Thank you for your comments.
You write: ‘Jesus referred to Himself as THE Son of Man (as in Daniel 7), not merely "a son of man" (human being).
I note how you capitalise certain words: ‘Himself’; ‘Son of Man’, in a vain attempt to add verisimilitude to the notion that Yeshua (radi Allahu ‘anhu) was divine. Unfortunately for you, the Tanakh - the only scripture he knew - was written in Hebrew and Aramaic, neither of which contains the capital letter.
The Hebrew expression ‘son of man’ (ben-'adam) appears one hundred and seven times in the Tanakh; and on every single occasion is used to denote humankind as fundamentally different from Yahweh; with special reference to our weakness and frailty. It is never used…..never…..to denote the Almighty Himself. And Yeshua, being a Jew, would have known this.
The expression first appears in Numbers: ‘God is no man ('iysh) that he should lie, no son of Adam (ben-'adam) to draw back. Is it his to say and not to do, to speak and not fulfil? (23:19).
In the Psalms the expression is used to describe humankind as a whole: ‘I look up at your heavens, made by your fingers, at the moon and stars you set in place - ah, what is man ('enosh) that you should spare a thought for him, the son of man (ben-'adam) that you should care for him? Yet you have made him little less than a god, you have crowned him with glory and splendour.’ (8:3-5).
Concerning Daniel:
Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler write: ‘The different status of Daniel in Judaism and Christianity is thus reflected in the position of the book in the two canons. In the Christian Old Testament Daniel is placed with the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, while in the Jewish Scriptures it is placed with the Kethuvim, or Writings. (Additional factors, including the late date of the book, may have also played a role in the book’s placement in Kethuvim rather than in Prophets.).’ (‘The Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition’).
The Kethuvim were not included in the prophetic collection either because they did not fit the content or the historical-philosophical framework of that collection; or because they were originally seen as purely human and not divine writings; or simply because they were written too late for inclusion.
According to the Dominican scholars of the École Biblique de Jerusalem - producers of the Jerusalem Bible: ‘The Book of Daniel is no longer part of the true prophetic tradition. It does not contain the preaching of a prophet commissioned by God with a message for his contemporise, but was composed and committed to writing by an author who concealed his identity under a pseudonym.’ (‘Jerusalem Bible).
Here is the section of Daniel you refer to: ‘I gazed into the visions of the night. And I saw, coming on the clouds of heaven, one like a man (kibar 'anash). He came to the one of great age and was led into his presence. On him was conferred sovereignty, glory and kingship, and men of all peoples, nations and languages became his servants. His sovereignty is an eternal sovereignty which shall never pass away, nor will his empire ever be destroyed.’ (7:13-14).
Daniel 7 is written in Biblical Aramaic. Note the expression ‘kibar 'anash’ - ‘one like a man’. In order to portray a ‘son of man’ the expression ‘bar enash’ would have had to be used.
In order to justify their theology, Christians have corrupted the text to read ‘son of man’, or rather ‘Son of man’! Even so, the scholars École Biblique state that the person referred to in 7:13 is: ‘Not the Davidic Messiah.’ (‘Jerusalem Bible).
Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (known as Rashi) ranks as one of the most influential Jewish commentators. He stated that the ‘one like a man (kibar 'anash)’ who is coming was the ‘Jewish King Messiah’, and not the (‘divine’) Messiah of the Christians. (cf. Jewish Enclyclopedia).
There is a consensus among Jewish scholars that the ‘man’ in question is meant to be Israel itself; but there is a difference of opinion as to whether this is a personification of the people, or an actual personality representing Israel, such as the Messiah or Israel's guardian angel; Michael.
The expression ‘son of man’ does not appear in any of the works attributed to Paul (who was writing before the Gospels existed); but is used eighty-one times in the Gospels themselves. Yeshua spoke Aramaic (the common language throughout Palestine in his day) and could never have designated himself ‘bar enash’ in a divine sense (as a claim to be God), since the expression never implied this meaning. Even if he had used this expression as a substitute for ‘I’m God’ his listeners would have simply taken him to mean ‘I’m a human being’, or even ‘It’s me!’ In the Tanakh the expression ‘son of man’ is used many times in the sense of ‘myself’, or ‘that person’. I am a son of man; and so are you; and so is everyone else!
The question to be answered is why would ‘the Word made Flesh’ be so poor a communicator as to claim divinity in a manner his audience would not have understood? Why did he not say: ‘I am Alaha (or ʼĔlāhā); meaning, of course: ‘I am God’? Would this really have been too difficult? May we be forgiven for thinking that the reason he did not say these words is because he knew them to be false?
