The Synoptic Gospels ascribe to Jesus some of the unique functions and characteristics, which the Hebrew Bible attributes to YHWH alone.

For instance, the Synoptics describe Christ as subduing/trampling on the winds and seas in language that is reminiscent of the way the Greek version of the OT writings (commonly referred to as LXX) has YHWH doing so.

Here are two examples taken from both Matthew and Mark:  

“Then He directed the disciples to get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, while He sent away the crowds. And after He had dismissed the multitudes, He went up into the hills by Himself to pray. When it was evening, He was still there alone. But the boat was by this time out on the sea, many furlongs [a furlong is one-eighth of a mile] distant from the land, beaten and tossed by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch [between 3:00—6:00 a.m.] of the night, Jesus came to them, walking on the sea (peripatounta epi ten thalassan). And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said, It is a ghost! And they screamed out with fright. But instantly He spoke to them, saying, Take courage! I Am (ego eimi)! Stop being afraid! And Peter answered Him, Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water (ta hydata). He said, Come! So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water (ta hydata), and he came toward Jesus. But when he perceived and felt the strong wind, he was frightened, and as he began to sink (katapontizesthai), he cried out (ekraxen), Lord, save me (Kyrie soson me) [from death]! Instantly Jesus reached out His hand and caught and held him, saying to him, O you of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat knelt and worshiped Him, saying, Truly You are the Son of God!” Matthew 14:22-33 Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC)

“And on that day, when evening came, He said to them, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd, they took Him along with them in the boat, just as He was; and other boats were with Him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling up. And Jesus Himself was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion; and they got Him up and said to Him, ‘Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?’ And He woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Silence! Be still.’ And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. And He said to them, ‘Why are you so cowardly? Do you still have no faith?’ And they became very afraid and were saying to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?’” Mark 4:35-41 Legacy Standard Bible (LSB)

Now compare the Greek phraseology with the following OT texts:

“Who alone has stretched out the heavens, and walks on the sea (peripaton… epi thalasses) as on firm ground.” Job 9:8 LXX

“O Lord God of hosts, who is like to thee? thou art mighty, O Lord, and thy truth is round about thee. Thou rulest the power of the sea; and thou calmest the tumult of its waves.” Psalm 88:9-10 LXX

“And let them offer to him the sacrifice of praise, and proclaim his works with exultation. They that go down to the sea in ships, doing business in many waters; these [men] have seen the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. He speaks, and the stormy wind arises, and its waves are lifted up. They go up to the heavens, and go down to the depths; their soul melts because of troubles. They are troubled, they stagger as a drunkard, and all their wisdom is swallowed up. Then they cry (ekekraxen) to the Lord in their affliction, and he brings them out of their distresses. And he commands the storm, and it is calmed into a gentle breeze, and its waves are still. And they are glad, because they are quiet; and he guides them to their desired haven. Let them acknowledge to the Lord his mercies, and his wonderful works to the children of men.” Psalm 106:22-31 LXX

“[For the end, [a Psalm] of David, for alternate [strains].] Save me (soson me), O God; for the waters (hydata) have come in to my soul. I am stuck fast in deep mire, and there is no standing: I am come in to the depths of the sea (tes thalasses), and a storm has overwhelmed (katepontise) me… Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord of hosts (Kyrie kyrie), be ashamed on my account: let not them that seek thee, be ashamed on my account, O God of Israel… But I [will cry] to thee, O Lord (Kyrie), in my prayer; O God, it is a propitious time: in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation. Save me (soson me) from the mire, that I stick not [in it]: let me be delivered from them that hate me, and from the deep waters.” Psalm 68:1-3, 7, 14-15 LXX

Amazingly, not only do the Synoptic Gospels portray Christ as saving and being addressed by his disciples in the same way that YHWH is petitioned and delivers, they even quote Jesus as referring to himself as the “Kyrie, kyrie,” the very phraseology which the aforementioned Psalm attributes to the one true God!

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord (Kyrie, kyrie),’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord (Kyrie, kyrie), in Your name did we not prophesy, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name do many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’” Matthew 7:21-23 (LSB)

“Now why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord (Kyrie, kyrie),’ and do not do what I say?” Luke 6:46 (LSB)

It is, therefore, inarguable that the Synoptics have deliberately adopted the exclusive language which the OT scriptures ascribe to YHWH alone and applied it the Christ, and the reason for doing so is obvious. The Synoptic writers clearly intended to depict Jesus as the human appearance, the very incarnation of YHWH Almighty, while also personally distinguishing him from both the Father and the Holy Spirit.

FURTHER READING

The Lord Jesus – the Maker and Ruler of Creation

The Markan Jesus – The Physical Embodiment and Visible Appearance of Israel’s God

THE CHRISTIAN SHEMA

JESUS: THE ONE AND ONLY ADONAY YHWH

APOCRYPHA & CHRIST’S DEITY

The following articles are taken from Jimmy Akin’s website, which can be accessed here:

Questions About Jesus’ Genealogies

An Older Article on Jesus’ Genealogies

Taken from my book A Daily Defense:

Day 85: Descended from David How?

Challenge: Jesus’ genealogies contradict each other. Matthew has Jesus descended from David’s son Solomon (Matt. 1:6), while Luke has him descended from David’s son Nathan (Luke 3:31). Similarly, Matthew has him descended from Zerubbabel’s son Abiud (Matt. 1:13), while Luke has him descended from Zerubbabel’s son Rhesa (Luke 3:27).

Defense: Jesus was descended from David and Zerubbabel by more than one line.

Normally, a person has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. But this doubling pattern does not go back indefinitely.

Marriages usually occur within the same community (a village, region, tribe, or nation). People in a community tend to be related. Consequently, the number of ancestors is less than what the doubling pattern would predict. In a small community, an individual may occupy more than one slot in a family tree.

Suppose William has a son named Henry, who has descendants, and several generations later, one named Elizabeth is born. Suppose William also has a daughter named Adela, who also has descendants. Because of intermarriage in the community, Elizabeth is also one of Adela’s descendants. Genealogists would say Elizabeth is descended from William by the Henry “line” and the Adela “line.”

This describes the British royal family. Queen Elizabeth II descends from William the Conqueror (c. 1028-1087) by the line of King Henry I and the line of St. Adela of Normandy, both of whom were William’s children. In fact, Elizabeth II is descended from William by multiple lines (at least eight through Adela alone). William the Conqueror thus appears in multiple slots in Elizabeth II’s family tree.

The same was true for David and Zerubbabel concerning Jesus, who descended from David by both the Solomon and Nathan lines and from Zerubbabel by both the Abiud and Rhesa lines. This is not unexpected. David lived a millennium before Jesus. Matthew records twenty-seven intervening generations, so according to the doubling pattern, Jesus would have at least 67,108,864 ancestors in David’s generation.

