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Loading...Yesterday I showed that beings other than God could be called God in the Old Testament and other ancient Jewish literature. It seems strange, but there it is. I continue now with an especially important case in point: the king of Israel. In this case there doesn’t seem to be much ambiguity about the matter.
Again, this is from my book How Jesus Became God.
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Hebrew Bible scholar John Collins points out that the Israelite notion that the human king could be considered in some sense divine ultimately appears to derive from Egyptian ways of thinking about their king, the Pharaoh.[1] Even in Egypt, where the king was God, it did not mean that the king was on a par with the great gods, any more than the Roman emperor was thought to be on a par with Jupiter or Mars. But he was a God. In Egyptian and Roman circles, there were levels of divinity. So too, as we have seen, in Jewish circles. Thus we find highly exalted terms used of the king of Israel, terms that may surprise readers who – based on the kind of thinking that developed in the fourth Christian century — think that there is an unbridgeable chasm between God and humans. Nonetheless, here it is, in the Bible itself, the king is called both Lord and God.
For example, Psalm 110: “The LORD says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” The first term LORD – traditionally printed in capital letters in English – is the Hebrew name of God YHWH, often spelled Yahweh. The four Hebrew letters representing that name were The rest of this post is for members only. Wanna keep reading? Gotta be a member. But it doesn’t cost much to join, and every penny you pay goes to charity. So what’s the downside???
I think I said this to you earlier, but… a great deal was made out of Joseph (strangely enough) being a direct descendant of David. Turns out probably everyone in Israel at the time was a direct descendant of David. Here’s a mathematical argument (which is comprehensible to people like me who are not very good at mathematics):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm0hOex4psA
Yup!
So Hezekieh was David’s Lord? And born about 300 years after David?
Hezekieh would reign forever?
The scripture rejoiced for the Coming Hezekiah?
And continued rejoicing after he died?
Does all this come from the Pesher Method?
No, the Psalm was not written by David; it is only ascribed to him (as were so many others, including Psalm 23 which presupposes that the temple “the house of the Lord” was already built); you’re right — it’s from centuries later.
I wonder how Isaiah’s prophecy comes in handy to contextualize the gospels. It does not shed any light on the process of divinization of Jesus but works on the prior probabilities that some particular “idea” was thought or practiced.
In other words, the term “Son of God” holds a significance only when is translated and interpreted in the pagan world.
Christianity -as we are to know it- came into existence on the wrong side of a meaning.
Can’t we identify the king in Isaiah 9 with Jesus?
Christians do! (Including Handel, in the Messiah!) But the text was not referring to a future messiah but to a royal son that had just been born, about whom the author had very high hopes indeed, and expressed them in highly metaphorical language.
Over time, I’ve come to think that Egypt did not have as extensive influence on Israelite religion as did those of Canaan and Mesopotamia – the absence of Egypt’s fascination with death being one reason, and the Mesopotamian idea of the gods or god rewarding and punishing the king and the people for obeying or disobeying being another.
So I moved to ask if we shouldn’t look to the Assyrians, the Hittites, and the Babylonians (and maybe the Moabites?) for more influence on the Israelite notion that the king could be in some sense divine.
I’ve noticed that in the passages quoted in the NT to support the idea of Jesus as the Messiah they are usually taken way out of context. If you read the entire passage it is clear they are not talking about a divine perfect son fo God. But understand writings like the Dead Sea Scrolls did the same thing: take a fragment and run with it.
I assumed that the word for might “God” was mighty “elohim” not “El”. “El” may be a stronger argument for your case, in that there are debatably a few instances in scripture in which elohim may refer to humans who are not gods at all, but are rather in a position of some authority. I lean away from that though. If I were to guess, I’d say elohim means some kinda spiritual being, either God, or angels of god etc.
Maybe the strongest case in point will be:
“I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings.”
