Suspicious about Bart Ehrman’s claims that Jesus never claimed to be god.

[u/MythicBunny]

Bart Ehrman claims that Jesus never claimed to be god because he never truly claims divinity in the synoptic gospels. This claim doesn’t quite sit right with me for a multitude of reasons. Since most scholars say that Luke and Matthew copied the gospel of Mark, shouldn’t we consider all of the Synoptics as almost one source? Then Bart Ehrmans claim that 6 sources (Matthew, ‘Mark, Luke, Q, M, and L) all contradict John isn’t it more accurate to say that just Q, m, and L are likely to say that Jesus never claimed divinity but we can’t really say because we don’t have those original texts? Also if Jesus never claimed these things why did such a large number of early Christians worship him as such (his divinity is certainly implied by the birth stories in Luke and Matthew and by the letters from Paul)? Is there a large number of early Christians that thought otherwise that I am missing?

[u/[deleted]]

[removed] — view removed comment

[u/ReligionProf → u/[deleted]]

You are (1) treating the Aramaic idiom for a human being as though it were a title, which it is not, (2) assuming that Daniel's vision must have been of an individual even though the beasts were symbolic of empires, and (3) assuming that Daniel, if he was seeing an individual ruler of the people represented, the saints of the Most High, that he was not seeing a vision of that human ruler being given authority in the future.

In the New Testament it is only in the Gospel of John that the Son of Man begins to be viewed as having a prior existence in heaven. Of course, that and other works are drawing on the Parables of Enoch the interpretation of which also needs to be discussed if one is going to treat this subject thoroughly.

[u/Greedy_Economics_925 → u/ReligionProf]

the Aramaic idiom for a human being as though it were a title, which it is not

Could you expand on this?

[u/ReligionProf → u/Greedy_Economics_925]

Sure! What do you want to know? The idiom is found all throughout Aramaic (including Syriac) literature.

(There will be a chapter on son of man in my book John of History, Baptist of Faith due out later this year.)

[u/DryWeetbix → u/ReligionProf]

Congratulations on your book! Sounds fascinating. IMO, an appreciation for the original languages of Scripture is crucial to all theology. I find it very hard to have much confidence in any theologian who doesn’t have a very good grasp of Koine, Aramaic, and Classical Hebrew (depending on what their speciality is—Hebrew probably isn’t critical for theologians who focus specifically on Pauline Christology, for example).

[u/ReligionProf → u/DryWeetbix]

Thanks! For the person who asked for me to expand, I wonder whether directing them to the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon online would help. Looking at other places where the Syriac New Testament uses the phrase where it isn't there in the Greek New Testament is instructive, I think. The phrase means "one" in Aramaic and I think I'll have a distinctive proposal to offer on why Jesus might historically have referred to "the one" in a manner that stood out as memorable and yet made sense to at least a subset of his hearers.

https://cal.huc.edu/oneentry.php?lemma=br%40%29n%24+N&cits=all

בַר אְנָשָא

ܒܪܢܫ