question for skeptics & objective historians: Is it true that Jesus never claimed to be divine?

Question

i can't remember where i heard it from, but the argument was essentially that Jesus himself never claimed to be divine, and all this talk about his divinity was fabricated after his death. what is basis of this argument?

PLEASE no agendas or bias. i am NOT going to be converted into Christianity over teh internets. if the question offends you, then I am not asking you! thanks!

also, what is making me wonder this is that Jesus didn't write anything in the bible, and of course the author's of the bible are going to write that he claimed divinity, so you can't really quote the bible as evidence of anything he said, right?

a historian can argue without agenda that Jesus did indeed claim divinity. those kinds of answers are what i am seeking. stop with the dishonestly claims please.

Answer 1

There is no doubt that Jesus is God. He was actually crucified because of His testimony.

" 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made." (John 1:1-3)

"and declared (Jesus) to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." (Mat 3:4).

"Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”" (Mat 16:16)

"1 Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God 2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, 3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, 4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." (Rom 1:1-4)

- Jesus is the savior of the world (Luke 19:10).
- Christ (Acts 2:25, 30, 36).
- The Son of God (John 9:35-37).
- Emmanuel (meaning God with us) (Mat 1:23).
- Lord (1 The 1:1).
- In Him dwells the fulness of the Godhead (Col 2:9).
_______________________________

Seeing your last comment, please let me ask you why you don't receive the Bible as a good evidence?

We could probably question our own existance. Do we really exist? But at what point do we consider evidence being evidence? Or at what point will doubt be considered reasonnable?

Logically, the way to assess the truth is to look into the evidences and to compare it with the other evidences. It is exactly what the Bible is teaching. You will not be able to understand the value of the Scriptures until you really put yourself to understand the knowledge of God. Don't leave yourself to be guided by what others are saying, but study to get understanding. This is my humble comment for you to consider.

Answer 2

I read something by a bible scholar who studies the ancient scrolls and he claimed that the earliest scrolls they can authenticate from the first gospel written, Matthew, have nothing in them about Christs divinity. It also lacks any claim that he was resurrected or that he was born of a virgin. It is thought provoking that the writer of the gospel that was written closest to the actual life of Christ, did not find it necessary to mention these details. And there is the other dimension that the writings were divinely inspired. The other three gospels were written later and started to tell different stories surrounding these concepts. Later still, the church scribes 'homogenized' the gospels so they where more similar in there stories.
Edit:
Bible scholars have always known that the original scriptures contradicted each other in numerous ways. This is no new claim. There are letters by Origen, one of the churches founding leaders in the 2nd century in Alexandria, about how many differing, conflicting scrolls and scriptures were floating around. Scholars have toiled for centuries trying to pan out the 'real' bible. The King James version is know to be a compilation of the worst collection of scripture available at the time. The old Greek scrolls are known to be the best but there are different versions of these as well. So, you can go back a forth about what the Bible says, but really, what does the 'real' Bible say?

Answer 3

I've seen some people argue that he did. I think they point to a verse where he says, "I am" in response to someone's question. They also quote the "Nobody comes to the Father except through me" verse.

On the other hand, most of the Gospels, especially the synoptic gospels (which were written first) suggest that most of what he did was try to bring fellow Jews back to loving their God with all their heart, soul, and mind. He calls himself the Son of Man, a common title for a prophet which is used in many places in the Old Testament. There are certain things he does in those earliest accounts which suggest he does NOT consider himself to be God.

Furthermore, anything claimed by the bible to be the words of Jesus can be questioned. There is a lot of speculation on which verses were more likely to have been said by Jesus than others, and there are various reasons why people think he said one thing and not another. It's too detailed to go into here, but you might like to do your own research about the issue. It's pretty interesting.