When Yeshua claims that the ‘son of man’ has no place to rest his head (Matthew 8:20) he is doing nothing more than using the first-person singular nominative case personal pronoun ‘I’. And every one of his listeners would have realised that. Of course, none of them were Christians. None of them were influenced by (corrupted by) the Christology of the Church.
In verses such as Matthew 12:8 - ‘For the son of man ‘bar enash’ is master of the Sabbath’ the term merely denotes humankind as master over the Sabbath. The same sense is given in the sayings of the Rabbis: ‘The Sabbath is given over to you, but not you to the Sabbath.’ (Mekhilta; Ki Tissa 1).
Kaufmann Kohler writes: ‘Greek translators coined the phrase, which then led, under the influence of Daniel 7:13 and the Logos gospel, to the theological construction of the title which is basic to the Christology of the Church.’ (Article in the Jewish Enclyclopedia).
Rabbi Abbahu, who had many disputations with the Christian community in Cæsarea, and well understood their theology said: ‘If a man says “I am God” he lies; if he says “I am the son of man' he will repent; if he says, 'I will ascend to heaven' he will not succeed.’ (Quoted in the Jewish Enclyclopedia).
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You write: ‘Regarding Jesus saying "I AM" - Those Jews who heard that remark by Jesus, had no doubt that He was claiming to Be God - hence their wish to stone Him. Jesus didn't withdraw or qualify the remark,
You’re capitalising again!
The idea that the Jews attempted to stone Yeshua because he was claiming to be God (John 8:59) is pure nonsense.
At his ‘trial’ (and there’s a lot wrong with the Gospel accounts of this, as we shall see, in šāʾ Allāh) the High Priest is alleged to have said: ‘Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ (Matt. 26:63).
It must be noted that the word ‘Christ’ would not have been used; since this is a Greek word, and the High Priest would have spoken in Aramaic (I’ve already mentioned that this was the lingua franca of Palestine in the time of Yeshua). His words are more likely to have been closer to: ‘Tell us if you are meshiaḥ Alaha (or ʼĔlāhā)’.
This, of course, is a reference to Allāh (Subḥānahu ūta'āla)’s anointed one; for the Jews, the name or title of the ideal king of the Messianic age. You must know that the Jews of that time yearned for their promised deliverer; the one who would free them from the hated Romans. The one who would establish a reign of peace and justice in its place.
The title ‘son of Alaha’ (or ʼĔlāhā); does not imply divinity. According to the Jews it belonged to anyone whose piety placed him in a filial relation to Alaha; a ‘saint’, if you like.
It is clear, therefore, that no one at this trial is asking Yeshua if he is ‘God’. Had they thought, even for a moment, that he was making such a claim they would certainly have done so. They did believe, on the other hand, that he was claiming to be Alaha’s anointed one. They didn’t believe he was (and they still don’t) that is why they thought him worthy of death.
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Concerning your statement that Richard Price is a ‘Unitarian, not a Christian’ (with the implied accusation that, as such, his theology sucks).
Had to smile at this.
About fifty years ago I had a Biblical Unitarian colleague. He was older than I, and very well versed in the Bible (I had to keep referring to mine; while his was already in his head).
We had many conversations about various aspects of biblical theology. I was, of course, much younger then, and rather fiery. One day, in a fit of sheer frustration, I grabbed my bible (KJV) and held it under his nose. ‘This is my book’, I cried. ‘What’s yours?’ With a smile he took the bible from my hands, very gently, and said: ‘This!’
I was stunned. How could this man read the very same bible; the very same books; the very same chapters, verses and words as I did and not believe what I believed? The truth, of course, is that Biblical Unitarians have studied the same manuscripts and the same bibles - and for just as many centuries - as their Trinitarian opposites.
And so the question to ask of Dr. Richard M. Price is not: ‘Is he a uni or a trini?’; but rather: ‘Is he a biblical scholar?’
Well, he does hold two PhDs; one in Systematic Theology and one in New Testament. He was pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey; a Professor of Religion at Mount Olive College; Professor of Theology and Scriptural Studies at the Jonnie Coleman Theological Seminary; and Professor of Biblical Criticism for the Centre for Inquiry Institute. I guess that qualifies him for the title ‘biblical scholar’.
By the way, he is neither a uni nor a trini…. He believes that the Jesus of the Bible is an invented figure. And he does so, largely because the Gospels are such a mess; such a hotchpotch of invention; forgery; historical inaccuracy; and contradiction that the real Jesus is no longer to be seen there.
