#120 Brant Pitre - Jesus DID Claim to be God

27:05However, I also think that what you're seeing in the gospel narrative here is a superhuman claim being made by Jesus when he uses, first of all, the Son of Man to refer to himself and makes the claim to be able to do something at least which heretofore has been viewed as a divine prerogative, namely not to ask God to forgive their sins, not to offer a sacrifice on behalf, but simply to declare the man's sins forgiven. And not just the man. Notice what he says to him. my son. That's a weird way to address, presumably, another adult male who is not actually your son. That's a strange—he'll do this throughout the Gospels.

27:48My daughter, my son. Now, these are not his students. These are just bystanders, strangers, sick people. It doesn't make a lot of sense if he's merely human, but if he's implying that he's more than just an ordinary rabbi, ordinary teacher, then there are these various hints and clues that build together toward making the claim here in this case for sure of not just being a son of man like a human being like in psalm 8 but the son of man meaning the heavenly figure that you see in the book of daniel who's described as we're singing receiving glory honor power kingdom and who comes on the clouds right something that God does in theophanies in the Old Testament.

28:32So I think this is a good example of how just on the surface, there are lots of different possible interpretations of, so you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. But if you look at it elusively, like what Jewish text from the Old Testament is he alluding to? And what does that Old Testament text in context reveal about the implication of who he's claiming to be? I definitely think that in this case, he is making the implicit claim to be a heavenly Messiah, like the Son of Man, who has divine power to forgive sins directly. And that's why I think the scribes in this case do not misinterpret the implications of his actions.

29:09And in fact, the whole point of the miracle is, so that you may know that I have the power to perform the invisibly divine act of forgiving his sins, I'll perform the visible miracle, so to speak, of healing his body and healing his paralysis by saying, rise, take up your palate. So that's my reading of the text. There's a lot to be said, right? And I hope people can realize. Some people ask me, like, yeah, Alex, why are you, as an agnostic atheist guy, so interested in Christology? And it's like, just listening to you speak, you can imagine you're on the Wikipedia page trying to read, and it's like, all the hyperlinks that you're clicking, all the tabs that are slowly opening soteriology son of man all of the time it's absolutely fascinating all of it um i've only got people too in a jewish setting this by the time you get to first century the danielic son of man figure is in early jewish apocalyptic texts depicted in fourth azra or first enoch these ancient writings as a pre-existent superhuman heavenly being so So there's also a resonance within Jewish circles here when Jesus alludes to famous, these are not obscure passages in the Old Testament.

30:20These are famous passages, highly debated passages. And just like you and I might allude to a famous movie or a famous song, and we can expect the audience to pick up on it. In this case, I think that's how he's operating with his audiences in Mark 2. Yeah, we'll have to talk about the Son of Man, of course. I mean, that is the greatest mystery. But just before that, I've only got maybe a couple of things to say about this. Oh, sure. Please. Go ahead. Forgiving sins business. And part of the interesting, so it's part of the fun of doing this is that a lot of the time you have multiple versions of a story, right?

30:52You've got multiple gospels telling the same story, which gives us a really good insight into what was definitely sort of believed as to have happened, what might be embellishments of an author. And there are a few things to say. Firstly, on this son and daughter business, I do think that is kind of interesting. but that's a question that i will be hopeless to answer unless i understand you know like uh colloquial uh galilean ways of speaking i mean that you know i could walk down the street and a police officer might come up to me and say hey son you know if you're in the south in the united states yeah so it's kind of difficult to know but it is interesting right that the the only other things that i that i'd want to point out is is firstly what it's all to do with the fact that this is in Mark's gospel, that Matthew's gospel has this story as well, of course.

31:39And Matthew is a little bit later, it's in chapter nine. And I want to emphasize that Matthew takes, I think it's something like 95 % of Mark's gospel is just copied verbatim in Matthew's gospel. Like it's like basically the entire of Mark's gospel is reproduced with extra material, but there's just these few passages that for whatever reason, Matthew doesn't copy from Mark, just a handful full of them. And one of them occurs in this story. When this story is told, Matthew removes a line. And what's the line he removes? He removes the line where the scribes say, who can forgive sins but God alone.

32:16That's not in Matthew's version, which, given that he doesn't seem to remove things like willy-nilly, there seems to be an intentionality behind removing this reference to only God can forgive sins. And I wonder if that's got something to do with the developing understanding that actually that's not true or maybe there's another explanation maybe it's a coincidence the only other thing i'll say and i'll let you respond to this because it's the same the same story is after this in matthew's version as you say the crowd reacts in matthew's version what is it that they say then the man got up and went home when the crowd saw this they were filled with awe and they praised god who had given such authority to a man Man, exactly.

32:56Yes. Okay. So you can see how I'm going to read this, right? Like, well, Matthew's taking out this forgiveness of sins. They recognize that God has given this authority to a man. What's going on there? Okay, so let me, this is great. I'm so glad you brought this up because this is an important point. You'll notice one of the titles, I agonized about the title for a long time. The title of the book is Divine Christology. And there's a reason for that. It wasn't just Jesus and his divinity. Because the thesis of the book, although there's a lot of emphasis on divinity, is not just that Jesus is divine simplicite, right?

33:28Like just in its simplest form. It's that he's a divine Christ, a divine Messiah. So there's divine messianism. So there's both human and divine. And one of the challenges I've found with this is that very frequently, sometimes people will assume, well, if I'm saying he's divine, I'm some way saying he's not human. And obviously, it's not the classic Catholic Christology, which is always a both and on this point. But it is understandable. So I agree with Matthew, surprise, surprise, that it is fascinating that God has given this authority to a man? Because I am not saying that in Mark 2 or in Matthew's version, he's not a man.

34:06What I am saying is he's not merely a man and that he has divine power and divine prerogatives that exceed that of a normal human being. So both responses, we've never seen anything like this, Mark, and wow, how has God given such authority to a man are reasonable responses because I'm arguing that Jesus is revealing through his words and actions, the mystery of his, not just his divinity, as if he's a divine being who's pretending to be human or appearing as human, like maybe some of the angelic beings in the Old Testament, but actually a divine man or a divine messiah. So I agree with your emphasis there on humanity, but I don't think it takes away from the superhuman or exalted status to which he is also laying claim implicitly.

34:55yeah that's that's a key point is that like for saying something like that the reactions of the crowd is like that's weird that a man can do that yeah because you know he's not just a man you know but do you do you have a view on why matthew removes this reference to man okay so i'll be honest with you um i spent a lot of years uh studying the synoptic problem studying q at a Q library, I get more and more cautious and more and more agnostic about my ability to get inside the head of why an author took this out or whether they even did or not. It's an extremely complex question. The synoptic problem is the question of which author wrote first, who copied from whom, and then why did they make the changes, omissions, additions, redactions that they did?

35:49I think a lot of that is honestly beyond the limits of our ability to really know. We can guess. We can speculate. There are certain tendencies that you can definitely see if you're right about the relationship of which author is copying from which. But I'm going to pull, is it okay if I can be agnostic on that point? I don't know. I'm not sure. And I would tell you. I mean, it is worth pointing out that though Matthew does remove that phrase, who can forgive sins but God alone, he does still have the scribes say, this man is blaspheming. Absolutely. So it's difficult to know how he'd be blaspheming if not on the same grounds.

36:25And as an author too, the one reason I've edited now, I guess I've written, published now almost 10 books. Sometimes I don't even know why I'll admit something

36:33Brant Pitre:or why I admit something. It's a very complex process. So I'm always a little hesitant to guess there. I mean, there could be all kinds of, it could literally be that Matthew had a version of Mark's gospel and his eyes skipped over the verse. It could be anything. And also, too, when we say Matthew has 95 % of Mark in it or 90 % more than that, it's true, but it's actually, you got to be careful because a lot of the episodes that are, that is true with regard to the episodes in Matthew Mark, but it's not actually true with regard to a lot of the material. Oftentimes, the episode in Matthew is shorter.

37:08So you have the same pericope, but it's actually longer in Mark, like with the healing of the garrison demoniac. It's the same episode, much longer in Mark than it is in Matthew. So Matthew actually has a content, if you're taking the hypothesis, the two source that Mark's first and Matthew and Luke copy, Matthew actually has a habit of shortening Mark in episodes. He wants to preserve them all, but his tendency is to make them more brief. So you get more detail, more elaboration Mark with fewer episodes. So again, it's a complicated question. So I'm not sure. I'll tell you what I should do maybe at this junction because there are paths exploding in front of me where we could go.

37:45I want to talk about the Son of Man. We can talk about worship. We can talk about walking on the water. We can talk about all of that kind of stuff. But I think I should lay out what my position is here, what my understanding is to help here. And maybe you can lay out yours too. I think you might have betrayed yourself as a Catholic given your use of Latin. I think it's out in the open now for our listeners. For all this me, yes. For what it's worth, I'm quite attracted to the idea that Jesus, historically speaking, is essentially a follower of John the Baptist, a disciple of John the Baptist.

38:20And there's some evidence in this, in the fact that Jesus is, of course, baptized by John the Baptist, and John is preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. A lot of people think that John was a type of Jew known as an Essene, because there are sort of three major Jewish groups in this time. There's the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. And of course, a lot of people might not have heard of the latter group because Jesus is constantly battling with the first two. He never battles with the third. It's a fairly well-trodden path of people who suggest. This means Jesus is an Essene in the tradition of John the Baptist.

