Transcription
The idea that Jesus was the second power in heaven, a God in flesh, is built upon stuff that's in the Jewish Bible. And the church comes out of Judaism and accepts the Jewish Bible as inspired revelation from God. This idea precedes the Council of Nicaea by at least 1,200 years. That's a millennium plus some. Constantine did not invent this. Okay.
This is something that Jews before there even was a Christianity noticed, tried to deal with, tried to articulate. And when Jesus came along and the Christians said, "We know who the second power is. It was this guy who lived among us. And by the way, you just crucified him."
Gnosticism itself has a very exalted view of Christ. Jesus, uh, the Jesus of Nazareth to a Gnostic was not just an ordinary guy. Uh, their their idea was not the same as those who would have penned the Nicene Creed. It's not the same uh position I think correctly uh that was arrived at before Nicaea that became the majority opinion in the early church, very, very quickly, that Jesus was God in the flesh. It it's not that. But the Gnostic view of Jesus is nevertheless still that Jesus is a very exalted being who is more than a man. And for those of you who have just read The Da Vinci Code only, or again, the sources that Brown uses, that might strike you as quite a surprise. And if it does, that's that's a good thing because again, you'll see that there's more than meets the eye than what Dan Brown is telling you.
Now, these are again some quotes, a passage from The Da Vinci Code where our hero, at least one of the major characters of the novel, uh, Sir Teabing says, "Many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon: the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and of course, the divinity of Jesus." And then Sophie, the female character, says, "I don't follow." "His divinity, my dear," Teabing declared, "Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet, a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless, a mortal, not the Son of God." She asks, "Right," Teabing said. "Jesus' establishment as the Son of God was officially proposed, you know, as though it had never existed to that point. Officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea." "Hold on. You're saying Jesus' divinity was the result of a vote?" "A relatively close vote at that," Teabing added. "Nonetheless, establishing Christ's divinity was critical to the further unification of the Roman Empire into the new Vatican power base. By officially endorsing Jesus as the Son of God, Constantine turned Jesus into a deity who existed beyond the scope of the human world, an entity whose power was unchallengeable."
So, very clearly, Brown has this notion, and again, he's just drawing on sources, that the idea that Jesus was a divine being was more than just an ordinary man was proposed at the Council of Nicaea, voted on there, and he says, as by a very close vote. Uh, we're going to find out that that is that is just absolutely untrue in our next session about the Council of Nicaea specifically. Is we know how many roughly people were there. We know how many people voted and we know who voted what way. But I'll save that for the sixth session. In this session, I want to focus on these other claims about the idea of Jesus being a divine being invented at Nicaea. Uh, which I will say very plainly is patently false.
This, as it turns out providentially, um, draws upon my own dissertation. My my specialty, as it were, uh, academically is, oh, excuse me, my specialty in terms of academics, this guy here, my specialty is divine beings, uh, the whole issue of polytheism, monotheism, that sort of thing in in the Bible, specifically the Hebrew Bible. And my dissertation was on the idea of binitarianism, two, a godhead of two beings in Judaism, which of course naturally predates Christianity. And I didn't know at the time that that would be of some value, uh, to this subject here, but here we go.
So, what The Da Vinci Code wants us to believe is that the belief that Jesus was God was foreign to Judaism. I mean, was it really? Was it foreign to early Christians? Was it invented by Constantine? And was it really decided on by only a vote? I'm going to show you that this idea is quite old, quite ancient. Yes. Go ahead. Gotcha.
Look at the verse on the screen. This is Genesis 19:24. Take a good look at it. Tell me what's odd about it. Anybody? What's odd about this verse?
>> The Lord.
>> Yeah. The word here is Yahweh in both in both occasions. Then the Lord, then Yahweh rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from Yahweh out of heaven. That's kind of weird. And the rabbis and other Jewish scholars noticed that and it gave them pause to wonder what is going on here.
Let's try another one. Genesis 31:10-13. Now, this is the account where Jacob, one of the patriarchs, is having some problems with another fellow named Laban who he is related to by marriage. And Jacob's flocks, his herds are multiplying exponentially and Laban's are not. And we read in Genesis 31, in in the midst of this little anecdote, "In the breeding season of the flock, I," this is Jacob speaking, "lifted up my eyes and saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped, spotted, and modeled. Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, 'Jacob.' And I said, 'Here I am.' And he said, 'Lift up your eyes and see all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted, and modeled, for I have seen all that Laban's doing to you.'" Basically saying, "I know Laban's been cheating you, and I'm going to multiply your wealth here." The important observation for our point is, who tells Jacob that? Anybody? Who speaks to Jacob? The angel of God. Well, now, wait a minute. The angel of God says in the next verse, "I am the God of Bethel." Now, wait a minute. How can the angel of God be the God of Bethel?
Now, if you notice, if you know anything about Jacob's history, and we're going to go back to some of these passages, he wrestles with a divine being at this place. Other things happened to him at this place. But the point right now is here you have an angel saying, "I'm God. I'm this deity." Even though I'm called the angel of God. The rabbis noticed this and thought, "Hm, wonder what that's about."
Exodus 3. Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you.'" This is, of course, Moses getting his commission at the burning bush. And God says, "You're going to go back to Pharaoh and say this, that, and the other thing." And Moses is like, "Well, what if they don't believe me?" And he says, "If I go back and say, 'Hey, the God of your fathers has sent me to you.' And they ask me, the Israelites ask, 'Well, what's his name? What shall I say to them?'" And God said to Moses, "I am who I am." In Hebrew, it's 'Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh.' And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" God also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.'" So, this is a passage that connects the "I am who I am" with the name Yahweh. "This is my name. This is my name forever and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations."
