I’m increasingly coming to the opinion that Blair’s main problem is that he’s not very bright.

Prof Ted Honderich

The Trial of Jesus 3

Did Jesus Think he Was Christ, a God?
Kings of the Jews

Abstract

Having been turned over to the Romans by the priests, Jesus Barabbas was quickly brought for trial. The Romans had built and administered the greatest empire the world had seen by being systematic, organised and thorough. Admittedly, they were a severe and cruel people but they had a sense of justice, and Roman law is still the model for civil law everywhere. Is it credible that they felt threatened by a man who told moral tales and thought he had a kingdom in heaven? Christians insist it is, but the Roman governors of Judaea had a lot more to concern them than mendicant preachers. Judaea had been in turmoil since even before the Romans annexed it in 6 AD, and only a quarter of a century after the crucifixion of the Christian god from Galilee, the Jews rose as a nation against their foreign rulers in a bloody war. When Jesus was crucified as a king, the problem for Roman governors was constant rebellion in Judaea.

Did Jesus Think he Was Christ, a God?

It might be argued that, if the Jews did not consider it blasphemous to claim to be the messiah, it is all the more reason why Jesus could have reasonably made this claim. Yet, scholars agree that in the gospels Jesus never asserted that he was the messiah. Of the five instances when he mentions it, three are later interpolations (Mk 9:41; Lk 24:26,46), one is improbable (Mk 13:6) but if true either implies that the messiah was yet to come or to return (but Jesus never suggested he would—see later) and the final one (Mk 12:35-37; Mt 22:41-46) is part of a scriptural discussion the rest of which is omitted. Had there been other instances the gospel writers and editors would have used them. Other references to messiahship, those in the nativity stories, those in the titles of Matthew and Mark and those in an editorial clause in Matthew are plainly added by editors.

Messianic words only get used in the gospels after the troubles began in Jerusalem. Jesus silences a demon who reveals who he is; he does not admit it even to Peter when he replies to Jesus’s direct question, “You are the messiah”. The congratulation to Peter, not present in Mark, looks like an interpolation to get rid of this embarrassing silence. In exchanges with the High Priest, Jesus answers coyly, his replies do not mean “yes” and could mean the opposite. Similarly, the answer to Pilate’s question: and in fact Luke implies that Pilate takes it to be a denial.

In Acts, Jesus definitely is the Christ though the claim is still not attributed to Jesus, and the book implies that Jesus became the messiah on his resurrection. Peter (Acts 3:17-18) and Paul (Acts 17:3; 26:23) both cite the scriptures as evidence that Jesus was the messiah, through his suffering, but do not give a source. John is written with the premise that Jesus is the messiah and introduces him as such in John 2 when Andrew announces, “We have found the messiah”.

Jesus’s earthly leadership was transformed to a heavenly one after his crucifixion, possibly because ideas of a pre-existent messiah and a suffering messiah were becoming popular. Jews hoped for a Davidic redeemer with soldierly powers, righteousness and holiness. But there were also other speculations:

about a priestly or prophetic messiah,
that the messiah had already come,
that he pre-existed in Heaven,
and even about a “slain” messiah.

2 Baruch 30:1 provided the idea of a heavenly messiah who would “return” in glory to heaven after his mission on earth but there was never a suggestion that he was divine. He was always human. In Zechariah 2:10-12 there is a suggestion of a “slain” messiah, “him who they have pierced…” Though this is discussed in the Rabbinical literature, it is not mentioned before the second Jewish War when Bar Kosiba is killed suggesting that it might be a reference to him. Equally it could be a reference to the Essene Teacher of Righteousness.

One school of thought based on the Jewish scriptures was that there would be three men sent towards the end of days, a prophet, a royal messiah and a priestly messiah; all were equals. The scriptural meaning of “prophet” is that of a man with special insight. But the title was also used of men who were admired for their miraculous deeds. The Essenes thought that their Teacher of Righteousness was the prophet. John, the evangelist, and Peter give the title to Jesus. After Jesus’s resurrection, a disciple, Cleopas, described him as

a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.

Jesus also claimed to be a prophet himself and compared himself with Elijah and Elisha. Other holy men, the Hasidim, did the same.

Yet, for the rabbis, the era of prophecy had ended with Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Even Daniel was not regarded as a prophet, and his book was not included among the Prophets in the Jewish Bible but in the Writings. Even if a man were worthy of the holy spirit the belief was that men generally had become unworthy of prophecy. Though the great teacher Hillel was considered worthy, his generation was not. In Against Apion Josephus explains that prophecy had not ended but no Jew could trust a prophet any more because the exact line of succession from the Old Testament prophets had been lost so no one could distinguish true prophets from false prophets.

