Jesus عليه السلام and Old Testament prophecy with Professor John J. Collins (2022-02-24)

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Summary of Jesus عليه السلام and Old Testament prophecy with Professor John J. Collins

This summary is AI generated - there may be inaccuracies.

00:00:00 - 00:45:00

Professor John J. Collins discusses the idea that Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in this YouTube video. He covers the different views on Jesus as Messiah and how the of "Son of Man" came to be applied to him. Collins also discusses the idea that Jesus was seen as divine by his followers and how this may have related to visions people had of him after his crucifixion.

00:00:00 John Collins discusses the servant song of Isaiah 52-53 in relation to ancient Jewish beliefs about the coming of a messiah. He notes that the song may not have been well-known among pre-Christian Jews, and that Christians are the first ones to identify it as a proof text for the resurrection of Jesus.

00:05:00 covers the first interpretation of the poem "The Son of Man" from the book of Daniel, which is that it refers to the Jewish Messiah, Jesus. Professor John J. Collins covers the various evidence for this interpretation, including the lack of a violent Messiah figure in pre-Christian Judaism, the use of the verse in the book of Daniel to describe the future leader of a rebellion against Rome, and the lack of any expectation of a suffering messiah in early Christianity.
00:10:00 The professor discusses the different expectations of a messiah in Judaism before Christianity. He says that after the Maccabean revolt, there was a resurgence in expectations of a messiah, but that by the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, these expectations had largely faded away.
00:15:00 Professor John J. Collins discusses the ancient texts of the Old Testament and how they contain references to a future figure known as the Son of Man. This figure is later identified with Jesus, and early Christians made a out of it to call him Messiah.
00:20:00 Professor John J. Collins discusses the different views on Jesus as a messiah in relation to the Old Testament prophets. He points out that there was such a thing as a prophetic messiah, and that the figure who comes to mind for many people are Elijah and Elijah in particular. He argues that the tag of messiah gets stuck on Jesus because he made claims about the kingdom of God that resonated with people.
00:25:00 Jesus' followers expected him to perform miracles and do other things that he did not do. After his crucifixion, some people claimed to have seen him alive. The evidence for these visions was visions right, which does not prove anything. There is also a counter-story that someone stole his body.
00:30:00 Professor John J. Collins discusses the idea that Jesus, referred to as "Lord" and "God" by Thomas in John 20:28, is an honorific used by those who wished to flatter Domitian, the Roman emperor at the end of the first century. He argues that the passage can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but ultimately does not believe that it describes Jesus as the one and only God.
00:35:00 The documentary hypothesis is the view that the Pentateuch - the first five books of the Bible - was composed of multiple sources which were combined to produce the text. There is strong disagreement among scholars concerning the precise nature of the sources, with some believing that they can be identified and others less confident. In modern biblical scholarship, the documentary hypothesis is divided into two camps: those who believe that there are four sources - elohist, deuteronomist, priestly writer, and "roland corpus" - and those who believe that there are only two sources, the elohist and the priestly writer.
00:40:00 Discusses the differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and Professor John J. Collins introduces his idea that the Hebrew Bible is best explained by the documentary hypothesis. He explains that he is retiring from his teaching duties, but intends to continue writing and publishing.
00:45:00 Professor John J. Collins discusses how Jesus' prophecies in the New Testament match up with Old Testament predictions.

