Licona and Martin: A Dialogue on Jesus' Claim of Divinity

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Licona and Martin: A Dialogue on Jesus' Claim of Divinity

May 14, 2025

In this episode, Dr. Mike Licona and Dr. Dale Martin discuss their differing views of Jesus’ claim of divinity. Licona proposes that “it is more probable than not that Jesus claimed to be God in some sense.” He bases this on the fact that the earliest Christians, those most plausibly connected to the apostles, held this view and that the best explanation is that Jesus said so himself. Licona cites passages equating Jesus with God and Jesus using “Son of Man, divine and co-equal with God, as his preferred way to refer to himself. Dr. Martin concedes that Jesus may have claimed divinity in some sense but not as orthodox Christians conceive. Instead, references to him as the “Son of Man” are claims to messiahship in a human or angelic sense, subordinate to God the Father. Martin claims that the orthodox Christian belief in Jesus’ divinity arose after his death in the second and third centuries, for if this had been taught by Jesus directly, the New Testament would not contain such a messy assortment of ideas about if, in what sense, and when Jesus became divine.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Risen Jesus podcast with Dr. Mike Licona. This is Dr. Kurt Jairus, your host. The New Testament is explicit in its testimony that Jesus taught that he was divine, co-existent with, and co-equal to God, right? Not according to Dale Martin of Yale University.

In this episode, Dr. Mike Licona and Dr. Martin meet at a Katie at Divinity College to discuss the question, did Jesus believe he was divine? Welcome to the second annual religion soup. My name is Greg Manette and I am the director and moderator of this event and I work in chaplaincy with the navigators at St. Mary's University. And I'm also a proud graduate of this fine institution here at Katie at Divinity College.

I do a master of divinity and my master of arts. And this place holds a very special location in this heart of mine. So let me make a special welcome to you, but I want to make one particular special welcome to the students here from Kingswood University who drove down here from New Brunswick with their professor, Dr. Gabbel.

And we're very pleased to see you here. Thank you for making the trip down and I hope you're really going to enjoy this evening. So it's great to see so many of you here taken this evening's event and we had such a good time doing it last year that we wanted to make sure that there was no fear of a snowstorm.

Thus we're doing this in October instead of in January. So I want to thank you for coming out to this event and I trust that you're going to find a very informative and educational. This is the goal of religion soup.

Regardless of where you stand regarding your views on Jesus of Nazareth, we hope that these events will give you much to consider and the mull over in the coming days, months and years. It's our hope that religion soup will create in you a desire to learn. And if you are not yet on a journey to explore the history behind the founder of Christianity, namely Jesus.

That you will begin to study up on the life of arguably the most important and influential human being who has ever lived. I also want to thank Acadia Divinity College for hosting this event tonight. They put a lot of work into this event and they deserve a lot of credit.

We'd also like to say that if you feel inclined to make a donation that there will be a donation bins at the door and the way out that will help cover the costs of this evening. So thank you in advance whatever you can give. Unlike last January, which was a debate, this evening is different.

It's a dialogue. You will find the order for tonight's event in your programs and we're going to start with opening presentations by both Dr. Lacona and Dr. Martin. Then we're going to move into a 25 to 30 minute dialogue where both presenters will engage with each other's thoughts on the topic.

Imagine that you are a fly in the wall when these two guests are sitting at a local pub, say the library pub down the hill here in Wolfville. And they're venturing back and forth about their views on the evening's topic. That's what we're trying to create here tonight.

That sort of atmosphere. Although with glasses of water and a few hundred flies on that wall. After this, we're going to take some questions from the audience.

And like last January, we're going to ask you to text in your questions. So text them in with your cell phone. If you own a cell phone and you don't quite know how to use it, tap the nearest young person on the shoulder and they'll show you how to use it.

But fear not if you don't understand technology too well because tonight Dr. Martin will not be using PowerPoint. So please text in your questions and some of the hard ones will be answered. We look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Religion Soup is an annual dialogue event aimed at fostering discussion around topics relevant to the Christian faith. Tonight we bring together two of the leading scholars in the field of Christian origins to discuss one of the biggest questions relating to Christianity, the deity of Jesus. It is helpful to hear different perspectives in order to be informed and to expand one's own horizon.

I can say firsthand after being at the event last night that both of our guests are very intelligent. They are both very good presenters and we have a lot to learn from both of them. So I'd ask you to try to keep an open mind tonight and listen to both their arguments.

Try to keep an open mind and really listen. You will benefit. I guarantee it.

Christianity is an historic faith rooted in ancient Judaism and finds its origins in the community of first century devotees to Jesus of Nazareth. One of last year's presenters, Professor Craig Evans, you sitting right here, he accurately stated that Jesus has left a very big wake in history. I agree.

Without Jesus Christianity would not exist and we would not be here in this room tonight. Last year's other participant, Professor Bartnerman recently stated in his book, did Jesus exist that, quote, there are several points in which virtually all scholars of antiquity agree. Jesus was a Jewish man known to be a preacher and teacher who was crucified in Jerusalem during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea.

This is the view of nearly every trained scholar. But one must ask the question, how did Christians come to revere Jesus as the divine son of God? How did a crucified Jewish man in the first half of the first century manage to spawn the largest religion in the world today, having millions, maybe even billions of people worship him? Tonight, we discuss the question of whether Jesus believed himself to be divine. We are not asking the question, is Jesus divine, but did Jesus believe he was divine? There is a difference.

We are very proud to welcome Dr. Michael Icona and Professor Dale Martin to Wolfville for this evening's religion soup dialogue. I will give a brief introduction prior to each of the opening presentations. Both of our guests will present for approximately 25 to 30 minutes, beginning with Dr. Michael Icona.

Michael Icona is associate professor in theology at Houston Baptist University and he is the president of Risen Jesus Incorporated. Mike was interviewed by Lee Strobel in his book The Case for the Real Jesus and has appeared in Strobel's video The Case for Christ. He is the author of numerous books including The Resurrection of Jesus, a new historiographical approach, which is for sale on the way out.

It's 700 pages long and makes for great reading and something to prop open your door. He is also authored, Paul meets Muhammad. He is the co-author of a popular apologetic book with Gary Habermas called The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, which is an award-winning book.

He is also co-edited with William Densky, Evidence of For God, 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy and Science. Mike is a member of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the Institute for Biblical Research and the Society of Biblical Literature. He has spoken on more than 50 university campuses and has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs.

His website is RisenJesus.com. Dr. Lacona earned his PhD with highest distinction from the University of Pretoria, and his dissertation is that 700-page door slammer out in the lobby as well. So, folks, please welcome Dr. Michael Lacona. Well, thank you.

I'm going to use this. Thank you and good evening. I'd like to thank Acadia Divinity School for hosting this evening's dialogue.

I'd also like to thank Dale Martin and Greg Minette for just the last two days. They've just been wonderful spending with these guys, and we've had a lot of fun. I also want to just say how great it is to see Professor Craig Evans again.

I have known him for several years and look up to the guy. I have the highest respect for him. You guys have a world-class scholar here at Acadia, and I envy you in your ability to, the opportunity you have to just hang out with this guy.

He's amazing. Well, Lyndon B. Johnson was President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, and at a time when Secret Service protection wasn't nearly as tight as it is today, President Johnson was speeding down a Texas road and it's convertible when a police officer pulled him over. That's right, son, and don't you forget it.

Lyndon Johnson's statement was more of a reflection of his personal arrogance than it was a sincere belief that he was divine, but that's not always been the case. Granting the status of deity to a Roman emperor may have originally been intended to be interpreted only honorifically. However, it seems clear that the Roman emperors, Caligula, and Nero actually believe themselves to have been gods.

This leads us to the question being discussed this evening. Did Jesus of Nazareth believe that he was God in some sense? I think that he did, and I'm going to be making a historical case to that end this evening. Before I launch into that case, I just want to make one preliminary point.

As with any historical investigation, the evidence will suggest certain conclusions with varying degrees of certainty. Historians across the board are very certain that Jesus thought he had a unique relationship with God who had chosen him to usher in his kingdom, that Jesus performed deeds of astonished crowds and that both he and his followers regarded as divine miracles and exorcisms, that he taught in parables, that he was crucified on orders of punchless pilot and died as a result. The supporting data for these are so strong that they may be regarded as historical bedrock, facts passed doubting.

But there are other data for which a good amount of support exists, but which are not quite as strong as what I just mentioned. Did Jesus regard himself as Messiah? Did he predict his imminent death and subsequent resurrection? I would place the evening's question in this category. So, accordingly, my conclusion is going to be somewhat modest.

Tonight, I'm contending that it's historically more probable than not that Jesus claimed to be God in some sense. This preliminary issue covered my thesis statement is as follows. There are two key truths that render it more probable than not that Jesus claimed to be God in some sense.

Key truth number one, the earliest known Christian generation and one that was most plausibly connected to the apostles regarded Jesus as God in some sense. And I'm going to offer three lines of support. Number one, most New Testament scholars agree that we have an early Christian hymn embedded in Philippians chapter 2 verses 6 through 11.

This hymn presents what is perhaps the highest Christology in the entire New Testament. It reads, While existing in the form of God, Jesus did not regard equality with God, something to be held onto, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and being born in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

For this reason, God exalted him greatly and gave to him the name that's above every name. In order that at Jesus name, every name may bow of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue may profess that the Lord is Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father.

There are a few major elements I want to focus on in this text. Number one, Paul contrasts being in the form of God with taking the form of a servant. Since being a servant is a role, I understand Paul to be saying that Jesus existed in the role of God.

However, he gave up that role, was made in human likeness and took the role of a servant. Thus, Paul teaches that Jesus was pre-existent and served in the role of God as his equal. This is profound because Paul is saying much more than that Jesus was God's favorite servant.

