Within Reason - #120 Brant Pitre - Jesus DID Claim to be God

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

Brant Pitre is an American New Testament scholar and Distinguished Research Professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute. He has written extensively on the historical Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Paul the Apostle, the origin of the Eucharist, and the canonical Gospels. His book, Jesus and Divine Christology, is available here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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My followers might know that I recently partook in a debate about Christology, about whether or not Jesus claims to be God as a historical figure. Your book is about that topic, specifically in the first three Gospels, the Synoptic Gospels. And you open this book by describing a paradox in biblical scholarship. What is that paradox? Yeah, the paradox has to do with two related fields of study. One of them would be the field of historical Jesus research, which is its own area of research where scholars set out to try to ascertain what Jesus of Nazareth the man really did and said. And the other one is the study of early Christology, like the Christological beliefs of the early church and Paul, the early New Testament authors, about the human or divine character of Jesus. And so, My own area of research has been primarily in historical Jesus research, although I'm fascinated by anything in the New Testament and Scripture as a whole. One of the things I noticed over the years was that if you look at the field of historical Jesus research, going all the way back to the 18th century, some of the founding figures like Rai Maris and David Friedrich Strauss in the 19th century,

the quest really originates almost with an axiomatic assumption that the historical Jesus, by definition, is a figure. who did not make divine self-claims, right? So you can just see this all over the literature. Albert Schweitzer talks about it in his famous work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. He kind of begins with this statement that the quest was setting about to strip Jesus of the supernatural nimbus with which he had been surrounded

and to look at him as merely a man. And so Schweitzer said that the quest, although it's called the historical quest, also had a kind of theological aim, which was to actually call into question the dogma of the two natures, that Jesus is both divine and human. And so from that day until now, there's been an almost kind of reflexive reluctance to even raise the question

of whether the historical Jesus claimed to be divine, because historical Jesus' research is almost characterized by definition as examining this human, this merely human figure, right? So one of the examples I give in the book is if you look at the handbook for the historical, of Jesus, which came out about 10 years ago, 15 years ago, which is 4,000 pages, which is not exactly a handbook, but there's no articles in it on whether Jesus claimed to be divine. It's almost a kind of an assumption that he didn't. Yet, when you switch over into early Christology, the study of early Christology by figures like Bart Arriman or Richard Balkum, Paula Frederickson, whoever it might

be, in the last 20 years or so, there's been a kind of burgeoning recognition. or a kind of burgeoning position known as the early high Christology club, namely this recognition that Christology did not necessarily start out low, like merely human Jesus, and then gradually elevate to the status of divine, but rather it was divine from the beginning. So we have an early high or early divine Christology in the writings of Paul, as well as other New Testament authors. And so as I was kind of working through these two fields,

one of the things that it brought to my attention was a paradox. In other words, if the historical Jesus never claimed to be divine, which is kind of the working hypothesis of the majority, not all, but the majority of historical Jesus scholars since the 18th and 19th centuries, then how is it that the earliest Christians, especially who are all Jewish Christians like Paul, went from a merely human Jesus to very early on, if not immediately, a divine Christology, treating him, speaking about him as if he were, in some sense, equal with the one God of Israel. You can think here of 1st Corinthians 8, for example, where Paul talks about, there is one God and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist, right? So he takes the language of the shama, and Deuteronomy 6 takes the language of creation, and he kind of, in a sense, folds Jesus into the shama, as early as 1st Corinthians chapter 8. And so the question is how do you... What is the shaman? Oh, I'm sorry, the shama is the Hebrew word for here. It's an allusion

to Deuteronomy 6, when God through Moses commands the Israel lights, hear, O Israel, Shama Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. So that's the kind of classic Jewish monotheistic axiom. That was also part of daily Jewish prayer. And so Paul's taking up that language of the Jewish confession of belief in one God and somehow folding the man, Jesus of Nazareth into it, and to what scholars are going to talk about as Christological monotheism. It's a monotheism, but it's also one that seems to speak of this human being, Jesus of Nazareth, as divine, or some sense equal with the one God of Israel.

So my paradox at the beginning of the book is, if Jesus doesn't claim to be God during his earthly life, how do you get to divine Christology so quickly in the early church? Now, there are lots of different answers to that. some people will say, well, it was the resurrection that led to the divinization of Jesus by the early Christians. And that's not an unreasonable claim, although it does have some problems. For example, there were other figures who had believed to have been raised from the dead like John the Baptist or Jiris's daughter or Lazarus, but no one divinizes them or seems to believe that they're divine. So resurrection would be a kind of necessary condition for

belief in his divinity, but not a sufficient one, at least in my opinion. Other people will say, well, he was divinized because of the messianic claims he made. But that's problematic as well, because to simply claim to be the Messiah doesn't necessarily mean that you made a divine claim because Messiah is just the anointed king of Israel. So what I wanted to do in this book is kind of test the hypothesis, which is my basic thesis that I'm arguing, is that the reason the first Christians,

who were all Jewish Christians at the beginning, made divine claims about Jesus immediately after his death, it's crucifixion, is because Jesus of Nazareth himself had already been making divine claims about himself during his lifetime. With the caveat that he does it in a very Jewish way, right? But claims to be divine, not by making explicit claimant, hey, everyone, I'm God. Or, hey, everyone, I'm the second person of the Trinity or some kind of anachronistic formulation. But rather, he does it in a Jewish way using riddles, Shalim, parables, illusions, especially allusions to Jewish scriptures.

scriptures, key Jewish scriptures like the Shama or the Declog. And in a way that invites his audience into this mystery, the kind of apocalyptic secret of his divine messianism. His identity is not just an earthly Messiah, but a more than earthly Messiah, a superhuman Messiah, a divine Messiah. So that's my argument in the book is I want to look at certain passages and see whether Jesus is claiming to be divine, but in a Jewish way. And I think if you do that, if you look at passages, I look at 12 episodes in the book, 10 from the synoptics, two from John. But if you look at those passages through an ancient Jewish lens in light of second temple Jewish eschatology and second temple Jewish messianism, I actually think that there's a strong case to be made for ample evidence that

Jesus spoke and acted as if he was divine within his lifetime. So that's kind of the basic argument in the book. I try to solve that paradox of low historical Jesus Christology, so to speak, high early Christian Christology by positing a historical connection between the two. To use E.P. Sanders'

claim following Joseph Klausner, this Jewish scholar who said, ex-neal-Lio feet, right? Nothing comes from nothing. So the smoke of divine Christology in the early church comes from the fire of Jesus' own divine messianism. That's what I'm testing in the book. That's what I'm going to fix for war. Because there's just

been a dearth of research on it. It's fascinating. You'd think there'd be book after book after book on the historical Jesus and whether he claimed to be divine. But in modern period, in 20 centuries, particular, there's just not a lot of work being done with that because it's almost a kind of working assumption in the field of historical Jesus. Yeah, well, that's why I found your book so interesting, but also useful in preparing for this debate that I had, because it was a new case for high crossology and in the synoptics as well. And I found that really, really crucial but also like to help me score a point here you know sometimes in a popular uh context like when i go and do a debate and i say that jesus never even claimed to be god which is a

separate question from whether he was god right we're talking about whether he actually even made the claim historically that he's god a lot of the time christians kind of look at me like i've said that a triangle has four sides as if i said something so unbelievably absurd that it's not just wrong and unchristian, but how could anybody believe this? But to be clear, this is quite a mainstream, like, scholarly idea about the historical Jesus, right? Absolutely. And in fact, I would support your point by pointing out that if you ask many Christians, you know, do you believe Jesus is God? They'll say, well, yes, of course. And then you say, okay, why do you believe God? And give me passages from the gospel supporting the claim that he claimed to be God.

some people might actually be hard-pressed, especially if you said just restricted to the synoptics, because many Christians will often go to John 8, right, I, before Abraham was, I am, or John 10, 33, right, I and the father are one. But if you said, okay, well, can we bracket John for a second? Where in the synoptics does Jesus explicitly claim to be God? That's actually a much harder question to answer without some thought or without having thought about it in advance because one of, it's just a fact, and it's one of the premises of my book, is that Jesus does not explicitly claim to be divine in the way that we moderns might want in a kind of univocal sense, right?

I am God with a subject and a predicate and everything clearly spelled out. No, that's the whole reason why William Rada back in the early 20th century could write a book called The Messianic Secret. And even in John, we see Jesus' contemporaries say, if you are the Messiah, tell us plainly, right? There's an element of this.

there's an element of riddle-like quality to his speech. Jesus far more frequently ask questions than gives answers. So it's actually, it is actually a challenging thing to say if you were pressed to demonstrate from the synoptics that Jesus claimed to be God, what passages would you look at? And I think actually, I'm not saying no Christian could answer that, but that's a more challenging question than some people might at first assume. Of course Jesus is God, right? From the Christian perspective. Well, they'll point to all kinds of things. Like you say, John's gospel is littered with, I think, three really important Christological claims, also including John 14.

Yeah, yeah, sure. Anyone who's seen me has seen the father, right? Very. But throughout the synoptics, Christians will also, you know, if they do know a little bit about what they're talking about, they'll say, you know, well, Jesus forgiving sins, and you've got Jesus walking on the water and calming the storm and doing things that only God can do. And I'm not trying to make the case that there's no argument to be made there, but I want people. to understand that both of these positions are plausible, let's say, and that, well, maybe you don't think that, maybe you don't think it's plausible, but I mean, they are both, have been historically thought plausible by, by serious scholars. It's not some, I'll, I'll grant credit where it's due.

I do sometimes on this podcast stray into the more esoteric and conspiratorial aspects of, of Christian history, Gnostic Gospels, and, you know, whether, whether the Gospel of Thomas is earlier than Mark, and I have a bit of fun with that. But with this, it's actually a quite serious mainstream debate. Absolutely. No, no, no. There's no doubt. And I would say that, I put this way, it's understandable that someone could read the synoptics and not walk away necessarily thinking, well, Jesus obviously claimed it be God because, and this is a really, this is a really crucial part of my book. There's a chapter, I think it's chapter four, called the Apocalyptic Secret. And one of the things I'm trying to emphasize in the book is that it is a widely agreed upon consensus. and I think it's right, that Jesus was not just a Jewish prophet.

He was an apocalyptic prophet, right? There was a particular strain of Judaism, which emphasized apocalypsis, the unveiling or unrevealing of invisible heavenly mysteries to earthly human beings, right? Whether it's about mysteries about the end of time, like eschatology, or heavenly realities, like in the book of Enoch or Fourth Ezra. And so moderns in particular, sometimes we want to eliminate, that element of mystery, but I don't think that that's the right way to go about answering this question. I think it would do a disservice to the gospel themselves if we tried to make

Jesus's statement less mysterious than they actually are. So I do think it's reasonable to walk away from, for example, you know, Jesus, one of the passages I look at is the healing of the paralytic. You brought it up already, right? Where Jesus says in Mark two to the paralyzed man, my son, your sins forgiven, right? Now, you can make a case, a reasonable case, that Jesus is just taking a priestly prerogative upon himself, because it is true that in the temple, Jewish priests would bring sacrifices, they'd offer them to the God of Israel, and they would sacrifice those in order atone for the sins of the people on their behalf. And so you could make the case that that kind of divine passive, your sense of forgiven, is just Jesus making or taking a priestly prerogative as his own.

Right. Yeah, that's something Barterman points out that Jesus doesn't say, I forgive you. He just says passively, your sins are forgiven. That's exactly right. So I do agree with you. Like, that's not an unreasonable interpretation for that passage. Now, I don't think that does false justice to the passage. I think more is going on than just a priestly prerogative.