Full transcript with timestamps: CLICK TO EXPAND

0:00:02 well hello everyone and welcome to 0:00:05 blogging theology today i am delighted 0:00:07 to talk to professor john j collins you 0:00:10 are most welcome sir 0:00:14 thank you 0:00:15 um john is the holmes professor of old 0:00:18 testament criticism and interpretation 0:00:20 at yale divinity school he has noted for 0:00:23 his research in the hebrew bible and the 0:00:26 dead sea scrolls and their relation to 0:00:29 christian origins 0:00:31 john is married to professor adela 0:00:33 yarbro collins professor of new 0:00:36 testament at yale divinity school with 0:00:39 whom he has co-authored the excellent 0:00:41 book this is it here king and messiah 0:00:44 as son of god divine human and angelic 0:00:47 messianic figures in biblical and 0:00:49 related literature um this is a 0:00:52 heavyweight book and i really recommend 0:00:53 it if you're interested in the academic 0:00:55 side of this discussion 0:00:57 uh also 0:00:58 um he is editor of the newly published 0:01:00 work the jerome biblical commentary for 0:01:04 the 21st century this is a weighty tome 0:01:07 um 0:01:08 third fully revised edition which has an 0:01:10 introduction by pope francis no less um 0:01:14 and i'm sure it will be a central 0:01:15 reading for the student of the bible and 0:01:17 i as an undergraduate had an earlier 0:01:19 edition of the work which was um very 0:01:21 good indeed now today john has very 0:01:24 kindly agreed to talk to us about the 0:01:26 jewish scriptures and early christianity 0:01:30 so if i may perhaps begin by asking the 0:01:34 following question 0:01:35 and it concerns the famous and often 0:01:37 quoted passage in the book of isaiah 0:01:40 usually known 0:01:41 as isaiah 53.0:01:44 is it correct to say that the famous 0:01:46 servant song of isaiah to be precise 0:01:49 isaiah 52 11 to 53 12. appears to have 0:01:54 played no role in pre-christian judaism 0:01:57 as as a text for telling the coming of a 0:02:00 messiah and if so would it be christians 0:02:04 who seem to be the first ones to 0:02:06 identify this as a proof text after the 0:02:10 crucifixion of jesus 0:02:13 yes 0:02:14 and by coincidence i was doing this text 0:02:17 in class yesterday oh my goodness and 0:02:20 teaching of course and the messiah 0:02:22 although i am now officially retired 0:02:25 i'm doing a kind of encore 0:02:27 course 0:02:28 on this 0:02:29 so and now it's a very interesting text 0:02:33 and you know if you grow up christian 0:02:36 it's hard not to think of it as 0:02:38 messianic 0:02:40 because 0:02:41 this is how the messiah came to be 0:02:43 understood eventually in christianity 0:02:46 and what was different about it in its 0:02:49 time 0:02:51 is that what what would it mean to be 0:02:53 saved 0:02:54 so what do you need to be saved from 0:02:58 now i'd say the typical answer to that 0:03:01 in the ancient world not just in judaism 0:03:04 is you need to be saved from 0:03:06 foreign occupation 0:03:09 hunger 0:03:10 uh plagues 0:03:12 you know various kinds of misfortune 0:03:15 and 0:03:16 therefore in many places 0:03:18 the world has not changed too much in 0:03:20 this regard in many places people think 0:03:24 you need a strong 0:03:26 central figure a ruler you know the 0:03:29 enumerage the 0:03:34 in babylon is typical in this regard if 0:03:36 you want to be safe from chaos 0:03:38 rally round your strong central leader 0:03:43 and as 0:03:44 you don't have to belabor the point that 0:03:46 this team is very much with us 0:03:48 to the present day okay 0:03:51 in the 0:03:52 what you get in the servant song of 0:03:54 isaiah which i think was quite novel at 0:03:57 the time 0:03:58 is that what you really need to be saved 0:04:01 from is sin 0:04:04 and the whole world needs to be saved 0:04:06 from sin now again 0:04:08 this idea all right was around you'll 0:04:11 get us in in the cult typically in 0:04:13 leviticus or whatever but you know 0:04:16 applied to the whole political situation 0:04:19 you know the problem confronting the 0:04:20 prophet here is that the babylonian 0:04:23 exile 0:04:24 you know when israel was almost wiped 0:04:27 off the map 0:04:28 indeed what many people would have 0:04:30 assumed that it had been wiped off the 0:04:32 map 0:04:33 and then 0:04:34 it has what he saw as a miraculous 0:04:37 comeback when cyrus the persian took 0:04:39 over 0:04:40 now but the explanation then is the 0:04:43 question then is uh if god wanted to 0:04:46 restore jerusalem and glorify it 0:04:49 why did he put it through this whole 0:04:51 misery of the babylonian exile 0:04:54 and the idea in second isaiah is that 0:04:58 the suffering itself 0:05:01 was redemptive 0:05:03 and as i understand the passage i'm 0:05:05 giving you a highly simplified version 0:05:07 of it here 0:05:08 and 0:05:09 the the idea was that the turnaround 0:05:12 would be so spectacular 0:05:14 that the fate of judah had been so 0:05:17 terrible it had been so given up for 0:05:19 dead 0:05:20 uh that nobody expected to come back 0:05:24 and then when it is restored this would 0:05:27 astonish all the nations and they would 0:05:29 think 0:05:30 it their god must be the real god we 0:05:32 should all go worship him 0:05:34 but that of course didn't quite happen 0:05:37 but that i would say was what that poem 0:05:40 meant in its original time 0:05:42 right now when you read it 0:05:45 and there are still many scholars who 0:05:47 think that it's actually talking about 0:05:50 an individual 0:05:51 perhaps the king who died in exile or 0:05:55 perhaps the prophet 0:05:58 i don't subscribe to that because in 0:06:00 order to subscribe to it you have to 0:06:03 deposit a lot of history for which we 0:06:06 have no other evidence 0:06:09 and i think it's simpler to just apply 0:06:12 it to the jewish people 0:06:15 but at the same time you know it was 0:06:17 language that could easily be applied to 0:06:19 an individual 0:06:20 and so many texts in the hebrew bible 0:06:23 were applied to future individuals and 0:06:26 treated as messianic prophecies 0:06:29 and this one as far as i can see was not 0:06:32 now you will get allusions to some of 0:06:35 the servant poems in isaiah 0:06:38 and now