Havermayer

Check the entire passage here

I've heard it claimed by some (Bard D. Ehrman) that Jesus talked about a "Son of Man" divine figure coming down and changing the world.

So did Jesus claim to be divine? Do the earliest gospels claim this?

In this particular passage he isn't making an obvious claim of divinity at all actually. Are there any clearer passages.

Thanks for the help!

Dominus Paradoxum

As you might be aware, there's a lot of controversy about the Historical Jesus and (assuming he existed) how closely he resembled the Jesus of the gospels. But as long as we're talking about Jesus as presented by the gospels, I would say that he does, sort of. He never comes right out and says he's God, but sometimes he acts in ways that hint at it. For example, he forgives people's sins, which was supposed to be something only God could do. Another example is John 20:28; Thomas calls Jesus "My lord and my God", and Jesus says nothing to correct him.

BALDUCCI

The problem here is that the biblical texts are full of editorial redactions, editions and changes that were made by theologians in the couple of hundred years after the gospels and other books of the new testament were composed. Its even easy to spot in the Acts where the changes are quite obvious. For most of the Acts, Jesus is described as God's Servant...playing the same role as all the Hebrew prophets that came before him. Then all of a sudden, in a few places, he is described as the "son of god"...you can almost see the white-out, or whatever they used at the time.

The Jewish concept of the messiah was in no way supernatural. There were many messiahs, who like Jesus, fought against foreign invaders and colonisers to reinstate the rule and traditions of the Jewish people. He would have been regarded as specially blessed by God, but not his son. The role of Jesus in his historical context, is probably much more accurately described in the Quran than in the edited version of the new testament.

He was crucified as King of the Jews, which appears to be the claim made about him. I think it is Matthew who shows that he descended from King David via his father Joseph. The theologians forgot to take that out, but in any case, the mythology of the virgin Mary only emerged and was grafted onto the theology a little later.

There is no convincing evidence that Jesus ever made the claims about himself that Christianity made for him. And the powers that he had were in no way unique. If you read the Acts, there were dozens of jesus emissaries going around raising people from the dead, exorcising demons, curing blindness etc. And this was not a preserve only of the Jesus movement. Judea and Galilee at the time were full of magicians, healers, and miracle makers. No one ever claimed that Moses was the son of god or in some way divine, and he was a big time miracle maker, outdoing Jesus on the breadth and spectacular nature of his miracles.

Havermayer

Fundies claim that modern Bibles are 99% as close to the original as we can get. How old are our earliest versions of the manuscripts that we're basing our translations on?

BALDUCCI

I guess about AD 125 is the earliest, and this would have probably been a copy with changes already incorporated

Doug Shaver

Assuming he was real, almost certainly not.

If by "earliest gospels" you mean the synoptics, no, they don't. At least, they do not attribute any explicit claims of divinity to him. There might be some statements that can be construed to that effect with some creative interpretation, but it cannot be cogently argued that no other construal is reasonable.

Even in John's gospel, he says nothing that in my opinion is an unambiguous claim to divinity.

BALDUCCI

..and there would be no reason why he should hide such a claim in abstruse language, especially if he suspected he would be found out anyway. The commentaries I have read on this point are masterpieces of special pleading

Nay-Sayer

Matthew 19:16-17

BALDUCCI

So if someone says something and you dont correct him, it follows that what he said is true

ModernHeretic

Well, the synoptics aren't as clear, but the gospel of John is pretty damn clear in it's claims of Jesus divnity:

John 8:58 (New International Version)

"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"