Jesus’s Divinity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus

We should hold a funeral for the view that Jesus entertained no exalted thoughts about himself.
—Dale C. Allison Jr.

It is possible to understand the Gospel only if both Jesus and the Jews around him held to a high Christology whereby the claim to Messiahship was also a claim to being a divine man.
—Daniel Boyarin

The Historical Jesus

In his watershed book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, written at the dawn of the twentieth century, Albert Schweitzer points out that the modern quest was motivated from its very beginnings by more than just the historical aim of discovering what Jesus of Nazareth really did and said. The quest was also explicitly directed against the idea that the historical Jesus claimed to be more than merely human. In his opening chapter on the “problem” of the historical Jesus, Schweitzer writes:

The historical investigation of the life of Jesus did not take its rise from a purely historical interest; it turned to the Jesus of history as an ally in the struggle against the tyranny of dogma. For hate as well as love can write a Life of Jesus, and the greatest of them are written with hate. It was hate not so much of the person of Jesus as of the supernatural nimbus with which it was so easy to surround him, and with which he had in fact been surrounded. They were eager to picture him as an ordinary person, to strip from him the robes of splendor with which he had been appareled, and clothe him once more with the coarse garments in which he had walked in Galilee.

In other words, the modern historical quest for Jesus—at least in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—was often explicitly driven by the theological aim of liberating readers from the ancient Christian doctrine, formulated above all at the ecumenical councils of Nicaea (325 CE) and Chalcedon (451 CE), that Jesus of Nazareth was both fully human and fully divine—what Schweitzer calls “the dogma of the two natures.” According to Schweitzer, “This dogma had first to be shattered before people could once more go out in quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of his existence.”

Since Schweitzer first penned these words in 1906, historical Jesus research has come a long way. On the one hand, a strong case can be made that the most important works on the historical Jesus are no longer written with “hate.” In my view, most contributors to contemporary Jesus research are sincerely seeking the historical truth about who Jesus of Nazareth was, how he fit into his first-century Jewish context, and the relationship between his public ministry and the birth of early Christianity. Moreover, in contrast to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in which the quest for the historical Jesus was dominated almost exclusively by European Protestant scholars, contemporary Jesus research involves contributions from multiple continents, multiple languages, and multiple perspectives, including Jewish, Christian, and nonreligious scholars alike.

At the same time, a case can be made that the contemporary quest has inherited from its early forebears an almost reflexive reluctance to explore the question of whether the historical Jesus ever claimed to be anything more than merely human. For example, in his presidential address to the Cambridge Theological Society, John A. T. Robinson once described the question of whether Jesus claimed to be more than human as one of several “‘no-go’ areas” around which twentieth-century scholarship had erected warning signs and which “it would not be intelligent or respectable to question.” He goes on to depict the situation as follows:

What lay at the center of Jesus’ life has been left a blank, and indeed been regarded as forbidden territory. We can say what the church said about him, but we cannot say—or apparently be allowed to care—what he thought about himself.

Four decades after Robinson penned these words, the situation remains largely unchanged. Though a growing number of scholars agree that Jesus spoke and acted as if he were a messianic figure, the possibility that he saw himself as divine (in some sense) is still often treated as a “no-go area.” For example, in his recent study of the origins of early divine Christology, Bart Ehrman emphasizes that the “one thing” contemporary studies of the historical Jesus “all agree on” is this:

Jesus did not spend his ministry declaring himself to be divine. One of the enduring findings of modern scholarship on the New Testament and early Christianity over the past two centuries is that the followers of Jesus, during his life, understood him to be human through and through, not God.

As we will see momentarily, Ehrman’s assessment of the modern quest as a whole is quite accurate. As I hope to demonstrate over the course of this study, however, when one takes a closer look at recent research on Second Temple Jewish messianism, the evidence in the first-century gospels, and the practice and belief of the early church, one finds serious reasons for reopening the question of whether Jesus himself ever claimed to be more than merely human. In particular, several key historical questions emerge that deserve thorough answers:

• Did Jesus of Nazareth ever speak and act as if he were divine? If so, in what sense?
• How did Jesus’s self-claims fit into his first-century Jewish context, especially the context of early Jewish monotheism?
• How did Jesus’s self-claims relate to the Christology of the earliest Jewish believers?

In order to see clearly why these questions are worth asking and answering, we will need to take a few moments to explore the contemporary problem of the historical Jesus and the origins of early “high” Christology.