it's a very interesting text in 0:06:41 the book of enoch the liturd's of enoch 0:06:44 where there's a figure called that son 0:06:45 of man 0:06:46 and that son of man is said to be a 0:06:48 light to the gentiles or a light to the 0:06:50 nations and that's a motif picked up 0:06:52 from those uh poems in isaiah 0:06:56 but 0:06:56 he is not said 0:06:59 to save people by his suffering right 0:07:02 you know the motif of 0:07:05 redemptive suffering is not picked up 0:07:08 there right in the dead sea scrolls we 0:07:11 have the figure called the teacher of 0:07:12 righteousness 0:07:14 many of us think he wrote some of the 0:07:16 thanksgiving hymns in any case whoever 0:07:19 wrote the thanksgiving hibs had what you 0:07:22 might call a servant complex 0:07:25 he saw himself as the servant 0:07:28 who was being abused by everybody for 0:07:31 whom nobody had any respect but god 0:07:33 would rescue him and glorify him 0:07:36 but it's never suggested that his 0:07:39 suffering would save anybody else 0:07:43 right so in the book 0:07:45 yeah at the end of the book of daniel 0:07:46 you have the people who are called the 0:07:48 wives in hebrew it's mass killing and 0:07:51 the term is picked up from this fourth 0:07:53 servant song 0:07:55 which says 0:07:56 you know 0:07:58 uh behold my servant will prosper and 0:08:02 that that's the verb and it's 0:08:04 the then these are the the wise 0:08:06 and they 0:08:08 apparently are put to death 0:08:10 but then they're raised up and lifted up 0:08:12 to the stars 0:08:14 but it's never suggested that by doing 0:08:17 that they were saving anybody else 0:08:21 so as i understand that the first uh 0:08:24 interpretation of that poem 0:08:28 in terms of a savior figure 0:08:30 was in the case of jesus 0:08:33 yeah 0:08:33 and in a way you might say that 0:08:36 interpretation was almost forced upon 0:08:38 the followers of jesus 0:08:40 because 0:08:42 i think they had already decided that he 0:08:45 was the messiah 0:08:47 and the messiah was not supposed to be 0:08:48 crucified 0:08:50 but this is the thing john isn't it 0:08:52 because there seems to be no firm 0:08:53 evidence to suggest expectations of a 0:08:56 suffering messiah in pre-christian 0:08:59 judaism would you agree that is that is 0:09:01 absolutely right 0:09:03 yeah 0:09:04 the the typical expectation of a messiah 0:09:08 is 0:09:09 somebody who would smash heads 0:09:12 but he'd be a violent figure who would 0:09:14 drive out the romans 0:09:16 you know a hundred years after jesus a 0:09:19 man named barcok came along who led a 0:09:23 revolt against rome one of the stories 0:09:25 about bark cockpit is that he kicked a 0:09:28 rabbi to death 0:09:29 gosh 0:09:30 you know he got into an argument with 0:09:32 him 0:09:33 so 0:09:33 he had a temper 0:09:36 but no if you want to lead a rebellion 0:09:38 against the romans 0:09:40 you know that's the kind of person you 0:09:41 want 0:09:44 and i think that is what most people 0:09:47 would have thought 0:09:48 that's what a messiah is supposed to do 0:09:51 there's a pretty standard job 0:09:53 description for the messiah that you get 0:09:55 now in the dead sea scrolls we have 0:09:57 several brief passages and 0:10:01 not a whole lot of other texts actually 0:10:03 outside of the dead sea scrolls but we 0:10:05 have some but they're quite consistent 0:10:08 that 0:10:09 what he should do is destroy the wicked 0:10:13 now in the book of isaiah it says he 0:10:16 will kill the wicked with the breath of 0:10:17 his lips 0:10:19 that's fine you know he does maybe 0:10:21 doesn't need a sword 0:10:23 but he kills them 0:10:25 yeah 0:10:26 that's what the expectation was and then 0:10:28 you see what happened in the case of 0:10:30 jesus really didn't fit that at all 0:10:34 and that's why they go back to the 0:10:36 scriptures 0:10:38 and look say is there anything here that 0:10:40 does fit 0:10:42 and then isaiah 53 seemed to be a 0:10:45 godsend 0:10:48 in that regard that and then the 0:10:50 combination of that with daniel chapter 0:10:52 7 0:10:53 yeah we'll come to that but just 0:10:56 the next question would be 0:10:57 um in judaism before christianity was it 0:11:01 the case that not only was there no 0:11:03 strong obsession with the messianic 0:11:05 expectations but in a few places where 0:11:08 there is a mention of a future messiah 0:11:10 or an eschatological figure we encounter 0:11:13 a diversity of views different 0:11:16 understandings so we've got texts you've 0:11:18 already mentioned some of them 0:11:19 mentioning a davidic messiah a priestly 0:11:22 messiah a prophet messiah and even a few 0:11:24 mentioning a divine perhaps angelic 0:11:27 messiah 0:11:28 figure 0:11:29 then there's also which you made already 0:11:31 a mention of a heavenly messiah in one 0:11:33 enoch 0:11:35 whose activity seems to be confined to 0:11:38 the heavens so can you shed some light 0:11:40 on the diversity of pre-christian 0:11:43 jewish expectations of a future messiah 0:11:47 or an eschatological figure and you've 0:11:49 covered this some ground already on this 0:11:51 but there is this diversity of viewpoint 0:11:53 i think isn't it 0:11:55 well i'd say you know if you 0:11:57 spoke simply of the messiah 0:12:01 anybody in first and this would be the 0:12:04 mashiach the anointed one 0:12:08 most people would take that to refer to 0:12:11 the king 0:12:12 right and 0:12:14 the expectation in that case was that 0:12:17 somebody would restore the davidic 0:12:20 monarchy 0:12:21 yes 0:12:22 now this was on the books so to speak 0:12:26 there's the promise to david in 2nd 0:12:28 samuel chapter 7 that somebody from your 0:12:32 line will always sit on the throne 0:12:35 then after the babylonian exile they 0:12:37 didn't have any descendant of david and 0:12:39 they didn't have a king 0:12:41 and so every now and then 0:12:43 somebody sticks in a passage in one of 0:12:46 the prophetic books 0:12:47 saying but the days are surely coming 0:12:50 when god would raise up for david a 0:12:53 righteous branch 0:12:54 and then 0:12:55 ten chapters later in jeremiah you read 0:12:59 in those days and at that time god would 0:13:02 raise up for david a righteous branch in 0:13:05 other words 0:13:07 