Answer 4

It takes a while to explain, but here is the "cliff's notes" short version. We know from studying the Gospels (both those included in the cannon and those that weren't) what order the Gospels were written in. The later Gospels show a very developed and "High Christology" and working in reverse order back to the earliest versions, Mark and Thomas do not even have resurection visions or accounts (The version of Mark currently in Bibles differs greatly from the earliest manuscripts). By studying Paul's writings (which predate Mark), Paul describes his "sighting of spirit" as typical and compares it to what Peter saw. This shows that the resurection story developed from "spirit sightings" all the way up to the lastest and most developed resurection stories of Luke and John. Additionally, when studying the sayings of Jesus and comparing the different sayings in the different Gospels, a strange parallel appears. There are 37 sayings that are "common tradition sayings" amongst them. These 37 sayings have some strange similarities. In them, Jesus:

1. Never refers to himself as the Messiah.
2. Never refers to himself as a singular or unique child of God.
3. Never uses any of the famous "I am" sayings from John.
4. Never uses apocalyptic sayings about the end of the world.

These, along with many other details, lead modern Biblical scholars to believe that even though Jesus had a profound impact on the people around him, his life's work had nothing to do with "fullfilling prophesy", being the "Son of God", or the "Messiah". The stages of the Christian communities development in their evolving Christology can in most cases be narrowed down to very precise time periods.

Answer 5

We have no way of knowing, since all of the books about him were written after his death, sometimes decades after, and the writers' views were colored by their own beliefs. If we had any actual writings from Jesus or that had been recorded as they occurred, then we could get a better idea. As it is, it can never be known. I do know that most of the early Christians did not think of him as divine, especially in the southern area of the Mediterranean.

Answer 6

The whole story was fabricated. Jesus is a fictional character.

* * *
Did a historical Jesus exist?
http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
[Excerpt]

ALL CLAIMS OF JESUS DERIVE FROM HEARSAY ACCOUNTS

No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources derive from hearsay accounts.

Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge.

Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it.

* * *
The Myth of the Historical Jesus
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/nizrael/jesusrefutation.html

Did Jesus Really Rise From The Dead?
http://www.ffrf.org/about/bybarker/rise.php

Pagan origins of Jesus:
http://www.medmalexperts.com/POCM/index.html
http://geocities.com/christprise/
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/nizrael/jesusrefutation.html
http://www.rationalresponders.com/a_silence_that_screams_no_contemporary_historical_accounts_for_jesus
http://www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/pcc/pcc09.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa3.htm
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/virgin.html
http://www.harrington-sites.com/motif.htm
http://altreligion.about.com/library/weekly/aa052902a.htm
http://www.apollonius.net/bernard1e.html
.

Answer 7

No, in fact he couldn't have been more clear about being divine.

I am going to assume that you know the Bible at least marginally. I am referring specifically to the Old Testament. It was God who claimed to be the Lord of the Sabbath. Yet Jesus claimed to be the Lord of the Sabbath.

He also claimed to be the 'Son of Man', which in one context only means the son of a man. But in the context Jesus was using it, it was the prophetic Messiah he was referring to here:

Luke 6
5 Then Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."

And the Jews knew by their traditions what the scriptures referred to. They had reactions to what Jesus said that take some explanation, because we probably wouldn't react to what He said in the same way. They told Jesus why they were about to stone Him:

John 10
33 "We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."

They knew what He was talking about. Many people here not only discount anything that Jesus said about himself being divine, they also discount anything anyone did when they heard him do it. I find it curious that so many people do this. Because typically they have no background in Jewish tradition, and so are saying by their question that they never really took the time to find out that Jesus was calling himself many things, one of those things was saying that he was literally from God.

Answer 8

Jesus never claimed to be anything, everything that was said and done was claimed by his followers which I hold vary little credibility with, one must remember the story of Jesus is an Egyptian story, and it was written 2000 years prior to his supposed birth, and there really is no factual evidence that he ever existed, the scribes discovered the story 2000 years later and behold a bible appeared, the rest is nothing more than mythical religious history.

Answer 9

cannot speak for whether it is true or not but biggest basis for the argument is that the "bible" most read today is not the same bible it was 150 years ago or 500 years ago for that matter.

My mother has a bible from mid 1800's which reads that man was created in "our" image... but now it's "his".. and it was a man who wrote the bible so who's to say things weren't changed up a bit?

I do believe that Jesus was a good man and influential, but divine? who knows for sure.

Answer 10

Jesus said that he was "son" of god which could mean different things. And yes a council decided to make Jesus divine. I think it was Constantinople but I'm not sure. They also choose what to put in the bible.