I think Jesus is laying claim to a divine prerogative. And I think the text itself supports that both because even within a Jewish context, the priests would not declare your sins forgiven, he would be the mediation of forgiveness. But even more, it's because of Jesus' response. Because when they respond by saying, who can forgive sins but God alone, you notice the response is not, who can forgive sins but priests alone. But they actually make it an exclusively divine prerogative, the Jewish interlocutors. And then Jesus responds by saying, so that you may know that the son of man has authority

on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, rise, take a Pallon Wall. So I think the fuller context of the passage makes that reasonable interpretation, not the best interpretation of the overall content. So yeah, I do think that those are reasonable positions from the synoptics precisely because these are complex matters. And it is, his identity in the Gospels is a mystery. It's not just univocal. It's not just laid out there for all to see. There is an element of mystery here, which the Gospels themselves testify to, like in Matthew 16, when Jesus says, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, Apocalyptus is the apocalyptic term, but my father in heaven. So I think that those are fair to walk away with different interpretations

of what are really mysterious passages. We'll get back to the show in just a moment, but first, do you struggle to focus? I know I do sometimes, and especially given my line of work, it can be incredibly frustrating when my brain is just not able to do whatever it's trying to do. Luckily, people like me are exactly who today's sponsor, Brain FM, was created to help. Brain FM is an app for professionals seeking productivity boosts. They create science-backed music, which helps you to focus better, as well as relaxing, easier, and sleeping deeper too. Opening the app, I've got four options. Focus, relax, sleep and meditate. I usually use this while I'm reading, so I'll pick focus, and then usually either deep work or learning.

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So someone in your position, as it were, has to take seriously the prospect of the scholarly challenge that Jesus never claimed to be God. Someone in my position has to accept that if Jesus were to claim to be God, it might not be in the way that we want. It might be in an extremely Jewish way. And it might also be in a non-straithfulward way or in a way that would require the kind of familiarity that Jesus might have expected his followers to have with the Hebrew Bible, for example, in order to understand. in order to understand what he was doing. So with those things granted, maybe we can just dive into some of these examples. I mean, we were just talking about the forgiving of sins, and that's often where people start because it's so early in Mark's gospel.

And Mark is, as far as we think, our earliest gospel, it seems to be a source for Matthew and Luke, who take almost all of Mark's gospel, and then add a few bits more. So Mark's gospel has Jesus sort of surrounded by crowds, and there's this famous story where there's a paralytic man who cannot get to Jesus. So they climb up on the roof and they lower him through the roof onto the ground. And Jesus tells this man, your sins are forgiven. And it's the scribes who are nearby. The first weird thing is that they're thinking, this man is blaspheming, who can forgive sins but God alone.

and Jesus hears their thoughts. Now, some people like to point to that immediately. I look at that and say, look, if Jesus were just a miracle working prophet, he could probably do something like that. But it's interesting. And they say, why, you know, this man is blaspheming, which is interesting, because blasphemy seems to be taking on godly prerogatives. Who can forgive sins but God alone?

And like you say, Jesus doesn't say, well, I am God. Jesus says, why are you thinking these things? He says, as you say, so you know that the son of man has the authority to forgive sins on earth, and he makes the man walk, because he says, which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or take up your mat and walk, but so you know the son of man has the authority to forgive sins, I tell him, take up your mat and walk and he gets up and he goes away. And everyone's kind of amazed by this. Now, the Orthodox Christian reading of this is that, the scribes were correct. Yes, only God can forgive sins, and Jesus proved to them that the son of man is God. My reading of this story is different for a few reasons. I want to know what you think of this. Yeah, sure. The first is that the whole motif of Jesus' Jewish opponents in the gospel seems to be that they're constantly misunderstanding him. They're constantly getting things wrong. I'm not sure if there is a good biblical foundation for the idea that only God can forgive

sins. God does forgive sins, but this kind of rule that exists, that only God can forgive sins. I'm unclear about what the sort of biblical basis is for this. And at any rate, Jesus then says, you know, so you know that the son of man has the authority to forgive sins on earth, I'm going to do this, which doesn't immediately say, I'm God. It says, well, no, I have this authority as well. Jesus also throughout the Gospels talks a lot about how he's been given certain authorities and prerogatives by the father. He's given the power to judge mankind by the father, that kind of stuff. And so even if this is a godly prerogative, it may be something that God has simply given to Jesus, But the real nail in the coffin here for me is at the end of John's gospel, Jesus sends out his disciples, right? And he says to his disciples, as the father has sent me, now I am sending you. If you forgive people's sins, their sins are forgiven. If you do not forgive their sins, their sins are retained. So he seems to give the disciples the ability to forgive sins. And if only God can forgive sins, then, you know, lucky disciples, I suppose. And some Christians say, yeah, but, you know,

those disciples went out and they forgave people in the name of Jesus, right? They did it on Jesus's authority. Okay, but what does Jesus say to them? As the father has sent me, now I'm sending you. So in the same way that they're forgiving in the name of Jesus, Jesus is forgiving in the name of God. That's a lot to start with. I'm going to throw that at you. Sure, sure. Yeah. Okay, yeah. This is a great question. So let's, I'll make a couple of points. First, you're right, that there is no explicit rule in Hebrew scripture that says only God can forgive sins full stop. However, it is, it's not a minority interpretive position. For example, in Leviticus chapter four, the early chapters of Leviticus, which are describing atoning sacrifices,

the kind of sin offerings, as they call. You'll see this over and over again to refrain. The priest will offer the sacrifice and his sin shall be forgiven. Shall be forgiven. Shall be forgiven. A great, the world expert on Leviticus, Jacob Milgram, great Jewish scholar, wrote a 3,000-page commentary on Leviticus. I've got it up here. He actually points out that that use of divine passive in the Hebrew, as well as the whole sacrificial system within Judaism, actually does. He takes the position that it is implying that the act of forgiving sin, precisely because sin is not just an offense against other humans, but above all, always an offense against the Lord against the God of Israel, is in fact an exclusively divine prerogative, and that's why the divine

passive is used over and over as a refrain in those Levitical descriptions of priestly activity. It's never the priest who is described as forgiving, but always the divine passive. Another passage would be Isaiah 43, which is one of the really high monotheistic passages in the Old Testament, where you see the Lord saying, I am, I am he, using that biblical language echoing the Exodus passage, and he says, he who forgives your sins, right? So there's an affirmation of God's ability to forgive sin in the context of emphasizing his exclusivity as the one God and as the God who is the creator, the one creator, there's no other God beside me. It's a whole monotheistic passage. So when you take those two passages together, I actually do think there is some

scriptural foundation for the inference, it's an inference, it's not a text in scripture, that in a Jewish context, it was understood that the positive act of forgiving sin was something that could only be done by God alone. So I actually don't think that the scribes in this case are misinterpreting the implication of Jesus' action. In fact, I think the whole point of him responding, so that you may know the son of man has authority on earth, is to affirm what they're saying, but describing himself as having that divine authority. Now, so I do think in his context. In that Jewish context, they're not wrong about that. Now, can God delegate divine power or divine authority? And the answer is yes, yes, yes, and yes. So I do think it would be wrong to then

argue that can't ever be delegated to a human being. And you're absolutely right. We're going to see Jesus delegate that authority to the apostles in John chapter 20. So it's a nuanced position. I'm not arguing that divine power can't be delegated. I am arguing that in this context, the scribes are right to perceive Jesus as doing something which here tofore, at least, is something only the God of Israel can do. And you can see that confirmed by the way the crowds react too when they say, we've never seen anything like this, right? So that implies that something unprecedented has just happened. But when they say we've never seen anything like this, just not to derail, but do you think they're referring there to Jesus's forgiving of sins or the fact that

they've just seen a paralyzed man get up and I think I would I would say it's both although you're absolutely right that the paralyzed man is going to is going to be striking I'm not minimize me that I would say it would be a both and rather than it either or that would be my suggestion right now real quick though I don't want to evade the John 20 point because that's a really important yeah yeah I do think it's crucial to emphasize here that and I do think Christians nowadays tend under emphasize it although it's growing in awareness that If you look at early Christian soteriology, for example, in 2nd Peter, there is an understanding. What satirology is the theology or the rational analysis of soteria means salvation or to be saved or be healed.

So it's the theology of how we are saved. And if you look at soteriology, for example, of 2nd Peter, it talks about becoming partakers of the divine nature, right? There's this notion of theosis in the early church that I actually think goes a long way toward explaining how a divine Messiah like Jesus can then also delegate divine powers and divine, in this case, even divine nature, to merely human beings. I mean, at least in Second Peter 1, that's what he's saying. Through baptism, you actually die not only to this world, but you actually become a partaker of divinity. And this is going to be an important theme, as I'm sure you know, if you're going to be. look at patristic Christology, patristic soteriology in the early church that's there. So again, I'm not denying that there is a very high soteriology on the other side of the

resurrection in both the Gospel of John and in the early New Testament epistles. However, I also think that what you're seeing in the gospel narrative here is a superhuman claim being made by Jesus when he uses, first of all, the son of man to refer to himself and makes the claim to be able to do something at least which here to four has been viewed as a divine prerogative, namely not to ask God to forgive their sins, not to offer a sacrifice on behalf, but simply to declare the man's sins forgiven. And not just the man, notice what he says to him, my son, that's a weird way to address presumably another adult male who is not actually your son. That's a strange, he'll do this throughout the gospels. my daughter, my son. Now, these are not his students. These are just bystanders, strangers, sick people. It doesn't make a lot of sense if he's merely human. But if he's implying that he's more than just

an ordinary rabbi, ordinary teacher, then there are these various hints and clues that build together toward making the claim here, in this case for sure, of not just being a son of man, like a human being, like in Psalm 8, but the son of man, meaning the heavenly figure, that you see in the book of Daniel who's described as receiving glory, honor, power, kingdom, and who comes on the clouds, right, something that God does in theophanes in the Old Testament. So I think this is a good example of how just on the surface, there are lots of different possible interpretations of so you may know the son of man has authority at earth, honor to forgive sins. But if you look at it elusively, like what Jewish text from the Old Testament is he alluding to

And what does that Old Testament text in context reveal about the implication of who he's claiming to be? I definitely think that in this case, he is making the implicit claim to be a heavenly Messiah, like the son of man, who has divine power to forgive sins directly. And that's why I think the scribes in this case do not misinterpret the implications of his actions. And in fact, the whole point of the miracle is, so that you may know that I have the power to perform the invisibly divine act of forgiving his sense, I'll perform the visible miracle, so to speak, of healing his body and healing his paralysis by saying, rise, take up your palate. So that's my reading of the text. There's a lot to be said, right? And I hope people can realize, some people

ask me, like, yeah, Alex, why are you as an agnostic atheist guy so interested in Christology? And it's like just listening to you speak, you can imagine you're on the Wikipedia page trying to read, and it's like all the hyperlinks that you're clicking, all the tabs that are slowly opening, satirology, son of man, all of the sun. It's absolutely fascinating, all of it. It is. But in a Jewish setting, by the time you get to first century, the Danielic son of man figure is in early Jewish apocalyptic text depicted in 4th Azra or first he knock these ancient writings as a pre-existent superhuman heavenly being. So there's also a resonance. Within Jewish circles here, when Jesus alludes to famous, these are not obscure passages in the Old Testament, these are famous passages, highly debated passages. And just like you and I might allude to a famous movie or a famous song, and we can expect the audience to pick up on it. In this case, I think that's how he's operating with his audiences and in Mark. Yeah, we will have to talk about the son of man, of course. I mean, that is the greatest mystery. But just before that, I've only got maybe a couple of things to say about this.

Sure, please, go ahead. Forgiving sins business. And part of the interesting, so it's part of the fun of doing this is that a lot of the time you have multiple versions of a story, right? You've got multiple gospels telling the same story, which gives us a really good insight into, you know, what was definitely sort of believed us to have happened, what might be embellishments of an author. And there are a few things to say. Firstly, on this son and daughter business, I do think that is kind of interesting. But that's a question that I will be hopeless to answer unless I understand, you know, like, colloquial Galilean ways of speaking.

I mean, you know, I could walk down the street and a police officer might come up to me and say, hey, son, you know. Sure. If you're in the south, in the United States, that would... Yeah. So it's kind of difficult to know, but it is interesting, right? The only other things that I'd want to point out is, is firstly, what is, it's all to do with the fact that this is in Mark's gospel, that Matthew's gospel has this story

as well, of course. And Matthew, it's a little bit later, it's in Chapter 9. And I want to emphasize that Matthew takes, I think it's something like 95% of Mark's gospel is just copied verbatim in Matthew's gospel. Like it's like basically the entire of Mark's gospel is reproduced with extra material. But there's just these few passages that for whatever reason Matthew doesn't copy from Mark, just a handful of them. Sure. And one of them occurs in this story. When this story is told, Matthew removes a line.