Paul is saying that prior to leaving heaven for earth, Jesus served in the role of God and was God's equal. This is much like we read in the very first verse of John's Gospel. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

So the view of a pre-existent Jesus who was on par with God was not something that evolved as the later Gospels were being written. It was present in Paul's letter to the church in Philippi, probably written before any of the Gospels and in a hymn that may have been much earlier. A second element in this hymn to observe is that as a result of Jesus' obedience on the cross, God exalted him greatly by giving him the name above all others.

Now, if I were to ask you all what was that name, most of you would probably say Jesus. At least that's what I thought, but that can't be what Paul's hand. Because what name did Jesus have before he was exalted? Jesus! So, I mean, he really wasn't giving that name then.

And if that's what it was talking about, then that means everybody throughout history who had the name Jesus, Joshua, Jesus could say, I've got the name. A mom, thanks for the name. No, that's not what's going on.

The term for name in Greek also means title. And what's the title that's above any other title you can think of? Prime Minister, President, Emperor, no. The very highest title and the world and beyond is Lord or God.

And this is the title given to Jesus, or perhaps even returned to him. A third element to observe in this hymn is the end result of getting that title. And here the hymn bars from Isaiah chapter 45 where God says, I am God the only God, there was no other God but me.

After saying this statement and repeating it over and over, he says it a total five times, God who identifies himself as the Lord says, Every knee will bow to me and every tongue profess to God. It is this text that the hymn applies to Jesus and what will every tongue profess? The title above all others, Jesus Christ is Lord. In other words, Jesus Christ is Yahweh himself.

This is astonishing. Paul an apostle who knew the other apostles proclaimed that Jesus was pre-existent in the role of God was equal to God and that after his crucifixion was given the title above all others. He attributed to Jesus what was meant only for God in Isaiah 45.

Every knee bowing and every tongue professing and they will profess that Jesus is Yahweh. This is the first line of support for my contention that the earliest known Christian generation and one which was most plausibly connected to the apostles regarded Jesus as God in some sense. The second line of support comes from Paul's letter to the church in Rome.

In chapter 10 verse 9 he writes, If you profess with your mouth the Lord is Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. Paul goes on to say why this is the case culminating with this statement in verse 13 for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. This is a precise quotation from Joel chapter 2 verse 32 where the Lord is none other than God, Yahweh.

In other words Paul states that whoever professes that Yahweh is Jesus and sincerely believes that God raised him from the dead will be saved for whoever calls on the name of Yahweh will be saved. The third line of support comes from the early belief that Jesus would do what the Old Testament attributes to God. Referring to the day of the Lord Zechariah 14.5 says, The Lord my God will come and all the holy ones with him.

In 1 Thessalonians chapter 3 verse 13 Paul writes of the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones, identifying Jesus as the God of Zechariah 14.5. This is important because 1 Thessalonians is probably the earliest piece of Christian literature in the New Testament and written by an apostle who knew the other apostles. The day of the Lord where the Lord is God is mentioned in Joel chapter 1 and chapter 2. When Paul writes 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians however the day of the Lord is when Jesus returns. Again Paul is equating the coming of Jesus with the coming of God in Joel chapters 1 and 2. To summarize in the earliest traceable times of the Christian church and one that has links to the apostles we have an extraordinarily high view of Jesus, one that refers to him as being in some sense God although functionally subordinate to the Father.

Jesus was more than an ambassador where one represents another or has authority delegated to him. He served in the role of God and was equal to him prior to coming to earth. Thus irrespective of how some Christians of that day may have regarded Jesus.

As far as we can tell the belief that Jesus is God in some sense belongs to the apostolic line of tradition and that's what matters most when attempting to learn what Jesus taught about himself. Richard Baucom of Cambridge University writes Early Judaism had clear and consistent ways of characterizing the unique identity of the one God and thus distinguishing the one God absolutely from all other reality. When New Testament Christology is read with this Jewish theological context in mind it becomes clear that from the earliest post-easter beginnings of Christology onwards early Christians included Jesus precisely and unambiguously within the unique identity of the one God of Israel.

Accordingly he truth number one seems firmly established the earliest known Christian generation and one that was most plausibly connected to the apostles regarded Jesus as God in one sense in some sense. But why don't earth lead the apostles who were staunch monotheistic Jews to regard Jesus as God? I believe the answer lay in key truth number two. The best explanation for this high view of Jesus is that he claimed to be God in some sense.

Here we go to the Gospels starting in the 1970s New Testament scholars Charles Talbert of Baylor and David Onney of Notre Dame proposed that the Gospels belonged to the genre of Greco-Roman biography. Classist Richard Burridge took exception with the claim and set out to demonstrate that the Gospels rather belong to the genre a genre of its own. He instead discovered that the Gospels indeed belong to Greco-Roman biography and as a resulting book what are the Gospels has become the definitive treatment on the subject and today a growing majority of scholars regard the Gospels as belonging to this genre.

The objective of Greco-Roman biography was to reveal the character of the subject through his sayings and deeds. The most commonly cited statement from an ancient biographer named Plutarch is what he said to this effect at the very beginning of his life of Alexander the Great, he writes for it is not histories that I am writing but lives. And in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice may a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of character than battles where thousands fall or the greatest armaments or sieges of cities.

Accordingly just as painters get the likeness in their portraits from the face and the expression of the eyes wherein the character shows itself but make very little account of the other parts of the body. So I must be permitted to devote myself rather to the signs of the soul and men and by means of these to portray the life of each leaving to others the description of their great contests. So the primary objective of ancient biography was to reveal the person's character.

So how do the Gospels portray the character of Jesus since their biographies? Who was Jesus? I want to look first at an enigmatic figure in ancient Jewish literature and the Gospels called the Son of Man. Scholars are virtually unanimous that Son of Man was Jesus' favorite way of referring to himself but there is no agreement pertaining to what he meant by it. There are typically three meanings behind Son of Man.

The first is that Jesus regarded himself as human similar to saying Son of Adam. The second is simply referring to oneself in the third person. Now those of us who have watched Seinfeld episodes may remember one where Jimmy is constantly referring to himself in the third person.

Jimmy likes Elaine. Jimmy can jump higher in his special basketball shoes. Using the third person was a humble way in antiquity to refer to yourself.

It was an Aramaic idiom in the first century and Jesus used it often. The third meaning refers to a divine figure we may refer to as the apocalyptic Son of Man. We find this figure in Daniel 7, the similitudes of Enoch and 4 Thesra.

In the interest of time rather than reading the relevant portions of those texts, I'm going to summarize them by providing eight characteristics of the apocalyptic Son of Man portrayed in them. Number one, he will be a light to the Gentiles. Two, he will appear before God.

Three, he will appear before all mankind on the clouds of heaven. Four, God will make him preside over judgment. Five, he will wipe away all evil.

Six, he will rule over all. Seven, he will sit on a glorious throne. Eight, he will be worshiped and served as only God is.

It seems quite clear to me that Jesus regards himself as the Son of Man in this sense in all four gospels. However, let's focus on the earliest gospel, Mark. On multiple occasions in Mark, Jesus tells his disciples that he, the Son of Man, is going to be betrayed, delivered to others, suffer, be killed, and raised from the dead.

In Mark 8, verses 31 through 38, Jesus says the Son of Man must suffer, then will come in his Father's glory with the holy angels. Some scholars have contended that Jesus was not here referring to himself as the Son of Man, but to someone else. However, there's no reason to regard Jesus' statement in verse 38 that the Son of Man will come in his Father's glory with the holy angels as referring to anyone other than Jesus, since he has just referred to himself as the Son of Man only seven verses earlier.

Moreover, two chapters later, in Mark 10, 35 through 45, Jesus clearly speaks of himself when saying the Son of Man will suffer, then have a glorious throne. This, of course, is something said of the apocalyptic Son of Man. In Mark 13, Jesus speaks of coming on clouds with great power and glory and will send angels to gather the elect.

In Mark 14, the high priest asked Jesus if he's the Messiah and Son of God. Jesus replies that he is and adds that he will see the Son of Man seated at God's right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven. At this, the high priest tears his clothes and accuses Jesus of blasphemy.

Now, what was blasphemous about Jesus' statement? Certainly, it wasn't blasphemous to claim to be the Messiah. Before and after Jesus, others had claimed to be the Messiah, Son of God. Simon of Perea, Judas of Galilee, Manachim, Ben Judah, Simon, Barcosaba had all claimed to be Messiah, and there was no charge of blasphemy.

Moreover, prophets, priests, and kings had been called sons of God. It was Jesus' claim to be the Son of Man who will come to judge the world that elicited the charge of blasphemy. To paraphrase Jesus, he said to the Jewish leaders, You're judging me now, but very shortly I'm going to be exalted by my Father, riding the clouds and sitting on his throne.

One day my Father will make you a footstool for my feet and you're going to honor me just as you honor my Father, because my Father and I were made of the same stuff. For the high priest, those were close ripping words. Now, if Jesus was not referring to himself, they'd have no reason at all to charge him with blasphemy.

Mark is not the only source to present Jesus as the apocalyptic Son of Man. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke also present Jesus in this manner in passages that are absent from Mark. On many occasions, the wording is so similar that it suggests they had a common source that has since been lost.

Scholars have called this source Q. In the Q material, there are at least three texts that present Jesus as the apocalyptic Son of Man. In Q13, Jesus says he's the one who will decide who enters heaven on the day of judgment. In Q3, John the Baptist says he's unworthy even to untie Jesus' sandals as one of a servants.

Jesus will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His pitchfork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into this granary. But the chaff, he will burn on a fire that can never be put out.

In other words, Jesus will be the eschatological judge. In Q10, Jesus says everything has been entrusted to me by my Father. Scholars have called this the Johannine thunderbolt because it sounds so much like Jesus in John chapter 3 verse 35, perhaps written 40 or more years later where Jesus says the Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands.