38:55John the Baptist dies. John is constantly talking about having a successor. There's one coming who's going to be greater than me. Jesus is that man. Jesus continues the ministry of John the Baptist. And then what we see is Jesus preparing to pass on that ministry to his own disciples and singling out Peter as his sort of main successor. And of course, this is very unorthodox for Christians, but I'm speaking historically here. There are some clues here. Jesus is saying things to his disciples like, you know, one day you'll do greater things than I will. He talks about teachers and students and how the students will surpass the teacher.

39:27And of course, the main thing, and the reason I bring this up, is to say that whenever I'm confronted with evidence of Jesus' actions, things that he can do that only God can do, Jesus forgives sins. In John chapter 20, he ends up giving that authority to his disciples. Jesus walks on the water. A lot of people also forget that Peter also walks on the water. And yet he starts sinking because he doesn't have enough faith. But the implication there is that if he had enough faith, he'd be able to walk on the water just like Jesus did. Meaning Jesus is presented as this idyllic figure with perfect faith in the Father.

40:02And if only Peter has the same faith, he could have walked on the water too. Jesus judges mankind. Well, he delegates judgment of the 12 tribes of Israel to the disciples. So as we talk about some of these examples, I want my listeners, our listeners, to recognize in my responses that that is kind of my rough understanding. That in these instances where Jesus is doing something extraordinary, and yeah, he is obviously doing something amazing and something that at least common understanding would have it that only God can do. Jesus is sort of saying, no, watch, I can do this too, but only in a way that one day you will also.

40:35And the greatest summary of this is in John chapter 17, where Jesus is praying for his disciples and the wider Christian community. And he prays that one day, you know, they will be in me just as I am in you, the Father, and we'll all sort of be one together. Seeming to imply that the special relationship Jesus has with the Father is something that will hopefully be passed on to other people. So that's basically my broad position. I thought it's worth laying that out. as we go through these. No, that's really helpful. So let me try to lay out just in a brief way, and then I'd like to point to some things that might be in tension with that reading.

41:21Basically, let me say I agree with you, because actually one of the amazing things about Christianity is that it makes very exalted claims for the gifts that it professes, both the apostles, their disciples, and other believers will be able to share it. It's a very high claim. And this is where the whole Christian tradition of theosis or divinization comes from, even though that's not very well known in contemporary Christian circles and discourse, I think. So my basic position or a couple of positions that I want to try to lay out in this book. Number one is that on the level of the gospel narratives, I'm trying to undo what I believe to be a very erroneous position that Jesus is only divine, only depicted as divine in John and not in this context.

42:06So I actually think that when it comes to the four sources from the first century about Jesus, he acts and speaks as if he's divine in all four. Martha, Mark, Luke, and John. Not just the fourth copy. Second, I actually think that in addition to the passages that you just listed about him performing divine actions or having divine power to forgive sins or to judge. right in addition to those there are other passages where jesus does things that i at least i i think he doesn't give to his disciples so let me let me give you a couple of examples is that fair okay so for example um let's look at the walking on the sea so i have the chapter called the epiphanic miracles in um in the book this is the second chapter and one of the main points of this chapter is actually to just demolish what i think is actually a myth the myth that he's only divine in John, and he's not really divine in the synoptics.

43:01I just think that doesn't hold up. And it's worked in the modern period primarily because in the modern period, there's been a tendency to bracket the miraculous out as if these aren't even part of the Gospels. It's almost kind of like a canon within canon. So lots of books on Jesus just ignore what are known widely as the epiphanic miracles. Now, epiphanic miracles already suggest to you that something is being unveiled or revealed, and it's not just a merely human quality, right? This is why King Antiochus the fourth, when he wants to claim divinity, he means coins, Antiochus Epiphanos, right?

43:32Antiochus, God manifest, right? He's making a divine claim. But the epiphany miracle that I think is really crucial here in Mark 6, the walking on the sea, takes place. In it, Jesus does something, you're right, that he enables, in Matthew's version, he enables Peter at least to walk briefly on the sea before he begins to sink. But one of the things he does that at least I don't see Peter or any other disciple doing anywhere else is take the divine name as his own from the Old Testament, right? So just to give you an example, in Mark chapter 6, right, when he comes walking on the sea and they see him, they think he's a ghost, he says to them, this is in Mark 6 verse 50, take heart, ego eimi, do not be afraid, right?

44:20So take heart, I am, do not fear, do not be afraid, right? Now, as I show in Jesus and Divine Christology, it's not just Christian apologists. It's Jewish scholars, non-religious scholars, Protestants, Catholics alike, recognizing that on the narrative level, at the very least, okay, the ego eimi here is not just an identification. It is doing that, okay? Because he's just told you they think he's a ghost. There is a mistaken identity element taking place here. And he is saying, ego and me, it is I. That's not an illegitimate translation. But that's not all that's happening because the context is theophanic, right?

45:01It'd be one thing to just say, it's me if, you know, you stumble across someone in the dark and you don't know who it is. And he says, I am. Okay, fine. No numinous divine implications. but he's walking on the water when he says ego and me and he adds to it and this is important the the standard theophanic uh statement mayful based that greek do not be afraid don't be afraid this is what happens over and over again the old testament when a heavenly being comes down whether it's the lord or whether it's an angelic figure the normal human response is fear and trembling Right. So in this case, Jesus both identifies himself, allays their fears, but then also, in my opinion, and in the opinion of lots of scholars, takes the numinous divine epithet, ego e me, I am, or I am he who is, which is an allusion to Exodus 3, the kind of paradigmatic theophany in the Old Testament, in which God reveals his name to the Israelites.

46:01It's a revelation of not just what he is, but who he is. This uncreated creator, the one who has no beginning, who has no end. He's not just the God of the mountain or the God of the river. He's the God who is. And so he takes that name as his own. That is something that I think you see not only in Mark 6, but also in John 8, 58, when Jesus says, or Abraham was, ego eimi, same thing. a declaration that has no predicate, right? It doesn't say I am God. It's just non-predicative. It's just at the trial as well in Mark's version. Right. In Mark's version, although it's not in the other, so I didn't make too much pay out of that in my reading.

46:42I was trying to focus on the triple tradition. So you're right, though. But that's the answer to a question, right? So that's also important. Like the meaning ego and me, I am is going to have is going to be determined by context. It would be wrong, for example, Christian apologists to say, whenever someone says, Ego, Emi, they're claiming to be divine. Because the blind man says it in John chapter 9 or 10, I can't remember. That's right. It's 9, yeah. Because they're asking, hey, is this the same guy or not? Right? He's different than he was. And he says, I am. Which clearly means, yes, it's me.

47:16But the context - Jesus also warns his followers. Like in Mark chapter 13, he says, beware that no one leave you astray. Many will come in my name and say, I am he, like Ego Ame, and will lead you astray. So clearly just the usage of this name is not necessarily an invocation of divinity. Just to be clear for our listeners here, right? So Ego Ame is a Greek phrase which is used in the Gospels. The Gospels are written in Greek. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew. Ego Ame translates roughly as I am. Ego is an ego. So it's I am. But it is also sort of used more colloquially to say something like, it's me.

47:57So a good example is the blind man in John 9. They say, you know, is this not the man who was born blind? And he goes, ego a me. Yeah, it's me, right? But the difficulty is that in the book of Exodus, when Moses asks God what his name is, God says, what would it be like, Asher? Yeah, Asher. Yeah, yeah. I am who I am. Hard to translate. I am who I am. I was, I will be who I will be. Like, it is a, it is a, how do I put it? It's an enigmatic Hebrew phrase in itself. Like, it bears multiple translations and meanings. So it's Aisha, Asha, Aisha, which again kind of means something like I am who I am or I am that I am.

48:39And then he says, so go and tell them that I am has sent you. And so he gives his name as I am. Of course, the New Testament is written in a different language, but I am in Greek is ego, Amy. So sometimes it does seem like when Jesus says it, especially in like John chapter 8, when he says weirdly with a weird grammar, you know, before Abraham was I am. It seems like such a sort of intentional usage of that phrase that people say it's a callback, but it's complicated by the fact that it is also a phrase that people do sometimes just use to identify themselves. So here, importantly, the Gospels themselves, if you read John 8, verse 58, they translate it usually as before Abraham was, I am.

49:21But on the walking on the water, most biblical translations, read the NIV or whatever, I'm not sure what the NRSV does, but it translates it as, it's me, even though it's the same phrase, because contextually it seems like he is just identifying himself. But you're saying that in the context of walking on the water, it takes on a great deal of significance to use that identifier. I would qualify it. I would just say, I don't think the word just is correct. Yes, he's identifying himself, but he's not just identifying himself. And the way you know that is from the context. Because in this context, he's walking on the water, which if you look in Job chapter 9, for example, this is something the Hebrew scripture says only God does.

50:04Only God walks on the waves. And in fact, in the Septuagint translation of Job 9, it says that God walks on the waves as on dry land, right? So this is something that Jewish scripture makes a divine attribute. And then this was really cool in the book. I'm sure you saw this part. It's also something in a Greco-Roman context was perceived as a divine power because in the first century, when Caligula wants to manifest his divinity, this is one of the strange things about Caligula. One of the reasons a lot of Romans thought he was crazy is because he didn't wait to divinize himself until he was dead.