And what's the line he removes? He removes the line where the scribes say, who can forgive sins but God alone. That's not in Matthew's version, which, given that he doesn't seem to remove things like willy-nilly, there seems to be an intentionality behind removing this reference to only God can forgive sins. And I wonder if that's got something to do with the developing understanding that actually that's not true, or maybe there's another explanation, maybe it's a coincidence. The only other thing I'll say, and I'll let you respond to this, because it's the same story, is our after this in Matthew's version. As you say, the crowd reacts. In Matthew's version, what is it that they say? Then the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe and they praised God who had given such authority to a man. Exactly. Yes. Okay. So, you can see how I'm going to read this, right? Like, well, Matthew's taking out this forgiveness of sins. They recognize that God has given this authority to a man. What's going on there? Okay. So let me, this is great. I'm so glad you brought up. because this is an important point.

You'll notice one of the title, I agonized about the title for a long time. The title of the book is divine Christology. And there's a reason for that. It wasn't just Jesus and his divinity. Because the thesis of the book, although there's a lot of emphasis on divinity, is not just that Jesus is divine simplicit, right?

Like just in its simplest form. It's that he's a divine Christ, a divine Messiah. So there's divine messianism. So there's both human and divine. And one of the challenges I've found with this is that very frequently, sometimes people will assume, well, if I'm saying he's divine, I'm some way saying he's not human. And that's obviously it's not the classic Catholic Christology, which is always a both and on this point. But it is understandable. So I agree with Matthew, surprise, surprise, that it is fascinating that God has given this authority to a man. Because I am not saying that in Mark 2 or in Matthew's version, he's not a man. What I am saying is he's not merely a man. What I am saying is he's not merely a. a man and that he has divine power and divine prerogatives that exceed that of a normal human being. So both responses, we've never seen anything like this, Mark, and wow, how has God

given such authority to a man, are reasonable responses because I'm arguing that Jesus is revealing through his words and actions, the mystery of his, not just his divinity, as if he's a divine being who's pretending to be human or appearing as human, like maybe some of the angelic beings in the Old Testament, but actually a divine man or a divine Messiah. So I agree with your emphasis there on humanity, but

I don't think it takes away from the superhuman or exalted status to which he is also laying claim implicitly. Yeah, that's a key point is that like, if we're saying something like, the reactions of the crowd is like, that's weird that a man

can do that. Yeah, because you know, he's not just a man, you know. Do you have a view on why Matthew removes this reference to only God can give sense? So I'll be honest with you. I spent a lot of years studying the synoptic problem, studying Q at a lot, Q library. I get more and more cautious and more and more agnostic about my ability to get inside the head of why an author took this out, or whether they even did or not. It's extremely complex question. The synoptic problem is the question of which author wrote first, who copied from whom,

and then why did they make the changes, omissions, additions, redactions that they did. I think a lot of that is honestly beyond the limits of our ability to really know. We can guess. We can speculate. There are certain tendencies that you can definitely see if you're right about the relationship of which author is copying from which. but I'm going to pull is it okay if I can be agnostic on that point I don't of course I don't know I like I I'm not sure um and I would tell what I mean it is worth pointing out that though Matthew does remove that phrase who can forgive sins but God alone he does still have the scribes say this man is blaspheming absolutely so it's difficult to know how he'd be blaspheming if not on the same grounds and as an author too the one reason is I've edited now I guess I've written published now almost 10 books sometimes I don't even know why I omit something or why I is a very complex process.

So I'm always a little hesitant to guess there. There could be all kinds of, it could literally be that Matthew had a version of Mark's gospel and his eyes skipped over the verse. It could be anything. And also, too, when we say Matthew has 95% of mark in it or 90 more than that, it's true, but it's actually, you got to be careful

because a lot of the episodes that are, that is true with regard to the episodes in Matthew 1. But it's not actually true with regard to a lot of the material. Oftentimes, the episode in Matthew is shorter. So you have the same pericope, but it's actually longer in Mark, like with the healing of the garrisoned demoniac. It's the same episode much longer in Mark than it is in Matthew. So Matthew actually has a content, if you're taking the hypothesis,

the two source that Mark's first in Matthew and Luke Cope. Matthew actually has a habit of shortening Mark in episodes. He wants to preserve them all, but his tendency is to make them more brief. So you get more detail, more elaboration, more with fewer episodes. So again, it's a complicated question. So I'm not sure. I'll tell you what I should do maybe at this junction because there are paths exploding in front of me where we could go. I want to talk about the son of man.

You know, we can talk about worship. We can talk about walking on the water. We can talk about all of that kind of stuff. But I think I should lay out what my position is here, what my understanding is to help here. And maybe you can lay out yours too. I think you might have betrayed yourself as a Catholic. given your use of Latin. I think, you know, it's out in the open now for our listeners.

For all this, yes. For what it's worth, I'm quite attracted to the idea that Jesus, historically speaking, is essentially a follower of John the Baptist, a disciple of John the Baptist. And there's some evidence in this, in the fact that Jesus is, of course, baptized by John the Baptist, and John is preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. a lot of people think that John was a type of Jew known as an Essine because there are sort of three major Jewish groups in this time there's the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essines

and of course a lot of people might not have heard of the latter group because Jesus is constantly battling with the first two. It never battles with the third. It's a barely sort of, you know, well-trodden path of people who suggest. This means Jesus is an Essene in the tradition of John the Baptist. John the Baptist dies. John is constantly talking about having a... a successor. There's one coming who's going to be greater than me. Jesus is that man. Jesus

sort of continues the ministry of John the Baptist. And then what we see is Jesus preparing to pass on that ministry to his own disciples and singling out Peter as his sort of main successor. And of course, this is very unorthodox for Christians. But I'm speaking historically here. There are some clues here. Jesus is saying things to his disciples like, you know, one day you'll do greater things than I will. He talks about teachers and students and how the students will surpass the teacher. And of course, the men. thing, and the reason I bring this up is to say that whenever I'm confronted with evidence of Jesus's actions, things that he can do that only God can do, Jesus forgive sins. In John chapter 20, he ends up giving that authority to his disciples. Jesus walks on the water. A lot of people also forget that Peter also walks on the water, you know? And he starts sinking because he doesn't have enough faith, but the implication there is that if he had enough faith, he'd be able to walk on the water, just like Jesus did, who, meaning Jesus, Jesus is presented as this idyllic figure with perfect faith in the father. And if only Peter has the same faith, he could have walked on the water too. You know, Jesus judges mankind. Well, he delegates judgment of the 12 tribes of Israel to the disciples. So as we talk about some of these examples, I want you to, I want my listeners, our listeners, to recognize in my responses, that that is kind of my rough understanding, that in these instances where Jesus is doing something extraordinary. And yeah, he is obviously doing something amazing and something that at least

common understanding would have it that only God can do. Jesus is sort of saying, no, watch, I can do this too, but only in a way that one day you will also. And the most sort of, the greatest summary of this is in John chapter 17, where Jesus is praying for his disciples and the wider Christian community. And he prays that one day, you know, they will be in me, just as I am in you, the father, and will all sort of be one together, seeming to imply that the special relationship Jesus has with the father is something that will hopefully be passed on to other people. So that's basically my broad position. I thought it's worth laying that out as we go through these. No, that's really helpful. So let me try to lay out just in a brief way

mine. And then I'd like to point to some things that I might, that might be in tension with that reading just to, or emphasize how I, basically, let me say I agree with you. Because actually, one of the amazing things about Christianity is that it makes very exalted claims for the gifts that it that it professes both the apostles, their disciples, and other believers will be able to share it. It's a very high claim. And this is where the whole Christian tradition of theosis or demonization comes from, even though that's not very well known in contemporary Christian circles and discourse, I think. So my basic position, or a couple of positions that I want to try to lay out in this book, number one is that, um, on the level of the gospel narratives, I'm trying to undo what I believe to be a very erroneous position that Jesus is only divine, only depicted as divine in John, and not in this context. So I actually think that the, that the, when it comes to the four sources from the first century about Jesus, he acts and speaks as if he's divine in all four, Martha, Mark, Luke, and John, not just, not just the forecough. Second, I actually think that in addition to the passages that you just listed, about him performing divine actions or having divine power to forgive sins or to judge, right? In addition to those, there are other passages where Jesus does things that I at least,

I think he doesn't give to his disciples. So let me give you a couple of examples. Is that fair? Sure. Okay. So, for example, let's look at the walking on the seat. So I have the chapter called the Epiphantic Miracles in the book. This is the second chapter.

And one of the main points of this chapter is, is actually to just demolish what I think is actually a myth, the myth that he's only divine in John and he's not really divine in the synoptics. I just think that doesn't hold up. And it's worked in the modern period primarily because in the modern period, there's been intended to see to bracket the miraculous out as if these aren't even part of the Gospels. It's almost called like a canon within canon. So lots of books on Jesus just ignore what are known widely as the epithanic miracles. Now epiphanic miracles already suggest to you that something is being unveiled or revealed, and it's not just a merely human quality, right? This is why King Antiochus

the 4th, when he wants to claim divinity, he meant coins Antiochus Epiphanos, right? Antiochus God manifest, right? He's making a divine claim. But the epiphany miracle that I think is really crucial here in Mark 6, the walking on the sea, takes place in it. Jesus does something, you're right, that he enables, in Matthew's version, he enables Peter at least to walk briefly on the sea before he begins to sink. But one of the things he does, he does, he does. He does that at least I don't see Peter or any other disciple doing anywhere else, is take the divine name as his own from the Old Testament, right? So just to give you an example, in Mark chapter 6, right, when he comes walking on the sea, and they see him, they think he's a

ghost, he says to them, this is in Mark 6, verse 50, take heart, ego a me, do not be afraid, right so take heart i am do not fear do not be afraid right now um as i show in jesus and divine christology it's not just christian apologists i've got it's jewish scholars non-religious scholars protestants catholics alike recognizing that in on the narrative level at the very least okay the ego and me here is not just an identification it is doing that okay because he's just told you they think he's a ghostism there is a mistaken identity element taking place here. And he is saying, ego and me, it is I. That's not an illegitimate translation. But that's not all that's happening because the context is theophantic, right? It'd be one

thing to just say, it's me if, you know, you stumble across someone in the dark and you don't know who it is. And he says, I am, okay, fine, no numinous divine implications. But he's walking on the water when he says ego and me, and he adds to it, and this is important, the standard theophantic statement, may forbaste that. Greek, do not be afraid. Don't be afraid. This is what happens over and over again in the Old Testament. When a heavenly being comes down, whether it's the Lord or whether it's an angelic figure, the normal human response is fear and trembling, right? So in this case, Jesus both identifies himself, allays their fears, but then also, in my opinion, and in the opinion of lots of scholars, takes the numinous divine epithet, ego and me, I am,

or I am he who is, which is an allusion to Exodus 3, the kind of paradigmatic theophony in the Old Testament, in which God reveals his name to the Israelites. It's a revelation of not just what he is, but who he is, this uncreated creator, the one who has no beginning, who has no end. He's not just the god of the mountain or the god of the river. He's the God who is.

And so he takes that name as his own. That is something that, I think you see not only Mark 6, but also in John, 8, 58, when Jesus says, or Abraham was ego and me, same thing. A declaration that has no predicate, right? It doesn't say I am God. It's just a non-predicative. It's just at the trial as well in Mark's version. Right. In Mark's version, although it's not the other, so I didn't make too much pay out of that in my treatment. I was trying to focus on the triple tradition. So you're right, though. But that's the answer to a question, right? So that's also important.

The meaning, Ego, and me, I am is going to have is going to be determined by context. It would be wrong, for example, Christian Apollos is to say, whenever someone says, Ego, am I, they're claiming to be divine. Because the blind man says it in John chapter 9 or 10, I can remember that's right. It's 9, yeah. Because they're asking, hey, is this the same guy or not? Right? He's different than he was.