Early High Christology

When we compare the results of the modern quest for the historical Jesus with recent research on the earliest Christology—that is, the earliest beliefs about Jesus’s identity and mission as the Jewish “messiah” (Greek: christos)—we discover something of a paradox.

The Historical Jesus Did Not Claim to Be Divine

On the one hand, when it comes to contemporary Jesus research, the vast majority of modern scholars agree that Jesus of Nazareth himself did not think, speak, or act as if he was in any way “divine”—that is, more than human. Consider, for example, the following statements of prominent contributors to the quest for the historical Jesus:

Jesus did not declare himself to be God (Ehrman).

There is no indication that Jesus thought or spoke of himself as having pre- existed with God. . . . We cannot claim that Jesus believed himself to be the incarnate Son of God (Dunn).

The religion proclaimed by Jesus was a wholly theocentric one in which he played the role of the man of God . . . without being himself in any sense the object of worship as he later became (Vermes).

There is no evidence whatever that [Jesus] spoke or acted as if he believed himself to be “a god” or “divine” (Harvey).

Notice here that the view that Jesus did not claim to be divine can be found in the works of Jewish, Christian, and nonreligious scholars alike. It has even found its way into the writings of prominent contemporary systematic theologians.

Significantly, this view goes back to the earliest days of the modern quest for Jesus. For example, three of its most influential figures—Herman Samuel Reimarus (1778), David Friedrich Strauss (1836), and Ernst Renan (1863)—are at one in the assertion that Jesus never claimed to be divine:

It was not his [Jesus’s] intention to present a triune God or to make himself God’s equal, no matter how much he makes of himself (Reimarus).

Jesus had indeed an intimate communion of thought and will with God, but . . . the boundary line between divine and human was strictly preserved (Strauss).

That Jesus never dreamt of making himself pass for an incarnation of God is a matter about which there can be no doubt. Such an idea was totally foreign to the Jewish mind; and there is no trace of it in the Synoptical Gospels: we only find it indicated in portions of the Gospel of John, which cannot be accepted as expressing the thoughts of Jesus (Renan).

Notice that the confidence with which these figures assert that Jesus never made divine claims rests on two key pillars: (1) The notion that Jesus thought himself divine is deemed impossible because it would “deviate from Judaism” and be “totally foreign to the Jewish mind.” In other words, any kind of divine claim on Jesus’s part would be incompatible with early Jewish monotheism. (2) Although Jesus does claim to be divine in the Gospel of John (e.g., John 8:58–59; 10:30–33), there is “no trace” of a divine self-claim in the Synoptic Gospels.

To this day, the assertion that Jesus never speaks or acts as if he is divine in the Synoptic Gospels continues to play a decisive role in the view that the historical Jesus did not claim to be more than human. Consider, for example, the argument of Bart Ehrman:

If Jesus went around Galilee proclaiming himself to be a divine being sent from God—one who existed before the creation of the world, who was in fact equal with God—could anything else that he might say be so breath-taking and thunderously important? And yet none of these earlier sources [i.e., the Synoptic material] says any such thing about him. Did they (all of them!) just decide not to mention the one thing that was most significant about Jesus? Almost certainly the divine self-claims in John are not historical.

According to this view, when it comes to the four first-century biographies of Jesus that we possess, the “score” is three against one: three earlier gospels in which Jesus does not claim to be divine (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and only one later gospel in which Jesus makes divine self-claims (John). In light of such data, the weight of evidence clearly falls in favor of a historical Jesus who never claimed to be more than human.

In sum, it is no overstatement to conclude that “the overwhelming majority” of contemporary scholars agree “that Jesus did not think of, or present, himself in divine terms.” To be sure, there are some exceptions, from both Jewish and Christian scholars alike. However, a brief glance at Jesus research in the last century or so shows that the vast majority render a negative verdict. Indeed, one searches most major monographs on the historical Jesus in vain for any mention of the possibility that Jesus may have made divine claims during his lifetime. Perhaps the most striking example of this is the massive four-volume, 3,600-page Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (2011), which contains no discussion of whether the historical Jesus ever made divine claims. The implication of such a gaping lacuna is clear: it is so self-evident that Jesus did not claim to be divine that the topic is not even worthy of discussion. For contemporary Jesus research taken as a whole, the answer to the question, « Did Jesus claim to be divine?, » is a resounding no.

The Earliest Christology Was High Christology

On the other hand, when we turn from contemporary Jesus research to recent studies in early Christology—or early Christologies—we discover that a remarkable number of scholars agree that the earliest Jewish believers in Jesus held what might be described as a “high” Christology, in which Jesus is regarded as divine in some sense.

