On John XIX: 7. The son of God

The verse John XIX: 7 has been generally misinterpreted (specially by Evangelical preachers) as being a charge of blasphemy. Quite impossible. There is no evidence of the view of any faction of the time that would find this to be a blasphemy serious enough to incur a death penalty, and we know that neither the Pharisees nor the Sadducees could have found any blasphemy at all. To claim to be a son of God is no more than a statement of pious intent or a statement of repentance. See Deuteronomy XXXII: 6 in context. This usage is the logical consequence of Exodus IV: 22, and there are explicit statements in the Psalm. For the line of thought from another direction, see Luke III: 38. Obviously we can equally well forget about any supposed blasphemy in a claim to be the Anointed. (Two favourite themes of bad and boring sermons can now be disregarded). The only crime bearing the death penalty Jesus could be accused of could only be that of being a false prophet. See Deuteronomy XVIII: 20-22. But Jesus never claimed to be a prophet. The explanation can only be that what was assumed in his sermons in the course of exposition was taken to mean that he himself claimed to be THE Prophet, the second and greater Moses promised in Deuteronomy XVIII:15 & 18. If Jesus had not manifested this status, then his words had “not come to pass”, as the verse in Deuteronomy has it. If Jesus was thought to have claimed to be the second Moses, he would have necessarily been thought to have claimed to be the bearer of the future divine salvation promised in Deuteronomy XXXIII: 29, who would himself be the future bearer of the future Torah with fire (symbol of both Power and revelation) on a future Pentecost. [The blessing of Judah is worded to show that the person will be from Judah, but the proof has already been given in previous messages. This was the Samaritan view. See John IV: 22, which says THE salvation is from the Judahites. The Old Syriac correctly has “from Judah”, either a correct interpretation or the actual original wording. The modern translations all dishonestly leave out the word “THE”]. You know the evidence that the first verses of the chapter are past, present, and future, both linguistically and by the clear statement of a perpetual emanation FROM Sinai of the divine revelation. The agent of the giving of the second revelation must be the second or greater Moses. (All this is implicit in Paul’s words “and the last enemy to be defeated is death”, referring to Deuteronomy XXXIII: 29, the conclusion of the Blessing). Jesus had not PROVEN this status, so he could be charged with having made a false claim.

However, Jesus had never explicitly made such a claim. (He was not being dishonest. He intended the argument to go further than that). As he said to the High Priest., all that he had said in public was a matter of public record. To make such a charge against Jesus, the whole theological and exegetical argument would have had to be explained to Pilate. As they didn’t want to do this, they used the word “blasphemy”, and when that didn’t work, they blackmailed Pilate. I personally think Pilate and his wife did understand all the argument and exegesis at a deep level, and this why they have been canonised by the Coptic Church. (I point out the obvious, that the Coptic Church has the authority of Mark, not Peter and not Thomas, and has always been able to do without the assent of other Churches. Also, they have their own tradition of knowledge).

The term THE Prophet occurs a few times in John and to a lesser extent in the other Gospels, but the translators render it “A Prophet” out of ignorance, dishonesty, and lack of courage. I use the terms “dishonesty” and “lack of courage” advisedly. If a phrase is not understood, and the difficulty is not linguistic but lies in the implication for the argument, then the only honest course is to translate exactly what the text has, admitting you don’t fully understand. If you translate what is NOT there, and the reason is not that the accuracy of the text is uncertain, but only that you want to substitute some other words to hide your ignorance of the subject under discussion, then this really is dishonesty. Still, it is not as bad as the deliberate change to the text seen in many verses. It is these altered verses, or verses to which human words have been added, that make up a big proportion of verses chosen as texts for sermons, and used as the supposed Scriptural basis for much that gets into coursebooks used in theological colleges. Mark well: it is precisely the verses that have NOT ben translated faithfully that make up the basis of preaching and teaching. The most flagrant instance I can think of at the moment is Mark VII: 19. I could add that it is precisely the pericopes that have NOT been interpreted according to their internal argument that are brandished as the supposed instructions of God. I’m thinking here of Daniel Mahar’s careful refutation of the prevalent misreading of Romans I.