If you claim that Jesus is God then you are guilty of making God into a man. You are an idol worshiper!

We believe that the eternally preexistent Son of God, through whom the universe was made, came forth from God his Father and was clothed with human flesh, making himself known to us as Yeshua the Messiah. He lived on this earth, died, rose from the dead, and returned to his Father. He now sits enthroned in heaven next to God.

We understand that Jesus, the Son of God, is the very image of God, the one in whom God caused his fullness to dwell, the one through whom he revealed himself completely to mankind. Since the Son came forth from the Father and shares his divine nature, in one sense it is quite correct to say that Jesus is God (or divine or deity), always bearing in mind that the overwhelming testimony of the New Testament writings is that Jesus is the Son of God. I can show you from the Hebrew Scriptures that there is absolutely nothing idolatrous about what we believe. God has always revealed himself to his people. He did it most permanently and most fully through Jesus his Son.

The question of the deity of Jesus—is he or is he not God—is one of the most important issues a traditional Jew and a Jewish follower of Jesus can possibly discuss. Emotions run high over this, and misunderstanding is the rule not the exception. The objections raised here are sometimes crude, such as, “Your god wore diapers. Our God sits enthroned in heaven.” At other times, they are more sophisticated, such as, “You say, ‘Jesus is God,’ the Bible says, ‘God is not a man’ (Num. 23:19), therefore, your faith is contrary to the Bible.” There is even a Rabbinic precedent for this argument that claims that Numbers 23:19 was uttered “because Balaam foresaw that a certain man would lead mortals astray by claiming to be God.”²⁸ How can we respond to these objections in a rational and honest way?

It’s only fair to say that I fully understand how our faith may look to someone viewing it from the outside. It may seem that the Jesus of Christianity is no different than some guru, holy man, or deluded religious fanatic claiming to be god. In fact, in March of 1996 I was scheduled to be in the city of Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh, India, a city famous for its worship of Satya Sai Baba, a so-called god-man. Therefore, I read this report, filed in December 1995 by Paul Murphy for the Religion News Service, with special interest:

Followers of Sai Baba regard the Hindu leader, who was born in 1926, as the reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi and as personification of the Hindu divinities Shiva and Shakti. According to Michael Goldstein, who led the American mission [that visited Sai Baba’s headquarters in Puttaparthi, India, in November 1995], “The beautiful, pure, profound grace one gets in his presence is testimony to his all-knowing love.”

Now, when I read something like that I say, “That’s absurd. Some man living in India is not God.” And when I see that it was presumably a Jew (Michael Goldstein) who led the delegation to worship Sai Baba, I feel even more grieved. “How could a Jew believe such a thing?”

“Exactly!” you say. “That’s how I feel when I hear that you people worship Jesus. Such things are off limits for us as Jews.” Well, let’s talk it over and see what the Bible says. If our beliefs in Yeshua are just like people’s beliefs in Sai Baba, then we’re completely off base. But if our beliefs are thoroughly biblical, even answering many questions and filling in gaps found in the Rabbinic literature, then you’re going to have to do some fresh, serious thinking. So let me explain precisely what we believe. I’ll start by repeating a famous Jewish quote: “No one has ever seen God.”

Do you know who wrote those words? It was none other than John (or Yochanan, as he would have been known to his family and friends), the Jewish fisherman who became one of Jesus’ most loyal followers and, to be quite candid, one of the most spiritual Jewish teachers the world has ever known. He made several significant statements in his important book that we know today as the Gospel (or Good News) according to John.

Before explaining that “no man has ever seen God,” he wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:1–2). Whoever this “Word” was, he was uniquely related to God. John says twice that he was with God in the beginning, and yet he also says that he was God. Then John explains, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3). This preexistent “Word” did not make all things himself; rather, all things were made through him. That is reminiscent of Paul’s teaching quoted in the previous answer: “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus [the Messiah], through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Cor. 8:6; see also Heb. 1:2). So all things came from God, the Father, and through Jesus the Messiah, called “the Word” by John.

Now, think back to the creation account in Genesis 1. What does it say there? How did God create the universe? He created all things by his spoken word. Over and over we read, “And God said …” For example, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen. 1:3); “and God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’ And it was so” (Gen. 1:9). In fact, Psalm 33:6 states, “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.” So God made all things through his word. In Genesis 1, the emphasis is on God’s spoken word; in John 1, the emphasis is on the Word “himself”—a divine entity, with God and yet God. What does this actually mean?

Let’s ask an obvious question: Why did God speak when he created the universe? Why didn’t he “just do it” without utterance or sound? To whom or for whom was he speaking? Was there even a language that he used? It seems clear that there was a creative, dynamic force to his words, a power and energy in his command, a tangible release of his divine life. He spoke, and it was so. His word was an extension of his nature, an expression of his will—alive, powerful, and effective—not just letters, syllables, and sounds. There is a vibrant quality to his word!

Now, look at these verses from the Tanakh, not twisted or taken out of context in any way. Each of them speaks of the divine word being sent on a mission.

Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,

and he saved them from their distress.

He sent forth his word and healed them;

he rescued them from the grave.

Psalm 107:19–20

As the rain and the snow

come down from heaven,

and do not return to it

without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is my word that goes out from my mouth:

It will not return to me empty,

but will accomplish what I desire

and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:10–11

He sends his command to the earth;

his word runs swiftly.

He spreads the snow like wool

and scatters the frost like ashes.

He hurls down his hail like pebbles.

Who can withstand his icy blast?

He sends his word and melts them;

he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow.

Psalm 147:15–18

What is the significance of these statements? They are just another way of explaining how God, the invisible Spirit, carries out his will on earth. It is by his word. This is how he communicates with us, and this is how he reveals himself. On the one hand, he has done this through the Bible, his written Word. We learn his will through his Word, and his Word reveals his nature and character to us. (Read Psalm 119 for many statements about this.) We know God through his Word. His Word is even worthy of praise: “In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me?” (Ps. 56:4).

