Michael Bird: Jesus among the Gods
Michael F. Bird, Jesus among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2022), xi+480 pages, ISBN 9781481316750. To whom or to what might we compare Jesus, the “son of God” (Mark 1:1)? In the hunt to discern the meaning and range of early Christian identifications of Jesus as divine, scholars […]
Michael F. Bird, Jesus among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2022), xi+480 pages, ISBN 9781481316750.
To whom or to what might we compare Jesus, the “son of God” (Mark 1:1)? In the hunt to discern the meaning and range of early Christian identifications of Jesus as divine, scholars have long compared Jesus with other ancient figures or deities. If, as Deuteronomy 6:4 memorably declares, God is “one,” then how, in a Jewish theological framework, can Jesus also be God? In mathematical terms, one plus one cannot also equal one. Certainly, Jesus is divine in the New Testament (see Phil 2:6; Col 2:9; 1 John 5:20), but in the Jewish and Greco-Roman environs does Jesus’ divinity put him on the same, ontological level as the God of Israel? These are a few of the weighty questions Michael F. Bird sets out to answer in Jesus among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World. In its simplest formulation, Bird argues that “Jesus is a Jewish deity of the Greco-Roman world” (p. 407). While there are sundry ancient comparanda to which one might compare Jesus, the Christian formulation of Jesus’ divinity remains “distinctive and characteristic” (p. 411). Quite impressively, Bird has catalogued and commented upon the principal intermediary figures with whom Jesus is often compared—from the Gnostic demiurge, to angel Christology, to Roman imperial cults.
Bird’s project is built on a careful distinction between functional and ontological divinity. If Jesus is God, then what kind or quality of God is he? “In what sense is Jesus divine and how closely is his divinity related to the divinity of God the Father” (p. 407)? Scholars have repeatedly noted that other intermediary figures in Second Temple Judaism display divine characteristics. In Exodus 7:1, Moses is made “like God to Pharoah.” From an array of evidence, it is plausible to argue that Moses is “a figure possessing divine power and exercising divine agency” (p. 35). The reception history of Moses as an exalted figure confirms such a claim (T. Mos. 1:14; 4Q374 II, 2.6; Philo, Mos. 1.27; Ezek. Trag. 68–82). In some comparative readings, Jesus is like God—just as Moses is like God—in a functional or tiered sense. Jesus is “among the gods” to borrow from the book’s title. Bird, instead, wants to recalibrate the claim that Jesus is God in an ontological sense. While early Christian articulations of Jesus’ divinity are quite varied and diverse (Bird is careful to note this on p. 83), “Christian authors in some instances begin to identify Jesus with the characteristics of absolute deity” (p. 82). According to Bird, Jesus and the God of Israel possess “ontic sameness” in important ways, such as the eternal, unbegotten, or immortal descriptions of absolute divinity one finds in early Christian writings (pp. 82–83).
In what sense is Jesus divine and how closely is his divinity related to the divinity of God the Father?
—Michael Bird
Jesus among the Gods provides a valuable lesson for how one ought to conduct historical investigations. In biblical studies, two perennial temptations have long enticed readers to swing in one of two directions.
Reviewed by J. P. O’Connor
Publisher’s page: https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481316750/jesus-among-the-gods/