don't sit around waiting for it 0:13:10 you know i think many people would have 0:13:12 thought of this the way many christians 0:13:14 now think about the second coming 0:13:17 that it's something 0:13:18 you affirm in principle 0:13:21 but you don't really expect it to happen 0:13:23 in your life fam 0:13:25 and i think that the mess that kind of 0:13:28 messianic expectation 0:13:30 generally faded into the background 0:13:33 right and you get very little of it if 0:13:35 any between about 500 i think there was 0:13:39 a little flurry when they came back to 0:13:41 jerusalem with the figure of zerubbabel 0:13:44 that they thought he would do it and 0:13:46 really what they were looking for was 0:13:47 somebody who would restore the monarchy 0:13:50 yes 0:13:51 not somebody who would bring history to 0:13:53 an end invent for a thousand years but 0:13:55 somebody who would restore the monarchy 0:13:57 and be get a son who would continue it 0:14:00 and so forth but i think that they 0:14:03 pretty well gave up on that 0:14:05 and the dominant figure in judaism in 0:14:08 the second temple period 0:14:10 was the high priest 0:14:12 and so when you get to the dead sea 0:14:14 scrolls they talk about two messiahs yes 0:14:17 the messiah of aaron and the messiah of 0:14:19 israel yeah and uh in some cases the 0:14:23 messiah of aeron takes precedence 0:14:26 and that i think was 0:14:28 what they were expecting 0:14:30 now 0:14:31 when does any of this messianic 0:14:34 expectation pick up again 0:14:36 i would say um 0:14:38 the two things contributed to it 0:14:41 first of all after the maccabean revolt 0:14:44 the descendants of the maccabees set 0:14:46 themselves up as kings 0:14:48 yeah 0:14:49 now some people didn't like that at all 0:14:53 and especially when things went bad 0:14:56 and they did go bad and you had a civil 0:14:58 war between two of the brothers and then 0:15:00 pompe the roman general came in 0:15:03 and uh around that time somebody wrote a 0:15:06 text called the psalms of solomon 0:15:09 and one of them is praying to god to 0:15:11 raise up for us a you know a real king 0:15:14 from david 0:15:16 so it's having a monarchy that is not 0:15:19 davidic 0:15:21 is what makes some people 0:15:23 anxious to get a davidic monarchy again 0:15:27 and then that was amplified i think when 0:15:29 the romans took over 0:15:31 because then you have a foreign you know 0:15:34 they had lived under greeks and persians 0:15:38 and lived fairly peacefully under them 0:15:40 but they did not live peacefully under 0:15:42 the romans 0:15:44 you know that the roman hand was too 0:15:46 heavy 0:15:47 or so it would seem and so i think then 0:15:51 again it doesn't mean that everybody was 0:15:53 sitting around waiting for a messiah but 0:15:56 that every now and then 0:15:58 somebody would come along 0:16:01 and 0:16:02 would excite a group of foreigners 0:16:05 now we hear of a couple of people 0:16:08 maybe a little bit before jesus 0:16:11 uh there was this a man named simon and 0:16:13 another man named throng gaze these are 0:16:15 only mentioned briefly in the historian 0:16:17 josephus but they got a following 0:16:21 and evidently some people got excited 0:16:23 about jesus also and we'll talk more i 0:16:27 guess about that as to why they got 0:16:29 excited about him 0:16:31 and but i take seriously the story of 0:16:34 jesus entry into jerusalem 0:16:36 you know writing on a donkey which was 0:16:39 fulfilling a prophecy from zechariah 0:16:41 chapter 9 and with people shouting 0:16:44 hosanna to the son of david 0:16:47 but jesus thought of that who knows 0:16:50 but at least a number of his followers 0:16:53 thought that this was it 0:16:55 and what the romans did to the case like 0:16:56 that 0:16:57 is crucify first 0:17:00 and have your inquiry later 0:17:02 yes that was settled that 0:17:05 and now where then do you get the idea 0:17:07 of a heavenly messiah 0:17:09 well what you get first of all in the 0:17:11 book of daniel is the idea of a heavenly 0:17:14 patron 0:17:16 archangel michael 0:17:17 quite explicitly in the later part of 0:17:19 the book 0:17:21 and i think that he is the figure who is 0:17:23 described as one like a son of man 0:17:25 coming on the clouds of heaven oh right 0:17:28 right in the later chapters of the book 0:17:31 they're fairly clear that there is a 0:17:34 battle in heaven between the angel 0:17:36 gabriel and michael on the one hand and 0:17:39 the princes of persia greece and the 0:17:41 other 0:17:42 and so then michael is the one who is to 0:17:45 win the battle 0:17:47 and you get that also in the dead sea 0:17:48 scrolls and the war scroll 0:17:50 that god will raise up the leadership of 0:17:53 michaels among the gods and the dominion 0:17:56 of israel among all flesh 0:17:59 so 0:18:00 that now these figures weren't 0:18:02 necessarily called messiahs 0:18:05 the first takes that does call you refer 0:18:08 to daniel 7 and that son of man and also 0:18:12 call him a messiah is the similitudes of 0:18:15 enoch 0:18:17 and you also get it in an apocalypse 0:18:20 called fourth ezra 0:18:22 at the end of the first century yeah but 0:18:24 now i think one of your questions here 0:18:27 was uh you know was um son of man 0:18:31 uh a standard expectation 0:18:34 but yeah 0:18:35 exactly yeah but was it was it the 0:18:37 question was is there any evidence in 0:18:38 any pre-christian text uh we were 0:18:41 mentioning daniel of course regarding a 0:18:42 future the son of man as a title did the 0:18:46 son of man act as a title for a 0:18:48 particular future figure in 0:18:50 pre-christian judeos in other words in 0:18:52 judea's before christianity 0:18:55 and no it wasn't a title yeah but you 0:18:58 could have you know the text of daniel 0:19:00 was known 0:19:02 and people could refer to it 0:19:05 and so in the civility of enoch what you 0:19:07 get is 0:19:08 that son of man 0:19:10 right 0:19:11 now you know that's not 0:19:13 quite the same thing as the son of man 0:19:16 it's that son of man son of man just 0:19:18 means human being you're right 0:19:21 or somebody who looks like a would be 0:19:24 in visionary literature 0:19:27 in fourth ezra they don't actually use 0:19:29 that terminology