Such was the thinking of learned men, but the ordinary people still believed in saints and prophets and a prophetic revival was expected based on 1 Maccabees. Both views are expressed in the gospels. The Chief Priests could not arrest Jesus after his entry into Jerusalem because

They were afraid of the people, who looked on Jesus as a prophet.

After they do capture him the High Priest’s more sceptical followers hit him and asked mockingly, “Now prophet, who hit you?”

The people expected miracles, but the Pharisaic intellectuals could not accept them—though they could accept Insight. Hillel and Shammai, on opposite wings of the Pharisaic party, and founders of modern Judaism, were not accredited with any miracles despite their acknowledged insight. Josephus, a Pharisee himself, considered wonder workers to be charlatans. In The Jewish War, Josephus angrily notes the:

impostors and deceivers, pretending divine inspiration, provoking revolutionary actions and provoking the masses to madness. They led them out to the wilderness so that God would show them signs of impending freedom.

The gospels (Mk 13:22; Mt 24:24) issue similar warnings but the Palestinian poor eagerly followed one after another, desperate for signs that their tribulations were nearing an end. Repeated failure led to a degradation of the term prophet and, though Jesus had been one of those Josephus had spoken of, his followers considered it unworthy and inadequate for him and it ceased to be used. The gospels however, show that Jesus was titled a prophet, in fact.

What then of the titles Son of God and Son of Man? Surely these mean that Jesus was claiming to be the messiah and, indeed, a god? The title Son of Man occurs over 60 times in the synoptic gospels and very often in John but otherwise it occurs only three times in the New Testament, once in Acts and twice in Revelations.

It occurs nowhere in the Epistles!

Curiously no one but Jesus uses the expression in the synoptics, and it is never used as a form of address to the prophet as it is by God addressing Ezekiel. No one, not even a Pharisee, is puzzled or offended by Jesus’s use of the expression. The reason is, as scholars agree, that in Aramaic at that time it simply meant “a man” or “the man” and was used as equivalent to “one” or “someone”. This usage is known in documents from the second century but it seems from the gospels that it was also used in the first century. It was a modest circumlocution used to avoid the use of “I” which might have seemed arrogant. Furthermore since God gave his name to Moses with the words: “I am who I am”, pious Jews would not have wanted to risk saying the name of God even inadvertently. The Essene punishment for so doing, even accidentally, was banishment, which meant death. Jesus would therefore have avoided the first person singular of the verb “to be”.

There is no evidence that “Son of Man” was used as a synonym for “the messiah” as John 12:34 implies. The expression is used in Daniel 7:13, where a supernatural being “like a son of man” is described, but the Jewish scholar, Geza Vermes, points out that the expression “like” is common in describing dreams (which Daniel’s was) and it is used of beasts in the same description. The being, “like a son of man”, is a symbolic representation of Israel and implies no title to a particular person, though some later rabbis did identify this representative figure with the messiah. The difference from the messiah of the gospels was that this one was a glorious figure not a humble one.

Finally, in Hebrew even the two uses are not the same. The prophetic title is “ben Adam”, the everyday use was “bar nash”, showing that it was not identifiable with the title. The gospel passages that refer to Daniel 7:13 are later interpolations intended to identify the everyday expression with a messianic prophecy. Further, there is contemporaneous evidence in 4 Ezra 13 written after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. There the messiah is described not as the “son of man” but as the “form of a man”. In the Parables of the Book of Enoch, verses 46 to 71, the expression “son of man” is used 16 times but always as is clear with the meaning “man” and not as a title. Fragments of the Book of Enoch from Qumran lack the Parables or Similitudes. Some scholars believe they were second century additions, possibly by a Jewish Christian!

There can be no doubt that since the expression was a way of saying simply “man” it could not also have been a title of honour since the two meanings were too apt to be confused with embarrassing consequences. The two meanings offer problems to translators of the bible into Aramaic and ungainly constructions have to be used to circumvent the ambiguity.

