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In my previous post 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 is not a lot of ambiguity about the matter, as odd as that might seem.
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 a 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.
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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 considered so special that in traditional Judaism they were not (and are not) pronounced. They are sometimes called the tetragrammaton (Greek for “four letters”). The second term “Lord” is a different word “ADN” (= ADONAI or ADONI) which is a common term for the Lord God, but is also a term that could be used, for example, by a slave for his master. What is striking here is that YHWH is speaking to “my Lord” and telling him to “sit at my right hand.” Any being enthroned with God is sharing the glory, status, and honor due to God himself. There is not a question of identity or absolute parity here – the king, sitting at God’s right hand – is not God Almighty himself. That is clear from what is said next: God will conquer the king’s enemies for him and put them under his feet. But he is doing that for one whom he has exalted up to the level of his own throne. The king is being portrayed as a divine being who resides in the presence of God himself, above all other creatures.
Even more stark is Psalm 45:6-7, where the king is addressed in the following remarkably exalted terms, as a God:
Your throne O God, endures forever and ever
Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity;
You love righteousness and hate wickedness
Therefore God, your God, has anointed you
With the oil of gladness beyond your companions…
It is clear that the person addressed as “O God” (Elohim) is not God Almighty but the king, because of what is said later: God Almighty is the king’s own God and has “anointed” him with oil – the standard act of the king’s coronation ceremony in ancient Israel. And so God has both anointed and exalted the king above all others, even to a level of deity. The king is in some sense God. Not equal with God Almighty, obviously (since the differentiation is made clearly, even here), but God nonetheless.
A yet more astonishing example comes in the prophet Isaiah, chapter 9, which celebrates a new king who has been given to the people. Anyone who knows Handel’s Messiah will be recognize the words; but unlike in Handel, the passage in its original context in Isaiah appears to be referring not merely to the birth of the king but to the birth of the king as the Son of God – in other words, it is about his coronation. At this coronation, a “child” has been given the people – that is, the king has been made the “Son of God.” But what is said about the king is truly remarkable:
For a child has been born for us
A son given to us;
Authority rests upon his shoulders;
And he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God (El),
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace
His authority shall grow continually,
And there shall be endless peace
For the throne of David and his kingdom.
That this passage is referring to the king of Israel is obvious by the final line. This is a king from the line of David: most scholars think it is a reference to the king at the time of Isaiah’s prophecy: King Hezekiah. He is acclaimed as the “Son” of God, one with great authority and one who will bring endless peace. Clearly, this person is not God Almighty himself, since his authority is said to “grow continually,” and one can hardly imagine God not having final, ultimate, and complete authority from the outset. Nonetheless, the epithets delivered for the king are astounding. He is called “Mighty God” and “Everlasting Father.” As the Son of God, he is exalted to the level of God, and so has God’s status, authority, and power – so much so that he can be called God.
[1] “The King as Son of God,” in Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) pp. 1-24.
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I will continue with this line of thought in the next post
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In a recent episode of MJ Podcast I understood you to say that despite many errors and contradictions in the bible no doctrine is affected because it can always be found elsewhere in the text. I always believed that this was in fact not the case regarding the Trinity. If 1 John 5:7-8 does not truly belong in scripture, as I have heard claimed, I thought that there is no other place where Father, Son and Spirit are said to be One. Please can you put me right on this.
Ah, I wasn’t referring to errors and contradictions in the Bible, but to textual changes made by scribes. Scribes did add 1 John 5:7-8 — it wasn’t in 1 John as originally written. But the doctrine of the trinity was not based on that verse. It was based on a much wider “data base,” that includes a range of passages, including God’s claim in Isaiah that he alone is God, passages that treat God the father as different from the Christ, passages that clearly indicate that Christ is nonetheless God, and passages that indicate teh the Spirit also God, but is not the Father or Christ. One way to affirm that *all* these passages are right is the doctrine of the Trinity. One God, but three persons. 1 John 5:7-8 *supported* that view (which is why it is was added by scribes) but it is not the primary *basis* for it.
I find the idea that an ancient Israelite king could be regarded as divine especially fascinating because something comparable occurred in modern Japan. Until Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, the emperor was officially presented as sacred and, in important respects, divine. From the Meiji period onward, State Shinto carried this belief into education, public ritual, and nearly every part of society. Tragically, it was also imposed in colonial Korea—a shameful part of Japanese history.
In the final years of the war, many young men gave their lives in suicide attacks, most famously the kamikaze missions, in the name of the nation and its living god. What strikes me is that Shinto did not possess a highly developed or systematic doctrine of the afterlife comparable to that of many other religions. Yet these men were still persuaded to sacrifice themselves for the state and the emperor.
Perhaps this was a form of collective fanaticism produced by nationalism, education, social pressure, and religious symbolism. In any case, it shows that the divinization of a ruler is not merely an ancient phenomenon. Something remarkably similar occurred within living memory in a modern, industrialized nation.
Could you please give us your take on the rather bizarre Exodus 34, the one version of The Ten Commandments that actually refers to itself by that title.
The chapter begins with the statement that: “The Lord said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke”, then proceeds to give a totally different version of the Commandments. This seems like a massive contradiction.
Oh boy is it. And try to get “ten” out of that list! It’s usually thought that there were various forms of the “ten” commandments and that this is a different one from ch. 34 (ch. 20 from the E source; ch. 34 from J)
Thank you for responding to my query about 1 John 5:7-8 re the Trinity. I note that you say there are numerous passages where the Father, the Son and the Spirit are all identified as God and it is from these that the Trinity can be developed. Nevertheless is it not the case that such passages only in fact point to there being three gods and thus the insertion of the Johannine Comma is the only verse which tries to overcome this objection for monotheists by arguing that they are in fact one? Is that not essential to the concept of the Trinity?
That the three are one? Yes, that’s an essential part of the doctrine as it developed in the late fourth century. the theologians who expressed it this way based their arguments not on a verse that said so per se, but on other consideratoins (e.g., I and the Father are One, John 10:30). It’s precisely because it’s not stated directly anywhere that hte exact formulatoin was a matter of disagreement. disabledupes{964a78c37cf60788bf304a92f908fcb5}disabledupes
What I take from this is the question of what exactly happened in the ancient world that led so many people to make such a dramatic shift—from worshipping Zeus and the other Greek gods to embracing Christianity. Personally, I think that question deserves serious consideration. What historical, cultural, political, and religious forces caused such a profound transformation?
From my perspective, Zeus is not inherently evil, so I’m interested in understanding why attitudes changed so completely and what convinced entire societies to adopt a different faith.