But there’s more. The most common Hebrew expression for “word” is davar, which can mean “word, thing, matter, affair.” There is content and reality to one’s “words.” The simple analogy of Old Testament scholar G. A. F. Knight is worth citing:

In a children’s comic, the words that people utter are usually written with a line ringing them round and are connected by another line with the mouth of the speaker. Their words have a very objective and solid look about them, framed as they are on the comic strip. You feel that the contents of the frame are now out of the speakers in actuality, that words that came out as thin sounds have condensed like steam into very tangible clouds, and that it is now too late to do anything about them. You cannot push the words back into the mouths of the speakers—they have solidified and become objectified. You can only deal with them for good or for evil. So also in the OT. Once a word, coming from the heart of man or God, is uttered, it condenses, so to speak, and becomes objective, it becomes a thing [see, e.g., Genesis 27].²⁹

The rabbis took this one step further. Since God was often perceived as somehow “untouchable,” it was necessary to provide some kind of link between the Lord and his earthly creation. One of the important links in Rabbinic thought was “the Word,” called memraʾ in Aramaic (from the Hebrew and Aramaic root, “to say” [ʾmr], the root used throughout the creation account in Genesis 1, when God said and the material world came into existence). We find this memraʾ concept hundreds of times in the Aramaic Targums, the translations and paraphrases of the Hebrew Scriptures that were read in the synagogues before, during, and after the time of Jesus. These Targums arose because, in some locations, many of the Jewish people no longer understood Hebrew. Instead, they grew up speaking and reading Aramaic, so they could follow the public reading of the Scripture only with Aramaic translation.

To use Genesis 3:8 as an example, most of the people who were listening to the public reading of the Scriptures would not have understood the Hebrew, which said, “And they heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden.” Rather, they would have understood the Targum, which said, “And they heard the sound of the Word of the Lord God walking in the midst of the garden.” What a difference an extra “word” makes! To speak of the Lord walking in the garden seemed too familiar, too down to earth. So the Targum made an adjustment: It was not the Lord who was walking in the garden, it was the memraʾ (Word) of the Lord! This Word was not just an “it”; this Word was a him.³⁰

Now, I want you to look carefully at the following verses. The translation of the Hebrew text is followed immediately by the translation of the Aramaic Targum. Keep in mind when reading that these Targums were the official translations used in the synagogues. Therefore, the Targums took on great significance in the religious life of the people, just as English versions of the Bible take on great significance for English speakers today. Here are several examples:

Genesis 1:27	God created man.	The Word of the Lord created man. (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan)
Genesis 6:6–7	And it repented the Lord that he made man on the earth.	And it repented the Lord through his Word that he made man on the earth.
Genesis 9:12	And God said, “This is the sign that I set for the covenant between me and you.”	And the Lord said, “This is the sign that I set for the covenant between my Word and you.”
Genesis 15:6	And Abraham believed in the Lord.	And Abraham believed in the Word of the Lord.
Genesis 20:3	And God came to Abimelech.	And the Word from before the Lord came to Abimelech.
Genesis 31:49	May the Lord keep watch between you and me.	May the Word of the Lord keep watch between you and me.
Exodus 14:31	And they believed in the Lord.	And they believed in the Word of the Lord.
Exodus 20:1	And the Lord spoke all these words.	And the Word of the Lord spoke all these words.
Exodus 25:22	And I will meet with you there.	And I will appoint my Word for you there.31
Leviticus 26:9	And I will turn to you.	And I will turn through my Word to do good to you.
Numbers 10:35	Rise up, O Lord!	Rise up, O Word of the Lord!
Numbers 10:36	Return, O Lord!	Return, O Word of the Lord!
Numbers 11:23	Is the hand of the Lord shortened?	Is the Word of the Lord detained?
Numbers 14:35	I the Lord have spoken.	Is the Lord decreed through my Word.
Deuteronomy 1:26	And you rebelled against the mouth of the Lord your God.	And you rebelled against the Word of the Lord your God.
Deuteronomy 1:30	The Lord your God who goes before you, he himself will fight for you.	The Lord your God who leads before you, his Word will fight for you.
Deuteronomy 18:19	I myself will require it of him.	My Word will require it of him.
Deuteronomy 31:3	The Lord your God will pass before you.	The Lord your God, his Word will pass before you.
Joshua 1:5	As I was with Moses I will be with you.	As my Word was in support of Moses, so my Word will be in your support.
Judges 11:10	The Lord will be witness between us.	The Word of the Lord will be witness between us.
Isaiah 45:17	Israel will be saved by the Lord.	Israel will be saved by the Word of the Lord.

As if these examples aren’t enough (and there are many more), just consider Genesis 28:20–21, Jacob’s vow. In Hebrew, it reads, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s house, then the Lord will be my God.” The Targum says, “If the Word of the Lord will be with me … then the Word of the Lord will be my God.” The Word of the Lord will be Jacob’s God! And this was read in the synagogues for decades, if not centuries. Week in and week out, the people heard about this walking, talking, creating, saving, delivering Word, this Word who was Jacob’s God.

Risto Santala, a Finnish Christian scholar fluent in Hebrew and Rabbinic sources, summarizes the combined evidence from the Targums: “ ‘The Lord’s Memra will be my God’; ‘I will save them through their God, the Lord’s memraʾ; Abraham was justified through the Memra; the Memra gave Israel the Law; Moses prayed to the Memra; Israel was justified through the memraʾs instrumentality and the Memra even created the world.”³² In fact, according to Targum Neofiti, representing important, early traditions, man was created in the image of the memraʾ of the Lord! Consider also Targum Pseudo-Jonathan—a Targum printed in all Rabbinic Bibles (called Mikraʾot Gedolot). Deuteronomy 4:7 in the Hebrew reads, “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?” The Targum instead says, “The Memra of Yahweh sits upon his throne high and lifted up and hears our prayer whenever we pray before him and make our petitions.” That is just some of the Targumic concept of “the Word.”

Now, let’s go back to the profound truths that open the Gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men” (John 1:1–4). This is sounding quite Jewish! (Try rereading this with “the memraʾ ” in place of “the Word” and “him.” It becomes even clearer.)

