PAPIAS

Fragments of Papias

IV

As the elders who saw John the disciple of the Lord remembered that they had heard from him how the Lord taught in regard to those times, and said]: The days will come in which vines shall grow, having each ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in every one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and on every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, and every grape when pressed will give five-and-twenty metretes of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another shall cry out, ‘I am a better cluster, take me; bless the Lord through me.’ In like manner, [He said] that a grain of wheat would produce ten thousand ears, and that every ear would have ten thousand grains, and every grain would yield ten pounds of clear, pure, fine flour; and that apples, and seeds, and grass would produce in similar proportions; and that all animals, feeding then only on the productions of the earth, would become peaceable and harmonious, and be in perfect subjection to man. [Testimony is borne to these things in writing by Papias, an ancient man, who was a hearer of John and a friend of Polycarp, in the fourth of his books; for five books were composed by him. And he added, saying, Now these things are credible to believers. And Judas the traitor, says he, not believing, and asking, ‘How shall such growths be accomplished by the Lord.’ the Lord said, ‘They shall see who shall come to them.’ These, then, are the times mentioned by the prophet Isaiah: ‘And the wolf shall lie, down with the lamb,’ etc. Isaiah 11:6 ff..]

V

As the presbyters say, then those who are deemed worthy of an abode in heaven shall go there, others shall enjoy the delights of Paradise, and others shall possess the splendour of the city; for everywhere the Saviour will be seen, according as they shall be worthy who see Him. But that there is this distinction between the habitation of those who produce an hundred-fold, and that of those who produce sixty-fold, and that of those who produce thirty-fold; for the first will be taken up into the heavens, the second class will dwell in Paradise, and the last will inhabit the city; and that on this account the Lord said, In my Father’s house are many mansions: John 14:2 for all things belong to God, who supplies all with a suitable dwelling-place, even as His word says, that a share is given to all by the Father, according as each one is or shall be worthy. And this is the couch Matthew 22:10 in which they shall recline who feast, being invited to the wedding. The presbyters, the disciples of the apostles, say that this is the gradation and arrangement of those who are saved, and that they advance through steps of this nature; and that, moreover, they ascend through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father; and that in due time the Son will yield up His work to the Father, even as it is said by the apostle, For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 1 Corinthians 15:25-26 For in the times of the kingdom the just man who is on the earth shall forget to die. But when He says all things are put under Him, it is manifest that He is excepted which did put all things under Him. And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all. 1 Corinthians 15:27-28

IGNATIUS

Epistle to Polycarp

Chapter 1. Commendation and exhortation

Having obtained good proof that your mind is fixed in God as upon an immoveable rock, I loudly glorify [His name] that I have been thought worthy [to behold] your blameless face, which may I ever enjoy in God! I entreat you, by the grace with which you are clothed, to press forward in your course, and to exhort all that they may be saved. Maintain your position with all care, both in the flesh and spirit. Have a regard to preserve unity, than which nothing is better. Bear with all, even as the Lord does with you. Support all in love, as also you do. Give yourself to prayer without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 Implore additional understanding to what you already have. Be watchful, possessing a sleepless spirit. Speak to every man separately, as God enables you. Bear the infirmities of all, as being a perfect athlete [in the Christian life]: where the labour is great, the gain is all the more.

Chapter 2. Exhortations

If you love the good disciples, no thanks are due to you on that account; but rather seek by meekness to subdue the more troublesome. Every kind of wound is not healed with the same plaster. Mitigate violent attacks [of disease] by gentle applications. Be in all things wise as a serpent, and harmless as a dove. Matthew 10:16 For this purpose you are composed of both flesh and spirit, that you may deal tenderly with those [evils] that present themselves visibly before you. And as respects those that are not seen, pray that [God] would reveal them unto you, in order that you may be wanting in nothing, but may abound in every gift. The times call for you, as pilots do for the winds, and as one tossed with tempest seeks for the haven, so that both you [and those under your care] may attain to God. Be sober as an athlete of God: the prize set before you is immortality and eternal life, of which you are also persuaded. In all things may my soul be for yours, and my bonds also, which you have loved.

Chapter 3. Exhortations

Let not those who seem worthy of credit, but teach strange doctrines, 1 Timothy 1:3, 1 Timothy 6:3 fill you with apprehension. Stand firm, as does an anvil which is beaten. It is the part of a noble athlete to be wounded, and yet to conquer. And especially, we ought to bear all things for the sake of God, that He also may bear with us. Be ever becoming more zealous than what you are. Weigh carefully the times. Look for Him who is above all time, eternal and invisible, yet who became visible for our sakes; impalpable and impassible, yet who became passible on our account; and who in every kind of way suffered for our sakes.

Ignatius’s exhortation to be watchful and sober is a clear from reference to our Lord’s words in the Synoptic Gospels. Case in point:

“Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning: Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.” Mark 13:35-37 – Cf. Matthew 24:42-43, 25:13; Luke 21:36

Since Ignatius is writing around 107 AD, this means that he did not think for a moment that our Lord’s words refer to his coming in judgment against Jerusalem in 70 AD. Rather, Christ’s statements must be a reference to his second coming when he shall descend from heaven in his physical, glorified body. This is apparent from Ignatius’s explicit belief that the risen Lord still possessed a body flesh:

Chapter 3. Christ was possessed of a body after His resurrection

For I know that after His resurrection also He was still possessed of flesh, and I believe that He is so now. When, for instance, He came to those who were with Peter, He said to them, Lay hold, handle Me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit. And immediately they touched Him, and believed, being convinced both by His flesh and spirit. For this cause also they despised death, and were found its conquerors. And after his resurrection He ate and drank with them, as being possessed of flesh, although spiritually He was united to the Father. (Epistle to the Smyrnæans)

Chapter 7. Beware of false teachers

For some are in the habit of carrying about the name [of Jesus Christ] in wicked guile, while yet they practise things unworthy of God, whom you must flee as you would wild beasts. For they are ravening dogs, who bite secretly, against whom you must be on your guard, inasmuch as they are men who can scarcely be cured. There is one Physician who IS possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first passible and then impassible — even Jesus Christ our Lord. (Epistle to the Ephesians)

POLYCARP

Epistle to the Philippians (Polycarp)

Chapter 5. The duties of deacons, youths, and virgins

Knowing, then, that God is not mocked, Galatians 6:7 we ought to walk worthy of His commandment and glory. In like manner should the deacons be blameless before the face of His righteousness, as being the servants of God and Christ, and not of men. They must not be slanderers, double-tongued, 1 Timothy 3:8 or lovers of money, but temperate in all things, compassionate, industrious, walking according to the truth of the Lord, who was the servant Matthew 20:28 of all. If we please Him in this present world, we shall receive also the future world, according as He has promised to us that He will raise us again from the dead, and that if we live worthily of Him, we shall also reign together with Him, 2 Timothy 2:12 provided only we believe. In like manner, let the young men also be blameless in all things, being especially careful to preserve purity, and keeping themselves in, as with a bridle, from every kind of evil. For it is well that they should be cut off from the lusts that are in the world, since every lust wars against the spirit; 1 Peter 2:11 and neither fornicators, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, shall inherit the kingdom of God, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 nor those who do things inconsistent and unbecoming. Wherefore, it is needful to abstain from all these things, being subject to the presbyters and deacons, as unto God and Christ. The virgins also must walk in a blameless and pure conscience.

IRENAEUS

Against Heresies

Book IV, Chapter 22 

Christ did not come for the sake of the men of one age only, but for all who, living righteously and piously, had believed upon Him; and for those, too, who shall believe.

1. Now in the last days, when the fullness of the time of liberty had arrived, the Word Himself did by Himself wash away the filth of the daughters of Zion, Isaiah 4:4 when He washed the disciples’ feet with His own hands. John 13:5 For this is the end of the human race inheriting God; that as in the beginning, by means of our first [parents], we were all brought into bondage, by being made subject to death; so at last, by means of the New Man, all who from the beginning [were His] disciples, having been cleansed and washed from things pertaining to death, should come to the life of God. For He who washed the feet of the disciples sanctified the entire body, and rendered it clean. For this reason, too, He administered food to them in a recumbent posture, indicating that those who were lying in the earth were they to whom He came to impart life. As Jeremiah declares, The holy Lord remembered His dead Israel, who slept in the land of sepulture; and He descended to them to make known to them His salvation, that they might be saved. For this reason also were the eyes of the disciples weighed down when Christ’s passion was approaching; and when, in the first instance, the Lord found them sleeping, He let it pass — thus indicating the patience of God in regard to the state of slumber in which men lay; but coming the second time, He aroused them, and made them stand up, in token that His passion is the arousing of His sleeping disciples, on whose account He also descended into the lower parts of the earth, Ephesians 4:9 to behold with His eyes the state of those who were resting from their labours, in reference to whom He did also declare to the disciples: Many prophets and righteous men have desired to see and hear what you see and hear. Matthew 13:17

2. For it was not merely for those who believed on Him in the time of Tiberius Cæsar that Christ came, nor did the Father exercise His providence for the men only who are now alive, but for all men altogether, who from the beginning, according to their capacity, in their generation have both feared and loved God, and practised justice and piety towards their neighbours, and have earnestly desired to see Christ, and to hear His voice. Wherefore He shall, at His second coming, first rouse from their sleep all persons of this description, and shall raise them up, as well as the rest who shall be judged, and give them a place in His kingdom. For it is truly one God who directed the patriarchs towards His dispensations, and has justified the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith. Romans 3:30 For as in the first we were prefigured, so, on the other hand, are they represented in us, that is, in the Church, and receive the recompense for those things which they accomplished…

Chapter 33 

Whosoever confesses that one God is the author of both Testaments, and diligently reads the Scriptures in company with the presbyters of the Church, is a true spiritual disciple; and he will rightly understand and interpret all that the prophets have declared respecting Christ and the liberty of the New Testament.

1. A spiritual disciple of this sort truly receiving the Spirit of God, who was from the beginning, in all the dispensations of God, present with mankind, and announced things future, revealed things present, and narrated things past — [such a man] does indeed judge all men, but is himself judged by no man. For he judges the Gentiles, who serve the creature more than the Creator, Romans 1:21 and with a reprobate mind spend all their labour on vanity. And he also judges the Jews, who do not accept of the word of liberty, nor are willing to go forth free, although they have a Deliverer present [with them]; but they pretend, at a time unsuitable [for such conduct], to serve, [with observances] beyond [those required by] the law, God who stands in need of nothing, and do not recognise the advent of Christ, which He accomplished for the salvation of men, nor are willing to understand that all the prophets announced His two advents: the one, indeed, in which He became a man subject to stripes, and knowing what it is to bear infirmity, Isaiah 53:3 and sat upon the foal of an ass, Zechariah 9:9 and was a stone rejected by the builders, and was led as a sheep to the slaughter, Isaiah 53:7 and by the stretching forth of His hands destroyed Amalek; Exodus 17:11 while He gathered from the ends of the earth into His Father’s fold the children who were scattered abroad, Isaiah 11:12 and remembered His own dead ones who had formerly fallen asleep, and came down to them that He might deliver them: but the second in which He will come on the clouds, Daniel 7:13 bringing on the day which burns as a furnace, Malachi 4:1 and smiting the earth with the word of His mouth, Isaiah 11:4 and slaying the impious with the breath of His lips, and having a fan in His hands, and cleansing His floor, and gathering the wheat indeed into His barn, but burning the chaff with unquenchable fire. Matthew 3:12; Luke 3:17

Irenaeus wrote elsewhere that the antichrist prophesied by Daniel and Paul had yet to arrive.

Book V, Chapter 25

The fraud, pride, and tyrannical kingdom of Antichrist, as described by Daniel and Paul.

1. And not only by the particulars already mentioned, but also by means of the events which shall occur in the time of Antichrist is it shown that he, being an apostate and a robber, is anxious to be adored as God; and that, although a mere slave, he wishes himself to be proclaimed as a king. For he (Antichrist) being endued with all the power of the devil, shall come, not as a righteous king, nor as a legitimate king, [i.e., one] in subjection to God, but an impious, unjust, and lawless one; as an apostate, iniquitous and murderous; as a robber, concentrating in himself [all] satanic apostasy, and setting aside idols to persuade [men] that he himself is God, raising up himself as the only idol, having in himself the multifarious errors of the other idols. This he does, in order that they who do [now] worship the devil by means of many abominations, may serve himself by this one idol, of whom the apostle thus speaks in the second Epistle to the Thessalonians: Unless there shall come a failing away first, and the man of sin shall be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God. The apostle therefore clearly points out his apostasy, and that he is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped — that is, above every idol — for these are indeed so called by men, but are not [really] gods; and that he will endeavour in a tyrannical manner to set himself forth as God.

2. Moreover, he (the apostle) has also pointed out this which I have shown in many ways, that the temple in Jerusalem was made by the direction of the true God. For the apostle himself, speaking in his own person, distinctly called it the temple of God. Now I have shown in the third book, that no one is termed God by the apostles when speaking for themselves, except Him who truly is God, the Father of our Lord, by whose directions the temple which is at Jerusalem was constructed for those purposes which I have already mentioned; in which [temple] the enemy shall sit, endeavouring to show himself as Christ, as the Lord also declares: But when you shall see the abomination of desolation, which has been spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let him that reads understand), then let those who are in Judea flee into the mountains; and he who is upon the house-top, let him not come down to take anything out of his house: for there shall then be great hardship, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall be.