Now I'm going to ask a dumb question, but it has a point. Did God tell Moses his name? It's not a trick question. Yeah. He says, "I am who I am and and my name is Yahweh." Then why do we read this? Exodus 33. Moses said to Yahweh, "Seeing you say to me, 'Bring up this people, and you've not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.'" Moses, "Ah, this is all nice and well. But now, therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, he's speaking to Yahweh. Please show me now your ways that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people." And he said, God says to him, "My presence will go with you." "You don't take it easy, Moses. My My presence will go with you and I'll give you rest." And he, Moses said to him, "If your presence will not go with me, don't bring us up from here. You know, I I need you to be with us, Lord, for how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people." So God says, "I'm going to go with you. Don't worry."
The narrative continues. And Yahweh said to Moses, "This very thing that you have spoken, I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name." Moses said, "Please show me your glory." And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name of Yahweh." Well, that that's kind of weird. Didn't Moses already know his name? I mean, he got his name the first time they met at the burning bush. And so God says, "I am going to proclaim before you the name of Yahweh." Yahweh says, "I'm going to proclaim the name of Yahweh to you, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." But he said, "You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live." And Yahweh said, "Behold, there's a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by." I mean, Moses wants to see God physically. And God says, he he answers him by saying, "I'll show you my the name of Yahweh." "I heard your question, Moses. I'll show you the name of Yahweh, but you can't see my face. I mean, catch the incongruity in the language here. You can't see my face. That would be trouble. You'd die. So, I'm going to put you in this little cleft of a rock and protect you. When I take away my hand, you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen." Well, now wait a minute, God. I mean, Moses doesn't say this, but am I going to see you or somebody else? Because you said I'm going to I'm going to see the name of the Lord and then now you're talking in the first person like what I'm a little confused.
Introduction to the Jewish Godhead. We're going to go back to that passage because there's something that is kind of remarkable about it. We will get there in a second. These passages and this language was noticed. This is not new with me. Okay? I'm not presenting this or myself to you as something like nobody's ever seen this before. No, lots of people saw this and other passages where it seems to be that there are two Yahwehs in the text. The Jews noticed this and they devoted a lot of time to thinking about it and articulating what is going on, known as the "Two Powers in Heaven" of ancient Judaism. This was an idea, "Two Powers in Heaven," that was well accepted in Judaism. No problems with it. Not a heresy. Yeah, we know this is going on. Good for you, you noticed this, until the 2nd century AD. What's significant about that? Well, that's post-Christianity. After Christianity came along, the "Two Powers in Heaven" became declared officially a heresy in Judaism for pretty obvious reasons. Uh, well, yeah, if we go around talking two gods in heaven, we sound like Christians, and we don't want that, do we? Um, h, guess not.
What am I suggesting? I'm suggesting that the Jewish scriptures teach that the God of Israel had a second self. There was a second Yahweh. The second God both was and wasn't the Father God of Israel. Put another way, the Hebrew faith had a binitarian godhead, two persons of the same essence. This belief was embraced again until the end of the first century. You get into the second century and it's bad news. This belief, therefore, goes back at least 1,200 years prior to Constantine. We're not even in the we're not even in the the range. There is just no comparison to be made.
The best book on this, and it's actually affordable this time, is *Two Powers in Heaven* by Alan Segal. Segal is Jewish. He's a Jewish scholar, uh, still teaching, I believe, at Columbia. Notice the subtitle. You know, fans of Dan Brown and Michael Beane and the rest. Notice the subtitle: *Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism*. That's a clue for saying that Gnostics had the same or similar idea. Jesus was not just an ordinary guy in Gnosticism. The second power in heaven.
Let's take a look at a few things. Oh, my font didn't work. The name. There's a phrase in the Old Testament, "the name of the Lord." Now, if you're a Christian, you're probably familiar with this because of Romans 10. That's in the New Testament. "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Most of the time when the phrase "name of the Lord" occurs, it's really referring to Yahweh, you know, that that it's just his name. It's his reputation or something like that. There are a few passages though that are different where the name is something different.
Isaiah 30:27. Just look at the wording. "Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar in blazing wrath with a heavy burden, his lips full of fury, his tongue like devouring fire." Now, unless you have four letters Y H W H floating around somewhere coming from afar, unless we're like doing alphabet soup, like, you know, Sesame Street or something, this phrase, "the name of the Lord," is described as though it is an entity, a person, a being that comes from afar. This is personification language.
Isaiah 60:9. "Behold the coastlands await me with ships of Tarshish in the lead to bring your sons from afar and their silver and gold as well. For the name of the Lord your God, for the Holy One of Israel who has glorified you." Here the phrase "name of the Lord your God" and "Holy One of Israel" are in parallel. This is classic Hebrew parallelism where the thought of one line rhymes with the thought of another. It re-echoes the same thought. The name of the Lord is not just a reputation here. The name of the Lord is the Holy One of Israel. The name of the Lord is God. Sounds kind of strange.
Psalm 20:1 and verse 7. "May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble. May the name of the God of Jacob protect you." Now, unless the psalmist here is saying, "Hey, quick. Somebody stamp the four letters on my forehead so that I'm protected from my enemies." No, he's saying, "I want the name of the God of Jacob to protect me." It's not just four letters, you know, protecting. Four letters don't protect anybody. A person, a divine being protects those who are his.
"Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God." Four letters scrolled on something don't win battles for you.
