Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Do Matthew, Mark, and Luke Present Jesus as Divine?

Many blogs and conservative websites have recently posted on old interview of Bart Ehrman by Stephen Colbert. Colbert gets into character during the interview and it is very entertaining. Colbert actually does decently well in his rebuttal of Ehrman, even though it is a bit 'tongue in cheek'. Erhman actually admitted that Colbert was correct in presenting the Gospel of John as holding forth Jesus as God incarnate in flesh. Where Colbert could have taken Ehrman to task was in the assumption that the Synoptic Gospels (Matt, Mark, and Luke) did not present Jesus as God. Ehrman, in his book Jesus Interrupted, proposes that the Synoptics paint a picture of Jesus as the purely human Jewish Messiah. He believes that the Divinity of Jesus is a later 'add on' of the Church. I would like to propose that Ehrman has not considered the Synopics as the original audience would have heard them. For example, if we could go back in a time machine and ask a Second Temple practicing Jew a few questions it may shed light on this issue. If one were to ask a practicing Jews the following questions: Who can forgive sins?, Who is the Lord of the Sabbath?, Who could be worshiped?, and Who could restructure or reconstitute what it means to be and Israelite? The resounding answer would be, "Only the one true God of Israel!" Now take that into consideration when you think about how Jesus claimed all of these roles in the Synoptics. In Mark 2 we read of Jesus' healing of the paralytic man let down through the roof of a home. Mark 2:5-7 reads, "And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” 6Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7“Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (ESV) One can quickly see that Jesus claims to have the authority to forgive sins and the reaction of the scribes says it all, "God ALONE can forgive sins" Here is just one implicit claim to divinity by Jesus of Nazareth. Matthew bookends his gospel with folks worshiping Jesus. We see that he is worshiped as a baby in Matthew 2:11 and worshiped after His resurrection in Matthew 28:9. We know that only to God alone is worship allowed but Matthew is rubbing our nose in the fact that the story of Jesus is bracketed with worship. The question Matthew is asking the reader is, "Will you worship Him too?" Jesus does other provocative things such as claim to be the Lord of the Sabbath and reconstitute what it means to be an Israelite by literally 'making 12' (his disciples) and determining the boundaries of being God's people as those that are with Him. One could just look at the only accusation that stuck to Jesus in his trail before His crucifixion and see that His claim to Divinity was what put Him on the cross. Mark's Gospel records the sham trial of Jesus and how the Council tried to get false witnesses to testify against Jesus. The problem was that the false witnesses had contradictions in their testimony. What finally stuck was that Jesus claimed equality with God. We read in Mark 14:61-63 "Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” 62And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” 63And the high priest tore his garments and said, “What further witnesses do we need? 64You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemned him as deserving death." (ESV) Jesus claimed the right to sit at the right hand of God which clearly means to share in His glory. One can witness the violent reaction of the high priest to see the effect of this claim. The very reason that Jesus was put on the cross was because of His claim to Divinity. To the Romans it was presented as a claim to Kingship but the Sanhedrin wanted Him on the cross because of their perception of blasphemy. In this post I just explored a few of the examples of Jesus' claim to Divinity in the Synoptics. It is a shame that Ehrman and other scholars try to discount the Christian faith using less than honest tactics. In a sound-bite society I am afraid that many people stop short of truly investigating some of the wild claims by a man like Ehrman.

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