Tag: Christological development

The Pitiful State Of ‘Jesus Is God’ Apologetics

There is a particular apologetic for the deity of Yeshua, which has been around for about a decade or more, that seeks to establish that the earliest gospel, Mark, presents Yeshua as God. This is a direct attempt to counter the prevalent notion among NT scholars that the ‘deity of Christ’ was a development, in which Mark, thought to be the earliest gospel, is seen as portraying a human Messiah, and John, thought to be the latest gospel, is seen as presenting a divine Messiah. This apologetic purports to show that Mark’s gospel actually presents Yeshua as divine, and in it’s extreme form as Yahweh himself. Though many apologists1 have promoted this view, probably the best articulation of it is by Mike Licona, a NT scholar, author and apologist. I will be drawing specifically from a March 4, 2022 video on the Inspiring Philosophy Youtube channel titled Is Iesus God in the Gospel of Mark?, in which Licona appeared as a guest. Here is the link to the video.

My purpose in this article is to show the shallow reasoning and low-level argumentation that apologists like Licona engage in when presenting this apologetic, and how their conclusions are driven not by exegesis but by their presupposition that Yeshua is God.

The Argument

The gist of Licona’s argument in this video is that in the gospel of Mark the author, while not coming right out and explicitly saying Yeshua is God, is giving the reader clues that Yeshua is actually Yahweh himself. These clues consist of applying OT texts about Yahweh to Yeshua and portraying Yeshua as doing things that only Yahweh can do, as well as titles being given to Yeshua which seem to imply his deity.

But before we examine these so-called clues of Yeshua’s deity I want to address Licona’s preliminary argument to the evidence from the text of Mark. From timestamp 2:10-5:44 he sets up his main argument by appealing to the supposed fact that the gospel of Mark, and the other three gospels for that matter, conforms to what he refers to as Greco-Roman biography. Licona appeals to Plutarch’s Life of Alexander to show how ancient biographies were written to illuminate the character of the person whose life was being presented. He gives a loose quote from the 1st chapter of Plutarch’s work, but, in my opinion, mischaracterizes how what Plutarch wrote would apply to the gospel of Mark’s portrait of Yeshua. Listen first to what Licona says (at the above timestamp) and then compare it to what Plutarch actually wrote:

“. . . if I do not record all [his] most celebrated achievements or describe any of them exhaustively, but merely summarize for the most part what [he] accomplished, I ask my readers not to regard this as a fault. For I am writing biography, not history, and the truth is that the most brilliant exploits often tell us nothing of the virtues and vices of the men who performed them, while on the other hand a chance remark or a joke may reveal far more of a man’s character than the mere feat of winning battles . . . or of marshalling great armies, or laying siege to cities . . . it is my task to dwell upon those actions which illuminate the workings of the soul . . . I leave the story of his greatest struggles and achievements to be told by others.”

One of Licona’s main points in this preliminary argument is that the great exploits of Yeshua in the gospel of Mark, his miracles of healing and his power over nature, reveal to us who Yeshua really was, i.e. Yahweh. But these exploits of Yeshua are what would correspond to the great exploits of Alexander in battle, the very things Plutarch says he is not interested in telling. If Mark, in trying to reveal Yeshua’s divine nature, sought to follow some kind of accepted norm of Greco-Roman biography, where the “brilliant exploits” of a person were ignored in favor of his words and actions in dealing with others on a more personal level, thus revealing the “workings of the soul”, then Mark has missed his mark (no pun intended). Licona, in putting forth this kind of argument, seeks to capitalize on what he knows about the form of ancient biography, which he knows most of his audience is ignorant of, to make exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims about the gospel of Mark’s portrayal of Yeshua. The truth of the matter is that this kind of argument falls completely flat and is meaningless in determining Mark’s purpose in recording what he did of Yeshua’s words and deeds.

