Jesus: Gospel Evidence and Jewish Expectations

 

From N. F. Gier, God, Reason, and the Evangelicals

(University Press of America, 1987), chapter 8.

 Copyright held by author.

 

Jesus practiced sorcery and beguiled and led Israel astray.

--Sanhedrin records

 

His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Strength-Hero....

--Isaiah 9:6 (Luther's translation)

 

The apocalyptic Son of Man, through sometimes pictured as pre-existent

by late Judaism, was never considered in Jewish texts to descend to earth.

--Dennis C. Duling

 

In the Gospels there is insufficient evidence that Jesus claimed the

title Messiah or that he fully accepted it when it was of­fered to him.

                                                      --Raymond E. Brown

 

There is no Jewish tradition of a divine-human Messiah.

                                                       --J. M. Ford

 

Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.

                                                 --Jesus (Mark 10:18)

 

Jesus is never called God in the Synoptic Gospels, and a passage like Mk. 10:18

would seem to preclude the possibility that Jesus used the title of himself.

                                                 --R. E. Brown

 

Any theory which holds that from the very beginning

Jesus was called God...is a theory that does not explain the facts.

--Brown

 

Church Christology is not the result of a consistent evolution out of the Hebraic

understanding of the Messiah, but it represents a repudiation of key elements of Jewish

messianic hope and their replacement by ideas that Judaism continues to reject as idola­trous.

--Rosemary R. Reuther

 

 

            There is an old revivalist saying that goes something like: "Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or what he really claimed to be, the living Son of God."  (Another version of this is that Jesus was "mad, bad, or God.")  Evangelists who use this quip are presuming that what the New Testament says about Jesus must be what Jesus thought himself to be.  Like the Buddha, Socrates, and Krishna, Jesus did not leave any of his own writings, so we do not have a direct account of his self-understanding.  Plato scholars are convinced that Plato's account of Socrates is biased and does not give us the genuine historical Socrates.  (The same is true with the accounts of the Buddha and Krishna.)  In fact, other Greek literature and history portrays Socrates as a buffoon, a down-and-outer, and an eccentric pest.  Similarly, external evi­dence, like the legal records of the Sanhedrin, record that Jesus "practiced sorcery and beguiled and led Israel astray."1

 

            In his book Jesus the Magician Morton Smith has shown that Jesus was not unique as a miracle worker, and that there were other healers who were called "sorcerers" and "magicians."  Smith does a thorough study of Near Eastern magic at the time of Jesus and draws significant parallels.  Drawing on the internal evidence of the gospels themselves, Smith maintains that Jesus gained his following primarily because of his cures, which according to Smith, are similar to those reported in extant magical texts.  In an earlier book, The Secret Gospel, Smith presents an even more controversial thesis.  Using a lost section of Mark (14:51ff.) which he found in a Greek Orthodox monastery, Smith proposes that Jesus initiated his disciples in night-long rituals that included sexual contact of some sort.  My mention of Smith's work is not to be taken as an endorsement of his views, but simply as an example of the spectrum of views in contemporary scholarship.

 

            Not only were there other charismatic healers but there is now evidence to show that there was nothing especially radical about Jesus' religious teachings.  Jewish scholar Geza Vermes cautiously declares that Jesus was "an amateur in the field" of the Torah.2 Furthermore, as there was no strong Pharisaic pres­ence in Galilee during that time, some scholars have suspected that the debates with the Pharisees actually reflect later polemics between the early church and Jewish teachers.  Other research has shown that the Judaism of Jesus' time was far more flexible than the New Testament leads us to believe.  Many exceptions to the Sabbath were recognized, and it was assumed that human well-being was more important than strict adherence to the Law.  It is Tikva Frymer-Kensky's thesis that compared to contemporary religious leaders, Jesus was a fairly conservative Jew.3

 

            Evangelical scholars like F. F. Bruce and the contributors to evangelical dictionaries are well aware of information like this, but it is seldom brought into evangelical theology proper.  In fact the use of scripture is generally very loose and unscientific.  For example, both Carl Henry and Stuart Hackett use traditional biblical interpretations (especially with regard to messianic titles) which no longer have any scholarly support.  John Stott's Basic Christianity is also typical.  Stott blithely assumes that the books of the New Testament were written by the authors traditionally attributed to them; and he makes no attempt to distinguish between the genuine sayings of Jesus and those which may have been imputed to him by his disciples and the early church.  Stott himself concedes twice that the disciples might have been deceived.4  How can we be sure of their account, given the virtual dearth of non-Christian witnesses?  How would we feel, for example, about an account of the history of communism written only by Communists themselves?  Testimony about the Rev. Sun Myung Moon ranges widely from positive devotee testimonials to very negative anticult accounts which claim that the "Moonies" have been deceived by a clever Oriental shaman.

