Part I can be found here.
Men Who Became More Divine…In the Hebrew Bible?
As we’ve seen in the previous article, ancient pagans had the idea that men could be divinized, or exalted to a “more divine” status. Keep that concept in the back of your mind, because it will become quite pertinent when we come back around to Jesus, who was certainly depicted as “exalted”. We’re going to consider the strongest language in the Hebrew Bible that suggests that some of God’s sons among men might have been elevated higher in the divine continuum. But before we do, we should briefly consider again the ways that the Hebrew Bible presents God among the gods, so that we are not anachronistically projecting monotheism onto the ancients.
Scholars have long noted that the strongest monotheistic language does not appear until Isaiah.[1] You might think that the Decalogue of Exodus 20 was monotheistic, but notice the command is to have no other gods before God. It does not explicitly deny the existence of the other gods. The actual term for this is monolatry, the worship of one God, not the belief in one God. Monolatry was actually the radical idea that the Torah brought to the world. How ironic is it then that we should be struggling so with the second most radical idea that the Bible brought to the world, the worship of Jesus?
As we’ve seen with other examples, the strongest monotheistic language of Isaiah does not preclude even his belief in other divine beings, such as angels, cherubim, and seraphim.[2] We moderns should pause to ask ourselves how such a view of the divine realm and the beings that inhabit it differs from that of the pagans. The first objection that comes to your mind is probably that the ancient gods could act in very human ways which even we mere mortals would consider disgraceful. Firstly, though, we should recall that the Platonists were already rejecting such ideas of the gods around the time that the bulk of the Hebrew Bible was being penned, as I’ve already examined. Secondly, what do some biblical authors believe about what some angels did to get cast out of Heaven? Were they not engaging in the same activity that Zeus did when he saw a pretty girl he wanted? (See one article on the sexual nature of the angels’ sin here.)
And as I’ve noted before, the Hebrew Bible was more concerned with what you did, not as much as what one believed, a shift that we primarily only see in the writings of Paul and John, who focus quite a bit on doctrines that are to be believed, as obligatory for the faithful follower of God. But in the Torah especially, you simply followed the law, and you were good with God. There were virtually no creeds or statements of faith that one had to hold in order to be right before God. There was certainly an emphasis on the heart, and such important things as loving God and your fellow, but not on doctrines that one had to believe. Applying this principal to the topic at hand, it is entirely conceivable that ancient Hebrews could have worshipped God alone, per the instruction of Torah, and believed anything they liked about the existence of other divine beings. And even Christians today still believe in angels and demons, cherubim and seraphim. Not to mention a man who was exalted to the divine….
This is a great place for another one of my philosophical asides: from the viewpoint of a fundamentalist, it is even theoretically plausible that God has always met people where they are at, without trying to explain all eternal truths at once, or ever for that matter. How would flesh and blood, clay vessels, understand all the divine anyway? Why would Abraham and the rest of his idolatrous family, or Jacob and Rachel who stole her dad’s idols, need to understand some doctrine about the unique nature of God, if all God needed them to do was to obey his command to worship only him? In fact as we’ve seen, God’s messages are often sparce with detail about why he commands something, so long as it is obeyed. And, indeed, what was there to explain?! The idea that there is only one supreme God at the hierarchy of divine beings was at least as ancient as the 6th century BCE among even the pagans!
So now that we’ve seen that divinity in both the pagan and biblical realms of thought was not a binary trait, one which a being either had in full or not at all, let’s consider the evidence from the Hebrew Bible of whether men could in fact somehow become “more” divine.
Men in the Hebrew Bible Who Became more Like Angels?
I have heard some conservative Christians lament the common idea that people become angels when they die, since the Bible never says this explicitly. However, that idea is actually very ancient. In the apocalypse of 2 Baruch (c. 1st century CE), we see the belief that those who have obeyed God’s law will not only cease to age, but “will be made as the angels and be made equal to the stars;” indeed, their “excellence” will even surpass that of the angels.[3] Probably written a little before 2 Baruch, 2 Enoch 22 says that Enoch became indistinguishable from the “glorious ones”, and his face bright, and he no longer needed to eat or sleep.[4] The parallels to Moses should be obvious, whose face became so bright after talking with God on the mountain that he had to put a veil over his face, and who was on the mountain for 40 days without sustenance or water.[5] Although Moses later died like other men, and even though his death was not as special, perhaps, as God’s whisking away of Elijah or Enoch into the heavens, he was special in the sense that it was God who buried him in a secret place that no one knew. It should not surprise us that, by the 2nd century BCE, Sirach 45 concludes that God made Moses “equal in glory to the holy ones”.[6] In the very Bible itself, in Ezekiel 28, the king of Tyre is actually called a cherub, placed by God on the holy mountain of God; this is most likely figurative language representing just how exalted God had made him, but it is still powerful, possibly parallel to Moses, and I believe a likely reflection of the concept of “as above so below.”