50:42That's perfectly acceptable. Once you're dead, you can be divinized. But he wanted divine claims and divine attributes to be given to him while he was alive. So a lot of people said he was crazy. But in Josephus and in Suetonius, we hear—no, Suetonius. Suetonius tells us about how in order to manifest his divinity, he builds a bridge across the Bay of Baye and then rides across it on a chariot as befitted his godhead, right? So the idea that he can cross the sea, and this is just one example, there are others as well, is both in Jewish and Greco-Roman context, a divine power, a divine attribute.

51:21It's something superhuman. And so when in that context, Jesus says, ego eimi me phobesa, don't forget the do not fear either too. This is that language. So you brought up Exodus 3, but it's not just Exodus 3. It's Isaiah 43. When God speaks, I am God. There is no other. He reutilizes the language of I am and I am he, the same Hebrew language from the book of Exodus. But then he also says, do not fear. So Jesus isn't just alluding to Exodus 3 and the burning bush. He's also alluding to the most monotheistic passage in Isaiah about the power of the one creator God of Israel. So in that, and he does it while he's walking on the water, right?

52:01So this is important, right? Context matters when it comes to this. I like to joke with my students whenever we would go through this, when we talk about this, in the Gospel of John, I think I noted this, it says that they're four miles from the shore, because the Sea of Galilee is about seven miles wide at the widest point. And so I would joke with the students, I said, listen, if he didn't know he was God by mile one, he probably figured it out by mile four, right? Like this is not just a identification of it's me. It's also a theophanic revelation. That's why it's called an epiphany miracle of the mystery of his identity that he is claiming he's using the name of the one God from the book of Exodus and from Isaiah.

52:47and the context shows that that's true in john 8 as well because the response of his contemporaries is to pick up a stone and to stone him to death and they say we stone you for no unrighteous work because you though a man make yourself god right well he says that in that's that's john chapter 10 when they respond that way i'm sorry i did i say eight i apologize um yeah john chapter 10 you're talking about whether because they pick up stones in john 8 as well but in john 10 oh yes So the stoning in John 8, 58, so they took up stones to throw at him. The death by stoning is in Leviticus and in Josephus.

53:28That's the legally prescribed manner of execution for blasphemy. So although the word blasphemy doesn't come, the implication is that they're stoning him because he's blasphemed. And in context, blasphemy can mean a lot of different things. Like you can speak against the temple. You can speak against the priesthood. One soldier got executed by the Roman procurator, Comanus, because he was ripped up copies of the Torah. So he like desecrated a sacred object. And they said he had, he also said he uttered blasphemies. So blasphemy can have a lot of different meanings, but one of them is making a divine claim.

54:01And for that, the penalty is death, not just death, but death by stone. So again, in context, John 8 and I think Mark 6, it's really difficult for me to argue that those allusions to Isaiah 43 and Exodus 3 are just coincidental. I think they're more significant, much more significant, that they're intended to help you see that he's making a divine claim about who he is. Because remember, the name in Judaism, it reveals not just your role in salvation history, like Abraham, you know, father multitude, it also reveals your identity. Who are you? And that's something I don't see any of the apostles ever saying, ego e me, I am, in that kind of context.

54:42So I would say that's something that is actually distinctive in addition to those divine powers. Does that help? Absolutely. Yeah. And there's so much to say. I mean, it's really difficult to have this conversation actually, because especially like on YouTube, when my comment section is flooded by Christians, it's like, if we spend 10 minutes talking about the son of man, then all the comments will say, he was literally stoned for blasphemy. It's like, okay, then we'll spend half an hour talking about blasphemy. And then it's like, he said, I am. And then it's like, okay, well, let's talk about that.

55:10And it's like, oh, but he said that he's one with the father. So we have to take these one by one, right? Yes. It's really important to look at in each case, what is the nature of the divinity to which he's laying claim, right? So not every passage that I looked at in the book has the same degree or kind of divine power or identity as the other. So I really tried to be clear, divine in what sense in this passage, divine in what sense in another passage. And it is a cumulative argument. It's not just that one passage kind of settles the whole thing. That's my opinion. So looking at what you've said about the walking in the water, and of course, although I am of my opinion of low Christology and all that, I've got no skin in this game.

55:59you know i don't i don't i don't mind so i think it's interesting uh but i'm not gonna die on this hill or anything one quick point on that yeah of course just for good so one of the things i did in the book was i like i tried to quote scholars who didn't have skin in the game yeah for example the famous jesus seminar from the 1990s that's when i was in school and they were really hot really popular most of the scholars who remembers the seminar not all were either atheists or agnostic not they weren't believers in the divinity of christ or the classic christian creeds but you know, when they come to the walking on the sea, they say he's alluding to Exodus three, he's making a divine claim.

56:30And they actually say he's acting like he's Poseidon or something. I mean, so it's not just a kind of Christian apologetic that, that interprets the text in that way. That's a reasonable interpretation, even from a non-Christian perspective, you know? Yeah. I definitely think that it's a reasonable interpretation. I'd never wish to imply otherwise, but there are some reasons that give me pause for thought on this, right? I mean, crucially, firstly, right? Like the main grounding for this walking on the water thing is, as you've already said in Job chapter nine, he alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.

57:02It's like God alone treads on the waves. We're sort of speaking poetically here. And of course it is Job who is speaking. And in the very next chapter of Job, while Job is sort of shouting to the heavens, he says, does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands while you smile on the plans of the wicked? He's angry at God. And he's saying all of these things about God, which are untrue. Like in the very next chapter, God is saying that God smiles on the wicked. He's saying that he pleases in oppressing him. He also says that he wished he'd never been born. Job is sort of this imperfect theological authority at that time.

57:38Of course, that doesn't mean that we can't sort of poetically refer to Job because people would know that that phrase is in there. But I think it's worth pointing out that this idea that we have this, we often say like it says in the Old Testament that only God does this, But it's important to know who's speaking and in what context. And in this context, Job is complaining and basically blaspheming himself by saying all of these things about God, which aren't true when he's angry. I agree, but I push back slightly. I didn't think you're right in the surrounding chapter or the next chapter that's true.

58:08But in Job 9, 1 through 10, in those verses there, one of the things he's doing is saying, how can a man be just before God? And then he begins a poetic litany of all of his attributes as creator. And I don't get the sense from that particular context that he's calling any of those into question. I actually think he's drawing a contrast between the utter transcendence and omnipotence of the creator. And what's happening to him. That's how I read it. Yeah. I think that's a perfect reading. I just think it's, or a plausible reading. I just think it's worth flagging that that needs to be part of the conversation.

58:41It's always dangerous to just say, the Old Testament says. Exactly. It's like, you know, Muslims might do the same thing. where I could say, well, in the book of Job, in fact, you know, it says, God is not a man that I might question him. Oh, Arceus, right? You know, everything's vanity, doesn't have any meaning. Like, okay, well, you're... Yeah, you know, Muslims do quote that, by the way. They quote the book of Job where it says, God is not a man that I might question him. And it's like, yeah, but this is Job, you know, and he's complaining and he doesn't... And it's poetic and it obviously means something else in that context.

59:11And that's why I try to give the examples of Caligula constructing the bridge and other examples of... I think that's brilliant. Kind of show up a kind of ancient contextual understanding of what that kind of an act by your own power would signify. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I love that because, of course, it might not be enough to have this Job reference. But if we just know that it's sort of understood at the time, then this might be the equivalent of being on like a movie set and being like, who's that guy over there? Is that an intruder? And then he's like sat on a director's chair and he goes, hey, everybody, you know, you're late or something.

59:45and it's like he's quite clearly claiming to be the director of the movie by doing that you know and and you kind of need to know you could if that story was read in a thousand years from now no one would know what the chair meant no one would know what your late as a phrase might have meant yeah yeah so it's important to know absolutely that's why throughout the book you'll notice i quote block quotes from scriptures i try not to just rip them out of context yeah because context context it's everything when you're coming to these kind of absolutely absolutely Another point in your favour is that in the book of Job, I can't remember exactly where, but it also talks about, I think, God or the Spirit of God or something like passing by or passing him by.

1:00:27Yes. There's this interesting phrase where it sort of says the Spirit of God or something like that, like passes him by. And interestingly, in this story of Jesus walking on the water, it says that Jesus was walking on the water past the boat so as to pass them by. Yes. Which is a little bit of an odd sort of thing to say, so as to pass them by. It's like a bit sort of random, unless this is a second, just to make clear that we really are alluding to the book of Job here to set up the context in which Jesus is walking on the water. And that often goes sort of unnoticed. I think a lot of people don't bring that up, but it's interesting.

1:00:59Absolutely, no. And I don't remember the Job reference, but definitely in Exodus 33 and 34, when Moses is on Mount Sinai and Elijah as well, the language of passing by is theophanic language. It's the language of the divinity coming near, but not being able to stay near for very long because human beings can't bear it. So like Moses says, show me your glory. And God says, you can't see my glory. You can't see my face, but you can see my backside. and it says he the the divinity and says passed him by like it coming to god's presence but it's a temporary um experience of of divine power and divine presence so yes i think in his commentary mentions that as well that at the level of narrative marks deliberately taking that language of passing by uh as a theophonic illusion i think there's like one theophonic illusion two three four it adds up i'm sorry exactly i i don't know if this is if this is the phrase that would be used or the um uh This is the one that they point to, but in Job chapter 4, verse 14, fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones shake, which is, as you say, classic evidence of theophany.

1:02:19And it says, then a spirit passed before my face, the hair of my flesh stood up. And so there's this sort of interesting language. But again, like you say, this is all a little bit sort of skirting around the edges, but the Gospels are sort of intentionally mysterious. The only thing I would point out here as well is that this passing by business, that's not Jesus speaking. No, no, that's why I didn't address it as much in the book. And it's important to separate those questions, right? There are three questions here that I always like to separate out. One is whether Jesus was God. The other is, did the historical Jesus claim to be God?