           

            Summing up the research on the historical Jesus, Norman Perrin concludes that most scholars agree on the following mini­mum:  that Jesus proclaimed the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God and that the parables, most of the proverbial sayings, and the Lord's prayer are genuine.5  There is still much controversy about the historicity of the Resurrection and whether Jesus actually accepted any of the christological titles attributed to him, such as Messiah, Son of God, and Son of Man.  We have already seen that many Christian liberals have explicitly given up the divinity of Jesus, and even the Catholic Church, on the basis of critical re­search, admits that the disciples "clearly perceived" Jesus as God only after his Resurrection.6  Although Wolfhart Pannenberg's positive pronouncements on the historicity of the Resurrection have been displayed prominently, especially in evangelical circles, less well known is his adoptionistic Christology.  Using the strongly subordinationist passage of Mark 10:18, Pannenberg claims that Jesus was not equal to God but was "'the Son' only in obe­dience to the Father."7  The focus of this chapter will be the biblical meaning of "Son of God" and other christological titles.

 

JESUS AS MESSIAH

 

In Hebrew messiah means "anointed one" and it was translated as christos by the writers of the Greek New Testament.  In the Old Testament not only kings, but high priests, were "messiahs"; even a pagan like Cyrus the Great was God's "anointed one" (Is. 45:1). Messiahship is a sign that God's authority has been invested in these persons.  After the end of the monarchy the Hebrews looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, a great political leader who would destroy Israel's enemies and set up God's kingdom on earth.  The Hebrew Messiah was seen strictly in terms of a political king and military conqueror until just before the Christian era.  Only in the apocalyptic books, like the noncanonical 2 Esdras and 1 and 2 Enoch, do we find the idea of a cosmic, divine (but not incarnate) messiah.  At the time of Jesus, most Jews still saw the Messiah in terms of the traditional view of conquering political king.  The meek and crucified Jesus did not at all fulfill their expectations.  As we shall see in the section on the Suffering Servant, the Jews did not connect the Messiah with suffering and defeat, but with their opposites.  Evangelical Michael Green concedes the point:  "The title Messiah was inadequate and possessed political implications which had nothing to do with Jesus' mission."8

 

Not all Old Testament books are consistently strong in messianic expectation.  Indeed, many of the prophets emphasize the nonmessianic concept that only Yahweh can be the king of Israel.  Jeremiah, for example, removes all superlative characteristics from the Messiah, declares that Yahweh is king (10:10), and refers to the Messiah as simply a just and wise king.  Ezekiel's messianism is probably the weakest:  the Messiah will have no universal reign, and his stature is reduced to that of a prince, for only Yahweh can be king.  For Second Isaiah (chapters 40 ff.) Cyrus is already Yahweh's "anointed one" and again Yahweh himself is king. Yahweh himself declares:  "I am God, and there is no other" (45:2).  As we shall see subsequently, the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 52-53 cannot be the Messiah and was not taken as messianic by later prophets.

 

The messianic passage in Micah 5 is consistently misinterpreted.  A Davidic ruler will simply rise from Ephrathah; there is no direct statement that he will be born there.  The woman in labor is probably symbolic of Israel, and definitely not the Virgin Mary.  Finally, the phrase "from ancient days" refers to the time of the original monarchy and not to any metaphysical preexistence. As one Bible scholar phrases it: "Neither the Old Testament nor later Judaism seems to hold that the Messiah really existed before his actual appearance."  Like Micah 5, Isaiah 7:14 still receives exaggerated attention from those who refuse to see the prophecy in context.  The future child will come in the prophet's own time; and Isaiah predicts that before the child is weaned, the enemies of Israel will be defeated.  Even though some evangelicals hold out doggedly for the traditional interpretation, the "young woman" is not a virgin and definitely not the Mary of the New Testament.

 

One might reply that the reason for the apparent confusion between Messiah as king and Yahweh as king is that the Messiah is in fact Yahweh incarnate.  There are, however, many problems with this view.  First, this interpretation is paganistic through and through.  Jewish messianism in its highest form stayed clear of the Canaanite idea of divine kings and of their being sired by gods through miraculous conceptions.  Such an idea would have been a clear violation of what I have called the Hebraic principle. Second, there is no explicit reference in the Old Testament which supports the divinity of the Messiah.  Evangelicals point to some of the Psalms for support, but close scrutiny of them reveals a very weak hypothesis indeed. 