And while we're on John's gospel, John very probably wrote after Mark and most scholars regard him as an independent source. So it's interesting to observe that in the Gospel of John, Jesus regards himself as the apocalyptic Son of Man in chapters 5, 9, and 13. For example, in John 5, Jesus says, for not even the Father judges anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father.

And he gave him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man. So Jesus has presented as the apocalyptic Son of Man in the earliest Gospel, Mark, and in Q and in John. Paul, who wrote prior to all of them, also regarded Jesus as the apocalyptic Son of Man.

He does this clearly in 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians. Now, since he's writing to Gentiles, who wouldn't understand the Jewish apocalyptic Son of Man imagery, he doesn't call Jesus the Son of Man, but he paints the same portrait. Remember that in 1 Thessalonians, which is probably the earliest piece of New Testament literature.

In this letter, there are five references to the coming of Jesus. For example, in chapter 4 verses 15 and 16, Paul writes, for this we say to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain into the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God.

By saying this is the word of the Lord, Paul is probably referring to one of Jesus' teachings in reference to his return. Thus Paul is provided as source independent to the Gospels pertaining to Jesus, teaching that he will descend from heaven with his holy ones and with the shout of the archangel and the trumpet of God. So if there was any doubt remaining that in Mark, Jesus was referring to himself when he taught the Son of Man would return in glory, that Paul said this was Jesus teaching in a letter written prior to any of the Gospels should settle the matter.

The apocalyptic Son of Man is an enigmatic figure in the Jewish and biblical literature. It's the Son of Man who presides over the final judgment, who from his glorious throne will wipe away all evil, ruling over all who in turn will worship and serve him in a way that belongs only to the God who shares his glory with no one. According to Q4, Jesus recognized this when he told Satan, worship the Lord your God and serve him only.

That particular word translated serve here appears just over 130 times in the Bible. With only one exception where Israel is set to serve her enemy, the term serve is always used to refer to an act done for a deity such as prayer, fasting and temple service. So Jesus recognized that this type of service is meant only for God.

In Daniel 7, God hands over everything to this apocalyptic Son of Man so that all may serve him same word. There were many exalted figures in 2nd Temple Judaism. However, the Son of Man is unique in that he receives devotion that only God was to receive, such as sitting on God's throne and being worshipped.

He was such an exalted figure that to claim to be him was to commit the crime of blasphemy and be worthy of death. That Jesus regarded himself as the Son of Man in this sense is multiple tested. It's in Mark, it's in Q, it's in John and it's in Paul.

I don't have time this evening, but I could also show Jesus claiming to be the apocalyptic Son of Man in the material unique to Matthew and the material unique to Luke. Thus it's in every layer of the Gospel tradition from A to Z and in Paul who predates all of them. It's also in multiple literary forms, biography, sayings, literature and letter.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is one of the very strongest forms of multiple attestation for which historians can ask. Therefore, although some ambiguity remains, the apocalyptic Son of Man figure appears to be God in some sense. That Jesus claimed to be this figure seems firmly established.

With that said, let's see what else we can find in Mark. Remember that ancient biography focused on portraying the character of the person. So how else is Jesus portrayed in Mark? In 2, Jesus heals a paralytic and tells him he forgives him of his sins.

The Jewish leaders say he's blaspheming who can forgive sins, but God alone. In Mark 2, 28, Jesus allows his disciples to gather food on the Sabbath, which was not allowed by the Jewish law. When the Pharisees object, Jesus tells him he's Lord of the Sabbath.

Now think about this, God instituted the Ten Commandments which forbids work on the Sabbath. And so Jesus is doing some work on the Sabbath. And when the Pharisees object, Jesus says, chill out, guys, it's okay.

I'm Lord of the Sabbath. Can you imagine what these guys might have been thinking? Who does this guy think he is? God? When it came to casting out demons in Mark 3, Jesus claimed he had bound Satan and was now plundering his kingdom. But what man can bind Satan? In Mark 9, Jesus' disciples had been unable to cast out a demon.

Then Jesus comes along, says the word, and the demon is expelled. When his disciples later asked him why they were unable to cast out the demon, Jesus said that this sort of demon only comes out by prayer to God. And yet it came out merely by Jesus' word.

He never had to pray. What does that say about Jesus' character? What about in Q? In Q3, 34, Jesus wished to gather his people under his wings. This recalls an early Jewish image in the Old Testament, in the Old Testament, pseudopigrapha and the Mishnah, where God says he desires to shelter his people under his wings.

In summary, the objective of ancient biography was to paint a portrait of the person by focusing on their teachings and deeds that illuminated their character. In every layer of the gospel tradition, and in Paul who wrote earlier, Jesus believes himself to be the apocalyptic son of man. In Mark and Q, Jesus believes he possesses rights belonging exclusively to God.

He forgives sins, is Lord of the Ten Commandments, binds Satan and plunders his kingdom, performs actions without prayer that can only be performed by others with prayer to God, and like God desires to gather the Jewish nation under his wings. It should be of no surprise to us when John 518 later reports the response of others who wanted to kill Jesus because he was breaking the Sabbath and making himself equal with God. So contrary to claims of many, John doesn't give us an evolved Christology, but rather one more clearly stated upon further reflection.

In conclusion, the thesis I'm defending is this. There are two key truths that render it more probable than not that Jesus claimed to be God in some sense. Key truth number one, the earliest known Christian generation and one that was most plausibly connected to the apostles regarded Jesus as God in some sense.

Key truth number two, the best explanation for this view of Jesus, is that he claimed to be God in some sense. This is why I regard it as being historically more probable than not that Jesus regarded himself as God in some sense. Of course, some of you may be thinking tonight's discussion may be interesting, an interesting academic exercise, but of little relevance to those of us living in the 21st century.

I can only share why this interests me. For years, I've devoted myself to investigating the question of whether Jesus actually rose from the dead. The answer was important to me because I'm a conservative Christian, and if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then it seems to me at least that Christianity is a false religion.

At least that's what the Apostle Paul wrote. He said, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. Now I don't know about you, but I don't want to belong to a false religion.

I got better things to do with my time. My passion is to discover and follow truth no matter where it leads, and after six years of intensely focused research resulting in a 700-page book, I became more convinced than ever that Jesus' bodily resurrection was an event that occurred in history. And if Jesus rose from the dead, it seems to me that much of what we read about Jesus in the Gospels becomes much more plausible.

But who is this Jesus? Is he actually God in some sense as orthodoxy asserts? I think a good historical case can be made that this is at least what Jesus thought. Whether you think Jesus was in fact God or is merely deluded will largely depend on whether you think Jesus was raised from the dead. And that's a topic for another evening.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next guest has flown all the way here from Yale.

We're very happy to have him as well. I've got to know Dale in the last couple of days, and he's a pleasure to travel with, and he's a funny guy and a very smart guy, and I think you're going to learn a lot from him in the next few minutes. Dale is the Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies at Yale.

He was educated at Abilene Christian University, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Yale University. His work explores the New Testament, Christian origins, the Greco-Roman world, the ancient family, and gender and sexuality in the ancient world. Professor Martin has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Fulbright Commission, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Lilly Foundation.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected to this group in 2009. His publications, which a number of them are for sale on the back table, include Slavery as Salvation, the Corinthian Body, Inventing Superstition, Sex and the Signal Savior, and the Pedagogy of the Bible, as well as the New Testament introduction that if Mike's 700 page book is a great door jam, this is a good one to pop up the piano.

So, with all that said, we'd like to hear Dale Martin when you come up and give him a round Nova Scotia applause. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.

Greg took us around to see some of your sights today in lovely Nova Scotia, and there's nothing on the Gulf Coast of Texas where I'm from that's like Peggy's Cove, believe me. So, I very much enjoyed it. I also think this is a much better context to talk about this very, very complex issue of did Jesus think he was divine than a debate would be.

In debates, you're constantly trying to make things black and white and get things, and I think if anything about this topic, it's not black and white. For one thing, what it means in the ancient world to call a human being divine is very, very different from what it would mean in the modern world to call a human being divine. The divine Miss M, I guess, are divas maybe to be accepted, and so I think the discussion will be able to talk about what those three words that Mike kept saying in some sense, because I think that's where the real worm bucket lies.

But, you know, what did it mean to be divine? So, and I can't help but be reminded of the story of when God was trying to decide where to take his next vacation, and he was standing around the water cooler with some of his head angels. And Uriel said, oh, go to Saturn. He loves Saturn.

His other rings, it's really colorful. God said, oh, too gaseous. Raphael said, try Mercury.

You'd love it. Last year, I took some friends to Mercury. We had a great time.

God says, too dusty and dry. So, then Michael chips in and says, go to earth. You'll love it.

The sand, the surf. It's beautiful. Took the wife and kids there last year.

We all had a great time. God says, out of the question. Two thousand years ago, I took a vacation there.

Got a Jewish girl pregnant. They're still talking about it. What does it mean to be divine? A bit about myself.

I grew up in a very fundamentalist church in Texas, but I am now an Episcopalian, an Anglican, and a very high Anglo-Catholic, liturgical church in New Haven. Socially progressive on social issues, but very traditional, surgically. I get up every Sunday and say, then I seem creed.

When we have morning prayer, I say the apostles creed, and we sometimes even say other creeds in confessions, all of which, of course, insist that Jesus is divine. I believe in the Trinity. I'm perfectly willing to confess that.

So, as a Christian, I believe in Jesus in those ways. I think it's entirely different questions to say as a historian, as a practicing historian, what can I say about what Jesus thought about himself during his own lifetime? That also means that, and let me say also that last night we were talking about resurrection and that sort of issue. I think that's a much clearer issue that historians can come down on.

I think that did Jesus think he was divine is a much more difficult question for non-Christian historians to come to a decision about, so it's a muddy thing. But I also need to make the point that history is not the same thing as the past. It's also not the same thing as Jesus as he really was.

