At its inception the Christian gospel was a message to and for Israel. Two Hebrew prophets, John and Jesus, had been sent to the Jewish people on behalf of the Jewish people. They had come to turn Jacob’s progeny back to God on the eve of the arrival of Israel’s messianic kingdom. John and Jesus did not, therefore, proselytize their message of God’s coming reign among Greeks, Samaritans, or Syrophoenicians. Indeed, Jesus forbid his disciples from wandering outside of Israel’s house altogether (Matthew 10:5, cf. Mark 1:38-39). Even in the face of growing opposition from Israel’s religious authorities, Jesus did not turn to those outside of Judaism—neither to God-fearers nor to pagans. Instead, Jesus provoked the jealousy of his clerical competitors (e.g. Pharisees, scribes, and priests) by nursing the sinners of his nation back to health. If Israel’s leadership did not repent soon and join their brethren at the prophet’s table, so Jesus claimed, the vineyard planted long ago would be handed over to former-scoundrels such as these—the kingdom’s mead hall filled with Israelites of an undesirable sort (Mark 12:1-12, Matthew 22:1-14). Regardless of their choice, Israel as such was set to rule in the kingdom of God, with or without the current adulterous regime.
Apostle to the Jews
Surprisingly, this Israel-centric trajectory is not thwarted after the resurrection of Christ. Despite Jerusalem’s horrific treatment of their Lord, the twelve disciples remained headquartered in Israel’s capital, preaching to the circumcized, to the heirs of God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In this context of Jewish exclusivity the unexpected conversion of Gentiles engendered long-lasting divisions among the Twelve headed by the conservative Peter, among the faction sympathetic to the reactionary James, brother of the Lord, and among the Hellenized Jews championed by Paul.1 As Paul’s letters attest, many early Christians, like James and Peter, favored the thorough Judaification of these Greco-Roman newcomers—the kingdom belonging to the people of the covenants after all. Yet even Paul, an apostle insistent upon a circumcision-free gospel, prioritized the conversion of his own countrymen as depicted in his earliest bios.2 According to the Acts of the Apostles, in the synagogues at every port across the empire Paul proved Jesus to be the Messiah of Israel promised by the Jewish scriptures. There finding receptive ears among the Greek God-fearers, Paul rarely trekked into pagan space but remained in established Jewish spheres, reasoning with his own people.
In all of this we see the contours of a genuine mission to the Jewish people carried out during and after the ministry of Christ. Jesus and his apostles had extended to their Israelite brothers a legitimate offer of rescue out from under the age-old tyranny of idolaters—a horn raised up for Israel, the coming of God’s kingdom in power over the nations. The gospel that was meant to glorify God’s holy people, however, was rejected and obstructed at every turn. What had gone wrong?
In distress over this persistent obstinance Paul the letter-writer appeals to a kind of deus ex machina: God himself had hardened the Jewish heart in accordance with the Prophet (Isaiah 6:9-13), preventing the people from believing the good news (Romans 11:7-12). This God did not for evil but for good. Israel would not fall from grace forever. Indeed, at the swiftly-approaching parousia the Greek peoples would rejoice alongside Israel, together praising the one true God for his sovereign mercy (Romans 15:10). Just as God had dispelled the ignorance of the nations for the good of the nations, so too would he soften Israel’s hardened heart for the good of Israel. “All of Israel [as a people and nation] will be saved” Paul decides, “Out of Zion (i.e. Jerusalem) will come [Christ] the deliverer” (Romans 11:26-27). David’s great city would soon reign triumphant over the once-idolatrous nations when the Jewish people and their leaders inevitably abandoned their stubbornness.