One example will do. Let’s return to Yeshua’s reported trial:
Since the 18th century Jewish scholars have recorded problems with this trial. Haim Cohn, a Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, and a scholar of Jewish legal history, using information from various scholarly sources concerning the law and procedures (both Jewish and Roman) pertaining at the time, found that even where the Gospel writers agree with each other, on point after point their claims are wrong. (cf. ‘The Trial and Death of Jesus’; page 98; see also pages 112-13).
Here are some of the violations that make Gospel accounts of this trial a farce: Meeting by night; holding a trial in a private home; conducting a trial in secret; the High Priest acting as interrogator; the High Priest striking the defendant; the failure of witnesses to agree; mocking and beating the prisoner; neglecting the Passover.
And as for the portrayal of Pilate; well, this is pure Monty Python. All Gospel accounts portray him as some kind of indecisive lightweight, easily swayed by the mob; anxious to free Yeshua - in whom he ‘saw no wrong’ - but too weak and feeble to do so. He pleads; he scuttles back and forth; he allows the mob to push him around. When they threaten to rat him out to Caesar if he refused their demands, he caves in!
What a wimp!
The fact is that Pilate, like his master Tiberius, was an arrogant, ruthless despot. Philo of Alexandria described him as ‘naturally inflexible and stubbornly relentless.’ He committed ‘acts of corruption, insults, rapine, outrages on the people, arrogance, repeated murders of innocent victims, and constant and most galling savagery.’ (‘Legatio ad Gaium 301; as cited in Cohn, page 15, note 46).
Josephus (a far better historian than any of the Gospel writers) describes him as: ‘Extremely offensive, cruel and corrupt.’ (Eerdman’s ‘Dictionary of the Bible’). He had absolutely no problem at all killing Jews, nor would he have lost any sleep over it. Innocent or not, what did it matter to him. They were Jews; and under his command scores of them were massacred - such as recorded in Josephus’ Antiquities: Volume 18.2 - when his soldiers, disguised in local dress and armed with knives, slipped into a crowd of protestors and, on his command, killed everyone they could catch (Josephus says they killed ‘a great number’), protestors as well as innocent bystanders.
A wimp?
The notion that Pilate would get it in the neck from Caesar if he did not execute Yeshua is risible; and could not be further from the truth. When Pilate was finally recalled to Rome (36 CE) it was not because of any reluctance on his part to butcher the enemies of Rome, but for his slaughter of a band of Samaritan pilgrims on their way to the sacred Mount Gerizim. (Cohn: page 10 - citing Blinzler: ‘Der Prozess Jesu’; pages 35-36).
Telling Pilate how to behave was guaranteed to get you killed. Justice Cohn makes this abundantly clear: ‘Any Jew who dared to remind the governor of his duty toward the emperor, or to hint at more fervid patriotism, would not be let live another hour. (Cohn: page 17.)
According to John (18:31) the Jews bring Yeshua to Pilate for execution on the pretext that was: ‘Not lawful for (them) to put any man to death.’ This is false. As for his ‘pre-trial’ and alleged handing over to the Romans, Cohn writes: ‘There is not a single instance recorded anywhere of the Great or Small Sanhedrin ever acting as a investigatory agent of the Romans.’ (ibid; page 109).
In yet another mistake, John states that the Jews could not enter Pilate’s Praetorium because they would be defiled (18:28). Cohn reminds us that: ‘Nothing in Jewish law or ritual, however, would support the contention that by entering the king’s – or anybody’s – place or a courtroom a Jew could become unpure.’ (ibid; page 147).
We are told that the Jews had a custom of freeing a prisoner on Passover. There was no such custom. Nor is there any evidence that the Romans had any such customary pardon either. What is more, the very notion that Pilate would offer to release a convicted murderer and anti-Roman insurrectionist (even if there were such a custom) is risible! There have been many attempts (involving searches of both Roman and Jewish records) to justify the historical truth of the so-called ‘Privilegium Paschale’, but without success. (Paul Winter: ‘On the Trial of Jesus’: page 131).
(By the way, if the Sanhedrin had truly asked Pilate for the death penalty, it would have been death by stoning, as the Taurat required (Mishnah Sanhedrin 6: 4h and i).
Anyway, to get back to Price. This is what he writes:
‘(There is a) general rule of procedure: when a later gospel offers a more spectacular version of a story from the earlier, source gospel, then the less spectacular, if either, is the historical one. This is because it is always more natural to imagine the story growing in the telling, not shrinking. One might want to beef up a more modest version, but who, already possessing the spectacular version, would prefer a simpler or more mundane one? So the more spectacular is always to be judged inauthentic……………John's gospel features numerous self-declarations of Jesus beginning with the revelation formula "I am...." The Johannine Jesus announces himself as the light of the world, the bread from heaven, the true vine, the good shepherd, the door, the way, the truth, and the life, and so on. If Jesus indeed said such things, why on earth do we hear nothing of the kind in any of the other gospels? Isn't it rather because Jesus never made any such statements, but Christian devotion predicated all these things of him? John's Jesus is a crystallization of Johannine Christian devotion, and it has remained the favorite devotional gospel for that reason. This is an important distinction, ignored by C. S. Lewis and his imitators who like to bully the skeptic by asserting that "Jesus claimed to be God."’ (‘Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?’).