In recent decades, it has become popular to use the expression high Christology to describe beliefs about Jesus in which he originates as a heavenly being who becomes human. Conversely, the expression low Christology is often used to describe beliefs about Jesus in which he originates as an earthly human being who is later exalted (at some point) to the status of divine. To be sure, there are problems with this terminology—not the least of which is a tendency to oversimplify matters. Nevertheless, with these common definitions in mind, consider the following statements of major contributors to the study of early Christology:

I have been a member of the Early High Christology Club (EHCC) for quite a few years now (Fredriksen).

The idea that Jesus is God . . . was the view of the very earliest Christians soon after Jesus’ death (Ehrman).

A Christology that portrays Christ as divine emerges very early, in distinctively Jewish terminology and within a Jewish context (Chester).

No follower of Jesus, to our knowledge, ever called Paul divine or reckoned him a god. Christians did, however, say astounding things about Jesus, and that from the very beginning (Allison).

The earliest Christology was already the highest Christology (Bauckham).

Devotion to Jesus as divine erupted suddenly and quickly, not gradually and late, among first-century circles of followers (Hurtado).

It is worth noting that the existence of early high Christology is agreed upon by Jewish, Christian, and nonreligious scholars alike. It should also be stressed that the scholars quoted above have different opinions regarding in what sense the earliest Jewish believers viewed Jesus as divine: for example, as an exalted human being, an angelic figure, equal with the Creator, and/or God incarnate. They also have different explanations for exactly how the belief in Jesus’s divinity arose so quickly: for example, as a by-product of Jesus’s execution as “king of the Jews,” a result of the resurrection appearances, or the effect of revelatory experiences of the exalted Jesus in heaven. Despite these differences, however, they all agree on one thing: after the death of Jesus, his earliest Jewish followers did not begin with a low Christology in which Jesus was regarded as merely human and then slowly develop a high Christology in which Jesus was regarded as in some sense divine. Rather, Jesus was regarded as “Divine from the Beginning.”

The Problem of Jesus and Early High Christology

To sum up what we have seen so far: although the vast majority of contributions to the modern quest agree that the historical Jesus never claimed to be divine, recent studies of the early church also agree that Jesus was regarded as divine in some sense from the very beginning. This somewhat paradoxical pair of hypotheses raises an important historical question: If Jesus himself never claimed to be divine in any sense, then how do we explain the origins of early high Christology? Again, Bart Ehrman puts the point well when he asks:

How did an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee, crucified for crimes against the state, come to be thought of as equal to the One God Almighty, maker of all things? How did Jesus—in the minds and hearts of his later followers—come to be God?

The question of the genesis of early high Christology is particularly pressing when we recall that the earliest believers in Jesus—including the apostle Paul—were Jewish believers, who believed in and exclusively worshiped the “one” God of Israel (cf. Deut 6:4–6). How did early believers in Jesus, who were also Jewish monotheists, come to regard Jesus as in some sense equal with the one God? In other words, how do we solve “the riddle of the origin of the Christology of the early church”? Recent studies of early Christology have given a variety of answers.

For example, some contend that the origins of Christology lie in the mistaken identification of Jesus as a messiah by the Jewish crowds at his final Passover. According to this hypothesis, although Jesus and his disciples did not think he was the messiah, it was the messianic fervor of the Jerusalem crowds that led Jesus to be wrongly crucified by Pontius Pilate under the messianic title “King of the Jews” (Matt 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38; John 19:19). Now, it is theoretically possible that the origins of Christology lay with a mob-induced case of mistaken identity. However, this explanation is very difficult to square with the historical evidence that, before he was crucified, Jesus (1) placed himself above the twelve apostles, who represented the heads of the restored twelve tribes of Israel (e.g., Matt 19:28; Luke 22:29–30; Mark 6:7; John 6:67) and (2) publicly rode a donkey into Jerusalem, just like the Jewish Scriptures said the future “king” would do (Matt 21:1–11; Mark 11:1–10; Luke 19:29–38; John 12:12–16; cf. Zech 9:9). As E. P. Sanders argues, taken together, these prophetic signs show that Jesus “thought he was in some sense ‘king’” of the coming kingdom of God. In a first-century Jewish context, another name for the long-awaited king was, of course, “messiah.” In the words of Martin Hengel: “The origin of Christology appears unthinkable without the assumption of a messianic claim of Jesus.”