2 Samuel 7:14 NRSV
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I concur with you, Professor. I always understood the passage in Isaiah 9; 6 to reference a present King (Hezekiah), and not a future one as Christians teach most often, being Jesus. Do you think Christians believe this because of the future tense that is emphasized in some bibles, where it states , ” For a child *will*be born unto us,” thus aligning it to Jesus ? Furthermore, I always thought of King Hezekiah as the greatest King to rule, even above David. My reasoning is because of 2 Kings 18: 5-6 (NRSV),”5 He trusted in the Lord the God of Israel; so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah after him, or among those who were before him. 6 For he held fast to the Lord; he did not depart from following him but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses”. Prof., is there anyone greater than this? I know Jews revere David, but Hezekiah is perfect (almost) a perfect man, why not call him a god ?
The Hebrew uses thee perfect tense, I believe (a completed action) rather than an imperfect (an incompleted); so if English translations give it as a future it is only because the translators assume it is referring to a future event. But the Hebrew doesn’t indicate that.
The last three posts are next level.
God is the king of Israel in the OT.
Human beings are allowed to take on this divine role on earth – but the writers didn’t think the human kings themselves were being elevated to a divine status.
Good evening, Bart. Off topic question. My subscription is due in March. Can I renew it now?
I don’t deal with subscriptions (my assistant does); but I believe subscriptions automatically renew until you cancel them.
Surely there is a big difference between a human who shares some of God’s glory or even God’s title but nothing more, versus a human who is given divine powers such as immortality, supernatural control over some aspects of the earthly realm like the weather, and acquired divine ontological nature. My understanding is under Greco-Roman religious thought, a divinised person after death falls under the second category. In rare cases, under Greco-Roman thought, a living person on being divinised, presumably (correct me if I am wrong) acquires some sort of new ontological nature, maybe supernatural power, maybe resistance to physical harms short out outright immortality. In Jewish thought, living divinised kings fall under the first category, in sharing some of God’s glory, divine titles, receive honour and praise from the people (something they already received on becoming king). But they remain physically human beings, will fall ill and die, have no supernatural powers. Their divinity is of quite a weak kind.
Surely in the original Jewish reading of Isaiah 9, the king being given the honorific title “Everlasting Father” is purely metaphorical, as he is not literally everlasting. It remains unclear to me in what sense is the king being divinised.
erhaps I can more easily relate to the multilevel/multidimentional understanding of God which my jewish friends tries to explain to me and even rabbis. God is for them an undefinable essence, like one called (Eyn Sof). Dr. Michael Laitman (even though he himself is an Jewish esoteric) point at Gods essence as a system of forces in cascading layers, but still oneness.
From my persepctive it resembles the creation myth in Apcryphon of John with the emination out of oneness) into different layers.
Well, since the author of Apcryphon of John had such ideas almost 2000 years ago, the ideas must have existed back then.
From that perspective, I am not surprise of the different names related to God, like Elohim (collective expression of devine beings?), the major divinity Yahweh, “The Ancient of Days”, “the devine concil” “sons of gods”, the king of Israel,,,,and even humans (Psalme 82 and John 10,34), and in Genisis chp 1-2 and Psalme 8 and more.
Form my perspectiv, the divinity realm seems to point different devinity, or like some jews claim,,,expressions (eminations), or system of forces, or like the gnostics,,,eminations as of «water light».
Perhaps that is why I don’t have any problem with consepts talking about multiplicity and oneness in one sentence.
Quote – No, the Psalm was not written by David; it is only ascribed to him (as were so many others, including Psalm 23 which presupposes that the temple “the house of the Lord” was already built); you’re right — it’s from centuries later.
A scholar would say, “The commonly accepted theory among skeptics is that this Psalm was written centuries later, ascribed to a mythic person called David.”
I wonder when the book of Daniel was written?
I’ve never heard a scholar say that, but I suppose they could.
Daniel is usually dated to the 160s BCE, since it appears to have been written during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes.
