When Titus had come to Jerusalem, he encountered a city that had been effectively under siege by the two remaining zealot leaders long before he had arrived. Simon ben-Gioras maintained control over the upper city and led 10,000 fighters and fifty commanders, along with 8,000 Idumeans and eight of their own commanders, among whom were…
Last month, I took part in an online debate regarding Noah’s flood: was it a worldwide flood, a local flood, or should Genesis 6-9 be understood as an example of ancient Near Eastern (ANE) mythological literature? My take, as it has been for the past twenty years, long before I knew anything about the creation-evolution…
The State of Jerusalem in the Spring of AD 70 During the winter of AD 69-70, the three factions of zealots in Jerusalem terrorized both each other and the civilian population as a whole. Eleazar ben-Simon and his group of zealots held the temple itself and the court of the priests—he was helped by Judas…
As Vespasian bided his time in Caesarea, things were playing out just as he had expected in Jerusalem—the zealots were tearing each other apart, and in the process, plunging the city further and further into bloody chaos and desolation. John of Gischala, began to act more and more like a tyrant among the zealots and…
We now come to my final post in my extended book analysis of Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God. In this post I will cover Ehrman’s last two chapters, as well as the epilogue. Chapter 8 is entitled, “After the New Testament: Christological Dead Ends of the Second and Third Centuries,” Chapter 9 is entitled,…
We are now in the home stretch of my extended book analysis of Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God. In this post, I will be covering chapter 7, entitled, “Jesus as God on Earth (Early Incarnation Christologies).” In a nutshell, what Ehrman argues in this chapter is the following: A few of Jesus’ followers had…
The sixth chapter of Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God is entitled, “The Beginning of Christology: Christ as Exalted to Heaven.” As the title suggests, the chapter attempts to essentially trace the development of early Christian Christology regarding just who Jesus was. Remember, the title of the book is How Jesus Became God—and what Ehrman…
In chapter 5 of his book, How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman discusses “what we can know” about the resurrection of Jesus. Of course, given the fact that in the previous chapter where Ehrman makes the argument that there probably wasn’t an empty tomb because Jesus probably wasn’t even given a proper burial, one would…
The earliest Christians didn’t claim Jesus was physically resurrected. There is no way to know if there was an empty tomb. There probably wasn’t even a tomb to begin with because Jesus probably was either never buried at all or was thrown into a mass grave with other people who were executed by the Romans….
In chapter 4 of Bart Ehrman’s book, How Jesus Became God, focuses on what Ehrman believes we cannot know about the resurrection of Jesus. Early on in the chapter, Ehrman makes the distinction between belief in the resurrection of Jesus and the actual resurrection of Jesus. Thus, even though Ehrman correctly says, “Belief in Jesus’s…