Others argue that it was early beliefs about the bodily resurrection of Jesus that led his followers to not only proclaim him to be the messiah, but also (in some sense) divine. One problem with this hypothesis is that it assumes that belief in the bodily resurrection would necessarily lead to a belief in Jesus’s divinity. However, there were other first-century Jews—such as John the Baptist (Matt 14:1–2; Mark 6:14–16; Luke 9:7–9), Jairus’s daughter (Matt 9:18–26; Mark 5:21–43; Luke 9:40–56), the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7:11–17), and Lazarus of Bethany (John 11:1–45; 12:9–11)—who were also believed by some of their Jewish contemporaries to have been raised from the dead. Yet, there is no evidence that any of them were ever considered to be divine beings as a result. As Dale Allison rightly points out: “The resurrection alone cannot account for Christology, and Easter did not turn Jesus into someone or something altogether different than he was before.”

Still others argue that it was the experience of “revelatory experiences” in the early church, during which early Jewish believers in Jesus saw him alive and exalted into heaven, that led them to think Jesus could be worshiped as a divine being. One weakness of this hypothesis is that there were other prominent figures in early Jewish belief—most notably, Moses and Elijah—who were also widely regarded as having been exalted into heaven (cf. Deut 34:1–6; 2 Kgs 2:1–12; Josephus, Antiquities 4.323–326; Lives of the Prophets 21:1–15). Both figures were also believed to have appeared to some first-century Jews in powerful revelatory experiences—most notably, to the disciples of Jesus himself during the transfiguration (Matt 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–10; Luke 9:28–36). Yet, as far as we know, there is no evidence that Jesus’s disciples—or any other Jews in the Second Temple period—ever offered Moses or Elijah the kind of worship given to God. And this is just one of several difficulties faced by this hypothesis.

What then are we to say? How do we solve the problem of the relationship between Jesus and early high Christology? The best explanation for why the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus believed he was divine shortly after his death is because Jesus himself spoke and acted as if he were divine during his lifetime. Indeed, when we interpret the words and deeds attributed to Jesus in a first-century Jewish context, a strong case can be made that the historical Jesus claimed to be divine, but he did so in a very Jewish way—using riddles, questions, and allusions to Jewish Scripture to both reveal and conceal the apocalyptic secret of his divinity. As we will see, it is precisely the riddle-like and scripturally allusive nature of Jesus’s divine claims that gave birth to an early Christology that was simultaneously both very “high” (i.e., divine) and very “low” (i.e., human).

Three Historical Warrants

It will take an entire book for me to test this hypothesis regarding Jesus and the origins of early high Christology. However, given the fact that even asking the question of whether the historical Jesus claimed to be divine has been for some time regarded as a “no-go area,” it will be helpful before we begin to briefly outline several reasons for even undertaking such an investigation.

In the last two decades, twenty-first-century scholarship on Second Temple Judaism, the historical Jesus, and earliest Christianity has provided us with at least four historical warrants for exploring whether the early high Christology of the first Jewish believers in Jesus might indeed have its origins in the words and actions of Jesus himself: (1) early Jewish evidence for divine messiahs, (2) the emerging agreement regarding Jesus’s messianic self-identification, (3) a growing recognition that Jesus makes divine self-claims in the Synoptic Gospels as well as the Gospel of John, and (4) often-overlooked evidence that other figures in the Second Temple period made divine claims. In this section, we will take a few moments to examine each of these.

1. The Divinity of the Messiah in Second Temple Judaism

The first reason for reopening the question of whether the historical Jesus claimed to be divine flows from the now-widespread recognition that some early Jewish texts do in fact describe expected messianic figures as superhuman. Consider, for example, the following conclusions of recent scholarship on early Jewish messianism:

The several types of messiahs attested in ancient Jewish texts are commonly classified, not unreasonably, under the headings “royal,” “priestly,” “prophetic,” and “heavenly” (Novenson).

Not all messianic figures . . . were human (Levenson).

The ruler anointed by God is not a mere mortal; he is a divine being who has always existed, who sits beside God on his throne. The Son of Man figure . . . would be one such divine figure (Ehrman).

The idea of the divinity of the messiah has its roots in the royal ideology of ancient Judah . . . In the Hellenistic period, hopes for deliverance often focused on supernatural, heavenly, mediator figures (Collins and Collins).

The term “messiah” did have great interpretive range in Jesus’ period. This figure could be a priest, a prophet, a royal warrior, perhaps even an angelic, nonhuman figure (Fredriksen).