 

In Psalm 45:6 the Messiah's throne is a "divine" throne; but this means only that it is established by God, not that the Messiah himself is divine.  As in the rest of the Old Testament, there is a clear distinction between the Messiah and God:  "Therefore God, your God, has anointed you" (v. 7); or the Anchor Bible makes it even clearer:  "The eternal, everlasting God has  enthroned you."  The same is true for Psalm 110 which is also frequently cited.  There is nothing which indicates that the Israelite king mentioned is a divine being; indeed, the two figures "The Lord" and "my lord" are two distinct entities.  It is also God who performs the messianic action not the king, which is again support for the view that only Yahweh could be the true Messiah.  Furthermore, the scene is not in heaven at all:  during Israelite coronations the king was seated at the right hand of a present, but invisible Lord.  As the Anchor Bible translator Mitchell Dahood concludes:  "In biblical literature...no claims are made for the king's divinity."11  

 

There is one famous passage which appears to directly impute divinity to the Messiah:  "His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God..." (Is. 9:6).  But even Luther knew Hebrew grammar well enough to avoid deifying the Messiah and translated 'el gibbor as "strength hero" (Kraft--Held).  In many places in the Old Testament the divine word 'el is used to make a superlative. The harere 'el of the psalms (36:3; 50:10; 68:16) are definitely not divine mountains, but "towering mountains"; the 'arze 'el are certainly not divine cedars, but "towering cedars."  Therefore, 'el gibbor of Isaiah 9:6 is not "Mighty God" but "divine in might," matching the other superlative yet human characteristics of the Messiah.  The New English Bible is more correct:  And he shall be called in purpose wonderful, in battle Godlike, Father for all time, Prince of peace."  following the tradition that only Yahweh could be Messiah, Michael Arnheim translates it this way: "A wonderful counselor is mighty God, an eternal father is the prince of peace."12

           

Finally, there is the question whether Jesus himself claimed the title of Messiah.  There is no doubt that the early church believed this:  the infancy narratives and other claims of alleged messianic prophecy fulfilled are proof of this.  But Jesus' own words indicate a real hesitancy about the title--e.g., his order of silence in response to Peter's confession (Mk. 8:29; Lk. 9:20) and his indirect answer to the high priest (Mt. 26:64).  One of the main hypotheses of Michael Arnheim's Is Christianity True? is that Jesus’ hesitation about the title clearly shows that he knew that his ministry did not fulfill Jewish expectations.  Perhaps Luke sensed this when he seems to imply that Jesus will not be proclaimed Messiah until his return to earth (Acts 3:20-21). (Indeed, the idea of the Second Coming is obviously based on the fact that Jesus did not "get it right" the first time.)  There is also the idea, expressed again by Luke (Acts 2:36; cf. 5:31), that Jesus was not made Messiah until his Resurrection.  Catholic scholar Raymond E. Brown summarizes the textual-critical problem: "We have seen that in the Gospels there is insufficient evidence that Jesus claimed the title Messiah or that he fully accepted it when it was offered him."13

 

JESUS AS SON OF GOD

 

            It is truly ironic that the title "Son of God," which Jesus was most willing to share with all who were saved, should be taken by orthodox Christians as a unique title for Jesus.  Because Jesus uses the term in this way, he cannot mean "sons of God" in the sense of bene 'elohim, i.e., the subordinate deities in Yahweh's divine council.14  He must mean it in the adoptive sense in which it is used in the Old Testament.  This meaning of "son of God" found in Exodus 4:22 and Hosea 1:10 where the people of Israel are all "sons of the living God."  David, Saul, and even Adam (Lk. 3:38) are "sons of God"; even the peacemakers "shall be sons of God" (Matt. 5:9; cf. Jn. 1:12).  It is not surprising then to learn that "there is no published, pre-Christian evidence for 'Son of God' as a title for the Davidic Messiah."15  

 

It is held that one of the reasons that Jesus can be called the unique Son of God is that he called God abba ("daddy").  This appears in passages that are all considered to be authentic sayings of Jesus.  But Raymond Brown has answered that Jesus teaches his disciples to pray to Abba in the Lord's prayer, an equally well-attested text.16  In Mark Jesus does not refer to "my Father" at all, and the phrase occurs only four times in Luke.  It appears frequently in Matthew, but Jesus adds "your Father" four times (5:15, 45, 48; 18:14).  Even John, who speaks of Jesus as God's only Son, has the saying "I am ascending to my Father and your Father" (20:17).  Brown puts the point bluntly:  "What right has the Synoptic exegete to assume that 'my Father' implies a more intimate relationship to God than 'your Father' implies?"17 There is no question that the early church did indeed believe that Jesus was the unique Son of God, but again we cannot be sure if Jesus really held this of himself.

