"Son of God" is a phrase found in the
Hebrew Bible, various other Jewish texts and
the Christian Bible. In the
holy Hebrew
scriptures, according to
Jewish
religious tradition,
"Son of God" has many
possible meanings, referring to
angels, or
humans or even all mankind. According to most
Christian denominations, it also
refers to the relationship between
Jesus and
God, specifically as "
God
the Son".
Historical context
While
"Son of God" is most widely related to Christian
New Testament concepts, similar
terminology was present, before, during and after the
Apostolic Age, in the Gentile and Jewish
cultural and
historical background of Jesus: while in the Greek and Roman
polytheistic culture rulers and heroes
were called sons of
Zeus or
Poseidon or
Apollo or some
other god among many, Christians consider Jesus to be the
unigenitus Dei Filius (lat. "only-begotten Son of
God"), of the only God there is, and regard themselves as
monotheists. In
Judaism
the term "son of God" was sometimes used of the expected
Jewish mashiach figure.
In Greek mythology,
Heracles and many other
figures, human and divine, were considered to be sons of gods such
as
Zeus, their highest god, and Zeus himself
was represented as one of the sons of another god.
The Roman emperor
Augustus was called "divi
filius" (son of the deified
Julius
Caesar): "Divi filius", not "Dei filius" (son of God), was the
Latin term used. In Greek, the term
huios theou was
applied to both, but, while
huios theou is used of Jesus
three times in the New Testament, he is usually described as
ho
huios tou theou, not just "a son of God", but "the son of
God".
Historians believe
Alexander the
Great implied he was a
demigod by
actively using the title "Son of
Ammon–
Zeus".
(His mother Olympias
was said to have declared that Zeus impregnated
her while she slept under an oak tree sacred to the god.) The title
was bestowed upon him by Egyptian priests of the god Ammon at the Oracle of the god at
the Siwah oasis in the Libyan Desert
The title was also used of
wonder-workers.
"Son of God" according to Judaism
In the
Hebrew Bible, the phrase "son(s)
of God" has various meanings: there are a number of later
interpretations.Our translation most likely comes from the
Septuagint, which uses the phrase "Uioi Tou
Theou", "Sons of God", to translate it.
- The Hebrew phrase Benei
Elohim, often translated as "sons of
God", is seen by some to describe angels
or immensely powerful human beings. The notion of the word as
describing non-divine beings most likely comes from the Targumic Aramaic translation, which uses the phrases
"sons of nobles", "Bnei Ravrevaya" in its translation. See Genesis and Book of
Job .
- It is used to denote a human judge or ruler (Psalm , "children
of the Most High"; in many passages "gods" and "judges" can seem to
be equivalent). In a more specialized sense, "son of God" is a
title applied only to the real king over Israel (II Samuel , with reference to King David and those of his descendants who
carried on his dynasty; comp. Psalm ).
- Israel as a people is called God's "son", using the singular
form (comp. Exodus and Hosea ).
- Ephraim as a tribe (Jeremiah )
In
Judaism the term "son of God" was used of
the expected "
Jewish mashiach"
figure. Psalm 2 addresses someone as both God's messiah (
anointed king) and God's son.
In the Jewish literature that was not finally accepted as part of
the Hebrew Bible, but that many Christians do accept as Scripture
(see
Deuterocanonical books),
there are passages in which the title "son of God" is given to the
anointed person or
Mashiach (see
Enoch, 55:2; IV Esdras 7:28-29; 13:32, 37, 52; 14:9). The title
belongs also to any one whose piety has placed him in a filial
relation to God (see Wisdom 2:13, 16, 18; 5:5, where "the sons of
God" are identical with "the saints"; comp. Ecclesiasticus [Sirach]
iv. 10).
It has been speculated that it was because of the frequent use of
these books by the
Early Christians
in polemics with Jews, that the
Sanhedrin at Yavneh rejected them around
80 CE.
In the Jewish interpretation of the
Gospels,
the being of Jesus as "son of God" corresponds to the typical
Hasid from
Galilee,
a "pious" holy man that by divine intervention performs
miracles and
exorcisms,.
"Son of God" according to the Christian Bible
Throughout the
New Testament (see "New
Testament passages", below) the phrase "son of God" is applied
repeatedly, in the singular, only to
Jesus.