3. Daniel too, looking forward to the end of the last kingdom, i.e., the ten last kings, among whom the kingdom of those men shall be partitioned, and upon whom the son of perdition shall come, declares that ten horns shall spring from the beast, and that another little horn shall arise in the midst of them, and that three of the former shall be rooted up before his face. He says: And, behold, eyes were in this horn as the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things, and his look was more stout than his fellows. I was looking, and this horn made war against the saints, and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of days came and gave judgment to the saints of the most high God, and the time came, and the saints obtained the kingdom. Daniel 7:8, etc. Then, further on, in the interpretation of the vision, there was said to him: The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall excel all other kingdoms, and devour the whole earth, and tread it down, and cut it in pieces. And its ten horns are ten kings which shall arise; and after them shall arise another, who shall surpass in evil deeds all that were before him, and shall overthrow three kings; and he shall speak words against the most high God, and wear out the saints of the most high God, and shall purpose to change times and laws; and [everything] shall be given into his hand until a time of times and a half time, Daniel 7:23, etc. that is, for three years and six months, during which time, when he comes, he shall reign over the earth. Of whom also the Apostle Paul again, speaking in the second [Epistle] to the Thessalonians, and at the same time proclaiming the cause of his advent, thus says: And then shall the wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the spirit of His mouth, and destroy by the presence of His coming; whose coming [i.e., the wicked one’s] is after the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and portents of lies, and with all deceivableness of wickedness for those who perish; because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And therefore God will send them the working of error, that they may believe a lie; that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but gave consent to iniquity, 2 Thessalonians 2:8

4. The Lord also spoke as follows to those who did not believe in Him: I have come in my Father’s name, and you have not received Me: when another shall come in his own name, him you will receive, John 5:43 calling Antichrist the other, because he is alienated from the Lord. This is also the unjust judge, whom the Lord mentioned as one who feared not God, neither regarded man, Luke 18:2, etc. to whom the widow fled in her forgetfulness of God — that is, the earthly Jerusalem, — to be avenged of her adversary. Which also he shall do in the time of his kingdom: he shall remove his kingdom into that [city], and shall sit in the temple of God, leading astray those who worship him, as if he were Christ. To this purpose Daniel says again: And he shall desolate the holy place; and sin has been given for a sacrifice, and righteousness been cast away in the earth, and he has been active (fecit), and gone on prosperously. Daniel 8:12 And the angel Gabriel, when explaining his vision, states with regard to this person: And towards the end of their kingdom a king of a most fierce countenance shall arise, one understanding [dark] questions, and exceedingly powerful, full of wonders; and he shall corrupt, direct, influence (faciet), and put strong men down, the holy people likewise; and his yoke shall be directed as a wreath [round their neck]; deceit shall be in his hand, and he shall be lifted up in his heart: he shall also ruin many by deceit, and lead many to perdition, bruising them in his hand like eggs. Daniel 8:23, etc. And then he points out the time that his tyranny shall last, during which the saints shall be put to flight, they who offer a pure sacrifice unto God: And in the midst of the week, he says, the sacrifice and the libation shall be taken away, and the abomination of desolation [shall be brought] into the temple: even unto the consummation of the time shall the desolation be complete. Daniel 9:27 Now three years and six months constitute the half-week.

JUSTIN MARTYR

Dialogue with Trypho the Jew

Chapters 31-47

Chapter 31. If Christ’s power be now so great, how much greater at the second advent!

Justin: But if so great a power is shown to have followed and to be still following the dispensation of His suffering, how great shall that be which shall follow His glorious advent! For He shall come on the clouds as the Son of man, so Daniel foretold, and His angels shall come with Him. These are the words:

‘I beheld till the thrones were set; and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure wool. His throne was like a fiery flame, His wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him. Thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The books were opened, and the judgment was set. I beheld then the voice of the great words which the horn speaks: and the beast was beat down, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame. And the rest of the beasts were taken away from their dominion, and a period of life was given to the beasts until a season and time. I saw in the vision of the night, and, behold, one like the Son of man coming with the clouds of heaven; and He came to the Ancient of days, and stood before Him. And they who stood by brought Him near; and there were given Him power and kingly honour, and all nations of the earth by their families, and all glory, serve Him. And His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not be taken away; and His kingdom shall not be destroyed. And my spirit was chilled within my frame, and the visions of my head troubled me. I came near unto one of them that stood by, and inquired the precise meaning of all these things. In answer he speaks to me, and showed me the judgment of the matters: These great beasts are four kingdoms, which shall perish from the earth, and shall not receive dominion for ever, even for ever and ever. Then I wished to know exactly about the fourth beast, which destroyed all [the others] and was very terrible, its teeth of iron, and its nails of brass; which devoured, made waste, and stamped the residue with its feet: also about the ten horns upon its head, and of the one which came up, by means of which three of the former fell. And that horn had eyes, and a mouth speaking great things; and its countenance excelled the rest. And I beheld that horn waging war against the saints, and prevailing against them, until the Ancient of days came; and He gave judgment for the saints of the Most High. And the time came, and the saints of the Most High possessed the kingdom. And it was told me concerning the fourth beast: There shall be a fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall prevail over all these kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall destroy and make it thoroughly waste. And the ten horns are ten kings that shall arise; and one shall arise after them; and he shall surpass the first in evil deeds, and he shall subdue three kings, and he shall speak words against the Most High, and shall overthrow the rest of the saints of the Most High, and shall expect to change the seasons and the times. And it shall be delivered into his hands for a time, and times, and half a time. And the judgment sat, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom, and the power, and the great places of the kingdoms under the heavens, were given to the holy people of the Most High, to reign in an everlasting kingdom: and all powers shall be subject to Him, and shall obey Him. Hitherto is the end of the matter. I, Daniel, was possessed with a very great astonishment, and my speech was changed in me; yet I kept the matter in my heart.’ Daniel 7:9-28

Chapter 32. Trypho objecting that Christ is described as glorious by Daniel, Justin distinguishes two advents

Trypho: These and such like Scriptures, sir, compel us to wait for Him who, as Son of man, receives from the Ancient of days the everlasting kingdom. But this so-called Christ of yours was dishonourable and inglorious, so much so that the last curse contained in the law of God fell on him, for he was crucified.

Justin: If, sirs, it were not said by the Scriptures which I have already quoted, that His form was inglorious, and His generation not declared, and that for His death the rich would suffer death, and with His stripes we should be healed, and that He would be led away like a sheep; and if I had not explained that there would be two advents of His — one in which He was pierced by you; a second, when you shall know Him whom you have pierced, and your tribes shall mourn, each tribe by itself, the women apart, and the men apart — then I must have been speaking dubious and obscure things. But now, by means of the contents of those Scriptures esteemed holy and prophetic among you, I attempt to prove all [that I have adduced], in the hope that some one of you may be found to be of that remnant which has been left by the grace of the Lord of Sabaoth for the eternal salvation. In order, therefore, that the matter inquired into may be plainer to you, I will mention to you other words also spoken by the blessed David, from which you will perceive that the Lord is called the Christ by the Holy Spirit of prophecy; and that the Lord, the Father of all, has brought Him again from the earth, setting Him at His own right hand, until He makes His enemies His footstool; which indeed happens from the time that our Lord Jesus Christ ascended to heaven, after He rose again from the dead, the times now running on to their consummation; and he whom Daniel foretells would have dominion for a time, and times, and an half, is even already at the door, about to speak blasphemous and daring things against the Most High. But you, being ignorant of how long he will have dominion, hold another opinion. For you interpret the ‘time’ as being a hundred years. But if this is so, the man of sin must, at the shortest, reign three hundred and fifty years, in order that we may compute that which is said by the holy Daniel —’and times’— to be two times only. All this I have said to you in digression, in order that you at length may be persuaded of what has been declared against you by God, that you are foolish sons; and of this, ‘Therefore, behold, I will proceed to take away this people, and shall take them away; and I will strip the wise of their wisdom, and will hide the understanding of their prudent men.’ Isaiah 29:14 and may cease to deceive yourselves and those who hear you, and may learn of us, who have been taught wisdom by the grace of Christ. The words, then, which were spoken by David, are these:

The Lord said to My Lord, Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool. The Lord shall send the rod of Your strength out of Sion: rule also in the midst of Your enemies. With You shall be, in the day, the chief of Your power, in the beauties of Your saints. From the womb, before the morning star, have I begotten You. The Lord has sworn, and will not repent: You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at Your right hand: He has crushed kings in the day of His wrath: He shall judge among the heathen, He shall fill [with] the dead bodies. He shall drink of the brook in the way; therefore shall He lift up the head.’

Chapter 33. Psalm 110 is not spoken of Hezekiah. He proves that Christ was first humble, then shall be glorious

Justin: And I am not ignorant that you venture to expound this psalm as if it referred to king Hezekiah; but that you are mistaken, I shall prove to you from these very words immediately. ‘The Lord has sworn, and will not repent,’ it is said; and, ‘You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek,’ with what follows and precedes. Not even you will venture to object that Hezekiah was either a priest, or is the everlasting priest of God; but that this is spoken of our Jesus, these expressions show. But your ears are shut up, and your hearts are made dull. For by this statement, ‘The Lord has sworn, and will not repent: You are a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek,’ with an oath God has shown Him (on account of your unbelief) to be the High Priest after the order of Melchizedek; i.e., as Melchizedek was described by Moses as the priest of the Most High, and he was a priest of those who were in uncircumcision, and blessed the circumcised Abraham who brought him tithes, so God has shown that His everlasting Priest, called also by the Holy Spirit Lord, would be Priest of those in uncircumcision. Those too in circumcision who approach Him, that is, believing Him and seeking blessings from Him, He will both receive and bless. And that He shall be first humble as a man, and then exalted, these words at the end of the Psalm show: ‘He shall drink of the brook in the way,’ and then, ‘Therefore shall He lift up the head.’

Chapters 69-88

Chapter 69. The devil, since he emulates the truth, has invented fables about Bacchus, Hercules, and Æsculapius

Justin: Be well assured, then, Trypho, that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah’s days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by [Jupiter’s] intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that [the devil] has imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? And when they tell that Hercules was strong, and travelled over all the world, and was begotten by Jove of Alcmene, and ascended to heaven when he died, do I not perceive that the Scripture which speaks of Christ, ‘strong as a giant to run his race,’ has been in like manner imitated? And when he [the devil] brings forward Æsculapius as the raiser of the dead and healer of all diseases, may I not say that in this matter likewise he has imitated the prophecies about Christ? But since I have not quoted to you such Scripture as tells that Christ will do these things, I must necessarily remind you of one such: from which you can understand, how that to those destitute of a knowledge of God, I mean the Gentiles, who, ‘having eyes, saw not, and having a heart, understood not,’ worshipping the images of wood, [how even to them] Scripture prophesied that they would renounce these [vanities], and hope in this Christ. It is thus written:

Rejoice, thirsty wilderness: let the wilderness be glad, and blossom as the lily: the deserts of the Jordan shall both blossom and be glad: and the glory of Lebanon was given to it, and the honour of Carmel. And my people shall see the exaltation of the Lord, and the glory of God. Be strong, you careless hands and enfeebled knees. Be comforted, you faint in soul: be strong, fear not. Behold, our God gives, and will give, retributive judgment. He shall come and save us. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear. Then the lame shall leap as an hart, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be distinct: for water has broken forth in the wilderness, and a valley in the thirsty land; and the parched ground shall become pools, and a spring of water shall [rise up] in the thirsty land. Isaiah 35:1-7

The spring of living water which gushed forth from God in the land destitute of the knowledge of God, namely the land of the Gentiles, was this Christ, who also appeared in your nation, and healed those who were maimed, and deaf, and lame in body from their birth, causing them to leap, to hear, and to see, by His word. And having raised the dead, and causing them to live, by His deeds He compelled the men who lived at that time to recognise Him. But though they saw such works, they asserted it was magical art. For they dared to call Him a magician, and a deceiver of the people. Yet He wrought such works, and persuaded those who were [destined to] believe in Him; for even if any one be labouring under a defect of body, yet be an observer of the doctrines delivered by Him, He shall raise him up at His second advent perfectly sound, after He has made him immortal, and incorruptible, and free from grief…

Chapter 80. The opinion of Justin with regard to the reign of a thousand years. Several Catholics reject it

Trypho: I remarked to you sir, that you are very anxious to be safe in all respects, since you cling to the Scriptures. But tell me, do you really admit that this place, Jerusalem, shall be rebuilt; and do you expect your people to be gathered together, and made joyful with Christ and the patriarchs, and the prophets, both the men of our nation, and other proselytes who joined them before your Christ came? Or have you given way, and admitted this in order to have the appearance of worsting us in the controversies?

Justin: I am not so miserable a fellow, Trypho, as to say one thing and think another. I admitted to you formerly, that I and many others are of this opinion, and [believe] that such will take place, as you assuredly are aware; but, on the other hand, I signified to you that many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise. Moreover, I pointed out to you that some who are called Christians, but are godless, impious heretics, teach doctrines that are in every way blasphemous, atheistical, and foolish. But that you may know that I do not say this before you alone, I shall draw up a statement, so far as I can, of all the arguments which have passed between us; in which I shall record myself as admitting the very same things which I admit to you. For I choose to follow not men or men’s doctrines, but God and the doctrines [delivered] by Him. For if you have fallen in with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit this [truth], and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are Christians, even as one, if he would rightly consider it, would not admit that the Sadducees, or similar sects of Genistæ, Meristæ, Galilæans, Hellenists, Pharisees, Baptists, are Jews (do not hear me impatiently when I tell you what I think), but are [only] called Jews and children of Abraham, worshipping God with the lips, as God Himself declared, but the heart was far from Him. But I and others, who are RIGHT-MINDED Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged, [as] the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare.