There are biblical passages that show that Moses was clearly closer to God, which included his ability to speak to God face-to-face, despite seeing God’s face being lethal to mortals.[7] Of course, Exodus 33 seems to temper the view of Moses as slightly more divine by showing that he, too, will die if he sees God’s actual face, but unlike other men Moses gets to see the backside of God, for what that’s worth.
In chapter 4 above, I mentioned the passage in Psalm 8 where man is said to be a little lower than the elohim. The Hebrew here is ambiguous. As we’ve noted, elohim can refer to God, angels, and men! Obviously, since man is being compared, the question is whether he’s being compared to angels or God, or even the gods. So you will find that different translations seem forced to select one or another meaning. Language is affected by how we think, and since we have less of a conception of God and angels being so linked as the ancients, we have no word as they did that can be used for either the supreme God or other divine beings. The ESV wisely chooses “heavenly beings”, but as I’ve noted, elohim, when used for God, is used in the singular, so even the ESV has not totally sidestepped the difficulty of translation.
But Psalm 8 seems to be referring to how God originally made man, not to the possibility of his being made more divine, which is what this section is about, despite my asides. As I’ve noted, we have to go to extra-biblical sources to find explicit comments that Moses was made like the angels, despite some rather suggestive remarks about his glorious appearance, temporary suspension of the need for sustenance, and election by and closeness to God in the Hebrew Bible. But Jesus in Matthew 22 does make one curious comment regarding man becoming like the angels after death, even if it is only in regard to one trait, the lack of gender or the practice of marriage; Luke 20 adds that they are like the angels in that can nevermore die. But Hebrews 1 makes another curious comment about men and angels: though its main point is to show that Jesus is superior to angels, the final verse actually also adds the detail that the angels even serve those who are to inherit salvation, human beings. And I should not skip over Acts 12 either, where Rhoda claims to have seen Peter, who everyon thinks is still in prison; their response? “It is his angel.” What? Did they equate a human spirit with an angel?
And let’s not fail to notice that one of the reasons the book of Enoch chose its name was because the individual named Enoch in the Hebrew Bible was somehow close to God, for he “walked” with him.[8] Compare this to Adam, who walked with God initially, yet lost that privilege. Moses’ departure from Earth was similar to Enoch’s in the sense that God was directly involved; yet Enoch arguably received greater divine glory, for he was taken and “was not”: he did not die like Moses. Interestingly, when the author of the succession of Elisha[9] mirrored the succession details of Joshua and Moses, he selected an Enoch-like detail for Elijah’s departure as well, except Elijah did one better with his fiery horses and a fiery chariot.[10] But the detail most pertinent for our progression toward the New Testament treatment of Jesus as someone who ascended to Heaven is that Jesus was not the first to be so exalted to the divine realm, but the third. Some religious folks I know would argue that Jesus went to a different place, but I’ll be content just looking at the details of the actual literary portraits. I’ll leave further theological conclusions to them, and mainly stick to my irritating philosophical questions with no answer.
So we’ve seen hints in the Hebrew Bible of men appearing or being treated more divine than other men, and later works fleshing out the angelology that incorporates at least Moses and Enoch. And the Hebrew Bible managed to maintain that monolatry was the only legitimate form of worship in light of these beliefs; and certainly by the post-exilic period, monotheism was at least a developing view of biblical orthodoxy,[11] which became the view of the vast majority of Jews in the Roman era. I’ll come back to angelology below when we consider New Testament passages about Jesus, which should prove quite interesting.
For now, we have a few more examples to consider from the Hebrew Bible, regarding how a human could possibly become somehow more divine.