Psalm 44:5 and 6. "You are my king, O God. Decree victories for Jacob. Through you we gore our foes. Through your name we trample our adversaries." So when the the army of Israel goes out, they just shout Yahweh and like they win. No, it's through the power of their God who here is called the name, your name. The name used as though it were an entity, a person, a being.
Deuteronomy 12. This is describing again the installation of the tabernacle, the place of worship. Verse four, "Do not worship the Lord your God in like manner like the other people do, but look only to the site that the Lord your God will choose amidst all your tribes as his habitation, the place where God lives to establish his name there." There you to go, so on and so forth. Verse 11, "You must bring everything that I command to you to the site where the Lord your God will choose to establish his name."
Now, we get a better idea what that means when we hit First Kings when the temple is built. "When the priests came out of the sanctuary, for the cloud had filled the house of the Lord. And the priests were not able to remain and perform the service because of the cloud, for the presence of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. Then Solomon declared, 'The Lord has chosen to abide in a thick cloud. I have now built for you a stately house, a place where you may dwell.'" Skipping to verse 27. "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Well, you know, we know that the heavens and highest heaven can't contain you, how much less this house." Next chapter. "But when Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord and the royal palace and everything Solomon had set his heart on constructing, the Lord appeared." Look who appeared. Yahweh appeared to Solomon a second time. Okay, building from chapter 8. "As he had appeared to him at Gibeon, the Lord said to him, 'I have heard the prayer and supplication which you have offered to me. I consecrate this house which you have built and I set my name there forever.'"
There are other passages in Deuteronomy and Kings that talk about an interchange. Here's the point. Interchange the name with Yahweh. They're interchangeable statements, interchangeable entities.
Back to Exodus 34. Now, we said in Exodus 3 that Moses knew what God's name was. And then Moses says, "Hey, I I want to see you." And God said, "My presence will go with you." And Moses, "Ah, it's not quite good enough. I I I want to see you." And God says, "I will, you know, I will proclaim my name to you. You will see the name of the Lord." And then in the next chapter, we get this. "Yahweh said to Moses, 'Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke. Be ready by the morning and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.'" So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai as Yahweh had commanded him and took in his hand two tablets of stone.
Now just catch this. "Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood with him with Moses there and proclaimed the name of Yahweh. Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed, 'Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.'" Now, I want to illustrate something for you. Guy, can you come up here? You got two ways to look at this, and I'm going to ask you which makes more sense. Let's just pretend for the sake of the illustration that Guy is Moses and I'm Yahweh. I descend in the cloud. I stand next to him. Now, are there two characters or three in what happens? You look at the text. Yahweh descends in the clouds, stood with him there and proclaimed the name of Yahweh. Do I say Yahweh? And then do I walk past him saying Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh? He already knows my name. Or do I come down the clouds, stand next to him, and say, "Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, the name of the Lord." Are there two or three? Go ahead. Thank you.
Again, this was the question in the mind of Jews as they looked at passages like this because Moses already knows the name. What he hasn't seen. What the issue really is is you have the name of the Lord. You have other characters and we're going to look at them today who are the physical manifestation of the God who is a spirit. Jesus says God is a spirit. John chapter 4, he tells that to the woman at the well. Well, if we assume Jesus is correct, which is probably good authority, then all these other manifestations are physical manifestations of Yahweh's own essence in visible tangible form, even to the point where you could reach out and touch. And yet the thing that you can touch, the thing that they're seeing visibly, the manif physical manifestation of this spiritual thing is also called Yahweh. There is an identification between the two.
It also occurs in texts outside of the Old Testament that are not canonical. Jubilees, this is a pseudepigraphical book. "Remember, my sons, Lord God of Abraham your father. The writer says, 'I will make you swear an oath, for there's no oath which is greater than it, by the glorious and honored and great and splendid, wonderful, mighty name which created the heavens and the earth.'" The name created the heavens and the earth. Did you know that? You standard Jewish text.
Now, this is a key passage. Exodus 23. God says, "I am sending an angel before you." He's speaking again to Moses. "I'm sending an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place which I have made ready. Pay heed to him and obey him. Do not defy him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, since my name is in him." Now, either God wrote out YHWH on something and made him eat it, or he's saying, "My very essence that you know, you have seen in the cloud, my name is in this being. He is me." But yet, we're still different. My name is in him.
"When my angel goes before you, brings you to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, Perizzites, the whole list." This is when Israel is being led to the promised land. This is the angel of the Lord. The special angel in Exodus 23, "my name is in him," turns out to be the angel of the Lord. We know this from a variety of accounts. We'll go backward in time first. Remember the burning bush? Everybody knows this. Charlton Heston. Okay, guess guess who's in the bush. It's not just God.
"Now Moses tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, drove the flock into the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of the bush. It's the angel. He gazed and there was a bush all aflame. The bush wasn't consumed. Moses said, 'I have to turn aside and see this marvelous sight. Why doesn't the bush burn up?' When the Lord," in Hebrew it's Yahweh, "when Yahweh saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush. 'Moses, Moses.' He said, 'Here I am.' Takes his sandals off. Verse six, said, 'You better take the sandals off. You're on holy ground.'" "I am." The voice said, he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob." Now, we have first-person language, but there's more than one being in the bush.
Leviticus 11:45, "I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God." Who brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt? Yahweh. Deuteronomy 21, same thing. "The Lord your God brings you up." Who brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt? Yahweh. Oh, well, then why do we read this? "The angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim and said, 'I brought you up from Egypt, and I took you into the land which I had promised an oath to your fathers, and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. But you have not obeyed me. Look what you have done. Therefore, I have resolved not to drive them out before you. They shall become your oppressors, and their gods shall be a snare to you.'" And as the angel of the Lord spoke these words, it's the angel doing the first person. As the angel of the Lord spoke these words, all the Israelites started to cry. Why? Because he said, "I've been with you up to this point. You haven't obeyed me. You are on your own. You're on your own." And they weren't too happy about it.
