Historian and professor of early Christianity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,\u00a0\u00a0Bart Ehrman explains in his new book, \u201d How Jesus Became God<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n In this fascinating \u00a0interview on Fresh Air<\/a>, Ehrman notes that the Christians were not the first to call someone god. They began doing so at the same time Roman\u2019s began to deify their emperors.<\/p>\n And they tried to explain the Trinity as monotheistic by calling it modalism. \u00a0Ehrman told NPR that \u201cit\u2019s called modalism because it insisted that God existed in three modes \u2014 just as I myself at the same time am a son, and a brother and a father, but there\u2019s only one of me \u2014 well these theologians said: That\u2019s what God is like.\u201d<\/p>\n Erhman argues that the early belief in the resurrection of Jesus \u201cis what initially led the followers of Jesus to believe that Jesus had been exalted to heaven and made to sit on the right hand of god.\u201d And, he says, \u201cthese beliefs \u00a0were the first Christologies\u2013the first understandings that Jesus was a divine being.\u201d<\/p>\n Ehrman also wrote several other books about Christianity including Misquoting Jesus<\/a><\/em> and Jesus Interrupted<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n