Of course, even though John as a Galillean Jew would have been completely familiar with the Aramaic concept of the memraʾ, he wrote his Gospel in Greek, and the Greek expression he used for “word” was logos. Interestingly, Philo of Alexandria, the greatest Jewish philosopher of the day and a man who was, roughly speaking, a contemporary of Jesus, had much to say about the logos. As explained in The Oxford Dictionary of Jewish Religion:

Although in a sense an aspect of the Divine, the Logos often appears as a separate entity, namely, a half-personal emanation of God. The concept was appropriated by Philo in order to bridge the gap between the transcendent God of Judaism and the divine principle experienced by human beings. This view of the Logos as a mediating principle between God and material creation could link up with biblical references to the creative “Word of God,” by which the heavens were made (Ps. 33:6) and with the concept of meimra (Aram.; “word”) in Targum literature (especially as it appears in Targum Onkelos).³³

Although Philo spoke of the logos more than fourteen hundred times in his writings, there are a few examples that are especially important. To quote New Testament scholar Larry Hurtado:

Philo calls the Logos “the second god” (ton deuteron theon) and states that the “God” in whose image Adam was created in Gen 1:27 is actually the Logos, which the rational part of the soul resembles. It is impossible (according to Philo) to think of anything earthly being a direct image of God himself …[and] Philo also calls the Logos “mediator” (mesites).³⁴

Philo also refers to the logos as “firstborn” (protogonon), “archangel,” “Name of God,” and “governor and administrator of all things,” stating that the “Divine Word” (theios logos) is the “chief” of God’s powers.³⁵ The unique revelation that John is bringing is that this Word (Hebrew, davar; Aramaic, memraʾ; Greek, logos) actually became flesh and made his dwelling among us.³⁶ “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus came to bring God near! The logos became flesh and blood.

While Philo’s description of the logos may have been philosophical, speaking of divine attributes in highly personified terms,³⁷ John’s usage was very real. Through Jesus, the living Word, God made himself known. The memraʾ/Logos, an extension of the Lord himself—in one sense God and in another sense with God—came down among us.

If John simply wrote, “God became a human being,” that would have given a false impression, leading one to think that the Lord was no longer filling the universe or reigning in heaven, having abandoned his throne to take up residence here. Instead, John tells us that it was the divine Word that became a human being, and through the Word we know God personally.

You may say, “All of this is a little difficult to understand.” Maybe so, but the Rabbinic concepts of the memraʾ, Shekhina, and Sefirot are a little difficult to understand too. The fact is, as we keep emphasizing, God cannot be put into a little box. But this much is sure. Objections such as “Your god wore diapers” are as worthless as they sound and completely miss the point. So let’s get back to John 1. Things will keep getting clearer as we go along.

We pointed to the important expression in John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The Greek verb for “made his dwelling” literally means “lived in a tent,” and to carry out the imagery here, we could say that God pitched his tent among us and temporarily settled in our midst through Jesus the Messiah.

Let’s examine this in more depth. When Solomon dedicated the Temple of the Lord he said, “The Lord has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud; I have built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever” (2 Chron. 6:1–2). Solomon had constructed a gorgeous, physical building for God to dwell in, an earthly “house” for the Lord. (In Hebrew, the Temple is often referred to as a “house.”) Of course, Solomon understood the limitations of such a building: “But will God really dwell on earth with men? The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple [Hebrew, house] I have built!” (2 Chron. 6:18).

Still, he knew the promise God had given to Israel through Moses: “Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them” (Exod. 25:8). The God whom the heavens could not contain would dwell in the midst of his people in the Tabernacle and Temple. How? He would “pitch his tent” among them. (Remember that the Tabernacle was literally an elaborate tent.) That’s exactly how the Septuagint put it in 2 Chronicles 6:1–2. It translated the words dwell in both verses with the Greek verb “to pitch a tent”—the very word that John used in 1:14!

So just as God “pitched his tent” in the midst of his people Israel through the Tabernacle and Temple—while remaining God in heaven and filling the universe with his presence—so he pitched his tent among us through his Son—while remaining God in heaven and filling the universe with his presence. As one Catholic scholar put it, Jesus is the replacement of the ancient Tabernacle.³⁸

This is the ultimate answer to the question of the Talmudic rabbis, Jewish philosophers, and medieval mystics as to how Almighty God could dwell in our midst: He came to us through his Word, Yeshua the Son of God. In a very real sense, God was in his Temple, and in a very real sense, God was in his Son. The glory of God filled them both, and the glory of God was manifested in both.

When the Tabernacle of Moses was completed, the Torah says, “Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exod. 40:34–35). When the Temple of Solomon was completed, the Scripture says, “When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it” (2 Chron. 7:1–2). And when Jesus the Messiah walked the earth, John records, “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14).

As he went around healing the sick, raising the dead, having compassion on the weak and helpless, setting the captives free, comforting the afflicted, lifting the burdens of the oppressed, demonstrating the Father’s love and making his truth known, he manifested the glory of God. Paul also spoke of this: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of [the Messiah]” (2 Cor. 4:6). When we see Messiah’s “face,” we see the glory of God.

At this point, before we go any further and provide other examples from the Tanakh and Rabbinic literature, let’s listen to more of what the New Testament says about Jesus-Yeshua our glorious Messiah:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

Hebrews 1:1–3

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.… For in [Messiah] all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.

Colossians 1:15–19, 2:9

Not a single word here could be called “idolatrous.” In fact, even the concept of God’s “fullness” dwelling in the Messiah in bodily form presents no problem when properly understood.³⁹ For just as the glory of God filled the Tabernacle and Temple without in any way emptying, depleting, or lessening God, so also his glory filled his Son, without in any way emptying, depleting, or lessening him. Isaiah 6:3 also teaches that the whole earth is filled with his glory, while in the New Testament, it is written that the church—the worldwide congregation of true believers in Yeshua—is “the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Eph. 1:23). Does this diminish God?

The fullness of the Father filled Jesus the Son, who “is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3), and when we see Jesus, we see God. The Son is the Father’s mirror image.

Now John’s words are becoming crystal clear: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1:18 RSV). Or as translated by New Testament scholar G. R. Beasley-Murray, “God no one has ever seen. The only Son, by nature God, who is ever close to the Father’s heart, has brought knowledge of him.”⁴⁰

Shortly before his death, Jesus had this dialogue with his disciples:

If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”

John 14:7–11

Whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father. Do you understand?

Let’s look back to Jewish tradition for a moment. What were some of the Rabbinic answers to the question of how a human being could see the Lord and live? According to Exodus 33:20, God said to Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Yet in Exodus 24:9–11, less than ten chapters earlier, we read, “Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up [Mount Sinai] and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.”

How can this be explained? Abraham Ibn Ezra interpreted the text to mean that they saw God in a prophetic vision. Then why did God tell them in 24:1 to actually go up the mountain to the Lord, remaining at a distance from him while Moses alone drew near? And why does the text point out that God did not lift his hand against them, as would have been expected? Obviously, this was far more than a prophetic vision.

The Targum also had a problem with these verses and could not translate them directly,⁴¹ rendering instead, “They saw the glory of the God of Israel … they saw the glory of the Lord.”⁴² Yet the text says, “They saw the God of Israel … they saw God.” What is the answer? Let’s keep looking at the texts. There’s more evidence to consider.