And he says, I am, which clearly means, yes, it's me. But the context is. also warns, warns his followers, like in Mark 13, he says, beware that no one leave you astray. Many will come in my name and say, I am he, like

Ego Amy, and will lead you astray. So clearly just the usage of this name is not necessarily an invocation of divinity. Just to be clear, for our listeners here, right? So Ego Amy is a Greek phrase, which is used in the Gospels. Yeah. The Gospels are written in Greek. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew.

Ego Amy translates roughly as I am. Ego as an ego. So it's I am. But it is also sort of used more colloquially to say something like, it's me. So a good example is the blind man in John 9. They say, you know, is this not the man who is born blind? And he goes, ego, am I?

Yeah, it's me, right? But the difficulty is that in the book of Exodus, when Moses asks God what his name is, God says, what would it be like, Asher? yeah i think that i yeah is yeah a a a yeah i am who i was i i will be who i will be like it it is a it is a um i put it it's an enigmatic hebrew phrase in itself like it bears multiple translations and means so it's ayesha asha ayesha which again kind of means something like i am who i am or i am that i am right and then he says so go and tell them that i am has sent you and so he gives his name as i am yeah of course the

The New Testament's written in a different language, but I am in Greek is Ego Amy. So sometimes it does seem like when Jesus says it, especially in like John chapter 8 when he says weirdly with a weird grammar, you know, before Abraham was I am. It seems like such a sort of intentional usage of that phrase that people say it's a callback. But it's complicated by the fact that it is also a phrase that people do sometimes just use to identify themselves. So here importantly, the Gospels themselves, if you read John chapter 858, verse 58 they translate it usually as before Abraham was I am right but on the walking in the water most biblical translations read the NIV or whatever I don't I'm not sure what the NRSV does but it translates it as it's me even though it's the same phrase because contextually it seems like

he is just identifying himself but you're saying that in the context of walking on the water it takes on a great deal of significance to to use that identify I would qualify it I would just say I don't think the word just is correct yes he's identified identifying himself, but he's not just identifying himself. And the way you know that is from the context, because in this context, he's walking on the water, which if you look in Job, chapter 9, for example, this is something the Hebrew scripture says, only God does. Only God walks on the waves. And in fact, in the Septuagint translation of Job 9, it says that God walks on the waves as on dry land, right? So this is something that Jewish scripture makes a divine attribute. And then

this was really cool in the book. I'm sure you saw this part. It's also something in a Greco-Roman context was perceived as a divine power. Because in the first century, when Caligula wants to manifest his divinity, this is one of the strange things about Caligula. One of the reasons a lot of Romans thought he was crazy is because he didn't wait to divinize himself until he was dead. That's perfectly acceptable. Once you're dead, you can be divinized. But he wanted divine claims and divine attributes to be given to him while he was alive. So a lot of people said he was, you know, he was crazy. But in Josephus and in Suetonius, we hear, no, Suetonius, Soutonius tells us about how in order to manifest his divinity, he builds a bridge across the Bay of Baye and then rides across it on a chariot

as befitted his godhead, right? So the idea that he, that he can cross the sea, And this is just one example. There are others as well. Is both in Jewish and Greco-Roman context a divine power, a divine attribute, it's something superhuman. And so when in that context, Jesus says, Ego, a me, may forbases. Don't forget that do not fear either, too. That's, this is that language. See, you brought up Exodus 3, but it's not just Exodus 3.

It's Isaiah 43. When God speaks, I am God, there is no other, he reutilizes the language of I am and I am he, the same Hebrew language from the book of Exodus. But then he also says, do not fear. So Jesus isn't just alluding Exodus 3 in the burning bush. He's also alluding to the most monotheistic passage in Isaiah about the power of the one creator God of Israel. So in that, and he does it while he's walking on the water, right? So this is important, right? Context matters when it comes to this. As I like to joke with my students, whenever we would go through this, in the gospel of John, I think I noted this, it says that he, that they're four miles from the shore, because

they'll see Galilee is about seven miles wide at the widest point. And so I would joke with the students that said, listen, if he didn't know he was God by mile one, he probably figured it out by mile four, right? Like, this is, this is not just, uh, this is not just a identification of it's me. It's also a theophanic revelation. That's why it's called an epiphany miracle of the mystery of his identity, that he is claiming, he's using the name of the one God from the book of Exodus and from Isaiah. And the context shows that that's true in John 8 as well, because the response of his contemporaries is to pick up a stone and to stone him to death. And they say, we stone you for no unrighteous work because you, though, a man, make yourself

God. Well, he says that in, that's John chapter 10 when they respond that way. I'm sorry. I say 8. I apologize. Yeah, John Chapter 10 you're talking about. Because they pick up stones in John 8 as well. But they pick up stone. Oh, yes. So the stoning in John 8.58, John 8.59. So they took up stones to throw at him. The death by stoning is in

Leviticus and in Josephus. That is the that's the legally prescribed manner of execution for blasphemy. So although the word blasphemy doesn't come, the implication is that there stone him because he's blasphemed. And in context, blasphemy can mean a lot of different things. Like, you can speak against the temple. You can speak against the priesthood. One soldier got executed by the Roman procurator Kamanas because he was ripped up copies of the Torah. So he like desecrated

a sacred object. And they said he had, he also said he uttered blasphemies. So blasphemy can have a lot of different meanings. But one of them is making a divine claim. And, and for that, the penalty is death, not just death, but death by stone. So again, in context, John 8 and I think Mark 6, it's really difficult for me to argue that those allusions to Isaiah 43 and Exodus 3 are just coincidental. I think they're more significant, much more significant, that they're intended to help you see that he's making a divine claim about who he is. Because remember, the name in Judaism, it reveals not just your role in salvation history, like Abraham, you know, Father Multitud. It also reveals your identity. Who are you? And that's something

I don't see any of the apostles ever saying, Egoe me, I am in that kind of context. So I would say that's something that is actually distinctive in addition to those divine powers. Does that help? Absolutely, yeah. And there's so much to say. I mean, it's really difficult to have this conversation, actually,

because especially like on YouTube, when my comment section is flooded by Christians, it's like if we spend 10 minutes talking about the son of man, then all the comments will say, he was literally stoned for blasphemy. It's like, okay, then we'll spend half an hour talking about blasphemy. And then it's like, he said, I am. And then it's like, okay, well, let's talk about that.

And it's like, oh, but he said that he's one with the father. It's like we have to take these one by one, right? Yes. And so it's really important to look at in each case, what is the nature of the divinity to which he's laying claim, right? So not every passage that I looked at in the book has the same degree or kind of divine power or identity as the other. So I've really tried to be clear, divine in what sense in this passage? divine in what sense, in another passage. And it is a cumulative argument.

It's not just that one passage just kind of settles the whole thing. That's my answer. So looking at what you've said about the walking in the water, and of course, although I am of my opinion of, you know, low Christology and all that. Sure. You know, I'm, I'm pretty, I've got no skin in this game, you know. I don't, I don't mind. So I think it's interesting, but I'm not going to die on this hill or anything.

Can I say one quick point on that? Yeah, of course. So one of the things I did in the book was, like, I tried to quote scholars who didn't have skin in the game. So, for example, the famous Jesus seminar from the 1990s, that's when I was in school. And they were really hot, really popular. Most of the scholars who were members of the seminar, not all, were either atheists or agnostic. They weren't believers in the divinity of Christ or the classic Christian creeds. But, you know, when they come to walking on the sea, they say he's alluding to XS3, he's making a divine claim.

And they actually say he's acting like he's Poseidon or something. I mean, so it's not just a kind of Christian apologetic that interprets a text in that way. That's a reasonable interpretation, even from a non-Christian perspective, you know. Yeah, I definitely think that it's a reasonable interpretation. I'd never wish to imply otherwise. But there are some reasons that give me pause for thought on this, right? I mean, crucially, firstly, right, like the main grounding for this walking on the water thing is, as you've already said, in Job, Chapter 9. Yeah, right.

He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. It's like God alone treads on the waves. We're sort of speaking poetically here. And of course, it is Job who is speaking. And in the very next chapter of Job, while Job is sort of shouting to the heavens, he says, does it please you to oppress me, to spur in the work of your hands while you smile on the plans of the wicked? He's angry at God. And he's saying all of these things about God, which are untrue.

Like in the very next chapter, God is saying that God smiles on the wicked. He's saying that he pleases in oppressing him. He also says that he wished he'd never been. born. Job is sort of this imperfect, you know, theological authority at that time. Of course, that doesn't mean that we can't sort of poetically refer to Job

because people would know that that phrase is in there. But I think it's worth pointing out that this idea that you know, we have this. We often say like, it says in the Old Testament that only God does this, but it's important to know who's speaking and in what context. And in this context, Job is complaining and basically

blaspheming himself by saying all of these things about God, which aren't true. when he's angry. I agree, but I push back slightly. I didn't think you're right in the surrounding chapter or the next chapter. That's true. But in John Job 9, 1 through 10, in those verses there, one of the things he's doing is saying, how can a man be just before God? And then he begins a poetic litany of all of his attributes as creator. And I don't get the sense from that particular context that he's calling any of those into question. I actually think he's drawing a contrast between the utter transcendence

and inipotence of the creator. And what's happening to him. That's how I read it. Yeah. I think I think that's a perfect reading. I just think it's, uh, or a plausible reading. I just think it's worth, worth flagging that that's no, that needs to be always dangerous to just say the Old Testament says. Exactly. It's like, you know, Muslims might

do the same thing where I could say, well, in the book of Job, in fact, you know, you know, it says God is not a man. Oh, please ask these, right? You know, everything's vanity, doesn't have any meaning. Like, okay, it's like, well, Yeah, you know, Muslims do quote that, by the way. They quote the book of Job where it says, God is not a man that I might question him.

And it's like, yeah, but this is this is Job, you know, and he's complaining and he doesn't, and it's poetic and it means obviously means something else in that context. And that's why I try to give the examples of like of Caligula constructing the bridge and other examples of walking. That's brilliant. Kind of show up a kind of an ancient contextual understanding of what that kind of an act by your own power would signify. That's what I love that. I love that because, of course, it might not be enough to have this Job reference. But if we just know that it's sort of understood at the time, then this might be the equivalent of being on like a movie set and being like, who's that guy over there? Is that an intruder?

And then he's like sat on a director's share and he goes, hey, everybody, you know, you're late or something. And it's like, he's quite clearly claiming to be the director of the movie by doing that, you know. And you kind of need to know, you could, if that story was read in a thousand years from now, no one would know what. the chair meant, no one would know what your late as a phrase might have meant. Yeah. So it's important to know. Absolutely. That's why throughout the book, you'll notice I quote, block quotes from scriptures. I try not to just rip them out of context. Yeah, yeah. Because context, context, it's everything when you're coming to these kind of interpretation. Absolutely. Absolutely. Another, another point in your favor is that in the book of Job,

I can't remember exactly where, but it also talks about, I think, God or the spirit of God or something, like passing by or passing him by. Yes. There's this interesting phrase where it sort of says the spirit of God or something like that like passes, passes him by. And interestingly, in this story of Jesus walking on the water, it says that Jesus was walking on the water past the boat so as to pass them by. Yes. Which is a little bit of an odd sort of thing to say so as to pass them by. It's like a bit sort of random, unless this is a second, just to make clear that we really are alluding to the book of Job here to set up the context in which.

which Jesus is walking on the water. And that often goes sort of unnoticed. I think a lot of people don't bring that up, but it's interesting. Absolutely, no. And I don't remember the Job reference, but definitely in Exodus 33 and 34, when Moses is on Mount Sinai and Elijah as well, the language of passing by is theophantic language. It's the language of the divinity coming near, but not being able to stay near for very long because human beings can't bear it.

So like Moses says, show me your glory. And God says, you can't see my glory, you can't see my face, but you can see my backside. And it says, the divinity and says, passed him by. Like, it, coming to God's presence, but it's a temporary experience of divine power and divine presence. So, yes, Joe Mark mentions that as well, that at the level of narrative, Mark's deliberately taking that language of passing by as a theophonic illusion. I think there's like one theophanic illusion. two, three, four, it adds up. I'm sorry.

