2025 Landregan Lecture | Did Jesus Know He Was God? - by Dr. Brant Pitre

Doctrinally, the answer is a clear yes. However, historical critical considerations have long weakened confidence in that answer. Dr. Brant Pitre tackles the question in light of these newer questions with an eye to the Semitic and rabbinic modes of teaching and expression that Jesus employed.

Transcript

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Good evening. My name is Christopher Malloy. I am professor and chairman of the Department of Theology at our beloved University of Dallas. Welcome to the 2025 Landrighen Lecture. This lecture series was established in honor of the late Stephen Landrigan, UD alumnus, and is sustained by the generosity of Barbara Landrigan, whose presence honors us tonight. Thank you, Barbara. This series is inspired by the Second Vatican Council's hope-filled engagement with the world, so that the theological riches might bear pastoral fruit. As Catholics, are we not called to flee from the world and walk with rose petals upon our toes? No! We must engage the world. So, should we uncritically embrace its changing dictates? No again. Christ heard the woman at the well and from the depths drew forth her thirst. De profundis clamaviate. Shedding worldliness by the renewal of our minds, we converse with the shadowed world and offer healing rays from the light of faith. This is our contribution. But the mystery of Christ exceeds us. Remarkably, the world can help us decipher this mystery, giving us tools whereby to study the Master. In the interpretation of sacred scripture, the city of God employs the city of man. As St. Paul said, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, gracious. If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Discipling Paul, the church encourages the prudent use of historical and critical approaches, provided the lights of faith and sound reason serve as judges. We are pleased and blessed to have with us tonight Dr. Brand Petrie to model this approach. In 2004, Dr. Petrie earned his PhD from the University of Notre Dame. He served as professor of scripture for a number of years at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, and has been serving as distinguished research professor of scripture at the Augustine Institute since 2018. He has published dozens of articles and at least 11 books. I would highlight his 2011 book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, and his most recent monograph, Jesus and Divine Christology, by Eerdmans. I couldn't go through all 11.

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Petrie continues to distinguish himself by searching the mystery of Christ not only in the light of the church's dogmatic and theological traditions, but also and especially in light of the Jewish modes of thought and expression. Our Lord, after all, was a Jewish man, born under the law to a Jewish woman. Yes, he is the eternal Son of God and the only Savior of the human race, the King of kings, the true Messiah. But he is also rabbi of rabbis. He communicated the truth both simply and enigmatically. To read him right, we must hear him well. The title of tonight's lecture is Did Jesus Know He Was God? While a yes or no answer takes but a breath, study of the evidences takes us closer to the Holy of Holies. With the guidance of Dr. Petrie, let us hear the rabbi's riddles in search of his truth. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in a warm welcome to tonight's speaker, Dr. Brant Petrie.

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Before I begin, just a word of thanks to Dr. Malloy and to the theology department and to the university for the invitation to come. Also I'd like to thank Barbara. We had a wonderful dinner last night and got to know you. Thanks so much for sponsoring this lecture series tonight. I'm very, very excited to be with you. I've had many friends who have come to UD and heard wonderful things about it over the years, and it's really good to be here with you all face to face tonight. Before I begin, just a word. There is a handout for tonight's lecture. If you are a visual learner like I am, you'll want to follow along with that. I hope there's enough copies. If there's not, maybe you can look on with the person sitting next to you. I'm going to be covering a good bit of territory tonight, and I'll probably go through it quickly, but uh the handouts there to help you follow the lecture and then also for you to take home and reflect on some of the texts that we'll be looking at uh from the Gospels as well as from scholars uh of the historical Jesus. So uh without any further ado, we'll begin. Uh Did Jesus know he was God? Yes. Thank you. Good night. That's all. No, no, no. I have a few more things to say. Okay. Um but in all seriousness, before I begin, just this question's an important one because uh we laugh at it, especially if you're a cradle Catholic like I am, and you think, well, of course Jesus knew he was God, right? But if someone asked you, did Jesus know he was God? And you said yes, and then said, Well, how do you know? How would you respond? Where would you bring them? If they said, Show me in the Gospels, where he makes that claim. Well, where would you point them? Okay, so that's what we're going to do tonight. We want to look at how to answer that question in a contemporary context, especially when it's been challenged, as it has been, for the last several hundred years. So, actual beginning. The quest and the divinity of Jesus. In his famous study, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, published in 1906, the Lutheran scholar and genius Albert Schweitzer pointed out that the modern quest for Jesus was motivated from its very beginnings by more than just the historical aim of discovering what Jesus of Nazareth really did and said. It was also explicitly directed against the idea that Jesus ever claimed to be divine. Here's Schweitzer's quote, first quote for you. The historical investigation of the life of Jesus did not take its rise from purely historical interest. It turned to the Jesus of history as an ally in the struggle against the tyranny of dogma. For hate as well as love can write a life of Jesus, and the greatest of them are written with hate. It was hate, not so much of the person of Jesus, as of the supernatural nimbus with which it was so easy to surround him and with which he had in fact been surrounded. They were eager to picture him as an ordinary person, to strip from him the robes of splendor with which he had been appareled, and to clothe him once more with the coarse garments in which he had walked in Galilee. In other words, the modern historical quest for Jesus was often explicitly driven by the theological aim of liberating readers from the ancient Christian doctrine that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine, which Schweitzer calls the dogma of the two natures. According to Schweitzer, this dogma had first to be shattered before people could go once more out in quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of his existence. Alright, now since Schweitzer first pinned these words in 1906, historical Jesus research has come a long way. On the one hand, a strong case can be raised that the most important books on Jesus nowadays are no longer written with hate. I'm thinking here of the great work of Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth. In my view, most contributors to contemporary Jesus research are sincerely seeking the historical truth about who Jesus was, how he fit into his first century Jewish context, and the relationship between his public ministry and the early church. At the same time, a case can be made that the contemporary quest has inherited an almost reflective, reflexive reluctance to explore the question of whether Jesus ever claimed to be anything more than merely human. For example, in the 1980s, the Anglican theologian John A.T. Robinson once described the question of whether Jesus claimed to be divine as one of several no-go areas around which 20th century scholarship had erected warning signs, and which it would not be intelligent or respectable to question. Robinson wrote in his Cambridge Address to the Theological Society in 1985, this is the next quote. We can say what the church said about