Chapter 81. He endeavours to prove this opinion from Isaiah and the Apocalypse

Justin: For Isaiah spoke thus concerning this space of a thousand years:

For there shall be the new heaven and the new earth, and the former shall not be remembered, or come into their heart; but they shall find joy and gladness in it, which things I create. For, Behold, I make Jerusalem a rejoicing, and My people a joy; and I shall rejoice over Jerusalem, and be glad over My people. And the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, or the voice of crying. And there shall be no more there a person of immature years, or an old man who shall not fulfil his days. For the young man shall be an hundred years old; but the sinner who dies an hundred years old, he shall be accursed. And they shall build houses, and shall themselves inhabit them; and they shall plant vines, and shall themselves eat the produce of them, and drink the wine. They shall not build, and others inhabit; they shall not plant, and others eat. For according to the days of the tree of life shall be the days of my people; the works of their toil shall abound. Mine elect shall not toil fruitlessly, or beget children to be cursed; for they shall be a seed righteous and blessed by the Lord, and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, that before they call I will hear; while they are still speaking, I shall say, What is it? Then shall the wolves and the lambs feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent [shall eat] earth as bread. They shall not hurt or maltreat each other on the holy mountain, says the Lord.

Now we have understood that the expression used among these words, ‘According to the days of the tree [of life] shall be the days of my people; the works of their toil shall abound’ obscurely predicts a thousand years. For as Adam was told that in the day he ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years. We have perceived, moreover, that the expression, ‘The day of the Lord is as a thousand years,’ is connected with this subject. And further, there was a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied, by a revelation that was made to him, that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem; and that thereafter the general, and, in short, the eternal resurrection and judgment of all men would likewise take place. Just as our Lord also said, ‘They shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, but shall be equal to the angels, the children of the God of the resurrection.’ Luke 20:35f.

Chapters 109-124

Chapter 110. A portion of the prophecy already fulfilled in the Christians: the rest shall be fulfilled at the second advent

Justin: Now I am aware that your teachers, sirs, admit the whole of the words of this passage to refer to Christ; and I am likewise aware that they maintain He has not yet come; or if they say that He has come, they assert that it is not known who He is; but when He shall become manifest and glorious, then it shall be known who He is. And then, they say, the events mentioned in this passage shall happen, just as if there was no fruit as yet from the words of the prophecy. O unreasoning men! understanding not what has been proved by all these passages, that two advents of Christ have been announced: the one, in which He is set forth as suffering, inglorious, dishonoured, and crucified; but the other, in which He shall come from heaven with glory, when the man of apostasy, who speaks strange things against the Most High, shall venture to do unlawful deeds on the earth against us the Christians, who, having learned the true worship of God from the law, and the word which went forth from Jerusalem by means of the apostles of Jesus, have fled for safety to the God of Jacob and God of Israel; and we who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter, and every wickedness, have each through the whole earth changed our warlike weapons — our swords into ploughshares, and our spears into implements of tillage— and we cultivate piety, righteousness, philanthropy, faith, and hope, which we have from the Father Himself through Him who was crucified; and sitting each under his vine, i.e., each man possessing his own married wife. For you are aware that the prophetic word says, ‘And his wife shall be like a fruitful vine.’ Now it is evident that no one can terrify or subdue us who have believed in Jesus over all the world. For it is plain that, though beheaded, and crucified, and thrown to wild beasts, and chains, and fire, and all other kinds of torture, we do not give up our confession; but the more such things happen, the more do others and in larger numbers become faithful, and worshippers of God through the name of Jesus. For just as if one should cut away the fruit-bearing parts of a vine, it grows up again, and yields other branches flourishing and fruitful; even so the same thing happens with us. For the vine planted by God and Christ the Saviour is His people. But the rest of the prophecy shall be fulfilled at His second coming. For the expression, ‘He that is afflicted [and driven out],’ i.e., from the world, [implies] that, so far as you and all other men have it in your power, each Christian has been driven out not only from his own property, but even from the whole world; for you permit no Christian to live. But you say that the same fate has befallen your own nation. Now, if you have been cast out after defeat in battle, you have suffered such treatment justly indeed, as all the Scriptures bear witness; but we, though we have done no such [evil acts] after we knew the truth of God, are testified to by God, that, together with the most righteous, and only spotless and sinless Christ, we are taken away out of the earth. For Isaiah cries, ‘Behold how the righteous perishes, and no man lays it to heart; and righteous men are taken away, and no man considers it.’ Isaiah 57:1

Chapter 111. The two advents were signified by the two goats. Other figures of the first advent, in which the Gentiles are freed by the blood of Christ

Justin: And that it was declared by symbol, even in the time of Moses, that there would be two advents of this Christ, as I have mentioned previously, [is manifest] from the symbol of the goats presented for sacrifice during the fast. And again, by what Moses and Joshua did, the same thing was symbolically announced and told beforehand. For the one of them, stretching out his hands, remained till evening on the hill, his hands being supported; and this reveals a type of no other thing than of the cross: and the other, whose name was altered to Jesus (Joshua), led the fight, and Israel conquered. Now this took place in the case of both those holy men and prophets of God, that you may perceive how one of them could not bear up both the mysteries: I mean, the type of the cross and the type of the name. For this is, was, and shall be the strength of Him alone, whose name every power dreads, being very much tormented because they shall be destroyed by Him. Therefore our suffering and crucified Christ was not cursed by the law, but made it manifest that He alone would save those who do not depart from His faith. And the blood of the passover, sprinkled on each man’s door-posts and lintel, delivered those who were saved in Egypt, when the first-born of the Egyptians were destroyed. For the passover was Christ, who was afterwards sacrificed, as also Isaiah said, ‘He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.’ Isaiah 53:7 And it is written, that on the day of the passover you seized Him, and that also during the passover you crucified Him. And as the blood of the passover saved those who were in Egypt, so also the blood of Christ will deliver from death those who have believed. Would God, then, have been deceived if this sign had not been above the doors? I do not say that; but I affirm that He announced beforehand the future salvation for the human race through the blood of Christ. For the sign of the scarlet thread, which the spies, sent to Jericho by Joshua, son of Nave (Nun), gave to Rahab the harlot, telling her to bind it to the window through which she let them down to escape from their enemies, also manifested the symbol of the blood of Christ, by which those who were at one time harlots and unrighteous persons out of all nations are saved, receiving remission of sins, and continuing no longer in sin.

FURTHER READING

THE EARLY CHURCH ON CHRIST’S THOUSAND YEAR REIGN

Brian Crawford

Psalm 22:1, 16–18, English Standard Version

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? … For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet—I can count all my bones—they star and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”

כָּאֲרִ֗י יָדַי וְרַגְלָי

 Leningrad Codex, Psalm 22:16 [17]

כארו ידיה̇ ורגלי

Nahal Hever 5/6HevPsalms, Psalm 22:16 [17]

What’s in a Word?

In the sixteenth century, Christian publisher Daniel Bomberg was commissioned to publish the first Mikraot Gedolot (Rabbinic Bible) using the newly invented printing press. Reportedly, as he was preparing the proofs for Psalm 22:16 (v. 17 in Jewish Bibles),^[1] one of his Jewish proofreaders drew his attention to a single word: כארו (ka’aru). This word would not do, the Jewish man told Bomberg. If the word were not changed to כארי (ka’ari), “no Jew would buy copies of his Hebrew Bible.”^[2] There is only one letter in question between the two options: the final Hebrew letter should be either a ו (vav) or a י (yud). One might not think that a single Hebrew letter would be such cause for concern, but in this case, the proofreader’s perception of the Jewish community was likely correct. The inclusion of the vav would make the Psalm teach something remarkably similar to the crucifixion of Jesus. Bomberg took the advice, and Jewish publishers have retained the word כארי (ka’ari) ever since.

By no means, however, has the debate on the word been settled, even to this day. In their recent commentary on Psalm 22:16, biblical scholars Rolf Jacobson and Beth Tanner write, “[This] line may be one of the most debated in all of Scripture.”^[3] They count more than ten monographs and multiple scholarly journal articles that attempt to explain how one should understand the verse. For example, from 1997 onwards, there has been a flurry of articles published in the Journal of Biblical Literature with punning titles about the guesswork involved in solving the verse’s quandaries.^[4]

As one might also guess, the driving force behind this controversy often involves a religious debate relating to belief in Jesus. Christians have often supported a translation of “they pierced my hands and feet,” whereas Jews have supported readings relating to a lion.^[5] Over the history of this debate, each side has fallen into the unhelpful trap of accusing the other side of willful mistranslation, tampering, and conspiracy over this verse—accusations which we find to be speculative bias and harmful to Jewish and Christian relationships.

A selection of various Jewish and Christian translations of the second half of the verse illustrates the disagreement:

Jewish translations:

1.      JPS (1917): “like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet.”^[6]

2.      NJPS (1985): “like lions [they maul] my hands and feet.”^[7]

3.      Stone (2013): “Like the [prey of a] lion are my hands and my feet.”^[8]

Christian translations:

1.      NASB (1995): “They pierced my hands and my feet.”^[9]

2.      ESV (2016): “They have pierced my hands and feet.”^[10]

3.      NIV (2011): “They pierce my hands and my feet.”^[11]

4.      NAB (2010): “They have pierced my hands and my feet.”^[12]

The Jewish translations are united in their understanding of a lion being present in the verse, but they differ on the verb. Christian translations have no lion but rather the verb “pierce,” and their translations are all alike. These two options (like a lion/they pierced) are directly tied to whether the Hebrew word underlying the translation has a vav or a yud as the final letter. Even these two translation options might seem to be much ado about nothing, if it were not for the history of Christian usage of this verse in conversation with Jewish people.

Psalm 22:16 and the Pierced Messiah

Psalm 22:16 is never quoted, mentioned, or alluded to in the New Testament. Although the verse frequently shows up in contemporary Christian lists of Messianic prophecies, the New Testament never directly cites Psalm 22:16 as a prophecy about the Messiah. The New Testament’s omission of the verse means there is no controversy or danger for the New Testament’s credibility if the disputed word is translated as “like a lion” rather than “pierced.” Nothing in the New Testament hangs on the verse, unlike passages such as Isaiah 53 or Psalm 110:1, which are quoted repeatedly by Jesus’ followers as prophecies fulfilled by him.

Despite the omission of the verse from the New Testament, it understandable why this line in the Psalm became so attached to Jesus. While Psalm 22:16 is not quoted in the New Testament, the following verse (v. 18[17])^[13] is quoted or alluded to during the crucifixion narratives (Matt. 27:35, Mark 15:24, Luke 23:34, John 19:24), and Jesus himself cried out the opening line of the Psalm as he was dying on the cross (Matt. 27:46, Mark 15:34).^[14] Moreover, the chief priests spoke the words of Psalm 22:8 when they mocked Jesus during the crucifixion (Matt. 27:43).^[15] The entirety of Psalm 22 appeared to be at the forefront of the Gospel writers’ minds as they chronicled the crucifixion.

Reflecting on these New Testament interpretations of Psalm 22, early Gentile followers of Jesus began reading the entire Psalm in light of Jesus’ crucifixion. Rather than a direct prophecy, the Psalm was interpreted as a patterned foreshadowing, where everything that David experienced in the Psalm would be repeated and exceeded by the Son of David, Jesus the Messiah. As Gentile followers of Jesus, these readers were not reading the Hebrew text of Psalm 22, but rather the Greek Septuagint (LXX) version of the Psalm, which was translated by Jewish people at least two centuries before the crucifixion. As they read, their eyes became transfixed on the following phrase:

ὤρυξαν χεῖράς μου καὶ πόδας^[16]

English: They pierced/dug through my hands and feet.

The violence of crucifixion was unmistakable in this phrase, these early Gentile followers of Jesus reasoned. They wondered how could this not be a foreshadowing prophecy of Jesus’ brutal death? Or, how could this not be primary evidence that Jesus was the Son of David, the one who repeated the events of David’s life and brought them to completion?

Already by the second century CE, Gentile Christian authors like Justin,^[17] Tertullian,^[18] Irenaeus,^[19] and Barnabas^[20] were citing Psalm 22:16 as primary evidence for the Messiahship of Jesus. Moreover, these early authors often quoted the verse when addressing reasons why the Jewish people should accept Jesus as the Messiah of Israel. The verse was often paired with Zechariah 12:10, in which God speaks about being pierced by Israel on some occasion. This early interpretive tradition eventually became the standard Christian reading of Psalm 22:16, a tradition that holds to this day.

In sum, the translation, “pierced,” has been irrevocably attached to a Christian understanding of the verse, and the translation, “like a lion,” has often been seen as the Jewish understanding of the verse. Any Jewish Bible, like Bomberg’s, that would print anything approaching the Christian understanding would likely not sell many copies to Jewish readers.

Messianic Jews, however, would beg to differ with the current status quo. As Jews who believe in Yeshua, they reject the dichotomy between “Christian” and “Jewish” readings of the verse.^[21] The standard of truth on the verse should not be determined by one’s religious community, but rather by the evidence of the manuscripts of Psalm 22 themselves. Thus, when the Messianic Jewish Tree of Life Bible translates the verse, it reads, “They pierced my hands and my feet,” with a footnote for “or, is like a lion.”^[22] This solution prefers the reading of “pierced” while also giving honor to the Masoretic tradition in the footnote.

It is unfortunate that there is a Christian/Jewish divide on this translational question, because the most likely and accurate answer—כארו, ka’aru, “pierced”—may be traced to the manuscript evidence itself. For the remainder of this article, we will investigate the manuscripts in question, thereby defusing any accusation that “pierced” is a mistranslation or Christian invention.^[23] If David really intended “pierced” in his Psalm, and God intended David’s life to be a foreshadowing of Messiah, then Psalm 22:16 may be a powerful indicator of Yeshua as the Messiah.