1:02:56And the third is, do the Gospels portray Jesus as claiming to be God? And those are three different questions. In fact, one other question is, do the Gospel authors themselves portray Jesus to be God? Right? Sure. And so my book's on number two, did Jesus claim, and did the Gospel authors proclaim, is secondary, but it's there. And I actually think the fact that Mark uses that theophantic illusion of passing by is evidence that at least the earliest interpretation we possess of this episode is reading it as a theophanic manifestation of his superhuman identity where he's making a divine claim.

1:03:33That's how I take it. So the only other thing that I want to bring up here is, and I can't remember which scholar it was that brought this to my attention, it's someone who wrote, who co-wrote, it's that book, it's like Mark's Christology Four Views or something. Yeah, another one you're talking about. I can't remember who it was in that text. But they brought this to my attention that, of course, like we've already mentioned, let's talk about this ego Amy business. You know, I am. It shows up all throughout the Gospels. And something really important to note is that the Gospels are written in Greek.

1:04:05The Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is written mostly in Hebrew, a little bit in Aramaic. Right. And this Hebrew phrase, Aesha, Asha, Aesha, I am that I am. And then go and tell them that Aesha, I am, has sent you. repeating that word three times. When the gospel authors are writing, they're writing in Greek, and we have good evidence to suggest that the authors of the gospels were using a Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, right? So they're reading a Greek version, some kind of Greek version of the Hebrew scripture. And so the interesting thing about the Septuagint is that if you look at Exodus chapter three in the Septuagint, It's translated into Greek.

1:04:50And what does it say? When Moses says, what shall I tell them your name is? Tell them Ho 'on has sent you. Yeah. He says, Ego Ame Ho 'on, which means something like, I am the one who is. In that context, saying Ego Ame Ho 'on is like saying, I am the one who is. So I am there, the Ego Ame, is just an introduction to the label and the label is Ho 'on. So he says, Ego Emi Ho 'on, so go and tell them that Ho 'on has sent you. So if a Greek-speaking, a Greek-writing author of the New Testament reads this Old Testament passage, Ego Emi Ho 'on, so go and tell them that Ho 'on has sent you, and wants to put the divine name into Jesus's mouth, they're not going to write Ego Emi, they're going to write Ho 'on.

1:05:35So writing Ego Emi can't be an allusion to the divine name in Exodus, because that isn't the Greek name of God in the Septuagint. Well, it's not. Okay. Yes. Okay. Good argument. Very nice rejoinder. Doesn't quite land for two reasons. Number one, the Septuagint, number one, this is so complicated. Okay. Let me, I don't want to make this more complicated. It's not just Exodus three that matters. Let me put it this way. It's Isaiah 43 as well. So in the Septuagint of Isaiah, which many scholars see as an allusion in Exodus three, it is ego emi. That's the translation. So in other words, there are different ways to translate that Hebrew expression.

1:06:14And just because the addition of the Septuagint that we have, which by the way, that's super complex to know whether the version of the translation of Exodus 3 that we have in what we call the Septuagint today is the same Greek translation of Exodus that the gospel authors were using is something we can posit as reasonable, but not demonstrate. Okay, like, especially when it comes to the Hebrew name, because even your English Bibles will tell you, wait, the NRSV does it this way, and the RSV does it that way, and the NIV does it that way, because that Hebrew expression lends itself to multiple translations.

1:06:48So, we've got to be very careful here just to say they wouldn't have said Ego Emi, because Ego Emi is not in the Septuagint of Exodus 3 that we have, because it is in the Septuagint of Isaiah 43. And so it is actually a viable translation of that, of that expression from the Hebrew. So I, I feel the force of that, but I don't think it actually clenches it, especially when, again, the context here is not just a quotation from the Greek Septuagint, but it is more than, it's Isaiah 43 with the don't fear I am as well. And it is rendered as Ego and me there in Isaiah. Does that make sense? Does it help a little?

1:07:25Oh yeah, it does. That's a good point. The scholar who pointed that is excellent. We're not saying that it has to be word for word, but Ego and Me Haon enough, even just the elated version of Ego and Me, is still close enough to that Exodus 3 allusion, to the Exodus 3 story of the burning bush, to posit an allusion to the name of the God of Israel, especially when Isaiah, the Septuagint of Isaiah, uses ego me as the divine name in its monotheistic hymn in chapter i'd find it i'd find it so much easier to just accept this line of reasoning if it weren't for the complication that ego amy is also just a commonplace like phrase for it's me that just makes it so difficult to to know with confidence what's going on here sure i understand but um and that's why you have to determine each one on a context case by case basis, right?

1:08:18So for example, you know, in Luke 24, when Jesus wants to identify himself on the road to Emmaus, he doesn't just say, I mean, he says, I go in me, I'll toss. It is I, like it puts an emphasis on there. So it's not like everyone's walking around saying I am all the time. There are a few examples of it. We don't want to deny those, but the meaning has to be determined by the context, especially when it's a passage that has a scriptural allusion. okay like i think that's when there's reason to say more is going on here than just the denotation of the words yeah and also i think it is worth pointing out as well in your favor that i could and i can i think confidently for basically every single claim you put forward well he says i am well he walks not i could say yeah but that could be this or yeah but that's this yeah but it does get a bit suspicious when you put them all together so yeah okay maybe he's just sort of saying it it's me maybe he just is walking on the water as a miracle and that just happens to line up with what job says only got it but when you have all of this stuff happening together it starts to sort of paint this impressionist picture especially the reaction of the disciples so you used matthew earlier when we were talking about paralytic what about matthew on the walking on the feet okay yeah fair enough they worship because what they happen is they they proscuneo they get down on their knees yeah surely this is the son of god now again not every context is kneeling necessary sign of divine worship.

1:09:42But there are contexts when it certainly is. Again, Alexander the Great, one of the points I made in the book that I hope people take away from it is that Jesus isn't the only historical figure during the second temple period to make divine claims about himself. Sometimes Christians, because we put so much emphasis on the uniqueness of Jesus, we can tend to forget that there are aspects of making divine claim that are not actually unique, right? So I tried to give four examples. Antiochus, I'm sorry, Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC makes divine claims. Antiochus in the 2nd century makes divine claims.

1:10:14No one talks about this. It's shocking to me. King Herod Agrippa in the 1st century, in the New Testament, in Acts and Josephus, acts as if he's a god. The crowds say the voice of a god, not a man. I mean, this is like a part of the Herodian dynasty. He's a practitioner of Judaism acting as if he's divine. That's a historical analog. And then, of course, Caligula, guys, Caligula I mentioned earlier is a Roman emperor. So one of the things I tried to show is there are these other people making divine claims. You don't have to believe Alexander or Antiochus or any of these people is divine to ask the historical question.

1:10:46Did they speak and act as if they were divine in their in their context? And when it comes to Alexander, one of the cool interesting things about him is that there was a controversy because he was demanding pros cunasis, kneeling in worship while he was still alive. And although the Easterners were happy to give it to him, the Greeks said, Macedonians, like, no, no, no, no, no, we don't do that. Like, we're not going to bow before you as if you were divine. And so there was this controversy about it. And so when Jesus says, I am, and then the disciples fall down on their knee, again, at least at the narrative level, that is a powerful argument that Matthew thinks Jesus here is making a divine claim and that the disciples recognize it and give him homage in a way that they would not have done to an ordinary human being.

1:11:34Because when John, the revelator, as they call him sometimes, when the author of Revelation, when he bows before the angel in the book of Revelation, he gets down on his knees and the angel's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, get up, don't do that. So again, context matters here. And so I do think that's another kind of cumulative argument for the walking on the sea episode. Although I hope we haven't talked about it too much. No, no. All right. Look, we're doing worship. Let's do worship. This is one of my favorites. I love this so much because you've already alluded to the fact that, again, it's important to notice that it's not just proscuneo.

1:12:06It's proscuneo in the context of an I am claim whilst walking on the water. That's important. But let's talk about worship because another thing that people like to bring up all the time is that Jesus accepts worship. It's not just that people worship him, but that Jesus doesn't contradict him. Right? And it seems like worship is something that only God is due. And so if the disciples will worship Jesus and he said, no, get up, get up, don't worship me, then great. But he accepts it on a number of occasions. I've got a lot to say on this. The first important thing is that, yeah, this word worship, proskuneo, comes in different forms, which just literally means to kneel down, to sort of bow down in front of.

1:12:43Now, I am of the opinion that basically this is just something that people do when they recognize that someone is of a higher authority or status than they are. For example, if we look at the Septuagint, if we look at the Greek version of the Old Testament, this term proskuneo shows up a lot. lot worships two angels in Genesis Abraham worships the Hittites Isaac blesses Jacob and says that all of the earth all of the nations on earth will worship him Jacob worships Esau Joseph's brothers Joseph in the Technicolor Dreamcoat, his brothers come back and when he's the governor of Egypt they worship him, they proskid him it just means that they're bowing down before him, the entire nation of Israel bows down before some of the kings of kings of Israel.

