Yeshua Affirming Messianic Identity

• Luke 19:40 The Stones Would Cry Out
• Matthew 21:16 Mouths of Babies
• Matthew 16:17 Flesh and Blood Has Not Revealed This
• Mark 14:62 I Am and You Will See the Son of Man

Yeshua Affirming Exalted Status
These claims go beyond the role of teacher or prophet.

• Matthew 11:27 All Things Have Been Handed over to Me by My Father
• Matthew 12:6 One Greater Than the Temple
• Luke 22:30 Eat and Drink at My Table in My Kingdom
• Mark 2:10 Son of Man has Authority on Earth to Forgive Sins
• Mark 8:38 Son of Man Comes in Glory of His Father
• Mark 10:40 To Sit at My Right or Left Is Not Mine to Give
• Luke 4:18 He Has Sent Me to Proclaim Release
• Luke 7:22 Tell John What You Have Seen
• Mark 10:45 To Give His Life as a Ransom
• Matthew 28:18 All Authority Has Been Given to Me

Yeshua as Prophet

• Mark 6:4 No Prophet Without Honor
• Mark 8:28 Some Say Prophet
• Luke 7:16 A Great Prophet Has Arisen
• Luke 7:39 If This Man Were a Prophet
• Mark 13:2 [Foretells Temple Destruction]

THE YESHUA STORY, HIGH VERSION
The story of Israel is not simply on earth, but in heaven. The Ancient One would give dominion to the Divine One who is like a man (the Son of Man). In Galilee a man became known for his miracles and kingdom teaching. His followers thought he was simply a human Messiah, but some things did not fit. He did not heal by prayer, but by his authority. He forgave sins. He said he was Lord of the Sabbath. He said the Son of Man would suffer Israel’s tribulation in himself. He rose and ascended and then they knew him to be the Divine Messiah and Redeemer, the Son of Man who received all authority from the Father. God himself, the Son and not the Father, had become a man. God himself took on humanity to raise humanity toward divinity. God himself experienced death to free us from death. The Radiance of God has been among us and will come again.

What difference does it make which version we believe?

So, it might surprise you to know that Boyarin thinks Judaism and Christianity are compatible. His goal, stated on pages 6-7 is to help Christians and Jews to stop vilifying each other. He doesn’t follow Jesus and isn’t asking fellow Jews to do so. But he demolishes all ideas that Christian devotion to Jesus is contrary to Judaism or that Christianity is anything other than a Judaism to which mostly non-Jews have been drawn. Jews in the time of Jesus were looking, he says, for a divine messiah. And Jesus’ earliest followers were kosher Jews. The sad separation and enmity of Judaism and Christianity is something to get beyond, not something to perpetuate.

Among the themes of the book are some startling claims which deep six the status quo that Judaism and Christianity are separate and incompatible ideas about God and faith:

• Jews in the time of Jesus were expecting a divine-man Messiah figure.
• Many Jews already believed in something very much like what Christians call the Son and Father.
• Some accepted Jesus as divine-man and some did not; both groups were Jews; one of these groups we now call Christianity and the other Judaism.
• Christianity is a Judaism.
• It is not just that Jesus is a Jew, but Christ, the exalted and divine figure, is also a Jew.
• The doctrinal police represented by some rabbis and church fathers are the ones who sought to make Judaism and Christianity incompatible (he gives the specific example of Jerome who rejected people with orthodox faith who wished to remain Jews, saying they had to renounce Jewishness to be true Christians).
• Early Messianic Jews (Christian Jews) called Nazarenes must have been a sizable group even in the fourth century.
• The false boundary between Judaism and Christianity needs to be blurred.
• “Son of God” originally meant the human Davidic ruler; “Son of Man” originally was a divine figure equal with God though submitted to him.
• The roots of the All-Transcendent God [Father] and the Immanent Agent God [Son] go back even to pre-Israelite days as Canaanites sought to understand deity as both.
• The Similitudes of Enoch (part of the book called 1 Enoch) give the lie to the notion that Judaism rejected a divine redeemer who is a God-man.
• The Similitudes, written about the same time as Mark, parallel the ideas of a divine man almost identically to Mark, but neither text was aware of the other.
• Yeshua (Jesus) and his early followers were kosher (he documents how Mark 7 and the “all foods clean” passage have been misunderstood).
• There was a history of faith in a suffering Messiah (Isaiah 53 style) before Jesus and the usual debate about whether Isaiah 53 concerns Israel or Messiah is a moot argument.
• The liberal Christian notion that the church developed the suffering Messiah idea by misinterpreting the Hebrew Bible is false.
• The Gospels are a conservative return to an earlier idea of a Second Divine Figure, who represents the Immanent Aspect of God.
• Jesus, or Mark, knew his way around a halakhic argument.