him, but we cannot say, or apparently be allowed to care, what he thought about himself. That was 1985. So that's four years before Taylor Swift was born, for context. Four decades after Robinson pinned these words, the situation remains largely unchanged. For example, in his 2014 book, uh the agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman emphasizes that the one thing contemporary Jesus research all agrees on is this. Quote, Bart Ehrman, Jesus did not declare himself to be God. One of the enduring findings of modern scholarship is that the followers of Jesus during his life understood him to be human through and through, not God. And that certainly was the consensus when I was in school in the 90s. When it comes to the modern quest, Ehrman's basic assessment is quite accurate. As I show in Jesus in Divine Christology, oh, by the way, here's the book. It's a gorgeous cover. You can get it on Amazon for $40. In Jesus and Divine Christology, I try to show that when one takes a closer look at recent research on ancient Judaism, the evidence in the first century gospels, and the practice and belief of the early church, one finds serious reasons for reopening the question of whether Jesus claimed to be divine. In order to see this, we need to take a brief look, I want to frame the problem, at what I call the problem of early high Christology. Okay, here's the problem. When we compare the results of the modern quest for Jesus with recent research on early Christology, that is, the earliest Christian beliefs about Jesus' identity as Messiah in Greek Christos, we discover something of a paradox. On the one hand, when it comes to historical Jesus research, the vast majority of modern questers agree that Jesus himself did not think, speak, or act as if he was in any way divine. Consider, for example, the categorical declaration of Anthony Harvey, again writing in the 1980s. Here's your next quote. Significantly, this view goes back to the earliest days of the modern quest for Jesus. For example, three of its most influential figures, Hermann Samuel Rimaris in the 18th century, David Friedrich Strauss and Ernst Rainan in the 19th century, are all at one in the assertion that Jesus never claimed to be divine. Here's Rainin's words, just as an example. Quote: That Jesus never dreamt of making himself pass for an incarnation of God is about a matter about which there can be no doubt. By the way, Raynan was an ex-Catholic priest, just throwing that out. Such an idea was totally foreign to the Jewish mind, and there is no trace of it in the Synoptic Gospels. We only find it indicated in portions of John, the Gospel of John, which cannot be accepted as expressing the thoughts of Jesus. Now notice two pillars of this view. Number one, the notion that Jesus thought himself divine is impossible because it would be incompatible with Jewish monotheism. Second, although Jesus does claim to be divine in John, that's admitted, like John 8, before Abraham was I am, or in John 10, I and the Father are one. According to these scholars, there's no trace of that divinity in the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Now, to this day, the assertion that Jesus never speaks as if he's divine in the synoptics continues to play a decisive role in the way many scholars view the historical Jesus. Consider, once again, the example of Bart Ehrman, and this is a really great quote. Ehrman is so good at summing up the consensus of scholarship. He's a very, very good writer, quote. If Jesus went around Galilee proclaiming himself to be a divine being sent from God, one who existed before the creation of the world, who was in fact equal with God, could anything else that he might have said be so breathtaking and thunderously important? And yet none of these earlier sources, and here he means the synoptic material, says any such thing about him. Did they, all of them, just aside, not to mention the one thing that was the most significant about Jesus? Almost certainly the divine self claims in John are not historical. You see the rhetorical power of that? Now, if this argument were true, it would be a really good argument. But I'm going to try to show you, I don't think it's right. According to Ehrman, however, when it comes to the four first century biographies of Jesus we possess, the score is three against one. Three earlier gospels in which Jesus does not claim to be divine, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and only one later gospel in which Jesus makes divine claims, John. Now, if this is right, then the weight of evidence clearly falls in favor of a merely human Jesus. Indeed, one searches most major monographs on Jesus in vain for any mention of the possibility that Jesus made divine claims. Perhaps the most striking example is the massive 3,600-page handbook for the study of the historical Jesus. I don't know whose hands they think can carry that around. Like, I mean it's not a pocket, but it's I have all four volumes at home. It's massive. And it has no discussion in almost 4,000 pages of the question of Jesus and his divinity. None. It's not even in the volume. The implication of such a gaping lacuna is clear. It is so self-evident to most contemporary scholars that Jesus didn't claim to be divine that the topic is not even worthy of discussion. For contemporary research as a whole, the answer to the question, did Jesus claim to be divine, is a resounding no. Now, here's the other side of the coin. Recent scholarship on Christology. On the other hand, when we turn from historical Jesus research to early Christological studies, we find a very different situation. In this field, most scholars agree that the earliest Jewish believers in Christ, think here of the Apostle Paul, for example, held what might be described as a high or divine Christology. In fact, in recent decades, it's become popular to use the expression high Christology to describe Jesus as a heavenly being who becomes human. Conversely, the expression low Christology is often used to describe a Jesus who originates as an earthly human being and is later exalted to divine status. Now, to be sure, this terminology is not helpful, it's overly simplistic, but it's utilized. So just be to be familiar with it with those categories in mind, considering some statements from recent scholars who have contributed to the discussion of early Christian Christology. So here are a few. And these are Jewish, agnostic, and Protestant scholars, by the way. So over throughout the talk, I'm going to consistently quote non-Catholic scholars who are making my point. Because I want you to see that it's this is not just a Catholic apologetic. There is actually a burgeoning recognition by scholars of these points, but no one's drawn them all together. That's what I'm trying to do. Okay, so Paula Fredrickson, a Jewish scholar. I have been a member of the early high Christology club for quite a few years now. Bart Ehrman, note this. The idea that Jesus is God was the view of the very earliest Christians, soon after Jesus' death. Ehrman admits that. Richard Baucom, an Anglican scholar, the earliest Christology was already the highest Christology. Now, it should be stressed here that scholars quoted above have different opinions about in what sense the earliest Jewish believers believed in Jesus as divine. For example, was he a defied human being? Was he an angelic figure? Is he equal to the creator? Is he God incarnate? There can be different ways of parsing out divinity. They also have different explanations for exactly how the belief in Jesus' divinity arose. Despite these differences, however, they all agree on one thing. When it comes to early Christian belief, Jesus was regarded as divine from the beginning. Okay? That's important. So here's the problem. In some, then, although the vast majority of contributors to the modern quest for Jesus agree that the historical Jesus never claimed to be divine, recent studies of the early church also agree that Jesus was regarded as divine from the beginning. So this paradoxical pair of hypotheses raises an important historical question. If Jesus himself never claimed to be divine, then how do we explain the origin of early belief in Jesus' divinity? Again, Ehrman puts the point well when he asks, next quote, how did