Genesis 28, going back to Jacob. Jacob had a dream. "A stairway was set on the ground. Its top reached the sky. The angels of God were going up and down on it. And the Lord was standing beside him and he said, 'I am the Lord. I'm Yahweh, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.'" Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord's present in this place, and I didn't know it." He named the site Bethel. That's important.
Genesis 32. The same night, this is a little bit later in Jacob's life, Jacob arose. Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him. This is a physical entity described as a man wrestling with Jacob. They're actually touching. Okay? A man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he wrenched Jacob's hip at its socket. So that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him. And he said, "Let me go, for dawn is breaking." But Jacob answered, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." He says, "What's your name?" Jacob. And he said, verse 29, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel. For you have striven with an Elohim. You've striven. You fought with God or a God. Either way, it's a divine being and man, and you've prevailed." Jacob asked, "Pray me, tell me your name." And he said, "You must not ask my name." And he took leave of him there. So, Jacob named the place Peniel, meaning "I have seen Elohim. I have seen El. I have seen God."
Hosea the prophet referring back to this chapter and to this episode says this, "The Lord once indicted Judah and punished Jacob for his conduct, requited him for his deeds. In the womb," this refers to the way Jacob was born. "In the womb, he Jacob tried to supplant his brother, grown to manhood. He strove with an Elohim. He strove with an angel and prevailed." Point blank. The angel is an Elohim.
This is my favorite passage in the Old Testament. I just love this one. This is just this is cool for language geeks like me. But Israel, that is Jacob, remember Jacob's name got changed to Israel. "Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim's head." This is when Jacob is about to die. He's blessing his children, Joseph's children. He stretched his hands out, hand out, lays it on Ephraim's head, though he was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh's head and crossed his hands, although Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph, these are Joseph's two kids. He blessed Joseph, saying, "The God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all harm." And here's the kicker. "May he bless these lads." Who is the he? Is it God or is it the angel? And the answer is yes. The verb is singular. This is a complete tight identification of the 'malak Adonai,' the angel of the Lord, as God. There are two. And this is where the idea of a godhead comes from. These passages. This is not a Christian invention. This is not something Constantine came up with and sucked out of his thumb for political reasons. This is in the text.
Jude 5. And here's some of the the neat things about what the New Testament does with this. Jude writing it says, "Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe." Well, now wait a minute. I thought God delivered them out of the land of Egypt. I thought the angel delivered them out of the land of Egypt. Jesus delivered them out of the land of Egypt.
For those of you who are wondering about Trinitarianism in the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 63. This passage to me comes the closest to it. And I I want to just mention it. This again is recounting Exodus wanderings and Exodus stuff. Prophet Isaiah looks back says, "I will mention the loving kindness of the Lord and the praises of the Lord according to all the Lord has bestowed on us and the great goodness toward the house of Israel." So on and so forth. Verse 8, he says, "These are my people. He became their savior." Look at verse nine. "In all their affliction, he was afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity, he redeemed them and he bore them and carried them all the days of old. But they rebelled and grieved his the Holy Spirit." Why doesn't it have God or angel there? Yahweh and the angel were the ones that were doing all that stuff back there. And here Isaiah says, "No, it was the Spirit." Now again, I don't have time to go through all the passages in both testaments that demonstrate a godhead in both testaments. This is only to give you an idea. The church fathers did not just suck this out of their thumb.
John 17. Jesus praying. This is the high priestly prayer of Jesus Christ in John 17. "I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world and I am coming to you, holy Father. Keep them in your name." What does that mean? "Keep them in your name which you have given me that they may be one even as we are one. While I was with them I kept them in your name which you have given me." I would suggest to you that when Jesus was around, the essence of God was in town. And keeping them in the name refers to the fact that he kept them with himself and protected them during his ministry. It's a really strange phrase.
The word, we all know this passage again as Christians. "In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Without him was not anything made that was made." Verse 14, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. No one has ever seen God. The only God, catch this, the only God who is at the Father's side. That's two. He has made him known." Where does the Word come from? Well, the theologians would say it comes from Greek philosophy, blah blah blah blah. Well, you know, I'll grant it may have had something to do with that. Guess what? You'll find this in the Old Testament, too.
"After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision." This isn't something he's hearing in his ear alone. He's seeing it. "The word of the Lord came to me came to to Abram in a vision. Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "Oh Lord God," he sees the word in a vision and identifies that being as the Lord, as Yahweh Elohim. You go down to verse four, "the word of the Lord came to him." And then he starts talking. "This man won't be your heir." So on and so forth. Verse 6, "Abraham believed Yahweh." He's talking to Yahweh, but Yahweh is called the Word.
Jeremiah 1. "Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 'Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated.'" This is Jeremiah's like personal testimony here in chapter 1. And I said, "Oh Lord God, truly I don't know how to speak. You know, I can't be a prophet. I'm only a boy." But the Lord Yahweh said to me, "Don't say I'm only a boy. Get out there and do the job." Then verse nine, it says, "Then the Lord put out his hand and touched me." Touched my mouth. Sounds don't touch your mouth. Phantoms, things that you just see that are not corporeal, do not touch your mouth. Physical entities touch your mouth. And this physical entity is the Lord.