The use of “son of man” in Daniel 7 is certainly a passage we’ll come back to when we consider how the New Testament uses it for Jesus. But for now, I’d like to look at it in its original context by itself, and see evidence for how it was understood before the Christian era. Based on the details given, it seems obvious that this is a messianic figure, who receives dominion from The Ancient of Days, which is quite obviously a reference to God. After Daniel’s succession of empires, at least through the Greeks, this figure was to finally bring God’s rule over all the Earth. As we’ve noted, the Hebrew Bible almost always presents the Davidic messiah as simply a descendant of him. In other words, a man. A “son of man”, in the sense of being human. However, Daniel 7 intentionally chooses the term “son of man” that the other prophets use to speak of mere humans and yet applies it to one who comes with the clouds! (v.13) Who does God let ride the clouds[12] with him?[13]
Daniel leaves us with a lot of questions, but 1 Enoch[14] was quite willing to provide, well before the New Testament writers did so. In fact, 1 Enoch was so prolific on the topic of the Son of Man that I will only provide a sampling here. Enoch’s portrayal of the Son of Man has very clear parallels to Daniel 7, such as one who is accompanied by and chosen by the Ancient of Days, and who is involved in judgment of sinners and kings. But 1 Enoch provides a great deal more details. His countenance is full of grace, like one of the holy angels.[15] His name was named (invoked?) before creation,[16] leaving us to wonder if this is suggesting that he’s so divine that he was preexistent; regardless of what the author intended, by the time we get to the gospel of John, this is clearly believed of Jesus. Enoch’s Son of Man is a light to the Gentiles, a concept clearly used in the writings of Luke.[17] Enoch goes on to say that “All who dwell on the Earth will fall and worship before him, and will praise and bless and celebrate with song the Lord of Spirits.” Wait, what? Larry Hurtado has argued extensively in his books that this is the kind of obeisance the Jews could give to people in authority, especially kings, without it being considered the kind of worship rightfully reserved for YHVH. I would be interested in hearing from any expert in Ge’ez, the language of the text, as to what precisely is said here: some translations render it “worship”, while other say “bend the knee.” Regardless, as we’ve been seeing, there is much else to present some level of divinity in this Son of Man figure in 1 Enoch.
But there are other passages in the Hebrew Bible itself that might have helped first century Jews somehow accept that a man could have become God in some sense. We’ve been considering examples of how men seemed to be more like the angels in some way. But now we turn to perhaps the most overlooked suggestions that man could become more divine—overlooked not because they suggest that a few men somehow become more like angels, but that they could somehow become more like YHVH himself!
Men in the Hebrew Bible Who Became More Like God?!
Let’s return to Moses. One of the most jarring statements in the Hebrew Bible for a monotheist would have to be Exodus 4:16 and 7:1, at least if you don’t already have an interpretation of it that makes it consistent with monotheism. It literally says that Moses would be as God! Of course, the immediate context is in fact that Moses is speaking for God. But to grasp the full weight of what the author is trying to say, we should take into account the full account. Aaron will be like a prophet, as he will deliver the message to the people, but Moses will be like God because he will provide the message?! If the meaning here were simply that Aaron would do the talking because he was a better speaker, then surely the wording of the explanation need not have raised so many questions. Surely something else is going on here. At a minimum, Moses is being given a very special authority unlike any other man or even prophet. As I’ve already noted, Moses’ revelation is different than most other prophets just in the sense that he gives laws, when most other prophets exhort the people to follow that law, not some new revelation. His enduring elevated authority is seen when New Testament writers speak not just of the prophets, but of “Moses and the prophets.”[18] And in order to make the case for Jesus’ special elevation, Hebrews does not just say that he was superior to all prophets before (1:1), but singles out Moses especially, in chapter 3.
How did later writers understand language regarding Moses as in Exodus 4:16 and 7:1, before Christianity’s debates about the nature of Christ in relation to God were widespread? Philo gives us some of the strongest remarks regarding Moses being made more divine, even more like God himself, not just the angels. Though Philo is still a monotheist, and makes it clear that Moses is not the same as God,[19] he explicitly states that he became more divine.[20] How does Philo explain this? He sounds peculiarly like a second or third century Christian explaining the nature of Jesus in relation to God, yet Philo is writing between 40 to 49 CE, about Moses! When explaining how God advanced Moses to “higher degrees of improvement” by his word—the same Word with which he created the cosmos—Moses is advanced all the way up to God himself, yet he says that, “God is not susceptible of any subtraction or addition.”