 

An early alternative to divine sonship was the idea that, in contrast to all other sons of God, only Jesus fulfilled the filial obligation of perfect obedience, an obedience "even unto death." This is the fundamental insight of the so-called "adoptionistic" Christology which many early Christians held.  "Adoptionists" believed that Jesus was a man who was adopted by God at his baptism and who then fulfilled his filial relationship perfectly by his suffering and death.  Luke is the best scriptural source for an adoptionistic Christology.  Christians who used the "Western" text of Luke were particularly inclined to adoptionism.  This text uses the exact wording of the adoptionism of Psalm 2:7.18  Luke speaks of Jesus as a prophet, a man approved by God (Acts 2:22) and as definitely subordinate to God.  God raises Jesus from the dead and God "has made him both Lord and Messiah" (Acts 2:36).  Note that God is active and the subordinate Jesus is passive.

 

The Book of Hebrews is another solid source for a subordinate Jesus, who rises in stature as he fulfills his mission.  Jesus "was made lower than the angels" (2:9), but after "he had made purification for sins," he became "much superior to angels" (1:3-4).  Jesus had to be made like us "in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful priest in the service of God..."(2:17).  This passage clinches our subordinationist interpretation:  "Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered, and once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be a high priest, just like Melchizadek" (5:18-20, NIV).

 

Commenting on Hebrews 2:10, evangelical G. R. Lewis cannot help but confirm this developmental view of Christ:  "The divine-human author of our salvation...was made perfect or complete through suffering...."19  The orthodox creeds declare of course that Jesus was fully God and therefore perfect from eternity.  The textual-critical challenge is even more pointed in the Anchor Bible Hebrews, where G. W. Buchanan concludes that the MSS. which imply that the Son is purified of his sins are to be preferred. (After all, he was made like us "in every respect.")  The doctrine of Christ's sinlessness was not yet in place, so the author "described the Son as a king who would be purified...before he ascended his throne....Once purified, he was without sin (4:5)."20 Here again we see the unorthodox, developmental view of Jesus as the adopted Son of God.

           

As there is only one verse in Paul's writings which might indicate Jesus' divinity (Ro. 9:5), an adoptionistic Pauline Christology is not inconceivable.  Such a view has been best expressed by Frances Young in The Myth of God Incarnate.  (It is ironic that Young is the only author whom Michael Green praises in The Truth of God Incarnate; but it is she who devastates the biblical argument for a literal Incarnation.)  Young contends that the orthodox incarnation is read into, not out of, the genuine Pauline epistles.  If there is a doctrine of incarnation, it is of Christ in us rather than God literally in Christ.  Arguing that a real son is not necessary to produce adopted sons, Young proposes that Paul saw Christ as the truly obedient son, the Second Adam as the true image of God, the perfect "man from heaven," to whom the "dust" men conform and in whom they find their true sonship.  As Young states:  "...his Sonship to God is not expressed in terms of 'divine nature,' ...but his own perfect obedience in doing God's work and obeying God's will."21

 

Young concedes that Paul does speak of Christ's preexistence, but this does not necessarily mean that Jesus was God.  Keeping what I have called the Hebraic principle in mind, it would be natural for Jewish Christians to think of the pre-existent Christ as an angel, a "man of heaven."  Such an "angel" Christology is found in Justin Martyr and the Shepherd of Hermas and it  culminated in Arianism, the most famous subordinationist Christology in church history.22

 

JESUS AS GOD

 

It is certainly true that there are passages in the New Testament which seem to support the view that Jesus was the divine Son of God.  It is significant, however, that none of these are found in the Synoptic Gospels and only one, even that disputed, is found in the genuine Pauline epistles.  Brown lists three "clear instances" (in which Jesus is called theos) and five other instances of "probable certainty."23  One of these is Hebrews 1:8 in which the author appears to identify Jesus with God in Psalm 45:7. We have already seen that Christian writers have been mistaken in seeing a divine messiah here; and G. W. Buchanan believes that the author of Hebrews, Oscar Cullman and Raymond Brown notwithstanding, did not make this mistake.  Buchanan's case is especially strong if he can persuade other scholars that Hebrews does not support Christ's sinlessness; but the book's incontrovertible subordinationist and developmentalist elements would at least make it an inconsistent witness to a divine Son.  Furthermore, if Hebrews was inspired by Philo and Alexandrian Judaism, then the author, even though he argues that Jesus is superior to the angels, would have most likely carried over the Wisdom tradition's idea of Sophia as a separate and subordinate mediator.