Notice that this conclusion regarding the divinity of the messiah in early Judaism can be found in the works of Jewish, Christian, and nonreligious scholars alike. Notice also that it is not just any figure, but the Danielic “one like a son of man” who is often singled out as an example of a heavenly or divine messiah (cf. Dan 7:13–14). The upshot of these statements is simple: in contrast to the age-old assumption that at the time of Jesus, most Jewish people were waiting for a merely human messiah, recent scholarship suggests that “the divinity of the messiah” was a significant part of the early Jewish messianic landscape. Indeed, it is quite telling that several recent surveys of early Jewish messianism add the category of “heavenly” messiah to the now-standard paradigms of royal, priestly, and prophetic messianic claimants. Hence, the popular notion that all Jewish messianic expectation involved a merely human (and often military) figure needs to be abandoned once and for all. As we will see, in the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism, there is ample evidence for both human and heavenly messiahs—especially when those messianic figures are based in some way on the heavenly son of man in the book of Daniel.

2. The Historical Jesus Saw Himself as a Messianic Figure

Another reason for revisiting the possibility that the historical Jesus claimed to be more than human is the increasing support in recent scholarship for the conclusion that Jesus spoke and acted as if he was the Jewish messiah. Consider, for example, the following conclusions of contributors to the contemporary quest:

I think . . . that the usual criteria of historicity invoked in Jesus research favor the view that the picture of Jesus as Son of David or royal Davidic Messiah goes back to the historical Jesus (Meier).

I think there are excellent reasons for thinking that Jesus imagined himself as the messiah (Ehrman).

Taking his ministry as a whole, it is evident that [Jesus] saw himself as the kind of figure who was later to be hailed as “the Messiah,” though he did not use this term of himself (Casey).

The ever so popular “unmessianic Jesus” never existed. . . . The emergence of the earliest Christology has its ultimate foundation in Jesus’ activity and way (Hengel and Schwemer).

It is quite certain that in his own lifetime Jesus became accepted by many—not just Peter—as the Messiah. Had it not been so, Pilate would not have written above the cross of Jesus, “King of the Jews” (Flusser).

Notice once again that the hypothesis that Jesus saw himself as the messiah is present in the works of Jewish, Christian, and nonreligious scholars alike.

To be sure, some disagree. Others qualify the conclusion somewhat by suggesting that Jesus saw himself as a messiah “in waiting,” or by emphasizing that though Jesus did not explicitly refer to himself as messiah, he “did not reject his being designated this way either.” Nevertheless, many scholars of the historical Jesus agree that if Jesus identified himself with any messianic figure, it was with the “son of man” in the book of Daniel—who does indeed appear to be a “superearthly” figure and a “heavenly being.” If Jesus of Nazareth saw himself as not just any kind of anointed leader, but as the heavenly figure of Daniel 7, then there is ample reason for taking a fresh look at exactly what kind of messiah Jesus may have claimed to be.

3. Jesus Makes Divine Claims in the Synoptic Gospels—Not Just John

A third historical warrant for venturing into the “no-go area” of whether the historical Jesus made divine claims is a growing recognition among contemporary commentators that Jesus is depicted as speaking and acting as if he is divine in all four first-century gospels—not just in the Gospel of John. This may come as something of a shock to readers familiar with the commonplace assertion that Jesus only claims to be divine in the Fourth Gospel. Consider, however, the following sampling of conclusions of recent scholarship on Mark:

Even in Mark, where the Christology can be seen as low, some aspects of Jesus’ divine nature appear. For example, in Mk 6.48, Jesus walks on the water (cf. Mt 14.25; Jn 6.19); the Transfiguration (Mt 17.2; Mk 9.2) as well hints at Jesus’ divine nature (Rashkover).

[Regarding Jesus’s words in Mark 12:35–36:] A seated position at the right hand of a deity implies co-regency with him. The imagery of the quoted portion of the psalm, then, implies that “my lord” stands in a relation of near equality with God (Marcus).

In this saying [Mark 14:62], Jesus claims to be a messiah of the heavenly type, who will be exalted to the right hand of God (Ps 110:1). Being seated at the right hand of God implies being equal to God, at least in terms of authority and power (Collins).

Once again, some disagree. For this reason, I spend my time in Jesus and Divine Christology examining key episodes in the Synoptic Gospels in which Jesus appears to speak and act as if he is divine.

For now, however, it may be helpful to highlight one important example: the recurrent accusations of blasphemy levied against Jesus. Consider the following evidence, taken from all four first-century gospels:

Then some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming” (Matt 9:3).

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has blasphemed! Why do we still need witnesses? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your verdict?” They answered, “He deserves death” (Matt 26:65–66).