Based
on the extensive research that I did back in 1987-90 I came to the
conclusion that the historical Jewish man Jesus (not to be confused
with the Jesus Christ of Christian mythology) did believe that he was
the "Son of God" - see below. The Jews were expecting a "Messiah",
Jesus considered himself to be that individual. Judas didn't betray
Jesus by identifing him, he did exactly what Jesus wanted him to do.
Jesus fully expected "God" (the God of Israel) to divinely
intervene upon his arrest and overthrow the Roman rule of Judea. I
would suggest reading Revolution in Judea and The Myth Maker-Paul and
the Invention of Christianity by Hyam MacCoby among many other good books on this
subject.
The
first appearance of these two ideas or phrases connecting is seen
Matthew 26:63 during Jesus’ trial before His execution. The verse
is quoted below.
"But
Jesus kept silent. And the high priest answered and said to Him, “I
put You under oath by the living God: Tell us if You are the Christ,
the Son of God!”
Notice
how the accusation is phrased against Jesus. The high priest wanted
to know if Jesus was the “Christ”, or in other words, the son of
God! They are paired together to clarify the same point. When
stressing clarity, many people today will repeat an idea in several
ways to ensure it was articulated clearly. Preachers do it all of the
time. “Jesus will forgive your sins, save your soul, and wash you
white as snow!”
All
of those ideas are connected with each other and convey the same
general point. Christ and Son of God are used in the same way in this
context. The high priest apparently understood these two titles to be
the same, or at the least, used them complement each other. In the
very next verse, Jesus replies, “You said it”, i.e., “Yes” (vs
64).
"Yes!" Jesus affirms the combination used by the high priest to convict him
of being the Christ, the Son of God. It can be argued that this verse
supports Jesus’ understanding of the interchangeability of the two
terms in focus.
He
then says, “…hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the
right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven" (vs
64b). We will explore what the “Son of Man” means in detail
later, but it arguably was a title just as interchangeable as Christ
was with Son of God. These two sections of dialogue offer a large
amount of insight into what religious leaders (Jesus and the high
priest) of the day believed when it came to these two terms. Jesus
accented the accusation by, in essence, calling Himself the Son of
Man.
In
response to Jesus’ reply, the high priest tore his clothes, accuses
him of blasphemy (vs 65), and asks the others who are listening if
they agree with his opinion; they did (vs 66). The reason they
condemned Jesus under the charge of blasphemy was linked to the
political ramifications of declaring oneself “Christ” (for
example, see this scene play out in John 19; John [who asserts the
divinity of Jesus most clearly to modern readers in the New
Testament] even relates the term “Son of God” to a political
sphere).
“Blaspheme”
comes from the Greek word, “βλασφημέω” (blasphēméō),
which has a broad meaning. One lexicon suggests that “in the NT,
[βλασφημέω is] generally synonymous with oneidízō (3679),
[which means to] revile, and loidoréō (3058), [which is] to
reproach (Matt. 27:39; Mark 15:29; Luke 22:65; 23:39; Rom. 3:8;
14:16; 1 Cor. 4:13; Titus 3:2; 2 Pet. 2:10; Jude 1:8 [emphasis
mine]). In other words, one can read the high priest saying, “He
has spoken wrongly!”, which excludes a divine nuance that is
suggested when one uses the word, “blaspheme”; ie, “He is
calling himself God!”.
As
seen before in part 2 of this blog series, “Christ” or “Messiah”
simply means God’s appointed king for Israel. Therefore, if someone
claimed to be the Christ in the 1st century (which Jesus affirmed in
vs 64), they would be taking a political position against Rome. They
would be deemed as an ‘enemy of the State’. Nevertheless, even if
“blaspheme” is a correct translation, the context begs for the
terms Christ and son of God to be linked as interchangeable.
Even
“liberal” scholars, such as Dr. Bart Ehrman, share this
conclusion. He writes, “But to ancient Jews, being the “son of
God” did not make a person God; it made the person a human being in
a close relationship with God, one through whom God does His will on
earth” [Jesus, Interrupted; Dr. Bart Ehrman, HarperOne Publishers,
2009, pg 140].
More conservative theologians defend the perspective
too, such as Dr. Mark Strauss when he writes, “First, as just
noted, by the first century, Son of God seems to have been coming
into use as a title for the Messiah. In a number of New Testament
passages, Son of God is almost synonymous with Christ" [Four
Portraits, One Jesus; Dr. Mark Strauss; Zondervan publishers, 2007,
pg 486]
Another example is Brad H. Young, Ph.D., who, in his book
Jesus the Jewish Theologian says, “In Hebrew thought, Psalm 2[:7]
refers to the Lord’s anointed. It is a messianic text… In the
time of Jesus… the “son of God” was identified with the future
deliverer [ie., the Messiah] who would fulfill the divine plan of
redemption.”
I
must mention that there is credibility in understanding Jesus as
“God’s Son” as signifying a particularly close relationship
between Him and the Father. This is best explained through the Abram
and Isaac motif, but that will be covered in a blog unrelated with
the theme of the Messiah.
In
ending, I suggest that by the time of the first century, the phrase,
“Son of God” was being used interchangeably with both “Christ”
and/or “Messiah”. This changes the way we read the Bible (and
particularly the New Testament), and it better focuses our view of
what Jews in Jesus’ day understood and thought of when it came to
the messianic expectation of the 1st century.
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