Did Jesus Really Say He Was God?
Did Jesus Really Say He Was God?, Mikel Del Rosario. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514011010) 2025.
Summary: Using methods of historiography, demonstrates that Jesus opponents believed him to be claiming divinity.
Christians believe Jesus was the Son of God, eternally God with the Father and the Holy Spirit. We also believe he assumed a fully human nature, God and man in one person. But did Jesus ever say he was God in those words? The honest answer is “no.” And for some, this leads to the belief that subsequent to his time on earth, the church “made” him God. However, many of us point to statements in the gospels in which Jesus implies his deity in conversation with his adversaries. They believed him to be making a blasphemous claim to deity and Jesus does not deny it. Furthermore, Jesus teaches and acts in ways consistent with a consciousness of deity. But can we trust these accounts to provide us with reliable, historical information?
That is the question that troubled Mikel Del Rosario as he encountered questions similar to those raised above. In this book Del Rosario focuses on two passages from the earliest gospel, Mark, where Jesus makes implicit claims of divinity understood in those terms by his adversaries. He uses historiographical methods to determine the probability of the different elements in these two passages and the overall probability that the implicit claims of divinity are highly evidenced facts. The two passages he considers are Mark 2:1-12, the healing of the paralytic, and Mark 14:53-65, Jesus examination before the Jewish Sanhedrin.
In the first part of the book, he discusses his historiographical methods and the rules of evidence he and other historians use in investigating Jesus. He sets out seven rules of evidence which he will apply: 1. multiple attestation; 2. dissimilarity (from both Jewish sources and subsequent church sources; 3. rejection and execution; 4. coherence; 5. embarrassment (elements that would be embarrassing to the church); 6. contextual plausibility; and 7. inherent ambiguity.
In Part Two, he examines the healing of the paralytic. He identifies five historical facts that he believes are at least highly probable: Jesus reputation as a miracle worker, the core scene, Jesus forgiveness saying, the scribal response, and Jesus authority saying. The conclusion was that it is highly probable, historically, that Jesus exercises divine authority to forgive sin.
In similar fashion he applies the rules of evidence to examine five historical facts in the Jewish examination of Jesus. Firstly, the authenticity of Jesus rejection by Jewish leaders and crucifixion, which he deems certainly historical. Then the remaining four facts are highly probable: the authenticity of the core scene, the authenticity of the high priest’s question, the authenticity of Jesus’ reply, and the authenticity of the blasphemy charge. Again, he concludes it was highly probable that Jesus spoke of himself as the Son of the Blessed. Likewise, it’s highly probable that his adversaries understood this as a blasphemous assertion of deity.
Then, in the final part of the book, he assesses this conclusion against those of Bart Ehrman, Tobias Hagerland, and Daniel Kirk. He found that in terms of plausibility, scope, explanatory power, and the use of less ad hoc, his analysis came out better than each of these. He concludes that Jesus did implicitly say he was God, and there are good historical grounds to believe this. And this was believed by the earliest Christians, not made up in later years.
All this stands and falls on the validity of his historiography. Can the probability of the core facts of these passages be established using the methods he uses? As far as I can tell, he uses methods used by others. I would like more discussion of why others reach different conclusions. I do appreciate the engagement with other prominent scholars. Above all, he gives even firmer grounds for those of us who have used these passages to argue Christ’s deity. He likewise provides a good basis for the conviction that this idea came from Jesus himself. He does all this carefully and methodically. This is a valuable and encouraging study.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.