an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee, crucified for crimes against the state, come to be thought of as equal to the one God Almighty, the maker of all things? How did Jesus, in the minds and hearts of his later followers, come to be God? Again, I want to stress, different scholars give different answers to this question. For example, so some will say it was the result of his misunderstood messianic identity. Paul Frederickson says that, you know, the claim on the cross, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. Others will say, like Larry Hurtato, it's the result of early Christian revelatory experiences where they encountered the risen and ascended Christ in visions and liturgical contexts, and so they deified him as a result. And the most popular explanation is that it's the resurrection, that the resurrection led to the divinization of Jesus in the experiences of the resurrection, whether they believe them to be veridical or not. The problem with that is, of course, that in first century Judaism, to be raised from the dead, it's a necessary condition for being divinized, but not a sufficient one, right? John the Baptist was believed to have been raised from the dead. No one worshipped him. Lazarus is raised from the dead, no one worshipped him. Jairus' daughter is raised from the dead. It doesn't make her a goddess, right? So that hypothesis is insufficient. So in Jesus and Divine Christology, I argue instead that the best explanation for why the earliest Jewish believers in Jesus thought he was divine immediately after his death is because Jesus himself made divine claims while he was still alive. I know that sounds funny, but this is actually a radical hypothesis, okay? Indeed, when we interpret the words and deeds of Jesus attributed to him in his first century Jewish context, a strong case can be made that the historical Jesus claimed to be divine, but he did it in a very Jewish way. This is important. Read the Gospels. Does Jesus go around? Does he ever say, hey everybody, I'm God. I'm the second person of the Trinity, don't you know? Like, no, that kind of explicit affirmation is not present, which is why so many scholars could look at the synoptics and not see the divinity. You have to read the Gospels through ancient Jewish eyes to actually see the claims that he's making. If you don't read them in light of the Old Testament, you will miss it, as I'll try to show. Okay. All right. So, four historical warrants. Now, given the fact that even asking this question in the scholarly guild was considered as a no-go area, uh it will be helpful to briefly justify my quest for historical reasons for even reopening this question. So I'm going to give you four warrants. You may not need them, but let me give them to you anyway, for why this is a good uh topic to explore. Number one, the divinity of the Messiah in Second Temple Judaism. The first warrant is based on the growing recognition that some ancient Jewish texts, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, Fourth Ezra, First Enoch, describe messianic figures that appear to be superhuman. Consider, for example, the following conclusions of recent scholars in early Judaism. Quote, Matthew Novenson, there are several types of messiahs attested in ancient Jewish texts and are commonly classified under the headings royal, priestly, prophetic, and heavenly. Bart Ehrman, quote, the ruler anointed by God is not a mere mortal. He's a divine being who has always existed, who sits beside God on his throne. The Son of Man figure would be one such divine figure. Wow. Adela Collins, John Collins of Yale, quote, the idea of the divinity, the Messiah, has its roots in the royal ideology of ancient Judaism. Ancient Judah, excuse me. Notice the divinity of the Messiah. Notice that this is not just any figure that they point to, but the Danielic son of man who is often singled out as an example of the heavenly Messiah. We're going to come back to him in just a moment. Hence, in contrast to the age-old assumption that at the time of Jesus, most Jewish people were waiting for a merely human and only military Messiah, recent scholarship shows that the divinity of the Messiah was part of the early Jewish landscape of Messianic expectation. Indeed, it's quite telling that several recent surveys of early Jewish Messianism add the category of heavenly Messiah to the now standard paradigms of priest, prophet, and king. We're all familiar with that, right? Priest, prophet, and king were the categories for Messiah. But more recent scholarship saying actually the early Jewish sources point to another heavenly. Although one Paulo Fredrickson, for example, immediately dismisses that as irrelevant for the study of Jesus. Well, we can take that one off the table. Well, maybe not. Second warrant. The historical Jesus saw himself as the Messiah. A second warrant is the increasing support for the conclusion that Jesus saw himself as the Jewish Messiah. Again, though in the 20th century, when I was in school, one of my daughters said that, Daddy, did you live in the 19th century? Like, no, no, I'm not that old, sweetheart. In the 20th century, it was very popular to assert that Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah. But this is the tides turned on this point amongst all kinds of scholars. So for example, Ehrman again, quote, I think there are excellent reasons for thinking Jesus imagined himself as the Messiah. The great German scholar Martin Hingel and Anna Maria Schwamer, the ever so popular unmessianic Jesus never existed. It was a figment of 20th century scholarly imagination. David Flusser, the Israeli scholar, quote, it is quite certain that in his own lifetime, Jesus became accepted by many, not just Peter, as Messiah. Had it not been so, Pilate would not have written above the cross the king of the Jews. That's a messianic title. Once again, that Jesus saw himself as Messiah is affirmed by lots of different scholars. And if this is right, then there's ample reason for taking a fresh look at exactly what kind of Messiah did Jesus claim to be. Third warrant, and this one's really important. A third historical warrant for venturing into the no-go area is growing recognition that Jesus is depicted as speaking and acting as if he's divine in all four first century gospels, not just John. This may come as something of a shock to readers familiar with the now standard assumption learned by undergraduates everywhere, maybe not at UD, but in most places, that Jesus is only divine in John. For example, however, consider the following sample of some conclusions by recent commentators on Mark. I'll just give you two. Randy Roshkover, who's a Jewish scholar, again, this is in the Oxford Jewish Annotated New Testament, which is an excellent resource. It was edited by my teacher, Amy Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament professor from Vanderbilt University. Randy Roshkov says, quote, even in Mark, where the Christology can be seen as low, some aspects of Jesus' divine nature appear. And then Adela Collins, a Catholic at Yale. In this saying, Jesus' response to Caiaphas, he claims to be a Messiah of the heavenly type, who will be exalted to the right hand of God. Being seated at the right hand implies being equal to God, at least in terms of authority and power. Now, again, others disagree. I mean, lots of views about the gospels. But so for this reason, I spend the entirety of the book looking at a close examination of key episodes in which Jesus appears to speak and act as if he's divine. For the purposes of this presentation, however, it may be helpful to highlight just one example. The recurrent accusations of blasphemy levied against Jesus in all four first century gospels. So I give you a little chart here. It's important to note. In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus is accused of blasphemy on several different occasions. We're going to look at Matthew and Mark in a little bit. You can see in Matthew, it's at the trial for the Sanhedrin. In Mark, it's in the healing of the paralytic. Luke is in the healing of the sinful woman. And then look at John here. This is in John 10, whenever Jesus, it's the feast of Hanukkah. And he says, the famous words, you know, I and the Father are one. And they pick up stones. And why are you doing this? And they