According to a story in the Talmud (b. Sanhedrin 38b), a man identified as a schismatic—here a clear reference to a Jewish follower of Jesus—was talking to a rabbi about Exodus 24:1, the beginning of the passage we are looking at, in which God said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord [Hebrew, YHWH].” It seems that they were having a discussion similar to our own! The Jewish believer was trying to argue that it seemed odd that God said to Moses, “Come up to YHWH,” rather than, “Come up to me.” Didn’t this seem to indicate more than one divine Person? (It was as if I said to you in a conversation, “You should call Mike Brown,” instead of, “You should call me.”)

Now, the rabbi could have simply replied, “Such usage is not that unusual in the Hebrew Bible.” Instead, because he too sensed that there were some theological issues to be addressed, the rabbi answered that God was not speaking here of himself but rather of Metatron, the most powerful angel in Rabbinic literature, “whose name is as his Master.” In other words, when God said, “Come up to YHWH,” he did not mean, “Come up to me” but “Come up to Metatron whose name is YHWH.” So according to this Talmudic interpretation, Metatron was called YHWH! Talk about going to all kinds of lengths to avoid the obvious.⁴³

The simple fact is that when God said, “Come up to the Lord,” that’s exactly what he meant. He was inviting Moses to come into his very own presence—not merely that of an angel.

“Well,” you might say, “what about Exodus 3. Doesn’t that chapter equate seeing the angel of the Lord with seeing God?” You’re getting very close! The relevant verses read:

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

Exodus 3:1–6

How does Targum Onkelos translate the end of verse 6? Moses “was afraid to look beside the glory of the Lord.” Once again, the Targum found it impossible to say what the Scripture said. It was too direct, too clear. Another Targum, called Pseudo-Jonathan, took this even further, translating that Moses was afraid to look at “the glory of the Shekhina of the Lord.”

This is reminiscent of the Targum’s rendering of Exodus 25:8. The Hebrew says, “Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.” The Targum renders, “… and my Shekhinah will dwell in their midst.”⁴⁴ It seems that there is a clear pattern emerging. And notice how the text in Exodus 3 completely intertwines the angel of the Lord with the Lord himself: The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in the flaming bush, but the Lord saw that Moses went over to look, so God called to him from within the bush, and Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. It seems that God was somehow “in” this angel (remember that the Hebrew word for angel simply means “messenger”) and that seeing the angel was equated with seeing God.

According to the Jewish biblical scholar Nahum Sarna, “From several texts it is clear that the demarcation between God and his angel is often blurred [citing examples from Gen. 16:7–9, 11;11–12, 15–18; Exod. 3:2, 4; Judg. 6:11–23]. At the Exodus from Egypt it is now God (Exod. 13:21), now his angel (14:9) who goes ahead of the Israelite camp.”⁴⁵

And how does Sarna account for the doctrine of angels (called angelology) in ancient Israel? He offers three scholarly views. One view is to see Israelite angelology as borrowing from Near Eastern mythology, hardly a compelling view for Bible believers. “Another view regards the angel as the personified extension of God’s will, or the personification of his self-manifestation. A third theory sees the angel as a conceptual device to avoid anthropomorphism [i.e., speaking of God in human terms]. He serves as a mediator between the transcendent God and His mundane world.”⁴⁶

Now, if we look beyond Sarna’s rational, slightly technical explanation—since he is trying to explain in human terms how and why the ancient biblical authors “came up” with the concept of angels—we can see at once that he is saying much of what we are saying. Angels can appear as “the personification of his self-manifestation”—i.e., as the concrete, visible embodiment of the glorious God—and angels can serve as mediators “between the transcendent God and His mundane world.” This is particularly true in certain key passages, in which it is clear that we are not dealing with any ordinary angel but with one who is especially identified with the Lord. Once again, this teaching explains how the infinite and invisible God can interact with finite, earthly people.

Let’s look at Genesis 32:24–30. We read that in the midst of a deep crisis, Jacob was left alone in his tent at night, and there he wrestled with a man until daybreak. (According to Hosea 12:4 this “man” was actually an angel.) After a fierce battle, this mysterious visitor blessed Jacob, changing his name to Israel. “So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared’ ” (Gen. 32:30; Peniel means face of God). Not surprisingly, the Targum translated with, “I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.” Yet Jacob said, “I have seen God face to face”!

This is reminiscent of Judges 6, in which Gideon saw the angel of the Lord—sometimes referred to as “the Lord” in the account—and was afraid that he would die:

Gideon went in, prepared a young goat, and from an ephah of flour he made bread without yeast. Putting the meat in a basket and its broth in a pot, he brought them out and offered them to him [i.e., the angel] under the oak. The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth.” And Gideon did so. With the tip of the staff that was in his hand, the angel of the Lord touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the Lord disappeared. When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, “Ah, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!” But the Lord said to him, “Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.”

Judges 6:19–23

Even clearer is Judges 13, in which Manoah, the father of Samson, equated seeing the angel of the Lord with seeing God himself:

Then Manoah took a young goat, together with the grain offering, and sacrificed it on a rock to the Lord. And the Lord did an amazing thing while Manoah and his wife watched: As the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame. Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground. When the angel of the Lord did not show himself again to Manoah and his wife, Manoah realized that it was the angel of the Lord. “We are doomed to die!” he said to his wife. “We have seen God!” [This is rendered again by the Targum as, “We have seen the angel of the Lord.”] But his wife answered, “If the Lord had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and grain offering from our hands, nor shown us all these things or now told us this.”

Judges 13:19–23

Now, let’s stop for a moment and review. According to Exodus 33:20, no one can see God or his face and live. Yet the Hebrew Bible preserves numerous instances of people “seeing God.” Look again at the Rabbinic explanations:

• In Exodus 25:8, God says that he will dwell in Israel’s midst. The Targum translates this to mean his Shekhina will dwell among them.
• Exodus 24:9–11 states that Moses and a select group of Israelites saw God, who did not strike them down. The Targum says that they saw the glory of God.
• According to Exodus 24:1, God said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord.” The Talmud states that “the Lord” here refers to the angel Metatron, whose name is as his Master.
• Jacob, who wrestled with the angel of the Lord, said that he had seen God face to face (Gen. 32:30). The Targum changed this to, “I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.” The exact same change is made in Judges 13:22.
• In Exodus 3:1–6, the angel of the Lord, equated with the Lord himself in the text, appeared to Moses in flaming fire in a bush, and Moses looked away because he was afraid to look at God. The Targum says that he was afraid to look near the glory of the Lord.