they talk about a man 0:19:32 riding on a cloud coming up from the sea 0:19:35 but you know if you know the book of 0:19:37 daniel you know who they're talking 0:19:38 about 0:19:40 but that this is 0:19:42 presumably the figure foretold by daniel 0:19:45 but it was really the early christians i 0:19:47 think who made a title out of it 0:19:50 right right so i think larry hurtado was 0:19:52 right on that point 0:19:54 yes yes i was i asked him the question 0:19:56 um that according to the late larry uh 0:19:59 her to do who um 0:20:00 uh was american but i think he was in 0:20:02 scotland for some consideration that's 0:20:03 right 0:20:04 um 0:20:05 he said there was no evidence of son of 0:20:08 man inverted commas acting as a 0:20:10 definitive title for a particular figure 0:20:13 escological figure and i asked if you 0:20:15 agree with that assessment and obviously 0:20:17 you do um and this is interesting uh but 0:20:20 the question is about the historical 0:20:22 jesus then 0:20:23 um 0:20:24 if one can speak of this uh is he best 0:20:26 viewed as a claimant to be a prophetic 0:20:29 messiah or a divine messiah because in 0:20:33 later christianity he certainly was seen 0:20:35 as a divine figure 0:20:37 well to back up one step there 0:20:40 was there such a thing as a prophetic 0:20:42 messiah 0:20:44 well there are a couple of cases in the 0:20:47 hebrew bible where prophets are said to 0:20:49 be anointed 0:20:51 and you know i think elisha 0:20:54 is supposed to be anointed at one point 0:20:57 in isaiah 61 a prophet says therefore 0:21:01 god has anointed me 0:21:03 and you know it basically means 0:21:05 appointed 0:21:07 me 0:21:08 but the word is used 0:21:10 and in the dead sea scrolls they 0:21:12 sometimes refer to the prophets as the 0:21:15 anointed ones 0:21:17 which is interesting enough and then 0:21:20 there is a very interesting and 0:21:23 controversial text in the dead sea 0:21:25 scrolls sometimes referred to as the 0:21:27 messiah of heaven and earth 0:21:30 because it starts out heaven and earth 0:21:32 will obey his messiah 0:21:35 and it goes on then to talk about uh 0:21:39 preach 0:21:40 raising the dead healing the sick and 0:21:42 preaching good news to the poor 0:21:44 and even though it's god who does it 0:21:49 you figure god doesn't do his own 0:21:51 preaching 0:21:52 you know that's the job of herald 0:21:55 and if you look for 0:21:57 a messiah whom heaven and earth obey 0:22:01 the figures who come to mind are elijah 0:22:03 and elijah 0:22:04 actually especially elijah 0:22:07 and so i think you know it also in the 0:22:10 the community rule from qumran they talk 0:22:12 about 0:22:13 this will last until the coming of a 0:22:16 prophet and the messiah severion in 0:22:18 israel 0:22:19 so they were expecting an eschatological 0:22:22 prophet 0:22:24 meaning a prophet who would uh kind of 0:22:27 bring in the change of the 0:22:30 world 0:22:31 and 0:22:32 who might or might not be called a 0:22:35 messiah 0:22:37 so now when you look then at the 0:22:39 synoptic gospels and they think 0:22:42 that's 0:22:42 that's the evidence we have problematic 0:22:45 as it may be 0:22:46 for the historical jesus the gospel of 0:22:49 john is 0:22:52 doesn't sound the same let's say you 0:22:54 know it doesn't seem like the same idiom 0:22:58 that jesus is speaking 0:23:00 but in the synoptics jesus is described 0:23:05 as going around 0:23:06 working miracles 0:23:09 raising the dead healing the sick 0:23:11 preaching good news to the poor 0:23:14 and in fact in the gospel of luke he 0:23:16 reads that passage from isaiah 61 as 0:23:19 kind of the the program yeah or for what 0:23:22 he's doing yeah and in fact at one point 0:23:25 in the gospel of mark uh he says to his 0:23:28 followers who do people say that i am 0:23:32 and one of the answers is elijah or one 0:23:35 of the prophets yes yes very interesting 0:23:38 no why then 0:23:40 does the 0:23:41 the tag of messiah 0:23:44 get stuck on him well i think it's 0:23:46 largely because he was going around 0:23:49 saying the kingdom of god is at hand 0:23:53 now we could sit here for a month 0:23:55 discussing what the kingdom of god might 0:23:57 mean okay but it it evidently does 0:24:01 something for for jesus uh what and i 0:24:05 think it surely meant something 0:24:07 different from the world as it now is 0:24:10 you know it's it's uh the world 0:24:13 transformed 0:24:15 but it's still this world though isn't 0:24:16 it johnny we're not talking about a 0:24:18 supernatural heavenly realm and we're 0:24:20 talking about it right that's right yes 0:24:23 it's talking about the transformation of 0:24:26 this world 0:24:27 and now people might hear that in 0:24:29 different ways 0:24:31 and i think 0:24:32 many people would probably have figured 0:24:35 if you get the kingdom of god that means 0:24:37 you get a davidic messiah 0:24:39 coming back hmm 0:24:41 you know that the kingdom of god means 0:24:43 the kingdom of judah 0:24:46 or entails a kingdom of judah 0:24:50 and they think 0:24:51 that for 0:24:52 through the people 0:24:54 who heard jesus say this 0:24:57 they came to believe that well he must 0:24:59 be the one who is going to bring it 0:25:03 and jesus himself seems to have been 0:25:05 very evasive 0:25:09 you know people scholars talk about the 0:25:11 messianic secret 0:25:13 because you have just a couple of cases 0:25:15 in the gospel where he breaks down and 0:25:18 tells people 0:25:20 uh you know with with peter 0:25:22 when 0:25:25 supposedly he 0:25:27 prophesies how he's going to referring 0:25:29 to himself as the son of man 0:25:31 and how he has to go up to jerusalem and 0:25:34 suffer and die 0:25:36 and then 0:25:37 peter says no and he says get behind me 0:25:39 satan 0:25:41 but i think it's pretty clear from the 0:25:43 gospels that he did not go around 0:25:47 saying publicly 0:25:49 i am the messiah i am the one 0:25:52 you're waiting for 0:25:54 and so i think this is something i think 0:25:58 maybe his followers already believe that 0:26:00 he was 0:26:01 but i think what they expected of him 0:26:03 when he went up to jerusalem 0:26:05 was totally different from what happened 0:26:09 and it must have been 0:26:11 a huge shock 