There were not that many Israelites alive in David’s generation, so, since David was one of Jesus’ ancestors, David filled multiple slots in Jesus’ family tree, and Jesus was descended from David by multiple lines. The same is true of Zerubbabel, though to a lesser degree, since Zerubbabel lived only half a millennium before Jesus (for more, see Day 95).

Day 95: The Judgment of Jeconiah

Challenge: Jesus is disqualified from being Messiah since he descends from the last king of Judah, Jeconiah (Matt. 1:12). God judged Jeconiah so that “none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah” (Jer. 22:30).

Defense: There are multiple flaws with this argument. Here are several.

First, Jesus was not descended from David only by the line of Jeconiah. He was also descended through the line of Nathan (Luke 3:31; see Day 85). It may have been questions among some Jews about whether a descendant of only Jeconiah could be Messiah that prompted Jesus’ family to preserve the memory of the Nathan line. The presence of both genealogies in Scripture shows that, regardless where a Jew fell on the Jeconiah question, Jesus had a qualified lineage either way.

Second, the prophecy need mean no more than Jeconiah’s immediate sons wouldn’t be kings because the Babylonian Exile would go on for too long (cf. Jer. 22:25-28).

Third, one of Jeconiah’s grandsons—Zerubbabel—received ruling authority in Judah, being made its governor (Hag. 1:1). (On Zerubbabel’s lineage, see 1 Chron. 3:17-19; there may be a levirate marriage involved since Zerubbabel’s father is usually said to be Shealtiel, though here he is said to be son of Pediah; both were sons of Jeconiah, and thus Zerubbabel was his grandson).

Fourth, the language used concerning Zerubbabel suggests a reversal of God’s judgment. God told Jeconiah, though you “were the signet ring on my right hand, yet I would tear you off” (Jer. 22:24), but he told Zerubbabel he will “make you like a signet ring; for I have chosen you, says the Lord of hosts” (Hag. 2:23). The image of making one of Jeconiah’s descendants again like a signet ring suggests a restoration of the family to divine favor.

Fifth, multiple Jewish sources indicate Jeconiah (also called Jehoiachin) repented and the curse was lifted. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906 ed.) notes: “Jehoiachin’s sad experiences changed his nature entirely, and as he repented of the sins which he had committed as king he was pardoned by God, who revoked the decree to the effect that none of his descendants should ever become king” (s.v. “Jehoiachin”).

Day 106: Matthew’s Missing Generations

Challenge: Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus omits some generations and thus is wrong.

Defense: In Israelite genealogies, it was permitted to skip generations.

Hebrew and Aramaic don’t have terms for “grandfather,” “great-grandfather,” “grandson,” “great-grandson,” and so on. Any male ancestor was called a father (Hebrew, ’ab, Aramaic, ’ab, ’abba), and any male descendant was called a son (Hebrew, bēn, Aramaic, bar).

Thus, prophesying the birth of Jesus, Gabriel tells Mary, “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32). David lived a millennium before Jesus, yet he is called Jesus’ father. Similarly, both Jesus and Joseph are called “son of David” (Matt. 1:20, 9:27). This made it possible to skip generations in genealogies, whether they ran forward (“Joram was the father of Uzziah”) or backward (“Uzziah was the son of Joram”).

Richard Bauckham notes:

That a family descended from one of the sons of David had at least an oral genealogy must be considered certain. This does not, of course, mean that it would be a complete genealogy. Oral genealogies, like many of those in the Old Testament, regularly omit generations, since their function is not to preserve the memory of every name in the list but to link the family with an important ancestor who gives it its place in the community (Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, 341).

Matthew skips generations for literary purposes, grouping his genealogy in three sets of fourteen generations (Matt. 1:17). The reason may be to stress Jesus’ connection with David. In Hebrew and Aramaic, David (DVD) adds up to fourteen (D = 4, V = 6, D = 4).

Matthew would have expected his readers to recognize that the generations he skips are recorded in the Old Testament. In 1:8, he says Joram was the father of Uzziah (aka Azariah), but 1 Chronicles 3:11-12 shows three generations between the two. The missing names are Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah. These three figures were kings of Israel. Their stories are told between 2 Chronicles 22 and 25.

When Matthew skips three Jewish kings in the line of David—well known to the audience from the Old Testament Scriptures—he expects his readers to recognize the literary device he is using in the genealogy.

Day 162: His Father Was Who?

Challenge: Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus contradicts Luke’s. Matthew says Shealtiel’s father was Jeconiah, while Luke says it was Neri (Matt. 1:12; Luke 3:27). Similarly, Matthew says Joseph’s father was Jacob, while Luke says it was Heli  (Matt. 1:16; Luke 3:23).

Defense: There are multiple possible explanations, given the way Israelite genealogies worked.

Hebrew and Aramaic didn’t distinguish between fathers, grandfathers, and so on. All male ancestors were called “fathers” (see Day 106). Consequently, since one person can be descended from another by more than one line (see Day 85), both Jeconiah and Neri could have been Shealtiel’s “father” (male ancestor) if one genealogy skipped a generation. The same is true of Jacob and Heli with respect to Joseph.

Alternately, adoption (legal rather than biological descent) may have been involved. Shealtiel may have had a legal and a biological father. The same is true of Joseph. This is particularly relevant because of the levirite marriage custom, which required that if a man died childless, his brother was to marry the widow and father a son who was legally attributed to the line of the dead man (Deut. 25:5-6). The levir (Latin, “brother-in-law”) thus supplied a son for his deceased brother. Given the ancient mortality rate, this situation was common. It is not surprising if it occurred more than once in the millennium between David and Jesus in their family tree.

It may have happened with respect to Shealtiel, and we have early testimony that it did happen with respect to Joseph. Early Christian writer Julius Africanus (c. A.D. 160-240) reported a tradition from Jesus’ surviving relatives in his day regarding the fatherhood of Joseph.

According to Jesus’ family, Joseph’s grandfather Matthan (mentioned in Matthew) married a woman named Estha, who bore him a son named Jacob. After Matthan died, Estha married his close relative Melchi (mentioned in Luke) and bore him a son named Heli. Jacob (mentioned in Matthew) and Heli (mentioned in Luke) were thus half brothers. When Heli died childless, Jacob married his widow and fathered Joseph, who was biologically the son of Jacob but legally the son of Heli (see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1:6:7).

Regardless of which explanation is true, the fact that multiple explanations exist indicates that no contradiction has been shown.