Now let’s look at Licona’s main points. He goes through the gospel of Mark, chapter by chapter, and offers brief explanations why we should think that Yeshua is being portrayed as Yahweh himself. Here is the breakdown of the video:

6:00-6:48 / 1:2-3 – Here, an OT text about Yahweh is applied to Yeshua
6:49- 7:20 / 2:5-12 – Yeshua forgives a paralytic’s sins
7:21-8:44 / 3:26-27 – Yeshua binds Satan
8:45-9:25 / 4:39 – Yeshua stills the storm
9:26-10:34 / 5:41-42 – Yeshua raises a dead girl to life
11:18- 12:18 / 6:48-49 – Yeshua walks on the surface of the lake
15:18-17:51 / 14:61-63 – Yeshua claims to be the son of man of Dan. 7

Though Licona’s commentary on each of these points is brief, it is important to notice the shallow reasoning in which he engages and how his exegesis is being driven not by the cultural context in which the gospel was written but by his presupposition. It is because he approaches the text with a firm belief that Yeshua is Yahweh, that he sees these vignettes of Yeshua’s life as confirmatory of that belief, even though there is another viable and more plausible explanation drawn from historical and cultural considerations. There is no exploration on his part of the other possible ways to understand the data that the author of the gospel has given. To his mind, all of these incidents of Yeshua doing what only Yahweh can do can mean only one thing – Yeshua just is Yahweh.

A More Reasonable Explanation

When we set out to interpret any passage of scripture we should take into account the historical and cultural context, and try to understand the text from the milieu of the author and original audience. Based on the historical and cultural context, what can we assume the original audience would have thought about a man who shows up on the scene “doing things that only Yahweh can do?” And is there any evidence from the gospel of Mark itself and from the other New Testament documents to back up that assumption? While Licona does make use of the standard Greco-Roman form of biography, wrongly in my opinion, to bolster the apologetic that says the gospel of Mark portrays Yeshua as God, what he either purposely ignores or is completely ignorant of is the concept of representative agency, so prevalent in the ancient Near East culture. What is funny is that this ubiquitous concept and practice is much more apropos to the question of how Yeshua is being portrayed in Mark’s gospel than whether or not the author was writing in the standard form of Greco-Roman biography. The failure of Licona and other apologists to recognize the relevance of representative agency to the question of how Yeshua’s disciples and the Jews in general would have understood his identity is a glaring blunder on their part. This blunder, coupled with the necessity of finding the orthodox tradition in scripture, is what leads Licona to the shallow reasoning and eisegesis displayed in this video.

Scholars in the field of ancient Near East studies have informed us of the pervasiveness of representative agency and it’s significance for understanding biblical passages. OT scholar John Walton observed regarding this ancient practice:

“In the ancient world direct communication between important parties was a rarity. Diplomatic and political exchange usually required the use of an intermediary, a function that our ambassadors exercise today. The messenger who served as the intermediary was a fully vested representative of the party he represented. He spoke for that party and with the authority of that party. He was accorded the same treatment as that party would enjoy were he there in person. While this was standard protocol, there was no confusion about the person’s identity. This explains how the angel in this chapter can comfortably use the first person to convey what God will do (v. 10). When official words are spoken by the representative, everyone understands that he is not speaking for himself but is merely conveying the words, opinions, policies decisions of his liege.”2

This concept of agency was also understood by ancient people to have carried over into the divine realm. In the Hebrew bible Yahweh is depicted as employing agents to represent him, to speak and act on his behalf. Angels, priests, prophets and the Israelite king were regarded as God’s agents. In the New Testament God is depicted as still employing agents such as angels, prophets and, of course, his chief agent, Messiah.

