Mike Bird has announced a debate via monograph concerning whether or not Jesus is divine. Bart Ehrman, lover and recycler of all things Baur, Bauer, and von Harnack, is set to publish a book arguing for the development (invention?) of the doctrine of the divinity of Christ after Jesus’ death and the earliest versions of Christianity. Bird, Craig Evans, Simon Gathercole, Chris Tilling, and Charles Hill will be responding with their own monograph, How God Became Jesus.  You can read Bird’s comments, along with each book’s Amazon.com blurb, on his blog.

This should be a great debate. Ehrman has always been able to to put arguments against the veracity, historicity, and antiquity of the Bible in language that can be understood and adopted by the masses (and of course he’s been helped by Dan Brown in that as well). This particular issue is one that strikes at the heart of Christianity, and I look forward to what I will assume can only be a witty but penetrating and insightful critique of Ehrman’s position by Bird et al.

And who can talk about Ehrman debating Christ’s divinity without mentioning this episode of the Colbert Report? (apologies for any ads that pop up…not under my control)