Exactly. I don't know if this is, if this is the phrase that would be used or the, um, uh, this is the one that they, they point to, but in Job chapter four, verse 15 or verse 14, you know, fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones shake, which is, you know, as you say, classic evidence of, of theophony. And it says, then a spirit passed before my face, you know, the hair of my flesh up. And so there's this sort of interesting language. But again, like you say, this is all a little bit sort of skirting around the edges, but the Bibles, the Gospels are sort of intentionally

mysterious. The only thing I would point out here as well is that this passing by business, that's not Jesus speaking. This is... No, no, that's why I didn't address it as much in the book and it's important to separate those questions, right? There are three questions here that I always like to separate out. One is whether Jesus was God. The other is, did the historical Jesus claim to be God? And the third is, do the Gospels portray Jesus as claiming to be God? And those are three different questions. And my book is, in fact, one other question is, do the gospel authors themselves portray Jesus to be God, right?

Sure. And so my book's on number two, did Jesus claim? And did the gospel authors proclaim is secondary, but it's there. And I actually think the fact that Mark uses that theophantic illusion of passing by is evidence that at least the early. interpretation we possess of this episode is reading it as a theophanic manifestation of his superhuman identity where he's making a divine claim. That's how I take it. So the only other thing that I want to bring up here is, and I can't remember which scholar it was that brought this to my attention. It's someone who wrote, who co-wrote, it's that book, it's like Mark's Christology four views or

something. Yeah, I know the one you're talking about. I can't remember who it was in that text. But they brought this to my attention that, of course, like we've already mentioned, let's talk about this ego Amy business. You know, I am. It shows up all throughout the Gospels. And something really important to note is that the Gospels are written in Greek. The Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is written mostly in Hebrew, a little bit in Aramaic, right? And this Hebrew phrase, Aesha, Asher, Ayesha, Ayesha, I am that I am. And then go and tell them that Ayesha, I am, has sent you, repeating that word three times. When the gospel authors are writing, they're writing in Greek, and we have good evidence to suggest that the authors of the Gospels were using a Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, right? Well, so they're reading a Greek version, some kind of Greek version of the Hebrew scripture. And so the interesting thing about the Septuagint is that if you look at Exodus chapter three in the Septuagint, it's translated to Greek.

what does it say? You know, when Moses says, you know, what's, what's my, what should I tell them your name is? Tell them, oh, has sent you. Yeah, he says, Ego Amy, ha on, which is something like, I am the one who is. In that context, saying, Ego Amy, hot on, is like saying, I am the one who is. So I am there, that Ego Amy is just an introduction to the label, and the label is hot on. So he says, Ego Amy, ha on. So go and tell them that hot on has sent you. So if a Greek speaking a Greek writing author of the New Testament reads this Old Testament passage, Ego Amy, Ho'on.

So go and tell them that Ho'an has sent you and wants to put the divine name into Jesus' mouth. They're not going to write Ego Amy. They're going to write Ho'an. So writing Ego Amy can't be an allusion to the divine name in Exodus, because that isn't the Greek name of God in the Septuagint. Well, it's not, okay, yes.

Good argument. Very nice rejoinder. Doesn't quite land for two reasons. Number one, the Septuagent Number one, this is so complicated. Okay, I don't want to make this more complicated. It's not just Exodus 3 that matters, but this way. It's Isaiah 43 as well. So in the Septuagint of Isaiah, which many scholars see is an illusion in Exodus 3,

it is ego emi. That's the translation. So in other words, there are different ways to translate that Hebrew expression. And just because the addition of the subtuogen that we have, which, by the way, that's super complex to know whether the version of the, translation of Exodus that we have and what we call the Septuagint today is the same Greek translation of Exodus that the gospel authors was using is something we can posit as reasonable, but not demonstrate, okay? Like, especially when it comes to the Hebrew name, because even your

English Bibles will tell you, wait, the NRS does it this way, and the RSV does it that way, and the NIV does it that way, because that Hebrew expression is, is, lends itself to multiple translations. So it's, we've got to be very careful here just to say, they wouldn't have said Ego Emi, because Ego Eme is not in the subtuagent of Exodus 3 that we have, because it is in the Septuagent of Isaiah 43. And so it is actually a viable translation of that, of that expression from the Hebrew. So I feel the force of that, but I don't think it actually clenches it, especially when, again, the context here is not just a quotation from the Greek subtuagent,

but it is more than Exodus 3, it's Isaiah 43 with the don't fear I am as well. And it is rendered as ego and me there in Isaiah. Does that make sense? Does it help a little? Oh, yeah, it does. Okay. That's a good point. The scholar who pointed that, it's excellent.

We're not saying that it has to be word for word. But ego and me own enough, even just the elated version of AOMI is still close enough to that Exist 3 allusion to, I mean, to Exodus 3 story of the Bernie Bush to posit an allusion to the name of the God of Israel, especially when Isaiah, the Septuagian, Isaiah uses Ego Me as the divine name in its orthoistic hymn in chapter. I'd find it so much easier to just accept this line of reasoning if it weren't for the complication that Ego Amy is also just a commonplace like phrase for It's Me. That just makes it so difficult to know with confidence what's going on here. Sure. I understand. And that's why you have to determine each one on a context, case by case basis, right? So for example, you know, in Luke 20,

when Jesus wants to identify himself on the road to Meus, he doesn't just say a-o-a-me, he says, ego and me, I'll toss. It is I, like it puts an emphasis on there. So it's not like everyone's walking around saying, I am all the time. There are a few examples of it. We don't want to deny those, but the meaning has to be determined by the context,

especially when it's a passage that has a scriptural illusion. Okay. Like, I think that's when there's reason to say, more is going on here than just the denotation of the words. Yeah. And also, I think it is worth pointing out as well in your favour that I could, and I can, I think, confidently, for basically every single claim you put forward, well, he says I am. Well, he walks on. I could say, yeah, but that could be this or yeah, but that's this. But it does get a bit suspicious when you put them all together. It's like, yeah, okay, maybe he's just sort of saying it's me. Maybe he just is walking on the water as a miracle and that just happens to line up with what Job says only got. But when you have all of this stuff happening together, it starts to sort of paint this impressionist. picture. Especially the reaction of the disciples. So you used Matthew earlier when we were talking about paralytic. What about Matthew on the walking on the feet? Okay. Yeah, fair enough. They

worship. Because what they happen is they, they proscuneo. They get down on their name. Proscaneo, yeah. Surely this is the son of God. Now, again, not every context is kneeling necessary a sign of divine worship. But there are contexts when it certainly is. Again, Alexander the Great, one of the points I made in the book that I hope people take away from it. is that Jesus isn't the only historical figure during the Second Temple period to make divine claims about himself. Sometimes Christians, because we put so much emphasis on the uniqueness of Jesus, we can tend to forget that there are aspects of making divine claim that are not actually unique, right? So I try to get four examples, Antichus, I'm sorry, Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC makes divine claims.

Antiochus in the second century makes divine claims. No one talks about this. It's shocking to me. King Herod Agrippa, in the first century, in the New Testament, in Acts and Josephus, makes divine acts as if he's a God. The crowds say the voice of a God, not a man. I mean, this is like a part of the Herodian dynasty. He's a practitioner of Judaism acting as if he's divine. It's a historical analog.

And then, of course, Caligula, guys, Caligula mentioned earlier, as a Roman emperor. So one of the things I try to show is there are these other people making divine claims. You don't have to believe Alexander or Antigas or any of these people is divine to ask the historical question. Did they speak and act as if they were divine in their context? And when it comes from Alexander, one of the cool, interesting things about him is that there was a controversy because he was demanding Proscunasis, kneeling in worship while he was still alive. And although the Easterners were happy to give it to him, the Greeks said, no, no, no, no, no, we don't do that. Like, we're not going to bow before you as if you were divine. And so there was this controversy about it.

And so when Jesus says I am and then the disciples fall down on their knees, again, at least at the narrative level, That is a powerful argument that Matthew thinks Jesus here is making a divine claim and that the disciples recognize it and give him homage in a way that they would not have done to an ordinary human being. Because when John, the Revelator, as they call him some time, when the author of Revelation, you know, when he bows before the angel in the Book of Revelation, he gets down on his knees and the angel's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, get up. Get up. Don't do that. Right. So, again, context matter here. So I do think that's another kind of cumulative argument for the walking on the sea episode, although I hope we haven't talked about it too much.

No, no, all right. Look, we're doing worship. Let's do worship. This is one of my favorites. I love this so much because you've already alluded to the fact that, again, it's important to notice that it's not just proscaneo. It's proscaneo in the context of an I am claim whilst walking on the water. You know, that's important. But let's talk about worship because another thing that people like to bring up all the time is that, you know, Jesus accepts worship.

It's not just that people worship him, but that Jesus doesn't contradict him, right? Yeah. And it seems like worship is something that only God is Jew. And so if the disciples will worship Jesus and he said, no, get up, get up, don't worship me, then great. But he accept it on a number of occasions. I've got a lot to say on this. The first important thing is that, yeah, this word worship proscenio, or it comes in different forms, which just literally means to kneel down. To sort of bow down in front of.

Now, I am of the opinion that basically this is just something that people do when they recognize that someone is of a higher, like, authority or status than they are. For example, if we look at the Septuagint, right, if we look at the Greek version of the Old Testament, this term Proscaneo shows up a lot. Oh, a lot. Yes. Lot worship worships to angels and Genesis. Abraham worships the Hittites. Isaac blesses Jacob and says that all of the earth. All the other nations on earth will worship him.

Jacob worships Esau, Joseph's brothers, like where Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, his brothers come back and when he's the governor of Egypt, they worship him. It just means that they're bowing down before him. The entire nation of Israel bows down before some of the kings of Israel. David at one point even worships the temple, you know? So, like, clearly if worship is something that's only due to God, all of these people are sinning, right? This term proscenio can just mean to bow down. I think that the explanation that we can give for why it is that sometimes people say, don't worship me.

The same thing happens, Peter in Acts. Yes, absolutely. Someone bows down before him and he says, get up because I'm just a man. Just a man. Yeah, right. Exactly. And that says to me, he's not saying, one reading of that is when Peter says, get up because I'm just a man. One reading of that is he's saying, you know, get up because I'm not God.

Right. But another reading is to say, get up. I'm a man just like you. I'm on your level. I'm not a higher authority than you are. But if it were someone of a higher authority, it would make sense. to Proscanea before them. Similarly, John of Patmos is bowing down before the angel. And the angel in that context is saying, like, look, I'm a messenger of God. You're a messenger of God. We're both

below this figure. Get up. Like, you know, don't worship me. Worship God. Because we're both of this level that we should only be worshipping God above us. So, okay, few things to note here. If this worship point is important, and for a lot of people, it is important. You know, Jesus accepts worship. One thing that I think is important. One thing that I think is important, important to point out, is that you only really get this in Matthew's gospel, right? Yeah, no, actually, I should be clear. Luke and John seem to not care about worship. And Jesus doesn't really get worshiped at all in those gospels. It's only really in Matthew that this shows up, right? You wanted to say

something. Oh, I just wanted to say, just to be clear, I'm tracking everything you're saying. And this is one of the reasons why I actually didn't make this a foundational argument in this moniker. Yeah. Because I actually do think it can't bear the weight that's sometimes given to it. So go ahead. I just want to be clear that the person, Proscunetosis controversy is not something that I spend a lot of time with because I don't think it's actually a strong argument. Yeah. And it's worth pointing out as well that there is this other term for like cultic divine worship. Latreo. Latreo. Yeah. And this phrase shows up more uncommonly. And when it does show up, it's given to God. There's nowhere in the New Testament that Latruo worship is given to Jesus. Some people think it's in revelation.

