Loading...In my last couple of posts I’ve talked about how the King of Israel could, oddly enough, be called “God.” That seems contrary to what we think of ancient Judaism, where only God can be God. But it helps explain why later Christians could call Jesus God. There was precedent for a human to be called that, even within Judaism,
Possibly yet more unexpectedly, within the Jewish tradition even Moses was sometimes considered a divine being, and called God. Here’s how I explain it in my book How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014)
******************************
It is interesting to note that not only the king of Israel, human as he was, is lauded with divine status and even the term “God,” but so too in ancient Jewish texts was that great savior and lawgiver of the people, Moses.
The root of this tradition is
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
Dear Dr Ehrman-Thank you very much for discussing this question, as it is one that has fascinated me for a great many years. It is interesting that Philo states that Moses was both god and king of the nation of Israel as a result of his visionary encounter with YHWH. In this vein, may I ask if you have any theories regarding Jesus words in Matthew 13:43 and Matthew 22:30? Might it be said that these passages portray the idea that the righteous with not only rise at the end of time, but in that rising gain new bodies that did not need or desire things such as food, copulation, earthly family or drink? Additionally, why does Jesus state that the saved will ‘shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father’? Might this imply that they will be made the apocalyptic ‘sons of God’ in their new transformed bodies? Once again, thank you.
Yes, it appears he is saying in both plaes that those who are saved will be transformed into an angelic existence. That’s also what “shining like the sun” probably means: the stars in ancient thinking were often thought to be divine / angelic sentient beings.
Dear Dr Ehrman-Thank you very much for your kind and insightful reply. I must confess that Matthew 13:43 has long baffled me. Specifically why do the righteous, who are described as shining ‘like the Sun’, enter the Kingdom specifically of ‘their Father’?Why is God referred to as ‘their Father’ specifically in this eschatological context? Once again, thank you.
He is the “head of the cosmic household” and the one who is ultimately in charge of it, as will be manifest, finally, at the end.
And redeemed humanity, inhabiting eschatological angelic bodies, are transformed into children of God?
How could they not if the stuff he was doing was true? That’s a big deal. 😐
Have you read Balogh’s Moses Among the Idols? What are your thoughts on it?
I’m afraid not. Sounds interesting.
A fascinating series of articles, but when I read something like this, there never seems to be a definition of “God”. For those of us living in the 21st century, “God” means a creator who is all-powerful, all-knowing, totally just, totally compassionate, and so forth. However, the Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian deities were certainly not all-knowing or all-powerful, and they could be quite petty at times. but they were still called gods. So how did the Jewish scholars of, say, the second temple period, define “God”? If Plato had said that Zeus was the only god and all lesser Greek gods were actually angels, would the Jewish scholars have agreed that the Greeks were actually monotheists? And if Plato had said that the Jewish angels were actually subordinate gods, would the Jewish scholars have agreed that, after all, they were not actually monotheists?
The vast majority of Jewish scholars didn’t define him in anything like philosophical terms. They assumed (“knew”) he existed and discussed his attributes and demands, etc.