The Genealogies of Christ

by Jimmy Akin

Since the gospels were first written, people have been puzzled by the two genealogies they give for Christ. The genealogy in Matthew 1 offers a different lineage than the one in Luke 3. This isn’t surprising since neither genealogy attempts to give a full family tree for Jesus, containing all his lines of ancestry. Each records only one line of ancestry.Even so, people are often perplexed by some of the differences between the two. The most obvious difference is that Matthew’s genealogy begins with Abraham and moves forward to Christ. Luke’s genealogy, on the other hand, begins with Christ and traces the line backward to Adam.   If we compensate for these factors and only look at the period where the two genealogies overlap, there are still differences. The most notable is that both genealogies trace Jesus’ lineage back to David, but through different sons. Matthew has Christ descending from David through Solomon, while Luke has him descending from David through a different son, Nathan.   This is not itself a puzzlement since David had more than one son, and a later individual can be descended from more than one of them. The question arises when the two lines meet up again. The Solomon line runs parallel to the Nathan line until the time of Shealtiel, when they intersect. In Matthew, Shealtiel is described as the son of Jechoniah, and in Luke his father is said to be Neri. The question arises: How can he have two fathers?   After Shealtiel, both genealogies state Christ was descended from Shealtiel’s son, Zerubbabel, who was governor of Israel after the Babylonian Exile. But then they diverge again. Matthew traces Christ’s lineage through Zerubbabel’s son Abiud, while Luke traces it through a different son, Rhesa. Again, there is no puzzlement since Zerubbabel simply had more than one son, and Christ was descended from both. The question again arises when the two lines converge, which they do on Jesus’ foster father, Joseph.   In Matthew, Joseph is said to be the son of Jacob, of the Abiud line, while in Luke Joseph is said to be the son of Heli, of the Rhesa line. So the question is: How can Joseph be said to have two fathers? Some have tried to deal with the issue by saying that Luke’s genealogy really doesn’t give Jesus’ lineage through Joseph at all, but through Mary. However, the text does not support that idea. Luke states that Joseph was the son of Heli, not that Mary was the daughter of Heli, and in any event, this does not account for the question of Shealtiel’s two fathers.   To explain that issue, one needs to know something about how ancient Jewish genealogies work. There are a number of differences that can account for this.   Ancient Jewish genealogies often skipped generations, in part because there were no terms for “grandson” and “grandfather.” Any male one was descended from was one’s “father,” regardless of how many generations back he was. Similarly, any male descended from you was your “son,” no matter how many generations down the line he was. This is why the Hebrews were called “the sons of Israel” hundreds of years after the original Israel (Jacob) died.   Potentially, this could explain why Shealtiel is said to have more than one father. In biblical genealogies, as soon as one moves more than one generation back, a person does have more than one father. Adoption, whether of a child or an adult, was also common and could affect which genealogical line one was ascribed to. For example, the faithful spy Caleb was biologically the son of a non-Jew named Jephunneh (Num. 32:12), but he was adopted into the tribe of Judah and ascribed to the line of Hezron (1 Chron. 2:18).   Adoption could take place even posthumously. The most striking example of that is what is known as the levirite marriage (from the Latin, levir = brother-in-law). If a man died childless, it was the duty of his brother to marry the widow and father a son on behalf of his brother. This son would then be posthumously “adopted” by the dead man and reckoned as his son in the family genealogy. Given how common death and infertility were in the ancient world, it would not be surprising to find several instances of levirate marriage in the thousand years between the time of David and the time of Christ.   Adoption is the most probable explanation of Shealtiel’s two fathers. Jeremiah had prophesied that Jechoniah’s (biological) descendants would never sit on the throne of Judah (Jer. 22:30). Thus the legal succession passed to the line of Nathan and Shealtiel, though biologically the son of Neri, was reckoned as Jechoniah’s son for purposes of the kingly line.   It appears that Shealtiel also died childless and his brother Pedaiah fulfilled the obligations of a brother and fathered Zerubbabel (1 Chron. 3:17-19 with Ezra 3:2, etc.).   This solves the first case of in the genealogy of a man seeming to have two fathers. The second occurs with Jesus’ foster father, Joseph.   In this case we have more direct information. The second century historian Julius Africanus, a native of Israel, records information given by Christ’s remaining family in his day. According to their family genealogy, Joseph’s grandfather Matthan (mentioned in Matthew) married a woman named Estha, who bore him a son named Jacob. After Matthan died, Estha married his close relative Melchi (mentioned in Luke) and bore him a son named Heli. Jacob and Heli were thus half-brothers.   Unfortunately, Heli died childless, and so Jacob married his widow and fathered Joseph, who was biologically the son of Jacob but legally the son of Heli (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1:7:6).

FURTHER READING

Jeconiah’s Curse Becomes Messiah’s Blessing!

I continue from where I previously left off: Daniel’s Son of Man: YHWH’s Angel? Pt. 2.

Before I proceed into disclosing the identity of the particular Angel of God that is not a created being and who, at the same time, is personally distinguished from God, I want to share the opinion of one critical scholar that argues for a somewhat similar opinion.

British Methodist preacher and author Margaret Barker has written that early Israelite religion and many first century Jews believed that YHWH was/is actually the son of God (el) or the Most High (elyon), and that he was the one who appeared as the Angel of the Lord, as is the God that often manifested in human form all throughout the OT. Barker also claims that this Angel manifests as the Messianic Davidic King, and that this is the viewpoint adopted by the NT authors:

The investigations range over a wide area, and cannot be in any sense comprehensive. What has become clear to me time and time again is that even over so wide an area, the evidence points consistently in one direction and indicates that pre-Christian Judaism was not monotheistic in the sense that we use that word. The roots of Christian trinitarian theology lie in pre-Christian Palestinian beliefs about the angels. There were many in first-century Palestine who still retained a world-view derived from the more ancient religion of Israel in which there was a High God and several Sons of God, one of whom was Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel. Yahweh, the Lord, could be manifested on earth in human form, as an angel or in the Davidic king. It was as a manifestation of Yahweh, the Son of God, that Jesus was acknowledged as Son of God, Messiah and Lord. (Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God [Westminster John Knox, Louisville, 1992], p. 3; bold emphasis mine)

Barker further writes that the first century AD writing 4 Ezra (also known as 2 Esdras) identifies Daniel’s Son of Man as this very same Angel of the Lord who also called the Son of the Most High:

The kingmaking ritual in Jerusalem has long been recognized as similar to the enthronement of Ba’al described in the Ugaritic texts, but when one compares these texts with the Old Testament material, a problem arises. Was the figure who corresponded to Ba’al in the Jerusalem ritual the Davidic king, or was it Yahweh? Or was it both, i.e. was the king thought to be divine? Is it possible that the Davidic king was seen as Yahweh, as implied by the Chronicler’s description of Solomon’s coronation? A key passage is the son of man vision in Dan. 7 which is thought to have had close links with Ps. 2. It may have been an imaginative elaboration of the psalm, or, as is more likely, it may have been a vision shaped by the memory of royal rituals to which the psalm alludes. If this latter is the case, then the son of man figure was the Davidic king. But Dan. 7 has also been shown to resemble closely the Ugaritic accounts of Ba’al himself ascending to El, to be installed as king and judge. ‘Behind the figure of the Son of man lies Yahwe and ultimately B a’al.’⁶ Israel must have had a divinity Yahweh who corresponded in some ways to Ba’al and was represented in Dan. 7 by the Man figure, who was enthroned. The theophanies in Deut. 33.2 -5, Hab. 3 and Zech. 14 were descriptions of this same installation of Yahweh as king and judge.