1:13:33David at one point even worships the temple. So clearly, if worship is something that's only due to God, all of these people are sinning. This term proskuneo can just mean to bow down. I think that the explanation that we can give for why it is that sometimes people say, don't worship me. The same thing happens Peter in Acts. Someone bows down before him and he says, get up because I'm just a man. Exactly. And that says to me, he's not saying, one reading of that is when Peter says get up because I'm just a man one reading of that is he's saying you know get up because I'm not God right but another reading is to say get up I'm a man just like you I'm on your level I'm not a higher authority than you are but if it were someone of a higher authority it would make sense to proskenea before them similarly John of Patmos is bowing down before the angel and the angel in that context is saying like look I'm a messenger of God you're a messenger of God we're both below this this figure get up like I you know don't don't worship me, worship God, because we're both of this level that we should only be worshiping God above us.

1:14:33So, okay, a few things to note here. If this worship point is important, and for a lot of people it is important, you know, Jesus accepts worship. One thing that I think is important to point out is that you only really get this in Matthew's gospel, right? Mark, Luke, and John seem to not care about worship, and Jesus doesn't really get worshiped at all in those gospels. It's only really Matthew that this shows up, right? You wanted to say something? Oh, I just wanted to say, just to be clear, I'm tracking everything you're saying. And this is one of the reasons why I actually didn't make this a foundational argument in this monocle.

1:15:06Because I actually do think it can't bear the weight that's sometimes given to it. So go ahead. I just want to be clear that the proskuneos, proskuneos controversy is not something that I spend a lot of time with because I don't think it's actually the sole argument. Yeah. And it's worth pointing out as well that there is this other term for cultic divine worship, Latreo or Latruo. And this phrase shows up more uncommonly, and when it does show up, it's given to God. There's nowhere in the New Testament that Latruo worship is given to Jesus. Some people think it's in Revelation. That gets a bit more complicated.

1:15:45But certainly in the gospels, Latria worship isn't given to Jesus. So when the disciples are beginning to realize that Jesus is the Messiah, that Jesus is the son of God, he's the promised one, he's the anointed one. For them to realize this after some miracle working, they worship him, they proscuneo before him and say, truly, this man is the son of God. It's as if the king comes back on his chariot with his crown and they all bow down and say, truly, this man is the king. He is the son of God, as sometimes kings were called. It's not an unintelligible reading to me to say that, yeah, they bowed down in front of him because they realized his authority as the promised Messiah.

1:16:23I totally agree. In fact, I would argue that proskuneo in Greek has almost precisely the same range as worship in modern, but also middle English. And it's worthy of honor. And you can give it to a king, or you can give it to God, and the context is everything, right? So, you know, in British English, which is different than American English, obviously, your worship is not implying that the person you're speaking to is divine, but of some status of authority. So yeah, I actually agree with you, Alex, on that. I do think you don't want to make more out of proskinesis than possible. At the same time, it is interesting that in the lives of Alexander, that particular gesture of worship in certain contexts, in the Macedonian and Greek context was actually seen as problematic that Alexander would demand it.

1:17:15Now, but that was the only analogy I was trying to make with the walking on the sea. There is also something interesting about, I'm glad you bring up Alexander the Great, because there's a legend told in Josephus's antiquities. He tells this legend of Alexander the Great, who goes to conquer Jerusalem. Yeah. And he wants to conquer Jerusalem. And the crisis is diverted. How? A priest meets him outside of the walls of the city and his mitre bears the the tetragrammaton it says you know has the divine name Yahweh on on this on this mitre and what does Alexander the Great do when he sees this priest like bearing the name of God he proskuneos before he bows down before him so like you've got Alexander the Great worshipping a man because he's literally got a sign that has the name of God in it and I think that if Jesus is in some sense carrying the name of God he's just a human, but he is given this authority by God and he's sort of a name bearer for Yahweh.

1:18:12It's exactly the same thing happening when Alexander bows down before the priest bearing the divine name, the disciples bow down before Jesus who has God in him. Yeah. I would agree with everything except the just. I agree with what you're denying, but not what you're denying in that there, because I think he's that, but he's much more. And I can give other examples of why I think that's the case, but that's a cool story. That's definitely it shows that when it comes to the expression of veneration the expression of acknowledgement of divinity around power your veneration is a very complex uh phenomenon it has to be examined on a case-by-case basis yeah absolutely yeah i have to thank my friend john nelson for that for that story he's got that's a really cool story that's behind the gospels.com he writes where i recommend it on my sub stack he's uh he's a good friend of mine and he he's he's a wonderful writer and and and and talks and he's got an essay on on jesus accepting worship and all of this kind of stuff.

1:19:06And I went pretty deep on this. I mean, the only other thing that I think people might have in their minds, which is worth bringing up, is the fact that in Matthew and Luke, you have the temptation in the desert, right? Like Jesus is in the desert and the devil comes to him and says, you know, like, do all of these things. And Jesus says, no. And one of these occasions, Satan asks Jesus to bow down before him. He says, just worship me and then all of this will be yours. And Jesus says in response, it is written, it's, how does he word it? Like, worship God and serve him alone. Yeah, you should worship and serve him alone.

1:19:40Exactly. Yeah, it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve him only. And so people often point to that and say, like, especially given that Matthew does have Jesus constantly worshipped throughout the Gospels. If Matthew has this story where Jesus says, worship the Lord your God and serve him only. That means that only worship is given to God. Importantly, though, if the reading of this is that proskuneo is only given to God, then all of those Old Testament figures are massive sinners. And also, it's worth pointing out that the phrasing is not only worship God, it's worship God and serve him only.

1:20:15And what's the word serve? Latruo. Latruo, the kind of worship that's only given to God. There is one case I think you can make for Latruo worship being given to Jesus in the Gospels. And that is the fact that when Jesus claims to be the Son of Man, who comes riding on the clouds of heaven, he's quoting the book of Daniel. And in the Septuagint for Daniel, the Son of Man is said to be given Latruo worship. So there is this possible allusion to Latruo worship being given to Jesus, but I think that's it. It's elusive, but it's not explicit in the Gospel text. Yeah. I actually think the Daniel 7 passage is super crucial.

1:20:50Although, can I take your point and segue to something? So, yes, to everything you said about worship, but if we could talk about love for a second, I'd actually like to talk about love because there's a relationship here. In chapter three of the book, I have a chapter called The Riddles of Jesus' Divinity. And one of the passages in there that really blew me away when I was looking through the gospel text was Jesus's demand that his disciples love him more than father and mother. So he says in Matthew 10, for example, if anyone loves father or mother more than me, they're not worthy of me. All right.

1:21:30This is a passage that is extremely evocative. It might not strike us as all that powerful, but in, I would argue in a first century Jewish context, this is really a powerfully, although implicit, but a powerfully elusive claim for divine status. Because when I began to dig into it, one of the things you'll see in Philo and Josephus and other Jewish writers is that in exegesis of the Decalogue and the fourth commandment, honor your father and mother, right? Which in Hebrew is actually glorify them. It's kravod. It's the same word for glory, like give glory to your parents. In first century Jewish texts like Philo and Josephus, they say that the only person above your parents is God, that your father and mother stand second to God alone because they gave you life.

1:22:23And it's almost like a kind of co-creative act. So there's a quotation here. Let's see. I found this. So in Philo, he says, quote, that your parents are on the borderline between humanity and divinity. Right. And Josephus also says, quote, the law ranks parents as second only to God in honor. So this is fascinating. It's a really interesting point. And you'll see this in other texts. Those are just a couple of examples. So there's this idea that you have the gravest of obligations to honor your parents above anyone else with the sole exception of the creator. And so then Jesus steps onto the scene in this Jewish context where honoring your father and mother is part and parcel of the Decalogue.

1:23:04It's something you recite daily. It's also, I mean, Philo and Josephus are really good examples of witnesses to come. The Decalogue, by the way, is the Ten Commandments. I'm sorry. The Decalogue means, yes, ten words, ten commandments, written with the finger of God, Exodus chapter 20, right? So this is the Ten Commandments. Fourth commandment, or at least in the Catholic enumeration, I know other people count it differently, is honor your father and mother. And so Philo and Josephus say that what this means, if you draw it out, is they're second only to God, because the first three commandments are about loving God, right?

1:23:37No other gods before him, so against idolatry, keeping the Sabbath, keeping it holy, and not taking his name in vain. The second half of the commandments are about loving your neighbor, and the first one is give glory, chavod, to your father and your mother. So they are literally at the top of the list, right, when it comes to the two commandments. And that first set of commandments, the first three commandments, God says, whoever keeps these, I will bless those who love me and keep my commandments. Okay. So obedience in the deck log is actually an expression of love. So in a Jewish context, when Jesus comes and says, anyone who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.

1:24:18That is such a shocking saying. It's hard for us to really wrap our minds around, especially in modernity, when we don't have all that much respect for our parents' culture, at least in Western culture, the idea for respect for parents has really fallen away. And the idea that it would be some kind of grave sin to not exercise it is almost kind of completely foreign to our mindset. So what I try to show in the book is that Jacob Neusner, for example, very famous rabbi from the 20th century, wrote a book called A Rabbi Encounters Jesus. When he gets to this passage from Matthew 10 in the Gospels, he says, listen, whatever people might debate about Jesus of history, the Christ of faith, he says in this passage, when Jesus says, you can't be my disciple unless you love me more than your mother and father, he says, only God can ask of me what Jesus is asking here.

1:25:06So even as a contemporary practitioner of Judaism, a contemporary rabbi, he recognizes that the implication of Jesus demanding super parental love is an implication that he is more, not just more than any merely human, But he takes a role above that of your parents. And that's really fascinating to me because it explains something really interesting about the early church. We don't just have evidence of the early church worshiping Jesus, right? We also have evidence in Ephesians and Peter of loving Jesus. This is really unique. I mean, you can maybe inform me. I'm not an expert on ancient Greco-Roman religion.