The Numerous Masoretic Hebrew Manuscripts of Psalm 22

Before we can begin with our investigation on Psalm 22:16, we need to get one thing out of the way: there is no one Hebrew text or even Masoretic text to consult for the Psalm.

Many Hebrew Bibles, such as ArtScroll’s Stone Edition, which is popular in Orthodox circles, simply reproduce the Leningrad Codex, the best and most reliable complete Hebrew manuscript we have of the Tanakh. They do not let the readers know about alternative manuscripts that have different Hebrew readings. It may be a surprise to some that there are different manuscripts with variant readings for the Psalm. We would encourage such readers to consider our Textual Criticism 101 article to orient themselves with the process of investigating the Hebrew manuscript tradition.

Although the Leningrad Codex is our most reliable Hebrew manuscript, it is problematic to treat it as free from error. There are many other Hebrew manuscripts—also faithfully and meticulously copied by Jewish scribes—that contain consonantal differences when compared with the Leningrad Codex.

When scholars want to determine whether there are textual differences for any particular verse in the Tanakh, they primarily consult two sources: Eighteenth century textual scholar Benjamin Kennicott’s collation of textual variants,^[24] and the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS).^[25] The BHS prints the standard Leningrad Codex Hebrew and adds footnotes to words that have different spellings or renderings in other Hebrew manuscripts. For Psalm 22:16[17], the BHS lists alternate readings for “like a lion.” The footnote for the word כָּאֲרִי (ka’ari, “like a lion”) reads:

pc Mss Edd כארוּ, 2 Mss Edd כָּרוּ cf 𝔊(𝔖) ὤρυξαν, α´ ἐπέδησαν, σ´ ὡς ζητοῦντες δῆσαι^[26]

If that made no sense to you, have no fear. Welcome to the cryptic world of textual criticism, where reading a sentence is a multilingual treasure hunt of translations and acronyms. This cryptic line may be understood to mean,

Although most Masoretic manuscripts have כָּאֲרִי (ka’ari), between 3–10 Hebrew manuscripts read כארוּ (ka’aru) and two read כָּרוּ (karu), and one should also consult the ancient Greek Septuagint, the Syriac, Aquila, and Symmachus translations as well.

While it is true that most Hebrew manuscripts have “like a lion,” there are a few that do not. And those few—with the words כארוּ (ka’aru) or כָּרוּ (karu)—each mean “pierced” or “to dig out.”^[27] Perhaps it is now clear why no one should be accorded credibility when they claim that “the Hebrew says ka’ari.” That is an overstatement of the manuscript evidence for “like a lion.”

In addition, it is important that the most recent edition of BHS was published in 1997. It is missing one of the most important ancient Hebrew versions of Psalm 22, which was published for the first time after the BHS went to print.^[28]

Evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Earliest Hebrew Manuscript for Psalm 22

In the late 1990s, a series of fragments from the Nahal Hever caves were published. These caves are in the mountains on the west side of the Dead Sea, and they may have been produced by the same community as the famous scrolls found in Qumran. The scrolls date from the mid-first century CE, meaning that they predate the Leningrad Codex and other medieval Hebrew manuscripts by nearly a millennium. One of the fragments, named “5/6HevPsalms,” contains Hebrew text for Psalm 22:16. A facsimile provided by the Leon Levy Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Library is below, with our notes added:

Figure 1 – 5/6HevPsalms, Plate 891, M42.190, The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive/image/B-280844

This fragment may be badly faded (especially in the original facsimile provided on the official Dead Sea Scrolls site), but imaging software brings out the letters sufficiently. The result is that the text in this ancient scroll does not have כארי (ka’ari), but כארו (ka’aru).  The last letter is definitively a vav, and not a yud. It does not say “like a lion” but rather, “they pierced/dug out.”

In 1999, the authors of The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, an English translation of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, were among the first to publish the ramifications of this find:

Psalm 22 is a favorite among Christians since it is often linked in the New Testament with the suffering and death of Jesus. A well-known and controversial reading is found in verse 16, where the Masoretic Text reads “Like a lion are my hands and feet,” whereas the Septuagint has “They have pierced my hands and feet.” Among the scrolls the reading in question is found only in the Psalms scroll found at Naḥal Ḥever (abbreviated 5/6ḤevPs), which reads “They have pierced my hands and my feet”!^[29]

In sum, this nearly 2,000-year old Hebrew manuscript—the oldest available for Psalm 22—produced before followers of Jesus ever could tamper with the text, clearly has a verb that matches closely with the sense of one’s hands and feet being violently pierced. This text also matches the Hebrew found in several much later medieval Hebrew manuscripts. Based on the Hebrew manuscript evidence alone—outside of any Jewish or Christian messianic debates—there is good reason to support the word “pierced.”

Additional Linguistic Reasons to Reject “Like a Lion”

In our discussions above, we focused on the evidence for the consonantal Hebrew text of Psalm 22:16. This evidence may be reasonable enough on its own to reject the “like a lion” translation. However, there are additional reasons, beyond mere manuscript evidence, that provide support for accepting “pierced” instead.

The Comprehension Problem with “Like a Lion”

First, the Hebrew ka’ari (כָּאֲרִי) in contemporary Hebrew Bibles, derived from the Leningrad Codex, does not make any sense. A literal, wooden, no-added-words translation of the key phrase with ka’ari is:

כָּאֲרִ֗י יָדַי וְרַגְלָי

“Like a lion my hands and my feet”

There is no verb in the phrase, leading to confusion. Hebrew prose often implies the English verb “to be” (is/are), so one could suppose that this phrase should be supplied a missing “to be” verb:

“Like a lion [are] my hands and my feet”

This addition solves the verb problem, but it does not assist the reader much with comprehension. There is some comparison between a lion and hands and feet, but this comparison is not at all clear. As it stands, the Masoretic majority reading with ka’ari is unintelligible. Multiple scholars have pointed this out: “This yields little sense for the rest of the line as there is no verb.”^[30] “It remains harsh and drawling so far as the language is concerned.”^[31] The text includes an “unorthodox use of grammar and syntax.”^[32] The confusion over the meaning of the phrase is reflected in various Jewish translations, which solve the problem by adding extra words. The previous Jewish translations given above are now repeated, but with the added non-Masoretic words in red:

1.      JPS (1917): “like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet.”

2.      NJPS (1985): “like lions [they maul] my hands and feet.”

3.      Stone (2013): “Like the [prey of a] lion are my hands and my feet.”

The JPS added the verb “are” and a preposition of location, “at,” which has an unclear signification itself. The NJPS brings out its verbal idea clearly with “they maul.” The Stone Edition adds a new subject, “prey,” resulting in a comparison between “prey” and “my hands and my feet” rather than with a lion. These added words solve the intelligibility problem, but they are not actually in any Hebrew manuscripts. Although the idea of a lion in this verse matches the presence of animals in other verses of the Psalm (worm, bulls, lion (vv. 13, 21), dogs, oxen), it is implausible that this benefit outweighs the cost of a phrase with no verb and no clear meaning behind the comparison being made.

Each of the solutions in the modern Jewish translations accept an incomprehensible Hebrew phrase as the standard and are thereby forced to fix the unintelligibility with their own creative solutions, none of which agree. A better solution, based on the Hebrew manuscript tradition, is to reject the “like a lion” reading because it is so incomprehensible.

Ancient Versions of the Line Have Verbs and No Lion

The word in the Leningrad Codex, כָּאֲרִי (ka’ari), is composed of a comparative prefix (כָּ) with a singular noun (אֲרִי). The resulting translation is “like a lion.” This grammatical construction (prefix + noun) is an outlier among all ancient versions of the verse, with the exception of Targum Psalms. Instead, the ancient translations of this line, whether produced by Jewish or Christian translators, understood the word in question to be a plural verb.^[33] For example:

·        Septuagint (LXX), third century BCE, Jewish: “They pierced/dug out (ὤρυξαν^[34]) my hands and my feet.”

·        Aquila’s first translation, second century CE, Jewish: “They put to shame (ᾔσχυναν^[35]) my hands and feet.”

·        Aquila’s second translation, second century CE, Jewish: “They bound (ἐπέδησαν^[36]) my hands and feet.”

·        Symmachus’ translation, second century CE, Jewish: “like those who seek to bind (ὡς ζητοῦντες δῆσαι) my hands and feet”

·        Jerome’s translation, fifth century CE, Christian: “They have dug (foderunt^[37]) my hands and my feet.”

Although these translations vary in their meaning, each has a plural verb in place of “like a lion.” None of them include any idea of a lion in their translation, meaning that they did not see ka’ari in their Hebrew manuscripts as they translated. Only one ancient translation, Targum Psalms, included a lion, but it included a plural verb as well:

·        Targum Psalms, unknown dating, third century CE?, Jewish: “They bite my hands and feet like a lion.”^[38] (נכתין היך כאריא אידי ורגלי)^[39]

Apparently, the Hebrew manuscript tradition during these early centuries included a plural verb (“they bite”), but at some point, the plural verb was supplanted by ka’ari. The Greek and Latin translations are witnesses to the early verbal tradition, and Targum Psalms is representative of a transitional phase where the translator attempted to combine both a verbal and noun-based translation. By the time of the Masoretic period, the noun (כָּאֲרִי, ka’ari) had supplanted the verbal tradition as the standard Jewish understanding of the verse. Even so, several Hebrew manuscripts with verbal forms (כארוּ or כָּרוּ) remained in use.

Two of the translations, Aquila’s second version, and Symmachus, included the idea of the hands and feet being “bound.” Scholars have pointed out that this translation may also be explained if the Hebrew behind these translations was כארוּ (ka’aru). If Aquila and Symmachus had the Arabic cognate of kwr in mind, it would explain their translations, since the Arabic word means “to bind.”^[40] Old Testament scholar Brent Strawn summarizes, “The minimum amount of change to the [Masoretic Text] if one emends כארי to כארו and relates the latter to Arabic kwr, and various other indicators, ‘they bind’ might have the interpretive edge in making sense of Ps 22:17b as it now stands.”^[41] This is a plausible option, but it is dependent upon using an Arabic cognate instead of understanding the word through Hebrew. We find that to be helpful in explaining Aquila and Symmachus’ translations, but less than ideal to explain David’s original meaning in Hebrew.

It is very unlikely that the original Hebrew word penned by David was כָּאֲרִי (ka’ari), because all ancient versions understood there to be a verb, rather than a noun, for that word. It is more likely that there was a Hebrew verb for that word, a verb that confused some translators and led to different interpretations. In light of the Hebrew manuscript evidence available to us, the most likely verbal candidate that would explain these phenomena is the Hebrew word כארו (ka’aru). If we give the word’s Hebrew etymology the most weight (which we believe is most appropriate), rather than that of an Arabic cognate, the verb translates as “they pierced.”

Conclusion: Dispelling Mistranslations and Conspiracy Theories

Who knew that a single letter could cause so much trouble? In this investigation, we have illustrated several lines of manuscript and linguistic evidence that make ka’aru (כארו, “pierced”) the most credible of the options. The support for this option includes:

1.      Early Hebrew manuscript support for ka’aru (“they pierced, dug”) in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in multiple Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts

2.      Early Greek translation support for “they pierced” in the Septuagint

3.      “They pierced” is more comprehensible than “like a lion my hands and feet.”

4.      “They pierced” agrees with the plural verb grammatical structure found in all ancient translations (Septuagint, Aquila, Symmachus, Vulgate).

It should be noted here that these four points have nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus, the New Testament, or Christian bias. As we have stated, there is no verse in the New Testament that lives or dies based upon our determinations here, although it is highly likely that Yeshua saw his crucifixion experience through the lens of the entirety of Psalm 22. Instead, our investigation has remained close to the manuscript and linguistic evidence, never straying into personal and religious accusations. Our argument does not include a fifth point, which could say something like, “Jewish people corrupted the text so it would not point to Jesus.” Just like there is no evidence for Christian conspiracy theories on Psalm 22:16, there is no evidence for Jewish conspiracy theories here.^[42] Not only is there no evidence for Jewish tampering with the text, but it is additionally unlikely that a conspirator would introduce a grammatically unintelligible phrase into Scripture as if it were a benefit.

If a conspiracy is not afoot on this verse, then what explains the problems here? In our opinion, it was a simple mistake, mindless and innocent. The difference between “like a lion” and “they pierced” in Hebrew is a single stroke of a pen. Make the stroke short—that is, a י (yud)—and we have “like a lion.” Make the stroke long—that is, a ו (vav)—and we have “they pierced.” All it would have taken was one hand-slipping copyist accidentally writing a yud instead of a vav. If that one manuscript was copied into daughter manuscripts, then we could conceivably end up with the results we see in the manuscript tradition.^[43]

Why did the “lion” reading take such precedence in Jewish usage, such that the older readings were forgotten? We can only speculate here, because we have no window into how the popularity of ka’ari grew over time. However, if there were two options before a Jewish scribe, and one word was actively exploited by Gentile Christians to point to Jesus, whereas the other word was not, all things being equal, the scribe was likely to choose the one that the Gentile Christian did not prefer. In her article on the psalm, religious studies professor Kristin Swenson wrote,

Probably in an attempt to avoid the association with Jesus, Greek-speaking Jews eschewed the LXX in favor of Aquila’s and Symmachus’s readings of the verse…. The word כארי, “like a lion,” which was eventually accepted by the Masoretes as the best text, may have gained popularity from a Jewish reaction to the Christian reading.^[44]

Is this true? We cannot know based on the historical record we have available to us. However, it is certainly plausible that an innocent mistake in the textual tradition became magnified and grew in popularity in Jewish circles because of its utility in avoiding arguments in favor of Jesus.

