Jesus: When God Became a Jew

When Jesus of Nazareth asked his talmidim (disciples), “Who do you say that I am?” the ebullient and outspoken Peter exclaimed, “Attah hu, haMashiach, ben Elohim hayim” (“You are he, the Messiah, Son of the living God.”) This simple affirmation immediately became the foundation of the Christian community when Jesus confirmed that the apostle’s insight had, in fact, been a divine revelation and when he subsequently declared to the disciples, “Upon this rock [revelation] I will build my community, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Matthew 16:18).

Since Christianity is established entirely upon the person and work of Jesus (1 Corinthians 3:11; Ephesians 2:20), it is purely a Messianic faith. In fact, the Son of God is today called “Jesus Christ” by Christians because he was and is the Messiah. “Christ” is not Jesus’ surname; it is his title—a Greek translation, Χρίστος, (Christos) of the Hebrew word מָשִׁיחַ, (Mashiach). There is no Christianity without the Christ, and the “Christ” is the Jewish “Messiah”! Without the Jewish Messiah, there is no such thing as Christianity. The concept of Messiah is exclusively a Jewish idea that was woven into the fabric of the Hebrew Scriptures and into the traditions of First and Second Temple Judaism and of Rabbinic Judaism as well. The messianic expectation has always been and will ever be a Jewish theme. Christianity, therefore, is a Jewish religion, the foundation of which was established on the monotheistic ethics of the Jewish Scriptures and on the messianic predictions of those Scriptures both in prophecy and in rich symbolism, typology, and imagery (Hebrews 10:1; Colossians 2:17).

Diverse Viewpoints on the Messiah

Since the time when prophets and sages began to birth a messianic expectation among the Israelites, a wide range of viewpoints emerged as to who the Messiah (“Anointed One”) would be and what he would do. As Michael Kogan points out, the majority of the sages envisioned the Messiah as a human figure.¹ Most Jews in history have believed that the Messiah would be a king; however, others envisioned a prophet, and still others expected  a priest. Most believed that the Messiah would usher in an age of universal peace on earth.² Many, however, believed that the coming of the Messiah would bring about the end of the world, which for some meant the end of the age, but for others, the end of Planet Earth.³

Still others among the Jews “expected direct divine intervention into history without any Messiah figure at all.”⁴ Even the great Rabbi Hillel argued against the coming of a personal Messiah: “There shall be no Messiah for Israel, because they have already enjoyed him in the days of Hezekiah.”⁵ Hillel’s argument, however, drew the immediate rebuke of Rabbi Joseph who said, “May God forgive Rabbi Hillel.” Virtually all the Jewish sages, however, expected the “last days” to be “a time of vindication for the Jewish people and their beliefs.”⁶ 

Messianic Divinity and Humanity

As the second-temple period unfolded, however, many Jews expected that the Messiah would be a divine person while others believed he would be both human and divine. The expectation that the Messiah “would be a god-man” was already “part and parcel of Jewish tradition” before the beginning of the Common Era, says Daniel Boyarin.⁷ The prevalence of the Jewish view in pre-Christian times that the Messiah would be a divine or divine-human person meant that the ultimate “belief in Jesus as God” was not a “departure on which some new religion came into being but simply another variant (and not a deviant one) of Judaism,” he concludes.⁸ This concept of a divine-human Messiah was based largely on Daniel’s “son of man” prophecies (7:13–22).

When the disciples of Jesus analyzed the life and work of their Master, they concluded that he was, without doubt, the Messiah whom the prophets, kings, and sages of Israel had anticipated. It was not a profound departure from prior Jewish thought when they also concluded that Jesus was—in Peter’s words—more than the Messiah: he was also the Son of God, the God of Israel who had sovereignly determined to tabernacle among them in human flesh—Jewish flesh.