The vision in 2 Esd. 13, from the end of the first century AD, i.e. some two hundred and fifty years after the Daniel vision, is based on the same underlying tradition. Here the Man figure is described as a son of Elyon, i.e. as an angel. If he was a son of Elyon a tthe end of the first century, then presumably he was also divine in the Daniel text, and if so, who were the two divinities of the vision? Daniel, unfortunately, gives no recognizable names; there is the Ancient of Days, and there is one like a son of man. In the classic study of this vision by Emerton, it is assumed that the Ancient of Days was Yahweh, ‘The Ancient of Days must, in Maccabaean times, have been understood to be Yahwe’⁷ but this is not necessarily so. The deity in the Aramaic chapters of Daniel is named ‘IIIaya (Elyon), and this was the ancient name for the High God, which means that the unnamed angel/son of man figure was the Holy One, Yahweh. The son of man figure certainly resembled Yahweh. One explanation offered for this is that the old Yahweh figure had somehow been divided; the High God remained Yahweh, and the functions of the warrior angel were separated off and assigned to the archangel Michael.⁸ But if the High God had never been Yahweh, the vision in Daniel would record accurately the older traditions of Jerusalem. (Ibid., pp. 37-38; emphasis mine)

And:

Among references to an unnamed Great Angel must be included all those which mention a son of man. ‘Son of man’ may not in itself have been a significant phrase since it probably meant no more than ‘a human being’ or ‘a man’, but in the apocalypses a man always meant an angel (as in ‘the man Gabriel’, Dan. 9.21, or a ‘man’s hand’, Rev. 21.17) and so ‘son of man’ must also have meant an angel. In the son of man visions outside the New Testament (Dan. 7; 2 Esd. 2.42-8; 13.1-13; and The Similitudes of Enoch), the appearance of the figure is not described. We are told only that a stream of fire came from his mouth (2 Esd. 3.10) and he had ‘the appearance of a man, and his face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels’ (l Enoch 46.1). It is not until Revelation that John describes a son of man, and it becomes clear that this was not just a phrase for an ordinary human being. The son of man figure in Rev. 1.13-16 is the angel of fire and bronze, the same as the man in Ezek. 1.26-8. Since Dan. 7, the earliest known son of man text which uses that particular phrase, has already been seen to be a description of Israel’s second God, other son of man passages should be read in this light. Son of man, or man, was a way of describing an angelic being, the chief of whom was Yahweh, and so the New Testament passages which refer to the coming of the son of man in fact refer to the Day of the Lord (e.g. Matt. 24.27-31) which is just how the first Christians described it (I Thess. 5.2; see chapter 10). It is not necessary to speculate how the day of Yahweh expectations were transferred by the Christians to the Son of Man texts; Yahweh was the Man. (Ibid., p. 77; emphasis mine)

In light of the foregoing, I now cite from 2 Esdras to highlight the fact of the Danielic Son of Man being described as the Messianic Son of the Most High:  

⁴² I, Ezra, saw on Mount Zion a great multitude that I could not number, and they all were praising the Lord with songs. ⁴³ In their midst was a young man of great stature, taller than any of the others, and on the head of each of them he placed a crown, but he was more exalted than they. And I was held spellbound. ⁴⁴ Then I asked an angel, “Who are these, my lord?” ⁴⁵ He answered and said to me, “These are they who have put off mortal clothing and have put on the immortal and have confessed the name of God. Now they are being crowned and receive palms.” ⁴⁶ Then I said to the angel, “Who is that young man who is placing crowns on them and putting palms in their hands?” ⁴⁷ He answered and said to me, “He is the Son of God, whom they confessed in the world.” So I began to praise those who had stood valiantly for the name of the Lord. ⁴⁸ Then the angel said to me, “Go, tell my people how great and how many are the wonders of the Lord God that you have seen.” Chapter 2 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVUE)

After seven days I dreamed a dream in the night. ² And behold, a wind arose from the sea and stirred up all its waves. ³ As I kept looking the wind made something like the figure of a man come up out of the heart of the sea. And I saw that this man flew with the clouds of heaven, and wherever he turned his face to look, everything under his gaze trembled, 4 and whenever his voice issued from his mouth, all who heard his voice melted as wax melts when it feels the fire.

⁵ After this I looked and saw that an innumerable multitude of people were gathered together from the four winds of heaven to make war against the man who came up out of the sea. ⁶ And I looked and saw that he carved out for himself a great mountain and flew up on to it. ⁷ And I tried to see the region or place from which the mountain was carved, but I could not.

⁸ After this I looked and saw that all who had gathered together against him to wage war with him were filled with fear, yet they dared to fight. ⁹ When he saw the onrush of the approaching multitude, he neither lifted his hand nor held a spear or any weapon of war, ¹⁰ but I saw only how he sent forth from his mouth something like a stream of fire and from his lips a flaming breath and from his tongue he shot forth a storm of sparks. All these were mingled together, the stream of fire and the flaming breath and the great storm, ¹¹ and fell on the onrushing multitude that was prepared to fight and burned up all of them, so that suddenly nothing was seen of the innumerable multitude but only the dust of ashes and the smell of smoke. When I saw it, I was amazed.

¹² After this I saw the same man come down from the mountain and call to himself another multitude that was peaceable. ¹³ Then the forms of many people appeared to him, some of whom were joyful and some sorrowful; some of them were bound, and some were bringing others as offerings…

Interpretation

²⁵ “This is the interpretation of the vision: As for your seeing a man come up from the heart of the sea, ²⁶ this is he whom the Most High has been keeping for many ages, who will himself deliver his creation, and he will direct those who are left. ²⁷ And as for your seeing wind and fire and a storm coming out of his mouth ²⁸ and as for his not holding a spear or weapon of war, yet destroying the onrushing multitude that came to conquer him, this is the interpretation: ²⁹ The days are coming when the Most High will deliver those who are on the earth. ³⁰ And bewilderment of mind shall come over those who inhabit the earth. ³¹ They shall plan to make war against one another, city against city, place against place, people against people, and kingdom against kingdom. ³² When these things take place and the signs occur that I showed you before, then my Son will be revealed, whom you saw as a man coming up from the sea.