0:26:14 you know if you go into jerusalem saying 0:26:16 hosanna to the son of david 0:26:19 and you think that this man can 0:26:21 you know perform miracles 0:26:25 and then no he's captured and crucified 0:26:29 and he wasn't actually the only person 0:26:31 that that happened to 0:26:33 we have a series of figures 0:26:35 uh josephus the jewish historian who 0:26:38 wrote the story of the jewish war 0:26:40 against rome 0:26:42 in the warm up so to speak to the 0:26:44 rebellion 0:26:45 there were several figures who came 0:26:47 along 0:26:48 one of them took the crowd of people up 0:26:50 on the mount of olives and told them 0:26:52 that at his word the walls of jerusalem 0:26:54 would fall down 0:26:57 well they didn't 0:27:00 or the romans got there first 0:27:02 and somebody else told them that the 0:27:04 walters of the jordan would part before 0:27:06 him i mean these people you know thought 0:27:10 they were 0:27:11 um reenacting 0:27:13 biblical scenes 0:27:15 and i don't doubt that some of the 0:27:17 followers of jesus expected that he 0:27:20 would do something like that too 0:27:23 although i don't see any indication that 0:27:26 he himself said so 0:27:29 so then what happened was 0:27:32 he was 0:27:33 arrested 0:27:34 crucified 0:27:35 and normally speaking you would expect 0:27:38 that to be the end of the story 0:27:41 but then 0:27:42 evidently a few days later 0:27:46 people started saying that they had seen 0:27:48 him alive 0:27:50 and the evidence really was 0:27:53 visions 0:27:55 visions right you know an empty tomb 0:27:57 doesn't prove anything 0:28:00 charlie chaplin's tomb was found empty 0:28:03 at one point 0:28:04 nobody figured he wasn't 0:28:07 uh 0:28:08 you know and and the counter story then 0:28:10 was that somebody stole the body 0:28:12 yeah which is you know what you would 0:28:14 normally think if a tomb were found 0:28:16 empty 0:28:18 but enough people claimed to have 0:28:22 seen him experienced him 0:28:25 and now it's very hard you know to 0:28:27 pronounce on the reality of something 0:28:29 like that 0:28:32 i remember in my early years teaching 0:28:36 a couple came along to an evening class 0:28:39 and after class they came up to me and 0:28:42 said that their son had been killed in 0:28:45 an accident 0:28:46 and they were really upset about this 0:28:49 and then one evening when they were in 0:28:51 bed 0:28:52 he came in and stood at the foot of the 0:28:55 bed and said it's all right 0:28:59 now 0:29:01 what do you say if somebody tells you a 0:29:03 story like that 0:29:05 i i think i think your point that this 0:29:07 is actually uh in the literature is 0:29:09 actually a surprisingly 0:29:12 common almost experience um it's not 0:29:15 unique um at all 0:29:18 i remember a story i read years ago the 0:29:20 famous english translator of the new 0:29:22 testament jb phillips which is a very 0:29:24 readable kind of colloquial translation 0:29:27 wasn't very literal at all anyway um he 0:29:30 um he knew cs lewis the great christian 0:29:33 apologist author of the you know the 0:29:35 line of which in the wardrobe and all 0:29:36 that um he knew him 0:29:39 in oxford or cambridge i forget which 0:29:40 anyway c.s lewis died jb phillips didn't 0:29:43 know jb phillips was sitting there in 0:29:45 his study at oxford i think it was 0:29:47 and c.s lewis just sat 0:29:50 actually appeared apparently in a chair 0:29:52 opposite jb phillips 0:29:54 bright as day 3d there was cs lewis had 0:29:58 a conversation with him now c.s lewis 0:30:00 had died i mean he was dead 0:30:03 and um now jb phillips is an otherwise 0:30:05 was an otherwise sane person i'm not i'm 0:30:07 not parting judgment on this experience 0:30:09 i really am not and that's not my point 0:30:12 my point is that it happens 0:30:14 that these kind of things happen to 0:30:16 grieving parents terrible story you've 0:30:19 mentioned there plus two slightly more 0:30:21 um you know everyday things or a 0:30:23 colleague has passed away it happens so 0:30:26 when you have people saying well this 0:30:28 this 0:30:29 person jesus of nazareth he has such a 0:30:30 huge impact on our lives and you know we 0:30:33 he's perhaps passed away in his tomb is 0:30:35 empty did he go to the did he go to the 0:30:37 right to him by the way anyway and he 0:30:39 appears to us 0:30:40 yeah 0:30:42 i can believe that because it kind of 0:30:44 happens it happens to people at oxford 0:30:47 it happens to people you you've met it 0:30:49 happens to grieving parents it happens 0:30:51 um i don't know why it happens i don't 0:30:53 know if it's objectively real it could 0:30:55 be it might not be i don't know it's 0:30:57 above my pay grade but it happens for 0:31:00 sure yeah 0:31:01 i mean there there is some real 0:31:04 experience 0:31:05 underlying it 0:31:07 now 0:31:08 at the same time you know it's not the 0:31:10 same kind of reality 0:31:13 that we have most of the time 0:31:18 know you can't necessarily call the 0:31:20 person back 0:31:21 get the person to appear on demand 0:31:24 uh or know what becomes of them 0:31:27 otherwise yes 0:31:29 but i think from the viewpoint of the 0:31:31 people having the experience it is very 0:31:33 real and 0:31:35 deserves respect 0:31:37 oh absolutely yeah 0:31:39 okay 0:31:40 um i don't want to uh in your uh 0:31:43 marvel's book 0:31:44 king and messiah as son of god i i read 0:31:47 a fascinating comment on um the apostle 0:31:51 thomas's acclamation 0:31:54 uh 0:31:55 in the gospel of john john 20 28 where 0:31:57 thomas says to jesus my lord and my god 0:32:01 and um in chapter eight there's a title 0:32:04 footnote here which i thought was really 0:32:05 really interesting um you uh you were 0:32:08 citing another scholar 0:32:10 um who i won't mention his name but he 0:32:12 said that 0:32:13 this verse where thomas says to jesus my 0:32:16 lord my god john 20 28 is the one verse 0:32:19 in the new testament which does 0:32:21 unquestionably describe christ as god 0:32:25 okay 0:32:26 now you're quite critical of that 0:32:28 because you go on to say this view fails 0:32:30 to recognize however 0:32:32 that the phrase dominus edeus and 0:32:36 presumably its greek equivalent in the 0:32:38 gospel of john 