"Sons of God" is applied to others only in the plural. The New
Testament calls Jesus God's "only begotten son" ( , , ), "his own
son" ( ). It also refers to Jesus simply as "the son" in contexts
in which "the Father" is used to refer to
God the Father.
Jesus as divine
In mainstream Christianity the title of Son of God is used to
describe Jesus as a divine being and a member of the
Trinity. This is expressed, for instance, in the
Nicene Creed, which refers to Jesus as
God's only Son, true God from true God, who took human form in the
flesh. This view interprets the New Testament as referring to or
implying the deity of Jesus in, for example, , which quotes as
addressing him as God, and in , where Jesus states, "Before Abraham
was, I am", seen in this view as referencing God's name "I am",
revealed in Exodus 3:14. Also in John 5:18, John writes "but he
[Jesus] was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal
with God".
Jesus as godly
Another view is that, in the
Synoptic
Gospels, Jesus styled himself the Son of God in the same sense
as a righteous person was sometimes referred to as a son or child
of God (though not
the son of God), as in . Since New
Testament books present Jesus as without sin, those who hold the
first view, that of Jesus as divine, can hold this view too, but
not as an exclusive interpretation.
Christians as children of God
See also: Divine
filiation.
In the
Gospel of John, the author
writes that "to all who believed him and accepted him [Jesus], he
gave the right to become children of God" [John 1:12]. The phrase
"children of God" is used ten times in the New Testament. To these
can be added the five times, mentioned above, in which the New
Testament speaks of "sons of God". The New Testament speaks of no
individual Christian as it speaks of Jesus, as
the son of
God, not just
a son of God.
New Testament passages
The devil or demons calling Jesus Son of God
- (huios tou theou)
- (ho huios tou theou)
- ([ho] huios tou theou) – vocative case is normally without
article
Humans, including the New Testament writers, calling Jesus
Son of God
- (theou huios)
- (huios theou)
- (of doubtful authenticity)
- (ho huios tou theou)
- (tou theou huios – equivalent to )
- his (i.e. God's) son, in various forms, e.g. (ho huios
autou), equivalent to
Attributed to Jesus himself
- (ho huios tou theou)
- (Jesus answers "I am" to the question.)
Unclear whether attributed to Jesus himself or only a
comment of the evangelist
- (ho huios tou theou)
- – with " " (only-begotten)
Jesus referred to as (ho huios)
Christian Apocrypha
"Son of God" is the "Word" in the gnostic The Teachings of
Silvanus (115:15): "For all dwell in God, that is,
the things which have come into being through the Word
who is
the Son as the image of the Father." Supporting this, The
Apocryphon of John also has "light" as
the "only-begotten child" of the Father—not Jesus, personally: "And
he looked at Barbelo with the pure light which surrounds the
invisible Spirit, and (with) his spark, and she conceived from him.
He begot a spark of light with a light resembling blessedness. But
it does not equal his greatness. This was an only-begotten child of
the Mother-Father which had come forth; it is the only offspring,
the only-begotten one of the Father, the pure Light."
Trimorphic Protennoia has: "Then the
Son who is perfect in every respect--that is,
the Word who
originated through that Voice; who has within him the Name; who is
a Light--he (the Son) revealed the everlasting things and all the
unknowns were known."
Islam
In
Islam (
`Īsā) is
a
messenger of God who had been sent to guide
the
Children of Israel (
banī
isrā'īl) with a new scripture, the
Injīl (gospel). The
Qur'an,
believed by Muslims to be God's final revelation, states that Jesus
was born to
Mary (Arabic:
Maryam) as the result of
virginal
conception, a miraculous event which occurred by the decree of
God (Arabic:
Allah). To aid
him in his quest, Jesus was given the ability to perform
miracles, all by the permission of God. According to
The Qur'an, Jesus was neither killed nor
crucified, but God raised him to himself. Some
Muslims take this to be a physical ascension while others interpret
it as a metaphorical rising of his status as a true Messiah.
Islamic traditions narrate that he will return to earth near the
day of judgment to restore justice and
defeat
al-Masīḥ ad-Dajjāl
(
lit. "the false messiah", also known as the
Antichrist).