History, in my view, is not the past, or what happened. History is an account of the past that's constructed by modern professional historians using the regular tools of modern professional historiography. And I teach in my historical Jesus class that there are, in my mind anyway, at least three Jesuses.

And you'll see why I'm a post-modernist, and there's some ways that I don't think I could be a Christian if I weren't a post-modernist, because I need to be able to talk this way about reality and knowledge. The real Jesus is not the same thing as the historical Jesus. The real Jesus is also not the same thing as the Jesus who existed in the past.

The real Jesus, in my view as a Christian, is the second person of the Trinity, 100% human, 100% divine, the Jesus we worship in church. That's the real Jesus for me, the ultimate Jesus. Sounds like a rock band or something.

Then there's the historical Jesus, which is that Jesus that human, that's professional historians construct. Notice I didn't say reconstruct. It's not like the Titanic, if the Titanic, we could get all the pieces of the Titanic off the ocean, haul them to land, and put those actual physical pieces back together, and then we've reconstructed the Titanic.

That's not what historians do. Historians have never reconstructed anything in their lives. They construct it, and they construct it using whatever evidence they can find for historiography.

That's the historical Jesus. It's a construction of modern historians. It's not the same thing as the real Jesus, but it's also not the same thing as the Jesus existed in the past.

The human Jesus who existed in the past is completely lost to us, as all the past is lost to us. The past does not exist anywhere. We can't take our constructions to the past event, hold them next to it, and say, does it meet? What counts as a historical construction of Jesus is what professional historians will accept as a likely historical construction of Jesus.

So, I think no responsible non-apologetic Christian historian would claim that Jesus thought of himself as divine in anything like the Christian sense, that is the second person of the Trinity, fully equal to Yahweh, as you put it. Fully divine is God the Father, in any way equal to God the Father, as one person of the Trinity, as the second person of the Trinity, in which the Holy Spirit is the third person, as not created but generated by God, etc. All those creedal statements, which I believe are true credally, I don't think any responsible historian would say, this historical Jesus considered himself any of those things.

If the historical Jesus considered himself divine in any possible sense, it would not have been in the Orthodox Christian sense. That's my first point. But could the historical Jesus have considered himself divine in some kind of sense? Since there were many people who did claim divine status for themselves or other human beings they knew, it's not as unlikely as some apologists have claimed.

As some people have said that if Jesus didn't actually claim to be divine, then he was a liar or he was a lunatic of you as a human being who did this. I think for example Alexander the Great really believed himself to be divine in his lifetime. I think it's quite possible that some of the Roman emperors thought that they were divine also in some sense, and a fairly high sense.

There may have been religious figures who claimed some kind of divine status for themselves. But do we have evidence that Jesus looks like these kinds of figures? And I don't think so. First, I think it is unlikely simply from the beginning, in the first place, that Jesus thought he was divine for the following reasons.

I assume that whatever Jesus was, he was a pious Jew, uneducated for the most part, and at home in rural and village settings. He was a Jewish peasant from Galilee. He may have seen himself as a prophet.

If Jesus thought of himself as a Messiah in his present state, that is not that he would become a Messiah later, but that he already was right then walking around the Sea of Galilee, divine, that could have entailed some kind of divinity. Contrary to what some come in opinion, even among many scholars, we do have Jewish texts from before and around Jesus' time that depict the Jewish king or a son of man, or a Messiah figure, as a son of God, as even begotten of God, and even addressed as God. So we have Jewish texts, not a lot.

They talk about both the son of God, the gotten of God, God, and they use this for a Jewish king, a son of man, or a Messiah figure, all those things you find. Now, notice this is not on any package. Some texts have some of these things together.

Others have some of the others together, but it's at least possible. Certain Psalms, layer Greek translations of those Psalms, a text or two from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other second temple Jewish literature, rarely but do indeed depict a divine Messiah, though one certainly subordinate to God himself. And I'm taking a lot of this on talking about Messiah figures and their divine status from a fairly recent book from 2008 by my Yale colleagues Adela Yarbrough Collins and John Collins.

It's called king and Messiah as son of God, divine, human, and angelic messianic figures in biblical and related literature. I think it's the most thorough examination to date of all the different possibilities that there are in second temple Jewish literature of this period. It used to be said by people that calling someone a Messiah didn't make him divine, and for the most part that's true.

You can have a Messiah that doesn't have divine status. Most Messiahs, I think in the ancient world, were not thought by other Jews to have divine status, but we have a few texts that do. But the picture of Jesus we get from our best sources, which I take to be for his life, the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, had defined a royal messianic status for himself during his lifetime.

And Collins and Collins also believe this. And I think because he was an illiterate Jewish peasant from rural and village Galilee, he would have appeared blasphemous and crazy to have made such claims during his lifetime, and I don't believe we have evidence that he did so besides his crucifixion. So even if he claimed messianic status for himself, it does not seem that he added divine status to it.

In other words, I think it's more likely that Jesus may have thought of a special Messiah than that he thought himself of a divine Messiah. I think it would have been more like a human or angelic form of messiahship than divine messiahship, and those were also possible. But these other contemporary Jewish texts do hint at how his disciples later elevated him to divine status by connecting him to that kind of divine messianic tradition.

So I believe that his disciples, when they believed he was a Messiah and then they believed he was raised from the dead, I think they put that together and said, oh, he is a divine Messiah, and therefore he is not only the Son of God but can be thought of as God himself. The Synoptic Gospels do not portray Jesus as pre-existent. I don't think so.

And Adela and John Collins don't think so either. I do admit that both Paul and the writer of the Gospel of John portray Jesus as pre-existent, but I think it's telling that Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not. Their references to Jesus as Son of God and Son of Man seem to be messianic kitals, but again that need not imply pre-existence.

The book of Revelation calls Jesus Christ and once calls him Son of God in Revelation 2 18. But that seems to mean that the author is taking Jesus to be an angelic heavenly Messiah. In fact, in Revelation Jesus is, I think, following the Collins' presentation again, presented as God's first creation.

He might be the Christ, but he is a created Messiah. Jesus makes no explicit claim to actual divine status in the Synoptics. And this is where Mike and I will probably in our discussion, I just believe that when he's taking Son of Man to necessarily imply divine status, he's going too far.

Even if he believed he was the Messiah, that would not usually turn out divinity, although in rare cases it could. Even if he called himself the Son of God, that also would not have meant that he himself was divine. The only gospel that makes that kind of open claim to divine status for Jesus is the Gospel of John.

And it's hard for me to see the historical Jesus in the Gospel of John. Second, Son of God itself need not mean divine status. Jewish readers of the Psalms would have seen the human king called Son of God without necessarily taking that to mean those kings were actually divine, the way Zeus or Augustus were said to be gods.

Luke 2036 has Jesus saying that people who will have experienced the resurrection are sons of God. But in that context it does not likely mean that they are truly gods themselves. Next, the Son of Man.

Jesus in the Gospels does seem to speak of himself as the Son of Man, but that can mean different things and it need not mean divinity. And there are passages that make it sound as if Jesus meant someone else, a future figure as the Son of Man. In other words, some of the passages sound more like Jesus is talking to a future coming Son of Man that's a different person from him.

And I think that what you have to do is sift through all of these sayings and try your best to figure out which ones are like a historical and which ones reflect later church invention. For example, this from Mark 838. This is the NRSV translation.

Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of them, the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of the Father of his Father with the Holy Angels. Notice, according to this quotation Jesus says, those who are changed of me, the Son of Man will be ashamed. Now of course those could be the same thing.

He could be using the words meaning himself in both cases. But you could just as easily interpret it to say that he's talking about two different people, himself and a future Son of Man. Next, adoptionist Christologies.

I think it's also unlikely that Jesus taught that he was divine to his disciples because different followers of Jesus after his death had quite different ideas about whether or not Jesus was divine. And even if they believed he was divine, they differed about in what sense or to what degree he was divine and when he became divine. In other words, there is not a unified Christology even in the New Testament, much less if we consider what other followers of Jesus who didn't make it into the canon were believing at the time.

Luke 3.22 says that at Jesus' baptism, besides the saying, this is my beloved Son, some ancient manuscripts add, today I have begotten you, quotation from the Psalm. And I, following Bart Erman, I think that's the better reading of what was actually in the text. And that Orthodox scribes in the second century took out the today I have begotten you because they thought this makes it sound like Jesus was adopted by God.

He wasn't always God. He was adopted by God at his baptism. Note also that the same kind of saying happens at the transfiguration in Luke 935.

Our passage just says, this is my son, this is my beloved, my chosen in that passage. So the word my chosen is used at the transfiguration. And some scribes apparently changed that to my beloved.

Now, why would people change my chosen to my beloved? Well, if you're an Orthodox scribe and you believe Jesus wasn't chosen to be God's son at the transfiguration, he always was God's son, then you might want to change that text of scripture to not leave adoptionist Christians who you consider heretics, any ammo in the Bible. In Romans 1-4, Paul says that Jesus was designated or appointed as son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead. Now, your translation might have that as declared to be son of God, but I don't think that's a correct interpretation of the Greek word.

Horizo is a word that you use for designating something as something. I think it's misleading. I think the Greek should be read, and this is not Paul's Christology.

I think what Paul is doing is quoting some kind of line that he's heard before him, but that line would sound like that God made Jesus son of God only at his resurrection, and that's what some adoptionist Christians pointed to to back up their own case. For example, Queen Elizabeth was not Queen until she was made Queen at her coronation, and I think that's the best way to read that Greek. If that's true, then someone before Paul, because he's quoting it, I think, had an adoptionist Christology by which they believed Jesus wasn't God or son of God until his resurrection.

In Acts 2.38, this is a quotation, God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified. Again, made him Lord and Messiah. In Acts 13.33, God fulfilled his promise by raising Jesus as also it is written in the second Psalm, you are my son, today I have begotten you.

The raising of Jesus is when Jesus became Messiah. In other words, I'm saying this is not orthodox Christology. It just shows that there were messy ideas about whether Jesus was divine.