Obviously, these texts presented some problems for the rabbis. (We won’t even mention passages such as Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1, in which the prophets said that they saw the Lord, since someone could argue that these were just prophetic visions.) How could God actually dwell in the midst of his people? How could anyone see him and not die? And why was seeing his angel the same as seeing him? Speaking for the ancient rabbis you might reply, “He dwells in our midst by his Shekhina, his glorious presence, and he reveals himself to us through his angel, who bears his name. Seeing him is like seeing God, just not directly.”

Good response. You’re really close now. The only problem is that seeing the angel of the Lord is not seeing God—unless that angel is more than just an angel. And no angel is called “the Lord”—not Metatron, not Michael, not Gabriel, not anyone—unless he is, in some sense, the Lord. And God said that he himself—not merely his Shekhina—would dwell among his people.⁴⁷ So what’s the answer? It was always the Son whom they saw. As Paul wrote, Yeshua “is the image of the invisible God.” We quote once more John 1:18, this time as translated in the Jewish New Testament: “No one has ever seen God; but the only and unique Son, who is identical with God and is at the Father’s side—he has made him known.”

Yes, it is the Son, who “is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3) who has made the Father known. As he said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

No one would argue that various individuals in the Bible saw “the glory of God” as opposed to God himself. In fact, that is exactly what the New Testament tells us happened as Stephen was being stoned to death: “But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55).

There are similar expressions found in the Tanakh. Look, for example at these verses in the Book of Exodus:

So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?”… While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud.

Exodus 16:6–7, 10

Or consider Exodus 24:15–17, verses that are especially important when we remember that it was in this very chapter, just a few verses earlier, that we read that Moses and the elders saw God. Here the language is very different:

When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud. To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain.

Exodus 24:15–17

It is one thing for Scripture to say that people “saw God” and another thing to say that they “saw the glory of God.” The Bible makes a clear distinction. The problem arises when the Bible explicitly says that people saw God and the traditional translators and commentators tell us something different. Once again, I emphasize that it is Jesus the Messiah—the divine Son, the image of the invisible God, the Word made flesh, the exact representation of the Father’s being—who solves the riddle and explains how someone could really see God, even though God cannot be seen. The Messiah is the visible representation of the invisible, the living manifestation of the glory of God.

I want to give you once more example, possibly the clearest example in the entire Hebrew Bible. At the end of Genesis 17, we read how Abraham and his entire household were circumcised in obedience to the command of the Lord. Genesis 18:1–2 says, “The Lord [Hebrew, YHWH] appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot. Looking up, he saw three men standing near him” (NJPSV).

According to the Talmud (b. Bava Mesia 86b), God himself was paying Abraham a personal sick call, checking on him after the ordeal of circumcision. Here is the expanded translation of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz (the actual words of the Talmud are in bold). We read that Abraham went out

and saw the Holy One, blessed be He, standing at the door of his tent, as the verse says, “And the Lord appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre.” This is what the verse is referring to when it says (Gen 18:3): “And he said, ‘O Lord, if now I have found favor in Your sight, do not, I pray you, pass by Your servant.’ ” In this verse Abraham was speaking to God Himself (and so addressed Him as Lord and referred to himself as His servant). When God saw that Abraham was busy tying and untying the bandages of his circumcision, He said to Himself, “It is not fitting that I stay here while Abraham is taking care of His wound.” He was about to remove His presence when Abraham pleaded with Him to stay a little longer. And this is also what the verse refers to when it says (Genesis 18:2): “And he raised his eyes and looked, and, behold, three men stood by him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them.”⁴⁸

Now, here we have a biblical text that indisputably says that the Lord—Hebrew, YHWH—appeared to Abraham, and the Talmud even relates in story form how Abraham actually saw “the Holy One, blessed be He,” addressing him as Lord. Yet, just a few words later, this very same biblical text says that Abraham looked up and saw three men, the Talmud giving the impression that God himself appeared to Abraham, only to be replaced by these men.

Who were the three men? Some Christian teachers, quite naturally, have suggested that the three men represented the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but this cannot work for a number of reasons. First, it would mean that Abraham actually saw God the Father, something that would be contrary to Scripture; second, the Bible—Old Testament or New Testament—never pictures God as three separate people; third, as we will see, the context is against this trinitarian reading, since it is only one of the three “men” who is addressed as Lord.

According to the Talmud, the three men were the angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, each with his own special task. Michael came to give Sarah the good news that she would soon have a son, Raphael came to heal Abraham, and Gabriel went to overthrow the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (although the Talmud says that Michael went along with Gabriel so as to rescue Lot). But there are problems with this view too. First, the text nowhere says that these angels replaced or represented the Lord. Instead, the Bible says that the Lord appeared to Abraham, that he saw three men, and that he addressed one of them both as Lord (ʾadonai) and as YHWH. Second, the context indicates clearly that two of the men went on to Sodom—where they are identified as angels—and that Abraham stayed before YHWH, with whom he had an extended dialogue. To be faithful to the Scriptures, we must say that the Lord, with two angels, appeared to Abraham, and all three appeared as human beings who spoke, ate, and drank with Abraham and Sarah.

Let’s watch the text unfold. In verse 3, we read that Abraham said, “ʾadonai, if it please you, do not go on past your servant.” According to the traditional Jewish punctuation, and as understood by the Talmud and many Rabbinic commentators, ʾadonai here means Lord, indicating that Abraham already understood who one of his guests was. Other traditional commentators suggest that this is unlikely, changing the vowels to read ʾadoni, “my lord,” as if Abraham simply addressed the apparent leader of the group without knowing who he was. Which view is correct? It really doesn’t matter if we keep reading. One of these “men” is YHWH himself!

The text states that Abraham hurried to Sarah, told her to start cooking, and then ran to the herd to get a calf to slaughter. (Abraham’s running around makes the Talmudic story a little unlikely too, since a man who was just circumcised would hardly be running around.) After preparing the meal, Abraham watched as the men ate:

They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he replied, “There, in the tent.” Then one said, “I will return to you next year, and your wife Sarah shall have a son!” Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent, which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years; Sarah had stopped having the periods of women. And Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “Now that I am withered, am I to have enjoyment—with my husband so old?” Then the Lord [YHWH] said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I in truth bear a child, old as I am?’ Is anything too wondrous for the Lord [YHWH]? I will return to you at this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.” Sarah lied, saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was frightened. But He replied, “You did laugh.”