Whether or not religious bias led to the common Masoretic reading of the verse, manuscript evidence ought to triumph over cherished interpretations that are demonstrably incorrect. If the evidence shows that “they pierced my hands and feet” is the most likely rendering of the verse, then readers should go where the evidence leads.

Footnotes

^[1] We will use the Christian verse numbering for the remainder of this article, since this will enable functioning verse popups with our default English Standard Bible translation.

^[2] Cited in Gregory Vall, “Psalm 22:17B: ‘The Old Guess,’” Journal of Biblical Literature 116, no. 1 (1977): 48. For this story, Vall cites D. P. Drach et al., Sainte Bible de Vence (27 vols.; Paris: Cosson, 1827–33) 9.464.

^[3] Nancy deClaissé-Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, and Beth LaNeel Tanner, The Book of Psalms, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 235.

^[4] Vall, “Psalm 22:17B: ‘The Old Guess,’” 45–56; John Kaltner, “Psalm 22:17b: Second Guessing ‘The Old Guess,’” Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 3 (1998): 503–6; Brent A. Strawn, “Psalm 22:17B: More Guessing,” Journal of Biblical Literature 119, no. 3 (2000): 439–51; Kristin M. Swenson, “Psalm 22:17: Circling Around the Problem Again,” Journal of Biblical Literature 123, no. 4 (2004): 637–48; James R. Linville, “Psalm 22:17B: A New Guess,” Journal of Biblical Literature 124, no. 4 (2005): 733–44.

^[5] We disagree that the camps are defined by Judaism or Christianity. Messianic Jews, that is, Jews who believe in Jesus, illustrate how there are Jews who accept the “pierced” translation for some of the reasons included in this article.

^[6] Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1917), v. Ps 22:17.

^[7] Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures Jewish Publication Society (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), v. Ps 22:17.

^[8] Nosson Scherman et al., eds., The Stone Edition Tanach, 3rd ed., ArtScroll Series (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications, 2013), 1453.

^[9] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), v. Ps 22:16.

^[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), v. Ps 22:16.

^[11] The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), v. Ps 22:16.

^[12] The New American Bible, (Washington DC: Cofraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., 2010), https://classic.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+22&version=NABRE

^[13] “They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” Psalm 22:18

^[14] “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1)

^[15] “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” (Psalm 22:8)

^[16] Septuaginta: With Morphology, electronic ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1979), v. Ps 21:17.

^[17] Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 35, 38, Dialogue with Trypho 97–98, 104.

^[18] Tertullian, Against Marcion 3.19, 4.42, On the Resurrection 20, Answer to the Jews, 13.

^[19] Irenaeus, Demonstration 79.

^[20] Pseudo-Barnabas, Epistle of Barnabas 5:13.

^[21] See Michael Rydelnik, “Textual Criticism and Messianic Prophecy,” in The Moody Handbook of Messianic Prophecy, ed. Michael Rydelnik and Edwin Blum (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2019), 69.

^[22] Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society, Holy Scriptures: Tree of Life Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2015), Ps 22:17.

^[23] Tovia Singer makes the “mistranslation” charge against Christians in Tovia Singer, Let’s Get Biblical, New Expanded Edition (Forest Hills, NY: Outreach Judaism, 2014), 1:37. For another mistranslation charge that the verse was “strategically manipulated,” see Asher Norman, Twenty-Six Reasons Why Jews Don’t Believe in Jesus (Los Angeles, CA: Black White & Read, 2008), 253–55.

^[24] Benjamin Kennicott, Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum : cum variis lectionibus, vol. 1 (Oxonii : Typographeo Clarendoniana, 1776), http://archive.org/details/vetustestamentum01kenn.

^[25] Gérard E. Weil, K. Elliger, and W. Rudolph, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 5. Aufl., rev. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1997). Gérard E. Weil et al., Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 5. Aufl., rev. (Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1997).

^[26] Weil et al., 1104.

^[27] For examples of the root כָּרָה (karah), see Gen. 50:5, Psalm 7:16, Prov. 16:27. Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and M. E. J. Richardson, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. Johann Jakob Stam (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2000), s.v. I כרה. There is no Hebrew root כאר, which one might expect for the other variant, כארוּ. However, there is no need to assume an error in this word, since alephs (א) were often added before the Masoretic vowel pointing system to assist with vocalization (called mater lectionis). The word with the aleph inserted is the same as כָּרוּ (karu), meaning, “they dug.” Keil and Delitzsch point to a parallel example of how רָאֲמָה (ra’amah) in Zechariah 14:10 is an expansion of רָמָה (ramah) with an added aleph. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 5:200; Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1951), s.v. כוּר.

^[28] As of this writing (2023), the Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ), an update of the BHS, has not yet had its volume on the Psalms published.

^[29] Jr. Martin Abegg, Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English (New York, NY: HarperOne, 1999), v. Ps 22.

^[30] Linville, “Psalm 22:17B: A New Guess,” 733.

^[31] Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 5:200.

^[32] Swenson, “Psalm 22:17: Circling Around the Problem Again,” 641.

^[33] For the ancient textual variants, see Frederick Field and Origen, Origenis Hexaplorum Quae Supersunt Sive, Veterum Interpretum Graecorum in Totum Vetus Testamentum Fragmenta. (Oxford, UK: E typographeo Clarendoniano, 1875), 2:119, https://archive.org/details/origenhexapla01unknuoft.

^[34] Walter Bauer et al., eds., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. ὀρύσσω.

^[35] Bauer et al., s.v. αἰσχύνω.

^[36] Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon: With a Revised Supplement, ed. Sir Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie, 9th ed. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1996), s.v. ἐπιδέω.

^[37] William Whitaker, Dictionary of Latin Forms (Logos Bible Software, 2012), s.v. Fodio.

^[38] Kevin Cathcart, Michael Maher, and Martin McNamara, eds., The Aramaic Bible: The Targum of Psalms, vol. 16 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), v. Ps 22:17.

^[39] Targum Psalms Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (Hebrew Union College, 2005), v. Ps 22:17.

^[40] Kaltner, “Psalm 22:17b: Second Guessing ‘The Old Guess,’” 503–6.

^[41] Strawn, “Psalm 22:17B: More Guessing,” 448.

^[42] We would appreciate the transparency, however, if a Jewish translation would include a footnote with “pierced” as a valid interpretive option.

^[43] Biblical archaeologist Randall Price and Christian theologian H. Wayne House concur: “There is no evidence, as some have contended, that Jews or Christians tampered with the text. It is more probable that in one of the manuscripts used by the Masoretes the ink had degraded on consonant waw so that it was read by a scribe as a yod, resulting in the word being read as a noun rather than a verb.” Randall Price and H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 155.

^[44] Swenson, “Psalm 22:17: Circling Around the Problem Again,” 638–39.

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.

RITES: BAPTISM AND THE LORD’S SUPPER

So far we have examined ways that the early Christians honored Jesus Christ with religious service through words in such forms as benedictions, doxologies, and hymns. Another category of religious activity characteristic of religious service is that of rituals or rites. If the earliest Christians gave religious service to Jesus Christ, we would expect that their religious rites would honor Jesus Christ, and that is just what we find. The two primary such rites are baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Baptism is a religious rite of initiation, while the Lord’s Supper is a religious rite of remembrance. In baptism, the new believer expresses in a dramatic, religious rite his commitment to Jesus Christ. This is what it means when the book of Acts reports that the early Christians were baptized in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5). These statements supplement rather than contradict Matthew 28:19, which speaks of baptizing new disciples “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Neither Matthew 28:19 nor the passages in Acts specify the words to say in a baptismal ceremony. In Matthew just as much as in Acts, the focus of disciple-making is commitment to Jesus Christ. Hence, in Matthew 28:18–20 new believers are to recognize his universal authority (v. 18), become Jesus’ disciples (v. 19a), be baptized in the Son’s name as well as the Father’s and Holy Spirit’s (v. 19b), observe all that Jesus taught (v. 20a), and live in the awareness of his presence (v. 20b).

The Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:20) is also a religious rite focused on Jesus Christ. Jesus himself instituted the rite on the Passover (Matt. 26:2, 18, 26–29; Mark 14:12–16, 22–25; Luke 22:8–20),³¹ the Jewish rite memorializing how the Lord God delivered Israel out of their bondage in Egypt (Exod. 12:21–27, 42–49; Deut. 16:1–8). The apostle Paul spoke of Jesus as “the Lord” honored in the rite that the Lord himself instituted:

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? What do I imply, then? That food sacrificed to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or are we provoking the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? (1 Cor. 10:16–22 NRSV)

Table 6. Paul’s Contrast of the Lord’s Supper with Pagan Ritual Meals

While Jesus instituted the rite of the Lord’s Supper, which has its own religious background in the traditions of Judaism concerning the Passover, the Corinthians were for the most part converts from paganism who had yet to break free entirely from the temptations of idolatry in their polytheistic culture. Paul therefore sharply contrasts the rite of the Lord’s Supper with pagan rites that were superficially similar enough that some immature believers were apparently participating in both. In drawing these contrasts (see Table 6), Paul contrasts the Lord Jesus with the deities worshiped in the pagan rites (which Paul calls “demons”). Paul thus makes it clear that the Lord’s Supper is a religious rite in which the Lord Jesus is the presiding deity, the object of religious devotion or “service” for Christians.³²

In drawing a contrast between the Lord’s Supper and pagan ritual meals, Paul alludes to a crucial Old Testament passage about the exclusive worship demanded by Yahweh. Yet he does so in a way that attributes that exclusive demand to the Lord Jesus. Thus, where Deuteronomy quotes Yahweh (“the Lord,” Deut. 32:19) as saying that the Israelites “provoked” him by worshiping what are really demons and not God (Deut. 32:17, 21), Paul says that the Corinthians who participate in pagan ritual meals honoring other gods are likewise “provoking the Lord to jealousy” because those other deities are demons and not God (1 Cor. 10:20, 22). We know that “the Lord” here is Jesus because it is his blood and body, his cup and his bread, and his table (vv. 16–17, 21; cf. 11:23–29). Thus, Paul not only explains that the Lord’s Supper is a rite of religious devotion to Christ, but he also compares those who participate in that rite along with pagan rites to the Israelites who did not sacrifice exclusively to Yahweh (see Table 7).³³

Table 7. Provoking the Lord Jesus to Jealousy

Paul’s sharp contrast between religious devotion to God and the Lord Jesus on the one hand and to demonic powers on the other appears again in his later epistle to the same church in Corinth:

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. (2 Cor. 6:14–16)

Here being united spiritually with Christ is set in contrast to being bound to Belial, a name for the devil used in the New Testament only here. In the literature of Second Temple Judaism, Belial had become a personal name for the archenemy of the Lord God. For example, the War Scroll (one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, numbered 1QM) states: “They shall bless, from their position, the God of Israel and all His works of truth, and they shall curse Belial there and all the spirits of his forces” (1QM 13.1–2).³⁴ Consistent with this usage, in 2 Corinthians 6:15 the Christ–Belial contrast parallels the God–idols contrast.

WHY JESUS IS NEVER OFFERED SACRIFICE

Although those of us who are evangelical Protestants do not view the Lord’s Supper as itself a sacrifice, Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 10 establishes that it is just as much a religious rite as were the sacrifices under the Mosaic covenant. Moreover, Paul’s analogy is apropos because the Lord’s Supper is a memorial of the sacrifice that the Lord Jesus Christ made on our behalf by dying on the cross, as Paul expresses in various ways in the same epistle (1 Cor. 11:23–26; cf. 5:7–8; 15:3).

If we understand these things about the Lord’s Supper and its religious significance, we will not be disturbed by the argument that the first Christians did not actually “worship” Jesus Christ as deity because they never offered him sacrifices. James McGrath argues at some length that “sacrificial worship” was the decisive issue for Jews in the New Testament period.³⁵ On this basis, finding no evidence of sacrifice to Jesus in Paul’s epistles, McGrath concludes that Paul regarded Christ as having “the supremely exalted status of God’s unique eschatological mediator,” rather than the status of God.³⁶ One obvious problem with this line of reasoning is that by this standard most of the Christians to whom Paul wrote his epistles never “worshiped” God. Gentile converts in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, or Thessalonica would not have participated in the Jerusalem temple sacrifices to Yahweh any more than they would have offered burnt offerings to Jesus Christ.

Moreover, based on the gospel that Paul had preached to them, they would have seen no need to offer sacrifices, because Christ had offered the definitive sacrifice for sins by his own death on the cross, which Christians commemorated whenever they participated in the Lord’s Supper. This understanding of Christ’s death is clear enough in Paul’s writings, though it receives its most thorough exposition in the epistle to the Hebrews.

It is quite true that the New Testament authors use the language of “sacrifice” and “offering” metaphorically in reference to living in a way that honors God (Rom. 12:1; Eph. 5:2; Phil. 4:18; 2 Tim. 4:6; Heb. 13:15–16; 1 Peter 2:5). It is also true that the word “sacrifice” is not used explicitly in connection with Christ.³⁷ However, the absence of the word does not prove the absence of an idea or concept. Such an argument from silence, which in this case depends on such a small number of texts in which God is the recipient of Christian “sacrifice,” is too weak to prove anything.

More telling is the fact that other language descriptive of sacrificial service is used with Christ as the recipient. As we pointed out earlier, Revelation calls the redeemed “firstfruits for God and the Lamb” (Rev. 14:4) and says that those in the first resurrection “will be priests of God and of Christ” (Rev. 20:6).

