Why Would Jews Believe Jesus Was God?

If all the Jews – or even a substantial number – expected that the Messiah would be divine as well as human, then the belief in Jesus as God is not the point of departure on which some new religion came into being but simply another variant (and not a deviant one) of Judaism.

The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, by Daniel Boyarin

This view represents high Christology, as opposed to a low Christology – that Jesus was an inspired human being, an influential preacher or teacher, but not God. Christology – the story and doctrines of the Christ – is the foundation on which Christianity rests.

As seen in my ongoing work through Behr’s book on The Way to Nicaea, the earliest Christians worked to sort this out even before the first council. But, per Boyarin, they weren’t working out a new invention, but were working through an ancient tradition – one that had also divided Judaism in the time of Christ.

Was Jesus divine from birth or an ordinary human later adopted by God and made divine?

The controversy was much more than this. But it was at least this. Was He God? Was He human? Was He both, and if so, how was He both? We see this play out through the early Church councils. Christological controversies continued through the third council for the non-Chalcedonian churches, and continued through the sixth or seventh council for those churches that accepted Chalcedon (I will eventually get to these later councils).

As an aside, Boyarin also asks the question: How did Jesus effect salvation? On this, I don’t believe any Church council has spoken authoritatively, and certainly not in a manner that most Christians would accept. In fact, what is meant by the word “salvation”? A courtroom or a hospital? A get out of jail free card, or theosis? Christians are divided on this – or, if not divided, at least divided on which aspect to overly emphasize.

It has frequently been asserted that low Christologies are “Jewish” ones, while high Christologies have come into Christianity from the Greek thought world.

This view has been taken on by both Jewish scholars attempting to paint Christianity as a kind of paganism and orthodox Christian scholars wishing to distinguish Christianity from the old Jewish religion.

This doubly defensive approach can no longer be maintained.

This is due to the issues raised in the book of Daniel and in other ancient sources. Yet controversy, and in Boyarin’s view, an incorrect understanding of Jewish theology (at least different views within Jewish theology) remains.

The idea that the divinity of Christ is a late, “Gentile,” development that marks a decisive break from Jewish thought is a view held by what Boyarin describes as liberal Protestants. The Jews saw Him as, at most, an inspired teacher ad nothing more. Only when a majority of Christians were no longer also Jews that the idea of Jesus being divine – God – came into view. Boyarin disagrees with this:

I submit that it is possible to understand the Gospel only if both Jesus and the Jews around him held to a high Christology whereby the claim to Messiahship was also a claim to being a divine man. Were it not the case, we would be very hard-pressed to understand the extremely hostile reaction to Jesus on the part of Jewish leaders who did not accept his claim.

I am reminded of the chapter, The Grand Inquisitor, from The Brothers Karamazov (I wrote of this here). Jesus appears during the Inquisition, but the Church, via the Inquisitor, doesn’t want Him to ruin their gig. Did Dostoevsky write this as nothing more than a reflection of the Pharisees in Jesus’s time, who saw Jesus ruining their gig?

Returning to Boyarin…

Controversy among Jews was hardly a new thing; for a controversy to lead to a crucifixion, it must have been a doozy.

Claiming to be the divine Son of Man, the one to sit on the second throne next to the Ancient of Days in Daniel…that was a doozy. I remember a friend asking me: why didn’t Jesus just say it: “I am God”? My response: He did, in ways the Jewish leaders of the time would understand. I understood this conceptually before Boyarin’s book. Now, he is giving me the receipts.

The reasons that many Jews came to believe that Jesus was divine was because they were already expecting that the Messiah/Christ would be a god-man. This expectation was part and parcel of Jewish tradition.

Careful reading of the book of Daniel, its visions and revelation, was the key. And this is exactly how Jesus saw Himself: the divine Son of Man. Boyarin will expand on this through a couple of passages in the Gospel of Mark.

Mark 2: 5 And Jesus seeing their faith said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.” 6 But some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, 7 “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?”

10 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the paralytic…

Here Jesus is referring back to the Son of Man in Daniel 7. Where He speaks of having “authority,” the same term in Aramaic also translates to “sovereignty” or “dominion.” The scribes claimed blasphemy, because they see Jesus claiming sovereignty over sins, and only God may forgive sins. But the one like the Son of Man is authorized to act as and for God.

This constitutes a direct declaration of the doubleness of the Godhead, which is, of course, later on the very hallmark of Christian theology.

Later rabbis would refer to this as “two powers in heaven.”

A second passage from Mark is also considered. Here, the disciples are plucking grain on the Sabbath. The Pharisees said that this is not lawful. Jesus replied with what David did, entering the temple and eating the consecrated bread and also sharing it with those with him.

Mark 2: 27 And Jesus was saying to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 Consequently the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Boyarin suggests that there are two arguments at work and in tension in Jesus’s defense of the actions. The first is a legal argument (halakhic) and the second a “radical apocalyptic transformation” in the words of Jesus. Both are at play here.

For the legal argument, such arguments are also found later in the tradition of the Rabbis – those who produced the Mishna and the two Talmuds. They flourished from the second through the seventh centuries in Palestine and Babylonia, and what they produced became accepted as authoritative transmissions of Judaism. The Gospel recording in Mark attests to the antiquity of this rabbinic idea.

To expand on the legal argument: here there is a convergence between two sets of Jewish traditions regarding the Sabbath (with some vitally important differences). Some healing is permitted on the Sabbath based at least partly on the same reasoning employed by Jesus:

…namely, that the Sabbath was given to benefit those who keep it, not that the people are there to serve the Sabbath.

Boyarin cites second century rabbis to demonstrate this point. There are Sabbaths that are pushed aside, for example, when a life is at stake; the Sabbath is delivered to you, and not you to the Sabbath.

“Profane one Sabbath for him [the sick person] in order that he may keep many Sabbaths.”

Boyarin suggests that this is the proper way to understand Jesus’s statement, and not, as many Christians do, that Jesus was suggesting to oppose all Sabbath laws. Jesus may have been in controversy with the Pharisees, who had not yet articulated the principle that saving a life supersedes the Sabbath. Such was also the opinion of the Jews of the Dead Sea community.

The parallel passage in Matthew adds something of importance to this episode:

Matthew 12: 5 Or have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent? 6 But I say to you that something greater than the temple is here. 7 But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.

Jesus extends this – His apocalyptic turn – by introducing Himself as something greater than the Sabbath. He is the Son of Man and that He is the Lord of the Sabbath.

The Gospels are testimony to the antiquity of themes and controversies that later appear in rabbinic literature.

Conclusion

…Jesus makes a much more radical claim: not only does the Torah authorize the healing of the deathly sick on the Sabbath, but the Messiah himself, the Son of Man, is given sovereignty to decide how to further extend and interpret the Sabbath law.

Jesus claims sovereignty to do this, not merely that he has been granted authority – like a steward or some such. The sovereign is the one who can make exceptions to the law; no one else has this authority. And here we see both the Davidic Messiah (the Son of God) and the Son of Man in one person – Jesus Christ.

He is both human, as the Son of God, and divine, as the Son of Man. And this, according to Boyarin, is not outside of the thought streams present in Jewish communities before, during and after Jesus’s time on earth.

Some Jews rejected Jesus because they disagreed with this view of a second divinity; others rejected Him because they did not believe He was the One who fit the bill for whom the second throne was prepared.

But other Jews accepted both the view of a second divinity and also that Jesus was the One. We read of them in the Gospels and in the book of Acts. Today we consider these the first Christians. In their time, they considered themselves obedient Jews.