First Samuel 3. Story of little Samuel. "Now the young man Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli and the word of the Lord was rare in those days. There was no frequent vision." Didn't see the didn't see the Lord too often. Down to verse eight. "The Lord called to Samuel. Yahweh calls to Samuel again the third time." You remember the story? Samuel's trying to go to sleep and he keeps hearing this voice, "Samuel. Samuel." And he thinks it's Eli. Little Samuel gets up and runs over to Eli and said, "What do you want?" And Eli's like, "What? I didn't I didn't say anything." Third time it happens. Came again. The third time he rose and went to Eli and said, "Here I am. You called me." And Eli finally gets a clue and says, "You know, it must be the Lord calling the young man." He says, "Go lie down. If he calls you again, say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.'" And so Samuel says, "Okay." "The Lord came and stood. Stood calling as at other times." This is a visible physical entity. "Samuel. Samuel." Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant hears." Go down to the the end of the chapter. "And Samuel grew. The Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord appeared appeared again, hearkening back to what we just read. The Lord appeared again at Shiloh." That's where they were living. That's where the tabernacle was. "For the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord." The Word is a being in these passages.
Philo picked up on this concept. He refers to the Logos, which is the Greek word for Word. He actually calls the Word God. But he maintained a distinction between the Logos and the God of Israel. Gnosticism actually is very close to what Philo believed. Philo. This is a Jew who wrote lots of stuff and was very influential. He referred to the Logos as the 'deuteros,' the second God. But he believed that the second God was a created being, an intermediary. And that's essentially what Gnosticism held. As we saw in our first session, the early church did not accept that because the essence of Yahweh cannot have a beginning. If it's Yahweh, it was always there. And that becomes the focal point for Nicaea. The dominant view was always the orthodox view that there are two, there's a there's a godhead and every member of the godhead is the same essence as the Father. They didn't get it because Constantine liked it. He wasn't a theologian. They got it from all those passages I just showed you and others and the Jews of the day. Again, not everybody, you know, could wrap their minds around that. And Philo came up with the, oh, this sounds a little more reasonable, you know, yeah, he's a second God, but he had to have a beginning because, you know. And those became the two tracks, the two views.
The rider on the clouds guy. How much time do we have?
>> You said about 10.
>> 10, 15 minutes. Okay. Here's another one. I I really like this one. The rider on the clouds. This phrase, "He who rides on the clouds," "He who makes the clouds his chariot." This is a phrase actually taken from pagan texts that winds up in the Old Testament, specifically that's drawn from Ugaritic texts about the god Baal. I mention that because it's it's very common for Old Testament prophets and writers to draw from literature around them and and put it into the Hebrew Bible, as it were, to make a theological point. One of the things they do is they take this title because Baal was like the big enemy in the Old Testament. Baal against Yahweh happens all the time, like with Elijah at Carmel. And they and they they take the title, "the one who rides the clouds," and they put it on Yahweh as if to say, "No, Baal isn't the one who controls the heavens and rides the clouds. It's Yahweh."
Five times this title is used in the Old Testament for the God of Israel, for Yahweh. Here they are. Deuteronomy 33:26. "There is none like God, O Jeshurun, who rides through the heavens to your help, through the skies in his majesty." Unlike God. Psalm 68:4. "Oh kingdoms of the earth, sing to God. Sing to the Lord, to him who rides in the heavens." Okay, clearly it's God. It's Yahweh. Psalm 104:3. "Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God. You are very great." Go down to the last verse there in the section. "He makes the clouds his chariot. He rides on the wings of the wind." These are all titles of Baal descriptions. Point is everybody in everybody in the ancient world knew Baal was a god or you know they believed that. And the writer's saying, "No, you know, Baal is, you know, whatever Baal's an entity, but but he is subordinate. Yahweh is the one who really has this position." And they kept putting the phrase to Yahweh.
Isaiah 19:1. "An oracle concerning Egypt. Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud." Yahweh is the one who's riding on the clouds. The lone exception. Every place in the Old Testament, the rider on the clouds is Yahweh. There is one exception, and it's this passage. Daniel 7. "As I looked, things were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was white as snow and the hair of his head like pure wool. His throne was fiery flames. Its wheels were burning fire. By the way, that's the same description as in Ezekiel 1. Uh, it's God, the Ancient of Days is sitting on his throne. Fiery throne, you know, wheels. It's it's if if you've ever seen my session on uh throne iconography that I do for some other topics, very familiar imagery. The stream of fire issued and came out from before him. Thousand thousands served him and 10,000 times 10,000 stood before him. In the court the divine counsel sat in judgment and the books were open." There's no doubt who this is. But the passage goes on. "I saw in the night visions and behold upon the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man." The phrase means a human one. Son of man as opposed to son of God. "And he came to the Ancient of Days." So these are clearly two different people, two different entities. "And was presented before him and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away." You have a second person referred to as the one who rides upon the clouds. And this passage became a real focal point of debate. And guess where it shows up in the New Testament?
"Then those who had seized Jesus led him to Caiaphas, the high priest." Jesus is brought in front of Caiaphas. And the high priest says to him, verse 63, "I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God." You know, he's you're getting tired of this. You know, quit beating around the bush. Are you the Son of God or not? And Jesus said to him, "Well, you said so, but I tell you, from now on, you will see," he quotes Daniel 7:13, "You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven." Jesus' favorite title for himself in the Gospels was Son of Man. I'm the human one. I get to be human. Isn't that cool? Jesus thought it was cool to be human, to be embodied as a man, and he stands before Caiaphas and Caiaphas says, you know, you know, I mean, this is a serious situation, this is life and death, and he, Caiaphas, okay, you know, tell us who you are. And Jesus gives this throwaway, you know, what are you quoting Daniel 7? Just yes or no would suffice. And he quotes Daniel 7:13 and says, "I'll tell you who I am. Hereafter you'll see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds." And you know how we know that the Jews knew he was claiming to be God? The very next verse. "Then the high priest tore his robes and said, 'He has uttered blasphemy. We don't need any more witnesses. This guy is claiming to be God. He is claiming to be the one who rides on the clouds. He's a blasphemer.'" There's no ambiguity. You know, when when you read these new, you know, the news media, "Oh, who did Jesus think he was?" You know, I think Caiaphas got the message, you know, maybe maybe people today don't, but Caiaphas certainly did.