 

Assuming that scholars can agree on Brown's "clear in­stances," of divinity, such a Christology is not necessarily the one of Nicea or Chalcedon.  Even the author(s) of John, who appears to identify Jesus and God as the same being in the first verse, still preserves a difference between God and Jesus.  At the end of the famous first chapter, the author states that "no man has ever seen God," an expression of the Hebraic principle that is repeated frequently (5:37, 6:46; 1 Jn. 4:12; 1 Tim. 6:16).  The clear implication here is that Jesus is not identical in substance with God.  Furthermore, Jesus' answer to Pilate definitely indicates that he sees himself as separate from the divine power above (Jn. 19:11).  Brown's conclusion is that the New Testament does refer to Jesus as a divine being three times, but it does not explicitly make him identical to God:  "Jn. 1:1 is bordering on the usage of 'God' for the Son, but by omitting the article it avoids any suggestion of personal identification of the Word with the Father."24

 

Of all the evangelicals I have read, it is Stuart Hackett who faces the challenge of subordinationism head-on.  He concedes that we cannot ignore these passages, especially as they appear in those books like John where Jesus' deity is best attested.  Using his principle of rational coherence, which includes the assumption that the New Testament writers would not knowingly contradict themselves, Hackett proposes that all subordinationist or developmentalist passages must refer to Christ's "office" and not his "essence."25  I believe that this solution demands too much of texts we know have been worked over by editors.  Hackett must also face the problem of the absence of any high Christology in the Synoptic Gospels.

 

A more plausible alternative is that the subordinationism of John is "essential"; and it is due to earlier materials (which we have seen to be more accurate than the Synoptics) being joined with later material like the advanced theology of the Prologue.  Even with their commitment to critical-historical methods, evangelicals like Hackett choose rationalist harmonizing rather than a more scientific reading of their scripture.  Finally, Hackett claims that Christians would have found it blasphemous to worship a subordinate deity.  If early Christians were indeed worshiping Jesus as a literal man-God, then they had already lost any scruples about violating the Hebraic principle.

 

JESUS AS SON OF MAN

 

Scholars have gone back and forth about whether Jesus meant the christological title "Son of Man" to be a self-designation; for in places Jesus speaks of the Son of Man in the third person, e.g., "...you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes" (Matt. 10:23).  Liberal scholars have traditionally concluded that the early church made the title self­designating as part of their general deification and exaltation of the human prophet of the Kingdom of God.  Morna Hooker, however, has done a full-length study of the topic and she sides with conservatives in concluding that Jesus himself meant the term as a self-designation.26  If this is the case, then it would be an embarrassing truth: Son of Man is not a title of any kind in the Old Testament.

 

In most instances the term "son of Man" is simply another way of saying "man" or "O man."  Only in late Judaism does this phrase take on soteriological meaning, and then only on the basis of a misreading of the main text:  Daniel 7:13ff.  In Daniel's vision of the four beasts, there finally comes "one like a son of man" who is presented before God in heaven.  The first mistake of later Jews and Christians (including Jesus himself) is that they made a poetic phrase, a simile, into a messianic title.  The Anchor Bible translation as "one in human likeness" removes the possibility that it is to be taken as a title.  As the translators state:  "In Daniel 7 the symbolic manlike figure has no messianic meaning, except perhaps as connected with messianism in the broad sense i.e., saving the people of Israel."27

 

The second mistake, related to the first, is that the symbolic figure really represents the saints of Israel (v. 18ff.) and it is God who saves, not the so-called "Son of Man."  Furthermore, all the saints are being exalted, not just one person.  Finally, these saints are going up to heaven; the "Son of Man" is not coming to earth to judge as Jesus predicts in the New Testament.  As T. W. Manson states:  "It cannot be too strongly emphasized that what Daniel portrays is not a divine, semi-divine, or angelic figure coming down from heaven to bring deliverance, but a human figure corporately as saints going up to heaven to receive it."28 Even in the noncanonical Enoch, where the term is a christological title, the Son of Man stays with God after coming up and being exalted.