For the disciples of Jesus, the God of their Scriptures had simply become a Jew. Peter proclaimed this truth to the larger Jewish community on the Day of Pentecost immediately after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension: “God has made this Jesus … both Lord [Yhwh] and Messiah” (Acts 2:36). The Apostle John was more definitive when he declared, “In the beginning was the Word [Logos, D’var, or Memra], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … and the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:1, 14). Paul removed all doubt about the divinity of Messiah Yeshua when he said, “In [Jesus] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). Each of these claims was founded on apostolic interpretations of the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Right to Interpret Prophecy

These were not, however, illegitimate claims advanced by Jews who had no right to make them. At the time, there was no such thing as a monolithic Judaism. In fact, there were many Judaisms, as even Christian Scripture attests. There were Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Essenes, the Qumran Community, even Sicarii, a group of first-century zealot assassins. The disciples of Jesus identified themselves simply as “The Way,” or more definitively as “Notzrim,” the followers of the Netzer, the shoot from the stem of Jesse. In so doing, they identified themselves with the Messiah predicted in Isaiah 11:1.

Because there was no monolithic Judaism at that time, there was no established authority, even though the Pharisees, the progenitors of Rabbinic Judaism, made every effort to assert their right to interpret Scripture, especially regarding legal matters (halakhah), and were even recognized by Jesus as the ones who occupied “Moses’ Seat” and should be obeyed (Matthew 23:2–3).

When it came to interpreting the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures, however, all the various sects of Judaism claimed equal, if not superior, rights to interpretation. This was especially true about the perspectives on the Messiah. The disciples of Jesus, therefore, were well within their rights as spiritual leaders in Israel to interpret their Jewish Scriptures as they believed them to be, and they did so with what they viewed as irrefutable and infallible proofs.

The Divine Transcendence/Immanence Dilemma

As the sages made in-depth studies of the Hebrew Scriptures, they confronted a dilemma. Was the God who gave the Scriptures and whose actions toward the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews were described in them a transcendent God or an immanent being? Was their God “wholly other” or was he “God with us”? For many, if not most, the philosophical and theological dilemma could be solved only with an either–or approach. God could not be transcendent and immanent at the same time, so philosophically, one had to choose either transcendence or immanence.

The dilemma was that the Hebrew Scriptures support both views of God. The Tanakh presented God as utterly transcendent. “The highest heavens cannot contain [God]. So who am I, that I should build a house for him,” (2 Chronicles 2:6). The Apostolic Scriptures agree. Even Jesus himself declared, “No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God” (John 6:46).

The sages also faced the other side of this dilemma when they read in their Scriptures that God had appeared in bodily form to Abraham and other patriarchs, as well as to kings and prophets. Their answer was to do everything in their power to protect the honor of God by declaring him to be utterly transcendent and then to attribute the anthropomorphic imagery of God’s reported manifestations to the idea that God created the “angel of his presence” to be represent him in the earth (Isaiah 63:9).

The Torah is filled with references where the “angel of the Lord” visited various patriarchs, including Abraham (Genesis 22:1–18), Jacob (Genesis 28:13; 31:11–13), and Moses (Exodus 3:2–6, 14), and the whole camp of Israel (Exodus 13:21; 14:19–20); however, these accounts also say that it was God himself who was doing the acting. The sages concluded that though God was said to have been interacting with humans, it was actually the angel of the Lord who was doing so as his representative.

This argument, however, was fraught with difficulties. Though its motive was to protect the honor of God from demeaning anthropomorphisms, it cannot account for the fact that the “angel” or “man” who visited Abraham and who led Israel out of Egypt and through the wilderness readily accepted worship, which was utterly forbidden by God himself for anyone or anything that was not God. This can be contrasted with the fact that the only angel who did seek worship (“I will be like the Most High”—Isaiah 14:14) was cast from heaven, never to be restored to the divine presence (Luke 10:18).

Another novel approach to the perceived need to protect the honor of God and his transcendence from anthropomorphisms was the action taken in the Targumim, the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Scriptures. In these works, the term the Word of God was often inserted in Scripture as a substitute for the word God—and especially the name Yhwh.

A Hebraic Both–And Solution to the Divine Dilemma

Having spent years of their lives under the teaching of Jesus, the apostles concluded—in typical Jewish fashion for that time—that God was both transcendent and immanent at the same time. Here is how Paul described God’s transcendence: “He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen” (1 Timothy 6:15–16, rsv). John reiterated this same theme, “No one has seen God at any time.”