Again, the main source here is Segal. And I draw your attention again to the subtitle, Gnosticism. If you want a book on Jesus in the Nag Hammadi writings, I recommend this one. It's a scholarly title, somebody's dissertation work again, but it's the most thorough thing there is, *Jesus in the Nag Hammadi Writings*. Just so that you can check up on me.
Going back to Dan Brown's quote, "My dear," Teabing declared, "Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed as just a mortal prophet, just a man." Well, let's take a look in the Nag Hammadi texts again. The Apocrypha of John. We look at the text here. Let's see if I can find it here. I don't Did I mark it up here? No. Can't see it visually. "The Teaching of the Savior, the Revelation of the Mysteries, the Things Hidden in Silence." Even these things he taught John his disciples. "It happened one day when John the brother of James, who are the sons of Zebedee, came to the temple that a Pharisee named Arammanius approached him and said to him, 'Where is your master whom you followed?' And he said to him, 'He's gone to the place from which he came.'" This is after Jesus' death. The Pharisees said to him, "With deception did this Nazarene deceive you. He filled your ears with lies and closed your hearts and turned you away from the traditions of your fathers." Then I, John, heard these things, or when I heard these things, I turned away from the temple to a desert place. Kind of hit me pretty hard. John says, and I grieved greatly in my heart saying, "Well then, how was the Savior appointed? And why was he sent into the world by his Father? And who is his Father who sent him? And of what sort is that aeon to which we shall go?" Well, I wait, you know, I Then why did the Father, you remember, you know, the Gnosticism, the God, the ultimate God, Father thing, why did he send him into the world then? Not just an ordinary guy. If the ultimate God is sending him somewhere, know who Christ is.
This is the Teachings of Sylvanus, another Gnostic text. "And acquire him as a friend. For this is the friend who is faithful. He is also God and teacher." I'm sorry, Dan Brown. You are incorrect. Okay, this is these are the Gnostic texts. "Know who Christ is. He is God and teacher. This one being God became man for your sake." You know, frankly, folks, this could go right into the New Testament. This could go right into orthodoxy. Now, I'm not saying that the Gnostics understood the language the same way, but they're saying this is a God who became man.
"Teachings of Sylvanus" again, let's see. "Do not tire of knocking on the door of reason. The middle section here, do not cease walking in the way of Christ. Walk in it so that you may receive rest from your labors. If you walk in another way, there will be no profit in it. For all those who walk on the broadway will go down at the end to the to perdition of the mire. For the underworld is open wide for the soul, and the place of perdition is broad. Except Christ, the narrow way. For he is oppressed and bears affliction for your sin. Even sounds like substitutionary atonement there a little bit. Oh soul, persistent. What ignorance do you exist? For who is your guide into the darkness? How many likenesses did Christ take on because of you? Although he was God, he was found among men as a man." You could put that in the New Testament, too. The only thing different is "likeness" says the plural because the Gnostic view of what's going on here is a little different than the orthodox view.
This is the classic passage from guess where, the Gospel of Philip, the one that everybody quotes in relation to The Da Vinci Code. Same text. "Jesus took them all by stealth, for he did not appear as he was, but in the manner in which they would be able to see him. He appeared to them all. He appeared to the greatest great. He appeared to the smallest small. He appeared to the
Angels as an angel and to men as a man. Because of this, his word hid itself from everyone. Some saw him. Some indeed saw him, thinking that they were seeing themselves. When he appeared to his disciples in glory on the mount, he was not small. He became great, so on and so forth.
What the Gnostic view of Jesus was, and again, we'll have to quickly go through this. The Gnostics, the Gnostic position about Jesus was this: Jesus is not just a man. He was a god. He was one of these aeons, and so was the Christ. Jesus and the Christ are two different things, two different entities in Gnosticism.
With the Gnostic scriptures, and you know, Michael Agent and others make a big deal about this, about there are certain Gnostic passages, and this is one of them, and some of the other ones where Jesus sort of he's crucified, but yet it's not really him. Jesus is like looking at some man they're crucifying and standing there laughing, thinking, "Ah, the archons, those, those evil, you know, entities think they got me, but they really didn't. I'm over here. It's not really me." And Begent and Lee will take this in their minds as evidence that that it wasn't the real Jesus. They don't understand Gnosticism.
To the Gnostic, the aeon comes down, becomes a human being, but it's like a shell. It's like a facade. It's like it's like a, I'll use the word deception, but I don't mean it to be negative. It's just as the Gospel of Philip said, "Jesus appeared as he needed to appear, when he needed to appear as that." So Jesus is faking them out. He comes down, he manifests himself as this man Jesus, the heavenly Jesus.
If, if you're familiar with Platonic philosophy, this is another stream in Gnosticism, you know, that there's the ideal, there's the cosmic Jesus, and there's the earthly Jesus. And the earthly Jesus gets killed, but the cosmic Jesus is still up here having a good time, untouched, unscathed. If anything, what the Gnostics did was they, they downplayed the humanity of Christ. They didn't think he was really, really, really, you know, this God in flesh and that that was it. It's, it's sort of a disguise is what they're looking at.