 

Evangelical R. G. Gruenler is correct in observing that the figure in vv. 13-14 appears to be an individual.  He therefore proposes that Jesus used Daniel 7 to show that his salvation would be both individual and corporate, the latter being most evident in passages which identify the Son of Man and the Kingdom of God.  This is an interesting solution but it takes many liberties with both Daniel and the New Testament.  The visionary figure of "one in human likeness" appears as an individual but this is explicitly interpreted as a corporate body of saints.  Gruenler's final words about his interpretation reveal that it is more fideistic and dialectical than scientific:  "Hence the irony and mystery of Jesus' favorite title, Son of Man, which both reveals and conceals and is penetrated only by the eyes of faith and obedient response."29

 

JESUS AS SUFFERING  SERVANT

 

The identity of the Servant in Second Isaiah has occupied scores of scholars for many decades.  The proposed candidates are legion:  the Servant is Israel as a whole, a saintly remnant, an ideal nation of the future, a past historical figure (Moses, Cyrus, Isaiah himself), a future historical figure (Jesus favored here of course), and finally, an ideal figure.  Again we find our­selves in the precarious position of drawing theological implica­tions from ancient and obscure poetry.  In his Anchor Bible commentary John L. McKenzie summarily rejects the Christian interpretation of the Servant Songs and favors the ideal figure with a corporate personality.  Such a view would include the ideas of individual and group as well as past, present, and future events.  McKenzie admits that his theory does not explain the references to the vicarious atonement and resurrection of the Servant; but as far as I know, no other theory does this either, not even the Christian view.

 

If one reads Isaiah 52-53 in context, the first conclusion one must draw is that the Suffering Servant is not the Messiah. The author has already declared that Cyrus is the Lord's "anointed" (45:1).  (Nowhere do we read that the Servant is "anointed.")  Even though this messiahship is different in crucial respects--Cyrus is a non-Israelite and he does not "know" Yahweh--it would seem strange for Deutero-Isaiah to have proclaimed two messiahs. Later Jewish prophets and the tradition as a whole did not link the Servant with the Messiah.  Indeed, later prophets without exception ignored the Servant.  As John McKenzie states:  "The Servant is clearly not the King-Messiah; his mission is not conceived in this way, and the images are not the same.  Whether Isaiah meant to replace the King-Messiah by the Servant is not explicit, but it is hinted."30

 

            There is one Jewish commentary on Isaiah which does link the Servant and the Messiah.  This is the Targum of Jonathan, which, although the MS. dates from the 5th Century C.E., may reflect a much earlier tradition.  The Targum does identify the Servant with the Messiah, but imputes all suffering to either Israel or the Gentiles:

 

Then shall the glory of all the kingdoms be despised

and come to an end; they shall be infirm and sick

even as a man of sorrows and as one destined for

sicknesses...they shall be despised and of no account. 

Then he shall pray on behalf of our transgressions

and our iniquities shall be pardoned for his sake,

though we were accounted smitten, stricken

before the Lord, and afflicted.31

 

It is clear that it is the people as a whole who suffer--they are the Suffering Servant--not the Messiah.

 

Close scrutiny of the Servant passages reveals that the Servant cannot be Jesus, if we are to read scripture as the evangelicals want us to.  Jesus was not disfigured beyond human recognition (52:14).  Jesus was not "one from whom men hide their faces" (53:3).  Jesus was not "stricken, smitten by God" (53:4), unless we accept Green's untraditional notion that God was crushed in the Crucifixion.  Jesus did open his mouth; the servant does not (53:7).  Jesus answered, albeit briefly, questions at his trial.  During his passion he spoke to the "daughters of Jerusa­lem" (Lk. 23:28), to the good robber, to his mother, to John, and the people in general.  Jesus was not buried in a felon's grave (53:9), but allegedly in a rich man's tomb.32  The Servant's days are prolonged (53:10), but Jesus' days are not.  If this means earthly days, as the phrase is commonly taken, then it cannot apply to Jesus.

 

In her book Jesus and the Servant Morna Hooker has shown that vicarious atonement by a single individual for all people was alien to the Hebrew mind.  The idea of the corporate personality was embedded in the Hebrew mentality.  The Old Testament writers switch from the singular to the plural and vice versa with the greatest of ease, even within the space of two verses (e.g., Hos. 11:1-2).  Hooker's comparative study of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Deutero-Isaiah shows similar themes and a theology that tends to support the corporate understanding of redemption.  The suffering appears to be in the past and therefore represents the suffering of Israel, not some future suffering figure.  Within the context of Isaiah's universalism (the nations are speaking at the be­ginning of Is. 53), Hooker identifies the Servant as suffering Israel, atoning for the sins of all.  (The Targum of Jonathan mentioned above confirms that this was a general Jewish belief.)

 

Like most biblical interpretations, there are certain weak­nesses in both Hooker's and McKenzie's accounts.  The principal one is that the people of Israel could not serve as a literal sacrifice ('asham).  First, the 'asham had to be spotless and without blemish; and second, the 'asham, at least according to Hebrew practices, could not be a human being or group of human beings.  This is a serious hermeneutical problem, but it also poses a challenge, at least on the point of human sacrifice, to the orthodox interpretation of the Servant.  Conservative commentators do have grounds to speak of the resurrection of the Servant (cf. 53:9*10), but this again might be seen as the revival of Israel itself.