³³ “Then, when all the nations hear his voice, all the nations shall leave their own lands and the warfare that they have against one another, ³⁴ and an innumerable multitude shall be gathered together, as you saw, wishing to come and conquer him. ³⁵ But he shall stand on the top of Mount Zion. ³⁶ And Zion shall come and be made manifest to all people, prepared and built, as you saw the mountain carved out without hands. ³⁷ Then he, my Son, will reprove the assembled nations for their ungodliness (this was symbolized by the storm) ³⁸ and will reproach them to their face with their evil thoughts and the torments with which they are to be tortured (which were symbolized by the flames) and will destroy them without effort by means of the law (which was symbolized by the fire).

³⁹ “And as for your seeing him gather to himself another multitude that was peaceable, ⁴⁰ these are the nine tribes that were taken away from their own land into exile in the days of King Hoshea, whom Shalmaneser, king of the Assyrians, made captives; he took them across the river, and they were taken into another land. ⁴¹ But they formed this plan for themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the nations and go to a more distant region where no humans had ever lived, ⁴² so that there at least they might keep their statutes that they had not kept in their own land. ⁴³ And they went in by the narrow passages of the River Euphrates. ⁴⁴ For at that time the Most High performed signs for them and stopped the channels of the river until they had crossed over. ⁴⁵ Through that region there was a long way to go, a journey of a year and a half, and that country is called Arzareth.

⁴⁶ “Then they lived there until the last times, and now, when they are about to come again, ⁴⁷ the Most High will stop the channels of the river again, so that they may be able to cross over. Therefore you saw the multitude gathered together in peace. ⁴⁸ But those who are left of your people, who are found within my holy borders, shall be saved. ⁴⁹ Therefore when he destroys the multitude of the nations that are gathered together, he will defend the people who remain. ⁵⁰ And then he will show them very many wonders.”

⁵¹ I said, “O sovereign Lord, explain this to me: Why did I see the man coming up from the heart of the sea?”

⁵² He said to me, “Just as no one can explore or know what is in the depths of the sea, so no one on earth can see my Son or those who are with him, except in the time of his day. ⁵³ This is the interpretation of the dream that you saw. And you alone have been enlightened about this, ⁵⁴ because you have forsaken your own ways and have applied yourself to mine and have searched out my law, ⁵⁵ for you have devoted your life to wisdom and called understanding your mother. ⁵⁶ Therefore I have shown you these things, for there is a reward laid up with the Most High. For it will be that after three more days I will tell you other things and explain weighty and wondrous matters to you.”

⁵⁷ Then I got up and walked in the field, giving great glory and praise to the Most High for the wonders that he did from time to time ⁵⁸ and because he governs the times and whatever things come to pass in their seasons. And I stayed there three days. Chapter 13 NRSVUE

Clearly, the author has drawn on the traditions of Daniel in his depiction of the Man arising from the sea, whom God identifies his very own Son. Elsewhere, this figure is explicitly said to be the Messiah who appears like a lion:

³⁶ Then I heard a voice saying to me, “Look in front of you and consider what you see.” ³⁷ When I looked, I saw what seemed to be a lion roused from the forest, roaring, and I heard how it uttered a human voice to the eagle and spoke, saying, ³⁸ “Listen, and I will speak to you. The Most High says to you, ³⁹ ‘Are you not the one that remains of the four beasts that I had made to reign in my world, so that the end of my times might come through them? ⁴⁰ You, the fourth that has come, have conquered all the beasts that have gone before, and you have held sway over the world with great terror and over all the earth with grievous oppression, and for so long you have lived on the earth with deceit. ⁴¹ You have judged the earth but not with truth, ⁴² for you have oppressed the meek and injured the peaceable; you have hated those who tell the truth and have loved liars; you have destroyed the homes of those who brought forth fruit and have laid low the walls of those who did you no harm. ⁴³ Your insolence has come up before the Most High and your pride to the Mighty One. ⁴⁴ The Most High has looked at his times; now they have ended, and his ages have reached completion. ⁴⁵ Therefore you, eagle, will surely disappear, you and your terrifying wings, your most evil little wings, your malicious heads, your most evil talons, and your whole worthless body, ⁴⁶ so that the whole earth, freed from your violence, may be refreshed and relieved and may hope for the judgment and mercy of him who made it.’” Chapter 11 NRSVUE

While the lion was saying these words to the eagle, I looked ² and saw that the remaining head had disappeared. The two wings that had gone over to it rose up and set themselves up to reign, and their reign was brief and full of tumult. ³ When I looked again, they were already vanishing. The whole body of the eagle was burned, and the earth was exceedingly terrified…

³¹ “And as for the lion whom you saw rousing up out of the forest and roaring and speaking to the eagle and reproving him for his unrighteousness, and as for all his words that you have heard, ³² this is the Messiah whom the Most High has kept until the end of days, who will arise from the offspring of David and will come and speak with them. He will denounce them for their ungodliness and for their wickedness and will display before them their contemptuous dealings. ³³ For first he will bring them alive before his judgment seat, and when he has reproved them, then he will destroy them. ³⁴ But in mercy he will set free the remnant of my people, those who have been saved throughout my borders, and he will make them joyful until the end comes, the day of judgment, of which I spoke to you at the beginning. ³⁵ This is the dream that you saw, and this is its interpretation. ³⁶ And you alone were worthy to learn this secret of the Most High. ³⁷ Therefore write all these things that you have seen in a book, put it in a hidden place, ³⁸ and you shall teach them to the wise among your people, whose hearts you know are able to comprehend and keep these secrets. ³⁹ But as for you, wait here seven days more, so that you may be shown whatever it pleases the Most High to show you.” Then he left me. Chapter 12 NRSVUE

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the NT writings describe Jesus as resembling a Lion, as well as identifying him God’s Messiah, the Son of the Most High, and the Danielic Son of Man:

“‘He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ And Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I have no husband?’ And the angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.’” Luke 1:32-35 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

“And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped him; and crying out with a loud voice, he said, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’” Mark 5:6-7 RSVCE

“And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” Mark 13:26-27 RSVCE

“But he was silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said, ‘I am; and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’” Mark 14:61-62 RSVCE

“… Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden girdle round his breast; his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters; in his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.’” Revelation 1:7, 12-18 RSVCE

“Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Weep not; lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’” Revelation 5:5 RSVCE

“Then I looked, and lo, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand. And another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to him who sat upon the cloud, ‘Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.’ So he who sat upon the cloud swung his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.” Revelation 14:14-16 RSVCE

In the final installment I will focus on specific OT texts which refer to one particular divine Messenger whom the inspired prophets expressly call YHWH God.

FURTHER READING

Yahweh Son of the Most High! Pt. 1, Pt. 2

Yahweh Son of the Most High: Yahweh is the Most High!

EARLY CHURCH & DANIEL’S MESSIANISM

Daniel’s Son of Man as the Messiah

The Son of Man Rides the Clouds Pt. 1a, Pt. 1b, Pt. 2a, Pt. 2b

Appearances of Christ in Daniel

A Divine Messiah That Suffers and Reigns! Pt. 2

The following is taken from the monumental work titled The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, authored by Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, published by Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2024, Part 2: Like Father, Like Son: Jesus’ Divine Attributes, Chapter 9: Monotheism and the Divine Attributes, pp. 177-184.