Treatise of the Great Seth. Um, again, talking about the crucifixion here. I know I have to hurry a little bit right up here. "I did not die in reality but in appearance, lest I be put to shame by them." So on and so forth. This is the Gnostic view, and I've just summarized it, uh, for the sake of time.
Summary again, what I want to convey to you, and I know this was a longer session because there's a lot here, and I'll grant you, this is my favorite part of the whole thing, which is why I took longer. The idea that Jesus was the second power in heaven, a God in flesh, is built upon stuff that's in the Jewish Bible. And the church comes out of Judaism and accepts the Jewish Bible as inspired revelation from God. This idea precedes the Council of Nicaea by at least 1,200 years. That's a millennium plus some. Constantine did not invent this. Okay. This is something that Jews before there even was a Christianity noticed, tried to deal with, tried to articulate. And when Jesus came along and the Christians said, "We know who the second power is. It was this guy who lived among us. And by the way, you just crucified him." But there is a reason for that, and we'll tell you about it. Okay. It's not something that was contrived at the Council of Nicaea.
Any questions? Yes. Uh, I've always had a little bit of a problem with, uh, the concept of trinity and that all he's the true unity and what the essence of God really was, and noticing the inconsistencies. I've seen three or four manifestations here, and maybe even five of what we could say to be the essence of God. Does it go beyond that?
When you say three or four or five, you're referring to >> the different uh the personages or revelations. In other words, >> like the name, you know, the glory. We what we didn't cover the glory. We didn't cover what scholars call the divine man. And specifically, that would be a situation like Exodus 24 or Ezekiel 1, where the person seated on the throne is described in physical, bodily terms. "I saw his feet. I saw his legs." You know that. So that scholars refer to that as the divine man. We also didn't talk about, uh, my dissertation actually focused on non-biblical stuff. In other words, how did Jews between the testaments try to deal with this? And so you have a whole separate category of trying to explain who the second power was in other terms. They would they would take things like phrases like "the friend of God," "the divine, the warrior of God" in the Old Testament and they would say, "Well, the second person must be who was a friend of God, Abraham." When Abraham died, then he got to sit on the throne. And yeah, I know he was around before Abraham, but it's kind of weird, but God can do anything. I mean, they were they were trying to fit people and angels and persons into the second category. Some people thought it was Michael. Some people thought it was Gabriel. Some people thought it was Elijah because he was taken up and never died. I mean, there there are about a dozen explanations the Jews offered in the period between the testaments for the second power. And we didn't go over any of that stuff. >> We're still doing that. Now, >> I I think when we talk about Trinitarianism, we're still sort of asking the same questions. >> Still back, >> right? >> In a box. >> Now, I'll be honest with you. I I went I spent a couple years in seminary. I never ran into any of this stuff. I was never taught this. What changed my life, and it sounds goofy, but I when I tell people this, I really mean it. Ugaritic changed my life because for the first time, I had to study an ancient, it's an ancient alphabetic cuneiform text. And the reason why it's important is because the description of the divine host, the heavenly host, at Ugarit is often used in the Old Testament. And when you're forced to look at comparative material that is not that is in some cases word for word and letter for letter brought into the Hebrew Bible, and then the prophets or the psalmists will do things with that to to illustrate concepts, when you start looking at comparative material and you start getting into this, "Well, you know, I keep coming across this two powers debate. What's that?" You know, when you get exposed to the literature, the broader ancient world, that is how I I bumped into this, and it became a fascination for me, this whole thing about divine counsel and the nature of the heavenly host and whatnot. I didn't get any of this in seminary. I the the most surreal experience I've had doing this kind of lecture at the University of Wisconsin. I taught for three summers in a non-credit, uh, situation. The first year I was in, I it was one of these things where they went around to grad students and they said, "Hey, suggest a class, and if we like it, you can teach for us." So, I suggested angelology. "Oh, that sounds kind of interesting. Well, let's do that. We've never had that before." I walked into the room. There's 40 people in the room, and I start doing this, and they were all Jewish. Every last person in the room except for me was Jewish. And the way I found out was not, no one threw anything at me. But somebody raised their hand and said, it's like five minutes into this, "My rabbi never told me this." And it's like, "Well, are you Jewish?" "Yeah." And everybody's like, "Yeah, I am too." And Britney is like, "Everybody in the room is Jewish." And I'm standing there. It's like, "Well, I got to fill up the hour. So like, what do I do now?" And but you go through it with them because they know their text. You know, some of them did, anyway. And it's like I actually had one of them say, in front of everybody else, in front of their peers, "I understand now why people became Christians. I get it. You just, you don't get it. You, you, you know, you go to seminary, you don't, you don't get into this nitty-gritty stuff." And for me, it just has become a fascination. This is where I spend most of my time, you know, doing this stuff. >> Since the second power is even even referring to that, we're >> we're really trying to mass up the other dogs and shooting. >> Yeah. I I really think, and I I I gave two academic papers on this last year at academic conferences, and I really think that that this is this is the bridge. This is the answer. This explains why the early church was so quick to worship Jesus and still die for monotheism. That that is probably the thing that offends me most about The Da Vinci Code. This idea that all this was invented. I'm, you know, sorry, but there were hundreds and probably thousands of people who were put to death by the Romans, and in some cases, I'm sure Jews as well, because they worshiped Jesus as God, but they refused to bow the knee to the Roman emperor who claimed to be a deity. And and the Romans thought this was insane. "Well, you're already worshiping this second one over here, and don't tell us you're monotheist because you're doing this." And the Christians, and and Jews for that matter, would say, "Sorry, we're not afraid to die." And I think what Dan Brown and his sources do with this material just makes that a mockery. So, for me personally, that's my biggest irritation with the book. But, you know, no, no, that that's just me because I'm thinking about this, and I'm not saying Brown's out to do that. He's he's not, but that's just me personally. Go ahead.