say, It is for no good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, the only a human being, are making yourself what? God. So it's very explicitly a blasphemy charge there. Now notice that in both the synoptics and John, Jesus is accused of blasphemy in the context of questions about who? Tis in Greek, who he claims to be, his personhood. This raises an important question. If Jesus never claims to be divine in the synoptics, then why is he accused of blasphemy in the context of questions about his identity? In this regard, it's crucial to recall that in first century Judaism, and I can't overstress this, it was not blasphemy to simply claim to be the Messiah, right? Especially if you're just talking about an anointed prophet, an anointed priest, or an anointed king. After all, how would anyone ever identify the long-awaited king when he finally arrived if it were blasphemy to claim to be him, right? On the other hand, I mean that's a good point. You're waiting for him. On the other hand, it was blasphemy to claim to be divine. For example, 2nd Maccabees, if you look, describes Antiochus IV as a blasphemer precisely because he refused to recognize that no mortal should claim that he is, quote, equal with God. Along similar lines, Philo of Alexandria, who was a Jewish contemporary of Jesus, describes the words of anyone who has, quote, dared to compare himself to the all-blessed God as blaspheming. Finally, the first century Jewish historian Josephus makes clear that people who blaspheme against the one God are guilty of a capital crime. Here's Josephus, quote, God is one. Let him that blasphemes God be stoned, then hung for a day, and buried ignominiously and in obscurity. So stoning and suspension, crucifixion, are both appropriate punishments for a blasphemer. In light of such text, the question is this: Did Jesus of Nazareth make claims about himself that could be regarded by his contemporaries as blasphemy? Did Jesus speak or act as if he were equal with God? Of course, one could contend that all the accusations of blasphemy against Jesus cited above are unhistorical. So, for example, an airman would do that. I had a little QA with him years ago, and he said, Well, okay, yes, he is making a divine claim here, but that didn't happen. Right? So it's not a historical event that he's talking about the trial. But you can't just assert that. You've got to argue that. Okay? You have to use historical argumentation. You have to convincingly argue it. And as we will see, surprisingly, as I go through, as I was doing my research, I've got about 350 books on Jesus on the home, like at the Jesus shelf at home. And it was really shocking to me the number of major works on Jesus in early Christology that simply ignore the accusations of blasphemy in the gospel, as if they didn't exist. They're just omitted from discussions. However, these charges pose serious problems for the now commonplace assertion that there's no trace of Jesus making any divine claims in the synoptics. Even if one concludes that all the accusations of black blasphemy are unhistorical, what cannot be said is that Jesus only makes them in John. To the contrary, when all the evidence is taken into account, Jesus makes divine claims in all four first century sources, not just one. Indeed, when it comes to the four gospels, the score is not three against one, it's four against zero. Four Gospels in which Jesus is divine, and none in which he isn't, or none in which he's merely human. Okay? Alright, one last warrant, and then we'll get into the gospels, I promise. Other historical figures who claim to be divine. This is really important from a historical critical point of view to point this out. The fourth warrant is the often overlooked fact that other prominent figures from the Second Temple period also made divine claims. Although this fact is universally ignored in contemporary Jesus research, there's ample evidence that number one, Alexander the Great, number two, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, number three, King Herod Agrippa, and then number four, Caligula, everybody's favorite emperor, all spoke and acted as if they were divine during their lifetimes. I give you a bunch of data in the book. This is just a few key quotes. Alexander, quote, accepted worship as if he were a god and assumed his own divinity. It's all primary sources in the footnotes. Antiochus IV, quote, acted as if he were equal with God. He actually minted coins that said, King Antiochus, Theu Epiphanus, God manifest. So you know we have the Feast of Epiphany, where Jesus' divinity is manifest, his kingship. He put that on his coins. He was God manifest. Although his detractors, his political opponents, they called him Antiochus Epimanes, Antiochus the Madman, rather than Epiphanes, right? Because they didn't agree. Yeah, it's really good. Herod Agrippa, who was a contemporary of Jesus, a son of Herod the Great, was hailed as a god, not as a man, and as more than mortal in nature. Wow, did you know that? It's buried away in the lost book known as the Acts of the Apostles. It's also in Josephus. And then good old Caligula displayed madness, Manias, when he ceased to think of himself as a man and imagined himself a God. This is actually important. Remember C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, the famous liar, lunatic lord trilemma? In the early 20th century, this was a live question that whether Jesus as a human could claim to be God without being a maniac or a lunatic. In some, if there were other Jews who believed the Messiah would be a heavenly figure, if Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be a heavenly and not merely human Messiah, and if Jesus, like other historical figures, spoke and acted as if he were divine, then this would provide a plausible historical explanation for how it was that the first Jewish Christians came to regard Jesus as more than merely human. And especially it would provide a plausible explanation for why some of his contemporaries, most notably Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, accused him of blasphemy and handed him over to the Romans for execution for the capital crime thereof. So, with these four warrants in mind, I spend the bulk of the book looking at twelve episodes in the Gospels in which Jesus is divine. So I've given you a little chart here. If you look at your handout, there are twelve. But because I know you want to go home tonight, I'm only gonna look at three. All right? So we will we're gonna look at number one, the healing of the paralytic, number five, the walking on the sea, and number twelve, the trial before the Sanhedrin. Okay? And what I want to show you is that when each of these episodes in the gospel is interpreted in a first century Jewish context, they reveal a Jesus who does claim to be divine, but again, in a Jewish way. And I'm not the only one who's saying something like this. Dale Allison of Princeton University in his recent book uh gave this beautiful quote where he said, Quote, we should hold a funeral for the view that Jesus entertained no exalted thoughts about himself. I agree. But in order to see it clearly, we need to look at the gospels, take a closer look, and try to see them through Jewish eyes. One second. Okay, you ready? Let's do it. Number one, the healing of the paralytic. The first episode that demands our attention is the account of Jesus healing a paralytic, which is found in all three synoptics. Here's your I'm just gonna look at Mark for the sake of time. I'll just take pick one. When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of door, and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing him a paralyzed band carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven. Now pause there for a second. Son, that's a very strange way for an adult Jewish male to address another adult Jewish male. That's your first clue that this looks strange. Second, I can't help but imagine that the paralytic, when he heard the words, your sins are forgiven, might have been thinking, that's not exactly what I came here for. You know? Now some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts, why does this fellow speak this way? It is blasphemy. Who can forgive sins but God alone?

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Right?