Boyarin also gives many intriguing solutions to long-held puzzles about Christology, the theology of the divinity of Jesus and his humanity, and how the Gospel texts are using the Hebrew scriptures and dealing with the seeming paradoxes of Yeshua (Jesus):

• The debate about “Son of Man” as “human one” or “divine redeemer” can be resolved if we understand “Son of Man” as a simile: one who is divine but it is like he is human.
• Contrary to much Christian scholarship, Yeshua (Jesus) saw himself as Son of Man from the beginning, not just at the Second Coming.
• Daniel 7 has two ideas in tension: Son of Man is divine redeemer but also Son of Man is Israel.
• The root of Jesus’ saying “the Son of Man” must suffer is Dan 7:25-27 where Son of Man is Israel and must suffer a time, times, and half a time. Jesus midrashically reads this as the Son of Man (himself) suffering for Israel as Ideal Israel.
• Christianity long ago deemed adoptionism a heresy (Jesus became divine at his baptism when filled with Spirit). This idea is called apotheosis (a man becomes divine by indwelling divine spirit). Yet the gospels contain this theme, especially Mark, argues Boyarin (though he becomes God at his ascension, not his baptism). However, see the next bullet point.
• The opposite of adoptionism (apotheosis) is theophany (incarnation, God becomes man) and the divine man is shown to have pre-existed and been divine before birth as a human. This theme is also in the Gospels and is emphasized over the apotheosis theme.
• Boyarin sees both theophany (God became man) and apotheosis (a man became God, Jesus became God as his ascension) in the Gospels. Are these two incompatible streams? See my thought below.

What about Boyarin’s notion that the Gospels have both apotheosis (Jesus becomes God at the ascension) and theophany (Jesus was already God who became man at his birth)? As he shows extensively, the same thing happens in the Similitudes of Enoch, which Enoch chapters 70-71 seemingly contradicting what had been said earlier about Enoch. While earlier it seems Enoch became the Son of Man when, as it says in Genesis, he “walked with God and was not,” in truth, he was already Son of Man before he was born, according to chapters 70-71. Are these ideas really a contradiction? Perhaps they are relative to whether Enoch is viewed from the earthy viewpoint or the divine. This is a way to take Boyarin’s notion that in the Gospels Yeshua (Jesus) both becomes God and already was God. In reality, he already was God, but in appearance his divinity was revealed at his ascension. This way of reading it is compatible with the creeds of Christianity and the strong divinity statements in Paul, Hebrews, and Johannine writings.

The Jewish Gospels is a short, approachable book. Even people who don’t read academic literature can enjoy it and understand most of it. Boyarin gos out of his way to define terms in simple language. The body of the book is only 160 pages.

I can’t honestly think of a sound reason to criticize the book, although it seems my review may be weak for lack of finding fault. I found the entire book engaging and finished it in about three hours. In my opinion, this is a great step forward in Jewish-Christian relations and is a mind-opener worthy of being read by many thoughtful Jewish and Christian thinkers.

Who were the shepherds of Bethlehem? Why do they figure so prominently in Luke’s birth narrative? What do we learn about Yeshua and his context?

In Michael Bird’s Are You the One Who Is to Come?: The Historical Jesus and the Messianic Question, there is a helpful chart of some major messianic scriptures and references to the thought of the time about these texts. What kinds of things were people saying about Isaiah 11 in Second Temple Judaism? That will be our theme in this first installment.

To help those who might not have the patience to read through the examples below, what you will see is:

• The “Shoot from the Stump of Jesse” is definitely interpreted as a messiah-figure (king, warrior).
• There is an expectation of war against oppressing nations (Rome = Kittim, nations = gentiles).
• There are unclear hints in the Dead Sea fragments of the Shoot being one of several messianic figures working together (one of them is a priest of renown).
• The Shoot will lead the nation in a time of unparalleled righteousness and is even said in one place to be without sin.
• The excerpt from Testament of Levi sounds like Yeshua’s baptism (but these texts were almost certainly edited after the time of Yeshua with Christian involvement – so no big revelation here).
• One excerpt in the Dead Sea Scrolls sounds as if, possibly, the Shoot will be killed. But words are missing and I have not read commentary on this text, so I may be completely mistaken.

