Dear Friends,

This is my ninth post of direct commentary on How Jesus Became God, by Bart Ehrman. Check here for my introductory comments.

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So, did Paul believe Jesus was just a supercharged angel?

Today, we return to the topic of extra-Biblical writings, and how much light they shed on early Christianity.

I bet you didn’t know you were an incarnation Christologist

As Christians, we believe that Jesus is God Himself, made flesh. Here is a simple statement of that belief, via two verses from John 1:

[Jhn 1:1, 14 KJV] 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and THE WORD WAS GOD. … 14 AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. 

Ehrman calls this belief an “incarnation Christology“.

The thrust of his book is that the mainstream incarnation Christology of today-Jesus is God made flesh- was a later delusion (a “development”, as scholars like Ehrman so politely call it), while “exaltation Christology” came earlier. Exaltation Christology is the belief that “…the human being Jesus was made the Son of God…” (181 -182 of 302).

Furthermore, Ehrman claims that Paul believed Jesus was an angel made flesh…an alternative “incarnation Christology“, in Ehrman’s terminology (181 -182 of 302), but straight heresy in mine.

So, Ehrman himself is not claiming that Jesus was a supercharged angel, but he IS claiming that Paul believed that. And although he never explicitly makes the connection as far as I can tell, he strongly implies (191 of 302) that The Prayer of Joseph forms at least a small part of his case that Paul was a heretic.

Christianity found dead…foul play suspected

Hopefully, at this point, you can see what’s at stake here; if God-made-flesh was not a view held by Paul about Jesus, and only appeared as a later development, then it seems less likely that Jesus himself taught that view.

And if Jesus CHRIST Himself did not teach this view, why should CHRISTians of any era believe it?

Ehrman might never come right out and say it, but the implication of his position is pretty clear to me…Jesus was not actually God with a big G. No surprise, coming from an atheist, but still, it’s important to see exactly where his conclusion leads.

So, with the battle lines clearly drawn, our question for today is…

…how much light does The Prayer of Joseph really shed on Paul’s beliefs about Christ?

The Prayer of Joseph 

This extra-Biblical book you’ve never heard of is only preserved in small fragments quoted by others. It is generally believed to have been composed in the 1st century (1).

As Ehrman explains (47 of 302), it portrays Jacob (yes, THAT Jacob) as the human incarnation of a chief angel. After appealing to several other texts which I’m planning to discuss later, Ehrman makes his larger point (49 of 302):

“In other words, if humans could be angels (and angels humans), and if angels could be gods, and if in fact the chief angel could be the Lord himself-then to make Jesus divine, one simply needs to think of him as an angel in human form.”

So, was The Prayer of Joseph in the Top 40? 

Paul never mentioned the Prayer of Joseph, as far as we know, but if it was popular around the time that Paul was alive, then it might be reasonable to use it to inform our interpretation of Paul’s own writings.

And this is where I see Ehrman’s appeal to the Prayer of Joseph drifting off the road and into the ditch.

First of all, it appears that only a very small portion of The Prayer of Joseph has survived:

“The Stichometry of Nicephorus shows that the Prayer of Joseph had a length of eleven hundred lines, thus only a very short part has survived.” (1).

And my question is, if it was so popular, then why is most of it buried under the sands of time? 

Secondly, unlike the writings of Paul, this text was never canonized. That’s another problem with using it to inform our understanding of Paul’s Christology; if it actually existed around the time of Paul, and it truly dovetailed with or influenced Paul’s Christology, and so many of Paul’s writings were later canonized…then why wasn’t The Prayer of Joseph?

Thirdly, we need to ask how fast this prayer circulated; that will help us judge both the probability that it influenced Paul, and help us get a feel for how popular this text really was. Which brings us to…

…The Dark Ages Before Twitter

In order to get a sense of the popularity of The Prayer of Joseph around Paul’s time (he died around AD 60-70), I searched up the earliest extant reference TO The Prayer of Joseph. Do we have multiple other texts, written around Paul’s time, which reference the prayer? Or do we have to fast forward a long time through the pages of history to get to the first reference? Turns out, it’s the latter. The earliest reference I could find was written not in the first century, not in the second century, but in the THIRD century AD (2)…about 226-229, to be precise.

Remember, this was before Substack…even if the prayer was written in the first century AD, it would take time to circulate. So, given that the first extant reference to the prayer was written in the 3rd century, the evidence that this prayer influenced Paul is actually pretty weak. And this also calls into question how popular the text was in the first century in the first place…if it was actually popular around the time it was written, and represented the beliefs of significant segments of the Jewish population (especially Christian Jews), why don’t we have a single reference to it, by anyone, until perhaps 150 years later? 

The bottom of the barrel

Later in the book, we’ll see Ehrman specifically and directly contesting traditional Christian interpretations of Paul’s writings…and so, we’ll have to confront his hermeneutic head-on.

But today, he’s bringing up The Prayer of Joseph…a text that has been almost completely lost, was never canonized, and isn’t mentioned by anyone we know of until centuries after it was written…to indirectly build a case for radically revising Paul’s Christology.

I would say Ehrman is scraping the bottom of the barrel here, but it’s more like drilling a big hole in the bottom of the barrel and scooping dirt up through the hole and into your mouth.

In my opinion, Ehrman’s interpretation of Paul’s letters needs to be judged without reference–direct or indirect–to The Prayer of Joseph.

What about you?

God bless,

TFOTF

Links:

1: The Prayer of Joseph on Wikipedia (this thing doesn’t even have a Britannica entry)

2: Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John