Drs. Michael J. Kruger and Charles E. Hill speak about a book to which Dr. Hill contributed, How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature, a response to Bart D. Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. The thesis of Dr. Ehrman’s book is that the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity was an early accretion onto the original truth of Jesus identity – neither Jesus nor Jesus’ disciples believed he was divine. How God Became Jesus is the first book-length response to Ehrman’s latest, and includes a contribution by Dr. Chuck Hill. Their thesis is that Jesus and his disciples rightly believed him to be divine, and that the later formulations of this doctrine reflected that early and accurate tradition.

Dr. Charles Hill is John R. Richardson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, Florida. His most recent publications include Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy (Oxford University Press, 2010) and The Early Text of the New Testament (Oxford University Press, 2012), edited with Dr. Kruger. He contributed to How God Became Jesus, which also features contributions by Michael Bird, Craig Evans, Simon Gathercole, and Chris Tilling.

Dr. Michael Kruger is President and Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC. He received his Ph.D. from New College, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the author of Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Crossway, 2012), The Early Text of the New Testament (Oxford, 2012; edited with Dr. Hill), and The Question of Canon (Intervarsity, 2013). Dr. Kruger has spoken on Christ the Center episodes 217 and 283 and 318.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Charles Hill, Jared Oliphint, Michael Kruger