In my estimation this is THE best and most comprehensive exposition and defense of the biblical basis for the Deity of Christ. Every serious Trinitarian Christian student of the Holy Bible, apologist, and/or theologian must have this book in the library.

LATTER-DAY SAINTS: MANY PERSONAGES WHO ARE GODS

The LDS Church teaches a doctrine of God that is at the other extreme from the position of progressive Christianity. Whereas progressive Christians deny that God is a personal being, Latter-day Saints believe in a plurality of divine beings who are “personages,” that is, anthropomorphic individuals. We gave a brief account earlier (pp. 56–57) of the development of LDS theology from Joseph Smith’s beginnings to the present. Joseph’s earliest revelations were in most respects monotheistic, but by the end of his life he was teaching explicitly that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were three Gods, that they progressed to become Gods, and that we are the Father’s literal spirit offspring with the potential to become divine beings like him. Although there are in the LDS doctrine of God many theological issues of interest and even relevance we could address, here we will focus on the LDS belief in a plurality of Gods and its distinction between “Elohim” the Father and “Jehovah” the Son as two different Gods in the Old Testament.

Plurality of Gods

In 1842, Joseph Smith published initial installments of the Book of Abraham, a supposedly inspired translation of a text that the Genesis patriarch Abraham had written on one of the Egyptian papyri that the LDS Church purchased in 1835. The papyri were authentically ancient Egyptian papyri (though two thousand, not four thousand, years old), but the Book of Abraham was not an authentic translation of the papyrus on which it was supposedly based. This fact became clear when fragments of the papyri resurfaced in the 1960s and were translated by both LDS and non-LDS scholars.³⁴ What interests us here is that Abraham 4–5 is a revision of Genesis 1–2. The base text of the revision is clearly the KJV, but the passage has been extensively edited to teach a polytheistic account of creation, as the following excerpts illustrate (emphases added):

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. (Gen. 1:1–3 KJV)

And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth. And the earth, after it was formed, was empty and desolate, because they had not formed anything but the earth; and darkness reigned upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of the Gods was brooding upon the face of the waters. And they (the Gods) said: Let there be light; and there was light. (Abr. 4:1–3)

The Book of Abraham changes “God” to “the Gods” not just in these verses but throughout Abraham 4–5. Notably, Genesis 1:26–27 is rewritten so that human beings are made in the image of the Gods: “So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them” (Abr. 4:27). In his final sermon, known as the Sermon in the Grove, Joseph attempted to prove this translation from the plural form of the Hebrew word ʾĕlōhîm.

I once asked a learned Jew, “If the Hebrew language compels us to render all words ending in heim in the plural, why not render the first Eloheim plural?” He replied, “That is the rule with few exceptions; but in this case it would ruin the Bible.” He acknowledged I was right. . . . The word Eloheim ought to be in the plural all the way through—Gods.³⁵

The LDS Church has had for a long time a contingent of scholars who know this is nonsense. More than a century ago, LDS apostle James Talmage, one of the LDS Church’s most influential intellectuals, commented regarding the word ʾĕlōhîm: “In form the word is a Hebrew plural noun; but it connotes the plurality of excellence or intensity, rather than distinctively of number.”³⁶ Yet the LDS Church stands by Joseph’s interpretation of the word ʾĕlōhîm, at least in some of its literature. In its Old Testament curriculum manual, for instance, they assert that contrary to the view of “modern scholars,” Joseph “indicated the significance of the plural form,” quoting the Sermon in the Grove.³⁷ There are many reasons why we know, beyond any reasonable doubt, that ʾĕlōhîm in Genesis 1 functions as a singular noun and should be translated “God.” For the sake of space, we will mention just three reasons.

1. Hebrew uses plural nouns for a variety of reasons other than to express a numerical plural. It does this, for example, with ʾādôn, the Hebrew word for “lord,” which often occurs in plural forms in reference to a king, such as David (1 Kings 1:43, 47), or in reference to Yahweh (e.g., Ps. 8:1, 9). Biblical scholars generally agree that the plural ʾĕlōhîm in reference to God is another example of this usage.

2. In virtually all cases where ʾĕlōhîm in context means “God,” the verbs, other nouns, pronouns, and adjectives used with it are singular in form, not plural.³⁸ The point here is easy to understand. If you read a sentence saying “Elohim is good,” you know that Elohim in this sentence must be singular because the verb is singular (“is”). The same thing applies to expressions like “Elohim our Father” or “Elohimsits on his throne.” We see this use of singular words in relation to ʾĕlōhîm right in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God [ʾĕlōhîm] created the heavens and the earth.” The verb “created” in this verse (bārāʾ) is singular, not plural. This pattern continues throughout Genesis 1–2 in the Hebrew text wherever the word ʾĕlōhîm occurs.

3. The Hebrew Bible refers to Yahweh numerous times as ʾĕlōhîm. Whenever it does so, the word ʾĕlōhîm must mean “God,” not “gods.” But this leads to the second problem in LDS theology we need to address.

Jehovah and Elohim as Two Gods

There was a reason why James Talmage over a century ago pointed out that the Hebrew word ʾĕlōhîm was singular in meaning. By that time, the LDS Church had settled on the convention of using “Elohim” as a name for God the Father, while using “Jehovah” as a name for the Son Jesus Christ. Thus, Talmage immediately explained, “Elohim, as understood and used in the restored Church of Jesus Christ, is the name-title of God the Eternal Father, whose firstborn Son in the spirit is Jehovah—the Only Begotten in the flesh, Jesus Christ.”³⁹ This was not merely a naming convention, however; in LDS theology, Elohim and Jehovah are two different Gods. Again, Joseph Smith explicitly taught that the Father and the Son are two different Gods (and that the Holy Ghost is a third God). His statement on the matter in his very last sermon continues to be quoted in LDS Church publications:

I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.⁴⁰

As we saw was the case with Joseph’s interpretation of the word ʾĕlōhîm, the LDS distinction between Elohim and Jehovah as two different Gods (which, as just mentioned, developed decades after Joseph’s death) has proved difficult for LDS scholars to correlate with the Bible. If Jehovah had a God over him who was his father, where in the Old Testament is this God who was superior to Yahweh? Joseph Fielding Smith, an influential apostle who led the LDS Church briefly toward the end of his life (1970–72), offered the following explanation that Latter-day Saints commonly accept to this day:

The trouble with this explanation is that if Jehovah really were a God lesser in rank and glory than his father Elohim, one would expect that in Jehovah’s revelations to the patriarchs and the prophets throughout the Old Testament he would have spoken frequently about that greater deity. Not only are there no such statements in the Old Testament, what we find instead is an astonishing wealth of statements to the contrary. In what follows, we will use “Jehovah” to represent the Hebrew YHWH (Yahweh, commonly translated “the Lord” in English Bibles) and “Elohim” to represent the Hebrew ʾĕlōhîm (commonly translated “God”).

