Harvey Jesus and the Constraints of History

7. Son of God: the Constraint of Monotheism

But there is [an] aspect of the relationship of son to father which is of significance for our purpose but which may easily escape our notice because it too is far removed from the conventions of our time. This is the aspect of agency.

The Jews have always been a great commercial people and the importance of securing reliable agents for the successful expansion of business was well understood. As soon as you start getting on as a trader, you will need to extend your interests beyond your own little shop or office. You need to know and employ people who can carry on your business in your absence and who can be trusted to carry through transactions to your advantage. Indeed it could be said that success in business depended more than anything else on the ability to choose and make use of reliable agents.

In these circumstances there was just one person whom a businessman would wish if possible to have as his agent in preference to any other — and that was his son. Not only, as we have seen, should he be able to rely on his son’s absolute obedience, but in the long run the interests of the son, who was also the heir, would coincide with the father’s. A classic instance of this agent-son is in the Book of Tobit; Tobias is sent on a long journey to recover an old debt for his father and is duly accredited as his father’s authorized agent. A more sinister example is Jesus’ parable of the wicked vine-dressers, where the son is instantly recognized as the agent having full authority as well as being the heir, a personal interest, and is accordingly murdered.

Further precision may be gained from the Jewish law of agency as it prevailed at the time.

Agency was an effective means of conducting business only if the acts of the agent could be assumed to be approved by his principal, and therefore to bind the principal in respect of legal liability. To express this relationship, the maxim was coined that “A man’s agent is like himself,” that is to say, for the purpose of the transaction for which the agent was authorized, it was as if the principal himself were present, and the agent must receive the respect which would be due to the principal — a good biblical instance is Abigail’s prostration before the messenger-agents of David who came to seek her consent to marriage (1 Sam. 25.41). It is of course important not to extend this principle beyond its specific application.

An agent was not his master’s representative under any circumstances: he carried his principal’s authority and prestige only for the conduct of the transaction for which he had been appointed as agent. Nevertheless, so long as his master was absent and he was seen to be managing his master’s affairs, there would be a presumption that he was acting as an authorized agent, and he would receive the appropriate respect. Indeed the same principle finds expression in the notion of an envoy ‘representing’ the sovereign. If you knelt before him, you were kneeling, not to him, but to the absent king. If you insulted him, the insult was taken personally by his sovereign and you were at war (2 Sam. 10.1ff.). The king was present in the ambassador just as, for certain purposes, the principal was present in his agent: a man’s agent is like himself.

That this procedure of agency was sufficiently familiar to be used as a figure of speech is proved, not only by the saying in John’s gospel, “the agent (apostolos) is not greater than him who sent him,” but by the rabbinic application of the term to Moses, Elijah, Elisha and Ezekiel who acted as “agents” in performing wonders that were normally the prerogative of God alone. The figure is not used directly of Jesus, nor could it be argued that in calling a person a “son” one was necessarily thinking of him as an “agent.” On the other hand, there were circumstances under which the recognition that a man was a certain person’s son might well carry the implication that he was also that person’s agent. As we have seen, the best agent a man could have was his son. If the son were observed going about his father’s business, if he were known to be an only son (monogenēs) and “beloved” — i.e. not dispossessed — and therefore with a personal interest in the inheritance; and still more if the son claimed to have been “sent” by his father for the purpose — there would be a strong presumption that the son was acting as his father’s agent and it would be wise to treat him accordingly. Now it happens that a number of sayings attributed to Jesus and well-attested in different strands of the gospel tradition show Jesus to have spoken of himself as one who was “sent,” and in each case the context permits no doubt about what was meant: Jesus was sent by God. If then the one who claimed to be sent by God was acknowledged to be the Son of God, the title cannot but have carried the implication that he was also God’s representative, God’s “agent.”