The fundamental principle of representative agency is that the words and actions of a person’s agent are attributable to the person himself.3 The person himself takes full responsibility for what his agent says and does while acting in his official capacity as that person’s representative. Understanding that the presence of a party’s representative agent is equal to the presence of the party himself, those to whom the agent was sent would receive or reject the agent as they would the party who sent him. However a person’s agent was treated, either good or bad, was taken personally by the person who sent him.4 Also pertinent is the fact that a person’s agent had at his disposal the necessary resources of that person to carry out his commissioned task.5

Now let’s take a look at Mark’s gospel with this in mind to see if it helps make sense of how the people of Yeshua’s day would have thought about his identity. It is my contention that this concept of representative agency adequately explains what we see written in the gospels and sufficiently answers Licona’s main argument in the video. The reason Yeshua is portrayed as fulfilling OT passages about what Yahweh would do and the reason he is portrayed as doing things that only Yahweh does is simply because he is acting as Yahweh’s agent. Every one of the passages Licona makes use of to establish that the author of Mark is portraying Yeshua as Yahweh himself is perfectly explicable from the perspective of Yeshua being a man who is Yahweh’s agent.

There are only two possible explanations of Yeshua’s ability to do what only Yahweh does: either he is able to do these things by an innate divinity or he is empowered to do these things by God and therefore the power is not innate to him. Either of these options could be true but they can’t both be true; the one negates the other. Sometimes, in debate, an apologist will first declare that Yeshua’s miracles prove his divinity, but then when confronted with passages that clearly speak of God doing these things through Yeshua, they will shift to saying that since Yeshua emptied himself in the incarnation and took on human nature he was acting as a man dependent on God. But they cannot have it both ways. Even if the incarnation were true, if Yeshua performed these miracles as a man dependent on God, then his miracles would not be evidence that he was Yahweh himself but only a man empowered by Yahweh.

The apologists have placed themselves in a quandry – they cannot maintain that Yeshua did these things by his own power as Yahweh, in light of clear passages to the contrary,6 and once this is admitted they can no longer use his miracles as evidence that he is Yahweh himself. Licona never addresses any of this in the video. The closest he comes to addressing this is when talking about Yeshua raising the young girl from the dead in Mark 5. He acknowledges that others, who are considered to be purely human persons, such as Elijah, Elisha and Peter, also raised the dead.7 To escape from the force of this he asserts that these men prayed to God before raising the dead and that Yeshua did not pray to God but raised the dead by his own power. Let us again note the ad hoc quality and unreasonableness of this argument. Just because Yeshua is not explicitly depicted as praying to God before raising the girl from the dead, is no reason that we should assume he didn’t pray to God. Yeshua is depicted in Mark 1:35 as going off early in the morning to a solitary place to pray. This was most likely his habitual practice, and it could be that in this time of prayer he would receive instructions from God as to what he was to do. This is certainly a reasonable conjecture. Even the gospel of John, which Licona himself admits portrays Yeshua’s deity much more explicitly than Mark’s gospel, strongly implies that Yeshua had prayed to God regarding the raising of Lazarus from the dead before he arrived at the tomb.8 Elisha is depicted as performing miracles without the text explicitly stating that he prayed beforehand9 but we cannot simply assume that he didn’t. This is an argument from silence and is simply not valid.

As for the other passages Licona points to, there is no objective reason why Yahweh could not give authority and power to a human person to forgive sins, to bind Satan, to speak to a storm and calm it, and to walk on water. In fact, concerning at least two of these, others beside Yeshua are given the same ability in the NT.10 Licona’s appeal to passages in the Hebrew bible which speak of God calming a storm and of men not being able to restrain the wind would be laughable if it were not so sad. Yes, only God can do these things, that is, innately, by his own power. But this does not preclude God giving power and authority to men so that they are able to accomplish such feats. Of course, no human being, in and of themself, can do these things, except God were with them. This should be obvious to all.

