In my previous post I showed how Jews could and did conceive of humans who became super-human beings — angels.  But that’s a far cry from thinking humans could be GOD!  And yet the Jewish followers of Jesus claimed that’s what he was.  How’d that work exactly?

That may come as a surprise: Jews who were monotheists thought that others could be God, along with the one God?  Uh, how does *that* work?

As it turns out, you can find it in the Hebrew Bible and in later Jewish traditions as well.  Angelic beings are sometimes called “gods” (e.g. Psalm 82, esp. vv. 1, 7); a figure called “The Son of Man” is considered a divine being before whom the entire world falls down in worship (1 Enoch 48:2-7); God’s “Wisdom,” a being separate from God himself, is said to have created the world (Wisdom of Solomon 9:-10); so too God’s “Word” (the Logos) is called “God” and “the second God” (Philo, Dreams 1.230 and Questions on Genesis  2.62).

But more than that, even some Jews held to the idea that

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