Hey Pastor John,
In Greek class we were talking about how the Greek word is translated “God” with a capital G if there’s an article before it, most often. I was looking up some examples of where “the” doesn’t come before “God”, and there aren’t many that I could find.
One that came up that I wanted to discuss was John 19:7, where the Jews were convincing Pilate to kill Jesus.
- The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to our law, he ought to die because he made himself out to be the Son of God.”
7. Ἀπεκρίθησαν αὐτῷ οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι, Ἡμεῖς νόμον ἔχομεν, καὶ κατὰ τὸν νόμον ἡμῶν ὀφείλει ἀποθανεῖν, ὅτι ἑαυτὸν υἱὸν θεοῦ ἐποίησεν.
The Jews could be saying, “he made himself out to be a son of a god!” as they’re talking to Pilate, trying to convince him to kill Jesus, or at least, “he made himself out to be a son of God!” I’m not sure, just wanted to bring it up. I’m sure we’ve talked about this before.
Aaron
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Hi Aaron.
Yes, for the Father and Son book, Richard and John David gathered all the places in the New Testament where “son of god” is found, both with and without “the”. We debated the difficult places, such as John 19:7, and decided that the Jews were concerned most of all with convincing Pilate that Jesus should die because he had committed a crime that was, under their law, worthy of death. Romans would have laughed at someone who claimed to be a son of God, and dismissed them (as Pilate wanted to do), but not the Jews. And Roman rulers were expected to respect the traditions and customs of local peoples.
From just the book of Matthew, we can see that both Satan and the Jews referred to the Messiah as the Son of God:
(Satan) Matthew 4:3, 6.
(Jews) Matthew 14:33; 26:63; 27:40, 43.
So, when the Jews said that Jesus had spoken blasphemy by saying he was the Son of God, they were saying that he had blasphemed by claiming to be the Messiah. Why they thought that making that claim was blasphemous is difficult to understand, but they could not have been saying anything else, for no one at that time knew there was a Son of God who had existed with God from before the foundation of the world. To the Jews, then, “Messiah” is all that “the Son of God” could have meant.
As an added note, Satan knew Jesus was the Messiah, but he, too, was ignorant of the pre-existent Son “through who God made the worlds.” So, he, too, could only have been thinking “Messiah” when he used the term “Son of God”.
The best that I can remember, that is why we decided on the translation that we have for Matthew 19:7.
I hope your students are enjoying thinking about such things.
Pastor John
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