But is this how the 1st century Jews who saw Yeshua doing these things would have perceived it? I believe the NT answers in the affirmative. In Mark 2:12, after Yeshua healed the paralytic, it is recorded that the people who observed this miracle “praised God.” The author of Matthew’s gospel adds this, “who had given such authority to men.”11 On another occasion when Yeshua raised someone from the dead, the response of those who saw it enlightens us as to how Yeshua’s miraculous power was perceived:

“. . . they glorified God saying, ‘A great prophet has been raised up among us,’ and ‘God has visited his people.'”12

This shows that the most natural response that 1st century Jews would have to seeing a man doing things that only Yahweh can do, was to assume he was a prophet, someone sent by God. There are a number of places in the gospel accounts that record the fact that the people perceived Yeshua to be a prophet.13 One such passage is in John 9 in the account of Yeshua healing the man born blind. When the man is questioned by the Pharisees he gives this response in vv. 30-33, after earlier in v. 17 referring to Yeshua as a prophet:

The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

This is the typical conclusion drawn by the people who saw Yeshua’s miracle, even the one’s who were the recipients of a miracle. They regarded him as being a man who was from God, a prophet, one whom God was with.14 What we never see in any of the gospels is the Jewish people drawing the conclusion that Yeshua must be Yahweh himself come in human form; such a thing is completely absent from the record. In fact, the only two times recorded in the NT where people who observed a man perform some miraculous feat and concluded he must be a god in human form, it is pagans who did so.15 What this shows is that pagan’s conceptions of their deities allowed for this kind of thing. But this would not have even entered the thoughts of a first century Jew. One final passage that shows this to be a fact is Acts 2:22. In this passage, the apostle Peter, who would have been present to observe every one of Yeshua’s miraculous deeds, is recorded by Luke as giving the definitive perspective of 1st century Jews:

“Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.”16

I will now turn the focus to Mark 1:2-3 and 14:61-63 and show how the concept of agency better explains what is being said than the idea that the author is hinting at Yeshua being Yahweh himself.

Mark 1:2-3

In the video, both Licona and his host give such a vacuous reading of this passage that, once again, it would be laughable were it not so pathetic. Their argument amounts to this: Mark quotes two prophecies which speak of someone preparing the way for Yahweh. It is fulfilled by John the baptist preparing the way for Yeshua. Hence, the author is saying Yeshua just is Yahweh. Despite this being an extremely unsophisticated gloss of this text, it has become a standard apologetic move.

The first thing to note is that the author is not even quoting these two passages in reference to Yeshua but in reference to John. His point is to show that John’s ministry was foretold in the scriptures. This certainly detracts from the notion that his aim is to portray Yeshua as God. The second thing of note is the way the author quotes these two passages. He cites them in a way that differs from the Hebrew text, the Greek text (LXX) and the Aramaic text, which all agree. In fact, we know of no existing text that words the passages the way this author does. Curiously, Licona doesn’t even mention this fact. The author changes Malachi 3:1 from “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me” to “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way.” The first person pronoun is changed to a second person pronoun. Likewise, Is. 40:3 is changed from “Prepare the way for Yahweh; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.” to “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.” Regarding the Malachi passage, it is interesting that the only other two times it is quoted in the NT16 it is worded the same way as in Mark, with the second person pronouns instead of the first person pronoun. And regarding the Isaiah passage, the one other time it is quoted in the NT17 it is worded the same as in Mark, with the second person pronoun replacing “our God”. The first thing I will point out regarding this difference in the wording of Mark’s quotations, is that this, in itself, works against the idea that this author was trying to portray Yeshua as Yahweh. If that was his aim he would have done better to have left the wording as it is in the traditional texts. The changes from the first to the second person actually obscure any attempt of the author to insinuate that Yeshua is Yahweh himself. Again, this fact isn’t even mentioned by Licona.