Genesis 18:9–15 NJPSV

There is only one honest way to read these verses. One of these three men was the Lord. Notice carefully: One of them promises to return next year so that Sarah will have a son; she laughs out loud when she hears this seemingly impossible promise; the Lord then addresses Abraham, asking him why his wife laughed and doubted his promise that he would graciously visit her the coming year; Sarah heard what he said, denying that she laughed; then he replied to her. There is absolutely no way around it. Abraham, Sarah, and the Lord were all there together.

And, as if we needed any more proof, here is the clincher. Verse 16 states that “the men set out from there and looked down toward Sodom, Abraham walking with them to see them off” (NJPSV), explaining in the next verses that the Lord then filled Abraham in on what he was about to do. This brings us to verse 22, “The men went on from there to Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the Lord” (NJPSV), to whom he intercedes on behalf of Sodom through verse 32. So, the men went on to Sodom while the Lord remained with Abraham.

Now brace yourself for the last verse of chapter 18 and the first verse of chapter 19: “When the Lord had finished speaking to Abraham, He departed; and Abraham returned to his place. The two angels arrived in Sodom in the evening, as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom” (NJPSV). The Scripture tells us that the Lord appeared to Abraham, then it says that Abraham saw three men by his tent, then it identifies one of those three as the Lord, who holds a conversation with Abraham and Sarah. The Bible then says that Abraham walked with the men as they went on their way to Sodom, that the Lord then informed Abraham of his intentions to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, that the men (i.e., the other two men)⁴⁹ continued on to Sodom while Abraham stayed and talked with the Lord, and that when they were done, the Lord left and Abraham went home, and that two angels then arrived in Sodom. I’ll say it again: One of those three men was YHWH, the Lord.

The awesome and exciting thing about this text is that it explicitly tells us that Abraham and Sarah talked with the Lord, that he appeared in human form to them, dusty feet and all (see Gen. 18:4), and that he even sat down and ate their food.⁵⁰ Yet all the while he remained God in heaven!

I wonder what our critics would do with this passage if it was not in the Hebrew Bible but rather in the New Testament Scriptures alone. They certainly would try to attack it as crass, asking us if God gained any weight when he ate and if he had to relieve himself when he was finished. After all, those are the kind of objections we hear when we talk about Jesus the Messiah being the Son of God in the flesh.

The fact is, Genesis 18 clearly and indisputably teaches that God can come to earth in human form for a period of time if he so desires. And if he could do this for a few hours, in temporary human form, he could do this for a few years, in permanent human form. This is what theologians call the incarnation, God coming down to earth as a man in the person of his Son.⁵¹ And it is only when we recognize the Son—the exact representation of God, and yet God himself—that we can explain how God remained the Lord in heaven while also appearing as the Lord on earth in Genesis 18. Even if you study all the Rabbinic commentaries you want, you won’t find another explanation that works.

I well remember talking about Jesus the Messiah with a rabbi at Phil’s Kosher Delicatessen in Smithtown, Long Island. Suddenly a light went on within him and he said, “So Jesus was like a walking Shekhina!” Exactly! The Lord, who remained hidden in heaven just as he always had, walked among us in his Son, the Messiah, the true messenger of the Lord and the bearer of his glory.

Could it be that when Moses and the elders saw the unseen God they actually saw his Son? Could it be that when Gideon and Manoah saw the angel of the Lord—somehow identified with the Lord himself—it was the Son whom they saw? And could it be that it is not Metatron—an angel mentioned nowhere in the Bible—who bears the name of the Lord, but the Son of God who does? Yes, yes, and yes!

Listen to more of the words of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God: “Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.… I and the Father are one” (John 10:37–38, 30). Once more, there is nothing idolatrous here. In fact, these words of our Messiah put a lot of the pieces together!

After his resurrection, Jesus said to the women who had come to his tomb, “I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17). Notice that he called him “my Father” and “my God.” Yet when Thomas saw him a short while later he exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). It makes perfect sense. Seeing Jesus was seeing God, yet Jesus did not call himself God. He called himself God’s Son—the one in whom the fullness of God dwells in bodily form. This contradicts nothing that we saw in numerous texts from the Hebrew Scriptures. Rather, it opens up the meaning of these texts in a way that answers the questions that neither the Targums, nor the Talmud, nor the Rabbinic commentators could answer.

You may, however, still be wondering about something. You might say, “Okay, I see that in one real sense Jesus makes God known, and in another real sense, he himself is divine. But doesn’t this mean that God is somehow divided? And you never explained where this ‘Son of God’ came from?” I’m glad you asked. In fact, we devote the next answer to the specific subject of the “Son of God” question. But there are a few important points to make right now.

John the Immerser said of the Messiah, “A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me” (John 1:30), and Jesus himself spoke about the relationship he had with the Father before the world began: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus [the Messiah], whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (John 17:3–5).

The Scriptures state that “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God” (John 13:3), and he himself said to his disciples, “… the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father” (John 16:27–28).

That’s why Jesus could say, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:23), and “before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). The idea of a preexistent Messiah who will come down from heaven is even found in traditional Jewish sources (see below, 3.22, for references); the New Testament just gives us the rest of the story.

The most detailed statement of this comes from the pen of Paul, the brilliant Jewish scholar and teacher. He explains the incarnation:

Your attitude should be the same as that of [Messiah] Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped [i.e., held on to], but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus [the Messiah] is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:5–11

So where did the Messiah come from? He came from God. Is he divine? Yes, because he is the Son of God. (We’ll explain this concept more fully in the next objection.) Is he also human? Yes, since he took on human nature and as a man became the mediator between God and mankind, expressing the amazing breadth and depth of God’s love for a sinning world. To save us and deliver us, he joined himself with us.