The answer to the transcendence/immanence dilemma was to accept Scripture when it declared God to be high above all heavens and at the same time to affirm its description of God as assuming angelic and human form to interact with his Chosen People. God did not create an angel for the purpose of being “God with us.” He instead separated from himself a part of himself and assumed two modes of existence (persons), one transcendent, the other immanent.

John discovered the key: “The Logos was God” (John 1:1). In the tradition of the Targumim, he argued that the Word of God was God and was with God at the same time. He understood that all the theophanies (appearances of God) in the Hebrew Scriptures were actually Christophanies (pre-incarnational appearances of the Messiah). As the divine Logos, the Lord could and readily did accept worship which was rightfully his. The divine Word, therefore, was the person who appeared to Abraham and made covenant with him and his descendants forever. The divine Word was the one who wrestled with Jacob and blessed him.

John further explained these theophanies that are recorded throughout the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures when he analyzed one of the most spectacular of such events that is recorded in Isaiah 6. When John quoted the prophetic word that the “high-and-lifted-up” Lord (Yhwh) had given the prophet for Israel, “He has blinded their eyes and he hardened their heart, so that they would not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and be converted and I heal them,” the apostle drew this conclusion: “These things Isaiah said when he saw his [Jesus’] glory and spoke about him” (John 12:40–41). Jesus, therefore, was the immanent Son who revealed the transcendent Father: “It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18, rsv).

Blasphemy or Divine Truth

During the ministry of Jesus, the Master often made allusions to his own divinity. When he declared, “Before Abraham was, I am,” the Pharisees immediately charged him with blasphemy (John 8:48–59) because they understood that when he said, “I am,” he was claiming to be the Yhwh who said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14). This is why they sought to exact the penalty for blasphemy—death—by stoning him.

On another occasion, Jesus boldly said, “I and my Father are one.” Because he claimed to be the Son of God and to be echad (one) with the Father, the people connected his statement with the Shema’s declaration, “God is echad,” and they again tried to stone him for blasphemy (John 10:30–31). The context of this event was even more powerful in that at the time, Jesus was celebrating Hanukkah, the festival that marked the Jews’ victory over Antiochus, the Seleucid king who had assumed the title Epiphanes (“God Manifest”). Jesus, however, knew that he was not merely a man who was trying to make himself God: he was God who had become human. While a human being can never make himself God, God can do anything he pleases, and, in the case of Jesus, it pleased God to enflesh himself as Yeshua.

While the devotion of many of his contemporaries to the theology of absolute monotheism prompted some of Jesus’ countrymen to accuse him of blasphemy for saying that he was the Son of God and the I AM or for claiming that he was echad with God, the disciples understood the opposite to be true. Jesus was true God (1 John 5:20) in whom the fullness of divinity dwelled bodily (Colossians 2:9). One community’s blasphemy, therefore, was another community’s divine truth.

Apostolic Use of Prophetic Proofs

The apostles exercised their Jewish right to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures, especially the words of their prophets. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter quoted Psalm 16:10, “You [God] will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will you allow your holy one to undergo decay,” as proof that Jesus was both Lord and Messiah because he had resurrected from the dead. The apostle continued to say that God, through the “prophet” David had also predicted the resurrection of Jesus so he could fulfill his divine oath to the king that “of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up one of his descendants to sit on his throne” (Acts 2:30).

The writer of Hebrews quoted Psalm 110:1 where King David said, “The Lord [Yhwh] said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand,” and asked this question: “To which of the angels has [God] ever said, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’?” (Hebrews 1:13). The conclusion was that the Psalmist was speaking about Jesus.

Peter quoted Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you … you shall listen to him,” as confirmation of the ministry of Jesus and his return to earth: “He shall send Jesus Christ whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things” (Acts 3:20–21).

Hebrews 7:17ff quotes Psalm 110:4, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek,” as evidence that Jesus became the High Priest after his resurrection (because he could not be priest while on earth since he was genealogically from the tribe of Judah, not Levi).

