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This transcript has been edited for clarity and space.
Brant Pitre
I’m Dr Brant Petrie, Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Augustine Institute in St Louis, Missouri.
David Capes
Dr. Brant Petrie, good to see you. Welcome to your first time on The Stone Chapel Podcast.
Brant Pitre
Thanks for having me, David. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be here.
David Capes
I’m delighted in your work. I really love the Lord’s Supper book that you did a number of years ago. It was so helpful, and instrumental. I thought a lot about the Lord’s Supper in early Christianity. But now you’ve written another book entitled Jesus and Divine Christology. We’re going to get into that in a few minutes. But first of all, for those who don’t know you, who is Brant Pitre?
Brant Pitre
As I mentioned, I’m a Research Professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology. I’ve been there for several years, but I’ve been teaching now for, I guess, 20 years. I got my PhD in Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity from the University of Notre Dame back in 2004. My main area of interest, if you’ve had to put it into giant category would be looking at the New Testament in its early Jewish context. I am fascinated by the Jewish roots of Christianity and all its aspects.
I’ve written a number of books, most of them have Jesus in the title. So, I’ve done a lot of work on Jesus and the Jewish roots of the Eucharist. You mentioned the book about Jesus in the Last Supper. I did a book on Paul, a new covenant Jew, that I wrote with my friend Michael Barber and John Kincaid. Because I really do believe that one of the most important elements necessary for understanding the New Testament properly is to look at it in the light of the Old Testament, and in light of second temple Judaism in particular. So that’s what I try to do.
And I’ve been fascinated for the last 10 years or so by the question of early high Christology, the discussions that are going on in New Testament studies about early high Christology. This book is really the fruit of my 20 years of interest in that whole question of Jesus, Judaism and the early church. For a long time, I taught at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. So, I’ve always taught in institutions that were not only academic and rigorous, but also oriented towards serving the church in some capacity.
David Capes
Well, you’ve written a full-length monograph. You cover a lot of different territory in here. I am a founding member of the Early High Christology Club, so I applaud your efforts. My work primarily has been on Paul but I’ve become more fascinated with Matthew of late and have written some on that. But this is a terrific book. It’s published by Eerdmans. Jesus and Divine Christology. Let’s talk a little bit about what is the big idea behind your book.
Brant Pitre
If I had to sum it up, I would say that the thesis of the book is this. Contrary to what the vast majority of modern, historical Jesus scholars have assumed, going all the way back to the beginnings of the quest in the 18th century, Reimarus and Strauss and Ernest Renan, the historical Jesus did in fact speak and act as if he were divine. But He did it in a Jewish way, using parables and riddles, and especially allusions to Jewish scripture. That if you understand them in their first century Jewish context, you will be able to draw out the implications of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t just claiming to be a merely human Messiah. He was claiming to be more than human, superhuman, a divine Messiah.
This is a crucial secondary thesis. He does this not only in the Gospel of John, which I think a lot of people will concede over the last couple 100 years, but that he does so also in Matthew, in Mark and in Luke. In other words, in all four first century biographies of Jesus that we possess. Jesus speaks and acts as if he is more than merely a human Messiah. He speaks and acts as if he’s divine, and in certain passages, will even speak or act as if he is equal with the One God of Israel. So that’s really the overarching thesis of the book. I’m trying to offer a corrective to what I think is a gaping lacuna really, in historical Jesus research. Namely a tendency to just assume that, well, of course, Jesus never claimed to be divine. That was something that his followers may have believed, or that the later early church may have believed, and superimposed anachronistically back onto him. But that he himself never made any divine claims. He didn’t speak or act as if he were more than merely human. That was a later development.
I want to argue in this book that actually, if you look at the sources in their first century Jewish context, the opposite is true, and that the origins of the early high Christology, the early divine Christology, that scholars like yourself and others are beginning more and more to recognize as something that was present from the very beginning, that the earliest Christology of Paul and other believers in Christ was a divine Christology. That the reason that historical fact is what it is, and the reason that the earliest Christology was divine is because Jesus himself had a divine, messianic self-understanding. That’s the actual historical roots of early high Christology.
David Capes
So, it wasn’t the resurrection [that convinced followers that Jesus was divine], it wasn’t religious experiences, it wasn’t thinking back, over his life. It was really rooted in things that Jesus said and did.
Brant Pitre
That’s really a good point. Obviously, there are lots of explanations out there for the genesis of early divine Christology. It was the resurrection that led people to claim he was divine. It was revelatory experiences, visions. You think here of some of the work of Larry Hurtado, for example, that led to the genesis of early high Christology. And those all have a certain plausibility, and I wouldn’t want to reject them in toto. But I do think one hypothesis that tends to get left off the table and not be discussed is maybe the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus thought He was divine because Jesus Himself spoke and acted as if he was divine. Before the resurrection, before his death, before his crucifixion. And I show in the book, one of the main arguments for that.
In fact, the final chapter in the book is going to be the evidence that Jesus, on more than one occasion, was accused of blasphemy in the context of questions about his identity. That’s really, really crucial, because, as any second temple Jewish scholar will tell you it wasn’t blasphemy to claim to be the Messiah. The Messiah is just the anointed heir to the Davidic throne. If it were blasphemy to claim to be the Messiah, when he came, how would he tell anyone who he was? So, it wasn’t blasphemy to claim to be the Messiah, although sometimes Christians might assume that. Contemporary Christians might have that working assumption. But it was blasphemy to claim to be divine. It was blasphemy to speak and act as if you were equal with the One God of Israel. And one of the striking things is that we have accusations of blasphemy against Jesus in all four first century gospels. Not just at the end of his ministry, but also during his public ministry on a few different occasions.
So that’s really what I’m arguing in the book. I take about 12 key passages from the synoptics and from the Gospel of John, and I try to analyze them in their first century context. Do some solid exegesis, but then also weigh the arguments that historical Jesus scholars have given for each pericope, each passage, each saying or action. I consider arguments against their historical plausibility, and then arguments for their historical plausibility. And I argue that in the end, the arguments for historical plausibility are actually much stronger in every instance that examined.
David Capes
In the book the blasphemy texts to me were very helpful in understanding that. And I have for years talked about for example the fact that the very first charge against Jesus in Mark by his opponents, and then the very last one, the one that condemns him with the Jewish leaders, at least. And of course, that’s not a charge that would have stuck with the Romans. Romans could care less about Jewish sensibilities about their God, but they did care about the charge that Jesus was going to be king.
One of those passages you talk about is a reference back to Psalm 110. You give 12 examples but I want to just tease out one of those. Let’s look at Matthew together. Matthew 22:41. The Pharisees were gathered together, and Jesus posed to them a question. He said, what do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he? And they said to him, the son of David. And then he went on to say to them, how was it then that David, by the Spirit, calls him Lord. Saying “the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies under your feet.” And Jesus makes a riddle. I love the way you say that this is a riddle that Jesus poses. That’s consistent with being a Jewish teacher. They tell riddles.