And then there is Paul’s statement that he is “a minister [leitourgon] of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service [hierourgounta] of the gospel of God, so that the offering [prosphora] of the Gentiles may be accept able, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:16). Here the apostle describes himself as a priestly minister³⁸ of Christ, serving him in the religious work of bringing Gentiles into the faith. In this context the “offering of the Gentiles” is what Paul does as Christ’s priestly minister. Yes, Paul calls the message he takes to the Gentiles “the gospel of God,” but just a couple of sentences later he also calls it “the gospel of Christ” (15:19). The point, then, is not that Paul served in a priestly fashion for Christ rather than for God, but that his service could be described as done on behalf of both Christ and God. The rest of what Paul says in this immediate context makes this quite clear. He says that his work is for God (15:17), and yet he also says that his focus is on what Christ is doing through him, on the gospel of Christ, and on making known the name of Christ (15:18–20).

By any reasonable definition of “worship” that might apply to early Christianity, then, the early Christians did regard Jesus Christ as worthy of worship. The first disciples literally bowed down to the glorified Christ when he appeared to them after his resurrection, and the New Testament authors affirmed that all people and all angels were summoned to worship him. The earliest Christians composed liturgy that honored Jesus Christ. Benedictions attributed divine blessings to him. Doxologies praised his great divine attributes. Hymns extolled his divine acts of salvation. The religious rite of the Lord’s Supper centered on the Lord Jesus and commemorated his sacrificial death on their behalf. Moreover, we have found evidence for these various expressions of the worship and religious devotion to Jesus Christ across the canon of the New Testament—in all four Gospels, in Paul’s epistles, in epistles by other first-century Christians, and in the book of Revelation. The full, religious worship of the Lord Jesus Christ as a divine object of devotion is therefore an integral aspect of the Christian faith.

31. See pp. 556–59 for more on Christ’s institution of the Lord’s Supper.

32. See Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 146.

33. See also Costa, Worship and the Risen Jesus in the Pauline Letters, 135–39.

34. In Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation, trans. Michael O. Wise, Martin G. Abegg Jr., and Edward M. Cook, rev. ed. (New York: HarperOne, 2005), 162.

35. McGrath, Only True God, 29–36.

36. McGrath, Only True God, 54 (see 50–54).

37. J. Lionel North, “Jesus and Worship, God and Sacrifice,” in Early Jewish and Christian Monotheism, ed. Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Wendy E. S. North, Early Christianity in Context, JSNTSup 263 LNTS (London: Continuum/T. & T. Clark, 2004), 199–200, followed by Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?, 56.

38. See BDAG, s.v. “leitourgos,” 1.b.

JESUS DIES FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS (MATTHEW 26:28)

According to the three Synoptic Gospels and Paul, on the night before his death Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper (which Christians also call Communion or the Eucharist) to commemorate his impending death (Matt. 26:2, 18, 26–29; Mark 14:12–16, 22–25; Luke 22:8–20; 1 Cor. 11:23–25). Let us first review what all four passages say. All of them agree that Jesus instituted this rite the night before his crucifixion and death. The Synoptic Gospels report Jesus informing his disciples around the time that he instituted the rite that one of them was going to betray him (Matt. 26:20–25; Mark 14:17–21; Luke 22:14, 21–23), and Paul says that it was “on the night when he was betrayed” (1 Cor. 11:23). Jesus “took bread,” blessed it or gave thanks, and said, “This is my body” (Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19a; 1 Cor. 11:24). He also took a “cup” and said that it is “my blood” of the “covenant” (Matt. 26:27–28; Mark 14:23–24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25a).

The basic historicity of this event should not be in question. E. P. Sanders comments, “The passage in general has the strongest possible support. . . . There are two slightly different forms, which have reached us through two independent channels, the synoptic tradition and the letters of Paul.”²⁴ In general, the accounts in Matthew and Mark are verbally very close, whereas the accounts in Luke and Paul are quite close to each other. Academic disputes over these accounts—and the relevant literature is voluminous—have focused mainly on their slight verbal differences from one another and what these might reveal about Jesus’ original intentions in the rite.²⁵

The Gospels all present Jesus’ last night with the disciples as occurring at or about the time of the Passover. To this day the Passover or paschal meal is one of the most important annual observances in Judaism, commemorating their escape from Egypt led by Moses (Exod. 12:21–27, 42–49; Deut. 16:1–8). There is a much-discussed question as to whether the meal that Jesus and his disciples had on that night was properly speaking a Passover meal. This question is bound up with the question of whether Jesus was crucified on Passover or the day before, arising from differences between John and the Synoptics. The Synoptics rather clearly refer to the meal as the Passover (Matt. 26:17–19; Mark 14:12–16; Luke 22:7–13). On the other hand, certain statements in John seem to indicate that the Last Supper and even Jesus’ trials were before the Passover (John 13:1; 18:28, 39; 19:14). Four main views have emerged on this vigorously debated issue:

1. The Synoptics are right that the meal was the Passover meal, but John presents the Last Supper as taking place the day before Passover (and implicitly not a Passover meal) and Jesus’ death on Passover at the time the paschal lambs were slaughtered, in order to symbolize Jesus as the Lamb of God.²⁶

2. John correctly presents Jesus dying on the day that Jews ate the Passover meal, while the Synoptics either mistakenly placed the Last Supper on that day²⁷ (which of all the views we consider the weakest) or they are describing a pre-Passover meal eaten the day before the official Passover.²⁸

3. John’s references to the “Passover” have different meanings: John 13:1 refers to the Passover meal (and is meant to refer to the same event narrated beginning at 13:2), while his later uses of the term refer to the Passover peace offering eaten the following day (18:28) and to the Passover week (19:14).²⁹

4. The differences between John and the Synoptics are the result of Jesus’ group and the Jerusalem Jewish establishment following different calendar conventions. On one such view, Jesus and the disciples held the Passover meal according to the same convention as the Qumran community (who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls) based on a solar calendar instead of the Jerusalem priestly convention based on a lunar calendar.³⁰ According to an alternative view, Jesus and the disciples ate the Passover, as the Synoptics indicate, because they followed the convention of a day beginning at sunrise, while the Jerusalem establishment ate the Passover the following day because they followed the convention of a day beginning at sunset.³¹

We do not need to settle on one of these views to conclude, as most of these interpretations agree, that the Last Supper was a Passover meal. The evidence for this fact puts it almost beyond reasonable doubt.³² Once this is understood, the significance of the rite that Jesus instituted that night becomes clear. The Passover commemorated the deliverance of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt when the blood of the lambs that they killed and ate that night was smeared on their door frames to distinguish them from the Egyptians (Exodus 12, see especially 12:7, 22–27). In all four accounts of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus referred to the cup of wine as representing his blood, which he associated with a covenant. The accounts report him saying, “This is my blood of the covenant” (Matt. 26:28a; Mark 14:24a), or “the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20b; 1 Cor. 11:25a).³³ Just as Jews partake to this day of various elements of the Passover meal (the seder) and recite expositions of what those elements represent, Jesus instructed his disciples to partake of the bread and the wine and gave them expositions of what those elements represent: his body and his blood. In this context, there can be no doubt that he is referring to his impending death, which in fact took place the next day.

Jesus’ reference to the “(new) covenant,” in this context of instituting a new rite, alludes to the “new covenant” prophesied by Jeremiah:

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put My law within them and write it on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.” (Jer. 31:31–34 NASB)

Here the Lord speaking through Jeremiah contrasts the “new covenant” with the one that he had made with Israel when he brought them out of Egypt, referring to a sequence of events that began at Passover. In this new covenant, the Lord says that he “will forgive their wrongdoing” and “will no longer remember” their sin (Jer. 31:34). Thus, forgiveness of sins is a key aspect of the new covenant. In Matthew, Jesus explains the significance of the cup by saying, “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). Only in Matthew’s account do we find this reference to “the forgiveness of sins,” but the idea is implicit in Jesus’ reference to the new “covenant,” found in all four accounts.

In short, the Lord’s Supper represents the shedding of Jesus’ blood on the cross as the beginning of a new covenant through which the Lord will forgive people’s sins. Jesus not only forgave people’s sins during his public ministry, but he also provided himself as the sacrificial “lamb” by shedding his blood for the forgiveness of sins. These two ideas are not contradictory. We may think of Jesus forgiving people before his death on the cross as a kind of “debt resolution” in advance based on an imminent “payment.”

24. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993), 263.

25. For an exhaustive discussion, see I. Howard Marshall, “The Last Supper,” in Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus, ed. Bock and Webb, 481–588.

26. E.g., Keener, Gospel of John, 2:1100–1103; Michael R. Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 151–67.

27. E.g., Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave, 2 vols., ABRL (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2:1350–78.

28. E.g., Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 554–55.

29. E.g., Roger T. Beckwith, Calendar and Chronology, Jewish and Christian: Biblical, Intertestamental and Patristic Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 289–96; Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 251–373.

30. Annie Jaubert, The Date of the Last Supper, trans. I. Rafferty (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1965 [1957]); Stéphane Saulnier, Calendrical Variations in Second Temple Judaism: New Perspectives on the ‘Date of the Last Supper’ Debate, JSJSup 159 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

31. E.g., Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan— Academie Books, 1977), 65–114; Hoehner, “Chronology of Jesus,” 3:2339–50; with some differences, Colin J. Humphreys, The Mystery of the Last Supper: Reconstructing the Final Days of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); see also Marshall, “The Last Supper,” 541–60, and his foreword to the book by Humphreys (ix–xi).

32. In addition to the works just cited, see Andreas Köstenberger, “Was the Last Supper a Passover Meal?” in The Lord’s Supper: Remembering and Proclaiming Christ until He Comes, ed. Thomas R. Schreiner and Matthew R. Crawford, NAC Studies in Bible & Theology (Nashville: B&H, 2010), 6–30; Joel Marcus, “Passover and Last Supper Revisited,” NTS 59, no. 3 (2013): 303–24.

33. A small yet noteworthy group of manuscripts omit Luke 22:19b–20, which parallels Paul but not Matthew and Mark, but most textual critics accept this passage as part of the original Luke. See Metzger, Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 148–50; and esp. Marshall, “Last Supper,” 529–41.

FURTHER READING

Which Day Was Christ Crucified?

THE EUCHARIST AS THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST PT. 1, PT. 2

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.

Christ with Israel in the Wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:1–9)

In 1 Corinthians, written about 54 or 55, Paul makes two statements about the relationship to Christ of the Israelites in the wilderness following the exodus. Here is the first one:

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. (1 Cor. 10:1–4)

Paul assumes here that his readers have some knowledge of the account in Exodus. The Israelites escaped from Egypt, led by a pillar of “cloud” representing God’s presence (Exod. 13:21–22; 14:19–20, 24), and they “all passed through the sea,” that is, the Red Sea (14:21–29). Paul is speaking figuratively when he says that they “all were baptized into Moses,” comparing the Israelites’ covenant relationship with God through Moses to Christians’ covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ. After the Israelites entered the wilderness, Yahweh’s glory “appeared in the cloud” (Exod. 16:10). On that occasion, God provided manna for them to eat (16:12–36). Soon afterward, God began providing water for the Israelites (17:1– 7). Paul calls the manna and the water “spiritual” food and drink, meaning not that they were immaterial but that God provided them supernaturally. Here is how Yahweh told Moses to get the water: “I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink” 17:6 NRSV). This is the first Old Testament text that uses the word “rock” (ṣûr). Later, the Song of Moses actually calls Yahweh “the Rock” five times (Deut. 32:4, 15, 18, 30, 31). The implication of these texts is that God himself was “the Rock” from which the water ultimately came.

It is in this context of God as “the Rock” that Paul says, “and the Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4b). An allusion here to Deuteronomy 32 is confirmed a few verses later when Paul makes a strong allusion to Deuteronomy 32:16–17 (1 Cor. 10:21–22).³⁷ Of course, as Ben Witherington III comments, “Paul is not discussing an earlier incarnation of the Christ on earth as a rock!”³⁸ In Paul’s day, a Jewish tradition was developing that later described a rock-shaped “well” of water that followed the Israelites around in the wilderness. Scholars debate whether the “well” was an explicit part of the tradition in Paul’s day and whether his statement assumes that idea. We may safely say that Paul was part of the same broader theological community within which the moving well motif developed, but we should probably not read that motif into 1 Corinthians.³⁹

Whatever the precise interpretive tradition concerning “the Rock” known to Paul, what he says in 1 Corinthians 10:4b indicates that Christ was a divine person present with the Israelites in the wilderness. Buzzard vehemently objects to this understanding of the text, mostly on a priori grounds that it would contradict what he claims the Bible teaches elsewhere. However, he also objects that Paul meant only that the “rock” was a type of Christ, quoting (twice) Paul’s statement, “Now these things happened to them as an example” (1 Cor. 10:11a), which Buzzard translates, “These things happened to them typically.”⁴⁰ Here Buzzard has things a bit muddled. Of course, the inanimate, literal rock in the wilderness was a type, as were the cloud, the sea, the manna, and the water. However, “the Rock” in Deuteronomy 32 is not a type but a metaphorical name for God.

When Paul uses the Old Testament typologically or allegorically, he does so in the present tense: “Now Hagar is [estin] Mount Sinai in Arabia” (Gal. 4:25), interpreting Hagar in Genesis 16 as symbolic of the Mosaic covenant enacted at Mount Sinai. That is not what Paul does in 1 Corinthians 10. Instead, he writes, “and the Rock was [ēn] Christ.”⁴¹ Thus, a sound exegesis of the passage leads to the conclusion that Paul was identifying Christ as “the Rock” to whom the Israelites were supposed to look in faith. This conclusion, which for some people will be difficult to accept, is confirmed just a few sentences later, when Paul warns the Corinthian Christians: “We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents” (1 Cor. 10:9). Here Paul states in a matter-of-fact manner that some of the Israelites in the wilderness “put Christ to the test,” and he warns the Corinthians not to make the same mistake!

