WI: Jesus never considered divine

Even if they didn't resolve the issue, we'd expect them to at least argue over it. E.g., Paul saying in one of his Epistles, "Don't listen to Peter when he denies the divinity of Christ, he's wrong," or Peter saying, "Don't listen to Paul, he's just an upstart heretic." And yet, there's no evidence of any controversy between the apostles on this extremely important point. Why not? Early Christian writers were happy to report the arguments Peter and Paul had with each other over following Jewish law, but for some reason they decided to suppress all mention of this other argument?
Que? I've never suggested that Paul thought Jesus wasn't divine. We have no direct record of what Peter believed one way or the other.

They can't contradict each other on what made Jesus divine without agreeing on the basic fact that Jesus was divine. Far from backing up your argument that Jesus' divinity was somehow up-in-the-air in early Christianity, this actually undermines it.
I've noted that the view that Jesus was divine was not universal in early Christianity. Those who did claim that he was divine were not drawing from a single early source with one tradition, but came up with a variety of different explanations. It's clear that they were not drawing from one early universal interpretation of divinity, but that different people were coming up with different reasons for it. Thomas, which most reasonably is an earlier source than John at least - and possibly others of the canonical gospels - does not claim divinity for Jesus at all. Granted, it doesn't explicitly reject it either, but if the divinity of Jesus was an essential belief for Christianity you'd think that it would mention it at least once.

The Gospels of Peter and Thomas were written later than the canonical Gospels. If we're trying to get back to what "the first Christians" believed, it's important to note that the earliest surviving documents are all in the "Jesus was divine" camp.
I disagree with Thomas being dated later than John, or at least the core of Thomas. It probably passed through several redactions, much as the canonical gospels have various accretions. Canonical John makes more sense as a response to Thomas, in addition to the aspersions it casts on different apostles (by the second century, all of the apostles were becoming revered figures, so it's difficult to see it being later than that).
 
Que? I've never suggested that Paul thought Jesus wasn't divine. We have no direct record of what Peter believed one way or the other.

The post of mine you were responding to was rebutting an earlier poster who sought to contrast what Paul believed with what "the earliest Christians" believed, so I assumed you thought they were in disagreement too.

I've noted that the view that Jesus was divine was not universal in early Christianity. Those who did claim that he was divine were not drawing from a single early source with one tradition, but came up with a variety of different explanations. It's clear that they were not drawing from one early universal interpretation of divinity, but that different people were coming up with different reasons for it.

So? "Some people thought Jesus was divine in this way, others thought he was divine in that way" doesn't at all contradict "Everybody thought Jesus was divine", in fact it backs it up.

I disagree with Thomas being dated later than John, or at least the core of Thomas. It probably passed through several redactions, much as the canonical gospels have various accretions. Canonical John makes more sense as a response to Thomas, in addition to the aspersions it casts on different apostles (by the second century, all of the apostles were becoming revered figures, so it's difficult to see it being later than that).

On the contrary, the Gospel of Thomas seems to rely on the Syriac translations of the original Greek Gospels, and so must be later than them.

Plus, whilst the final form of the New Testament wasn't fixed until the fourth century, the acceptance of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as the canonical Gospels was far earlier, by the early-to-mid second century at the latest. This was because, as the early Christian writers tell us, these four were regarded as being written by people who were closer to Jesus than the other accounts of his life were, and therefore as being more reliable. If the Gospel of Thomas really did predate the other Gospels, we'd expect it to have been included as well, based on the criteria used for accepting or rejecting Gospels.
 
it seems to me that if we want Jesus not to be considered divine then we somehow have to avoid him being crucified, or at least being crucified under the title of "King of the Jews."

This at least seems to be historical. It's not a central part of later theology, and just the sort of thing Pilate would do, but there has to be a reason for it. Some, perhaps most, of the earliest followers expected Jesus to somehow "restore the kingdom to Israel." That had to be re - interpreted after the shock of the crucifixion. Jesus HAD to be King, just not that sort of King. About ten years later Herod Agrippa was a literal and apparently popular King of the Jews. It was only natural that current Greek and Roman ideas of kingly divinity would be applied to Jesus, who was no longer in a position to contradict.
 
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