The title Son of God today implies divinity because, from the Council of Nicaea, that is how the Christians defined it. Yet scholars largely agree that Jesus never referred to himself as Son of God and the concept never played a part in his teaching. In the gospels it never occurs in narration but only in confessions. In the Psalms of Solomon everyone led in righteousness as the Holy People of the messiah are Sons of God. Thus it was used of the just or saintly men known as Hasidim. Hanina ben Dosa was a Son of God. Correspondingly, the Hasidim were likely to call God Abba, father. The Psalms of Solomon have every indication of deriving from the Qumran Community and it is not impossible that the New Covenanters thought of themselves all as Sons of God. Jesus, if he were an Essene, might therefore have been a Son of God in this diluted sense.

The formula for anointing a king or a priest was to use the term “only begotten” or “beloved” son, so in this sense Jesus certainly was the Son of God. Many New Testament cases of the use of “Son of God” occur in descriptions of miracles. The reason is that miracles were concocted to disguise the actions taken by Jesus’s supporters when someone was indiscreet enough to call Jesus a Son of God, which would give away the secret aims of the Nazarene band.

Since the title “Son of God” applied to a Hasid or an anointed king, it also applied to the messiah, who was a holy king, but Jesus could still not have been thought of as a god, that was blasphemy, and none of the synoptic gospels unequivocally say it. Once he was thought of as messiah, Jesus as an Essene (who considered themselves appointed by God from before the creation) would easily have been identified then with the pre-existent messiah, already accepted by some Jewish thinkers.

After the dispersal of the Jerusalem Church, the step to divinity would have been easier for the remaining gentile followers. Nevertheless even Paul and the epistle writers were hesitant, using expressions like “the image of god” rather than leaping in with full blown divinity. Ignatius of Antioch, at the turn of the first century AD, felt able to refer to Jesus as “our god”.

“All right,” you might say, “but what about the use of the word “Lord”. Surely that means that Jesus was a god?”

Certainly the expression “the Lord” was an important religious title to the Jews into the intertestamental period. It was used as an alternative to Yehouah and as an absolute address for God. The Canaanites, the ethnos of the Jews before the Persian period, called their beloved god, “Baal”, which is “Lord”. The Wisdom of Solomon uses it for God 27 times. Lord and God are used interchangeably in one of the scroll fragments. Josephus says the Galilaeans would not call any man Lord and nor could they if they used it as a title for God. We can deduce from this that jesus’s own followers would not have called him, Lord. The Greek word for Lord—Kyrios—was imported into Aramaic as Kiri in the Hellenistic period as an alternative. Sometimes in the gospels, the original word used to address Jesus, Master, has been wrongly translated as Lord.

For those who were less dogmatic “Lord” was used in a lesser sense as an address for a person with some degree of power, perhaps a father or husband as well as people of higher rank. In this sense “Lord” used of Jesus, as a person of authority, was to be expected. Rabbi is a title of a teacher of authority but Vermes shows us that “Lord” is the higher title: a first century Hasid, Abba Hilkiah, is addressed “Lord” by rabbis sent to him whereas they refer to each other as rabbi only—yet the holy man was only a farm worker! “Lord” was also used in respectful speech to replace “you” when addressing a senior figure or a holy man.

Jesus could have been addressed as “Lord” in any of these latter senses without any implications of divinity. In the synoptic gospels there is a progression in the usage of the word “Lord”. In the earliest gospel, Mark’s, the form “Lord” is used rarely of Jesus. It is a form of address to him usually by strangers, though in one instance it is rendered absolute as “the Lord”. All of the vocative uses are in the context of miracles suggesting that it was originally Master. In Matthew the usage is slightly extended, it being used by Jesus’s followers and in some cases with a prophetic implication. Luke applies it less in the context of miracle working, more in the context of a teacher of authority and most commonly in the absolute sense of “the Lord”. Finally, in John where the usage is largely in the context of a teacher of authority there is eventually a clear identification of “Lord” and god (Jn 20:28).

The conclusion is that there is little direct evidence in the gospels that Jesus thought of himself as the messiah. That might have been expediency, so as not to attract undue attention to himself while he built up support—the Messianic Secret. That he thought of himself as divine is a non-starter. No one brought up in the most strictly monotheistic of religions could possibly consider it. Yet, if the symbolism of the entry into Jerusalem on the foal is not a gospel writer’s device, then he certainly believed he was the messiah by the time he attempted an insurrection in Jerusalem and was willing to state it theatrically.

Kings of the Jews

It was a capital offence to act against the Empire or Caesar
It was a capital offence to assume the actions of an official without authority
It was a capital offence to join an armed body in capturing a public place.