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And once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves, and he said to them, Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or to say, stand up and take your mat and go home. But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to for on earth. Let me say that again. But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, I say to you, stand up, take your mat, and go to your home. And he stood up and immediately, that's Mark, took the mat and went out before all of them so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, We've never seen anything like this. Now, much can be said about this remarkable passages. For our purposes, just four basic exegetical points. First, when Jesus declares the man's sin to be forgiven, he's doing something that in Jewish scripture only God does. For example, when the book of Leviticus describes the forgiveness of sins achieved by priests in the tabernacle, it is consistent in its use of the divine passive to describe the Lord as the one who forgives. For example, in Leviticus, it says, the priest shall make atonement for you on behalf of your sin that you've committed, and you shall be forgiven. Over and over. It's a refrain throughout Leviticus. As Jacob Milgram points out in his 3,000-page commentary on Leviticus. If you're looking for some Linton reading, there you go. The use of the divine passive shows that the Lord alone is the agent of forgiveness. In the entire Bible, only God dispenses salach, forgiveness, never humans. Second, should there be any doubt about this, in all three synoptics, some of the Jewish scribes who hear Jesus' declaration of forgiveness react by accusing him of blaspheming. It's on all three accounts. In order to understand this reaction, it's important to emphasize that at the time of Jesus, the word blasphemy could be defined in six ways. So forgive me, I didn't get to, I couldn't fit the chart on the handout, it was already long enough. So with blasphemy, you can get accused of it for different reasons. Like, number one, illicit pronunciation of God's name, uh, derogatory speech against God, derogatory speech against other deities, uh, derogatory speech against priests. Like if you cursed a priest, that could be called blasphemy. Sacrilegious acts in the temple, desecration of vessels, that could be blasphemy. And then the sixth definition is to make a divine claim, right? Now, in the healing of the paralytic, there's no evidence that Jesus pronounces God's sacred name, much less that he attacks the Jewish priests or other deities or the temple, definitions one to five. Therefore, in context, the only really plausible explanation for the scribe's accusation is that Jesus is speaking or acting as if he is divine, definition six. As Adela Collins argues in her commentary on Mark, quote, here's your quote, there is no precedent for a human being making a simple declaration that God is at this moment forgiving another human being sin. It should be noted here that commentators hold that because Jewish priests acted as mediators, some people will object and say that Jesus is only arrogating to himself a priestly prerogative. This view, however, runs up against the fact that the scribes do not say, this is important, who can forgive sin but the priests alone? That's not their objection. Their objection is who can forgive sins but God alone, right? In fact, in Mark, it's who can forgive sins except Hezhoteos, the one God. That's the literal translation of the Greek. Who can forgive sins but the one God? That's a monotheistic formulation based on the Shema. The response of the Jewish scribes show that they consider Jesus' declaration to be infringing on a divine prerogative of the God of Jewish monotheism. That's a really serious charge. Third, and this is important, also, it's all important, but uh, Jesus does not draw back or seek to correct the scribes, like, no, you you got me wrong, right? Instead, he doubles down and implicitly identifies himself as the Son of Man, Havillos to Anthropu, who does in fact have authority, exousia, to forgive sins upon earth. Jesus then proceeds to demonstrate this authority by commanding the paralytic to stand up, take up his mat, and go home. And he does. As John Meyer, my teacher at the University of Notre Dame, put it, Jesus performs the visible act of healing the paralytic to show that he has the invisible, I'm sorry, the power to perform the invisible act of forgiving his sins. Does that make sense?

unknown 38:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

In order to interpret Jesus' response in a first century Jewish context, then it's important to recall that he that the expression Son of Man that he implicitly takes for himself can be used in a couple ways. It can be just a generic term to refer to a human being, like in Psalm 8. But with a definite article, as many scholars point out, it can also be used as a reference to a specific Son of Man in the book of Daniel, in his vision of the heavenly Son of Man who's given authority in chapter 7. So here's your quote. Daniel says, I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, and he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him. To him, meaning the Son of Man, was given authority and glory and kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. Daniel 13, 7, 13, and 14. Now, commentaries on Daniel continue to debate whether the figure of the Son of Man is an angelic being or a messianic figure or a corporate or collective symbol for the people of Israel. On this question, just a couple of quick points. First, um, whatever contemporary exegetes may conclude about Daniel 7, the most ancient Jewish interpreters that we have in books like 1 Enoch or Fourth Ezra identify the one as of like a son of man in Daniel as a messianic figure. That's important. The earliest interpretation is messianic and individualistic. The reason for this is probably because the angelic interpretation of the vision that is given to Daniel in the book actually parallels the Son of Man with the four beasts, which represent four kings. So that the fifth in the line is a royal figure, except he's a good one. In context, the Son of Man, this is important, is also heavenly, right? Who's described as if he's divine. For example, he comes riding on the clouds of heaven, right? Note that's something God does in the Bible. Like he rides the clouds. Okay. Also, notice that when it says he was one like a son of man, it implies that he appears to be human, but is in fact heavenly. In the words of the contemporary Jewish scholar, Danny Boyarin, um, so this is not a Christian apologist, quote, with this text, Daniel 7 projects is a second divine figure who will be given eternal dominion over the entire world. In other words, a simile, a God who looks like a human being. Wow. In other words, when Jesus' somewhat cryptic self-reference is interpreted in light of Jewish scripture, he is implicitly, not explicitly, implicitly, identifying himself both as a human being, son of man, and as a heavenly Messiah, the Son of Man, revealed in the apocalyptic book of Daniel. It's like an apocalyptic riddle. This is how Jesus teaches. Remember, he's the great teacher in parables, Mushalim in Hebrew, which can also be translated as riddles. He wants you to have the ears to hear. And his words are going to both reveal his divinity to those who have ears and conceal it from those whose hearts are hardened. That's his pedagogy. Finally, fourth, should there be any doubt about this implicit divine claim, look at the reaction of the Jewish crowds. They were all amazed and glorified God, saying, We've never seen anything like this. Notice the crowds don't say, ah, we've seen priests do all this all the time, or we've seen other miracle workers do this kind of thing. Instead, they respond as if Jesus has spoken and acted in ways that are unprecedented, which makes perfect sense if he's claiming a divine prerogative. In light of such observations, then, more than one scholar has concluded in the synoptic accounts of the healing of the paralytic, Jesus speaks and acts as if he is more than merely human. Consider again the following statements. Quote Martin Hingel, out of Maria Schramer, Jesus emphasizes the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins. Here too he acts in the place of God. Richard Hayes, who recently passed away at Duke University, the healing of the