THE SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 11:1-6, RSV
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the girdle of his waist,
and faithfulness the girdle of his loins.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA (Various Jewish Writings, from Charlesworth’s two-volume set).
1 Enoch 62:2

The Lord of the Spirits has sat down on the throne of his glory, and the spirit of righteousness has been poured out upon him. The word of his mouth will do the sinners in: and all the oppressors shall be eliminated from before his face.

Excerpts from Psalms of Solomon 17:22-37

Undergird him with strength to destroy the unrighteous rulers . . . to shatter all their substance with an iron rod; to destroy the unlawful nations with the word of his mouth . . . He will gather a holy people whom he will lead in righteousness . . . He will distribute them on their land according to their tribes . . . He will judge peoples and nations in the wisdom of his righteousness . . . And he will be a righteous king over them, taught by God. There will be no unrighteous among them in his days, for all shall be holy, and their king shall be the Lord Messiah . . . and he himself will be free from sin . . . and he will not weaken in his days (relying) upon his God, for God made him powerful in the holy spirit, and wise in counsel of understanding, with strength and righteousness.

Excerpts from Testament of Judah, chapter 24.

And after this there will arise for you a star from Jacob in peace . . . This is the Shoot of God Most High; this is the fountain for the life of all humanity . . . and from your root will arise the Shoot, and through it will arise the rod of righteousness for the nations, to judge and to save all that call on the Lord.

Excerpts from Testament of Levi, chapter 18.

And then the Lord will raise up a new priest to whom all the words of the Lord will be revealed . . . The heavens will greatly rejoice in his days and the earth shall be glad; the clouds will be filled with joy and the knowledge of the Lord will be poured out on the earth like the water of the seas . . . The heavens will be opened and from the Temple of Glory sanctification will come upon him, with a fatherly voice, as from Abraham to Isaac. And the glory of the Most High will burst forth upon him. And the spirit of understanding and sanctification shall rest upon him.

TARGUM (Aramaic Translation).
Excerpts from 11:1-6.

And a King shall come forth from the sons of Jesse, and from his children’s children the Messiah shall be anointed . . . And the righteous shall be round about him, and those that work in faith shall draw nigh unto him. In the days of the Messiah of Israel peace shall be multiplied on the earth.

DEAD SEA SCROLLS (simplified from the Florentino Garcia Martizez translation).
Excerpts from 4Q285 5:1-6, “4Q War Scroll.”

A shoot will emerge from the stump of Jesse [missing words] the bud of David will go into battle with [missing words] and the Prince of the Congregation will kill him, the bud of David [missing words] and with wounds. And a priest will command [missing words] the destruction of the Kittim.

Excerpts from 1QSb 5:22, 25, 26, “Rule of the Blessing.”

. . . to reproach the humble of the earth with uprightness,
to walk in perfection before him in all his paths . . .
May you strike the peoples with the power of your mouth . . .
May you kill the wicked.

Excerpts from 4Q161 3:18-25, “Isaiah Pesher.”

The interpretation of the word concerns the shoot of David which will sprout in the final days, since with the breath of his lips he will execute his enemies and God will support him with the spirit of courage . . .
He will not judge by appearances or give verdicts on hearsay. Its interpretation: [missing words] according to what they teach him, he will judge, and upon his mouth [missing words] with him will go out one of the priests of renown, holding clothes in his hand.

NEW TESTAMENT
Matthew 2:23
Acts 13:23
Hebrews 7:14
Revelation 5:5
Revelation 22:16

Yeshua is the Moses-like Prophet-to-Come, the New Moses, whose agency as the Voice of the Father reveals depths of God unknown or ambiguous in previous revelation.

I listed for readers the findings of Paul Anderson regarding the prophet-like-Moses theme in the fourth gospel, which is not a minor motif but a guiding principle of the entire Gospel of John (see my post “Moses-Like-Prophet in John” here).