If so, what kind of divine was he? Was he kind of low level divine or really high level divine? And when did he become divine? And these things, it takes the full second century and a good bit of the third century for these to get straightened out to become what became orthodox Christologies. I think the different Christologies we find in the New Testament, or hinted about in the New Testament, suggest that beliefs in his divinity arose only after his death. Otherwise, we would expect more commonality or uniformity among his later followers.

This is very similar to E.P. Sanders argument that the historical Jesus must not have taught something that was absolutely clear about the Mosaic Torah as it related to his followers and to later Gentiles. For example, the historical Jesus had said, you know, you as followers of me won't have to keep the Mosaic Law anymore. It's passed away.

Or if he had said the opposite, you will have to keep the Mosaic Law and you have to keep it strictly. Or if he had said, when you make disciples of Gentiles, you should circumcise them and make them keep the Torah. Or if he said, when you have Gentiles who come into your group, they don't have to keep Torah, although you have to keep Torah.

If Jesus had taught any of these things very clearly, you wouldn't have all the confusion and fighting about what to do about the law that happened after his death among his followers. If he had said something clear, that was E.P. Sanders argument the law. I'm making a very similar one about claims to Jesus divinity.

If he had taught that he was divine in any kind of clear sense, then I do not expect that you have all the various ways of conceiving him to be divine or not in the earliest Christianity. Next, if people believe that Jesus is divine in the New Testament, they often have what we call a subordinationist notion of divinity, not that he's equal to God the Father. Our earliest source, Paul, has some rather suspicious statements in his letters that suggest that though he believed Jesus was divine in some sense, he did not equate Jesus with God.

He did not believe Jesus was equal to God the Father. He may have entertained some kind of adoptionist Christology, at least at some time. And if he was, it seems, thoroughly a subordinationist.

This is simply the idea that Christ is a divine figure, but subordinate to God the Father. Certainly Paul accepted a form of early Christianity that already worshiped Jesus as Lord, but again, that did not necessarily mean they thought of him as fully God. The word Lord just doesn't mean that in Greek.

And it almost certainly in the beginning did not mean they thought of him as equal to God. 1 Corinthians 11, 13, I mean 11, 3 says God is the head of Christ as man is the head of woman. And Paul certainly believed that females were inferior to males.

He therefore must have believed that Christ was inferior to God the Father. 1 Corinthians 15, 38, when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him so that God may be all in all. Again, Jesus as the coming Messiah has the battles, subjects the entire universe to himself, Jesus.

Then he subjects everything to the one whom he also is subjected to God the Father. All of those cases seem to me to say that although you do have the Gospel of John, which makes Jesus equal to God the Father in divinity, that's one situation in the New Testament. You have many examples of subordinateist Christology in the New Testament also, not to mention post New Testament writings.

The last piece of evidence I think that Jesus did not consider himself divine is one saying in the Gospel of Mark that I believe if any saying of Jesus has a claim to be historical, it's this one. Mark is the earliest Gospel and it tells the story in which Jesus is asked what should he do by young men, what should I do to tear eternal life, good teacher. It's Mark 10, 17 through 18, and this is the NRSV version.

Jesus answers as the first part, why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. I think you can interpret that in lots of different ways, but it seems to be the most natural interpretation is Jesus is basically saying I'm not God. Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.

Of all sayings that have any possible divinity of Jesus in the synoptics, this one has in my opinion the greatest claim to historicity and it seems to be a denial on Jesus part of divine status for himself. Now compared to the discussion about the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus that we had last night, the question of his possible divine self-consciousness is much more murky. I would say that no reputable historian would call the flesh and blood resurrection of Jesus a historical fact, but I could see even non-Christian professional historians being willing at least to entertain the possibility that Jesus may have thought of himself as divine in some sense, though certainly not I believe in the orthodox Trinitarian sense.

That last sense I think would be wildly anachronistic and unhistorical retrojected back into life into Jesus' own historical lifetime. What does it matter for my faith? Not at all. I believe Jesus is divine and I believe the Christologies that develop later in the church.

I accept the good thing about Anglicans and Roman Catholics is we don't have to base all of our theology purely on a literal and historical reading of the Bible. We can say the Holy Spirit has guided the church even after the period of the New Testament. And when we confess the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed, we believe the church under the leadership of the Holy Spirit came to interpret the Bible to teach these truths about Jesus.

And that's what we accept as orthodox. So I can speak as a historian about this and it doesn't affect my faith at all to believe that the historical, that I can't say the historical Jesus thought of himself to be divine. In fact, I think rather that the best historical solution is that the historical Jesus did not think he was divine.

Thank you. Well, this is my favorite part of the night. This is that we're both scholars get to ask each other questions about their presentations, about their thoughts.

And we get to hear from them as though we're... Imagine you're at the library pub, as I said, and you get to hear these guys go back and forth. Well, you get to do that, right from these seats. So what we're going to do is we're going to start with Dale.

I might want to prioritize which questions you're going to ask each other because you've got about 25, 30 minutes max. So you can only ask so many questions. So ask the most important ones that you think you can come up with.

So Dale, would you like to start and ask Mike a question to get the dialogue started? Can I ask two questions that are probably not very long to answer? One of them was how would you interpret that last market passage? And so I'm sure you must have an interpretation that Jesus is not denying the mind says to himself. But I also want to ask if you make Jesus equal to Yahweh, even in Jesus' own teachings, how do you explain all that subordination? Coordinationism that we find in the New Testament and later Christian literature. Okay, great question.

Is this a little out for you guys? No. In terms of the question about Mark chapter 10 verses 17 and 18, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. I agree with you that's ambiguous.

It could be interpreted as Jesus said, and hey, why do you call me good? I'm not good. Only God is good. And that's not me.

Or it could be saying, why do you call me good? Only God is good. In other words, do you know what you're saying? You know what you just said? You called me good and only God is good. Well done.

So it could be in either way. So when we come to a text which is ambiguous and could be interpreted one way or the other, I think the best thing to do the responsible hermeneutics would be to interpret that text in light of other texts, at least by the same author or what Jesus would say elsewhere in Mark. And as I contended in my opening statement, I think Mark is quite clear that Jesus regards himself as being God in some sense.

So that's how I would interpret that. And therefore I think the interpretation that I just gave to it would be a more plausible or likely interpretation than the one that you provided. But I admit that it is ambiguous and taken alone, you could go either way.

But in the context of how Jesus presents himself in Mark, or maybe I should say how Mark in his biography presents Jesus, I think it might interpretation be more likely. I mean Mark even opens up the gospel with quoting Isaiah 43 about John the Baptist in relation to Jesus, a voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God. And that's a plan to Yahweh in Isaiah 40 verse 3, and yet here Mark is applying that to John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus.

So I think the whole of the biography of Jesus as presented by Mark is Jesus is Yahweh amongst us. Then why doesn't he say it? Well, because in the biography you're trying to do the character. And I think that if Jesus comes right out and says, guess what, I'm Yahweh, it's going to be kind of problematic for a lot of people.

And like you said, he'd be charged with blasphemy. And so I think, and he's got a ministry ahead of him. So my speculation would be just like you have the messianic secret in Mark.

You have this in the same way, the apocalyptic son of man. Jesus uses that as a title for himself because it's sufficiently ambiguous because it can have different meanings to it. And so he can say this, but in private he can say it in a way that suggests the apocalyptic son of man.

And people can get things confused. And he's not really statement until his time has come. And then when he's in front of a high priest, he knows his hours come.

And so he just lets it fly. Boom. He's going, hey, let me put this in a very straight, clear, unambiguous and precise manner.

Yes, I'm the Messiah. Yes, I'm the Son of God. And that son of man who's going to be worshipped and judge the world.

Yep, that's me. I'm going to be coming back riding the clouds and I'm going to be sitting right next to my daddy on the throne. It's that clear.

And if Mark makes it that clear, why is it that most scholars don't see it? Most scholars don't believe that Mark is portraying Jesus as Yahweh. Or in fact, most scholars don't believe Mark is portraying Jesus as God in almost any sense. Yeah, I would agree.

I think most scholars would say that Mark is not doing it. But I've provided arguments. Why? And so it's not a matter of what scholars, I mean, I respect scholars on that.

But I've given a number of arguments why I think Mark is presenting Jesus as God. And those need to be addressed. And so while we're on Mark, if I might ask you, you said, oh, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, what was the second question again? How do you explain the subordination, just Christologies? In Paul. In different parts, well, in Revelation and Paul in different parts of the... In fact, I would say you have subordination, Christologies everywhere, but maybe John. Gospel of John, Hebrews, and maybe Colossians.

Well, that's a fine question. Yes, there's a subordinate's Christology in Revelation. But in Revelation, you still have Jesus and the Father are both referred to as the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end within Paul and all these others.

I think that what we're looking at here is the subordination within a divine relationship. You say that John doesn't have a subordinate's relationship, but I think that he does. He says, I do all that the Father has commanded me.

He says, the Father is greater than I. So that sounds pretty subordinate. And yet this is in John who flat out calls Jesus God. So if you can have this and you have Paul, I think it's pretty clear in Philippians 2 and Romans 9. And with the coming of the Lord, I think he's flat out talking about Jesus as God.

And yet he can talk about him in a subordinate's sense. So if you have Paul do this, if you have John, again, who says Jesus is God and can talk about Jesus in a subordinate sense, I think that for me I look at that and say they're talking about a divine relationship where if God has a divine DNA, Jesus has it. But there is a subordination within the relationship.

But I think you're misinterpreting those passages in John to say, even someone who believes fully in the Trinity and a non subordinate's Christiology can still, will still necessarily confess that Jesus is begotten of the Father. God the Father is the only one of the Trinity who is completely unbegotten. But we don't take that to mean Jesus is subordinate to the Father.