First of all, the Hebrew Bible pervasively identifies Jehovah as Elohim. It does this in many ways. Most commonly, it does so by referring to “Jehovah your Elohim” well over four hundred times, as well as in related references with other pronouns (“our Elohim,” “my Elohim,” and so on). We also find the compound name “Jehovah Elohim” or “Jehovah the Elohim,” references to “Jehovah, Elohim of Israel,” “Jehovah, the Elohim of ” various human figures (Shem, the patriarchs, David, Elijah, etc.), “Jehovah, Elohim of hosts,” and “Jehovah, Elohim of heaven” (or “of heaven and earth”). Besides these references, there are at least ten statements explicitly stating that Jehovah is Elohim (Deut. 4:35, 39; Josh. 22:34; 1 Kings 8:60; 18:21, 37, 39 [bis]; 2 Kings 19:19, cf. 19:15; Ps. 100:3). Some of these texts even state that Jehovah alone is Elohim. Here we will quote from the ASV, which uses “Jehovah” for the divine name YHWH:

Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that Jehovah he is God [ʾĕlōhîm]; there is none else besides him…. Know therefore this day, and lay it to thy heart, that Jehovah he is God [ʾĕlōhîm] in heaven above and upon the earth beneath; there is none else. (Deut. 4:35, 39)…

that all the peoples of the earth may know that Jehovah, he is God; there is none else. (1 Kings 8:60)

O Jehovah, the God of Israel, that sittest above the cherubim, thou art the God [ʾĕlōhîm], even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast made heaven and earth. . . . Now therefore, O Jehovah our God, save thou us, I beseech thee, out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou Jehovah art God [ʾĕlōhîm] alone. (2 Kings 19:15, 19; cf. Isa. 37:16, 20)

We find additional statements to the same effect elsewhere (again, quoting the ASV):

Wherefore thou art great, O Jehovah God: for there is none like thee, neither is there any God [ʾĕlōhîm] besides thee. (2 Sam. 7:22; also 1 Chron. 17:20). I am Jehovah, and there is none else; besides me there is no God. (Isa. 45:5, cf. 45:14)

. . . who hath declared it of old? have not I, Jehovah? and there is no God [ʾĕlōhîm] else besides me, a just God and a Saviour; there is none besides me. (Isa. 45:21).

Conservatively, there are well over 850 statements in the Old Testament identifying Jehovah as Elohim in the various ways we have just catalogued, averaging almost one per chapter. Not only are there many such statements in the Hebrew Bible, but they are spread throughout it in thirty-four of its thirty-nine books. It would not at all be an overstatement to assert that the primary message of the Old Testament is that Jehovah is Elohim.

In the light of this evidence, the only recourse would seem to be to question the integrity of the Old Testament. Indeed, that is what some Latter-day Saints do. Here LDS apologists have found some help from a maverick Methodist scholar named Margaret Barker. According to Barker, in ancient Israelite religion during the period of the first Jerusalem temple (Solomon’s), “there was a High God and several Sons of God, one of whom was Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel. Yahweh, the Lord, could be manifested on earth in human form, as an angel or in the Davidic king.”⁴² The “High God” might be called El or Elohim (“God”) or El Elyon (“God Most High”), but he was a God superior to Yahweh. “The original temple tradition was that Yahweh, the Lord, was the Son of God Most High, and present on earth as the Messiah.”⁴³ Here we have a scholarly construction of the origins of Christology that apparently lines up with LDS theology: Elohim as the Most High God and as the father of a group of “sons” (whom Latter-day Saints claim were the preexistent spirits of human beings), one of whom was Jehovah, later known as Jesus Christ.

The early Christians, Barker argues, drew on the First Temple traditions of the ancient Israelites in their view of Jesus, rather than on the monotheistic tradition that came to dominate Judaism in the Second Temple period. That monotheistic tradition was primarily the work of the “Deuteronomists,” Jewish scribes around the time of the Babylonian exile and thereafter who produced the passages in Deuteronomy and Isaiah that Christians commonly cite in support of monotheism.⁴⁴ Kevin Christensen, the main LDS apologist who has used Barker’s work to defend LDS theology, comments: “The same passages in Isaiah and Deuteronomy that are often used as proof texts for the strict monotheism of the Old Testament turn out to be for Barker evidence for a shift in Israelite theology during the exile.”⁴⁵

A full critique of Barker’s theory is beyond the scope of this book, but we can explain rather simply why it does not work as a support for LDS theology. First, the problems for the view cannot be limited to a few passages in Isaiah and Deuteronomy. Over 850 statements in thirty-four of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament explicitly identify Jehovah as Elohim, and several books assert that Jehovah is the only Elohim (recall the texts we quoted above from Kings and Chronicles as well as Deuteronomy and Isaiah). Genesis and the Psalms also explicitly identify Jehovah as God Most High (El Elyon), the deity that Barker claims was the father of Jehovah and the other spirit sons: “Thou alone, whose name is Jehovah, art the Most High [ʿelyôn] over all the earth” (Ps. 83:18 ASV; see also Gen. 14:22; Pss. 7:17; 47:2; 97:9). All thirty-two occurrences of ʿelyôn in the Hebrew Bible as a title of deity are consistent with this identification of Jehovah as the God Most High. The one text that supposedly distinguishes Jehovah from Elohim or El Elyon is embedded, ironically, in Deuteronomy—in one of the most explicitly monotheistic passages in the Old Testament: When the Most High [ʿelyôn] gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s [YHWH] portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage. (Deut. 32:8–9)

When the Most High [ʿelyôn] gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s [YHWH] portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage. (Deut. 32:8–9)

This passage does not clearly distinguish Jehovah from Elyon; it makes perfect sense as saying, in Hebrew parallelism, that Jehovah the Most High allowed other nations to be dominated by “the gods” but reserved Israel (Jacob) for himself. In this same passage (the Song of Moses), Jehovah states:

“See now that I, even I, am he; And there is no god [ʾĕlōhîm] beside me.” (Deut. 32:39)

The theory that Elyon was a different deity than Jehovah entails that the “Deuteronomist” scribes skillfully edited out this idea from the entire Hebrew Bible, yet it somehow shows up in one statement in their signature book of Deuteronomy.46 Barker herself admits, “How such a ‘polytheistic’ piece came to be included in Deuteronomy, with its emphasis on monotheism, is a question we cannot answer.”⁴⁷

In effect, the LDS use of Barker’s theory turns the Old Testament upside down. The Old Testament consistently presents the monotheists as the good guys and the polytheists as the bad guys, the ones who corrupted Israel and who brought divine judgment on Israel. The LDS apologists claim that the polytheists were the good guys while the monotheists were the bad guys. Notice how different this theory is from Joseph Fielding Smith’s explanation for why it is so difficult to find a God above Yahweh in the Old Testament. Smith, assuming the general integrity of the Old Testament text, argued that after the fall Elohim the Father withdrew from contact with humanity and had his son Yahweh speak and act for him. Christensen claims that the Father was almost entirely erased from the Old Testament by apostate scribes. Neither theory holds up.