1:25:45I just dabble as much as I can. But as I tried to, I looked around, I looked around, saw all kinds of evidence of you have to honor the gods, you have to serve the gods, you have to obey them, you have to offer sacrifice. But I didn't find language of loving God in the same way that you find in the Jewish scriptures, the Shema, which is basically every day you recite this commandment to love God. And then the Decalogue, which is an expression of loving God through obedience. So when Jesus comes on the scene and says, unless you love me more than father and mother, you can't be my disciple. Any Jew would have asked, whoa, what are you asking me?

1:26:16Who are you claiming to be if you say I owe you a super parental love? And at least according to Rabbi Neusner and some others exegetes, that this is another case where Jesus is demanding divine love. He's demanding something of his disciples that in a Jewish context you would only give to the God of the Shema in Deuteronomy 6. So anyway, just another example. So the argument from worship I think is more complicated, but the argument from divine love and super parental love is really forceful in my opinion. now yeah now this that's really difficult for me the reason is because this is a this is a passage that or yeah this passage in this concept which i haven't really uh dived into dove into and i can tell you what my immediate thoughts are but it's going to be pretty uninformed the first thing that springs to mind of course is that there are different kinds of love in the new testament famously you have agape which is your sort of unconditional uh love the kind of love that god has for humanity um you've also got like eros which is romantic or sexual love right um you also have this particular term used for like familial love like between parents and children which is something like store gay or something like that it's kind of and then familial yeah and then you have phileo i guess is how you'd pronounce it which is um another kind of love i don't know how you'd love a friend it's kind of that yeah it's yeah so i i just as you were speaking i just looked at matthew 10 in greek and the kind of love that's used there is this philo um the same root word that you get in philosophy you know love of sure and the question that would bring to mind to me is of course it's written in hebrew but the kind of love that god demands for himself i wonder if that is this philo love or if this is more like this unconditional agape love because maybe you could say that like well when he says that you have to love your parents he's talking about that familial love but when Jesus says you have to love me he's talking about a different kind of love he's talking about philo which is like the love of friendship so you still love your parents the most in a familial sense but you love me more as like a friendly acquaintance someone you listen to someone you confide in that kind of thing and again this is purely speculative I have no idea but that would be where I would start researching to see is there room to still interpret this as Jesus saying yeah in this context this extraordinary claim that you know, you have to prefer me over your parents, but not in all kinds of love, just in the kind of love that's relevant to, you know, following him as the Messiah.

1:28:51You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I understand. Yeah. And I would say, um, uh, my response would be fair point. Um, although the scholarship on this has been, there's a North amount of scholarship. And, um, if you look at, uh, like commentaries on John 20, where Jesus will use phileo and agape almost as synonyms. It's actually kind of difficult. I know C.S. Lewis wrote that famous book, The Four Loves, where he separates these into pretty tight categories that they're separate from another. It's actually a little more complex on the ground, and phileo and agapao can actually be used synonymously.

1:29:25They are used, arguably, as synonyms in the Gospels themselves. So for me, again, it's less about the denotation of the word and more about the context. Whether it's phileo or agapao, it is super parental. And that's actually the part that I was trying to make to say that it's more than mother and father, at least according to Joseph, Josephus and Philo, that that's something you really only give to God. And it's an extraordinary demand on Jesus' part. And you'll see it elsewhere. Like when someone says, you know, I got to go bury my father. And he said, you know, let the dead bury their dead, come and follow me.

1:29:57So he makes these extraordinary demands. And if he's alluding there, if he's alluding to the Decalogue and the Shema, then again, it's a kind of elusive, implicit demand that is truly extraordinary. And as Rabbi Neusser says, it really seems that he's asking something that only God can demand of you, to put him above his parents. Anyway, that was just another topic. While we were talking about worship and love, I thought I'd throw that in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool. Okay, so one thing that we have to talk about, we've been talking for a while now, and I think before we end this podcast, it would be ridiculous to not mention we've we sort of alluded to the son of man a bunch throughout this podcast and we've mentioned that it comes up at this trial of jesus and of course the most important thing about jesus's life is something we haven't even mentioned yet which is the fact that he dies under roman crucifixion and allegedly raises from the dead and the story of exactly why it is that jesus is put to death the story it is the story of why jesus had so upset the jewish authorities.

1:30:57They convicted him of blasphemy. He's doing something. This is really important Christologically to the extent that anybody who hasn't watched up to now, anyone who doesn't watch the rest of the podcast is probably already commenting in the box down below. Of course, he's God. That's literally why they killed him. So, blasphemy claim, trial, what's going on here? Okay, great. So, the final chapter in the book deals with both those questions. The issue of Jesus's crucifixion, actually three, crucifixion, the blasphemy charge, and the title Son of Man. So let me see if I can kind of wrap this up in a bow and bring it to the climax, because you're right, this is the most consequential element.

1:31:36So if you look at historical Jesus scholarship, it is almost universally recognized that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by Pontius Pilate. This is something as accepted as a historical fact. So there's no argument about whether he was crucified, But when you actually press into it and ask, well, why was he crucified? What's the reason for the crucifixion? Then it actually gets more complicated. It's fascinating that there's lots of disagreement about the causes or the reasons that led to the crucifixion. Some people say, oh, well, he was a false prophet or he was executed for being a deceiver.

1:32:06He was executed for being against the law or he was executed for being against the temple or he was executed because he made a claim to be the Messiah. And most of those charges, although they're reasonable kind of in the abstract, if you look at the sources, there's not a lot of evidence to support those things, with the sole exception of Messianic claim. Obviously, the Messianic claim plays a part in his Roman execution because it's there on the title of the cross, Jesus, Nazareth, King of the Jews. But the problem with even with that one is that it isn't a crime in Judaism to claim to be the Messiah.

1:32:38If by Messiah, you simply mean the heir to the Davidic throne, right? If it were a crime to claim to be the Messiah, then how would you ever know who the Davidic heir was? I'm the heir of David's throne. Kill him. That doesn't make sense. It's not plausible within a Jewish context. So the question also has to be not only why did the Romans execute him, but why is he handed over for execution by the Jewish authorities to the Romans? And so that actually pushes the point that Anthony Harvey made a long time ago in his book on Jesus and the Constraints of History, that the only charge that we have that all four Gospels agree on as a cause for his execution is the accusation of blasphemy.

1:33:19blasphemy. This is really, really important. So if you look, for example, at Mark chapter 14, although, for example, Jesus's so-called cleansing of the temple where he turns over the tables, that's certainly a factor in his arrest, but he is not charged with any kind of capital crime for what he does in the temple. Most people will argue that's the reason for his execution, but not only was it not a capital crime, the gospels themselves don't even tell us that was the reason. If you look at the Gospels, the reason he is sentenced to death, the reason he is handed over to the Roman authorities is the charge of blasphemy.

1:33:54Now, the reason that matters is because in a first century Jewish context, as I said, it isn't blasphemy simply to claim to be the Messiah, but it would be blasphemy to claim to be a divine figure, to be more than just the Messiah. And I think that's exactly what happens in Mark chapter 14 in the famous scene before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin. So the passage is familiar, but I'll read it just to be precise. When Caiaphas says to him, are you the Christ, Messiah, Mashiach in Hebrew, Christos in Greek, the son of the blessed, Jesus says in Mark, I am, so it gives an affirmative. There it's just an answer to the question, I think.

1:34:35And, see, this is the point. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. Now, pause. In that answer, Jesus does not simply say, I'm the Davidic heir. He adds to it an allusion to Daniel 7, which depicts the one, like a Son of Man, coming on the clouds of heaven, right, and receiving the Latria that you talked about earlier, the worship. In other words, he's a heavenly being who appears to be human and then is given the kingdom and the power and the glory and all that. And Jesus alludes to Psalm 110, which says, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

1:35:20So it's again, a kind of royal Psalm that's depicting a heavenly enthronement of the Davidic air. So what Jesus says is, I'm the Messiah, but I'm not just any Messiah. I'm the Messiah, the heavenly being of Daniel 7, who comes on the clouds and receives worship and all that. And I'm the super Davidic Messiah of Psalm 110, who sits on the throne beside God, which in an ancient Near Eastern context, if you sit on a divine throne, it implies equality with the divine region, with the divine king. So by making that answer, Jesus doesn't just affirm his Messiahship, He goes beyond and implicitly claims to be a heavenly Messiah, like in Daniel 7, and a co-equal or divine authority, like in Psalm 110.

1:36:05And in reaction to that, the high priest says he tears his mantle, which is a reaction to blasphemy, by the way, in the Old Testament. It's a kind of visible way of showing shock and horror. And he says, why do we still need witnesses? You've heard his blasphemy. What is your decision? And they all condemned him as deserving death, right? So the gospel narrative there makes it really clear that Jesus is accused of blasphemy in the context of a question about his identity. Who are you? Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed? And he answers it by alluding to those scriptures. So what I think is important about this passage is that it shows, at least at the level of the gospel narrative, that the reason Jesus is handed over to the authorities is not because he's a false prophet, not because he's a deceiver, not because he made a mess in the temple, or because he was against the law.