Nor do we take it to say that God the Father commands Jesus to do something. That's just, Athanasius is the most heavy duty of the Father's. The Patristic Father is to insist on a non subordinate's Christiology.

And yet Athanasius would not take those passages in John as implying subordination. It's precisely because in John you've got Jesus saying before Abraham was I am, which seems to equate him to Yahweh. Pre-existent right and equation.

I'm giving it to you for John and I think that that means that to read these other passages as subordinationists is probably then not right. I'm just saying that we've got very clear equality statements in some parts of the Bible. I just don't see them in the Synoptic Gospels.

Well, in the Synoptic Gospels, you said that the Synoptics do not present Jesus as pre-existent. I mean, I would take issue with that. I think that they do.

You have what are, you know, the sent passages or Jesus says I have come. I was talked about by Simon Gatherkol. You know, these are in Mark and it's in Q. Or Jesus makes these statements.

I have come. Prophets in the Hebrew Bible say I have come and I was sent all the time. They're not claiming pre-existent reality for themselves.

I agree with you. It wouldn't be required, but it certainly would be compatible with these things for them to say I have come. For Jesus to say I have come, like the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life for the ransom for many in Mark, that could certainly be referring to a pre-existence there.

I agree it wouldn't be required, but it could certainly be doing it. You can't rule it out and say, well, the Synoptics don't do it. I mean, Paul, who writes before any of the Synoptics, talks about a pre-existent Jesus.

Yeah, I'm not saying Paul doesn't believe it. It's very frustrating when the main way you talk about ex-Jesus is one could read this this way. But that's what you're doing? No, I'm actually saying there are more likely historical readings and less likely historical readings.

Okay, so you got Paul who believes in a pre-existent Jesus, right? And you would say he certainly believes in a pre-existent Jesus. And he's the earliest writer. And then you have John, perhaps the latest, who believes in the pre-existence of Jesus.

So you can't say that this evolves along the way because it's there from the very beginning. No, no. In fact, even in the mid-second century you have debates about this.

It's not a linear development where you start from confusion and end up with unity. You start from confusion and end up with confusion. It's Christology and what to think about Jesus' divine status is being argued about all through late antiquity.

Even the Nicene Council doesn't settle it. Even the Council of Constantinople doesn't settle it. Even the Council of Calcedon doesn't settle it.

So I just don't see how you can read the New Testament to have such a unified view. When there are so many indications to me that it's not unified and it takes so many centuries for it to get unified. Well, as I said in my opening statement, I think it's more probable than not.

So I don't think the evidence is as strong as it is or that we can come with such a firm conclusion as we can say as I contended last night for Jesus' resurrection. I'm just presenting a case of why I think Jesus regarded himself as being God in some sense. Does that kind of clarify where I'm coming from on that? But I guess the point I'm making is if you've got Paul, the earliest writer who says that Jesus is pre-existent.

And do you think Paul regards Jesus as God? Yeah, I've said that like three times. Okay. All right.

So Paul... I agree with you on that. So you've got Paul and John. Certainly Paul's connected with the apostles.

I think there's eyewitness testimony from an apostle in John's gospel as well. Let's talk about... You said it wasn't a unified view and that brings me to, I think, which is maybe a major point in this discussion. And that would be the adoptionist view that you talked about.

And so you cited a bunch of verses from Luke, Acts, and one from Paul. So I have two questions for you. Do you know of any first century literature outside of the New Testament that presents an adoptionist view of Jesus? I don't know of any first century Christian literature outside the New Testament for certain.

Okay. I mean... That's okay. So maybe some of the epistolic followers... I think all the epistolic followers to be either at the beginning of the second century or maybe the very, very end of the first century.

The only non-canonical Christian document I would say I might be willing to put back into the first century would be the gospel of Thomas. Okay. And would Thomas possibly present an adoptionist view of Jesus in your opinion? No.

Okay. It's Valentinian. He's gone the other direction.

Okay. And he believes that he probably believes that Jesus never was maybe fully human. Okay.

So in your opinion, I would agree. I'm not aware of your not aware of any first century literature outside the New Testament that presents an adoptionist view of Jesus. All right.

Second question. Wait a minute. Can we clarify this? Sure.

How can you make that point when we don't have any literature outside the New Testament the first century? Exactly. It's not like that makes a point that therefore adoptionism isn't around all of us. I agree.

I agree with you. I'm just asking that question. Okay.

Second. Do you think Paul or Luke were adoptionists? No. Okay.

So here's my point. You're saying that there are these different Christologies that we have in early Christianity. Now we know Paul, who is an apostle, certainly regards Jesus as God.

All right. He's an apostle. He knows the other apostles as we talked about last night, Galatians 1, Galatians 2. You know, they certify his teaching, his gospel message in alignment with theirs.

Certainly that the identity of Jesus has got to be part of that. All right. So we see the apostles most likely are regarding Jesus as God.

Are there other views of Jesus in the first century? You say, okay, well, there's maybe some hints in Luke, Acts, and Romans. But the authors, neither of the authors of Luke, Acts, or Romans are adoptionists. They're certainly not.

The point I would want to make is I think that your argument that there, and I know you're not the only one to do it. I know Bart Ehrman does it. I think that's a pretty weak argument.

And the reason being, the only evidence you have are a few ways of possible interpretations in Luke and Paul of an adoptionist Christology when neither of them accept an adoptionist Christology. I admit that Psalm 27, when you read it, you are my son. Today I've begotten you.

Wow. That is certainly a text that adoptionists would want to grab onto. And so you have Luke use this verse twice, one in the context of Paul.

Well, and then if I were to grant you that he uses that at Jesus' baptism, which I wouldn't, but if I were to grant that, you'd have that, plus you'd have Paul, Luke, say Paul says that, Acts, and then you have the author of Hebrews, says it twice. And yet the author of Hebrews, even though he uses that twice, in chapter one he says that Jesus created the heavens and laid the foundation for the world, my point, and I'll end with this. If adoptionists were around in the first century, I don't think we'd find Luke and the author of Hebrews using Psalm 27 when it could so easily be used by an adoptionist.

It seems to me that the more plausible scenario is adoptionists weren't around in the first century. And so you have Luke and Paul and the author of Hebrews using these things freely to show hey, God approved Jesus at his resurrection, God approved Jesus and reaffirmed him at his baptism and it was the adoptionist that came in the second century that read those and misinterpreted them. Yeah.

What do you think about that? I would just say I don't believe that's how most historians do history of religions. I think what we do is we see that there definitely are adoptionists in the second century who not only are reading these texts that we might read, but they're doing all, they're seeing the dove come down on Jesus and they say, oh, the Greek word for dove is petty stera. And if you add up all the letters and petty stera, you come up with a number eight hundred one.

Well, that's proof that Jesus became divine at his baptism because eight hundred one is what you also get when you add up the Alpha and the Omega. So that's the divine commitment. Now we know there are Christians in the second century doing this.

They're Christians in the 21st century doing it. And I think most of us historians don't approach the text with a tendency to make them as unified as possible in the first century only to come apart into wild diversity of Christianity in the second century. I think most of us just assume that if there were adoptionists in the second century, it's just as highly likely that there were some in the first century.

Wouldn't it be like saying the same about Gnostics though? Well, no, we can tell. We can show when Gnostic kinds of ideas sort of started coming about. We've got enough historical texts.

We can relate them to what's going on in developments of middle and late Platonism. No, it's not at all like Gnostics. We can we can be fairly certain that there weren't Gnostics in the sense that they were in the third and fourth centuries in the first century church.

Well, see, I would say the same thing for adoptionists. We don't have any evidence that there were adoptionists in the first century. That's because the evidence from the New Testament, which is the only place we have any source for any early Christian texts, you reject.

So the fact is... One good realm? So I think... I think you do. I mean, I think the fact is the very fact that you have texts that second century scribes are editing to make them non-adoptionist indicates that those people are worried that these texts either came from or were being used by adoptionists very early. And I don't think it's an unreasonable proposition to say that fully adoptionist Christology doesn't make it into New Testament because the New Testament is starts becoming codified much later in the second century.

And by that time, anything that was adoptionist is just not going to be included by the Orthodox scribes who are doing it. That seems to be a much more historically sensitive way of imagining the growth of early Christianity than to imagine a kind of harmonized, homogenized, universalized Christology of the first century that explodes into confusion in the second century. But that's discussing canonicity, which isn't really part of this.

I'm basing my case for Jesus claiming to be God on the earliest sources that we know of and those that can be traced to the apostles in terms of Paul. And then when I'm using the synoptics, I'm talking about multiple at the station, like this apocalyptic son of man, you said you don't think Jesus claimed to be the apocalyptic son of man. But I showed that this is in every layer of the gospel sources, Mark Q, M, L, John from A to Z, and it's in Paul as well.

And it's in multiple literary forms, biography, saints, literature, letter. You really can't ask for any stronger form of multiple at the station than that. So it seems that Jesus certainly regarded himself to be this apocalyptic son of man, this divine figure.

How would you answer my argument for that? I just say that you are entirely too generous in what you're willing to accept this historical. You're not really willing to take a critical approach to these texts at all. But critical doesn't mean skeptical.

Critical means I'm not bringing my biases or my presuppositions to the text. I'm looking at these and when I say, okay, I'm not approaching the text as though they're divinely inspired or that they're even generally trustworthy. I do the same thing that skeptical scholars would do.

And in your book, you say multiple at the station is one of the ways that we get to things that appear historical. And I'm saying it's not only just in two sources, it's in every layer of the gospel tradition. It's in Paul, and Paul even says, this is the word of, this is a loggia of Jesus that has come to us about teaching, about his return as the apocalyptic son of man.

I don't know what else you'd want. Because I think you're completely ignoring what I think is another very important tool that you're going to talk about the historical Jesus. Which is simply to say, what pieces of their story about Jesus, what sayings, are they not likely to have invented to support what their own beliefs were? The things that look like they go counter to their belief structures, those even get more historical weight.