Now, you will remember our discussion about the Shekhina (above, 3:1), what the Israeli scholar Ephraim Urbach calls “The Presence of God in the World.” The Shekhina was one of the most important Rabbinic ways of explaining how the infinite and transcendent God could really be with his people in this world.⁵² We explained previously how the rabbis believed that “at the time of the destruction of the Temple (mishkan), the Shekhinah went into exile, as it were, and was thought to accompany the Jewish people in their wanderings—sharing their sufferings and longing with them to be reunited once more with the Holy Land.”⁵³

God, so to speak, is experiencing internal “disunity” until his people are fully restored. In that sense, their physical regathering and spiritual renewing will mean the complete restoration of his unity. This is actually very close to a New Testament concept, namely, that the Son of God, who came forth from his Father, joined himself to us in our human nature, died, rose again, and returned to his Father in heaven, will in the end submit himself back to his Father “so that God will be all in all”: “For he [God] ‘has put everything under his [Jesus’] feet’ [Ps. 8:6(7)]. Now when it says that ‘everything’ has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under [Messiah]. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:27–28). It begins with one God, and it will end with one God. Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, makes him known to man.

So the next time someone says to you, “God is not a man, so Jesus cannot be God,” you have a sound answer to give: “Of course, God is not a man. But can he reveal himself in and through a man? Can he temporarily pitch his tent among us? Can his fullness dwell in a virgin-born human? The scriptural answer is yes.”

And if someone hits you with, “Your god wore diapers; our God sits enthroned in heaven,” tell them, “My God, who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, always has and always will sit enthroned in heaven. But his divine Word became flesh and blood. It’s really quite a lofty spiritual concept!”

You are now ready to teach them. In fact, you can begin by quoting John 1:18.

²⁸ See Bilalik and Ravnitzky, Book of Legends, 519, #120

²⁹ G. A. F. Knight, A Biblical Approach to the Doctrine of the Trinity, Scottish Journal of Theology, Occasional Papers, no. 1 (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1953), 14–15. See G. A. F. Knight, Christ the Center (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).

³⁰ Robert Hayward, Divine Name and Presence: The Memra (Totowa, N.J.: Allanheld, Osmun, 1981), 147,149, states that, “Memra is God’s ‘HYH [i.e., “I am,” based on Exod. 3:14], His name for himself expounded in terms of His past and future presence in Creation and Redemption,” observing that Memra “was surely one of the most profound and wonderful of the scribal meditations on the Name of the God of Israel.” For critical interaction with some of Hayward’s work, cf. the works of Bruce Chilton, cited below, n. 34.

³¹ Cf. Yeyn HaTob, 1:351, which simply notes here (as it does elsewhere in similar contexts), “to remove personification [hagshamah],” i.e., of the Deity; cf. the discussion of Ezra Zion Melammed. Bible Commentators (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1978), cited below, n. 42.

³² Santala, Messiah in the Old Testament, 90–91 (with the spelling normalized from “Mimra” to “Memra”); I have used his examples as given on 89–90; see further Hayward, Divine Name and Presence, and cf. the lengthy discussion below, n. 34.

³³ “Logos,” in R. J. Werblowsky and G. Wigoder, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of Jewish Religion (New York: Oxford, 1997; henceforth cited as ODJR), 423.

³⁴ Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 45. Compare the discussion there with Sigal’s analysis of Philo’s logos in The Jew and the Christian Missionary, 145–50. According to Sigal, “The Christian doctrine of the Logos, ‘Word,’ has its origins in the writings of Philo,” claiming that “Philo judaizes his idea by identifying the Reason of the Greek philosophers (Logos in Greek means both ‘word’ and ‘reason’) with the Aramaic term memra (‘the Word’)” (145–46). He concludes that “Philo’s Logos is nevertheless alien to Judaism” (149). Suffice it to say that some of Sigal’s discussion would come as a surprise to both Jewish and Christian scholars of Philo. For a more balanced assessment, see George R. Beasley-Murray, John, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco: Word, 1987), 4–10; and David H. Johnson, “Logos,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 481–82 (the entire article runs from 481–84). See further David Winston, Logos and Mystical Theology (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1985); James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), especially 213–50. Of particular value in this context is the study of Bruce Chilton, a specialist in Targumic literature and New Testament studies. See “Typologies of Memra and the Fourth Gospel,” in his Judaic Approaches to the Gospels (Atlanta: Scholars, 1994), 177–201 (with bibliography of recent studies on 177). Chilton writes, “Within the study of the fourth Gospel, commentators in recent years have largely dismissed the hypothesis that memra might be a precedent for the usage of logos. That dismissal, however, is produced by a misconception of both terms.… The present argument holds that the Targumic theologoumenon of the memra as God’s activity of commanding has influenced the sense of logos in the fourth Gospel, and that logos in that Gospel is not fundamentally a christological term, as contemporary discussion has assumed” (185–86). See also Bruce Chilton, “Recent and Prospective Discussion of meˆmra,” in Judaic Approaches to the Gospels, 271–304. Barker, The Great Angel, cites the work of earlier scholars (including J. W. Etheridge, B. F. Westcott, and Alfred Edersheim) in full support of the connection between the Targumic Memra and John’s Logos (see 137), also listing ten important parallels between Philo’s Logos and the Targums’ Memra. Both were identified as the Name of the Lord; man was said to be created in the image of both the Logos and the Memra; both were pictured as the viceroy of a great King; both were identified with the Angel of YHWH who guided Israel in the desert; both were depicted as heavenly judge; both were mediators between man and God; both performed high priestly functions; both were the agents of creation; both were involved in God’s covenant with Israel; both were pictured as speaking from between the cherubim (see 146–47). Barker notes interestingly, “The monotheism of mainstream rabbinic Judaism which is now reflected in the Targums may not have been the Judaism of the people to whom they were originally addressed. The fact that Memra is opaque to us, even though originally intended as a translation and clarification, must stand as a warning” (147). For a comprehensive listing of occurrences of memraʾ in all extant Targums to the Torah (aside from Onkelos), broken down by category, see Chilton, “Recent and Prospective Discussion of memraʾ,” 296–304. See further Chilton, “Eight Theses on the Use of Targums in Interpreting the New Testament,” in Judaic Approaches to the Gospels, 305–15, for some important concerns regarding the use and misuse of the Targums in New Testament study. For speculations on the variations in usage of memra between the so-called Palestinian Targums and those thought to be Babylonian Targums, see Barker, The Great Angel, 141–59, with reference also to the observations of Jacob Neusner, perhaps the most influential scholar of early Judaica in this generation, on the incarnation of God in Babylonian Judaism: “It is the representation of God as a human being who walks and talks, cares and acts, a God who not only makes general rules but also by personal choice transcends them and who therefore exhibits a particular personality” (from his study The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988], 21, cited in Barker, ibid., 158–59). Barker also finds Neusner’s reasoning for this development intriguing: “Neusner recognized that this direct encounter had been part of the original expression of the Scriptures and argued with a great deal of evidence that when the writers of this period ‘began to represent God as personality … they reentered the realm of discourse about God that Scripture had originally laid out’ [28, her emphasis]. He hints at the reason for abandoning the older ways. When the earlier Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, had been formed within the Palestinian community it had addressed the threat posed by Christianity in the fourth century AD, and, since, Christianity had its own way of reading the Old Testament, a ‘Judaic response took the form of a counterpart exegesis’ [107, her emphasis]. The Jewish sages adapted Scripture to their new needs.… [Jewish] Scholars in Babylon, however, were under no such pressures: ‘Consequently, it was in the Bavli [the Babylonian Talmud] in particular that God became Man’ ” (159). Note, however, that these comments should not be construed to imply in any way that Neusner accepts Christian views of the incarnation; rather, they simply indicate how the language of the Hebrew Scriptures, in which God is often portrayed in human terms, has been applied in various streams of Rabbinic Judaism, as well as in the New Testament.