paralytic provides a further clue about Jesus' divine identity. And Richard Balcom, Anglican scholar. Jesus' practice of declaring God's forgiveness was perceived in his time as infringing on a divine prerogative. Now, if this is right, I think it is, then the account of the heralding of the paralytic provides us with important evidence in which Jesus appears again to claim that he's both human, notice, he's human, son of man. He's affirming humanity. We're not docetists, right? Okay. But also implying he's a heavenly being, the son of man. From the book of Daniel. Alright, so that's our first episode. Second one, walking on the sea. This one's fine. The second episode we'll look at involves the famous account of Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee. This one is present in two of the synoptics and also in John. And it is widely identified by scholars as a quote, epiphany miracle. So John Meyer in his massive series A Marginal Jew, Volume 2, has a whole section on the epiphany miracles. And these are miracles in which Jesus doesn't, you know, deliver someone from a demon or uh heal some disease, but which the miracle is actually ordered toward manifesting some invisible aspect of his identity. And by the way, the epiphany miracles are consistently and systematically ignored in many, many books on Jesus. They just skip them as if they don't exist. That's a problem. So once again, we focus here on Mark. Let's look at Mark for a second. Well, we're moderns, y'all. We have electricity, we have cameras, we have phones. We can't believe in that kind of stuff, right? And this is kind of the modern chronological snobbery that the ancients could believe in miracles, but we're past that now. Rudolph Bullmann famously said, you know, modern man cannot believe he cannot have the electric wire and still believe in miracles. Well, that was the 30s. Okay. Immediately, here's Mark 6. Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. Now, after saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray. He's human, gets has to get away from the crowds to pray. When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and he was alone on the land. When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by, but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. So, side note, the apostles believed in ghosts, apparently. But immediately, this is Mark, immediately he spoke to them and said, Egoemi me fobesta, or wading through the surf near the hidden shore, or walking on the very edge of the sea in the shallows. Nor do they say, give us the slightest hint that Jesus, quote, knew where there were some submerged rocks, or that he quote, walked on a log or a concealed sandbar. In fact, in the early 2000s, I remember there were a couple of scientists, climatologists, who actually put out this piece where they argued that every thousand years the Sea of Galilee freezes. And so there were sheets of ice, yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course the disciples go fishing when it's frozen. But anyway. And he and he was walking on floating ice, um, which is tricky in itself, right? Um you don't have to be divine, but you have to be have good balance. Now, did you see any of that in the text? I didn't. Right? This is eisegesis of the worst kind. I mean, it's just totally reading this into the text. Um, and it does violence to the gospel accounts, right? It might be the greatest example of eisegesis anywhere in the gospels. So instead, we want to exegete, we want to ask, what does the text actually say? And I'll be three points here. First, though some contemporary people might think, like if you haven't been to the Holy Land, you might imagine the Sea of Galilee as a small body of water. But it's actually about 13 miles long from north to south and about seven and a half miles wide. Right. So, although some translations obscure the point, the Gospel of Mark states the boat that is that the boat is in the midst of the sea. In Mesotes Thalasis. Taken at face value, this would place the disciples a few miles from the shore. Matthew says that the boat is mini stadia from the land. And since a great stadion was about 600 feet, uh this easily places the disciples more than a mile from the shore. Finally, John is the most explicit. He states that the Gospels are about, quote, three or four miles from the shore. In short, according to the Gospels, Jesus walks on the sea for several miles before he arrives at the boat. Now, this is a really interesting point. So for many years I taught at Notre Dame Seminary, and I lived on the North Shore in Covington, where my good friend Chris Baglow, another UD uh alum, we lived up there, and we would commute down to the seminary together. And there's a bridge across the Pontrafrain Lake, which is the longest freestanding bridge in the world. It's 24 miles long, it's the causeway. And there are mile markers along it. So one day I was about to teach this passage, and I thought, hmm, I wonder how far four miles is. So when I got to the fourth mile marker, I looked back. That's a long way to walk on water. So I always like to tell my disciples, I mean my disciples, floating and slip, okay. Sorry. My students. That messed up my joke. Okay, okay. I always like to tell my students, mate taste. Hey, disciple just means learner. Mate taste. That's what it means. I'm messing up my joke. Stop. Come on. I always like to tell my students, look, if Jesus didn't know he was divine by mama one, I think he figured it out by mom four. He's like, I'm not like the other people. You know, something's different. Okay, second point. In all three accounts, Jesus does something the Jewish scripture says only God can do. He walks on the sea. Consider this illusion, and it's uh in the book of Job. Look at Job chapter 9, it's a description of God. Quote: God alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea. That's from Job chapter 9. Notice here the surrounding context. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm gonna close my book there. Who does great things beyond understanding and marvelous things without number. John 9, Job 9, 8 to 10. Notice here the surrounding context in Job is a hymn of praise to God as creator of the universe. Notice also that Job emphasizes that God alone is able to walk upon the waves of the sea. In fact, the ancient Greek Septuagint translates the verse in this way: God alone walks on the sea as on dry ground. Okay? In light of such passages, both atheists and Christians agree that by walking on the surface of the sea, Jesus is doing what the book of Job says only God can do. So Garr Ludemann, who was also a Vanderbilt when I was there, he's an atheist German scholar, quote, In antiquity the capacity to walk on water was regarded as divine power. Old Testament parallels are to be noted here, according to which God can walk on the water or on the waves of the sea. CF Job what? 9, verse 8. So Ludeman didn't believe any of this happened, but he knew the Old Testament and he knew the implications. Garr Tyson and Anetta Meritz, quote, only a divine being can walk on water. Now, when we interpret Jesus' act of walking on the sea in light of Jewish scripture, a strong case can be made that, again, this is an epiphany miracle. It reveals that Jesus is not just any deity, he's equal to the God of Job, who famously said, Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Okay. Finally, most important of all, when the disciples react with fear to the appearance of Jesus walking on the sea, in all three accounts, he responds to them by declaring, Ego and me. It is I, do not be afraid. Now, some commentators here are gonna insist that Jesus is merely identifying himself. In support of this, they'll point to other passages where the phrase I am without a predicate can be used to identify someone. For example, the man born blind, when they ask, hey, are you the guy that used to beg in the Gospel of John, he says, ego and me, and the implication is he means I am the man. Yes, it's me. So according to this view, the English translation, it's me, captures the sense of Jesus' words. And to be sure, there's some truth here. When Jesus says, ego and me, it is I, there's no doubt he's identifying himself to the disciples. After all, they are in need of correction since they mistook him for a ghost. On the other hand, if we situate his words in an early Jewish context, there are very good reasons for holding that he's also alluding to