So that's why I said the Mark passage where Jesus seems to be saying that he's not God. I give it extra weight because the people who ended up writing the New Testament did believe that he was God in some sense. So if you have the small pieces in the text that seemed to survive Christian editing, later Orthodox editing and thinking about that, you give those extra weight.

So since the New Testament is actually written by people who all believe Jesus is the Christ, that when Jesus says, I am the Christ, well, you just don't give that as much weight as when there are places where it seems like he's not making messianic claims for himself. So that's just one of the fundamental things. I just believe you've met the Lord.

You just look at multiple attestation. Well, of course you're going to get more stuff when it's something that supports the beliefs of later Orthodox Christians. Because that's the stuff they want to be there.

It's the stuff that seems to go against their beliefs that gets more weight in a decent historical Jesus reconstruction, in my view. Yeah, like the criterion of the similarity. I appreciate that.

And so I think, for example, those passages where Jesus seems to be saying that somebody else is the Son of Man and not him should be given more historical weight, precisely because the Christians, by the time they wrote these texts, they took Jesus to be the Son of Man. They took Jesus to be the apocalyptic Son of Man. So those passages should be given much less weight.

And any passages where Jesus seems to be saying somebody else in the future is the apocalyptic Son of Man. And I'm just the forerunner for him. Those passages should be given more historical weight.

I'm fine with giving them weight. Let me have one thing here and then we can move on. I'm fine with giving them weight.

I agree with you there. But in Mark, Jesus speaks of the Son of Man 14 times. Of those 14, 11 of them, he's crystal clear that he's referring to himself.

There are three of which there's some ambiguity that exists. Mark 8, 138, and I gave my reasons why I think that's Jesus referring to himself because just seven verses earlier he calls himself the Son of Man. Mark 10, 35 through 45, he is certainly referring to himself in that sense when he says he's going to sit as Son of Man on a glorious throne.

Wow, well that is something the Son of Man does. And then you got Mark 14, the mother of all Son of Man verses where he says he's the Son of God, he's the Messiah, and you're going to see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven and seated at God on the right hand of power. They charge him of blasphemy.

I guess I could ask you since it's not blasphemy to be of Messiah, not blasphemy to claim to be the Son of God. If Jesus was not claiming to be the Son of Man here, what grounds do they have for charging him with blasphemy? Number one, I think that you could talk about Son of Man without it being blasphemy. You could talk about Son of God and it would be blasphemy.

You could talk about claiming to Messiah and it would be blasphemy. I think you've been entirely too clean with saying this always means this, this always means this. No, these words mean a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts.

I don't think the trial scene is at all historical. I don't think any of the things Jesus probably had a trial, but so I don't think any of this goes back to the historical Jesus when these sayings, but I think that you can imagine how the high priest, an upper class Sadducee, fully in control, how he could have seen it was blasphemy only because a lower status ignorant peasant from Galilee was claimed to be the royal moustache. That itself without even claiming to be divine, that itself could be considered blasphemy by somebody of that class.

So I just think that you can't be so clear and the basic way you got there is what I object to. You're going through counting passages and you're saying, okay, there are more of these kinds of passages than the other kinds of passages. A whole lot more.

Yeah, and of course there are a whole lot more. Mark believes Jesus is that kind of Son of Man. He's writing the gospel.

So then why would we, what's the, I mean, what are you disagreeing with me? He's, Mark's trying to make the point, Mark's preaching. He's not recording history. He's not a newspaper recorder, even if they did get history right sometimes.

He's, Mark is not a reporter of what Jesus said. He's writing a story to try to convince his audience that yes, Jesus is the Son of Man who suffered but will come in glory in spite of his suffering. It's in his interest to portray Jesus as that Son of Man.

So he's doing it. He's not reporting words of Jesus. So when every once in a while a word of Jesus that doesn't sound like it's Mark's own theology slips through, that's when you feel like you've got something that gives you a lot on the history.

Not when you have 18 occurrences of Jesus saying what Mark believes he's supposed to say. So it sounds to me anything that goes against your view of saying that Jesus did not claim to be divine, you want to dismiss, even though it's multiple attested in the best kind of multiple attestation we can ask for, doesn't matter. No, it's just a historical, it's a historical assumption that if you have a bunch of texts that teach that Jesus is divine, they're all written and published by a group of people who believe that Jesus is divine.

It's not surprising to find these texts talking about Jesus being divine. It's precisely when the texts seem to go against the interests of their own authors that you have something. And I think that's when you have these weird places where, for example, Jesus never openly claims divine status for himself in the Synoptic Gospels unless you take these terms that you say must mean divine status.

And that's just simply not true. Sonoment does not need to mean divine status. You have to basically introduce a reading of the Sonoment passages that you get from a couple of other passages, which I admit they're over there.

And you have to say this is precisely what they mean in the Synoptic Gospels. And they'll have Paul too, right? Well, Paul's not one of the Synoptic writers. He's writing before them.

Yes, and you can't interpret each of those different documents in light of others. Paul's just one early Christian source among many others. But he's an apostle, and he knows the apostles, and it seems that they're teaching the same thing.

We have no way to recover how much of Paul's theology can be traced back to the original apostles. Absolutely no way to know that. If Paul's teaching that Jesus is God, and according to Galatians 2, he runs the gospel, he preaches, past them to ensure he hasn't been working in vain, and they certify his teaching as an alignment with theirs.

It seems to me that if they're preaching the gospel about Jesus, his identity has got to be part of that. And if Paul is saying Jesus is God, it's more likely that they were also saying Jesus is God. Well, I don't doubt that actually.

I think that I think the resurrection experiences that some of them had connected with the fact that he was crucified for for somebody's claims that he was Messiah, I think that combination caused them to say, ah, he is the Messiah. He is like the risen Messiah, and he's going to be one of these glorious Messiahs. And I think that's what caused them to start worshiping in his Lord, and that's what caused them to start considering that he's divine in some sense, although I think it took a long time for any kind of equality to God the Father to develop.

It just didn't happen on day four after Easter. So I imagine that the belief that Jesus was divine in some sense arose very early, possibly even with the first proclamations of his resurrection experiences, that I just don't think you can retroject that back into Jesus's own life. Okay, one more question for you.

I'll make a point and I want to see how you respond. Just a moment ago, you said when all the gospels are saying, you know, Jesus is this apocalyptic sentiment there, or at least Mark saying it, you say, well, we really can't believe it because he's, that's what he believes, and he's want us to believe it. Should we throw out histories of the Holocaust written by Jewish historians, or histories of slavery in the United States, written by African-American historians, because they also have their biases and agendas and want to write it? No, you do exactly the same thing.

You say the piece in their story that seems to betray their story has the best chance of being historical, and I'll give you an example. Joseph Smith claims that he translated the Book of Mormon miraculously from golden plates that he had. Now, there's a problem there that he dictated to his wife, I can't remember what, 100 pages, 200 pages of translation of this, and William Harris, who was at first been kind of skeptical, but then kept wanting to see it.

He kept wanting to see the plates, and Joseph wouldn't show him the plates. He wouldn't even show his wife the plates, although his wife says that she felt them one time wrapped up in linen on the table, in the same room where he translated. He didn't actually look at the plates to translate.

He looked in this box or hat thing, darkness, and translating stones and seeing stones. The thing is though, they tell us the story of how Joseph Smith gave the pages that he had written. He had already translated to Harris, so Harris could take them away to show Harris's wife who was skeptical of the whole thing.

Harris came back much later than they expected him, distraught, because he could no longer find that document. He had lost it. They didn't know whether Harris's wife had stolen it and hidden it, and Joseph Smith was scared to death to go back and start translating again, because he was afraid that whatever he published later that was those first 100 or so pages of the Book of Mormon the previous 100 pages that Harris's wife had scrolled away.

Now, to me, that tells me something. Why would they pass on that story, which could be so detrimental to them? The story in itself makes Joseph Smith sound like he faked the whole translation thing in the first place. If he just translated the first 100 pages and sent him off to Harris's wife, why not just sit down with the same magical so he came up with a story of why he was going to translate different portions of the Book of Mormon now, because he simply, and he admitted to his, at least his friends and family, he was afraid those original pages would come up and people would use them against him.

I take that whole story about those first pages that he translated and were lost to be, if anything in Joseph Smith's history, absolutely historic, because he would never have made it up and it goes against his interest. That's comparable, I think. Okay.

Thanks, guys. We're going to move into some Q&A from the audience and there's the Q&A ready for the PowerPoint. Okay, so we're going to ask a few questions, these scholars from you lovely folks, and then after that we're going to get Craig Evans to ask one question each of you as well.

Oh, great. It's Judgment Day, Mike. So the first question is for, what is the source of evidence to confirm the texts have been edited, and where can we read this for ourselves? Go out in the lobby and buy my book.

Actually, I do spend a lot of time working through the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles to show how I believe you can see the very authorial process of the author himself. We most most believe that Luke used the Gospel of Mark. So one of the things we can do is set the Gospel of Mark here and the Gospel of Luke here and see what does he seem to be taking from Mark and then how does he change it? How does he edit it? But Luke seems to be doing that with other sources also.

And so I have argued in, this is the book called New Testament History and Literature. It's basically written version of my lectures at Yale that are online if you want to see them rather than read them. And I use the speech of Stephen.

So Spy here, sitting ready to come down on your head. Okay, so Greg, he asked me if I knew how to use a mic like this and I said, I used me in rock bands and stuff, you know. And he said, would you sing? So, I don't like spiders and snakes and that ain't what it takes to love me.

Okay. This is on YouTube. Great.

I actually try to show that you can, that I believe you can see the seams of editing in Acts when the author of Acts takes a speech, the speech of Stephen that I think he must be getting from a different source precisely because it doesn't agree with his own theology. The speech of Stephen contains certain theology that I believe does not agree with the writer's own theology about the temple and the mosaic law. But for his own purposes, he puts this speech into his work.