Islam rejects that Jesus was God
incarnate
or the son of God, stating that he was an ordinary man who, like
other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God's message.
Islamic texts forbid the association of partners with God
(
shirk), emphasizing the
notion of God's
divine oneness
(
tawhīd). Numerous titles are given to Jesus in the
Qur'an, such as
al-Masīḥ ("the
messiah; the anointed one" i.e. by means of
blessings), although it does not correspond with the meaning
accrued in Christian belief. Jesus is seen in Islam as a precursor
to
Muhammad, and is believed by Muslims to
have foretold the latter's coming.
Although Jesus is thus a highly respected prophet in Islam, and
considered to be the Messiah, Muslims do not believe that he was a
son of God. They look on him as the son of the virgin Mary and as a
great prophet like other prophets such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and
Muhammad. They believe that associating others with God in any kind
of worship, even if the associated person is an angel or prophet,
is polytheism and is an unforgivable sin.
See, from the
Qur'an,
Mary, verses 15-38, Al-Imran, verses 44-61, Al-Ma'idah, verses 108-117 and
Al-Ikhlas
Augustus as son of a Roman god
It is generally agreed that the language Jesus ordinarily spoke was
Aramaic, even if he perhaps also
spoke some
Greek (see
Aramaic of Jesus). The lack of
primary sources in Aramaic about the life of
Jesus makes it impossible to determine whether he himself or others
referred to him in that language as "a son of God" or as "the Son
of God" or neither.
In 42 BCE,
Julius Caesar was formally
deified as "the divine Julius" (
divus Iulius). His adopted
son, Octavian (better known by the title "
Augustus" given to him 15 years later, in 27 BC)
thus became known as "divi Iuli filius" (son of the divine
Julius)
or simply "divi filius" (son of the Divine One),
because of being the adopted son of Julius Caesar.
He used this title to advance his political position, finally
overcoming all rivals for power within the Roman state. The title
was for him "a useful propaganda tool", and was displayed on the
coins that he issued.
The word applied to Julius Caesar as deified is "divus", not the
distinct word "deus". Thus Augustus was called "Divi filius", but
never "Dei filius", the expression applied to Jesus in the
Vulgate translation of the New Testament, as, for
instance, in
1
John 5:5, and in earlier Latin translations, as shown by the
Vetus Latina text "Inicium evangelii
Ihesu Christi
filii dei" preserved in the
Codex Gigas. As son of Julius Caesar, Augustus
was referred to as the son of a god, not as the son of God, which
was how the monotheistic Christians referred to Jesus.
Greek did not have a distinction
corresponding to that in Latin between "divus" and "deus". "Divus"
was thus translated as " ", the same word used for the Olympian
gods, and "divi filius" as " " (theou huios), which, since it does
not include the Greek article, in a polytheistic context referred
to sonship of
a god among many, to Julius Caesar in the
case of the "divi filius" Augustus. In the monotheistic context of
the New Testament, the same phrase can refer only to sonship of the
one God. Indeed, in the New Testament, Jesus is most frequently
referred to as " " (
ho huios
tou theou),
the son of
God.
Son of a god in other belief systems
Human or part-human offspring of deities are very common in other
religions and mythologies. A great many pantheons also included
genealogies in which various gods were descended from other gods,
and so the term "son of a god" may be applied to many deities
themselves.
Ancient mythology contains many characters with both a human parent
and a god parent. They include
Hercules,
whose father was
Zeus, and
Virgil's Aeneas, whose mother was
Venus.
In Plato's
Apology, an
account of Socrates' defence at his trial, Socrates meets the
accusation of atheism by getting his accuser to admit that, since
he had spoken of Socrates as believing in "spiritual agencies", he
was admitting that Socrates believed in "spirits or demigods", and
since spirits or demigods are "either gods or the sons of gods"
(
theon paidas not
uioi theou), he was illogical
in accusing him of atheism.
In the Greek and Roman cultures in which early Christianity
expanded after first arising within Judaism, the concepts of
demi-gods, sons or daughters of a god, as in the story of
Perseus, were commonly known and accepted.
In the
Rastafari movement, Haile
Selassie is considered to be God the Son, a part of the Holy
Trinity. He himself never accepted the idea officially.
