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Originally Posted by hjalti Right. The lines of evidence Ehrman offers for the earliest Christology being adoptionism are, if I recall correctly: 1. The speeches in Acts. 2. The supposedly pre-Pauline material in Rom 1:3-4 My problem with this is that even though you have earlier material in Acts, Act is so late (let's say ~115 CE) that it's hard to go from there all the way back to the beginning without some good reasons. And a decent case can be made for #2 being part of a non-Pauline interpolation. And meanwhile Ehrman says that in the famous (pre-Pauline?) hymn in Philippians we have Jesus already pre-existing "in the form of god" as some sort of an angel. That sounds like high Christology to me.

... [Jesus Christ] who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead

Christians of the second and third centuries generally--regardless of theological persuasion--claimed to espouse the views of Jesus' earliest followers. With regard at least to the adoptionists, modern scholarship has by and large conceded the claim.

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Originally Posted by hjalti Quote: Originally Posted by GakuseiDon think you have Ehrman wrong on that point. Ehrman believes that the "in the form of God" is a part of an Adam Christology. He equates "in the form of God" with "in the image of God", i.e. Adam. He doesn't see the passage as necessarily indicating a pre-existing Jesus as some sort of an angel AFIAK. Here's what he says when discussing this passage in DJE? : When discussing this interpretation earlier he mentions that in the OT angels "may appear like God (in the "form" of God), but they are not actually God", and of course that they are pre-existing .

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Originally Posted by hjalti By the way, one thing that annoyed me was Ehrman's use of "God" and "god". Ehrman often says that Jesus wasn't "God" (capitalized), so he wasn't a "dying and rising god" (not capitalized). But he seems to think that in the earliest days (it's a pre-Pauline hymn), Jesus was thought of as a "dying and rising [angel]". A god by any other name would smell as sweet.

Dying and Rising Gods in Pagan Antiquity

Even though most mythicists do not appear to know it, the onetime commonly held view that dying-rising gods were widespread in pagan antiquity has fallen on hard times among scholars.

No one was more instrumental in popularizing the notion of the dying-rising god than Sir James George Frazer (1854– 1941). Frazer did in his day what Joseph Campbell did in the second half of the twentieth century: he convinced thousands of people that at heart many (or most) religions are the same. Whereas Campbell was principally revered by popular audiences, especially for such books as The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth, Frazer’s studies made their greatest impact upon scholars. Particularly influential was his view of dying and rising gods.

Frazer’s important book was called The Golden Bough, which went through a number of editions, each time growing larger and larger. Already in the first edition of 1890 Frazer had set out his view of pagan deities who died and then rose again; by the third edition of 1911– 15 Frazer devoted all of part 4 to the topic. In it Frazer claimed that Eastern Mediterranean divinities such as Osiris, Dumuzi (or Tammuz), Attis, and Adonis were all
dying and rising gods. In each case we are dealing, Frazer averred, with vegetative gods whose cycle of life, death, and resurrection replicates and explains the earth’s fertility. Frazer himself did not draw explicit connections between these divinities and Jesus, but it is perfectly clear from his less-than-subtle ways of discussing these other gods what he had in mind. He thought that the Christians picked up this widespread characterization of the pagans and applied it to their myths about Jesus.

Although such views about pagan gods were widely held in some circles for years, they met with devastating critique near the end of the twentieth century. There are, to be sure, scholars here or there who continue to think that there is some evidence of dying and rising gods. But even these scholars, who appear to be in the minority, do not think that the category is of any relevance for understanding the traditions about Jesus.

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Originally Posted by hjalti Quote: Ehrman also sees Rom 1:3-4 supporting adoptionism: Right, and that's what I said And I also said that a good case can be made for it being a part of an interpolation.

The most important point I want to make, however, is this. Even those scholars who think that Paul inherited this hymn (or creed) do not think that it was the oldest form of belief about Jesus. Even if it predates Paul, it does not represent the earliest Christian understanding of Christ. However we interpret this passage, the earliest Christian traditions point in a completely different direction, emphasizing Jesus’s full humanness andsaying nothing at all about his being God. The divinity of Christ is a relative latecomer to the scene of Christian theological reflections.