And I think by seeing where he puts it and how he puts it, you can see his editing process at work. So within the text of the, the very text in the New Testament, you can see evidence that authors are editing other people's texts to fit in their text and their own text. I think the author of Ephesians was using Colossians as a model for his letter.

And I believe Colossians was using Paul's letters to model his letter. But I think Colossians by one person, Ephesians by another person, and they were all using each other. I think you can see how the author of Second Thessalonians used First Thessalonians but edited it to fit his own purposes.

So I think you can see it in the Testament. The second place you can see them is in text criticism. And Bart Erman is the best person to show this, how second century authors, Christian authors, are changing the text in the New Testament to make the New Testament more orthodox.

And I think it has a brilliant job of showing that editing process at work. Thank you. Mike, it seems clear in John that Jesus scholars refer to what's called the Epsisim of Verba and the Epsisim of Box.

Epsisim of Verba would be the precise words of Jesus. Epsisim of Box would be the voice of Jesus, kind of like a paraphrase. I think in John we have a lot of the Epsisim of Box.

I think we're hearing, seeing John paraphrase a lot of what Jesus said. He probably takes more literary liberties of any of the four gospels do. But stuff that he would have been allowed to do as a biographer in his day.

So as I've said this evening, I think you can find the same Christology in Paul that you have in John. And if you compare to him in Philippians chapter 2 with John chapter 1 verses 1 through 14, you've got the same Christology there, the exact same Christology. And you've got Paul who believes in the pre-existent Jesus.

John who believes in the pre-existent Jesus. There are so many different things that are similar. It's just John is going to present the Epsisim of Box of Jesus.

And he does some other liberties. He dislocates certain stories and puts them in a different context in order to draw theological points. Plutarch does this kind of stuff, although not theological points.

Plutarch does it. Tacitus does it. Theon in the first century said that's a proper way of writing history and biography and chides Thucydides for not doing it.

So I think John's fine in what he does. So I do think he presents an accurate portrait of Jesus, historically accurate portrait of Jesus. But a portrait is different than a photograph.

I think if you're looking at a photograph with more precise details of what it might actually have looked like, you're going to find that in the synoptics. But the portrait takes Jesus and is going to paraphrase it some and gives us a crystal clear portrait of who Jesus thought he was and who John thinks he was. Thank you.

Okay, we're back to Dale. Jesus said before Abraham was, I am. And if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.

How can these be interpreted as not addressing pre-existence? They are. They are talking about pre-existence. This quotation is from the Gospel of John.

And as I said, I believe that the high Christology of making Jesus pre-existent is found in some parts of the New Testament. The Gospel of John and Paul included. I, unlike Mike, believe that John's Christology is not exactly like Paul's Christology because I think I still see a subordinationist Christology in Paul.

And I don't believe I see a subordinationist Christology in John. But pre-existence, yes, that's there in John. But I actually don't take the Gospel of John to have very much information that's going to help the historian construct a historical Jesus.

Thank you. Next question is for Mike. Please qualify what you mean by, in some sense, in reference to Jesus' deed.

Well, that's a good question. That's tough. I, you know, I think, I guess if I were to say, I would, I mean, I don't know that the New Testament authors are crystal clear on this, and that's why I want to state this as a preciseness to the ambiguity.

If I could put it this way, I'd say, if God has some sort of a divine DNA, Jesus shares that DNA. So yes, there's a subordinate subordinate relationship here. It's within a divine relationship.

But from what I'm reading in the New Testament authors, and especially Paul, and how the Jerusalem apostles would have viewed it. And for me, that's the most important. It's more important than, you know, what Mark or John or Matthew or Luke think about it.

It's what Paul and the Jerusalem apostles were thinking about it. And they certainly regarded Jesus as divine, as, as equal to God in terms of the, of his very nature. But in terms of the divine relationship, he considered, they all consider Jesus to be subordinate to the Father.

Next question is for Dale. You see him radically skeptical before Gospels' eyewitness accounts. If we can only trust Paul, who is not an eyewitness, could we then argue that Jesus is a myth? Well, it has been argued by people.

Not so much by scholars now, certainly in the 19th century, the German scholar Bruno Bauer took the scholarship of D.F. Strauss. D.F. Strauss believed that there had been a Christ where later myths that developed by the early church to reflect their consciousness of how they experienced Jesus. Bruno Bauer took that further, and so radically that he basically denied that Jesus of Nazareth had ever existed.

The very invention of Jesus of Nazareth, according to Bauer, was a myth developed from the early church. I don't believe that, and I don't know any professional historian, whether they're Christian or not Christian, who believes that Jesus of Nazareth is an entirely fabricated mythological figure. And I think it's just because we believe that we have enough evidence from the Gospels themselves that Jesus existed.

Paul knew people that new Jesus existed. I just think that there are sources even outside the New Testament that mention Jesus, how reliable those are in Josephus or later Texas, is debated. But I think that most scholars, most historians, are just convinced that that's just a bit too much skepticism that's not necessitated by the historical data.

What Jesus was like during his lifetime is highly debated by everybody, but that he existed, and I think even several other things, that he was crucified by the Romans under Pontius Pilate around the year 30. I just don't know any professional historian would doubt that. What we have to do is always start off with what we think is the likely case.

It doesn't mean it's absolutely undoubtable. That's the way historians work. Thanks.

Is this the next question? Dale, two in a row. If not historically, on what basis do you as a Christian, not as a historian, believe that Jesus is divine? Okay. I start off with the fact that I'm a Christian.

I don't try to apologize for my faith. I don't try to defend it. I start out from the fact that I believe.

I grew up believing. I find that it's meaningful for my life. As I got older and did a lot more studying, I came to shift what that meant to say, I believe, to where I didn't feel like the historical construction of Jesus was a siniquan on for my faith.

That if someone says, why do you believe? So the reason I believe Jesus is divine is because that's what Orthodox Christianity teaches me. That's what my church teaches me, and I'm a member of my church, which is an Orthodox Christian church. And so I take it on faith.

When someone says, but what's the reason for your faith, I say there are two possible explanations for that, both of which I think are entirely true, although they're not the same explanation. This is what makes me a post-modernist. I believe there are two answers I can give to a question that come from two separate discourses, and they can both be true while not being commensurable to one another.

I can give you the sociological answer. I believe because I'm socialized to believe by my upbringing. I just got socialized into having faith.

It's a good sociological answer. I think that's true. Now, I can give you a theological answer, which I also believe is true.

I believe because God has given me the gift of faith. I wake up and I take my spiritual pulse, and I say, do I still have faith that the universe is a good place, that the universe has a loving reason, that love is the best reason to go on living in this universe, and that the Christian liturgy and mythologies and scripture reinforce that sense that I have. I go, yeah, it's still there.

And I say, that's just a miracle. God gave me the grace of belief, and it's been a comfort, and it's been great for my life. I'm not going to defend it to you.

I don't need to defend it to you. It's just there. And so I say, everybody's faith is a Christian.

I think Christianity has always taught this. You cannot take credit for your faith. That's one of the reasons you can't look down on people who don't believe because you didn't earn anything for yourself by believing.

It was a gift from God. Great answer. Well, that's the last of your questions, but before I talk about this, Craig, would you come up, take the seat, and ask one question of each, and I'll just stand right over there, and I'll come back and point out.

Grab the mic from me when you're done. So can I go with you? No. You're going to stay here.

Stay there. Well, thank you very much, Mike and Dale. It's been very stimulating.

Good, good thoughts, and thank you to audience for your questions. Yes, I have one question for each of our distinguished guests, and I'll start with with Dale. Paul asserts in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 19 that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.

I've always been fascinated by this statement. I really appreciate it. And I'd like to hear how you understand it, what you think Paul was in his say.

I do. I think Paul definitely believes that Jesus is divine in a sense, and I believe that he doesn't put Jesus on completely equal footing with God the Father. But if that's true, he needs to justify Jesus' role in reconciliation.

And I think what that's saying does is that's Paul saying Jesus is not the Reconciliator on his own. Jesus is the reconciliation of humanity to God by the agency of God the Father also. Now, as a Christian, I think we can even be more robust about that and say that that's a statement about the incarnation of the full God in Jesus Christ in all of his person.

But I wouldn't want to retroject that kind of counsel of Calcedon Christology back into Paul's head. I think the way I would interpret it is that that's admitting that God the Father, when Jesus Christ is working to reconcile the world to back to God, he is working as God's agent and by God's power. Thank you very much.

Mike, let me ask you this. In your view, what is the single most important passage in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, or Luke, for which a strong argument for authenticity can be made that suggests that Jesus viewed himself as divine? I would guess, let's see, I have to think about that for a moment. I think when you're looking, now, let me ask you to clarify that.

Are you saying for historical authenticity? Yes, that's why I throw in the qualification about which a good argument can be made as to its authenticity. Okay, I'm sorry. I would do the apocalyptic son of man I'd go with.

Again, I think it's just crystal clear that the Synoptics regard, I mean, certainly Matthew does. There's no question about that. But I do think Mark, the earliest gospel regards Jesus as this apocalyptic son of man, this divine figure.

And again, it's in Mark, it's in Q, it's in M, it's in L, it's in John, and it's in these multiple literary forms, biography, saints, literature, and letter. I think that's extremely strong. And this apocalyptic son of man does things that only can be done to God.

Again, there are exalted figures in Judaism, greatly exalted figures. But the apocalyptic son of man is the only one to receive worship and sit on God's throne. Nobody else gets those.

So I think that's given, I think they have great claims to historicity that Jesus actually believed himself to be this apocalyptic son of man. Thanks for joining us today. If you'd like to learn more about the work and ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona, visit RisenJesus.com where you can find authentic answers to genuine questions about the reliability of the gospels and the resurrection of Jesus.

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