A study of the Fourth Gospel reveals that an understanding of Jesus as the authorized agent and representative of God is one of the controlling themes of the whole narrative. But we can now see that it is implicit also in the synoptics’ use of the title, Son of God; indeed, it is the explanation of the surprising phenomenon we observed earlier, namely that Jesus is acknowledged as Son of God only by supernatural beings or on supernatural authority. For if one who is Son of God is so called not merely because he is obedient and just, but because he is known to be sent by his Father and is therefore God’s representative, agent and authorized revealer of the truth, then to give this name to a living person in respect of his work, his mission and his teaching is to say something very serious indeed. It amounts to the recognition that how you respond to him — what you say to him, whether you attend to him, obey him and consistently acknowledge him — is equivalent to how you respond to God himself. It is, in effect, your judgment and your salvation: and there is more than one saying attributed to Jesus in the synoptic gospels, quite apart from whole discourses on the theme in the Fourth Gospel, which have precisely this implication. Small wonder therefore that so grave and portentous a designation of Jesus was one which, it was instinctively felt, no one would normally have dared to give him in his lifetime unless supernaturally prompted to do so.

“He claims to have knowledge of God, and calls himself son of God . . . he boasts that God is his father” (Wisdom 2.13, 16). In view of the evident allusion to this passage in Matthew’s Passion narrative there can be no doubt that some version at least of it, which we know only as part of a writing characteristic of Hellenistic Judaism, must have been familiar to the very first Christians. In this context the phrase “Son of God” probably meant no more than a righteous and innocent man who had perhaps achieved an unusual degree of piety, and there is no convincing evidence that it had come to have any further meaning by the time of Christ. It certainly was not a “title” waiting to be assigned to an individual who would be recognized as worthy of it. In this respect we are justified in adopting an approach to it similar to that which we followed in the case of “Christ.” Instead of assuming that its meaning can be discovered from its occurrences as a title in Hellenistic or even pagan writings, we must ask what were the connotations of the phrase itself which would have made it seem an appropriate designation for a person such as we believe Jesus to have been. I have argued that in certain contexts the word “son” itself connoted obedience to a father’s will, an inherited knowledge of his skills and experience, and the authorization to act as a fully empowered agent. These contexts are all present in the narratives concerning Jesus, and are taken for granted in sayings which may reasonably be regarded as authentic. To call Jesus “Son of God” was therefore to accept the claim implied in his words and actions that he was totally obedient to the divine will, that he could give authoritative teaching about God, and that he was empowered to act as God’s authorized representative and agent. To this extent, the phrase “Son of God” as applied to Jesus acquired new precision and a new range of meaning; but there was nothing new in the conceptions it made use of. Indeed the notion of a teacher and leader fully authorized by God, disobedience towards whom would be tantamount to repudiation of God himself, was well understood in the Old Testament.

The crucial text is Deuteronomy 18.18–20. This is related to a text in Exodus 23.20–1 where the subject is some kind of supernatural being, but where the consequences of disobedience are equally serious. Whatever may have been the original purpose and meaning of these passages, they represent a fundamental conviction about the nature of God’s self-manifestation which is the religious equivalent of the legal concept of agency.

Divine authorization had of course been given to the great teachers of Israel, Moses and the prophets, to disobey whom was to disobey God himself. Yet such disobedience was inevitable, as inevitable as sin itself. The Bible therefore stops short of regarding these figures as the actual representatives of God on earth, for in that case disobedience would have amounted to a blasphemous repudiation of God’s authority and would surely have been followed by death.

The only instances of such a life-and-death encounter with a representative of God are expressed in the form of an “angel” of God (malak yhwh), where it is as if God himself is present, e.g. Gen. 16.13; Gen. 31.11–13. The passages just quoted from Deuteronomy and Exodus are significant as evidence of the expectation held at least as early as the Deuteronomist that such a divinely authorized figure, a true representative of God, would appear at some time in the future, and this expectation was accompanied by the practical, or legal, considerations that any alleged appearance of such a figure would need to be authenticated before it could be acknowledged, but that once acknowledged the figure would demand total obedience, being nothing less than the agent and representative of God himself.

This expectation was certainly still held in the time of Jesus, and it is highly significant that the same two passages are alluded to in the narratives of Jesus’ transfiguration: the designation of him as Son of God clearly implied that he was God’s authorized agent and representative.