The gospels are clear that Jesus was unequivocally guilty of each of these offences. Pilate had no discretion in the matter of sentencing. Under the laws of Rome Jesus was guilty of treason. Simply being acclaimed a king without an insurrection would have been sufficient for the Roman authorities to have found him guilty. There is no argument about this! The punishment for these crimes could only be crucifixion.

Nor did Pilate imagine that Jesus was innocent as the gospels make out. Pilate insisted that the inscription on the cross should read “The King of the Jews” rather than “They said he was King of the Jews”. Pilate intended the execution and the inscription to serve as a lesson to any future nationalists similarly claiming kingship over the Jews. Thus ended the career in life of Jesus Barabbas, the Zealot, better known later as Jesus Christ. The crucifixion of Jesus however did not have the effect desired by Pilate.

Many unknown people were crucified by the Romans in the period preceding the Jewish war but three men are recorded in history besides Jesus. Could Jesus have been one of them? They were Judas of Galilee (6 AD), Theudas (44 AD) and Benjamin the Egyptian (60 AD). Since these three people were all thought to be the messiah, any one could have been confused with Jesus later.

Judas of Galilee had preached in Galilee and had collected many followers before being crucified by the Romans. The story of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee could be based on the life of Judas of Galilee. Judas and Jesus were both Galilaean. In those times it might have been easy to confuse them, especially for Jews in the diaspora who were removed from the scene.

Since Matthew says Jesus had come out of Egypt, he could have been confused with Benjamin the Egyptian. Paul certainly was in Acts! Some authors have suggested that Jesus was the Egyptian, although their deaths were different, and that the tribune who questioned Paul suspected him of being one of the gang rather than the Egyptian himself.

The author of the Acts of the Apostles, which seems to use Josephus’s book Jewish Antiquities (93—94 AD), treats Jesus, Judas of Galilee, Theudas and Benjamin the Egyptian, to be four different people. That though could be deliberate obfuscation or accidental confusion which could not be undone. Josephus has no reference to Jesus which is certainly not a Christian interpolation. Christian editors need only to have displaced some of the Chronology of Josephus to give quite a wrong impression, one which Christians prefer to the truth.

After Pilate’s disgrace in 36 AD, Roman Prefects came and went until Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, was instated for a few years until 44 AD whereuopon Roman rule resumed under the Procurators. Immediately there was an uprising under a messiah called Theudas who was slain. Some of Jesus’s disciples, notably James of Zebedee and some say his brother John, were killed in 44 AD by Agrippa. Had some of Jesus’s disciples turned to Theudas in another attempt to evict the Romans?

A High Priest was murdered by the Sicarii. Simon Magus assembled a crowd at the Mount of Olives to see a miracle. The revolt of Lazarus continued for twenty years until he was captured and sent to Rome. James the Just, the brother of Jesus, was stoned to death in 62 AD.

The Jewish War began in 66 AD with astonishing successes. The leader of the Zealots, Menehem, a son of Judas of Galilee, and Eleazar, the captain of the Temple Guard, revolted at the same time. The Zealots captured the fortress of Masada and murdered the Roman garrison. The Captain of the Temple Guard refused to allow a daily sacrifice for the Emperor, a blatant outrage to the Romans The Roman garrison in Jerusalem surrendered and was butchered. The Legate of Syria had to send an army of twenty thousand men which the rebels promptly defeated.

Then it began to go wrong—the rebels began to quarrel among themselves. Menehem declared himself king only to be murdered by the Sadducees. John of Gischala, another Galilaean, leader of the Zealots, then murdered the High Priest, Annas, and overthrew the Sadducees.

It took a large force from Rome under the generalship of Vespasian, soon to be Emperor, and his son Titus to put down the rising, taking advantage of the disunity of the Jewish factions. With the fall of Jerusalem after a siege of five months, the Jewish state was crushed:

the Temple was shattered and with it the party of the Sadducees
Jews were taken captive to Rome
Jewish wealth was plundered
the Sanhedrin was disbanded
the Rabbis and the Pharisees were scattered to re-establish Judaism centred on the synagogue
most important of all from the viewpoint of Christianity, the Jewish followers of Jesus in Jerusalem were also dispersed, a few remnants taking to the desert.

Even after Jerusalem and the Temple had been razed, Jewish spirit was not destroyed. There were to be further messianic uprisings in 116 AD and 136 AD when, with the slaying of Bar Kosiba, the flame of revolt was finally extinguished.

Something powerful had fanned these flames for two hundred years. What was it? It was the Star Prophecy—The Star of Bethlehem.

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Last uploaded: 11 May, 2008.