Check out this book by one of the world's top secular Bible scholars, Dr. Bart Ehrman. He's written so many books and been in many debates about the Bible. It's called "How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee". It explains how Jesus started as a man, then became a demigod, then finally God in the Gospel of John. It's very obvious when reading the four canonized gospels that the first three - Matthew, Mark and Luke - do not depict Jesus as God at all. Only the Gospel of John does, which came decades later when the doctrine of Jesus' divinity became canonized. This is very obvious to anyone who examines the four gospels, and logically means that the doctrine of Jesus being God was created and evolved over time, by Christians and their churches and leaders. So it was not a fixed doctrine from Jesus himself. Ehrman's logic and analysis on this are superb and first rate and expert.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Jesus-Became ... 061778184/
New York Times bestselling author and Bible expert Bart Ehrman reveals how Jesus’s divinity became dogma in the first few centuries of the early church.
The claim at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. But this is not what the original disciples believed during Jesus’s lifetime—and it is not what Jesus claimed about himself. How Jesus Became God tells the story of an idea that shaped Christianity, and of the evolution of a belief that looked very different in the fourth century than it did in the first.
A master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, Ehrman reveals how an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee crucified for crimes against the state came to be thought of as equal with the one God Almighty, Creator of all things. But how did he move from being a Jewish prophet to being God? In a book that took eight years to research and write, Ehrman sketches Jesus’s transformation from a human prophet to the Son of God exalted to divine status at his resurrection. Only when some of Jesus’s followers had visions of him after his death—alive again—did anyone come to think that he, the prophet from Galilee, had become God. And what they meant by that was not at all what people mean today.
Written for secular historians of religion and believers alike, How Jesus Became God will engage anyone interested in the historical developments that led to the affirmation at the heart of Christianity: Jesus was, and is, God.
If anyone is interested, a team of Christian apologist authors and scholars have put together a book to counter and rebut Bart Ehrman's above, called "How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature---A Response to Bart Ehrman". It is a point by point refutation of Ehrman's book, and explains why the church did not invent Jesus' divinity and status as God. Here it is below if you want to read their side and rebuttal. It's always smart to study an issue from both sides after all, so you see the bigger picture and get better informed.
https://www.amazon.com/How-God-Became-J ... 00I2P2OVS/
In his recent book How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee historian Bart Ehrman explores a claim that resides at the heart of the Christian faith— that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. According to Ehrman, though, this is not what the earliest disciples believed, nor what Jesus claimed about himself.
The first response book to this latest challenge to Christianity from Ehrman, How God Became Jesus features the work of five internationally recognized biblical scholars. While subjecting his claims to critical scrutiny, they offer a better, historically informed account of why the Galilean preacher from Nazareth came to be hailed as “the Lord Jesus Christ.” Namely, they contend, the exalted place of Jesus in belief and worship is clearly evident in the earliest Christian sources, shortly following his death, and was not simply the invention of the church centuries later.
