Did the Jews say Jesus was "God"?

JW Disclaimer: I am not a current or former Jehovah's Witness and I am not promoting their New World Translation that wrongly teaches Jesus was "a god" (see John 1:1c, 18). 

A combination of bad translations led by equally bad dogma has led most Christians to misunderstand the real Jewish charge against Jesus in John 10:33. For example, most translations have the Jews answering Jesus:

“For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy; and because you, being a man [or a mere man], make yourself out to be [or claim to be] God.” [That is, capital G “God.”]

But Judaism, then and now would never dream of accusing anyone from actually “claiming to be,” let alone making themselves the one God of Israel. If anything the only accusation such a claim should have warranted was that of insanity! As a matter of fact, some well-known modern-day Trinitarian scholars seem to agree. 

British Methodist minister C.K. Barrett admitted “it’s simply intolerable that Jesus should be made to say, I am God, the supreme God of the OT, and being God I do as I am told, and, I am God, and I’m here because someone sent me.” 

The Anglican cleric and scholar R.T. France was right to note that this sort of talk, “as a public relations exercise…would have been a guaranteed disaster.”

So this begs the question: Did the Jews say Jesus was "God"?

The Jews full well knew that God could and did appoint personal agents who represented him with full authority. That’s why scripture calls Moses and the judges of Israel “god” (Ex 4.16; 7.1; Ex 22:8; Ps 82:6, etc.). So the real Jewish charge is that Jesus, "a mere man,” i.e., an illegitimate agent of God, is claiming to be or making himself “a god", i.e., a legitimate agent of God (like Moses and the judges of the OT).

Another Trinitarian scholar, Dr. James McGrath, rightly noted that Jesus’ real “conflict with the Jews [throughout the Gospel of John] did not concern a supposed abandonment of Jewish monotheism.” [The inevitable result of someone else claiming to be the one God.] Rather, the issue is whether Jesus is an agent carrying out God's will and purposes, or a blasphemer who is seeking glory and power for himself in a manner that detracts from the glory due to the only God."

Dr. McGrath concludes that the real “issue is therefore not equality with God per se” but whether or not this lowly Jesus from Nazareth was just another “upstart, one of a number of messianic pretenders and glory-seekers to appear on the scene during this period of Jewish history.”

The charge of Jesus as “a god” as opposed to “God” is supported by the context of John 10. For example, in v.34 Jesus himself uses the aforementioned Ps 82:6 as a “proof text”: “Is it not written in your Law, I said, you are gods?”

36 “Why do you call it blasphemy when I say, I am the Son of God? After all, the Father set me apart [i.e., commissioned me as His personal agent] and sent me into the world.”

37 “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me.”

38 “But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

The “a god” translation is also supported by other notable Trinitarians.

A Translator's Handbook on the Gospel of John by Newnan and Nida, p 344, 1980: "Purely on the basis of the Greek text, therefore, it is possible to translate [John 10:33 as] a god, as NEB does, rather than to translate God.”

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol 3, p 187, 1986: "The reason why judges are called `gods' in Ps. 82 is that they have the office of administering God's judgment as `sons of the Most High'. In context of the Ps. the men in question have failed to do this.... In trying to arrest him ([John] v. 39) and in disregarding the testimony of his works (vv.32,38), they were judging unjustly like the judges in Ps. 82:2....On the other hand, Jesus fulfilled the role of a true judge as a `god' and `son of the Most High'."

One last thing to note is that the Greek words translated “man” [a mere man] and “god,” do not appear with the Greek article. But translators consistently render the Greek anthropos as “a man” yet the Greek theos as capital G “God” and not “a god.” Regardless, the Jews sadly denied the claims of Jesus until the end.

“We have a law, and according to the law he ought to die, because he made himself/claimed to be the Son of God!” The Jewish leaders say to Pilate in John 19:7.

For the Jews Jesus remained just another usurper to the unique authority that would have been his by birthright alone, as the promised Messiah: “The King of the Jews.” These false charges added fuel to their case for the death penalty.