Description
Book SynopsisIn antiquity, “son of god”—meaning a ruler designated by the gods to carry out their will—was a title used by the Roman emperor Augustus and his successors as a way to reinforce their divinely appointed status. But this title was also used by early Christians to speak about Jesus, borrowing the idiom from Israelite and early Jewish discourses on monarchy. This interdisciplinary volume explores what it means to be God’s son(s) in ancient Jewish and early Christian literature.
Through close readings of relevant texts from multiple ancient corpora, including the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Greco-Roman texts and inscriptions, early Christian and Islamic texts, and apocalyptic literature, the chapters in this volume engage a range of issues including messianism, deification, eschatological figures, Jesus, interreligious polemics, and the Roman and Jewish backgrounds of early Christianity and the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The essays in this collection demonstrate that divine sonship is an ideal prism through which to better understand the deep interrelationship of ancient religions and their politics of kingship and divinity.
In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Richard Bauckham, Max Botner, George J. Brooke, Jan Joosten, Menahem Kister, Reinhard Kratz, Mateusz Kusio, Michael A. Lyons, Matthew V. Novenson, Michael Peppard, Sarah Whittle, and N. T. Wright.
Table of ContentsAbbreviations
Introducing Son of God: Divine Sonship in Jewish and Christian Antiquity—Kai Akagi, Paul Sloan, and Garrick V. Allen
Part I: Son of God in Early Jewish Literature
1 Son of God and Son of Man: 4Q246 in the Light of the Book of Daniel—Reinhard G. Kratz
2 Son of God, Sons of God, and Election in the Dead Sea Scrolls—George J. Brooke
3 Son of God in Wisdom 2:16–18: Between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—Jan Joosten
4 Son of God in the Book of Revelation and Apocalyptic Literature—Garrick V. Allen
5 Whose Son Is the Messiah?—Matthew V. Novenson
Part II: Son of God in Early Christianity and the Gentile World
6 Jesus’s Use of “Father” and Disuse of “Lord”—Richard Bauckham
7 “Whoever Does the Will of God” (Mark 3:35): Mark’s Christ as the Model Son—Max Botner
8 Son of God and Christian Origins—N. T. Wright
9 Son of God in Gentile Contexts (That Is, Almost Everywhere)—Michael Peppard
10 “Declared to Be Son of God in Power”: Romans 1:4 and the Iconography of Imperial Apotheosis—Sarah Whittle
11 “To Become like His Brothers”: Divine Sonship and Siblingship in Hebrews—Mateusz Kusio
12 Son(s) of God: Israel and Christ: A Study of Transformation, Adaptation, and Rivalry—Menahem Kister
13 What Does God Get Out of It? Reciprocity and Divine Sonship—Michael A. Lyons
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index of Ancient Sources