In the Epic of
Gilgamesh, one of the
earliest recorded legends of humanity, Gilgamesh claimed to be of
both human and divine descent.
According to the
Radha Soami
Satsang Beas teachings, known as
Sant
Mat or Teachings of the Saints, "Son of God" refers to a living
Master who connects souls with the Creator through the
Shabd or Holy Spirit.
There are no direct analogues in Chinese culture which has been
essentially atheistic among the literate classes since Han times,
but the Emperor was generally styled the
Son of Heaven and his or her rule was
justified by the
Mandate of
Heaven.
References
- "Jesus' unique sonship is antithetical to concepts of sonship
popular in the ancient world. In Hellenism, people believed a man
could be a 'son of the gods' in many ways: in mythology, by
cohabitation of a god with a woman whose offspring was imagined to
be superhuman; in politics, by giving generals and emperors high
honours in the cult of Roman emperor worship" (Comfort, Philip W.,
ed., and Elwell, Walter A., ed., Tyndale Bible Dictionary
2001 ISBN 0-8423-7089-7, article "Son of God").
- Augustus. The Facts
- See Lewis and Short for the meanings of "divus".
The distinction is remarked on also in the online Encyclopaedia Britannica: "It became customary — if
emperors (and empresses) were approved of in their lives — to raise
them to divinity after their deaths. They were called
divi, not dei like the Olympian gods".
- Borg, Marcus, and Crossan, Dominic, The First Christmas,
HarperCollins, 2007, p. 96
- "Not the least of the many extraordinary facts about Alexander
is that both in his lifetime and after his death he was worshipped
as a god, by Greeks and
Ancient Macedonians as well as, for
example, Egyptians (to whom he was Pharaoh). The episode that led to Callisthenes' death in 327
was connected to this fact. Greeks and Ancient Macedonians believed
that formal obeisance should be paid only to gods. So the refusal
of his Greek and Macedonian courtiers to pay it to Alexander
implied that they, at any rate, did not believe he genuinely was a
living god, at least not in the same sense as Zeus or Dionysus were. Alexander, regardless, did nothing
to discourage the view that he really was divine. His claim to
divine birth, not merely divine descent, was part of a total
self-promotional package, which included the striking of silver
medallions in India depicting him with the attributes of Zeus.
Through sheer force of personality and magnitude of achievement he
won over large numbers of ordinary Greeks and Macedonians to share
this view of himself, and to act on it by devoting shrines to his
cult."
- Bauer
lexicon, 2nd edition, 1979, page 834. In Contra Celsus VI chapter XI, Origen uses the term of the Samaritan
Dositheus, without saying he was a
wonder-worker, rather saying that, in the case of Dositheus, the
title was self-attributed: "Such were Simon, the Magus of Samaria, and Dositheus,
who was a native of the same place; since the former gave out that
he was the power of God that is called great, and the latter that
he was the Son of God." The Samaritan Dositheus claimed to be the
Messiah, which may be what Origen meant by saying that he gave out
that he was the Son of God (cf. Catholic Encyclopedia: Dositheans).
- While some hold that in previous centuries the Israelites were
henotheists, by
the end of the Babylonian captivity, Judaism is
strictly monotheistic. The Septuagint translation is
later.
- Qumran scroll #4Q246 states: "He shall be called the Son of
God; they will call him Son of the Most High" (quoted in Mark Eastman: Messiah—The Son of God?;
also in Wise, Michael O. and James D. Tabor. The Messiah at Qumran
in Biblical Archaeology Review, Volume 18, Number 6.
(Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, November/December,
1992), p. 61
- Vermes,
Geza Jesus the Jew, Fortress Press, New York 1981.
p.209
- Paolo Flores d'Arcais,
MicroMega
3/2007, p.43
- Five times explicitly ( , , and , , and implicitly in
- For instance, , , , ; ;
- ,
- The other nine instances are , , , , , , ,
- Only verses that contain a reference also to "the Father" are
listed here.
- The Oxford Dictionary of
Islam, p.158
- While Franciscan Friar Massimo Pazzini claimed: "The hypothesis -- often aired in the last
two centuries -- that Jesus spoke Greek or Latin is impossible to
accept", Ian Young, who teaches Aramaic at the University of
Sydney, expressed the general view referred to in the
Wikipedia article on the subject: "Some scholars have pointed out
that Jesus' homeland, Galilee, in the north of modern Israel, was
at that time very cosmopolitan, with a heavy non-Jewish influence.