the famous account of God appearing to Moses on Mount Sinai, where he reveals the divine name. Remember, Moses asked God, what's your name? What am I going to tell them? And the quote says, God said to Moses, I am who I am. In the Greek Septuagint, it's Ego Emi Hoon. I am he who is. On. We get ontology from that. It's a metaphysical claim. He said further, thus you shall say to the Israelites, I am, has sent me to you. God also said to Moses, thus you shall say to them, the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has sent me to you. So in Exodus, this expression, I am, Ahya, is a divine self-designation that functions as another name for the Lord, Tetragrammaton, Y-H-W-H, the one God of Israel. The divine I am also suggests that the God who appears to Moses is eternal. He has no beginning, he has no end, he simply is. In fact, uh David Noel Friedman argues that the tetragrammaton, what Yahweh, means he who is. Moreover, though the point is often overlooked, Jesus, this is really crucial, he doesn't just say I am. He also says, do not be afraid. These two expressions occur together in one of the most explicitly monotheistic passages in the entire Old Testament. It's Isaiah, chapter 43. Look at Isaiah 43. God says to Israel, Do not fear, for I have redeemed you, so that you may know and believe and understand that I am He. Before me no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me. It's only by ignoring the echoes of Job and Isaiah in Jesus' response that one can seriously maintain he's simply saying, It's me. You have to ignore the echoes. This is especially true when we keep in mind that Jesus does not say, I am, in just any context. He says them while he's walking on water. Okay? Context matters, right? It's important. In light of such considerations, scholars of very different perspectives agree that his response to the disciples on the sea is not merely a self-identification but a self-revelation, Rudolf Schnackenbohr, of his divinity. I could use Father Meyer, who was my teacher at Notre Dame. He admits this allusion to Exodus III, but I thought it would be helpful to use the notoriously skeptical members of the Jesus seminar. You might not remember them. They were very, very popular in the 1990s. They were not apologists, okay? They were very skeptical. But when they read this text, this is how they interpreted it. Quote: In this scene, Jesus is not an ordinary Galilean sage. He is the manifestation of a divine being. Until he reassures them that it is he, and so doing, he uses a Greek formula, ego emi, it's me, that is reminiscent of the I am saying of God in the Hebrew Bible. So don't take my word for it. Just take the Jesus seminars. The difference between them and me is they don't believe any of this happened. Okay? Now, if the Jesus seminar is right, the implications are enormous. Though the divine I am is the exclusive and unique name of God, the one God of Israel, in the context of an epiphany miracle, Jesus uses it to refer to himself. He takes the name of the eternal God who is uncreated without beginning, without end, as his name. Now, quick aside, this doesn't just work in a Jewish context, it also works in a Greco-Roman context. So remember I mentioned Caligula, the Roman emperor, who claimed to be divine when he was alive? Well, in order to prove it, guess what he did? He he built a bridge of pontoons against the bay of Bae so that he could ride his chariot across and look like he was walking on the sea. Josephus and Suetonius talk about this. So look at this quote. Josephus says, Caligula's other actions did not fall short of madness. For instance, it was insufferable he thought to cross the bay in a trireme in a boat. He considered it his privilege as lord of the sea, to require the same service from the sea as he required from the land. So the thirty furlongs of sea from headland to headland were connected by pontoons, and over this bridge he drove his chariot. That way of traveling, he said, befitted his Godhead. So even pagans would have known if you can walk across the sea, you're divine. You're divine. So, in light of all these exegetical observations, scholars across the religious spectrum agree that Jesus acting walking on the sea indicates that he's more than merely human. He is divine. Again, Jewish scholar Randy Rushkover, even in Mark, some aspects of Jesus' divine nature appear. For example, in Mark 6, he walks on the water.

unknown 55:32

W.

SPEAKER_01 55:32

D. Davies and Dale Allison, in their fantastic commentary, on the classic work on Matthew, says, Jesus here exhibits an authority which the Jewish scriptures associate exclusively with the deity. Jesus is bold enough to refer to himself with the loaded and numinous I am. That's right. It's the numinous I am. It's not just, it's me, you know. The step toward the later ecumenical creeds, he's talking about Nicaea and Chalcedon here, which affirm Christ's deity appears undeniable. In short, when the words and actions of Jesus are interpreted in their first century Jewish context, a solid case can be made that the episode is a theophany, not just a Christophany, in which Jesus reveals that he's not just any deity, but the one God of Israel. Come in person. Third episode, almost to the end. The charge of blasphemy. The third episode in which Jesus speaks as if he's divine takes place in the account of his interrogation by Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin on the night before he was crucified. So I know you know this passage, very famous. We're going to hear it during Lent, right? Holy Week. But listen to it again and try to see it through Jewish eyes. Quote. They took Jesus to the high priest, and all the chief priests, the elders, and scribes were assembled. Peter had followed him at a distance right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself by the fire. Now the chief priests and the whole council were looking for a testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none. For many gave false testimony against him, and their testimony did not agree. Some stood up and said against him, gave false testimony against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands. But even on this point their testimony did not agree. Then the high priest stood up before them and asked, Jesus, Have you no answer? What is it they testify against you? But he was silent and did not answer. Again the high priest asked him, Are you the Christos, the Messiah? Son of the Blessed One? Jesus said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the power and coming with the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest tore his robes and said, Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard his what? Blasphemy. What is your decision? And all of them condemned him as deserving death. Some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to strike him, saying to him, Prophesy. The guards also took him over and beat him. Now, while Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came by, and when she saw Peter warming himself, she stared at him and said, Hey, you also were with Jesus, the man from Nazareth. But he denied it, saying, I do not know or understand what you're talking about. Then he went out into the forecourt. All right, Mark 14, parallel of Matthew 26. Now the amount of ink spilled over the trial of Jesus is virtually incalculable, but for our purposes, I just want to make a couple of brief points. First, actually five. First, the episode begins with Jesus being brought under arrest to the house of Caiaphas, where he's examined by the Sanhedrin. Note well that Simon Peter is explicitly described as having followed Jesus and as being present in the courtyard, the Ole, during the questioning. As the evidence from Josephus and archaeology suggests, the house of the high priest was not a small home, but a palatial residence with a large courtyard where many people could be gathered. So according to the Gospels, Peter is Simon, Simon Peter is an eye and ear witness to the trial. This is really important because Ehrman and others will say, Well, we have no access to what was said during the trial, so we can't know. And I'm like, the Gospels say Peter is in the courtyard. In Luke, Jesus looks at him, remember? So he's within sight. Very important. Also, Nicodemus is a member of the Sanhedrin Joseph Arimathea, too. But I digress. Second, contrary to popular belief, Jesus is not condemned for his words or actions involving