But why does the NT change the wording of these passages? Well, we can’t know for certain. I suppose it is possible that there was a Hebrew or Greek text available to these 1st century authors that read that way, which is no longer extant. But I would offer another possible explanation. It seems likely that this way of reading these texts may have become standard among the Christian community based on the fact that these prophecies had already been fulfilled and they knew it wasn’t Yahweh himself who showed up, but his agent, the Messiah. In other words, they were reading the passage agentially and so it was appropriate, after the fact, to use the second person pronouns to reflect the reality of what actually happened. Further evidence that this may be the case is the apparent conflation of Ex. 23:20 with Malachi 3:1 in the NT citations. The three NT citations contain the phrase “before your face” after the phrase “I will send my messenger”, which is not found in any extant text of Malachi 3:1. It appears to be taken from Ex. 23:20: “See, I am sending a messenger before your face . . .” In Ex. 23:20 Yahweh informs the Israelites that he is sending an agent19 to lead and care for them on their way to the promised land. The passage is clearly agential and for this reason may have been conflated with Malachi 3:1 to further emphasize the agential nature of that passage.

In the original texts the way was to be prepared for Yahweh and for our God, and indeed it was. John’s mission was to ready a people prepared for what God was about to do in bringing his anointed one on the scene. In the appearing of Yeshua of Nazareth, God was going to accomplish his long awaited plan of redemption. No Jew reading Malachi’s or Isaiah’s prophecy would have thought that Yahweh was literally, personally and visibly going to appear in the wilderness of Judea, and so they were not surprised to see these prophecies fulfilled in Yahweh’s chief agent, the Messiah. A parallel instance of this kind of prophecy and fulfillment is found in Gen. 50:24:

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely visit you and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

Here Joseph prophesies, based on God’s promise to the patriarchs, that God will come to them and bring them out of Egypt and to the land he promised them. So how was this promise fulfilled? Exodus chapters 2-3 tell of the birth of Moses and of God’s commissioning of him to go to Egypt and bring the Israelites out and bring them to the land God promised. So God promised to come to them and bring them out and, in time, Moses shows up to bring them out. Yet there is no record of anyone thinking that Moses was God himself and even to this day orthodox Christians have no problem distinguishing between God and his agent, Moses.

Mark 14:61-63

Regarding this passage, Licona reads way too much into it. He briefly mentions other texts, such as Daniel 7, the book of 1 Enoch and 4 Esdras, making exaggerated claims from these texts to support his reading Mark 14:61-63. His first assertion regarding this passage is that Yeshua is certainly claiming more than just being the Messiah because he is charged with blasphemy by the high priest, and “you don’t get charged with blasphemy for claiming to be the Messiah.” This is a common claim by the apologists, but is it true? The only thing I have ever heard offered as proof of this claim is that there were supposedly many in the first century who claimed to be the Messiah and none of them were ever charged with blasphemy. This assertion itself is truly without any basis. We know of four people around the time of Yeshua’s birth and childhood who rose up and led a following in rebellion against Rome.20 It is not clear that any of them claimed to be the Messiah and we do not know if any of them ever had any dealings with the religious leaders in Judea. There may not have even been the oppurtunity for any of them to be accused of blasphemy. The point is that there is just not enough information to be dogmatic about this. To draw any conclusions as to whether or not the charge of blasphemy could be incurred by a messianic claimant in 1st century Judea, based on what little we know of these four, is both ill-considered and ill-advised.

What should be taken into account with Yeshua’s case is that the Jewish authorities were threatened by Yeshua’s teachings and by his castigation of their corruption and had been looking for a way to get rid of him for some time, and having finally arrested him, they conducted a sham trial. There didn’t need to be a legit reason for condemning him for it had most likely already been decided beforehand that he would not leave the trial without having been condemned to die. The charge of blasphemy should be understood as a pretense by the high priest and nothing more. Of course, we do not know if any of these circumstances were involved in the case of the other so-called messianic claimants.

Alternatively, Yeshua was regarded as a sinner, a sabbath breaker, by the Jewish leaders, and hence, his claim to be God’s chief agent amounted to the claim that God approved of his lawlessness, a claim which would have been considered blasphemous.