That gets a bit more complicated. But certainly in the Gospels, Latria worship isn't given to Jesus. So when the disciples are beginning to realize that Jesus is the Messiah, that Jesus is the son of God. You know, he's the promised one. He's the anointed one. For them to realize this after some, you know, miracle working, they worship him. They proscianeo before him and say, truly this man is the son of God. You know, it's as if, you know, the king comes back on his chariot with his crown.

and they all bow down and say, truly this man is the king. He is the son of God, as sometimes kings were called. It's not an unintelligible reading to me to say that, yeah, they bowed down in front of him because they realized his authority as the promised Messiah. I totally agree. In fact, I would argue that Proscuneo in Greek has almost precisely the same range as worship in modern, but also Middle English. And it's worthy of honor.

And you can give it to a king, or you can give it to God. And the context is everything, right? So, you know, in British English, which is different than American English, obviously, like, your worship is not implying that the person you're speaking to is divine, but of some status of authority. So, yeah, I'm actually, I actually agree with you, Alex, on that. Yeah. That I do think you don't want to make more out of proscenesis than possible. At the meantime, it is interesting that in the lives of Alexander, that particular gesture of worship, in certain contexts, in the Macedonian and Greek context, was actually seen as problematic that Alexander would demand it.

Now, but that was the only analogy I was trying to make with the walking on the sea. There is also something interesting about, I'm glad you bring up Alexander the Great, because there's a legend told in Josephus's antiquities. He tells this legend of Alexander the Great, who goes to conquer Jerusalem. He wants to conquer Jerusalem, and the crisis is diverted how a priest meets him outside of the balls of the city, and his mitre bears the tetragrammaton. It says, you know, it has the divine name, Yahweh, on this mitre. And what does Alexander the Great do when he sees this priest, like, bearing the name of God?

He proscanos before, he bows down before him. So, like, you've got Alexander the Great worshipping a man because he's literally got a sign that has the name of God in it. And I think that if Jesus is in some sense carrying the name of God, he's just a human, but he is given this, authority by God and he's sort of a name bearer for Yahweh. It's exactly the same thing happening when Alexander bows down before the priest bearing the divine name. The disciples bowed down before Jesus who has, you know, God in him. Yeah. I would I would agree with everything except the just. I agree. Yeah, right, right, right. But not what you're denying in that there. Because I think he's that, but he's much more. And I can give other example to why I think that's the case.

But that's a cool story. That's a fantastic. It is definitely, it shows that when it comes to the The expression of veneration, the expression of acknowledgement of divinity around power, your veneration is a very complex, phenomenon that has to be examined on a case-by-case basis. Yeah, absolutely. I have to thank my friend John Nelson for that story. That's a really cool story. Behind thegospels.com. He writes, I recommend it on my substack.

He's a good friend of mine, and he's a wonderful writer and he talks, and he's got an essay on Jesus accepting worship and all of this kind of stuff. And I went pretty deep on this. I mean, the only other thing that I think people might have in their minds, which is worth bringing up, is the fact that in Matthew and Luke, you have the temptation in the desert, right? Like, Jesus is in the desert and the devil comes to him and says, you know, like, do all of these things. And Jesus says, no. And one of these occasions, Satan asks Jesus to bow down before him. He says, just worship me and then all of this will be yours.

And Jesus says in response, it is written. It's, how does he word it? like worship God and serve him alone. Yeah, you should worship and serve him alone. Exactly. Yeah, it's, yeah, it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve him only. And so people often point to that and say, like, especially given that Matthew does have Jesus constantly worshipped throughout the Gospels.

If Matthew has this story where Jesus says, worship the Lord your God and serve him only, that means that only worship is given to God. Importantly, though, if the reading of this is that Proskeno is only given to God, then all of those Old Testament figures. are massive sinners. And also, it's worth pointing out that the phrasing is not only worship God. It's worship God and serve him only. And what's the word serve?

La Troroo, the kind of worship that's only given to God. There is one case I think you can make for Latruo worship being given to Jesus in the Gospels. And that is the fact that when Jesus claims to be the son of man who comes riding on the clouds of heaven, he's quoting the book of Daniel. And in the Septuagint for Daniel, the son. of man is said to be given Latruo worship. So there is this possible allusion to Latruo worship being given to Jesus, but I think that's it. It's elusive, but it's not explicit in the gospel text. Yeah, I know I actually think the Daniel 7 passage is super crucial, although can I take

your point and like segue to something? So yes, everything you said about worship, but if we could talk about love for a second, I'd actually like to talk about love because there's a relationship here. In chapter three of the book, I have a chapter called. the riddles of Jesus' divinity. And one of the passages in there that really blew me away when I was looking through the gospel text was Jesus' demand that his disciples love him more than father and mother. So he says in Matthew 10, for example, if anyone loves father or mother more than me, they're not worthy of me, all right?

This is a passage that is extremely evocative. It might not strike us as all that power. But I would argue in a first century Jewish context, this is really a powerfully, although implicit, but a powerfully elusive claim for divine status. Because when I began to dig into it, one of the things you'll see in Philo and Josephus and other Jewish writers is that in exegesis of the decalogue and the Fourth Commandment, honor your father and mother, right? Which in Hebrew is actually glorify them. It's chavode. It's the same word for glory. Like give glory to your parents.

In first century Jewish texts like Philo and Josephus, they say that the only person above your parents is God. That your father and mother stands second to God alone because they gave you life. And it's almost like a kind of co-creative act. So there's a quotation here. Let's see. I found this. So in Philo, he says, quote, that your parents are on the borderline between humanity and divinity. And Joseph Fitzhitz also says, quote, the law ranks parents as second only to God in honor.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is fascinating. It's a really interesting point. And you'll see this in other texts. Those are just a couple of examples. So there's this idea that you have the gravest of obligations to honor your parents above anyone else with the sole exception of the creator. And so then Jesus steps on the scene in this Jewish context where honoring your father, mother's part and parcel of the decalogue. It's something you recite daily. It's also, I mean, Philo and Joseph is a really good example of witnesses to... The Decalogue, by the way, is the Ten Commandments. I'm sorry. The Decalogue means, yes, ten words, ten commandments, written with the finger of God, Exodus chapter 20, right? So this is the Ten Commandments. Fourth Commandment, or at least in the Catholic enumeration, I know other people counted differently, is honor your father and mother.

And so Philo and Giusefus say that what this means, if you draw it out, is they're second only to God. because the first three commandments are about loving God, right? No other gods before him. So against idolatry, keeping the Sabbath, keeping it holy, and not taking his name in vain. The second half of the commandments are about loving your neighbor. And the first one is give glory, chavode, to your father and your mother. So they are literally at the top of the list, right, when it comes to the two commandments. And that first set of commandments, the first three commandments, God says, whoever keeps these,

I will bless those who love me and keep my commandments. So obedience in the deck log is actually an expression of love. So in a Jewish context, when Jesus comes and says, anyone who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me. That is such a shocking saying. It's hard for us to really wrap our minds around, especially in modernity when we don't have all that much respect for our parents. Culture, at least in Western culture,

the idea for respect for parents has really fallen away. And the idea that it would be some kind of grave sin to not exercise it is almost kind of completely foreign to our mindset. So what I try to show in the book is that Jacob Neusner, for example, very famous rabbi from the 20th century, wrote a book called a rabbi encounters Jesus. When he gets to this passage from Matthew 10 in the Gospels, he says, listen, whatever people might debate about Jesus of history, the Christ of faith, he says in this passage, when Jesus says, you can't be my disciple unless you love me more than your mother and father, He says, only God can ask of me what Jesus is asking here. So even as a contemporary practitioner of Judaism, a contemporary rabbi, he recognizes that the implication of Jesus demanding super parental love is an implication that he is more, not just more than any merely human,

but he takes a role above that of your parents. And that's really fascinating to me because it explains something really interesting about the early church. We don't just have evidence of the early church worshipping Jesus, right? We also have evidence in Ephesians and Peter of loving Jesus. This is really unique. I mean, you can maybe inform me. I'm not an expert on ancient Greco-Roman religion.

I just dabble as much as I can. But as I tried to, I looked around, I looked around, saw all kinds of evidence of you have to honor the gods, you have to serve the gods, you have to obey them, you have to offer sacrifice. But I didn't find language of loving God in the same way that you find in the Jewish scriptures, the Shama, which is basically every day you recite this commandment to love God, and then the Deccalaw, which is an expression of loving God through obedience. So when Jesus comes on the scene, it says, unless you love me more than father and mother, you can't be my disciple, any Jew would have asked, whoa, what are you asking me?

Like, who are you claiming to be if you say, I owe you a super parental love? And at least according Rabbi Newsner and some others, exegetes, that this is another case where Jesus is demanding divine love. He's demanding something of his disciples that in Jewish context, you would only give to the God of the Shama in Deuteronomy 6. So, anyway, just another example. So the argument from worship, I think, is more complicated. But the argument from divine love and super parental love is really forceful, in my opinion. Now, yeah, now this, that's really difficult for me.

The reason is because this is a passage that, or this passage in this concept, which I haven't really dived into. dove into, and I can tell you what my immediate thoughts are, but it's going to be pretty uninformed. The first thing that springs to mind, of course, is that there are different kinds of love in the New Testament. Famously, you have agarpe, which is your sort of unconditional love, the kind of love that God has for humanity. You've also got, like, eros, which is romantic or sexual love. You also have this particular term used for, like, familial love, like between parents and children, which is something like store gay, Storgette or something like that.

It's kind of a fixed. Familiar effect. Yeah. And then you have filial fielo, I guess is how you'd pronounce it, which is another kind of love. I don't know how you'd exactly find it. A love of a friend? It's kind of, yeah, it's... Yeah. So I just, as you were speaking, I just looked at Matthew 10 in Greek, and the kind of love that's used there is this philo, the same root word that you get in philosophy, you know, love of. Sure. And the question that would bring to mind to me is, of course, it's written in Hebrew, but the kind of love that God demands for himself, I wonder if that is this philo love, or if this is more like this unconditional agape love, because maybe you could say that like, well, when he says that you have to love your parents, he's talking about that familial love. But when Jesus says you have to love me, he's talking about a different kind of love. He's talking about Philo, which is like the love of friendship. So you still love your parents the most. in a familial sense, but you love me more as like a friendly acquaintance, someone you listen to, someone you confide in that kind of thing. And again, this is purely speculative. I have no

idea, but that would be where I would start researching to see, is there room to still interpret this as Jesus saying, yeah, in this context, this extraordinary claim that, you know, you have to prefer me over your parents, but not in all kinds of love, just in the kind of love that's relevant to, you know, following him as the Messiah. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I understand. Yeah, I would say my response would be fair point, although the scholarship on this has been, there's a enormous amount of scholarship. And if you look at like commentaries on John 20, where Jesus will use Filet-O and Agape, almost as synonyms, it's actually kind of difficult.

I know CS-Lewis wrote that famous book, The Four Loves, where he separates these in a pretty tight categories that they're separate from another. It's actually a little more complex on the ground, and Filet-O and Agap-Pa-O can actually be used synonymous that they are used arguably as synonyms in the gospels themselves. So for me, again, it's less about the denotation of the word and more about the context, whether it's filet or Agaphao, it is super parental. And that's actually the part that I was trying to make to say that it's more than mother and father, at least according to Joseph, Josephus and Philo, that that's something you really only give to God. And it's an extraordinary demand on Jesus' part. And you'll see it elsewhere,

like when someone says, you know, I got to go bury my father. And he said, You know, let the dead bury their dead come and follow me. So he makes these extraordinary demands. And if he's alluding there, if he's alluding to the decalogue and the Shemah, then again, it's a kind of elusive, implicit demand that is truly extraordinary. And as Rabbi Neuser says, it really seems that he's asking something that only God can demand of you. To put him above his parents. Yeah.