Not all of the extant Greek manuscripts containing 1 Corinthians 10:9 have the name “Christ” there; some say “Lord” instead. The reading “Christ” (christon) has the earliest, most diverse, and most numerous manuscript support (starting with P46, dated about AD 200), and it is also better attested by early translations into other languages (such as Coptic and Latin) and in other early Christian writings. It is the reading given in most contemporary critical editions of the Greek New Testament (notably NA28 and SBLGNT). It was the reading followed in the KJV and is followed by most contemporary English versions (CSB, ESV, LEB, NABRE, NET, NIV, NKJV, NLT, NRSV).

The reading “Lord” (kyrion) does have the support of two major codices from the fourth century (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), which led Tregelles (1879) and Westcott and Hort (1881) to prefer this reading in their critical editions of the Greek New Testament. The recent edition published by Tyndale House (THGNT), which was based on the Tregelles edition, also accepts the reading kyrion. However, the rest of the manuscript support for kyrion is quite weak compared with the evidence for christon. Moreover, while it would be understandable for scribes to change the strange sounding “Christ” to “Lord” here, it is highly unlikely that scribes would change “Lord” to “Christ.”

For these reasons, the reading kyrion is followed by only a few English versions today (NASB, NJB). Manuscript discoveries in the twentieth century, especially P46 (which was rediscovered and published for scholars to study in the 1930s) have convinced nearly all textual critics and other scholars that “Christ” is the correct reading.⁴²

Predictably, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Bible version follows the less likely reading kyrion in 1 Corinthians 10:9 and then substitutes Jehovah there, so that Paul is made to say, “Neither let us put Jehovah to the test” (1 Cor. 10:9 NWT). The Watchtower’s online study Bible cites the Westcott–Hort and THGNT editions of the Greek New Testament in support of the reading kyrion. Of course, no Greek manuscripts of 1 Corinthians use any form of the name YHWH (“Jehovah”). The Watchtower therefore speculates that “the divine name was originally used in this verse and later replaced with the title ‘Lord’ or ‘the Christ.’”⁴³ Even granting the baseless assumption that the text originally had YHWH here, it is extremely implausible to claim that scribes might have replaced that name with “the Christ.” Thus, one must accept three implausible claims in order to defend the NWT rendering: that kyrion is better attested than christon; that kyrion originated as a substitute by apostate scribes for YHWH; and that some scribes would also have substituted christon for YHWH (or even for kyrion).

The Watchtower’s zeal to avoid having Paul say that the Israelites put Christ to the test in the wilderness is understandable. What Paul says here about Christ is what the Old Testament said about the Lord Yahweh: that the Israelites had put him to the test, resulting on one occasion in some of them dying from poisonous serpents (Num. 14:22; 21:5–6; Pss. 78:18–20; 95:9).⁴⁴ Once again, the New Testament not only affirms Christ’s preexistence, but affirms his divine preexistence.

Jesus the Savior and Judge of Israel (Jude 5)

A similar statement appears in the epistle of Jude. He warns his readers about those “who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). Immediately after that warning, he starts giving examples from Jewish history, beginning with the Israelites’ apostasy in the wilderness. This text has come down to us mainly in two forms, with variations similar to what we saw in 1 Corinthians 10:9. We will quote two different translations to illustrate the difference:

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. (Jude 5 ESV; similarly, CSB, LEB, NET, NLT, NRSV).

Now I want to remind you, though you know everything once and for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. (Jude 5 NASB; similarly, KJV, NABRE, NIV, NJB, NKJV)⁴⁵

These two translations reflect the fact that many manuscripts have “Jesus” here, while many others have “Lord” (kyrios). A third reading comes from the earliest extant manuscript, a papyrus known as P72 and dated to the third or fourth century. In P72, Jude 5 has “God Christ” (theos christos) instead of either “Lord” or “Jesus.” This is so far the only extant manuscript containing this reading, which is one reason why virtually no one argues that it is the original reading. If it were, of course, it would mean that Jude was explicitly affirming the preexistence of Christ as God! Not only is this an isolated reading, but it appears in a manuscript that scholars regard as particularly unreliable.⁴⁶

Deciding between “Lord” and “Jesus” in Jude 5 is not so easy. On the one hand, most scholars acknowledge that the manuscript evidence for “Jesus” is significantly better than for “Lord.” On the other hand, many scholars find it hard to accept that Jude actually wrote “Jesus” here. In his textual commentary first written in 1971 and revised in 1994, Bruce Metzger, writing for the committee that produced the Greek New Testament for the United Bible Societies, famously explains: “Despite the weighty attestation supporting Iēsous . . . a majority of the Committee was of the opinion that the reading was difficult to the point of impossibility.”⁴⁷ Yet this was a bare majority ruling, with three committee members taking this position and two (including Metzger) dissenting. Normally the more difficult reading is preferred on the grounds that scribes were more likely to amend a difficult reading than to create one, but in this case many scholars think “Jesus” is just too difficult a reading.⁴⁸

Other scholars have defended the reading “Jesus” as difficult but not too difficult, arguing that it is most likely correct.⁴⁹ When Metzger produced the two editions of his textual commentary for the United Bible Societies, their published Greek New Testament, through its fourth edition, reflected the committee’s majority ruling and had kyrios in Jude 5. However, the fifth edition (as well as NA28, which presents the same Greek text) changed its reading to Iēsous (“Jesus”). In addition, the other two main critical texts of the Greek New Testament, the SBLGNT and the THGNT, also both favor “Jesus.” In keeping with this shift in favor of the reading Iēsous, the updated edition of the NRSV changed its translation of Jude 5 from “the Lord” to “Jesus.”

We think that the reading “Jesus” in Jude 5 is more likely to be correct, based on the currently available evidence. If that is true, then Jude 5 undeniably affirms that Jesus preexisted his human life and was involved in Israel’s history. However, even if one prefers the reading “Lord,” in context the statement would still refer to Jesus Christ because in the immediately preceding sentence Christ is called “our only Master and Lord” (Jude 4). Reading the two sentences together (and using a translation with the reading “Lord” in verse 5) should make the point clear:

For certain people have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into indecent behavior and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now I want to remind you, though you know everything once and for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. (Jude 4–5 NASB)

After speaking of Jesus as “our only Master and Lord,” Jude can hardly have referred immediately to someone other than Jesus as “the Lord” without qualification. The Lord who delivered his people out of Egypt, then, must be the Lord Jesus.

Who Led the Israelites Out of Egypt?

The statements we have just examined from Paul (1 Cor. 10:4, 9) and Jude (Jude 4–5) indicate that Jesus Christ was the divine figure who led the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness on their way to the promised land. Yet both authors, of course, in those same epistles differentiated the Lord Jesus Christ from God the Father (e.g., 1 Cor. 8:6; Jude 1, 25). How, then, are we to understand their statements about Christ’s role in the Israelite exodus in relation to the Old Testament narrative? Who is it exactly that Paul and Jude thought the preincarnate Christ was?

When we turn to the book of Exodus, we find a likely answer. It turns out that there is a similar complexity, even paradox, in what Exodus says about the divine deliverer of the Israelites. The divine figure who appeared to Moses from a burning bush is first called “the angel of the Lord” (Exod. 3:2), but the one whom Moses sees and hears in the bush is identified repeatedly by the names “the Lord” (Yahweh) and “God” (3:4–16). Once the Israelites begin their journey out of Egypt, we are told that “God” led them out and that “the Lord went before them” in a pillar of cloud and fire (13:18, 21). When the Egyptian army attempted to overtake the Israelites, “the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them” (14:19). In these passages, the angel of the Lord, also called the angel of God, is both distinguished from and equated with God, the Lord. Elsewhere, the Old Testament tells the people of Israel both that “the Lord” brought them out of Egypt (Exod. 20:1–2; Lev. 11:45; Deut. 20:1; Neh. 9:18) and that “the angel of the Lord” did so (Judg. 2:1). In other places, especially in the early narrative books of the Bible, the angel of the Lord speaks to human beings as though he were the Lord himself, and those who see him confess that they saw God (e.g., Gen. 16:7–13; 21:17–18; 22:1, 11–18; 31:11–13; Judg. 6:11–24; 13:2–23).

These and many other texts evidently refer to a divine person called God’s “angel” who is somehow distinct from God and yet is himself God. Keep in mind that the words translated “angel” (Hebrew malʾak, Greek angelos) literally meant “messenger,” which meant that the word could be used for human messengers, created spirit messengers, and evidently a divine messenger. Perhaps the richest example of this phenomenon comes in Jacob’s prayer for blessing over Joseph’s two sons:

The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,

the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day,

the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys . . . (Gen. 48:15–16a)

As Jewish commentator Nahum Sarna observes, the parallelism of these three lines “strongly suggests that ‘angel’ is here an epithet of God.”⁵⁰ This triadic blessing recalls the famous priestly blessing given later in the Bible:

 The Lord bless you and keep you;

the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (Num. 6:24–26)

Jacob’s crediting the angel with redeeming him from evil also implies the angel’s deity, especially since elsewhere in Genesis, Jacob prays to God and receives protection from God (Gen. 28:15, 20; 31:3; 32:10–13; 35:3). As Sarna also acknowledges, “no one in the Bible ever invokes an angel in prayer.”⁵¹ That the angel in Genesis 48:16 is God is confirmed by the singular form of the verb barak (“bless”).

Why, then, does Jacob use the term “angel” in his prayer for blessing over his grandsons? The answer is that the “man” with whom Jacob had famously wrestled, whom he then realized was God (Gen. 32:24–30), was the same figure called “the angel of the Lord” earlier in Genesis. The prophet Hosea later stated this explicitly: “In his manhood he strove with God. He strove with the angel and prevailed” (Hosea 12:3–4).

A strong case can be made on the basis of these and other passages that the figure called “the angel of the Lord” (and “the angel of God”) was himself God, yet in some way distinct from God. The traditional Christian view on this matter is that the angel of the Lord was in fact the preincarnate Son of God, and this view has received noteworthy defenses and expositions in recent years.⁵² Two New Testament passages we discussed earlier in this chapter, 1 Corinthians 10:4–9 and Jude 5–7, although they do not actually use the term “angel” for Christ, do seem to allude to Exodus passages about the angel of the Lord, as several scholars have argued.⁵³

Not everyone agrees. On the one hand, some interpreters argue that the Old Testament texts in question refer to created angels who spoke and acted as God’s agents or representatives.⁵⁴ This theory can appear to account for a few of the passages, but it just does not fit many of them, with Genesis 48:16 being one of the most compelling. The created angel interpretation also struggles to make sense of the passages in which a human being, when seeing the angel of the Lord, is afraid that he or she might die because of seeing God (Gen. 32:30; Exod. 3:6; Judges 6:22–23; 13:21–23). The point here is not merely that they feared for their life, but that they feared for their life because they understood that in seeing the angel of the Lord, they had seen God.⁵⁵ In the light of such texts, evidently what the Lord meant when he warned that people could not see God and live (Exod. 33:20) was that they could not see him in an unfiltered or direct fashion.

The debate over the identity of the angel of the Lord will continue.⁵⁶ For those who accept the interpretation that the “angel” in the Old Testament is a divine person who is somehow “God” and yet also distinct from “God,” this finding easily correlates with the New Testament revelation that Jesus Christ existed as a divine person distinct from the Father who was active in the history of the patriarchs and ancient Israel.

On the other hand, the view that the “angel” of the Lord was a created angel does nothing to overturn or weaken the evidence from the New Testament for the preexistence of Christ. Our study in this chapter has found passages in four different parts of the New Testament, written by four different authors, that clearly speak of the Lord Jesus as having been involved in the Old Testament history of Israel (Matt. 23:34–37; John 12:37–41; 1 Cor. 10:1–9; Jude 5).

It is especially striking that Paul and Jude—two quite different authors— in different ways both refer to Christ as involved specifically in the judgment of the faithless Israelites in the wilderness. Since Jude (whom everyone agrees wrote after Paul) shows no signs of literary dependence on any of Paul’s writings, both authors evidently were drawing from a common Christian understanding of Christ’s role in the history of Israel. That is an especially significant finding because it shows that Paul did not invent this idea. Together with the evidence from Matthew and John, we may conclude that the belief in a preexistent, divine Christ actively involved in the Old Testament history of Israel apparently had arisen among Christians even earlier than Paul’s epistles.

37. See our earlier discussion (pp. 135–37).

38. Ben Witherington III, The Indelible Image: The Theological and Ethical Thought World of the New Testament, Vol. 2: The Collective Witness (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 216 n. 21.

39. For an argument seeking to tie 1 Corinthians 10:4 to the “moving well” tradition, see Peter E. Enns, “The ‘Moveable Well’ in 1 Cor 10:4: An Extrabiblical Tradition in an Apostolic Text,” BBR 6 (1996): 23–37. For alternative views, see Thiselton, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 727–30, who argues for Wisdom as the dominant tradition of relevance, and Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, rev. ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 494–96, who cautions against reading the moving well into Paul and considered the Wisdom traditions irrelevant.

40. Buzzard and Hunting, Doctrine of the Trinity, 110, 111 (see 108–12).

41. Gordon D. Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Peabody, MA: Hendriksen, 2007), 95–96.

42. See Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 494; Carroll D. Osburn, “The Text of 1 Corinthians 10:9,” in New Testament Textual Criticism: Its Significance for Exegesis: Essays in Honour of Bruce M. Metzger, ed. Eldon Jay Epp and Gordon D. Fee (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 1–12.

43. NWT (Study Edition), Appendix C3, “Verses Where the Divine Name Does Not Appear as Part of Direct or Indirect Quotations in the Book of 1 Corinthians.” On this issue, see pp. 469–73.