In searching out examples of how Yeshua revealed greater depths of God than had previously been known, I first went down a path seeking in the teaching of Yeshua new revelation. I think to some degree I was on the wrong path. I came up with a list of nine existential questions about God and us that are addressed in Yeshua’s teaching and wrote a blog post about it (see “The Son Has Spoken” here).

Yet as I taught this material at our synagogue, a perceptive woman and friend said, “But, Derek, none of that is new. That’s all good interpretation of what’s already in the Hebrew Bible.”

I quickly realized she was right. In terms of Yeshua’s teaching about God’s nature, nearly all of it is accessible in the Hebrew Bible if you avoid certain pitfalls. Judaism has, like Christianity, fallen into a number of pitfalls in this area (e.g., the Saadian and Maimonidean ideas about God’s unity and transcendence in utter denial of real Presence).

Not long after realizing that I was searching in the wrong place — looking for Yeshua’s new revelation of the depths of God in his teaching — I came across some good thoughts on the New Moses theme in Matthew in a book by Darrell Bock (Jesus According to Scripture). His comments on Matthew 13:16-17, 52, made me realize that Yeshua’s purpose in teaching was often to clarify what was already in the old. The new wine was mostly new because the shepherds of Israel did not, in Yeshua’s time, understand the message of the prophets.

Those prophets, according to Matthew 13:16-17, desired to look into Yeshua’s time, to see in his identity and teaching the completion of what they envisioned. And the good scribe of the kingdom (the scribe who knows the King, Yeshua, and looks for his kingdom to come) brings forth both new and old. That is, the old (Hebrew Bible) is inextricably connected with the new, and the scribe brings forth the connections (but most writing about “messianic prophecy” has been terrible and has not followed scribal patterns at all).

Where I needed to be looking, to find the new revelation of the Sent-One, was not in Yeshua’s public teaching, per se. I needed to be looking more at his deeds (somewhat in combination with his teaching). It is more in the deeds and hints at the identity of Yeshua that we find the new things coming forth from the old.

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.
Matthew 11:25 (and Luke 10:21).

What are some of the things revealed to little children that may be referenced here?

The following list is subject to more evidence that I am planning to give here. I am not pretending that in listing these points I have demonstrated my case for them. This is an initial presentation of some themes and ideas presented in the gospels that cry out for closer scrutiny. Also, it is important to me not to simply draw from the fourth gospel, where the exalted identity of Yeshua is especially emphasized. Any meaningful portrait of what is new in Yeshua ought to draw from the synoptics as well as John.

• The Way of Surrender. I was struck by a phrase in an essay by Marianne Meye Thompson: the path that God designates . . . giving power up in surrender of one’s life and service to others (“Jesus and His God” in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, 2001). Yeshua not only described his own messianic career as being about surrender of his life and service, but said repeatedly that disciples were to lose their life, that the last was greatest, and that his followers should be servants to all. This is not simply social justice (the message of the Israelite prophets). It is a radical step beyond. It is Messiah killed being the real glory of Messiah. It is kingdom subjects not only working for justice, but selling everything for a pearl of great value. This is not an incidental theme, but is central in all four gospels (the messianic secret, the Sermon on the Mount, the kingdom for the poor, the lifted up Son of Man, and many other themes).
• Ransom theology. This is an outgrowth of the first point. In surrendering all, Yeshua accomplishes a ransom. The famous ransom passage (Mk 10:45; Mt 20:28) is greeted with skepticism by many scholars (a late addition? it sounds too churchy, say some). Ransom theology goes beyond the way of surrender theme. Not only does Yeshua give up power in service to others, but his surrender to death, but this act of sacrifice is a necessary transaction for people to have life. This is cross theology. It grows out of the Exodus-Passover story.
• Faith as inclusion in the kingdom. I do not think Yeshua in any way denies the election of Israel, which is a carnal election (via birth, not faith). I think, rather, he introduces a concept of a second requirement beyond election. The renewal movement of Yeshua suggests it is not enough to be Israel. God has not yet sent the messianic age because Israel has to go beyond being the Elect. Israel must believe and act according to belief. And in making belief the requirement for renewal, Yeshua opens the door for those in the Nations as well. This is where Yeshua’s universalism (that the divine covenant promises cover the whole world and not only Israel) comes through the door. Paul’s “works of the Law” equal presumption of rightness with God via birth as Jews (or conversion). Paul’s “salvation by faith” equals Yeshua’s call to “believe in me.” This is where Matthew 13:16-17 is really explained: the prophets called for faith and action, but the object of that faith and action was waiting to be seen. Yeshua claims to be that object of faith. And the action required is belief in his identity and message. The irrevocable election of Israel remains important, for in the fulness of time, Israel will also come to the renewal of faith, as the prophets had already foretold. And now that Yeshua has come, that faith can only be in the Messiah himself.
• Word made flesh (incarnation). It is not only John, as some think, but all through the gospels, that we see Yeshua as the Exalted One, whose identity is more than a man. It is a mystery, because the nature of God as both transcendent (the Eternal, the Beyond-Knowing) and immanent (the Word-Glory-Presence) is mysterious. Yeshua is more than the Prophet-like-Moses, ultimately, but is the Prophetic-word incarnate. He is Living Torah. All things have been handed over to Yeshua by the Father. Even the wind and waves obey him. He comes in the Glory of his Father. He is greater than the Temple. He is before Abraham. Unless we know that he is, we will die in our sins.