0:32:39 is an honorific acclamation used for 0:32:42 example by those who wish to flatter 0:32:45 domitian the mission of course was the 0:32:47 roman empire towards the end of the 0:32:49 first century when the gospel of john 0:32:51 presumably was written 0:32:53 um now could you elaborate on that 0:32:55 because surely people will say 0:32:58 thomas is just calling jesus god 0:33:01 i mean god is a very equivocal term 0:33:06 in that period 0:33:08 now uh either in the hebrew bible there 0:33:12 really isn't monotheism 0:33:16 if by that you mean the idea that only 0:33:18 one god exists 0:33:22 what has happened in christianity 0:33:24 certainly and probably in judaism and 0:33:27 islam too 0:33:28 is that the beings 0:33:31 that used to be called gods 0:33:33 got to be downgraded 0:33:36 and so people call them angels 0:33:38 or demons or whatever but in the first 0:33:42 century 0:33:44 many people would still refer to them as 0:33:46 gods 0:33:48 so so a god 0:33:50 is not 0:33:51 human although you get some humans 0:33:54 who are also gods 0:33:56 including i might add the king 0:33:59 in ancient israel yeah i mean is it 0:34:01 psalm 45 the psalm 45 king is actually 0:34:04 called god directly in an extraordinary 0:34:07 passage in isaiah nine you get another 0:34:10 human figure called god and jesus quotes 0:34:12 psalm 82 he doesn't hear john's gospel 0:34:14 ye shall be as gods referring to 0:34:17 judges of israel so this language is 0:34:19 used very elastically 0:34:22 uh around the place 0:34:24 so i think you know to say my lord and 0:34:27 my god 0:34:28 is like saying 0:34:30 my master 0:34:31 ah 0:34:32 your majesty 0:34:34 right 0:34:36 it's something like that 0:34:38 although i do think that that chapter 0:34:41 was written by adela rather than by me 0:34:59 so you're saying that this is not to be 0:35:00 pressed in a literal sense in in 0:35:03 accordance with the beliefs of later 0:35:05 times when strict monotheism was the 0:35:07 kind of norm everywhere 0:35:08 that's right 0:35:10 yeah but there is monotheism in jewish 0:35:11 scriptures i mean isaiah famously you 0:35:13 know as i have 40 armors you get these 0:35:15 great monotheistic 0:35:17 statements 0:35:20 even there i would say not 0:35:22 really i think you know he will still 0:35:24 talk about bale and nebo being bowed 0:35:27 down 0:35:28 so i think you know the pointed issue 0:35:30 there is 0:35:31 who's the boss 0:35:32 who's the real god 0:35:35 but it's not questioning that there are 0:35:38 you know that the gods of the other 0:35:40 nations do exist 0:35:42 they're just not any good 0:35:45 they don't have any real power 0:35:47 so i think actually the idea of 0:35:49 monotheism really only comes in with 0:35:51 greek philosophy 0:35:52 right where you begin to get the idea of 0:35:56 the exclusion of opposites 0:35:59 right because you know in mythological 0:36:01 thinking you can maintain contradictory 0:36:03 things 0:36:06 cheerfully 0:36:09 okay so 0:36:10 but even in the the uh hellenistic 0:36:13 jewish literature written in greek a 0:36:16 text that comes to mind is one called 0:36:18 pseudofocalities 0:36:20 it's like a wisdom text composed in the 0:36:22 name of the greek poet for 0:36:24 killities but you know fairly 0:36:27 transparently jewish for all of that 0:36:30 and one of the things it says 0:36:32 is that when good people die they become 0:36:36 gods 0:36:39 in greek right 0:36:40 now you know that i think all he meant 0:36:43 by that is what we would say 0:36:46 they go to heaven 0:36:49 but you know that's passed over to a 0:36:51 different mode of existence from the 0:36:53 normal human one 0:36:55 okay 0:36:56 um which is a final question if i may is 0:36:58 a complete change of subject and coming 0:37:00 back to your um specialism as an old 0:37:03 testament scholar and it's an academic 0:37:05 question so apologies to viewers who uh 0:37:08 this may not be terribly of terrible 0:37:10 relevance but 0:37:11 um it's about the uh the documentary 0:37:13 hypothesis uh this is obviously the the 0:37:15 authorship of the pentateuch um 0:37:19 aura um now the question is what is the 0:37:21 current scholarly consensus concerning 0:37:24 the documentary hypothesis would it be 0:37:26 fair to say that modern scholars tend to 0:37:28 agree that while the pentateuch is the 0:37:31 first five books of moses so-called 0:37:34 probably consists of earlier multiple 0:37:37 independent sources which were combined 0:37:40 to give us the pentateuch 0:37:42 we cannot confidently identify these 0:37:44 once independent sources in a scientific 0:37:48 manner our modern scholars 0:37:50 less confident these days in their 0:37:52 ability to identify possible sources and 0:37:56 interpolations in the pentateuch what is 0:37:58 the status of the documentary hypothesis 0:38:00 then in modern biblical scholarship 0:38:03 like all great academic issues 0:38:07 opinion is divided into at least two 0:38:10 camps right 0:38:12 now 0:38:13 if you 0:38:15 go to germany 0:38:16 and ask that question 0:38:19 i think almost everyone would agree that 0:38:22 no you can't identify 0:38:25 you can everyone would probably grant 0:38:27 that there is a priestly source 0:38:30 right 0:38:31 and a deuteron the deuteronomy 0:38:34 is different although they may disagree 0:38:36 as to whether 0:38:37 uh you have bits of deuteronomy in the 0:38:40 other books 0:38:42 but the old hypothesis was four sources 0:38:46 yahwest elohist deuteronomist and 0:38:49 priestly writer 0:38:51 and the europeans by and large 0:38:54 have 0:38:55 now opted for 0:38:58 what what they call in german for 0:39:00 tribune 0:39:02 and that is to say a kind of roland 0:39:05 corpus 0:39:06 where by scribes 0:39:08 modify verses here and there and but 0:39:11 it's very hard to pin down stages 0:39:15 against that my colleague here at jail 0:39:18 joel baden is a staunch defender of the 0:39:22 four 0:39:24 for documentary hypothesis 0:39:27 he 0:39:29 learned that from a man in beluke 0:39:31 schwartz a jewish scholar 0:39:33 at hebrew university 0:39:36 at jeffrey stackert in chicago is 0:39:39 another member of the neo documentarian 0:39:42 school 0:39:44 and i think they make a very good case 0:39:46 right 