1) STATE OF CURRENT SCHOLARSHIP WITH RESPECT TO JESUS’ SELF-UNDERSTANDING:
-Majority would affirm certain implicit sayings and actions of Jesus as likely belonging to the historical Jesus (Jesus’ preaching on the kingdom of God; Jesus’ authority with respect to Torah; Jesus’ exorcism, Jesus claim to forgive sins, Jesus’ role as judge)
-About half would affirm certain explicit titles as likely belonging to the historical Jesus (Son of God; Son of Man; Christos)
2) PRELIMINARY COMMENTS ABOUT THE CRITERIA:
-They are positive in force.
-We don’t have to establish the general reliability of the Gospels in order to use them meaningfully.
-Each criterion is sufficient for historicity of some incident , not necessary for some incident to be historically probable.
3) DID JESUS THINK HE WAS THE MESSIAH?
-The King of the Jews: Independent, Early Sources; Dissimilarity; Coherence
-‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’: The criteria of embarrassment, historical fit, and coherence with other authentic material, coupled with its presence in a very early source, give good grounds for seeing this incident as historical.
4) CAN WE SAY MORE ABOUT JESUS’ ALLEGED DIVINITY?
-Criterion of explanation: Within 20 years of the crucifixion, Christians were worshipping Jesus as God incarnate.
-Second Temple Judaism:
The overarching metanarrative during Jesus’ time went something like this: Israel is
YHWH’s chosen covenant people, but she has been unfaithful to YHWH and disobeyed his Torah. For this reason she finds herself in exile. But YHWH is faithful to his covenant and when Israel repents and once again is obedient, YHWH will deliver her from exile, defeat the evil ones, and dwell in Zion. When this takes place, a new world, with a new way of living, will be realized. It was evident to most, if not all, Jews of Jesus’ day that this had not yet happened, that Israel’s story was lacking its God-ordained conclusion.
-Jesus’ vocation, basic kingdom proclamation, and stories and riddles reveal that he thought of himself as bringing Israel’s story to its God-ordained conclusion; he thought he could do this because he thought he was the embodiment of YHWH.
-Once we view Jesus’ vocation from this perspective, the broad ministry and mission of Jesus makes more sense (i.e. announcement of the kingdom of God, exorcisms, authority with respect to the law, claim to forgive sins, Jesus’ role as judge).
-So, the logic to arrive at Jesus’ divinity goes like this: Jesus’ vocation against the backdrop of Second Temple Judaism, the cross, the resurrection as divine vindication of Jesus’ vocation and the revelation of Jesus as Messiah on the cross, the task performed on the cross as the fulfillment of what YHWH himself was to do, to Jesus Himself then as the very embodiment of

YHWH. Or more simply, resurrection pointed to messiahship; messiahship, to the task performed on the cross; that task, to the God who had promised to accomplish it himself. From there on it was a matter of rethinking, still very Jewishly, how these things could be. In Jesus’ time, the hope that YHWH would return in person to Zion was a central feature of Jewish expectation, thus when we recall that Jesus’ basic kingdom proclamation wherein he saw that it was his task and role
(vocation) not only to speak of this kingdom, but to enact and embody it, we can see how and why Monotheistic Jews came to think of Jesus as God incarnate.
5) WHY THINK JESUS REALLY WAS THE MESSIAH AND GOD INCARANTE?: The resurrection is the divine vindication of Jesus’ radical self-understanding for which he was crucified.
6) HOW DID MONOTHEISTIC JEWS COME TO BELIEVE THIS?
-Out of an evidential necessity
-Wright also puts forward a second argument that, he grants, is less well supported than his primary point. That argument, simply stated, is that there is evidence that many second-Temple Jews were quite comfortable speculating on the possibility of a plurality of powers in heaven without abandoning monotheism
7) MODEL FOR THE INCARNATION:
-Depth Psychology: Human beings have a waking consciousness and a subliminal ‘mind.’
-Subliminal/Waking Consciousness: The divine attributes were buried in Jesus’ subliminal ‘mind’ whereas the human nature of Jesus was experienced in Jesus’ waking consciousness.
8) WHY DIDN’T JESUS JUST SAY THAT HE WAS GOD?
A) I just gave an argument that Jesus did communicate that he was divine in the things he said and the things he did; B) It would be to deny the incarnation. C) Even in the manner in which he did reveal his divine selfunderstanding got him crucified for blasphemy; this implies a fourth reason, namely D) Jesus had to prolong his life and ministry long enough to accomplish everything he in fact did without being killed for charges of blasphemy to quickly; E) Second-temple Judaism was strongly monotheistic, and so, Jesus would have had to have found a way to communicate his divine self-understanding within the culture of Second-temple Judaism in a subtle manner so that it wouldn’t be outright rejected.