the temple. To be sure, some unnamed figures testify that he threatened to destroy and rebuild it. However, according to the Gospels, their testimonies don't agree and their claims don't lead to any charge. As a result, the key charge against him is not that he had threatened to destroy the temple. This is important. It's a popular hypothesis now among scholars to say the reason Jesus was crucified was because he had spoken or acted out against the temple. That's plausible, but there's no evidence for it. There's no evidence in the gospel that he was charged with that crime. Because it's not a capital offense. Third, in the wake of the abortive attempt to bring a charge against Jesus, the high priest intervenes and asks him point blank whether or not he's the Messiah, Christos, and the Son Qios of God. In context, this is a question about the anointed Davidic king, who in 2 Samuel 7 and Psalm 2 is called the Son of God. Significantly, Jesus responds to Caiaphas' question in the affirmative by saying, I am, in Mark, or in Matthew, he says, You have said so. Both of those are affirmations. The force of the Greek is the same as in English. If I say, you said it, I'm affirming it, but I'm putting the onus on you for making the affirmation. So the latter form emphasizes, oh and I already said that. Hence, whatever the exact form of Jesus' response is, the substance is an affirmation in the presence of Caiaphas that Jesus thinks he is the long-way to Messiah and Son of God. Fourth, and most importantly of all, Jesus does not merely answer yes. This is crucial. He also goes on to identify himself with two figures in Jewish scripture. So he alludes to two Jewish texts: the Son of Man who comes on the clouds in Daniel 7, and then the heavenly king who sits at the right hand of God in Psalm 110. So we already looked at Daniel 7, but just to feel the force of that designation, it's important to remember that in Daniel 7, the Son of Man is not just the fifth king in a series, he's also described as a heavenly being who looked human and he acts like God himself. Again, Danny Boyarin gets this really clearly when he says what Daniel 7 projects is the second divine figure, right? A God who looks like a human being. Along similar lines, when it comes to Psalm 110, the royal figure in that psalm is depicted as a heavenly king. The Lord says to my Lord, here's the quote, uh, the Lord says to my Lord, Psalm 110, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. You know this one, especially if you pray the liturgy hours. The Lord sends out from Zion your mighty scepter, rule in the midst of your foes. Yours is princely power on the day of your birth in holy splendor, from the womb of the dawn, like the dew I have begotten you. Psalm 110, 1 to 4. Sorry, typo. As commentators point out, the image of a king sitting at the right hand of God implies that he's in some sense equal with the Lord. And the imagery of his being begotten before the dawn implies a kind of pre-existent divine status. That's certainly how early Jewish interpreters render this text. So Frank Hosfeld and Eric Zinger, in their commentary in the Psalms, say, I have born or begotten you, proclaims the enthronement as a divine begetting or a birth from the dawn. Joel Marcus of Duke, I think he said Duke, in his commentary, says, a seated position at the right hand of a deity implies co-regency. The imagery of the quoted portion of the Psalm implies that my Lord stands in a position of near equality with God. And you've got to think about ancient Jewish or ancient royal ideology. I mean, the only person who gets to sit on the throne is the king. So if you sit at the right hand of the king, you have equal authority and power with the king. And if that king's God, well, there are implications. If this is correct, then by quoting Psalm 110, Jesus implies he's not merely the human Messiah, he's also the super Davidic Son of God, who sits at God's right hand as God's equal. And his answer to Caiaphas, Jesus isn't just affirming he's the Messiah, he's also claiming to be the pre-existent celestial figure who will sit at God's right hand and the heavenly Son of Man, who will one day receive the kind of worship, it's called sir, it's translated as serve in the English, but it's the same term used for worship elsewhere in Daniel that is given to God alone. Finally, if there's any doubt about what I'm suggesting to you about the way Daniel 7 and Psalm 110 are functioning in the trial, you just need to look at the reaction. How do Caiaphas and Sanhedrin respond? Well, Caiaphas tears his garments and explicitly accuses him of blasphemy. Includes Jesus. When Caiaphas asks the rest of the Sanhedrin for their decision, they too condemn him as deserving death. And in order to understand this response, it's important to recall that a person could be accused of the crime of blasphemy for making a divine claim. That would be a capital crime in a Jewish context. It would be worthy of death. And since there's no evidence that Jesus pronounces the divine name, some people argue that, but that's it's he's answering, when he says echo and me to the priest, he's answering a question. And it doesn't have any particular added connotation. People say this all the time if they're answering a question about identity. The fact that Caiaphas therefore tears his garments demonstrates that blasphemy is the issue. So, according to the Gospels, the principal reason Jesus is rejected and handed over for execution is not because of what he says about the temple, but because of what he claims about himself. And here I'll just give one point. This is uh look at Jane J. Daniel Kirk. He's an agnostic scholar. He wrote a whole book, 500 pages, on how Jesus is only human in Mark. But when he comes to the trial, he admits this quote, in the mouths of Jesus' opponents, blasphemy is a charge leveled against him for claiming to be what? God. So don't take my word for it, you can listen to him. Uh Catholic scholar uh Arman Puig Itarek, same thing, and David Fluser. I will read Flusser's because he's a Jew. He says this the one like a son of man who sits upon the throne is the highest conception of the Redeemer ever developed in ancient Judaism, a human being who is divine. We could still come to the conclusion that Jesus spoke and acted as if he were divine in his lifetime. Last but certainly not least, my hypothesis also has the power to explain the problem of early divine Christology, with which I began the essay. In his brilliant study of Jesus and Judaism, uh the Protestant scholar E. P. Sanders once wrote, quote, It has proven difficult to do justice to the question of how it was that Jesus lived totally within Judaism and yet was the origin of a movement that separated from Judaism. This is this important question. Since ex nihilo nihil feet, nothing comes from nothing, or more idiomatically, where there is smoke, there is fire. Indeed, when it comes to the aftermath of Jesus' life, contemporary scholarship has had a really hard time doing justice to Sanders' principle here of nothing comes from nothing. I think that's from the sound. Of music also. In particular, the view that Jesus never claimed to be divine has struggled to explain how this merely human Jesus came to be regarded as divine by his Jewish followers. And that from the beginning. As I hope to have shown from a historical point of view. Notice I've not used arguments from faith, I've not used arguments from church authority. I'm not citing the church fathers or Aquinas, although I love them, right? We're just looking, we're using reason and the evidence in the Gospels to interpret the text. The problem with early divine Christology is not actually as much of a problem as it may have seemed to be. Instead, when all the evidence from the Gospels is interpreted in a first century Jewish context, there are good reasons for conclusion. I'm sorry, there are good reasons for concluding that the reason the first Jewish Christians believed in the divinity of Jesus immediately after his death is because Jesus himself claimed to be divine during his life. In other words, when it comes to E. B. Sanders' principle of ex nihilo nihilio feet, the smoke of early divine Christology originated in the fire of Jesus' own divine claims. That's where it comes from. From a historical point of view, the answer to the question that's the title of this lecture, Did Jesus Know He Was God, is a resounding yes. Thank you very much.