If you don’t know the truth of what he says then you have not studied your Bible well enough.
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You write: ‘Being BOTH "A" AND "B" isn't a contradiction. Unless you WANT to believe it is.
My brother Muhammad has written an admirable response to this statement (see Post 14). Allow me to approach the matter from a different angle. Let’s try a little game (anyone can join in):
Take your left hand and make a fist….as tight as you can. Let’s call this fist ‘A’.
Now spread your hand as wide as you can. Let’s call this ‘B’.
Now close and open; close and open; close and open; then close. Great! ‘A’, then ‘B’, then ‘A’; then ‘B’; then ‘A’.
Here we have a process, devoid of any logical contradiction. What, you may ask, is the essential ingredient that makes this process possible? Time. ‘A’ and ‘B’ are happening at different times.
The law of non-contradiction states that nothing (nothing at all) can be both ‘A’ and ‘not-A’ at one and the same time. We could substitute ‘not-A’ for ‘B’, of course, but let’s leave things as they are.
Okay, you have a clenched fist (‘A’). Now try and achieve both ‘A’ and ‘B’ at one and the same time (in effect, by removing time from the process). You can’t. Nobody can. This is the law of non-contradiction at work.
Do you ‘WANT to believe’ that your hand is both closed and open? Go ahead.
Now consider the doctrine of the ‘hypostatic union’:
You have a clenched fist (‘A’). Imagine that this is Yeshua; and that your open hand (‘B’) is the ‘Second Person of the Trinity’.
There is nothing illogical in saying that ‘A’ can switch to ‘B’ (or ‘B’ to ‘A’); and back again from one moment in time to another (just like opening and closing your fist). But that is not what the doctrine is saying.
The doctrine states that ‘A’ is both ‘A’ and ‘B’ at one and the same time. But we have shown that this can’t happen. It is a logical impossibility. The doctrine also says that ‘B’ is both ‘B’ and ‘A’ at one and the same time. Again, a logical impossibility.
The doctrine is a lie simply because it contains these logical contradictions. Anyone who believes otherwise is a victim of doublethink: ‘The act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct,’…(nowt to do with ‘Marxist-Leninism’, as you claim. Everything to do with logic).
By the way, doublethinkers are not trying to deceive. They really do believe that what they are saying is true. But it can’t be true….anymore than taking your clenched fist and spreading it wide…….while at the same time keeping it clenched can be true.
That’s the law of non-contradiction for you.
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You write: ‘All things are possible to God’; and again: ‘Second Person of the Trinity became flesh there was no change’
To state that ‘all things are possible to God’ is very bad theology. Here’s what one of your own (Matt Slick) has to say:
‘God cannot do everything. God is holy, and He cannot sin. The Bible tells us He cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18; Titus 1:2). Also, since God is eternal by nature (Psalm 90:2), He cannot stop being God. He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13). God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone with evil (James 1:13).
‘The truth is that God must be consistent with His own nature, and He cannot violate His own nature. Therefore, God cannot lie, cannot stop being God, cannot deny Himself, and cannot be tempted by evil. Why? Because He is God’. (Article in his Forum).
Slick is correct. But now, take a closer look at this: ‘The truth is that God must be consistent with His own nature, and He cannot violate His own nature’.
Slick, of course, is still correct.
Unfortunately, he believes (with you) that when the ‘Second Person of the Trinity became flesh there was no change’.
Water becomes ice. Change. Youth becomes age. Change. Day becomes night. Change. The ‘Second Person of the Trinity’ becomes flesh. No change. What???
Let’s see it again: ‘The truth is that God must be consistent with His own nature, and He cannot violate His own nature’.
The nature of God: He is spirit…………He is immutable…….He is infinite………He is omnipotent…………He is God!
The nature of man: He is corporeal…..He is mutable…….He is finite……..He is weak……..He is not God!
Question:
How could God (pure spirit) and absolutely immutable, become flesh without a change of nature?
Answer:
Not possible. It is not ‘consistent with His own nature’, and He ‘cannot violate His own nature.’
To believe that God can be both spirit and not-spirit at one at the same time makes him a logical contradiction (see above).