Yeshua heals and those with faith are made well. Yeshua defeats evil powers and demons are drawn to oppose him, but they can only obey his greater authority. Yeshua criticizes the shepherds of Israel who have followed the pattern of domination and not surrender. Yeshua gathers disciples for his way of surrender. And Yeshua surrenders to the difficult will of the Father (“he will speak to them all that I command him,” “the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me”). And all these things are revealed not to the wise, the shepherds of Israel who deal in power, but to little children.

Luke 10:21-24 is material not found in Mark. It is found in Matthew, but Matthew has it separated into two separate sayings on two occasions: 11:25-27 and 13:16-17. Messianic fulfillment comes in unexpected ways and Yeshua’s identity peeks through the veil.

On that same occasion Yeshua rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your gracious will. All things have been given to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son decides to reveal him.”

Then Yeshua turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

Yeshua rejoiced in the Holy Spirit
As was said of Mary in 1:47. For Luke, this is a mode of worship commended for disciples: seeing signs of God’s work in the world and rejoicing.

you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent
Yeshua did not come to the Temple leadership or the scribal circles.

revealed them to little children
But he chose disciples from the common people, those who had no power or dominance.

for this was your gracious will
A margin note in the NET translation says this could be rendered, “for [to do] thus was well pleasing before you.” Yeshua understands an aspect of God’s pleasure: to avoid the channels of ego and power and work through the forgotten and ignored.

All things have been given to me by my Father
The idea that Yeshua was the Radiance of the Being of God is not something that waited for John’s gospel. It is an idea already known to Matthew and Luke. Behind such a saying is a Jewish mystical concept: the Being of God does not directly enter the world, but his Word, Image, Spirit, Glory, Presence does. Yeshua has been given all things because he is the Word, Image, Spirit, Glory, and Presence of the direct Being of God (the Father). Philo and the Targums contain this sort of notion of the difference between God’s transcendent Being and immanent Word or Spirit in the world.

No one knows who the Son is except the Father
“Knows” here is a word easily misunderstood. Knowledge includes more than the intellectual. Knowledge is also experiential, emotional, and intuitive. Mystical ways of looking at knowledge even emphasize the experiential. To know God in his Direct Being is not simply to read scripture and deduce theology. To know the Son (Yeshua, Jesus) is not simply to deduce things about his life from the history or from scriptures about messianic figures. True knowledge comes from union with the Ein Sof (the Unending One, the Father, God in his Direct Being).

who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son decides to reveal him
It is a catch-22 that we cannot know the Being of God except through his Emanation (Son, Yeshua, Jesus) while at the same time we cannot know Yeshua (Jesus, Son) except through the Being of God (Father). This conundrum means that something supernatural must happen, a divinely given intuition. John calls it being born from above. It is an experience that disciples require.

Blessed are the eyes that see what you see
For Luke it is very important that the Yeshua-community understand its blessings. In a time of hardship in the larger Greco-Roman world, the marginalized Yeshua-followers need to understand the glory of knowing the Father and Son.

many prophets and kings longed to see what you see
Such as David the psalmist and Isaiah the seer.

Both Matthew and Luke include these sayings, though in slightly different contexts. The realization of Yeshua’s identity as the mediated Presence of God in the world (the Divine Man) is not something invented by the Fourth Gospel. There is much here for disciples of Yeshua to ponder about God’s preference for channels that circumvent power and domination, about worship as rejoicing at seeing God in the world, about a sense of blessing at knowing Father and Son, about messianic happenings being fulfilled in unexpectedly hidden corners of the world, and about disciples seeking the inner meaning of it all.

