Land and Bible

"But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, being little among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days ."   וְאַתָּה בֵּית-לֶחֶם אֶפְרָתָה צָעִיר לִהְיוֹת בְּאַלְפֵי יְהוּדָה מִמְּךָ לִי יֵצֵא לִהְיוֹת מוֹשֵׁל בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל וּ מוֹצָאֹתָיו מִקֶּדֶם מִימֵי עוֹלָם ׃ To hear a podcast of this blog, click here . A passage often remembered around Christmas time, Micah 5:2 is quoted in Matthew 2:5-6 to describe that Israel’s ruler would be born in Bethlehem. Some Christian expositors and laypersons see the “eternal pre-existence” of the Messiah and therefore Messiah’s deity in the words of Micah 5:2 (in Hebrew, Micah 5:1): “ whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.” However, even just a comparison of English translations reveals that “eternality” in this passage is not so cut-and-dry. Some English translations use a word like “everlasting”, while others translate the same phrase as “f...

Hurtado’s Thesis: Early Jewish Devotion to Jesus is evidence that Jesus had divine status Dr. Larry Hurtado claims that the great degree of devotion displayed by early Jewish followers of Jesus is evidence that soon after Jesus' life on earth, Jesus’ followers came to understand that Jesus had some kind of divine status. Hurtado stops short of claiming that Jesus' followers believed outright that Jesus is “God”. The title of the book is “How on earth did Jesus Become a God”. But Hurtado sees the intense, worshipful devotion of Jesus’ early followers, even willingness to die, as evidence that they believed that Jesus had a divine status. Hurtado’s thesis is in step with recent scholarly efforts to discover evidence of 2 nd Temple Period Jewish binitarian “two-power” theology as a backdrop from which Christian trinitarianism emerged. Jesus didn’t think he was God Hurtado’s views on the deity of Jesus are not in line with conservative Evangelical Protestant C...