1:36:57It's because he made a divine claim about himself, or a claim about himself, that goes beyond what they think would be acceptable for a merely human Messiah. He claims to be a heavenly Messiah, a divine Messiah. And that kind of claim would be blasphemy. and would merit death. So I think that the blasphemy charge, which is not just in Mark, it's also in Matthew, and also in John as well. John, think here, John 19. We have a law, and by that law, he deserves to die. It's an allusion to the book of Leviticus, the Catholic problem of blasphemy. If you put that all together, I think the most plausible explanation for why Jesus is handed over to crucifixion is because he makes a divine claim in the context of the Sanhedrin that they perceive as blasphemous, and that's what ultimately leads to his crucifixion.

1:37:47So from my point of view, as Sanders said, the smoke of the early divine Christology really originates in the fire of Jesus's divine claim that we see leads to his death. And that's why I think the divine Jesus is actually the most crucifiable Jesus in terms of plausible plausibility than all these other scenarios in which he's not making divine claims, and yet somehow still ends up handed over by the authorities for a capital crime. I don't doubt that that is the most crucifiable version of Jesus. And of course, this is the big climax, but there are a number of questions which jump out of this for me.

1:38:26And it's a strong case, and people make it all the time. They sort of quite confidently say, Jesus is clearly, when he says, you will see the Son of Man sat at the right hand of power, coming with the clouds of heaven. These are allusions to the divine Messiah. And it's like instantly the high priest recognizes that these are allusions to Daniel and to Psalm and says, this man is blaspheming. And that must be because he's claiming to be God. A few things that I want to point out. Firstly, this is not the only time when Jesus is accused of blasphemy for claiming to be God. This also happens in John chapter 10, where Jesus says, I and the Father are one.

1:39:06We don't have time to get into that at the moment. I talked about it in my debate with David Wood. I have a whole interpretation as to why I really don't think he's claiming to be God by doing that. Could be, but I don't think it's obvious. The important thing to note is that when the Jewish opponents pick up stones to stone him, and he says, why are you doing this? For which of these good works are you stoning me? He says, we're stoning you for blasphemy because you a mere man are claiming to be god and in my interpretation of the story jesus then goes on to basically say you've misunderstood me maybe maybe that is what he meant but it at least leaves room for just the idea that yeah these people instantly said you're blaspheming claiming to be god but maybe they were wrong because jesus is speaking quite uh cryptically here when he says he makes these allusions that seem to maybe be implying this or implying that and the and the priest hears it and goes you've heard the blasphemy.

1:39:56We need to stone this man. There's no obvious indication. It's not obvious to me that Jesus couldn't, if he wanted to, say, no, he's still not quite getting it, but he sort of goes along with it as part of God's plan. I just want to point out that a lot of the time when Jesus is accused of blasphemy, they're getting it wrong, right? And that might be what's happening here. So then, what about this allusion to Daniel, this son of man who's given Latruah worship and all of this power? The question that jumps out to me and what I want to ask you is, this is part of the hebrew scripture right before jesus came along caiaphas would have been aware that there is this danielic son of man and that there is this uh there is this psalm which which is a messianic psalm which is god sort of talking about the the promised messiah who everyone knew was coming if and and jews believed that these figures were coming right and so if jesus claims to be that person and caiaphas instantly goes oh he's claiming to be god did caiaphas already interpret this Danielic son of man and the Messiah promised in the Psalms as God.

1:41:00You see what I'm saying? In order for him to think that Jesus identifying with these figures, he's claiming to be God, he would have already had to think before Jesus came along that these figures in the Hebrew scripture, which he believes in, describe a coming promised human figure who is also God, which seems kind of out of line with Jewish teaching. So it seems a little bit weird to me that, I mean, yeah, there's a really, obviously Jesus is alluding to Daniel here. But to say that therefore he's claiming to be this divine figure would imply that Caiaphas would know that the son of man was going to be like God himself in the flesh, which seems like implausible to me.

1:41:36You know what I mean? There's a great objection. I really well put. I totally get where you're going. So I'll respond if you got a second. I'll try to say, obviously it's so. Yeah, this is a great point. So I would answer it in this way. First, it actually isn't in tension with common Jewish teaching, because if you look at apocalyptic Jewish texts from the first century AD, I'm thinking here of texts like 4th Ezra, texts like 1st Enoch, like the similitudes of Enoch, which is from the first century, as well as Desi Scrolls, like 11 Q. Melchizedek. the idea that of a superhuman Messiah is something that actually is present in apocalyptic Jewish texts and interpretations of, especially interpretations of Daniel.

1:42:224th Ezra and 1st Sennacher both interpreting the Danielic figure in Daniel 7, not just as the Messiah, but as a preexistent heavenly being who's been hidden from all time and is now being revealed. Now, just because those Jews believe in that kind of super exalted divine Messiah, like whoever the authors of the first Enoch literature war. Think here, maybe the Essenes and the figures, like the authors of the Dead Sea Scroll Library. It doesn't mean that every Jew accepts that as an orthodox interpretation of those texts. Does that make sense? And the debate over those very cryptic and enigmatic texts is going to continue well into the rabbinic Jewish period.

1:43:00So Alan Siegel, a late Jewish scholar, wrote a famous book called The Two Powers in Heaven, where he talked about the fact that in some, even the later rabbinic texts, There's this notion that if anyone interprets Daniel 7 as a second power in heaven, that's a blasphemous exegesis of that text, right? So these are not univocally interpreted passages in first century Judaism, but they don't have to be. In fact, the fact that they might be controversial questions actually lends credence to the idea or controversial text. If Jesus cites them and then seems to interpret them as being a divine messianic figure, it doesn't have to have, by the way, it doesn't have to be like fully incarnate in the way we understand through Nicene.

1:43:38He only has to be making a superhuman or super, you know, a divine power claim for it to be sufficient for blasphemy, right? I mean, Antiochus isn't claiming to be God-made man. He's still blaspheming when he says he can walk on the sea or whatnot. So the fact that Jesus interprets those texts in a potentially controversial, but not implausible and not unprecedented way is totally sufficient grounds, especially if the Sanhazan is looking for a reason to execute this figure that they've had problems with and has caused them trouble in the past. So that's how I would read that, and that's how I would respond to that.

1:44:14Yes, Caiaphas would, I think, you can make a plausible case that he would be aware of that kind of exalted, apocalyptic interpretation of the Daniel figure or of Psalm 110, because we have evidence in the scrolls, we have evidence in the Jewish pseudepigrapha that those interpretations were in the air in the first century AD. So that'd be my response. Yeah. I mean, this came up in my debate that I had with David Wood. I mean, his case was relied quite heavily on this two powers in heaven idea. And for me, the question sort of comes down to the evidence for like pointing to the idea that this was sort of floating around.

1:44:51I mean, we don't have any - Well, that's later. I don't want to hang anything on. I'm just using an example of its - Yeah, it seems sort of - ... plausibility. You can take that all of the people and just look at their first century sources. Yeah. Coming up later, this is annoying part in the Q &A, actually, where someone could, because I made a case where I basically said like, well, you know, that there is no pre-Christian text that discusses the two power in heaven heresy. And somebody got up and I was a little bit confused what exactly what they were saying. I think I can't remember, but they referred to some passage from the Talmud where they're talking about it.

1:45:21And I was sort of like, I was like, well, when was this? And, you know, he says it was a few hundred years BC. and i was like yeah and i and i was like wait hold on wait and i was thinking to myself but i'm i'm sure that like there is no there's no prior source but this guy's just telling me that there is i was sort of a bit like maybe maybe i've just like missed something no i spoke to him i said to him like come and come and speak to me i found out that the text was written much later but alleged to refer to something further back so no no you know this two powers in heaven thing seems to be maybe something that develops in response to christianity absolutely you know alan siegel's works.

1:45:55This is a rabbinic debate. I was just alluding to that to show that the debate continues. Well, BS. Just take that off the table. You don't need anything from the Talmud. The Second Temple sources alone on Daniel 7, similar to Zabinot, 4th Ezra, which is late 1st century, and then 11 Q. Melchizedek, which is a Dead Sea Scroll, again, 1st century BC or CE, on Psalm 110. You have early Jewish sources from the Second Temple period already interpreting Psalm 110 and Daniel 7 in superhuman categories. And that's all you really need for a plausible interpretation of the way Jesus uses the passage here.

1:46:30I would not hang anything on the two powers, have his heresy, except to show you that those texts continue to be controversial in later Jewish tradition, especially in contradistinction to Christian appropriations of the book of Daniel and interpretations of Daniel. Yeah, sure. So you're right. I agree with you on that point. Yeah. Parking the two powers thing. I'm going to throw out just a couple of responses here to this blasphemy stuff and then i promise that we can wrap this up and as it were um so on this blasphemy point because it is important right there are various i want to say firstly you you refer to john chapter 19 where the jews answer we have a law and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the son of god in this instance they make a difference that they do at some point say you're claiming to be god in this instance they just say he's claiming to be the son of God.

1:47:18And we have a law, and according to that law, he ought to die because he claimed to be the son of God, implying that it seems like people can put a man to death just for claiming to be the son of God, rather than claiming to be identical to the God Yahweh of Israel. A few other instances that point to me... Like, yeah, okay, you can point to biblical injunctions about laws about what punishments go for what things. And there's a discussion we had about to what extent those were actually enforced. But certainly we know that people were killed for blasphemy. The thing is, the kinds of blasphemy that they were killed for vary all over the place.