The commentary that follows is about the specific emphases in Luke’s version on the filling with the Spirit, the different order from Matthew, and the overall meaning of the three temptations. See the other articles categorized under “Temptation” for a fuller view of this important scene in Yeshua’s life.

NOTES: It is often assumed that the Spirit is either present or not present, that the “filling” of the Spirit has only one meaning. But Luke’s use of the Spirit in both the gospel and in Acts shows that the Spirit’s filling comes at different levels and has different meanings in different contexts. It is not that Luke would deny the Pauline emphasis that all of Yeshua’s followers have the Spirit. Rather, Luke is aware of a more subtle and variegated view of the Spirit’s Presence. As is the case with the Glory in the Hebrew Bible, the Spirit manifests in different ways and levels. One evidence for this is that in Acts, the Spirit’s power is imparted specifically by the presence of one of the Twelve or Paul. Luke emphasizes the Spirit in the life of Yeshua more so than the other gospels (an emphasis somewhat similar to John’s mystical perspective on Yeshua). Mark’s “the Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness” becomes “Yeshua, full of the Holy Spirit . . . was led by the Spirit.” Yeshua will conquer Satan’s temptations with the Spirit’s power and will emerge on the other side with the power of the Spirit in vs. 14. The order of temptations in Luke is desert-bread/world-kingdoms/temple-pinnacle whereas Matthew has desert-bread/temple-pinnacle/world-kingdoms (from a high mountain, says Matthew). The order of Deuteronomy allusions in Luke is 8:3; 6:13; 6:16 (while Matthew’s order is descending: 8:3; 6:16; 6:13). Some argue Matthew’s order is original: the elevation moves up from desert to pinnacle to high mountain and the Deuteronomy verses are in simple descending order. If so, then Luke has moved the world kingdoms temptation earlier and ended with the Temple pinnacle. All three temptations concern false notions about the identity of the Messiah: cheap miracles and the stones-to-bread, messianism as ruling power and the world-kingdoms, and signs to prove messiahship and the temple-pinnacle. Yeshua doesn’t do cheap miracles, teaches a different idea of how power and kingdom work, and doesn’t give signs to prove his identity. The order in Luke probably suggests two things about his emphasis in the scene: (1) Jerusalem is last in Luke’s presentation because Jerusalem and the Temple will be the final test for Yeshua and (2) the Temple-pinnacle is the most potent temptation for Yeshua, to prove his identity by signs (Johnson).

Under the “Messiah” category, I am accumulating some evidence in support of the popular messianic expectation theory. See for example this post in which Josephus explains some of the rationale for the First Jewish Revolt which started in 66 CE as being related to a messianic notion.

Now, let me share a little Suetonius.

Suetonius (c. 70 – 130 CE) is a Roman historian best know for his De Vita Caesarum, The Lives of the Caesars. In his biography of Vespasian, the emperor who besieged Jerusalem in the First Jewish Revolt, he says:
An ancient superstition was current in the East, that out of Judea would come the rulers of the world. The prediction, as it later proved, referred to two Roman Emperors, Vespasian and his son Titus; but the rebellious Jews, who read it as referring to themselves, murdered their Procurator, routed the Governor-general of Syria when he came down to restore order, and captured an Eagle. To crush this uprising the Romans needed a strong army under an energetic commander, who could be trusted not to abuse his plenary powers. The choice fell on Vespasian.

The idea that messianic hopes in Jewish thought actually referred to Vespasian and Titus and not to a Jewish-Davidic king may have come to Suetonius from Josephus, who similarly changed in his interpretation and made that very claim (Jewish War 6.5.4).

Yeshua and his disciples likely had limited knowledge of the Greco-Roman world (with some exceptions in his larger group of disciples since some may have been part of the aristocracy). The evangelists, however, would likely have had much more involvement in the Greco-Roman world and their audiences would as well.

Mark, by the traditional theory and even more so for those who reject the traditional theory, likely wrote from outside the land of Israel. The author of Matthew was not one of the Twelve (or else why would he use Mark) and wrote in decent Greek. Luke is even easier to locate in the Greco-Roman world. The author of John according to tradition lived in Ephesus in Asia Minor and in non-traditional theories might have had even more Greco-Roman background.