And if you’re thinking you might have heard a hint of the beginning of John, we will come back to this below, as John does indeed sound remarkably like Philo. For now, just note that Philo even seems to be conceiving of Moses as preexistent, which would certainly be something John echoes regarding Jesus.[21]
So we’ve seen some pretty incredible elaborations of Biblical passages which suggest that Moses was closer to God than other mere mortals. But there is one more person in the Hebrew Bible who gets special elevation from YHVH, and that is the son of David.[22] Similar to the way Moses is portrayed as predicting a prophet to come after him to whom the people must listen,[23] David is promised that a son of his will establish God’s kingdom on Earth, but there is one comment that most moderns probably miss: God significantly says that “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.”[24] This is precisely the concept of how other kings of the ancient world were considered divine, even gods. This is not merely the sonship of God that all mankind is said to possess, or even Israel herself, but an even more special sonship.
I believe that the Psalms are an often overlooked portal into the earliest understandings of Torah and the prophets. These five collections of books of ancient hymns developed many interpretations and prophetic statements which had great influence over what Judaism would become, and even Christianity. And this is especially true regarding one of their most important understandings of Scripture: the hope in the future king who would finally establish God’s kingdom on Earth. So we should not be surprised to find that the promise of a son of David who was still to come was elaborated on in the Psalms.
Psalm 89 is a great example of portraying God as among the gods/elohim, as we examined in the above section, and it also portrays God as crushing a mythical sea monster named Rahab,[25] a common pagan understanding of how the world came to be, and how good and evil exist. The difference is that in the pagan myths, it was a cosmic struggle, while in the Hebrew understanding of God, there was probably no contest: God conquered chaos, whether it was the void of the earth during creation, when it only took his word to bring order, or whether it was his control of all kings of the earth, even when he was using them to punish his own chosen Israel. I plan to expound on the Hebrew Bible’s use of ancient myth to portray its God as far superior in the next book in the series, but for now I just want to establish the context of the message of Psalm 89, as it is important for understanding its message regarding the son of David. God is the greatest in heaven and earth, among the elohim, and on earth he will eventually establish, what? A rule that will have no end, whose king will be the son of David. How will this man be different from other men? He will not just be made the son of God, as in 2 Samuel 7, but YHVH promises to make “him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth!” The end of the hymn gives us even more context: the author is living in a time when the dynasty of David has ended, and they are pleading with God to answer: how long O Lord will you forsake the Davidic covenant? In other words, the author is still holding out hope for this future son of God to come and establish God’s rule.
Let’s pause for a moment and consider this in light of the question of how Jesus could come to be considered God. Of course the New Testament references this psalm, or at least alludes to its ideas.[26] Secular scholars often try to make out as if the Davidic Messiah they were waiting for were only a man, and not divine. It is of course entirely plausible that many Jews believed that the Messiah would be merely a man, but to conclude that everyone did would be to ignore these incredible passages. This is an anachronistic view that projects even modern Christian views of the stark separation of man and the divine onto the ancient texts, and yet it is often secular scholars that do it. God could indeed elevate men in divine status in the eyes of some authors of the Hebrew Bible, and these passages are highly suggestive. In other words, the prophetic seed for Christ-worship was already there, even if there were other additional causes of its development. Below we’ll see how many modern scholars largely ignore this, but for now, let’s see some more prophecy about the anticipated son of David.
Psalm 2 is especially significant. Not only was David declared to be God’s firstborn, the highest of all the kings of the Earth, but he was also “begotten” of God. What does it mean to be “born” of God? I don’t know, but it seems perfectly plausible that some would interpret it as the son of David becoming more divine. We know for a fact, actually, that that is exactly what happened with Jesus. This passage is cited in Acts 13:33 and Hebrew 1:5 and 5:5. There are of course debates about how divine the original authors of the New Testament thought Jesus as we’ll explore more below, but no debate about whether he was at least exalted to some extent, whether based on a “high” or “low Christology.”
I’ve been mentioning New Testament interpretation, but would also like to pause and view things from a more ancient perspective. How would a post-exilic Jew before Jesus interpret past events in light of such passages? That they were waiting on something pretty special is evinced quite incredibly in both the Hebrew Bible and in other sacred texts before Christ, as I’ve been citing. But we should also not forget how Hebrew prophecy worked, as it was not just concerned with future fulfillments: the special typological prophetic fulfillments before the future one for the Davidic messiah are plainly seen in the narratives surrounding key sons of David, especially Josiah and Solomon, as I’ve already explained. Before Matthew 17 gave us the transfiguration where Jesus went up a mountain and his face shone like Moses and God’s voice declared his sonship and authority, we have the story of Solomon dedicating the Temple on mount Moriah, the new dwelling place of God instead of the Tabernacle that Moses built, when a cloud descended, ostensibly to indicate the presence of God, and fire from heaven consumed the sacrifices. And these compilations containing the accounts from 1 Kings 9 and 2 Chronicles 7 were completed after the exile. Once again, how were the ancients to understand such stories in light of the entire world’s view of how gods made kings their sons and thus more divine? Such a view did not at all conflict with strict monolatry as commanded by the Torah; and as I’m trying to argue, it also did not conflict with even the monotheism in Isaiah, a view that included a continuum of divinity populated by God at the top, but also lesser divine beings toward the middle, and even with the idea that man could somehow get up into that continuum.