³⁵ Hurtado, One God, One Lord, 45.

³⁶ “Early Christianity took up the notion of Logos and in the Gospel of John (1:1) the Logos as an eternal, divine principle is said to have been made flesh in the person of Jesus” (“Logos,” ODJR, 423). Since this concept became so important in developing “Christian” theology, it is speculated that this could have “contributed to the disappearance of logos speculations, together with the whole Philonic tradition, from Jewish thought. [Note in this context that the term ‘memra’ of the Lord,’ so common in the Targums, is not found once in the Talmuds.] In kabbalistic literature concepts similar to that of logos reappear in the doctrine of Sephirot” (ibid.). Margaret Barker notes that the Jewish theologian Kaufman Kohler “suggested that the rabbis abandoned the personified Memra because of the Christians.” See his Jewish Theology Systematically and Historically Considered (New York: n.p., 1918), 199, n. 3, cited in, Barker, The Great Angel, 160, n. 10.

³⁷ For caveats against making these divine personifications into independent, semi-divine entities, see Hurtado, One God, One Lord, 46–48.

³⁸ R. E. Brown, cited in Fritz Rienecker and Cleon Rogers, A Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 219.

³⁹ Commenting on Colossians 2:9, N. T. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, Tyndale New Testament Commentary (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 103, observes that “Christ is not a second, different Deity: he is the embodiment and full expression of the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

⁴⁰ G. R. Beasley-Murray, John, 2; cf. the rendering of Eugene H. Peterson in The Message: “No one has ever seen God, not so much as a glimpse. This one-of-a-kind God-expression, who exists at the very heart of the Father, has made him plain as day.”

⁴¹ See the Talmudic commentaries on the dictum that “whoever translates a verse literally [Hebrew, ketsurato, according to its form], is a liar and whoever adds to it reproaches and blasphemes [God]” (b. Qiddushin 49a) as compared to the statement that “a scripture never departs from its plain sense [peshuto]” (b. Shabbat 63a). Note the application of the first principle in Midrash HaGadol (cited by Barker, The Great Angel, 143, following G. H. Box and Raphael Patai) in the context of the nature of God: “R. Eliezer said: ‘He who translates a verse literally is a liar. He who adds to it commits blasphemy. For instance, if he translated [Exod. 24:10] And they saw the God of Israel, he spoke an untruth; for the Holy One … sees, but is not seen. But if he translated. And they saw the Glory of the Shekhinah of the God of Israel [which is the rendering of Targum Neofiti and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan], he commits blasphemy; for he makes three (a trinity) viz. Glory, Shekinah, and God.’ ”

⁴² There are many other examples in which the Targum replaced “God,” or “the Lord” with “the glory of the Lord”; see, e.g., Genesis 28:16 (the Hebrew says, “Surely the Lord is in this place”; the Targum reads, “Surely the glory of the Lord abides in this place”); Genesis 17:22 (“And God went up from Abraham,” is replaced with, “And the glory of the Lord went up from Abraham”); Leviticus 9:4 (“For today the Lord will appear to you,” is changed to, “For this day the glory of the Lord will be revealed to you”). For more examples, see Melammed, Bible Commentators, 162.

⁴³ See further Barker, The Great Angel. On a more popular level, see also Robert Leo Odom, Israel’s Angel Extraordinary (Bronx, N.Y.: Israelite Heritage Institute, 1985).

⁴⁴ See also the Targum to 1 Kings 8:27, in the context of Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the Temple. The Hebrew reads, “But will God really dwell on the earth?”, changed in the Targum to, “But is the Lord really willing for his Shekhinah to dwell among men?” Note also God’s response in 9:3 “I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there,” which becomes in the Targum, “… I have sanctified this house which you built for my Shekhinah to abide there forever, and my Shekhinah will abide in it with my will being done there always.”

⁴⁵ Nahum Sarna, Genesis, The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 383 (Excursus 10, Angelology).

⁴⁶ Ibid., 383–84.

⁴⁷ Here is one more Targumic example of the degree to which the Shekhina took the place of God himself. The Hebrew for 2 Kings 1:3 reads (see also 6), “Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?”, while the Targum says, “Is there not a God whose Shekhinah abides in Israel that you go to inquire of Baal Zebub, the idol of Ekron?”

⁴⁸ Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition, vol. 6, Tractate Bava Metzia, Part VI (New York: Random House, 1992), 159.

⁴⁹ Commenting on Genesis 18:22, “The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord,” W. Gunther Plaut, the Reform Jewish rabbi and biblical scholar, notes simply, “In this verse ‘the men’ are clearly distinguished from God.” See W. Gunther Plaut, ed., The Torah: A Modern Commentary (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1985), 128.

⁵⁰ On the words “they ate” in Genesis 18:8, Plaut notes, “Traditional interpreters experience great difficulties here. If the three are divine messengers, why do they eat? According to the Midrash, they merely appeared to eat. According to Rashi, they pretended out of courtesy. The text of course is oblivious of later Jewish dietary laws that forbade serving milk and meat at the same meal” (ibid., 122).

⁵¹ This is also the reason for Miriam’s virginal conception of Yeshua, since the Son of God could not be born in the normal human way, otherwise he would have been only a normal human. See further vol. 3, 5.9–11.

⁵² See n. 24, above, for references.

⁵³ Rabinowicz, Encyclopedia of Hasidism, 454.

Brown, M. L. (2000). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 2: Theological objections (14). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.

If you claim that Jesus is God then you are guilty of making God into a man. You are an idol worshiper!