It is relevant to the notion of Yeshua as some sort of king, as a divine man of some sort, as being called by some with the title Son of God, that these types of claims were made about other rulers in the Greco-Roman world. The following is a sampling of the kind of divine titles and savior language used of Greco-Roman rulers. These examples are drawn from Adela and John Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God:

(1) Alexander the Great went to the shrine of Amun (Ammon-Re) in the Siwa Oasis in what was then Libya (now Egypt) and was greeted as a “son of Amun,” which to the Greeks meant “son of Zeus.” To clarify that this was divinity, he also in that account demanded proskynesis, or a form of worship.

(2) Ptolemy I delivered Rhodes in 304 BCE from a siege. He was known thereafter as Savior and at the Siwa Oasis the oracle confirmed that Ptolemy I was a god. The Ptolemies thereafter used title including divinity, some of them even using the Greek word theos in their titles.

(3) The Rosetta Stone (196 BCE) hails Ptolemy V as “god like the sun” and “image of Horus, son of Isis and Osiris.” Horus has a long history in the Egyptian pantheon, but in some ages was the Falcon, god of the sky and war, and kings were regarded as manifestations of his being. The idea of a divine king could be something like a man in whom the divinity of Horus dwells and manifests his power.

(4) Antiochus IV (Epiphanes, 215 – 163 BCE) was perhaps the first of the Seleucids to emphasize divinity. He minted his divinity right onto coins. He showed Zeus enthroned and the title theos epiphanes (god manifested) appeared on coins.

(5) Seleucus (358 – 281 BCE) the founder of the Seleucid (Syrian) dynasty and a general of Alexander, had an origin story that his mother was visited in her bed by Apollo.

(6) Octavian, a.k.a. Augustus Caesar and Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (63-14 BCE) was known as divi filius (son of a god) as early as 40 BCE. He was called Savior of the World.

Adela and John Collins go on to present evidence that Greco-Roman ideas about kings as deity did not influence the translation of the LXX (Septuagint) and were in general not accepted in Jewish thought (though Philo did seem to accept some type of divinity in Augustus). The Jewish idea of the Davidic king as divinely empowered and even preexistent (see Psalm 110), according to Collins, does not show visible signs of influence from the Greco-Roman notions (for example, terms like savior and manifestation, soter, epiphanes, do not show up).

Josephus, a Galilean general, captured by the Romans, who became a collaborator with the Romans though always a defender of the greatness of his people, explains in a famous passage in The Jewish War (also called Bellum Judaicum or BJ for short) what one of the root causes of the war was. It was a concept of a Jewish ruler who would actually rule the world:

But their chief inducement to go to war was a equivocal oracle also found in their sacred writings, announcing that at that time a man from their country would become the ruler of the world.
–Bellum Judaicum 6.312-313, G.A. Williamson translation, Penguin Books, 1959.

John J. Collins says of this passage:

Josephus . . . also claims that messianic expectation was a significant factor in the outbreak of the revolt against Rome . . . Josephus held that the oracle really referred to Vespasian, who was proclaimed emperor while still in Judea (The Messiah in Early Judaism and Christianity, pg. 19).

What oracle from the Hebrew Bible did Josephus likely mean? N.T. Wright thinks it was Daniel 2, in which Daniel explains a vision of four successive empires and then a fifth kingdom which breaks all others “in those days,” a kingdom which will never end (Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, pg. 304). In another passage (Antiquities 10.203-210), Josephus alters the vision of Daniel to hide the fact that it might refer to Rome being destroyed. He points out that iron is stronger than gold, silver, or bronze (a compliment to Rome) and says he will not bother to interpret the meaning of the stone that breaks all the kingdoms since that deals with the future and not the present.

So, to summarize some important points we learn from Josephus about the messianic concept:

(1) Daniel 2 suggested to many Jews that their time was the time when the world ruler from Israel would emerge (i.e., Messiah).

(2) The belief in this emerging Jewish king of the world (Messiah) was a large part of the motivation for the Jewish Revolt.

(3) How does this relate to the possibility of a strong “Messiah concept” in the lifetime of Yeshua? It shows that a generation after Yeshua, there was a strong messianic concept. This is evidence, though admittedly not proof, that similar concepts abounded in Yeshua’s time a generation earlier.