120 Things ABC CBS CNN FOX and NBC Won't Tell You" Cont..
38. Jesus claimed to be God.
Ankerberg: When you look at the Gospels, when you look at the New Testament books, and you look at that information, what words that Jesus spoke impressed you that he was telling the truth or do you think that he was telling the truth when he claimed to be God? Or was he even claiming to be God?
Witherington: Well, in some ways the indirect evidence of Jesus being more than a mere mortal is more compelling than the direct evidence. Let me give you an example. The word "Amen" which we still use today, we use as a confirmation of when some other person has said something that we believe is true, and we will say, "so be it," which is what Amen means, I agree, yes, that’s true. Now in the case of Jesus, one of the things that is distinctive of the Jesus tradition is that Jesus used the word Amen before he said some particular important utterance. Amen, I say to you, we translate "Truly, Truly I say to you." Now in advance of his saying it, he affirms the truthfulness of his words. What other early Jew did that? Nobody. We don’t find it anywhere else in the New Testament. Peter doesn’t do this of his utterances. Paul doesn’t do this of his utterances. Other early Jews that we have record of didn’t do this of their own utterances. To the contrary, most early Jews were using footnotes "I say on the authority of Rabbi Shemi, who says on the authority of Rabbi Elal, so and so¼. This is true." Well, what Jesus affirmed the truthfulness of his own words in advance by saying "Amen." I mean, what kind of person does that in a Jewish culture highly dependant on tradition? A very unusual person.
Another piece of evidence. Jesus himself says "I say unto you." I mean, he speaks on his own authority. It’s one of the things the gospels convey over and over again. And one of the earliest stories about Jesus being in the synagogue in the Gospel of Mark, if you look at Mark 1 and 2, it says, a new teaching and with authority. He doesn’t use footnotes. He speaks on his own authority in a highly tradition bound culture, what kind of person say, "You’ve heard it said in the tradition of the elders, but I say to you, on my own authority." What kind of person does that? What kind of person says, I say?
Furthermore, what kind of person treats the Mosaic law with the kind of sovereign freedom Jesus did? Jesus says the dominion of God is breaking into human history, that means new occasions teach new duties. Guess what? The laws of clean and unclean no longer should restrict us from reaching out to people who have leprosy, or this disease or that disease, you know. Jesus allows his disciples to do things that Pharisees and others would have said were acts of ritual uncleanness. Jesus says this is a new situation. The eschatological age has broken in. I’m telling you now that those laws are now obsolescent. Now what kind of person feels that they have the freedom to set aside some of the Mosaic law?
I mean these kind of indirect evidences are to me some of the most compelling pieces of evidence because they’re not the kinds of things that later Christians wanted to claim about Jesus. They wanted to go with the titles" He’s Son of God, Son of Man, this is who he is. And certainly Jesus did make some claims of that sort. It seems very clear that he went around calling himself son of man quite a lot.
Ankerberg: Was that important?
Witherington: Well, I think it’s very important.
Ankerberg: How come? What does son of man do for you in terms of deity?
Witherington: Well, first of all the context of that phrase is Daniel 7. It’s not a general Ben-Adam, son of Adam kind of phrase. It doesn’t mean a human being like me. If you look at the context out of which Jesus is using that phrase in Daniel 7, the son of man figure is the one who comes before the Almighty and is given an everlasting kingdom. Now what kind of person can rule in an everlasting kingdom? It’s only an everlasting person who can rule for ever and ever and ever. So the proper context in which to exegete this phrase, son of man, is Daniel 7:13 and following. That’s where this phrase comes from. Now what’s interesting about that is that Jesus didn’t want to be pigeon-holed. There were a wide panoply of Messianic expectations in early Judaism. Jesus didn’t want to pigeon-holed into, well, he’s going to be a political messiah, bringing a warrior group of persons to Jerusalem and he’s going to take over by violence. He didn’t want to be pigeon-holed in this way or that way. He wanted to define his own identity in a way that he felt was natural and would best represent who he was. So he chose to refer to himself over and over again as son of man. If you knew the later prophetic Scriptures, like Daniel and Zechariah, you would understand the eschatological and apocalyptic overtones of that. If you didn’t it would just sound like he was claiming to be a representative human being.
Ankerberg: When he was on trial and they asked him "Are you the Christ, the son of the blessed?" and he said that "I am," then he quoted that, do you think that the Jewish priests, high priests, understood what he was saying?
Witherington: Well, I think for sure that you can count on the high priest knowing Daniel 7. And what’s interesting is they offered him the traditional titles, are you Meshiak, Messiah, the son of the Blessed One? Jesus say, you know, okay, that’s the way you put it, but I prefer to say, "and you will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of God and coming on the clouds for judgment." Now, they knew very well that the only son of man said in the Old Testament to be sitting at the right hand of God or being given dominion or power by God was the one represented in Daniel 7 as the future of God’s people. And so, surely they would have understood this. But they also knew that throughout the Old Testament the one who was given the right to offer final judgment on the world was God himself. And so somebody who claims to come on the clouds and offer final judgment has got to be some kind of divine figure for sure. And this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, claiming to be a divine figure, sitting on the right hand of God, coming from God and offering judgment on the world, what kind of person makes that kind of claim? Well that was just way over the top, and that, of course was the straw that broke the camel’s back according to the synoptic Gospels.
39. Jesus knew he would die, and that his death would be significant.
Ankerberg: From the evidence, what do you think Jesus thought about himself in terms of the purpose for his life?
Witherington: Well, there were a lot of purposes for Jesus’ life, but when he makes a purpose statement like you find in Mark 10:45, "the son of man did not come to be served but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many," I mean, ultimately, as Dorothy Sayers once said, Jesus was the man who came to die. He understood that it was going to require more than just pithy sayings or parables or even this miracle or that miracle for the people of God and the world to be changed. He understood that something had to be done about the sin problem. And so, and in the larger scheme of things, those son of man sayings that are in Mark 8 and 9 and 10, the son of man must suffer many things, be killed and on the third day rise, that gets at the heart of what he sees as his purpose. And it’s not an accident that the Gospel writers¼ The Gospels have all been called passion narratives with a long introduction. Almost half of the gospels is spent on that last crucial, critical week of Jesus’ life. Why is that? This is prime time. This is where the salvation of God, according to these witnesses is actually being wrought. Could the world have been saved if Jesus never told the parable of the Good Samaritan? Of course. Could the world have been saved if blind Bartemaus had never received his sight? Of course. But what the early Christians did not believe that the world could not have been saved if Jesus had not come, if he had not died, and if he had not risen again. |