Anyway, that was just about worship and love. I thought I'd throw that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. Okay, so one thing that we have to talk about, you know, we've been talking for a while now, and I think before we end this podcast, it would be ridiculous to not mention, we sort of alluded to the son of man a bunch throughout this podcast, and we've mentioned that it comes up at this trial of Jesus. And of course, the most important thing about Jesus's life is something we haven't even mentioned yet, which is the fact that he dies under Roman crucifixion and allegedly raises from the dead. And the story of exactly why it is that Jesus has put to death, The story it is, the story of why Jesus had so upset the Jewish authorities, they convicted him of blasphemy, he's doing something. This is like really important, Christologically, to the extent that anybody who hasn't watched

up to now, anyone who doesn't watch the rest of the podcast, is probably already commenting in the box down below. Of course he's God, that's literally why they killed him. So, blasphemy claim, trial, what's going on here? Okay, great. So the final chapter in the book deals with both those questions. the issue of Jesus' crucifixion, actually three, crucifiction, the blasphemy charge, and the title, Son of Man. So let me see if I can kind of wrap this up in a bow and bring it to the climax, because you're right, this is the most consequential element.

So if you look at historical Jesus' scholarship, it is almost universally recognized that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by Punches Pile. This is something accepted as a historical fact. So there's no argument about whether he was crucified, but when you actually press into it and ask, well, Why was he crucified? What's the reason for the crucifixion? Then it actually gets more complicated. It's fascinating that there's lots of disagreement about the causes or the reasons that led to the crucifixion. Some people say, oh, well, he was a false prophet, or he was executed for being a deceiver, he was executed for being against the law, or he was executed for being against the temple, or he was executed because he made a claim to be the Messiah. And most of those charges, although they're reasonable kind of in the abstract, if you look at the sources, there's not a lot of evidence to support. those things with the sole exception of messianic claim obviously the messianic claim plays a part in his

roman execution because it's there on the title of the cross jesus nazir king of the jews but the problem with even with that one is that it isn't a crime in judaism to claim to be the messiah if by messiah you simply mean the heir to the davidic throne right if it were a crime to claim to be the messiah then how would you ever know who the davidic heir was right you know i'm the heir of david's throne kill him that sense. It's not plausible within a Jewish context. So the question also has to be not only why did the Romans execute him, but why is he handed over for execution by the Jewish authorities to the Romans? And so that actually pushes the point that Anthony Harvey made a long time ago in his book on Jesus in the constraints of history, that the only charge that we have that all four

gospels agree on as a cause for his execution is the accusation of blasphemy. blasphemy. This is really, really important. So if you look, for example, at Mark Chapter 14, although, for example, Jesus is the so-called cleansing of the temple where he turns over the tables, that's certainly a factor in his arrest, but he is not charged with any kind of capital crime for what he does in the temple. Most people will argue that's the reason for his execution, but not only was it not a capital crime, the Gospels themselves don't even tell us that was the reason. If you look at the Gospels, the reason he is sentenced to death. The reason he is handed over to the Roman authorities is the charge of blasphemy. Now,

the reason that matters is because in a first century Jewish context, as I said, it isn't blasphemy simply to claim to be the Messiah. But it would be blasphemy to claim to be a divine figure, to be more than just the Messiah. And I think that's exactly what happens in Mark Chapter 14 in the famous scene before Caiaphas and the Sanhedron. So the first, the first of the first, passage is familiar, but I'll read it just to be, to be precise. When Caiaphas says to him, are you the Christ, Messiah, Meshach, and Hebrew, Christos, and Greek, the son of the blessed, Jesus says in Mark, I am, so it gives an affirmative. There, it's just an answer to the question, I think, and, see, this is the point, and you will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. Now pause. In that answer, Jesus does not simply say, I'm the Davidic heir. He adds to it an allusion

to Psalm, to Daniel 7, which depicts the one, like a son of man, coming on the clouds of heaven, right, and receiving the Latria that you talked about earlier, the worship. In other words, he's a heavenly being who appears to be human and then is given the kingdom and the power and the glory and all that. And Jesus alludes to Psalm 110, which says, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. So it's, again, a kind of royal psalm that's depicting a heavenly enthronement of the Davidic air. So what Jesus says is, I'm the Messiah, but I'm not just any Messiah. I'm the Messiah, the heavenly being of Daniel 7, who comes on the clouds and receives

worship and all that. And I'm the super Davidic Messiah of Psalm 110 who sits on the throne beside God, which in an ancient near recent context, if you sit on a divine, throne, it implies equality with the divine regent, with the divine king. So by making that answer, Jesus doesn't just affirm his messiahship. He goes beyond and implicitly claims to be a heavenly Messiah, like in Daniel 7, and a co-equal or divine authority like in Psalm 110. And in reaction to that, the high priest says he tears his mantle, which is a reaction to blasphemy, by the way, in the Old Testament. It's a kind of visible way of showing shock and horror.

And he says, why do we still need witnesses? You've heard his blasphemy. What is your decision? And they all condemned him as deserving death, right? So the gospel narrative there makes it really clear that Jesus is accused of blasphemy in the context of a question about his identity. Who are you? Are you the Messiah, the son of the blessed? And he answers it by alluding to those scriptures. So what I think is important about this passage is that, It shows, at least the level of the gospel narrative, that the reason Jesus is handed over to the authorities is not because he's a false prophet, not because he's a deceiver, not because he made a mess in the temple, or because he was against the law. It's because he made a divine claim about himself or a claim about himself that goes beyond what they think would be acceptable for a merely human Messiah. He claims to be a heavenly Messiah, a divine Messiah, and that kind of claim would be blasphemy and would be guilt, would merit death. So I think that the blasphemy charge, which is not just in Marx, also in Matthew, and also in John as well, John, think here John 19, we have a law, and by that law, he deserves to die. It's an allusion to the book of Leviticus, the Catholic crime of blasphemy. If you put that all together, I think the most plausible explanation for why Jesus is handed over to crucifixion is because he makes a divine claim in the context of the Senhedron that, they perceive as blasphemous, and that's what ultimately leads to his crucifixion. So from my point of view, as Sanders said, the smoke of the early divine Christology really originates in the fire of Jesus' divine claim that we see leads to his death.

And that's why I think the divine Jesus is actually the most crucifiable Jesus in terms of spiritual plausibility than all these other scenarios in which he's not making divine claims, and yet somehow still ends up handed over by the authorities. for a capital crime. I don't doubt that that is the most crucifiable version of Jesus. And of course, this is the big climax, but there are a number of questions which jump out of this for me. And it's a strong case, and people make it all the time.

They sort of quite confidently say, well, look, Jesus is clearly, when he says, you will see the son of man sat at the right hand of power, coming with the clouds of heaven. These are allusions to the divine Messiah. And it's like instantly the high priest recognizes that these are, allusions to Daniel and to Psalm and says, this man is blaspheming, and that must be because he's claiming to be God.

A few things that I want to point out. Firstly, this is not the only time when Jesus is accused of blasphemy for claiming to be God. This also happens in John chapter 10, where Jesus says, I and the Father are one. We don't have time to get into that at the moment. I talked about it in my debate with David Wood. I have a whole interpretation as to why I really don't think he's claiming to be God by doing that could be, but I don't think it's obvious. The important thing to note is that when the Jewish opponents pick up stones to stone him, and he says, why are you doing this? You know, for which of these

good works he's stoning? He says, we're stoning you for blasphemy, because you are mere man are claiming to be God. And in my interpretation of the story, Jesus then goes on to basically say, you've misunderstood me. Maybe that is what he meant, but it at least leaves room for just the idea that, yeah, these people instantly said, you're blaspheming, claiming to be God, but maybe they were wrong, because Jesus is speaking quite cryptically here. When he says, he makes these illusions that seem to maybe be implying this or implying that, and the priest hears it and goes, you've heard the blasphemy. Like, we need to stone this man. There's no obvious indication. It's not obvious to me that Jesus couldn't, if he wanted to, say, like, no, you're still not

quite getting it, but he sort of goes along with it as part of God's plan. I just want to point out that A lot of the time when Jesus is accused of blasphemy, they're getting it wrong, right? And that might be what's happening here? So then, what about this allusion to Daniel, this son of man who's given Latrua worship and all of this power? The question that jumps out to me and what I want to ask you is like, this is part of the Hebrew scripture. Before Jesus came along, Caiaphas would have been aware that there is this Danielic son of man and that there is this Psalm, which is a messianic Psalm, which is God's sort of talking about the promised Messiah, who everyone knew was coming, and Jews believed that these figures were coming, right? And so if Jesus claims to be that person, and Caiaphas instantly

goes, oh, he's claiming to be God, did Caiaphas already interpret this Danielic son of man and the Messiah promised in the Psalms as God? You see what I'm saying? In order for him to think that Jesus identifying with these figures, he's claiming to be God, he would have already had to think, before Jesus came along, that these figures in the Hebrew scripture which he believes in describe a coming, promised human figure who is also God, which seems kind of out of line with Jewish teaching. So it seems a little bit weird to me that, I mean, yeah, there's a really, obviously Jesus is alluding to Daniel here. But to say that therefore he's claiming to be this divine figure would imply that Caiaphas would know that the son of man was going to be

like God himself in the flesh, which seems like implausible to me. You know what I mean? there's a great objection. I'm really well put. I totally get where you coming. So I'll respond. If you got a second, I'll try to send it. Obviously, it's so.

Yeah. This is a great point. So I would answer it in this way. First, it actually isn't in tension with, you know, common Jewish teaching. Because if you look at apocalyptic Jewish texts

from the first entry AD, I'm thinking here of texts like Fourth Ezra, text like first Enoch, like the similarities of Enoch, which is from the first century, as well as Desi Scrolls, like 11 QMalchizedek, the idea that of a superhuman Messiah is something that actually is present in apocalyptic Jewish texts and interpretations of, especially interpretations of Daniel, 4th Ezra and 1st Enoch, are both interpreting the Danielic figure in Daniel 7,

not just as the Messiah, but as a pre-existent heavenly being who's been hidden from all time and is now being revealed. Now, just because those Jews believe in that kind of super exalted divine Messiah, like whoever the authors of the first Enoch literature war, think here maybe the ASEANs and the figures like the authors of the Dead Sea Scroll Library, it doesn't mean that every Jew accepts that as an Orthodox interpretation of those texts. Does that make sense? And the debate over those very cryptic and enigmatic text is going to continue well into the rabbinic Jewish period. So Alan Siegel, a late Jewish scholar, wrote a famous book called The Two Powers and Heavens. where he talked about the fact that in some, even the later rabbinic text,

there's this notion that if anyone interprets Daniel 7 as a second power in heaven, that's a blasphemous exegesis of that text, right? So these are not univocally interpreted passages in first century Judaism, but they don't have to be. In fact, the fact that they might be controversial questions actually lends credence to the idea, or controversial text, that if Jesus cites them and then seems to interpret them as being a divine messianic figure, It doesn't have to have, by the way, it doesn't have to be like fully incarnate in the way we understand through 19.

He only has to be making a superhuman or super, you know, divine power claim for it to be sufficient for blasphemy, right? I mean, Antiochus isn't claiming to be God-made man. He's still blaspheming when he says he can walk on the sea or whatnot. So the fact that Jesus interprets those texts in a potentially controversial, but not implausible and not unprecedented way, is totally sufficient grounds, especially if the Senhassen is looking for a, reason to execute this figure that they've had problems with and they and they're and has caused them trouble um in the past so um that's how i would read that and that's how i respond to that yes caiaphas would i think you can make a plausible case that he would be aware of that kind of exalted apocalyptic interpretation of the daniel figure or of psalm 110 because we have evidence in

the scrolls we have evidence in the jewish pseudapigrapha um that those interpretations were in the air in the first century AD. So that would be my Yeah, I mean, this came up in my debate that I had with David Wood. I mean, his case was rely quite heavily on this two powers in heaven idea. And for me, the question sort of comes down

to the evidence for like pointing to the idea that this was sort of floating around. I mean, we don't have any later. I don't want to hang anything on. I'm just using an example of it. Yeah, it seems to sort of plausibility. You can take out of evidence in that. We don't have evidence in that. And just look at their first entry sources. Yeah.

Coming up later, this is an annoying part in the Q&A. actually where someone could, because I made a case where I basically said, like, well, you know, that there is no pre-Christian text that discusses the Two Power in Heaven heresy. And somebody got up, and I was a little bit confused exactly what they were saying, I think. I can't remember. But they referred to some passage from the Talmud, where they're talking about it. And I was sort of like, I was like, well, when was this? And, you know, he says it was a few hundred years BC or whatever.