Whatever the case, there is no reason to think that the account of Yeshua’s words before the Sanhedrin at his trial amounts to a claim to be God himself. Licona, while rightly equating Yeshua’s answer with Dan. 7:13, gets the implication of the correlation between the two passages wrong. Like almost all apologists, Licona assumes the “son of man” figure in Dan.7 is a divine figure. In Daniel’s vision “one like a son of man” approaches the ancient of days who is seated on the throne, a clear reference to Yahweh. If the “son of man” is seen coming before Yahweh and receiving from Yahweh authority, glory and sovereign power, then why should anyone assume that the son of man figure is Yahweh himself. Licona simply brings a faulty interpretation of Dan. 7 to bear on Mark 14:61-63 and ends up with a confused and confusing mess.

Licona’s understanding of the passage amounts to this: Yeshua is brought before the Sanhedrin and is asked by the high priest if he is the Messiah, the son of God. Yeshua answers yes, but then goes further in his claim by alluding to Dan. 7:13 and thus implying that he is Yahweh himself. The high priest understands Yeshua to be claiming to be Yahweh himself and charges him with blasphemy. Now, can you see the problem with this scenario? This whole interpretation requires that the high priest and others in the Sanhedrin thought that the ‘son of man’ figure in Dan. 7:13 is Yahweh himself, which is a highly dubious assumption. The high priestly family and many others in the Sanhedrin were of the Sadducee sect, which regarded only the five books of Moses as authoritative scripture. It is more likely than not that they did not even regard Daniel’s prophecy as legitimate scripture. But even if they did, why should anyone believe that any Jew ever thought that the ‘son of man’ figure in Dan. 7:13 is himself Yahweh? This idea may be a later Christian interpretation of the passage based on the presupposition that Yeshua is God, but there is certainly nothing in the text itself to suggest it, and there is no evidence that 1st century Jews would have ever thought this. This is simply a case of reading a later high christology back into a passage from the Hebrew bible and then using it to prove the validity of that high christology. I think they call that circular reasoning.

Licona also insinuates that the worship given to the son of man in Daniel is the worship that is given only to God. He appeals also to the worship that is given to the Messiah in the 1st book of Enoch and in 4th Esdras. But these texts do not say that this personage is being worshipped as God or with a kind of worship that can only legitimately be given to God. What this text portrays is a highly exalted human, for that is what a son of man is, who is rightly given homage by all peoples because of the exalted status bestowed on him by God. The text depicts this one as God’s chief agent, through whom God will carry out his program of righteousness, justice and peace in the world.21

It should also be born in mind that the book of Daniel is apocalyptic literature and the vision imagery within this kind of literature is always overdramatized and hyperbolic and should never be taken strictly literal. This also goes for 1 Enoch and 4 Esdras and other such apocalyptic works. Depictions of worship being given to the Son of man, the Son of God and the Elect One figures in these works may seem to imply that they share divinity with God, but this is never explicitly stated in these works, and the hyperbolic imagery and language used of these figures is better attributed to the nature of this particular kind of literature.

Conclusion

No one should be fooled, by the title of this article, into thinking that I am lamenting the pitiful state of ‘Jesus is God’ apologetics. Rather, I rejoice at this state of affairs, for if this is the best kind of argumentation these apologists can offer then I expect, in the near future, to see many more abandon the ‘Jesus is God’ nonsense and join the ranks of those who believe in the Father as the only true God and in Yeshua as his chief human agent, his anointed one and our Lord.

Endnotes

  1. Matt Slick, “Does the gospel of Mark teach the deity of Jesus?” Nov. 4, 2016 article on the CARM website; James White, “Did the Earliest Followers of Jesus Believe in His Deity? 2015 debate with Muslim Shabir Ally; Michael J. Kruger, “Does the Gospel of Mark Present Jesus as God?” Oct. 14, 2013 article on Cannon Fodder website; “The Deity of Christ in the Gospel of Mark” Dec. 15, 2014 article on Cross Examined. Org website.