 

In this section I have shown that the traditional interpretation that the Suffering Servant foreshadows Jesus, let alone the Messiah, is not supported.  As we look back at the entire discussion of christological titles, we find that none of them are compatible with Old Testament understanding or expectation, except perhaps the adoptionistic reading of "Son of God."  Evangelical D. H. Wallace honestly recognizes that messianic expectations were "diffuse"; that there were no clear connections between Messiah, Suffering Servant, and Son of Man; and that Jesus avoided the title Messiah because of its political implications.33  The traditional connections between the Old and New Testaments are therefore considerably jeopardized.

 

I have shown that orthodox Christology not only has shaky New Testament foundations but that there is a significant theological gap between Jewish and Christian understanding of salvation.  (Only the tenuous ad hoc axiom of "progressive" revelation can begin to bridge this gap.)  The Jews, then, had every reason to reject Jesus as the Messiah, and if Jesus indeed claimed to be the divine son of God, then the Jews were justified in their charges of blasphemy (Jn. 10:34).  As J. M. Ford states:  "There is no Jewish tradition of a divine-human Messiah."34 Early Christians joined world paganism, and betrayed traditional Judaism, by making a preexistent man-God the center of their religion.

 

ENDNOTES

 

1. Kee, Howard C., Jesus in History (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 2nd ed., 1977).

 

2. Vermes, Geza, "The Gospels without Christology,” God Incarnate: Story and Belief, ed. A.E. Harvey (London, SPCK, 1981).

 

3. Tikva Frymer-Kensky, "Jesus and the Law."  Paper presented at "Jesus in History and Myth" (University of Michigan, April, 1985).

 

4. Stott, John R.W., Basic Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972).

 

5. Perrin, Norman, The New Testament: An Introduction (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1974).

 

6.  Pontifical Biblical Commission (April 21, 1964), quoted in Raymond E. Brown, Jesus:  God and Man (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1967).

 

7.  Pannenberg, Wolfhart, "A Liberal Logos Christology,” John Cobb’s Theology in Process, eds. Altizer and Griffin.  He clearly rejects "the old dogmatic view of an immediate divine presence in [Jesus]" (p. 143).

 

8.  Green, Michael, The Truth of God Incarnate (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977).

 

9.  The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, ed. G.A. Buttrick, vol. 2 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1962).

 

10. Isaiah uses the Hebrew word for virgin (betulah) five times but chooses 'almah, meaning a young woman of marriageable age, for this verse.  Marvin H. Pope refers to a privately printed paper by W. S. La Sor which makes it "abundantly clear that the term 'almah does not mean 'virgin'" (The Anchor Bible:  Job, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973).  Evangelical Michael Green again concedes the point:  "Virgin births did not figure in the religious concept of a Jew.  He knew that the word translated 'virgin' in that Isaiah passage, 'almah, meant merely 'young woman'" (The Truth of God Incarnate, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977).

 

11. Dahood, Mitchell, The Anchor Psalms, vol. 1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1966).

 

12. Arnheim, Michael, Is Christianity True? (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984).  Even conservatives Keil and Delitzsch have to admit that their own traditional interpretation of this passage "appears to go beyond the bounds of the Old Testament horizon" (Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 7, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976).

 

13. Brown, Raymond, The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).

 

14. Curiously enough, Jesus does refer to Psalm 82 in answering the charges of the Jewish mob which attempts to stone him for blasphemy (Jn. 10:34).  Jesus, like all Jews who knew the scripture well, should have interpreted the 'elohim in Psalm 82 as men, but then, oddly enough, used the phrase "You are gods" (v. 6) as a way of proving that men can also be gods.  Modern scholarship has confirmed that the 'elohim are deities whom Yahweh has dethroned for misadministration of their nations (see Dt. 32:8) and has punished by making them into men.  See Gerald Cooke, "The Sons of (the) God(s)", Zeitschrift fur Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 76 (1964); The Anchor Judges, p. 27f.; Julian Morgenstern, "The Mythological Background of Ps. 82", (Hebrew Union College Annual 14, 1939); and The Anchor Psalms, vol. 2, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1968).  For more on Hebrew henotheism see www.class.uidaho.edu/ ngier/henotheism.htm

 

15. Brown, Raymond, The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).

 

16. Brown, Raymond, The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).

 

17. Brown, Raymond, The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).  Brown supports Jeremiahs' theory that the famous "No one knows the Son except the Father..." (Mt. 11:27; Lk. 10:22) was originally a parable, so it cannot be confidently taken as an instance of self-designation unless Jesus meant it as an allegory about himself.

