How Jesus Became God Analysis

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Just how did Jesus become God? Bart Ehrman explores this highly contradictory question along with others in his book, How Jesus Became God. Bart Ehrman, a New Testament Scholar who currently teaches at the University of North Carolina, takes his readers back to the very beginning of Christianity where he explores the life and teaching of Jesus Christ and just how he became divine in the eyes of Christians. Exactly who was Jesus though? Jesus was to be understood as a first century Jew. Like most of the Jewish believers at the time, Jesus “would have believed in the one true God and keeping the law of Moses would have been of paramount important to him.”(98) Essentially Jesus was just a normal human being of the time period who worshipped his…show more content…
To be divine, one must possess god-like qualities or attributes. According to Ehrman, there are many different ways in which a person could become divine. One way was for gods to become temporarily human. Ehrman references Ovid’s Metamorphoses to illustrate his meaning. In Ovid’s story, gods sometimes would take on a human form in order to interact with humans on earth. Another way for someone to be considered divine would be through having a mortal and a God as parents. This was usually seen in Greek mythology when the gods would have sexual relations with humans and the child would be born a divine being. Another way for a human to be considered divine would be for them to become divine through temporary incarnation. Humans becoming divine through these particular methods were normally seen in Ancient Greece and Rome although there were divine humans in Ancient Judaism as well. And even though the followers of Judaism were monotheistic, Ehrman states that “humans could become angels. Humans could be called the Son of God or even God. This did not mean that they were the One God who created heaven and earth.” Even though Jesus’s followers recognized him as divine, it did not mean that they were worshipping him over their one, true God. One important way that his followers came to see him as divine was through his miracle working. He could make the blind see and cure the sick and raise the dead. He even rose from the dead

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