1:47:56I mean, an important example for me is, of course, in the book of Acts, in chapter seven, we have the death of Stephen. And Stephen is, firstly, Stephen is accused of blasphemy. And it's like throughout the whole of Acts chapter six, you're hearing the story of Stephen going about and doing stuff. And it's written in Acts chapter 6 that people sort of conspire to lie about Stephen in order to get him put to death. What do they say about Stephen? Well, Acts chapter 6 verses 11 onwards say, they secretly instigated some men to say, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.

1:48:38And then it says, they stirred up the people as well as the elders and the scribes. Then all of a sudden they confronted him, seized him and brought him before the council. They set up false witnesses who said, this man never stops saying things against the holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us. So they say that they're accusing him of blasphemy. And what is he doing that's blasphemous? Well, he's saying that Jesus will destroy the temple and saying that he will change the customs that Moses has handed on to us.

1:49:09If simply changing the customs of Moses is enough to get you an accusation of blasphemy, then it's no surprise to me that Jesus gets killed. And in his actual death, Stephen has a vision similar to Jesus, right? Jesus is before the council and he looks up to the sky and he says, I see the heavens have opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. and they started covering their ears and then they all rushed at him and they stoned him to death. What did they stone him for? For blasphemy. What does he actually do that gets him stoned? He simply sees a vision of Jesus stood actually this time at the right hand, or is it sat this time?

1:49:49I get them mixed up. Standing, standing at the right hand of God. And so it's enough to just think that Jesus is the son of man figure to get the accusation of blasphemy and stone to death, let alone claiming to be that son of man, and let alone claiming that that son of man is also God himself. So it seems to me that the Jews were a little bit trigger happy, in other words, when it came to accusations of blasphemy, meaning I don't think Jesus would have had to make this explicit claim to be God in order to get that stoning. Okay, that's fascinating you read it that way, because I actually read it, I read the same data differently.

1:50:22So let me just back up. Maybe I'm wrong here. But unless I'm mistaken, and I think I'm not, I don't think the word blasphemy is used for any of the allegations they make against him, like speaking against the law, speaking against the temple. Those are all problematic, but I don't think they're identified with the term blasphemy. Perhaps I'm wrong. In Acts chapter 6, all it says is that they instigated some men to say, we have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. That's Acts 6.11. And then it goes on to talk about the things that he did. So it doesn't then say that they stoned him for blasphemy or anything.

1:50:56It just says that previously they accused him of blasphemy crucially against Moses and against God. And then later he's stoned as a result of all of that. All right. I'm tracking now with you. Okay. So I understand. Yeah. So this is one that's going to come in the book. There are lots of different ways you can speak. You can commit sacrilegious in the temple, speak words. Even if you put a curse on a priest, like if you cursed a priest, that would be considered blasphemy. So yes, you don't have to make a divine claim to be charged blasphemy. Absolutely, that's not what I'm claiming. Although I would, I read it differently because the thing that actually gets him killed is when he makes a claim about Jesus.

1:51:35So it's not just that he sees it, it says but Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed in heaven, saw the glory of God, Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and then said behold, I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. And so they cried out with loud voice And they stopped their ears So I think this is the one that's very clearly Blasphemous It's his declaration that the Son of Man Daniel 7 Is standing at the right hand of God Psalm 110 That's the blasphemous claim that leads them To drag him out of the city and stone him Both of which are prerequisites Those are both what Leviticus 24 Says you do to a blasphemer You take him out of the camp And then you stone him to death So my reading is actually that And Stephen is executed not for blasphemy in the same sense that Jesus is because he's not making a claim about himself, but he is executed for the same claim that blasphemy because he's making it about Jesus.

1:52:32He's making it about the Son of Man. The other things are bad. They can be regarded as blasphemous, although that's kind of summary statement at the beginning. So I want to go back and try to tease out what that is. But this is what gets him killed. His allusion, same two passages, Psalm 110, Daniel 7, but making it verbally the claim about Christ or Jesus as Son of Man. And so I actually think that that actually is an argument of coherence with my reading of the trial. Because just as the Sanhedrin sees the allusion to those two texts being applied to Jesus as a divine self-claim, So to Stephen's allusion to those two texts, Daniel 7 and 1, Psalm 110, as being about the risen or exalted Jesus, that's seen also as a blasphemous claim about him, and it's worthy of capital punishment.

1:53:22Because he's claiming a man has these divine qualities. So I read it differently. I actually see it as confirmatory rather than conflicting evidence. So that's my read. Yeah, that is just sort of—that's just the way with these things, isn't it? the same verses of the same text being used to justify different conclusions. It'd be nice and normal simple, but it isn't. That's for sure. That's the one thing that should be clear in all of this. I would add to it, though, one last thing. It is clear, though, all of the early Christian executions in Jerusalem that are reported in Acts or in Josephus or in his early fathers, whether it's Stephen or James, the brother of Jesus in Josephus, or the early Christian Jerusalems who were executed by the Sanhedrin.

1:54:07Nobody ever talks about this, but it's in Hedges. All of them are stonings. And that's important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The stoning is illegally prescribed punishment for blasphemy against the deity, right? So not all crimes are capital crimes, but making divine claims about human beings is one of them. So I think that that actually, again, puts a kind of cumulative argument that helps us to understand that Jesus isn't making a merely human messianic claim, but rather a divine. I think that's the one that makes the best sense of the most evidence. Yeah, there's obviously so much to say. Because you're right, people point to other reasons why Jesus might have been killed.

1:54:48In Deuteronomy, it says that any prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded the prophet to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. So basically, false prophets shall be killed. Deuteronomy 13. And if that passage were quoted in the trial, I'd say that's the reason. Then fantastic. But it's not. And it's the stoning. I don't actually know what the punishment is for false prophets, if it's also stoning or if it's not specified or if it's something else. Well, there's some different evidence about that. I don't remember off the top of my head.

1:55:19I do remember, though, that the false prophet one, that passage from Deuteronomy is interesting because it actually gets picked up in the Tsefta, which is an early collection of rabbinic traditions, and says really clear that certain crimes, like capital crimes, you punish those people during the festivals, like Passover, Tavern, so that everyone will see and fear and obey. So sometimes people say, Jesus, the count of the trial isn't plausible because it's during Passover. And in the book I tried to show, actually, at least our Zerminic tradition goes to, it's the opposite. Those punishments are reserved for festivals because then everyone's going to be there and they're all going to see and they're going to make sure they don't repeat that kind of grave crime.

1:55:59So that's interesting. Yeah. Cause that's the question I didn't get to ask was like the plausibility of the historicity of all of these Jewish authorities getting together on the most like holy night of the year to convict some random Jewish rebels. It's not only plausible, but the Tosefta says it's mandatory for capital crimes to be executed. Also too, it also says for what it's worth, again, it's later. So you have to be cautious with it. And it says that you have to have two hearings. Well, they do in that they have a night hearing and then there's a brief mourning hearing and then off he goes to the crucifixion so it's remarkable case of coherence at least with with law on capital crimes right yeah minor crimes they should be carried out the festivals the rabbis say that but the tosefta actually is clear on on capital crimes for for false prophets and anyone who idolaters people lead people straight so anyway that's all right that's i think i think the crucifiable jesus the the jesus the one who's accused of blasphemy makes sense of early divine christology i think it makes sense of the how early high christology is there because he makes a christology claim during his life i think it makes explains his explanatory power for the separation of the parting of the ways between judas and christianity why why do we start seeing splits between these communities it's because the making a divine claim about the founder is going to be something that's going to be a dividing line between Jews and Christians.

1:57:24It's also why we see stonings for Paul. Why does he get stoned in synagogues? Maybe he's making blasphemy or what is taken as blasphemous claims, right? And then I think it also just provides a really plausible explanation for the divinity of Jesus being such a central topic of the rest of the New Testament text, as well as obviously the patristic theological debates that will eventually culminate in the Council of Nicaea. But that's a long way down on the road. So we're just focused here on this. I hope that's helpful. I'm going to make one request of our listeners, which is to first point out that, of course, we haven't covered everything.

1:57:59Even in the synoptic gospels, there's all kinds of stuff we haven't talked about. Jesus being Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus judging mankind, all this good stuff. But also, we of course haven't talked about the gospel of John, which as you say, famously is thought of as the high Christology gospel. I think it's got a really interesting christology we've kind of intentionally not talked about that because the synoptics is is like a more important focus here given that so many people think they've got a low christology so my only request yeah sure to our listeners is that if you've got interesting things to say you want to talk about jesus as the son of man and healing the paralyzed man and stuff yeah let us know in the comments that kind of stuff but please please just just try to refrain from going into the comments and saying, John 1030, the father and I are one.

1:58:42A lot of people do this. They comment things like that as if I'm going to read that comment and go like, oh my, how did I miss that? I've done all this research and all this. Man, I've got to go read John chapter 10. I didn't realize that he said, I know. I know he said that. I've got things to say about it. We have intentionally not spoken about it here and we'll perhaps do so another time. We might have another conversation about John. Yeah, that would be great. I mean, I need to do the John Christology thing in podcast form, I think, because it's just way better than a debate as well. I enjoyed the debate.

1:59:09I thought it was fun and all that kind of stuff, but it's just, it's, it's, this is just better. It's a better way to be. So I really appreciate it. And when I was preparing for that debate, I read your book and I found it really, really useful and interesting. And it's, it's Jesus and Divine Christology. A link is of course in the description for people who are interested. Maybe we'll revisit this at some point in the future, but for now, thank you so much for your time. It's been a, it's been a great one. I really, Thank you, Mark. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks a lot.