>> How does this uh connect to um the only begotten? In other words, when I think when a lot of people hear that, they think of uh the birth of Jesus, that begotten takes place, good for >> yeah. Part of the part of the problem is the is the chron it's a two-fold problem, actually. It's a three-fold problem. Part of it is a word like "begotten" does convey chronology because we have the sense that it implies a beginning. The the early church, though, used that term to distinguish the idea behind that term from being created. The Nicene Creed, "He's the Son is begotten but not made." So they knew there was a distinction there that they had in their heads. We have lost that because we don't, we just don't use words like "begotten." So that's the second issue. The third issue is it's a it's a terrible translation. Uh, there's a translation problem. The the word that is used that we we typically think of as "only begotten" in the New Testament is *monogenēs*. It used to be assumed that that came from *monos*, which is "alone" or "only," and and it came from the verb *gennaō*. So *monogenēs* means "to beget," "to give birth to." And so the the supposition was that it meant "only begotten." After there was a lot of other Greek papyri discovered in the late 19th century and early 20th century, were and by the way, when papyri are discovered, the neat thing that that does is it widens the vocabulary, the known vocabulary of of a and the known meaning range of a certain word. It was discovered, and this is 100 years old. It was discovered that *monogenēs* does not come from *monos* and *gennaō*. It comes from *monos* and *genos*, which means "unique" or "kind." So Jesus is the *monogenēs*. He is the unique kind. He is the only kind of something. And the way we know that that's what's going on in the New Testament is in Hebrews chapter 11, the word *monogenēs* is used of Isaac. Think back to your Old Testament. The book, the writer of the Hebrews calls Isaac the *monogenēs*. Isaac is the son of Abraham. Here's the question: Was Isaac Abraham's only son? No, he had Ishmael first. Isaac wasn't even the firstborn. So that tells you that *monogenēs* cannot mean firstborn or only born. What it means is unique. There was something unique about Isaac out of all the sons of Abraham. And what was it? Isaac was the son of the promise. He was the one that came from Sarah, which was the original prophecy that God gave to Abraham and said, "You're old and your wife's old, but from Sarah, you will have a child, and that child will be the chosen one of my covenant." Same word that's used in John 3:16. So, it's there's a translation issue. So, back to your original question, it relates because Jesus is unique. We have plural sons of God in both testaments. Haven't you ever asked yourself this question? Why do why is Jesus called the only begotten son of God when there are plural sons of God in the Old Testament? It's a good question to ask. The reason is there's something unique about him. What's unique about him with respect to all the sons of God, all the heavenly host? He's the essence of the Father. They are not. He is uncreated. They are not. He is Yahweh. They are not. He's unique. He is species unique. >> Go ahead. >> Is you're more of a more familiar that maybe CBN now that you could like it forgotten at >> as far as an illustration. >> Oh boy. You know, I the short answer is nothing that I either a like or b understand. I mean, I you know, you you read some of the simpler ones like an A or like the three states of water or something like that. And and they're all, you know, some of them are kind of useful, but they all seem to break down somewhere. Physicists, I've seen physicists try to tackle this with different states of matter, and that's just right over my head. You know, I I can't claim to understand it or even have anything to really suggest that would be helpful in that.
>> It does seem pitiful at times because you have well, at least most Jewish circles, or you proclaim the Shema. >> The Lord our God is one. >> Right. >> And it's difficult to try to reconcile their >> Yeah. But think of it this way. The claim in the Shema is "The Lord our God is one." "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." By the way, it never claims there aren't any other gods in those passages. Uh, just a side note. The issue though is if name, if the angel, if the word is Yahweh, then he's Yahweh. Even though he exists in a second, I I'll use this even though it's not theologically careful, but it might help. Even though the name and the word are different forms of Yahweh, they're still Yahweh. And if you worship this being, you are still worshiping Yahweh. And there's a unity. Okay? Nothing. Yahweh is not taking his essence and making a lesser being. In other words, a distinct being, a being that is not him in essence. If he did do that, then you'd have to worship two separate entities, and you would violate the Shema. This is this is how the Jews approach this because if you look back in, uh, Deuteronomy, what was the one I Deuteronomy 12, it says, "This is the place where I have chosen to set my name, and this is the place to which you'll bring your sacrifices and offerings." Okay, they're they're actually offering sacrifices to the to the name, but they didn't see that as a violation of the Shema. Why? Because, well, the name's Yahweh. He's just a physical manifestation of Yahweh. We know that we're not worshiping another God. We're worshiping Yahweh. It's just now we can see him. All these all these second entities, the fancy scholarly term for this is they are hypostases. They are they are visible physical manifestations of a spiritual thing, but it's still the same thing in essence. It's just that one one is you can you can see, and it and it you can approach it with your senses. See, touch, feel, hear, that kind of thing. And the other one is a spirit. God is a spirit. John chapter 4. So the Jews could could comprehend that much. And to them, to worship Jesus or to worship the name or whatever, it was worship of Yahweh. So they didn't see it as a violation, which drove the Romans nuts. They just thought that that was insane. "You're like, you're willing to die, and you already do this. It doesn't make any sense to us."