And I was sort of like, yeah. And I was like, wait, hold on, wait. And I was thinking to myself, but I'm. I'm sure that like there is no, there's no prior source, but this guy's just telling me that there is. So I was sort of a bit like, maybe I've just like missed something. No, I spoke to him. I said to him, like, come and speak to me. I found out that the text was written much later, but alleged to refer to something further back.

So, no, no, no, no, you know, this 2,000 heaven thing seems to be maybe something that developed in response to Christianity. Absolutely. You know, Alan Siegel's workshop, this is a rabbinic debate. I'm just, I was just alluding that to show that the debate continues. Well, BS. Just take that off the table. You don't need anything from the Talmud. The Second Temple sources alone on Daniel 7,

similar to Zavina, 4th, which is late 1st century, and then 11 QMalkisadec, which is a Dead Sea Scroll, again, first century BC or CE, on Psalm 110. You have early Jewish sources from the Second Temple period already interpreting Psalm 110 and Daniel 7 in superhuman categories. And that's all you really need for a plausible interpretation of the way Jesus uses the passage here. I would not hang anything on the two powers,

heresy, except to show you that those texts continue to be controversial in later Jewish tradition, especially in contradistinction to Christian appropriations of the book of Daniel and interpretations of Daniel. Yeah, sure. So you're right. I agree with you on that point. Parking the two powers thing, I'm going to throw up just a couple of responses here to this blasphemy stuff, and then I promise that we can wrap this up and make it's bad as it

were. So on this blasphemy point, because it is important, right? There are things I want to say. Firstly, you refer to John chapter 19, where the Jewish. answer, we have a law, and according to that law, he ought to die, because he has claimed to be the son of God. In this instance, they make a different, they do at some point say, you're claiming to be God. In this instance, they just say he's claiming to be the son of God, and we have a law, and according to that law, he ought to die because he claimed to be the son

of God, implying that it seems like people can put a man to death just for claiming to be the son of God, rather than claiming to be identical to the God Yahweh of of Israel. A few other instances that point to me, like yeah, okay, you can point to biblical injunctions about laws about what punishments go for what things. And there's a, there's a discussion to we had about what extent, to what extent those were actually enforced. But certainly we know that people were killed for blasphemy. The thing is, the kinds of blasphemy that they were killed for vary all over the place. I mean, an important example for me is, of course, in the book of Acts in chapter seven we have the the death of Stephen yeah and Stephen is is firstly

Stephen is accused of of blasphemy and it's like throughout the whole of Acts chapter six uh you know you're hearing the story of Stephen going about and doing stuff yeah and it's written in Acts chapter six that people sort of conspire to like lie about Stephen in order to get him put to death what do they say about Stephen well Acts chapter six versus 11 onwards say They secretly instigated some men to say, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. Yes. And then it says, they stirred up the people as well as the elders and the scribes. Then all of a sudden they confronted him, seized him, and brought him before the council.

They set up false witnesses who said, this man never stopped saying things against the holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us. So they say that they're accusing him of blasphemous. me. And what is he doing that's blasphemous? Well, he's saying that Jesus will destroy the temple and saying that he will change the customs that Moses has handed on to us. If simply like changing the customs of Moses is enough to get you an accusation to blasphemy, then it's no surprise to me that Jesus gets killed. And in his actual death, Stephen has a vision similar to Jesus, right? Jesus is before the council and he looks up to the sky and he says, I see the heavens

have opened, and the son of man standing at the right hand of God, and they started covering their ears, and then they all rushed at him, and they stone him to death. What do they stone him for? For blasphemy? What does he actually do that gets him stoned? He simply sees a vision of Jesus stood, actually, this time, at the right hand, or is it sat this time? I get them mixed up, standing, standing at the right hand of God. And so it's enough to just think that Jesus is the son of man figure to get blaspheme, to get the accusation of blasphemy and stone to death, let alone claiming to be that son of man, and let alone claiming that that son of man is also God himself. So it seems to me that the Jews were a little bit trigger-happy, in other words,

when it came to accusations of blasphemy, meaning I don't think Jesus would have had to make this explicit claim to be God in order to get that stoning. Okay, that's fascinating you read it that way, because I actually read it, I read the same data differently. So let me just back up. Maybe I'm wrong here, but unless I'm mistaken, and I think I'm not, I don't think the word blasphemy is used to just for any of the allegations they make against him like speaking against the law speaking against the temple those are all problematic but i don't think they're identified with the term blasphemy perhaps i'm wrong in chapter six it shows up it all it says is is it says uh that they instigated some men to say we have heard him speak blasphemous words

against moses and god that's act six 11 and then it goes on to talk about the things that he did right so it doesn't then say that they stone him for blasphemy or anything sure sure says that that previously they accused him of blasphemy, crucially, against Moses and against God. And then later he's stoned as a result of all of that. All right. I'm tracking now with you. Okay, so I understand. Yeah, so this is one that's going to come in the book. There are lots of different ways you can speak, you can commit sacrilegious in the temple,

speak words. Even if you put a curse on a priest, like if you cursed a priest, that would be considered blasphemy. So yes, you don't have to make a divine claim to be charged blasphemy. Absolutely, that's not what I'm claiming. Although I would, I read it differently because. the thing that actually gets him killed is when he makes a claim about Jesus. So it's not just that he sees it. It says, but it's even full of the Holy Spirit, gazed in heaven, saw the glory of God,

Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and then said, behold, I see the heavens open and the son of man standing at the right hand of God. And so they cried out with loud voice and they stopped their ears. So I think this is the one that's very clearly blasphemous. is his declaration that the son of man is, Daniel 7, is standing at the right hand of God, Psalm 110. That's the blasphemous claim that leads them to drag him out of the city and stone him, both of which are prerequisites for, those are both what Leviticus 24 says you do to a blasphemer. You take him out of the camp and then you stone him to death.

So my reading is actually that Stephen is executed not for blasphemy in the same sense of Jesus is because he's not making a claim about himself, but he is executed for the same claim of that blasphemer, because he's making it about Jesus. He's making it about the son of man. The other things are bad. They can be regarded as blasphemous, although that's kind of summary statement at the beginning.

So I want to go back and try to tease out what that is. But this is what gets him killed. His allusion, the same two passages, Psalm 110, Daniel 7, but making it verbally the claim about Christ, or Jesus as Son of Man. And so I actually think that that actually is an argument of coherence with my reading of the trial, because just as the Sanhedron sees the allusion to those two texts being applied

to Jesus as a divine self-claim, so to Stephen's allusion to those two texts, Daniel 7 and 1-10, as being about the risen or exalted Jesus, that's seen also as a blasphemous claim about him and it's worthy of capital punishment. because he's claiming a man has these divine qualities. So I read it differently. I actually see it as a, as confirmatory rather than conflicting evidence. So that's my read.

Yeah, well, that is just sort of, that's just the way with these things, isn't it? You know, the same verses of the same text being used to justify different conclusions. I think at the very least,

it's simple, but it isn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's for sure. That's the one thing that should be clear in all of this. And it's also one of the reasons why I would add to it, though, one last thing. It is clear, though,

all of the early Christian executions in Jerusalem that are reported in Acts or in Josephus or in Hitchsippic early fathers, whether it's Stephen or James, the brother of Jesus in Josephus, or the early Christian jerusalems who are executed by the Sanhedron. Nobody ever talks about this, but it's in Hedgesipas. All of them are stonings, and that's important. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a legally prescribed punishment for blasphemy against the deity, right? So not all Christ, but, crimes are capital crimes, but making divine claims about human beings is one of them. So I think that that actually, again, puts a kind of cumulative argument that helps us to understand that Jesus isn't making a merely human messianic claim, but rather a divine. I think that's the one that makes the most mess, the best sense of the most evidence. Yeah, that's, there's obviously so much to say. Because you're right, people point to other reasons where Jesus might have been killed.

Like, you know, in Deuteronomy, it says that anybody, but any prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded the prophet to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. So basically, false prophets should be killed. And if that passes were quoted in the trial, I'd say that's the reason. Then fantastic, but it's not. And it's the stoning. And I don't actually know what the punishment is for false prophets, if it's also stoning or if it's not specified or if it's something else. Well, there's some different, there's different evidence. about that. I don't remember off top of my head. I do remember, though, that the false prophet one, that passage from Deuteronomy is an interesting because it actually gets picked up in the Tecefta, which is the early rabbinic tradition, collection of rabbinic traditions, and says really clear that certain crimes, like capital crimes, you punish those people during the festivals, like Passover,

tabern, so that everyone will see and fear and obey. So sometimes people say, Jesus, the count of the trial isn't plausible because it's during Passover. And the book I tried to show, actually, At least Tarzanianic tradition goes to, it's the opposite. Those punishments are reserved for festivals because then everyone's going to be there and they're all going to see and they're going to make sure they don't repeat that kind of grave crime. That's interesting, yeah, because that's the question I didn't get to ask was like the plausibility of the historicity of all of these Jewish authorities getting together on the most like holy night of the year to convict some random Jewish rebels. It's not only plausible, but the Tosefda says it's mandatory. for capital crimes to be executed also too it also says for what it's worth again it's it's later so you have to be cautious with it and it says that you have to have two hearings well they do and that they have a night hearing and then there's a brief morning hearing and then off he goes to the crucifixion so it's remarkable case of coherence at least with with law on capital crimes right yeah minor crimes they should be carried out the festivals the rabbis say that but the tosefta actually is clear on on capital crimes right for false prophets and anyone who idolaters, people, leave people stray.

So anyway, that's right. I think, I think the crucifiable Jesus, the Jesus, the one who's accused of blasphemy, makes sense of early divine Christology. I think it makes sense of the, how early high Christology is there, because he makes a high Christology claim during his life. I think it makes, explains as explanatory power for the separation of the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity. Why do we start seeing splits between these communities?

It's because making a divine claim about the founder is going to be something that's going to be a dividing line between Jews and Christians. It's also why we see stonings for Paul. Why does he get stoned in synagogues? Maybe he's making blasphs or what is, are taking his blasphemous claims, right? And then I think it also just provides a really plausible explanation for the divinity of Jesus being such a central topic of the rest of the New Testament text, as well as obviously the patristic theological debates that will eventually culminate in the council of Nicaea. But that's a long way down the road.

So we're just focused on. I'm going to make one request of our view of our listeners, which is to first point out that, of course, we haven't covered everything. Even in the synoptic gospels, there's all kinds of stuff we haven't talked about. You know, Jesus being Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus judging mankind, all this kind of stuff. But also we, of course, haven't talked about the Gospel of John, which, as you say, famously is thought of as the High Christology Gospel, Sure.

I think it's got a really interesting Christology. We've kind of intentionally not talked about that because the synoptics is like a more important focus here, given that so many people think they've got low Christology. So my only request to our listeners is that if you've got interesting things to say, you want to talk about Jesus as the son of man and healing the paralyzed man and stuff, yeah, let us know in the comments, that kind of stuff. But please, please, just try to refrain from going into the comments and saying, John 1030, the Father and I, or one. Just put, like, I know, a lot of people do this. They comment things like that as if I'm going to read that comment and go like, oh, my, how did I miss that?

I've done all this research and all this. I just, man, I didn't, I've got to go read John chapter 10. I didn't realize that he said, like, I know. I know he said that. I've got things to say about it. We have intentionally not spoken about it here and will perhaps do so another time. I have no conversation about John, yeah. Yeah, that would be great.

I mean, I need to do the John Christology thing in podcast film, I think, because it's just way better than a debate as well. I enjoyed the debate. I thought it's fun and all that kind of stuff. but it's just, it's, this is just better. It's a better way to be. So I really appreciate it. And when I was preparing for that debate, I read your book and I found it really, really

useful and interesting. And it's, it's Jesus and Divine Christology. A link is, of course, in the description for people who are interested. Maybe we'll revisit this at some point in the future. But for now, thank you so much for your time. It's been a great one. I really, really have this. It's a real pleasure.

Thanks a lot.