Let’s consider a few more passages regarding just how elevated “the son of David” could be, even before Jesus, because I believe the level of exaltation of these is often overlooked today, even by believing lovers of Scripture, because of our modern views of the separation between the divine and man.[27]
Zechariah 12 says something similar to the passage that Moses will be like God. It says that on the day when God begins to bring Salvation, “the house” of David would be like God, like the angel of YHVH. In fact, this section of Zechariah says some pretty incredible things, though often cryptic, which Christians have often used to defend their case for Jesus as Christ. I would not include this sampling of them in this section here, except that they actually seem to relate to Zechariah’s view of the coming Davidic Messiah being like God: but make of them what you will. Again, this is not an apology for Christianity, but only an attempt to understand the author. I would also like to point out before enumerating these details that the context is prediction both of Jerusalem’s destruction and salvation, of the judgment of her rulers and the final establishment of YHWH’s rule. It sounds like the author is vacillating, but I would argue that he is intentionally creating this seeming dichotomy for a purpose. In Zechariah 11, in the midst of God’s pronouncement of judgment on the evil shepherds who consume the flock, it seems that the prophet is made shepherd, “doomed to be slaughtered by the sheep traders.” Is this a riff off of the Joseph story? (More of how the Hebrew authors riffed in the next book of this series.) But the prophet not only brings judgment on those evil shepherds, but annuls the covenant. Then the prophet says to the bad shepherds “if it seems good to you, give me my wages,” which I would argue is a reference to the Jacob story where he requests wages from Laban, as shepherd.[28] This passage is quite cryptic, and gets even more so, leaving the New Testament writers several details to apply to Jesus, whether they invented them or not: “And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. Then YHVH said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of YHVH, to the potter.” Fast forward back into chapter 12, where we have the statement that David will be like God and the angel of YHVH, we have not only a cryptic statement, but one which actually begs the question: how can YHVH be pierced? And why does Zechariah repeat the motif found in Scripture of the mourning for the only child/firstborn?[29] It was on this day of mourning that (moving into chapter 13) a fountain would be opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin, when the idols would finally be cut off from the land, and prophets too. More cryptic statements follow regarding wounds from friends, striking of the shepherd and the sheep scattering, etc., but these will do for now. I just want to emphasize that Zechariah’s comment about the house of David becoming like God is couched in a prophecy about a special coming great day of the Lord, when the unrighteous shepherds will be severely punished, and God’s king will finally rule with power, and do something about God’s broken covenant and the sins of Israel, specifically in Jerusalem.
What about other passages that seem to exalt the son of David, even up to the right hand of God? Some have argued that Psalm 45:6-8 may be addressing the king as “God”.[30] But there is no doubt here that the king has been anointed “beyond” his companions. However, Isaiah 9:6-7 does in fact do this explicitly, saying that the child born to us, upon whose shoulders authority rests, is named “Mighty God,” and even “Everlasting Father.” It is easy enough to see how Christians would have applied this to Jesus, even more so considering the context that Isaiah is speaking of Galilee of the Gentiles, where the peoples walking in darkness see a great light.[31] Many scholars see this as probably believed to refer to Hezekiah before Jesus was born. Regardless, it is a definite reference to a man becoming more divine in some sense. And finally, we have Psalm 110, attributed to David, which plainly says that “YHVH says to my Lord”, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” This is clearly a throne beside God’s throne, sharing the glory of God, though the anointed one sitting in it is clearly a different individual from God. Psalm 110 is quoted quite a bit in the New Testament to help people understand that a man, Jesus, could somehow become divine.[32] And the logical question is there raised, who is David speaking of when he mentions this other lord? How can his own descendant be his lord?
To continue this chapter on how Jesus could be considered God in a monotheistic, Jewish setting, check out my book here.
