Jews, like pagans, understood that the divine realm was populated with super human beings besides the Lord God Almighty, that sometimes these divine beings were called gods [Hebrew: elohim = “powerful ones”], and sometimes these other gods [elohim], or even the one God Himself, would appear on Earth as a human [through the use of an agent].
In this lecture will see that the reverse was true as well, even among Jews, it was believed that humans could be made into divine beings, and that sometimes men were actually called God.
To segue into this discussion I need to begin by returning to the idea that within Judaism other beings besides the one true God could also be called God, and [could be] considered in some sense to be God....
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Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Keywords: hypostasis, hypostases, Philo, Philo logos, logos, wisdom, wisdom personified, personification, personified, personify, God's word personified, logos personified, word personified, word made flesh
Bible reference(s): Exo 4:16, Psa 45:6-7, Proverbs 8, Isa 9:6, John 1:1-3, Heb 1:8-9
Source: How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, (HarperOne, 2015).
Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.