0:39:47 i think 0:39:48 you know and 0:39:50 you won't probably get any two scholars 0:39:52 will agree exactly 0:39:55 on every verse 0:39:58 but i think most people have a pretty 0:40:00 good idea of what we call the yahwest 0:40:04 what we call the yellowist 0:40:07 and 0:40:08 you know i think uh some of the um 0:40:11 some some of the german scholarship is a 0:40:13 little bit overdone 0:40:16 that 0:40:17 it's uh it's making too many fine 0:40:19 distinctions 0:40:20 yes yes yes i know so 0:40:23 i have an introductory textbook to the 0:40:25 hebrew bible and i 0:40:27 opt for 0:40:29 the documentary hypothesis 0:40:32 now my reason for doing that in large 0:40:35 part 0:40:36 is that i think it gives you a readable 0:40:38 text 0:40:38 yeah 0:40:39 and if you're trying to explain the text 0:40:41 to students 0:40:43 you've got to be able to show some 0:40:45 coherence in it 0:40:47 and the german approach tends to 0:40:50 undermine the coherence 0:40:53 and people spend an awful lot of time 0:40:55 saying this verse reflects that first 0:40:57 yeah it doesn't matter to anybody yeah 0:41:00 it's very speculative earlier there's a 0:41:01 strike speech it's quite speculative 0:41:02 something yeah 0:41:04 so that's the state you know the the i 0:41:06 think in north america and israel 0:41:10 the 0:41:11 all the documentary hypothesis is alive 0:41:14 and well right 0:41:16 and in europe 0:41:17 it's 0:41:19 but it hasn't already expired 0:41:23 okay well that's fascinating so yeah 0:41:26 it's clearly two two views here um 0:41:28 simultaneously held globally i think in 0:41:30 britain uh they might be a little more 0:41:33 inclined to go with the american 0:41:36 approach 0:41:38 you'll find exceptions to everything of 0:41:40 course but 0:41:41 okay well that's first thing thank you 0:41:42 for that um uh very interesting uh 0:41:44 summary and uh well just inclusion 0:41:47 you say you're just retiring well i do 0:41:48 wish you well in your in your 0:41:50 well-deserved retirement what you said 0:41:52 before we said before we went uh live so 0:41:55 to speak that i was just remarking that 0:41:57 you you're an irishman 0:41:59 originally and you've kept your irish 0:42:01 accent pretty much and but you said 0:42:03 you've been in the states about 50 years 0:42:05 was that what you said to me yes 0:42:06 probably a little more now i first came 0:42:08 to the states in fall of 1969 0:42:12 and i taught for one year in dublin in 0:42:15 72 to 73 0:42:18 then i came back to the states and 0:42:20 they've been here since 0:42:21 [Laughter]0:42:22 so that would be out of the last what 53 0:42:26 years 0:42:28 i've spent 52 of them 0:42:30 here i think amazing gosh well that's 0:42:32 extraordinary uh korea um 0:42:34 as a problem the problem the challenge i 0:42:36 had in introducing you looking at your 0:42:38 uh your cv your bibliography and so on 0:42:40 it's so vast and i can see why you've 0:42:43 been at it for over half a century so to 0:42:45 speak uh and um but anyway there's a 0:42:48 whole wikipedia page folks if you want 0:42:50 to see uh more of your incredible never 0:42:52 look at that stuff 0:42:55 no there's nothing i look up i look up 0:42:57 other people oh yeah 0:42:59 but i figure it's just as well not to 0:43:01 know you know 0:43:02 i don't want to know who did not say 0:43:04 that i am 0:43:06 no no no it it's all right 0:43:08 and everything no it's very nice stuff 0:43:10 there's nothing horrible about you why 0:43:11 would they do that 0:43:12 i mean do you have any 0:43:14 in your in your retirement in terms of 0:43:15 academic work are you thinking of 0:43:17 producing any further work or is that it 0:43:19 for for the position well you know i 0:43:21 have a couple of unfinished projects 0:43:23 right uh one of which is the commentary 0:43:26 and the community rule from qamran 0:43:28 wow and 0:43:30 uh that a lot of that is done but i have 0:43:33 a collaborator on it and then who's my 0:43:35 student 0:43:36 and um 0:43:38 he's a little bit behind he is a young 0:43:40 child and his more complicated life at 0:43:43 this stage 0:43:44 and then we're doing a new edition of uh 0:43:48 apocalyptic texts uh in english 0:43:51 absolutely and most of those will be due 0:43:53 to come in this coming summer right and 0:43:56 right now i had contributed to the old 0:43:59 one 0:44:00 uh the the treatment of the sibling 0:44:02 oracles 0:44:04 and i'm revising that right now that's 0:44:06 what's open in my desk here 0:44:08 wonderful and then i just 0:44:11 might i did the the last 0:44:14 authored book that i had was called what 0:44:16 are biblical values 0:44:18 it's a very different kind of book yeah 0:44:21 and what i might yet do is something on 0:44:25 the bible in human rights 0:44:27 right yes indeed i have a lecture on 0:44:30 that that i gave last fall and will give 0:44:32 again now as a 0:44:34 conference in a month or so 0:44:37 and um 0:44:38 i have been encouraged by a publisher to 0:44:41 follow up on it but i need to get the 0:44:43 other things put to bed first yeah 0:44:46 well i'm i'm very pleased you're you're 0:44:48 continuing a very active life 0:44:50 as a 0:44:51 i use the word retired inverted 0:44:53 confidence 0:44:54 so 0:44:55 you're not retired uh no you you've left 0:44:57 you've retired from your teaching duties 0:44:59 yeah uh yell of course perhaps um that's 0:45:01 how it goes 0:45:02 that's how it goes well i do wish you 0:45:04 all the very best with that and uh and 0:45:06 thank you uh very much indeed professor 0:45:08 john j 0:45:09 collins i've been absolutely fascinating 0:45:11 um uh hearing you speak about all these 0:45:13 various issues and uh and thank you very 0:45:15 much indeed for your time and thank you 0:45:18 it's been a pleasure

Jesus عليه السلام and Old Testament prophecy with Professor John J. Collins (2022-02-24) ​

Summary of Jesus عليه السلام and Old Testament prophecy with Professor John J. Collins ​

00:00:00 - 00:45:00 ​

Full transcript with timestamps: CLICK TO EXPAND

Jesus عليه السلام and Old Testament prophecy with Professor John J. Collins (2022-02-24)

Summary of Jesus عليه السلام and Old Testament prophecy with Professor John J. Collins

00:00:00 - 00:45:00