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  2. Comment on Gen. 16:7 in the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. ↩︎
  3. This is a non-exhaustive list of passages demonstrating this principle: Gen. 16:11-12/16:13; Gen. 19:12-13/19:14; Gen. 32:24-30/Hose 12:3-4; Ex. 3:1-15/Acts7:30, 35; Ex. 7:19-20/7:17; Ex. 14:16, 21/Is. 10:26; Ex. 17:5-7/Ps. 78:20; Judg. 2:16-18/10:11-12; 1 Sam. 16:13/Ps. 89:20; 1 Sam. 26:11/26:12; 1 Kings 5:8-9; 2 Chron. 36:15/Jer. 7:13; Ps. 77:20; Is. 7:3-4, 10; Is. 29:1-3; Jer. 43: 8-9/43:10; Lk. 1:26-38/1:45; Lk. 2:9-12/2:15; Lk. 7:1-8/Matt. 8:5-9; Acts 12:6-11/12:17; Acts 27:23-24/27:25. ↩︎
  4. Ex. 16:1-8; 1 Sam. 25:9-12; 2 Sam. 10:1-6; Matt. 10:40; Lk. 10:16; Jn. 12:44-45. ↩︎
  5. Gen. 24:1-10, 52-53; Ex. 3:10/4:1-17; Josh. 1:6-9; Judg. 6:14-16; 1 Sam. 3:19-21; 1 Kings 19:16/2 Kings 2:13-14; Is. 48:16; Matt. 11:27; Lk. 5:17; Jn. 3:2; Acts 10:38. ↩︎
  6. Lk. 5:17; Jn. 5:19; 10:25, 37-38; 14:10-11; Acts 2:22; 10:38. ↩︎
  7. 1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:32-35; Acts 9:40-41. ↩︎
  8. John 11:41-42. ↩︎
  9. 2 Kings 4:38-41; 6:5-7. ↩︎
  10. See Matt. 14:29; Jn. 20:21-23. ↩︎
  11. Matt. 9:8. ↩︎
  12. Lk. 7:16. ↩︎
  13. Matt.16:13=14; 21:11, 46; Mk.6:14-15; Lk. 7:39; 24:19; Jn. 4:19; 6:14; 9:17. ↩︎
  14. See also John 3:2. ↩︎
  15. Acts 14:8-12; 28:3-6. ↩︎
  16. See also Peter’s testimony in Acts 10:38: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and because God was with him, he went around doing good and healing everyone who was oppressed by the devil.” ↩︎
  17. Matt. 11:10; Lk. 7:27. ↩︎
  18. Matt. 3:3. ↩︎
  19. Here is my article on Ex. 23:20 in which I make the case that this agent refers to Moses: Exodus 23:20-23 : Who Is The Angel?https://letthetruthcomeoutblog.wordpress.com/2023/01/05/exodus-2320-23-who-is-the-angel/ ↩︎
  20. Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews 17. 10.5, 6 and 7 tells of Judas of Galilee, Simon of Perea and Athronges, a shepherd, who each, at different times, gathered a following and was made out to be king. Acts 5:36-37 speaks of a Theudas and of a Judas the Galilean, who both apparently gained a following and attempted a revolt against Rome. The Judas mentioned by Josephus and in Acts may be the same person but we can’t be certain. ↩︎
  21. It is also possible and even likely that the son of man figure, in it’s original context in Daniel 7, is not referring to the Messiah but to the collective people of God, as the angel’s interpretation of the vision in vv. 17-18, 22, 27 seems to imply. This interpretation certainly takes the wind out of the sails of the apologists assertion that the ‘son of man’ is a deity figure. If the ‘son of man’ does indeed represent the collective people of God, then we can understand Yeshua’s appropriation of the phrase as a personal title to mean that he saw himself as the sole representative or head of this collective body of holy ones. ↩︎