Apostolic Theology/Christology

The apostles also affirmed the absolute deity of Jesus by correlating theology and Christology. Paul did so in an amazing display of maintaining continuity with biblical faith by connecting the truth about the divine Messiah with the cardinal truth of the Torah. In Deuteronomy 6:4, God himself established the theology of monotheism in what was to become Israel’s most prominent declaration of faith, the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Jesus himself affirmed this as the first and greatest commandment (Mark 12:28–29; Matthew 22:36–37).

Paul, however, explicated the Shema as containing a revelation of the Father and of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things … and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6). Paul understood that the word echad (“one”)in the Shema (“The Lord our God is echad [one].”) expresses “a compound unity,” not an absolute singularity (as does the Hebrew word yachid). Paul explained, therefore, that the “Lord God” of the Shema is a compound unity of Father, Son, and Spirit by employing the two terms for God that are used in the Shema (Yhwh—“Lord” and Elohim—“God”) to describe Father and Son, respectively. The one God is the “Father”; the one Lord is the Son. The Shema, Judaism’s affirmation of theological truth, explicated by Paul’s declaration, became the foundation of the Christian affirmation of faith, the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord. …”

The faith of believers in Jesus has always rested on monotheism wherein there is only one God who is manifest in three modes of divine existence identified as three persons (Father, Son, and Spirit), not three separate and distinct beings. This reflects the apostolic understanding of monotheism expressed in the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is echad [a compound unity].”

Prophet, Priest, and King

Jesus is the fulfillment of all the messianic predictions of the Hebrew Scriptures and of their yet future messianic expectations. He is the “prophet like Moses,” the “priest like Melchizedek,” and the “king like David.” In effect, he is the fulfillment of the three messianic expectations of Jewish thought: Mashiach ben-Yosef, Mashiach ben-Levi, and Mashiach ben-David. While the Israelites allowed for the possibility that the three messianic manifestations seen in Scripture could be three different Messiahs, the apostles understood that they were all one. The only manner in which this could occur would be if the Messiah is divine, the son of man of Daniel’s prophecy (7:13–14) who “came with the clouds of heaven” to the Ancient of Days, the Eternal Father himself, to receive an everlasting kingdom that will never pass away.

Jesus came as the prophet like Moses who strengthened, fulfilled by “filling full,” and perfectly observed the entire Torah. When he resurrected from the dead (a sign of his inherit deity because he alone had the power to lay his life down and to take it up again [John 10:17]), Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father where he became the High Priest like Melchizedek. When he returns to the earth as he has promised (John 14:3), he will be the King of kings and the Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16), and he will sit on King David’s throne.

The Messiah Mission

The prophet Isaiah gave the most succinct summarization of the divine Messiah’s mission in the immortal words he used to describe the Suffering Servant of Yhwh (Isaiah 53). As the “God who provides” (Yhwh Yireh) did in Abraham’s day when he “provided himself the lamb” as a substitutionary sacrifice for Isaac (Genesis 22:8), so God provided a lamb—in this case, himself—to solve the age-old dilemma of human sin and separation from God through vicarious atonement. “He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed,” the prophet proclaimed (53:5). This was the Holy One who “was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth,” for “like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before his shearers, so he did not open his mouth” (53:7). He was “cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people,” for “the Lord was pleased to crush him” (53:8). Yet, through the power of the divine resurrection, the Lord “will prolong his days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand” (53:10). Jesus himself summed up his divine mission this way: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

The Final Denouement

At that time, the prediction that God made through Isaiah, “Unto me every knee shall bow, and every tongue will swear allegiance” (Isaiah 45:23), will be fulfilled in Jesus, for “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord [Yhwh], to the glory of God [Elohim] the Father” (Philippians 2:10).

This is Jesus, the divine Messiah, fully God and fully human, who is “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5). With John, the righteous of the earth will ever declare, “Unto him that loved us, and released us from our sins by his blood—and he has made us to be a kingdom, priests to his God and Father—to him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen” (Revelation 1:5–6).

As Daniel predicted, “Then the sovereignty, the dominion, and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the Highest One; his kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey him. This is the end of the matter” (Daniel 7:27–28).

About the Author

John D. Garr, Ph.D.

President & CEO