 

18. See Frederick C. Grant, The Gospels:  Their Origin and Growth (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1957) for a reconstruction of Luke's original baptism story.  Brown believes that an adoptionistic Christology based on obedience and some special revelation at Jesus' baptism has, at least in the Gospels, insufficient and unconvincing support.

 

     19.  Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984).

 

20.  Buchanan, G.W., The Anchor Bible: To the Hebrews (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Co., 1972).

 

21. Young, Francis, "A Cloud of Witness," The Myth of God Incarnate.

 

22. See Robert C. Grant, Early Christian Doctrine of God (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1966). John Cobb gives this rationale for the angel Christology: "In the context of the two-story view the angel Christology was conceptually quite clear.  First, the existence of heavenly created beings among whom one was superior to the others was perfectly acceptable.  Second, it was understandable that these beings could take human form and appear on earth and then subsequently return to their heavenly place.  The language used, of God's sending his Son into the world and then exalting him, expresses this understanding" (Christ in a Pluralistic Age, Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1975).

 

23.  Brown, Raymond, The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).  "Jesus is never called God in the Synoptic Gospels, and a passage like Mk. 10:18 would seem to preclude the possibility that Jesus used the title of himself" (p. 30).

 

24.  Brown, Raymond, The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966). Brown assumes that the earliest Christians remained committed to the strict separation of God and humans:  "The New Testament does not predicate 'God' of Jesus with any frequency...For the Jews 'God' meant the heavenly Father; and until a wider understanding of the term was reached it could not be readily applied to Jesus" (ibid.).  Bruce Vawter agrees:  "Here 'God' is used predicatively, without the article:  the Word, whom he has just distinguished from the Person of God, is nevertheless a divine being in his own right" (The Four Gospels: An Introduction, vol. 1, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969).  Protestant Howard Kee also agrees that there is no identity between the Johannine logos and God (op. cit., p. 244).  Brown argues that Moffatt's translation "the Word was divine" is too weak.  If the author intended this, then the word theios would have been used instead (Jesus:  God and Man, p. 26).

 

25.  Hackett, Stuart, The Reconstruction of Theism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984).

 

26. Hooker, Morna, The Son of Man in Mark (Montreal, Canada: McGill University Press, 1971).  Hooker is another example of admirable scholarly integrity.  In this book she goes against her liberal colleagues, but in her Jesus and the Servant she follows the historical-grammatical method to a very radical conclusion.

 

27.  Hartman, Louis F. and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Anchor Bible: The Book of Daniel (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1978).  Evangelical Dewey Beegle is quite correct in concluding that this prediction, like all other Old Testament prophecies, was "short-range" in its intent (Scripture, Authority, and Infallibility [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, rev. ed., 1973]).

 

28.  T. W. Manson, "Son of Man in Daniel, Enoch, and the Gospels," p. 174.  Hartman and Di Lella observe that "the Son of Man did not descend or come from God...but rather he ascended or came to God and was brought into his presence" (op. cit., p. 102).  Dennis C. Duling concurs:  "The apocalyptic son of man, though sometimes pictured as preexistent by late Judaism, was never considered in Jewish texts to descend to earth"  (Jesus Christ Through History, New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1979).  Incidentally, Norman Geisler's view that God and the Son of Man are identified in v. 22 has no exegetical basis whatever (Christian Apologetics, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1976).

 

29.  Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984).

 

30.  McKenzie, John L, The Anchor Bible:  Second Isaiah (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968).   J. B. Payne's attempt to prove that the Jewish Messiah was connected with suffering and humiliation is an unfortunate display of rationalist harmonizing.  I simply do not understand his use of Is. 7:15; the "anointed one...cut off" in Dan. 9:26 "refers almost certainly to the murder of high priest Onias III in 171 B.C.E."  (The Anchor Daniel, p. 252); and the "triumphant and victorious" Messiah of Zech. 9:9 is "humble" not humiliated.  See Payne's entry in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, p. 1007, first column.

 

31. Quoted in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 3, ed. G.A. Buttrick (Nashville. TN: Abingdon, 1962).  Evangelical D. H. Wallace concedes that because of the late date of the Targums one cannot assume that the Servant was made Messiah in the intertestamental period. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984]).

 

32. The RSV has an ambiguous "grave with the wicked and with a rich man...," which Payne of course exploits; but McKenzie believes that "rich man" was a conjectural emendation (op. cit., p. 130).

 

33. See Wallace's entry in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, p. 711, first column.

 

34. Ford, J. Massynberde, The Anchor Bible:  Revelation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975).