[1] E.g., 45:22-23. As I’ve already examined, many scholars place Isaiah 40 and following chapters in the 6th century, not the 8th century when Isaiah actually lived. But even if you believe the whole book was written in the 8th century, this is many centuries after when the biblical chronology places the first giving of the Mosaic Torah.
[2] See Isaiah 6, for example.
[3] 51.7-12
[4] 37.2, 23.3, 56.2
[5] Exodus 34:27-35
[6] “Holy ones” is biblical terminology for angels, e.g., Deuteronomy 33:2, 3. And like “elohim”, when “holy one” is used in the singular, of course it refers to God, e.g., 2 Kings 19:22. There even seems to be implicit reference to inefficacy of praying to angels in the reference to the holy ones in Job 5:1, but this is not made explicit.
[7] Exodus 33:11-23.
[8] Genesis 5:18-24
[9] 2 Kings 2
[10] I’m not sure where the 1981 instrumental piece (or the movie that it was written for) “Chariots of Fire” got its name, but if it was given by a similar divine muse as the one who entered the author of the Elijah story, then I still don’t think my birth that year has any providential meaning. Perhaps God is a Bob Marley fan, who died that year, as fiery chariots are for leaving this Earth, not births. But there’s always that London 2012 performance at the Olympic Games where Mr. Bean gives his interpretation, which makes me wonder….
[11] No, I do not believe it anachronistic to speak of orthodoxy in addition to orthopraxy in pre-Christian times. Of course people have always had views about what was proper belief, not just practice, before Christianity, even if Christianity would later take the requirements of orthodoxy to a whole new level.
[12] Cf. Psalm 68:4
[13] It is also interesting that Daniel is one of the few lengthier books of the Hebrew Bible after David’s time to not mention David explicitly, despite its clear focus on some sort of messiah figure.
[14] I’m here speaking of 1 Enoch as if it was a single work. But it was highly composite, with clear evidence that its different sections came from different sources. In fact, the Son of Man references are only found in one section. And no fragments from this section were found at Qumran. In other words, just because the Qumran library seemed to be quite keen on the book of Enoch, we do not actually know if they had this section, along with its doctrines regarding the Son of Man. Also pertinent to the present discussion, this section of Enoch regarding the Son of Man is believed to have been written approximately a century before the birth of Jesus, and it appears to be highly influential among apocalyptic-minded Jews of Jesus’ day, especially some of those who gave us the New Testament.
[15] 1 Enoch 46
[16] 48.1-10
[17] Luke uses such terminology in the birth narrative of Jesus in Luke 2:32 and after the resurrection in Acts 26:23. And his followers were to do the same, Acts 13:47. But his image of light to the nations/Gentiles is also found in Isaiah 42:6 and 60:3.
[18] E.g., Luke 16:29-31
[19] That the Worse is Wont to Attack the Better, 160-162. For all these references to the works of Philo, I am using the complete collection of his works translated by C.D. Yonge, which contains these line numbers.
[20] On the Birth of Abel and the Sacrifices Offered by Him and by His Brother Cain, 8-10
[21] Ibid. “When he gave him the use of all earthly things and suffered him to dwell among them….” Another translation is even more explicit, “And even when God sent him as a loan to the earthly sphere and caused him to dwell there,” as quoted by Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, ch. 2.
[22] This is not a Christian apologetic, as you’ll find much (but not all) of this analysis right there in Ehrman, ibid., who is an agnostic; his views are fairly well accepted in the scholarly community today. At least for the moment.
[23] And interestingly, it is in the singular, even though it could have very well been interpreted as referring to all of YHVH’s prophets that followed. However, I would argue that the author intends to look forward to a future, great prophet, as he specifically says that God promises to send a prophet “like you”, that is, like Moses. Deuteronomy 18:15-19. Again, the author is probably writing in the post-exilic period, when most Jews were waiting on a pretty incredible king to return and save Israel, as I’ve been demonstrating.
[24] 2 Samuel 7:12-17
[25] See also Isaiah 51:9-10 and Job 26:12.
[26] E.g., Colossians 1:15; Revelation 1:5
[27] I keep using the masculine because there is no doubt about women: of course they were the pinnacle in the Genesis creation account, with man only being the penultimate creature….
[28] Genesis 30
[29] I go into this in much more detail elsewhere.
[30] How Jesus Became God¸ by Bart Ehrman, ch. 2
[31] E.g., Matthew 4:15
[32] Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42, 43; Acts 2:34-35