Finally, we should acknowledge the superficial appeal of the theory that Elohim and Jehovah are two different Gods for the LDS reading of the New Testament. As is well known, the New Testament authors most commonly use the title “God” (theos) for the Father and the title “Lord” (kyrios) for Jesus Christ. Since the Greek word theos is a common translation of the Hebrew ʾĕlōhîm while the Greek word kyrios is a common translation of YHWH, anyone who views the Father and the Son as two different deities will quite naturally infer that the Father is the deity called Elohim/God while Jesus Christ is the deity called Yahweh/Lord.

However, as we have seen, such an interpretation is at odds with the most fundamental teaching of the Old Testament, which is that Yahweh is Elohim. It is also at odds with the New Testament, which clearly accepts the identification of Yahweh as Elohim, at least in equivalent language in Greek. For example, Matthew, Mark, Luke–Acts, and Revelation all use the compound name “the Lord God” (Greek, kyrios ho theos) and related forms (“the Lord our God,” “the Lord your God”) as a designation of God (Matt. 4:7, 10; 22:37; Mark 12:29, 30; Luke 1:16, 32, 68; 4:8, 12; 10:27; 20:37; Acts 2:39; 3:22; Rev. 1:8; 4:8; 11:17; 15:3; 16:7; 18:8; 19:6; 21:22; 22:5, 6). This is a stock designation for God in the Septuagint, appearing over nine hundred times (translating both YHWH ʾĕlōhîm and ʾădōnāy YHWH). The New Testament also quotes Old Testament texts in which the titles kyrios (representing YHWH) and theos (representing ʾĕlōhîm) are used for the same referent. These include the famous Shema, the Old Testament affirmation of Jehovah as Elohim (Deut. 6:4) that became the Jewish “creed” (Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:29, 30; Luke 10:27).

We conclude that the New Testament is just as “monotheistic” as the Old Testament. The distinction between God the Father and Jesus Christ the Lord cannot be explained biblically as a distinction between two of several or many different gods. The traditional Christian doctrine that there is one God who made the world and who is unique in his divine attributes (affirmed also in Judaism and Islam) is therefore securely grounded in the teachings of Scripture. There is no one like God—a point made over and over in the Old Testament (Exod. 8:10; 9:14; 15:11; 1 Kings 8:23; 1 Chron. 17:20; Ps. 86:8; Isa. 40:18, 25; 44:7; 46:5, 9; Jer. 10:6–7; Mic. 7:18). And yet, as we will see, the New Testament claims that Christ possesses the fullness of that unique divine nature (Col. 2:9; Heb. 1:3; see also John 14:7–10; 2 Cor. 4:4).

34. The LDS Church made no official statement on the translation problem until almost fifty years later, in a 2014 article on its website entitled “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham,” at ChurchofJesusChrist.org (where one can also find the text of the Book of Abraham). The literature on the Book of Abraham, especially from LDS authors, is enormous. A representative introduction by a Latter-day Saint scholar is John Gee, An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU; Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2017). The best critical study is Robert K. Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition. P. JS 1–4 and the Hypocephalus of Sheshonq, with contributions by Marc Coenen, H. Michael Marquardt, and Christopher Woods (Salt Lake City: SmithPettit Foundation, 2011). Ritner, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago, also wrote “‘Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham’—A Response,” The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, 2014, answering the LDS Church’s website article. Ritner’s article is conveniently available along with other resources on the subject at https://mit.irr.org/category/book-of-abraham.

35. Smith, History of the Church, 6:475, 476.

36. James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, 6th ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1922 [orig. 1915]), 38. The book is currently on the LDS Church’s official website.

37. “Enrichment Section: Who Is the God of the Old Testament?” in Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis—2 Samuel: Religion 301, 3rd ed. (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2003), accessed online at ChurchofJesusChrist.org.

38. Genesis 20:13 (“And when God caused me to wander [hithʿû, plural verb]”) may be a rare exception (see also Gen. 35:7, “revealed”; 2 Sam. 7:23, “went”). The fact that these occurrences are rare and in theologically inauspicious contexts means one cannot use them to read a doctrine of plurality of Gods into the Bible.

39. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, 38; see also Joseph F. Smith et al., “The Father and the Son: A Doctrinal Exposition by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles,” Ensign, April 2002, reprinted from Improvement Era, August 1916, 934–42.

40. Smith, History of the Church, 6:474; quoted, e.g., in Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2007), 41–42; Chapter 47, “Doctrine and Covenants 121:11–46,” in Doctrine and Covenants: Student Manual: Religion 324 and 325 (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2017).

41. Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954–56), 1:27. LDS Church publications frequently quote this statement, e.g., “Moses 1:1–11,” in The Pearl of Great Price: Student Manual: Religion 327 (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2017). It is also quoted in Robert L. Millet, “The Ministry of the Father and the Son,” in The Book of Mormon: The Keystone Scripture, ed. Paul R. Cheesman (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1988), 44–72, accessed online at rsc.byu.edu.

42. Margaret Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 3, emphasis in original.

43. Margaret Barker, “Joseph Smith and Preexilic Israelite Religion,” BYU Studies Quarterly 44, no. 4 (2005): 79.

44. E.g., Barker, Great Angel, 28.

45. Kevin Christensen, “The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament,” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 16, no. 2 (June 2004): 69.

46. On Deuteronomy 32:8–9, see Michael S. Heiser, “Are Yahweh and El Distinct Deities in Deut. 32:8–9 and Psalm 82?” Hiphil 3 (2006); “You’ve Seen One Elohim, You’ve Seen Them All? A Critique of Mormonism’s Use of Psalm 82,” FARMS Review 19, no. 1 (2007): 233–37.

47. Barker, Great Angel, 6.

FURTHER READING

YHWH: THE ONLY TRUE ELOHIM

MORMON GOD VERSUS THE TRUE GOD

15 Eerie Similarities Between Islam & Mormonism

WHO IS THE ELOHIM OF MORMONISM?, PT. 2

THE MORMON SATAN & PREMORTALITY

THE BIBLICAL GOD VERSUS THE MORMON GODS, PT. 2, PT. 2B

JOSEPH SMITH THE FALSE PROPHET DEBATE

NOTES FOR MORMON DEBATE

Daniel’s Son of Man: YHWH’s Angel? Pt. 3