44. Cf. Costa, Worship and the Risen Jesus in the Pauline Letters, 358–59 n. 479.

45. The NWT, as one would expect, presupposes this reading but changes “Lord” to “Jehovah.”

46. See Elijah Hixson, “Dating Myths, Part One: How We Determine the Ages of Manuscripts,” in Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism, ed. Hixson and Gurry, 91. Jarl E. Fossum defends theos as the original reading in “Angel Christology in Jude 5–7,” in The Image of the Invisible God: Essays on the Influence of Jewish Mysticism on Early Christianity, NTOA 30 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 41 n. 1.

47. Metzger, Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 657.

48. Notable recent examples include Tommy Wasserman, The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission, ConBNT 43 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2006), 262–66; Herbert W. Bateman IV, “Disarming Significant Textual Issues in Jude: A Text Critical Study and Interpretation of Jude 5 and 12,” in New Testament Philology: Essays in Honor of David Alan Black, ed. Melton Bennett Winstead (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2018), 145–49.

49. E.g., Gathercole, Preexistent Son, 36–41; Philipp Bartholomä, “Did Jesus Save the People Out of Egypt? A Re-examination of a Textual Problem in Jude 5,” NovT 50 (2008): 143–58.

50. Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 328; likewise, Bruce K. Waltke and Cathi J. Fredricks, Genesis: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 599, and others.

51. Sarna, Genesis, 328. Sarna offers several good reasons to understand the “angel” here to be God, but then at the end suggests a possible way around this conclusion (which does not sit well with current Orthodox Judaism) by allowing that the passage “may reflect some tradition . . . concerning an angelic guardian of Jacob,” not otherwise found in Genesis.

52. E.g., Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), 134–48; Anthony Rogers, “The ‘Heavenly’ & ‘Earthly’ Yahweh: A Proto-Trinitarian Interpretation of Genesis 19:24, Part I,” in Our God Is Triune: Essays in Biblical Theology, ed. Michael R. Burgos Jr. (Torrington, CT: Church Militant Publications, 2018), 34– 76; Matt Foreman and Doug Van Dorn, The Angel of the Lord: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Study, foreword by Michael S. Heiser (Dacono, CO: Waters of Creation Publishing, 2020); Michael R. Burgos Jr., “The Angel of Yahweh: A Biblical Appellation for the Second Person of the Holy Trinity,” American Journal of Biblical Theology 22, no. 31 (Aug. 1, 2021); Rob Phillips, Jesus before Bethlehem: What Every Christian Should Know about the Angel of the Lord, foreword by Rodney A. Harrison (Jefferson City, MO: High Street Press, 2021).

53. E.g., Fossum, “Angel Christology in Jude 5–7”; Darrell D. Hannah, Michael and Christ: Michael Traditions and Angel Christology in Early Christianity, WUNT 2/109 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 139–42, among others.

54. Perhaps most notably, W. G. MacDonald, “Christology and ‘the Angel of the Lord,’” in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation: Studies in Honor of Merrill C. Tenney Presented by His Former Students, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 324–35; René A. López, “Identifying the ‘Angel of the Lord’ in the Book of Judges: A Model for Reconsidering the Referent in Other Old Testament Loci,” BBR 20, no. 1 (2010): 1–18.

55. Contra López, “Identifying the ‘Angel of the Lord’ in the Book of Judges,” 10–11.

56. We discuss the question of whether Paul identified Jesus as “the angel of God” (Gal. 4:14) in chapter 19 (pp. 371–75).

FURTHER READING

Jesus Christ: The Lord God Who Saved and Punished Israel During the Exodus

JUDE TESTIFIES THAT JESUS IS YHWH ALMIGHTY!

JW BIBLE ADMITS: JESUS IS ABRAHAM’S GOD PT. 2

UNITARIANS PROVE THE FATHER ISN’T THE TRUE GOD

CHRIST: GOD’S CREATED WISDOM?

A HYMN TO THE DIVINE CHRIST

“The conception, namely the infusion of the soul, is believed to have taken place gently and blessedly, without original sin coming upon her; so that in the infusion of the soul she was also at the same time purified from original sin, adorned with God’s gifts, and received a holy soul poured into her by God, and thus from the first moment she began to live, SHE WAS FREE FROM ALL SIN. For before she lived, one might well say that she was neither in sin nor outside of sin, which applies only to souls and living humans.”  – (Emphasis mine)

This next quote is excerpted from this post: Luther on Luke 2 – Saint John’s Lutheran Church.

Then there are some who express opinions concerning how this birth took place, claiming Mary was delivered of her child while she was praying, in great joy, before she became aware of it, without any pains. I do not condemn these devotional considerations—perhaps they were devised for the benefit of simple-minded folk—but we must stay with the Gospel text which says she gave birth to him, and with the article of the creed which says “born of the Virgin Mary.” There is no deception here, but, as the words indicate, it was a real birth. Now we know, do we not, what the meaning of “to bear” is and how it happens. The birth happened to her exactly as to other women, consciously with her mind functioning normally and with the parts of her body helping along, as is proper at the time of birth, in order that she should be his normal natural mother and he her natural normal son. For this reason her body did not abandon its natural functions which belong to childbirth, except that she gave birth without sin, without shame, without pain, and without injury, just as she had conceived without sin. The curse of Eve, which reads: “In pain you shall bear your children” [Genesis 3:16], did not apply to her. In other respects things happened to her exactly as they happen to any woman giving birth …

I am talking about this so that we may have a foundation for our faith and that we let Christ be a natural human being, in every respect exactly as we are. Nor must we put him in a separate category as far as nature is concerned except where sin and grace are involved. In him and his mother nature was pure in all members and in all the functions of the members. No female body or one of its organs ever attained its natural function without sin, EXCEPT THIS VIRGIN. Here, for one time, God honored nature and its function. The more we draw Christ down into nature and into the flesh, the more consolation accrues for us. Therefore whatever is not contrary to grace should in no way be subtracted from his and his mother’s nature. The text clearly states and declares that she bore him, and that “he is born” is also proclaimed by the angels.

How could God have demonstrated his goodness more powerfully than by stepping down so deep into flesh and blood, that he does not despise that which is kept secret by nature, but honors nature to the highest degree exactly where it was brought into shame to the highest degree in Adam and Eve? … (Martin Luther, “The Gospel for Christmas Eve, Luke 2” in Luther’s Works (Fortress Press, 1974), LII, 7–31; emphasis mine)

Here’s another version taken from: Luther on the Virgin Birth of Christ.

Some argue as to how this birth took place, as if Jesus was born while Mary was praying and rejoicing, without any pain, and before she was conscious of it.  While I do not altogether discard that pious supposition, it was evidently invented for the sake of simple minded people.  But we must abide by the Gospel, that He was born of the virgin Mary.  There is no deception here, for the Word clearly states that it was an actual birth.

“It is well known what is meant by giving birth.  Mary’s experience was not different from that of other women, so that the birth of Christ was a real natural birth.  Mary being His natural mother and He being her natural Son. Therefore her body performed its functions of giving birth, which naturally belonged to it, except that she brought forth without sin, without shame, without pain and without injury, just as she had conceived without sin. The curse of Eve did not come on her, where God said: ‘In pain thou shalt bring forth children,’ Gen. 3:16; otherwise it was with her in every particular as with every woman who gives birth to a child. Grace does not interfere with nature and her work, but rather improves and promotes it”. (Christmas Day sermon, The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, vol. 1.1-2, edited by John Nicholas Lenker, translated by John Nicholas Lenker and others [Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI 2000] p. 140; emphasis mine)

FURTHER READING

LUTHER & MARY’S VIRGINITY REVISITED

LUTHER’S PRAISE OF MARY

LUTHER ON THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

MARTIN LUTHER, JAMES & NT CANON

Here is what he wrote in refuting of the claims of Manichaeus, the founder of Manicheism. All emphasis is mine.

Chapter 5.— Against the Title of the Epistle of Manichæus

6. Let us see then what Manichæus teaches me; and particularly let us examine that treatise which he calls the Fundamental Epistle, in which almost all that you believe is contained. For in that unhappy time when we read it we were in your opinion enlightened. The epistle begins thus:— “Manichæus, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the providence of God the Father. These are wholesome words from the perennial and living fountain.” Now, if you please, patiently give heed to my inquiry. I do not believe Manichæus to be an apostle of Christ. Do not, I beg of you, be enraged and begin to curse. For you know that it is my rule to believe none of your statements without consideration. Therefore I ask, who is this Manichæus? You will reply, An apostle of Christ. I do not believe it. Now you are at a loss what to say or do; for you promised to give knowledge of the truth, and here you are forcing me to believe what I have no knowledge of. Perhaps you will read the gospel to me, and will attempt to find there a testimony to Manichæus. But should you meet with a person not yet believing the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not believe? For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved BY AUTHORITY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. So when those on whose authority I have consented to believe in the gospel tell me not to believe in Manichæus, how can I but consent? Take your choice. If you say, Believe the Catholics: their advice to me is to put no faith in you; so that, believing them, I am precluded from believing you — If you say, Do not believe the Catholics: you cannot fairly use the gospel in bringing me to faith in Manichæus; for it was at the command of the Catholics that I believed the gospel;— Again, if you say, You were right in believing the Catholics when they praised the gospel, but wrong in believing their vituperation of Manichæus: do you think me such a fool as to believe or not to believe as you like or dislike, without any reason? It is therefore fairer and safer by far for me, having in one instance put faith in the Catholics, not to go over to you, till, instead of bidding me believe, you make me understand something in the clearest and most open manner. To convince me, then, you must put aside the gospel. If you keep to the gospel, I will keep to those WHO COMMANDED ME TO BELIEVE THE GOSPEL; and, in obedience to them, I will not believe you at all. But if haply you should succeed in finding in the gospel an incontrovertible testimony to the apostleship of Manichæus, you will weaken my regard for the authority of the Catholics who bid me not to believe you; and the effect of that will be, that I shall no longer be able to believe the gospel either, FOR IT WAS THROUGH THE CATHOLICS THAT I GOT MY FAITH IN IT; and so, whatever you bring from the gospel will no longer have any weight with me. Wherefore, if no clear proof of the apostleship of Manichæus is found in the gospel, I will believe the Catholics rather than you. But if you read thence some passage clearly in favor of Manichæus, I will believe neither them nor you: not them, for they lied to me about you; nor you, for you quote to me that Scripture which I had believed on the authority of those liars. But far be it that I should not believe the gospel; for believing it, I find no way of believing you too. For the names of the apostles, as there recorded, do not include the name of Manichæus. And who the successor of Christ’s betrayer was we read in the Acts of the Apostles; Acts 1:26 which book I must needs believe if I believe the gospel, since both writings alike Catholic authority commends to me. The same book contains the well-known narrative of the calling and apostleship of Paul. Acts ix Read me now, if you can, in the gospel where Manichæus is called an apostle, or in any other book in which I have professed to believe. Will you read the passage where the Lord promised the Holy Spirit as a Paraclete, to the apostles? Concerning which passage, behold how many and how great are the things that restrain and deter me from believing in Manichæus. (Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental)

FURTHER READING

AUGUSTINE & JOHN DAMASCENE VS. CALVINISTS PT. 1

AUGUSTINE ON JESUS BEING THE ANGEL OF YHVH

AUGUSTINE ON CHRIST’S ETERNAL GENERATION

Here is Luther in his own words. All emphasis is mine:  

Today the pope and his crowd cry out against us that they are the church, since they have received Baptism, the Sacrament, and Holy Writ from the apostles and are their successors. They say: “Where else should God’s people be than where His name is praised, and where the successors and heirs of His apostles are to be found? Surely the Turks, the Tartars, and the heathen cannot be His people. Therefore we must be His people; otherwise it will be altogether impossible to find a people of God on earth. Consequently, he who rebels against us resists the Christian Church and Christ Himself.” This will surely offend and repel anyone who is not armed with different weapons and different strength, who listens only to such opinions of the most eminent and influential people on earth. “You are a heretic and an apostle of the devil,” “You are preaching against God’s people and the church, yes, against God Himself.” For it is exceedingly difficult to deprive them of this argument and to talk them out of it.

Yes, we ourselves FIND IT DIFFICULT TO REFUTE IT, especially since WE CONCEDE—AS WE MUST—that so much of what they say IS TRUE: that the papacy has God’s Word and the office of the apostles, and that we have received Holy Scripture, Baptism, the Sacrament, and the pulpit FROM THEM. What would we know of these if it were not for them? Therefore faith, the Christian Church, Christ, and the Holy Spirit must also be found AMONG THEM. What business have I, then, to preach against them as a pupil preaching against his teachers? Then there come rushing into my heart thoughts like these: “Now I see that I am in error. Oh, if only I had never started this and had never preached a word! For who dares oppose the church, of which we confess in the Creed: I believe in a holy Christian Church, etc.? Now I find this church in the papacy too. It follows, therefore, that if I condemn this church, I am excommunicated, rejected, and damned by God and all the saints.”

For the name “church” includes many scoundrels and rascals who refused to obey God’s Word and acted contrary to it. Yet they were called heirs and successors of the holy patriarchs, priests, and prophets. To be sure, they had God’s Law and promise, the temple, and the priesthood. In fact, they should have been God’s people; but they practiced idolatry so freely under the cloak of the name “church” that God was forced to say: “This shall no longer be My temple and priesthood. My people shall no longer be My people. But to those who are not My people it shall be said: ‘You are sons of the living God’.” Luther’s Sermons on John 16 [LW 24:303-304]

FURTHER READING

MARTIN LUTHER, JAMES & NT CANON

LUTHER & MARY’S VIRGINITY REVISITED

LUTHER’S PRAISE OF MARY

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

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

FURTHER READING

Jeconiah’s Curse Becomes Messiah’s Blessing!

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