If Jesus was, as the gospels indicate, a carpenter, he may have
needed Greek to deal with customers. (...) So it is plausible that
Jesus knew Greek."
- Inscription on Porta Tiburtina in Rome
- 'Augustus' Gaius Julius Octavius
- As noted below, Augustus was called "divi filius" not "dei
filius", the phrase used of Jesus
- Augustus (31 B.C. - 14 A.D.) by Nina C.
Coppolino
- John Dominic Crossan, writing in
God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (2007),
says, early in the book, that "[t]here was a human being in the
first century who was called “Divine,” “Son of God,” “God,” and
“God from God,” whose titles were “Lord,” “Redeemer,” “Liberator,”
and “Saviour of the World.” ... [M]ost Christians probably think
that those titles were originally created and uniquely applied to
Christ. But before Jesus ever existed, all those terms belonged to
Caesar Augustus. To proclaim them of Jesus the Christ was thereby
to deny them of Caesar the Augustus. ... They were taking the
identity of the Roman emperor and giving it to a Jewish peasant.
Either that was a peculiar joke and a very low lampoon, or it was
what the Romans called majestas and we call high treason."
(Crossan, John Dominic (2007), God and Empire, p.
28).
- "Ostentatiously rejecting divinity on his own account, he rose
to power via Caesar's divine image instead" ( Augustus, by Pat Southern, p. 63).
- Coins of the Emperor Augustus; examples are a
coin of 38 B.C. inscribed "Divi Iuli filius", and another of 31
B.C. bearing the inscription "Divi filius" ( Auguste vu par lui-même et par les autres
by Juliette Reid).
- "It became customary — if emperors (and empresses) were
approved of in their lives — to raise them to divinity after their
deaths. They were called divi, not dei like the
Olympian gods" ( Encyclopaedia Britannica).
- Writing more than a century after the death of Augustus,
Suetonius included
among a series of wonders associated with his birth a story
recounted by a certain Asclepias of Mendes in Upper Egypt that the
birth of the future emperor resulted from the impregnation of his
mother, while fast asleep, by a serpent in the temple of Apollo,
and that her child was therefore called a son of Apollo, an
Olympian deity (a "deus"), not a "divus", the word in the title
given to Augustus.
- Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon
- Used of Jesus in Mk 15:39; Lk 1:35; Rm 1:4
- In that context there are no other gods to which it could
refer!
- Swindler, Leonard J. Biblical Affirmations of Women.
Westminster: 1979, John Knox Press, pp. 216-217. ISBN
0664221769
- The following are instances of the use of " " in the New
Testament: Mt 16:16; 26:63; Mk 3:11; Lk 4:41; 22:70; Jn 1:34, 49;
3:18; 5:25; 11:4, 27; 20:31; Ac 9:20; 2 Cor 1:19; Ga 2:20; Ep 4:13;
Heb 4:14; 6:6; 7:3; 10:29; 1 Jn 3:8; 4:15; 5:5, 10, 12, 13, 20; Rv
2:18. " " (huios tou theou) appears in Mt 4:3; Lk 4:3; Jn 10:36.
Mark, according to most modern commentators the earliest of the
gospels, uses " " once, attributing it to "unclean spirits" who
were "making him known" ( ) and " " (theou huios) in ( ), putting
it in the mouth of a pagan centurion. In the first verse of this
gospel, some manuscripts have (in the genitive case) " " (huios
theou), others " " (huios tou theou), others omit the phrase in
either form; critical editions such as that published by the United
Bible Societies therefore bracket the phrase to indicate that in
the present state of New Testament textual scholarship it cannot be
taken as completely certain that the phrase is part of the text.
Paul the Apostle uses " " (theou huios) of Jesus once, in , a
letter in which he four times ( , , , ) refers to Jesus as
"his son" (literally "the son of him", not
"a son of him"). He uses "his son", with "his" referring
to God, also in other letters ( and , ) and uses " " three times (
, , ).
- Translation by Benjamin Jowett
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