Footnotes:

46 Cf. J. D. M. Derrett, Jesus’ Audience (1973) 76.

47 Tobit 5.2. The significance of this use of σημεῖον for understanding Johannine usage is discussed in Jesus on Trial 95 and n.34.

48 Though the matter involves some technicalities, cf. Derrett, Law in the New Testament 302–3 and 303 n.1.

49 This follows from Mark’s phrase, ἕνα υἱὸν ἀγαπητόν: an only son was necessarily both heir and agent.

50 Cf. Derrett, op. cit. 52 n.4 for the literature, and add Z. W. Falk, Introduction to Jewish Law of the Second Commonwealth 2 (1978) 191–4; J.-A. Bühner, Der Gesandte und sein Weg (1977) 196–8.

51 M. Ber. 5.5.

52 Marriage and divorce were the classic instances of the use of agency: Derrett, op. cit. 53; Falk, op. cit. 192–3.

53 Well stated in K. H. Rengstorf’s classic article on ἀπόστολος, TWNT 1. 415: “Beauftragung mit ganz bestimmten Aufgaben”; cf. Bühner, op. cit. 210.

54 Philo well expresses the principle when he writes (De dec. 119) ὁ δ’ ὑπηρέτην ἀτιμάζων συνατιμάζει καὶ τὸν ἄρχοντα.

55 The comparison is evidently taken from everyday life, and ἀπόστολος must represent shaliach, not Christian “apostle”. Cf. Harvey, Jesus on Trial 115–16.

56 Rengstorf, art. cit. 419.

57 Mk. 9.37 par.; Mt. 10.40; Lk. 9.48; Jn. 13.20; Mt. 15.24; Lk. 4.18, 43; Jn. 12.49 etc. It is significant that Paul twice refers to God having “sent” his son, Romans 8.3; Gal. 4.4.

58 Harvey, Jesus on Trial, esp. ch. 5.

59 Mk. 8.38 par.; Lk. 9.26; Mt. 10.33 par.; Lk. 12.9.

60 Two passages in Lk. suggest this evangelist’s sensitivity to the point: (i) 2.49. The translation (A.V.) “about my father’s business” is not only correct, despite papyrus evidence supporting the R.V. rendering; cf. C. F. D. Moule, Idiom Book of New Testament Greek (1953) 75, but entirely appropriate to the agent-son taking up his work of authoritative exposition. (ii) 20.16 μὴ γένοιτο is not just an expression of “horror,” but is apotropaic, a repudiation of a sacrilegious thought. Jesus’ hearers are appalled at the consequences of maltreating one whom they discern to stand allegorically for God’s agent and representative, and repudiate the thought that such a thing could happen.

61 Mt. 27.43: an application to Jesus of Ps. 22.10 which shows striking similarities to Wisdom 2.12–20, which itself alludes to the same verse of Ps. 22. Cf. D. P. Senior, The Passion Narrative according to St. Matthew, A Redactional Study (Bibl. Ephem. Th. Louv. 39, 1975) 288–90.

63 Cf. G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew (1973) 194–200; M. Hengel, Son of God (E. tr. 1976) 41ff.

64 Even Kl. Berger, who relies on the evidence of late Jewish writings such as 3 Enoch and the problematical Joseph and Asenath, has to admit that the further meaning “divinely authorised messenger” is by no means established: NTS 17 (1971) 424.

65 I find myself in agreement here with B. Gerhardsson, who writes (The Mighty Acts of Jesus [1979] 88), “‘The Son of God’ is not treated as a ready-made title for a specific figure for which people are simply waiting and with which Jesus is simply identified. It is used as an interpretative designation . . .”

66 “Bears a generally deuteronomistic stamp,” M. Noth, Exodus (E. tr. 1962) 192.

67 The fact that Ex. 23.20 was combined with Mal. 3.1 in pre-Christian Jewish exegesis shows that the notion of mission and agency was felt to be primary. Rabbinic exegesis passes over the prophetic sense of these passages, perhaps in reaction to the Christian exploitation of it.