Dr Ehrman
Historically, Is it not true that, the title King came before Moses’ era, only during Joseph’s time/era? and during the time of Moses, the the authoritative figure was known as the Pharaoh not King and the Pharaoh ascribed Godship to himself. ( maybe out of fear not belief, the slaves called him God)?
I don’t know. I suppose it would depend which language you were speaking and what the term “king” means. But we don’t know anything about Hebrew in Joseph’s time (which was long before Moses)
I’ve read that the words in Isaiah, chapter 9 are very similar to or have been copied from the words that were used in the coronation of the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs. Do you know if this is true?
Rings a faint bell, but I don’t recall.
I did some research and found this: Whose Child Is This? Reflections on the Speaking Voice in Isaiah 9:5
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/article/abs/whose-child-is-this-reflections-on-the-speaking-voice-in-isaiah-95/CA0C6F7E3988001F81239566A9BA0BB2
I’m no expert on Biblical Hebrew — my yeshiva days were 50 years ago and I was a poor student at that — but I would interpret Isaiah 9:5 not as literally calling Hezekiah divine, but rather as giving him as a cognomen a theophoric name that means “God is mighty.”
There are dozens of such names in the Torah. Christians are probably all familiar with Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us.” Other common ones include, Daniel (God is my judge), Gabriel (God is my strength), Elijah (My God is Yah), Elimelech (My God is king), and so on.
Following up my own comment, I’ll add that it just occurred to me to check the most recent Jewish Publication Society translation (freely available at Sefaria.org) and I see that it treats all the terms familiar to us as separate titles — Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace — as components of one long theophoric name or title:
“He has been named ‘The Mighty God is planning grace; The Eternal Father, a peaceable ruler’”
As awkwardly as that may strike our ears, in its historic context it makes more sense to me than the prophet literally calling the king a god.
In the Talmud Sanhedrin 94a we find:
§ The verse states: “Therefore shall the Master, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones [mishmanav] leanness” (Isaiah 10:16). What is the meaning of the phrase “send among his fat ones leanness”? The meaning is that the Holy One, Blessed be He, said: Let Hezekiah, who has eight [shemona] names, come, and exact retribution from Sennacherib, who has eight names. The Gemara elaborates: The eight names of Hezekiah are as it is written: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government is upon his shoulder; and his name is called Pele Joez El Gibbor Abi Ad Sar Shalom” (Isaiah 9:5). The Gemara asks: But isn’t there an additional name, Hezekiah? The Gemara explains: That was not a given name; rather, it is an appellation based on the fact that God strengthened him [ḥizzeko]. Alternatively, he was called Hezekiah due to the fact that he strengthened the devotion of the Jewish people to their Father in Heaven.
Thanks for both comments.
Prof Ehrman,
These sessions on the Divine persons, Trinity are just amazing and a real eye-opener. Great info.
Q1 – Please, does Melchizedek fit into this category of divine personalities?
Q2 – Could these pointers and verses be the motivation behind why early Christians read Jesus (God) into the Jewish scriptures?
1. Not so much for the sources I”ve been talking about, but later — for example in the Dead Sea Scrolls — Melchizedek is thought to be some kind of divine being. ANd of course in Hebrews he stands for Christ, the King of Righteousness to whom Abraham himself paid homage.
God’s spirit shows up already in Genesis 1, as the agent God uses (or God’s agency) to get things done. This is the Spirit, for Paul, who indwells the believers in Jesus, and is the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. Paul does not explain what the relationship of the Spirit to God is, apart from the fact that it appears to represent God, do his bidding, is itself a divine being, but is not the Faterh. One can see how that would lead to speculations about a Trinity.
Paul, though, has other things on his mind and plate, and so never deals with the issue.
2. Yes indeed: they could point to these passages as proof of their views. E.g. Psalm 110:1!
Was Cyrus the Great a messiah? (Isaiah 45.1)
For Isaiah he was! God had anointed him to fulfill his purposes.