To save Israel
The Apostle’s optimism regarding the impending future of Israel sits uncomfortably beside later perspectives evidenced in the New Testament. The Gospels and Acts, for instance, presuppose that the mission to the Jewish nation had concluded in catastrophe—Israel’s war with Rome. These early Christian historians did not hesitate to portray such calamity as divine punishment for sins against God’s Messiah. Israel had, over the course of 40 years, definitively rejected the gospel and so God had definitively rejected Israel: the Temple he burned, the city he demolished, and the tribe he scattered outside the land. A new, mostly Greek, people of God would emerge from this rubble. The theo-political promises once given to the children of Israel would now rest in the hands of the Gentile churches embedded in an obsolete pagan empire. With Jerusalem no more, another holy capital would have to be found, a spiritual Jerusalem. Perhaps Rome would be suitable; perhaps a new Zion would be built upon the Bosporous.
The Fourth Gospel exhibits this end-of-the-century anti-Jewish perspective most forcefully. In Johannine conception those Israelites who remain in the synagogues are sons neither of Abraham nor of God. Their father is the Devil and as such they are opposed to the sons of light by their nature. Into Israel’s darkness Christ comes to “blind” these Jews to the truth so that the people might fall into the snares of judgement and death (John 9:39). As the spokesman for the Johannine community, Jesus confounds and defeats the enemies of his people, the Jews of the synagogue. Thus the very scripture that Paul had earlier employed to showcase God’s unconditional loyalty towards Israel the Gospel of John now implements to consign the people to damnation:
Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him. This was to fulfill the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah… [God has] blinded their eyes and hardened their heart in order that they should not look with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them.
John 12:37-43, cf. Isaiah 6:9-13
Here then the incipient mission to convert Israel has transfigured into the mission to expose the corruption of the Jewish people and the mission to justify God’s wrath against his (former) possession. In the Gospel of John it is only those few Jews who hearken to the call of Christ, who willingly face expulsion from the synagogue of Israel, who can be called members of God’s family and part of God’s redemptive purposes. The leadership of Jerusalem, and the nation of Israel as a whole, are intractably lost—His own people did not receive him (John 1:11).
The Lukan evangelist espouses a similar fatalism but situates it within the broader context of profitable expeditions among Greeks and Romans realized by Paul and his associates. Other nations, not just a small band of discontented Johannine Jews, have responded to the call. The Greek, not the Israelite, is now the true heir of God’s kingdom. In the Acts of the Apostles then, unlike in Paul’s letters, the Apostle becomes thrice-convinced that the Jewish people will not respond to God’s word and are thus doomed. While it was “necessary [according to the scriptures]” to reveal the gospel to the Jews first, Paul exclaims, Israel proved “unworthy of eternal life” and thus God repudiated his people in favor of the Gentiles (Acts 13:46-47). On another occasion Paul curses “the Jews” of Macedonia to destruction and vows to continue his operation among non-Jews instead: “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles” (Acts 18:5-6). Having at last reached his true objective, the city of the emperor (cf. Acts 23:11, 27:24), Paul issues “one [final] word” to the Jewish leaders at the capital so as to conclude the book. After arraying Isaiah’s familiar criticism against these representatives of ecumenical Judaism, Paul reiterates his prophetic legacy as understood by the Lukan historian: “this salvation of God has been sent to the nations; they will listen.” The mission to Israel had failed and was now to be renounced—all according to God’s plan.
A Greek Israel
As in the Gospel of John then, Luke’s historical narrative is framed in anticipation of God’s decisive action in AD 70. Some Jews may have responded to the gospel, a few may have proven worthy to rule over the inhabited world in God’s kingdom, but the great institutions of Judaism—the Temple and the nation—were bound to perish as such. The Judaism born out of this disaster would remain at the mercy of Christian political power for centuries—the two peoples accusing the other of impersonation. The nations as nations, of course, would come to worship Israel’s God and his Messiah. Caesar and the kings under his charge would acquiesce to the rule of Christ. Such is the expectation at the forefront of Luke’s narrative: All throughout the Mediterranean Greek and Roman authorities respond to the Christian message with faith—or at least with wisdom and hospitality. When Paul at last reaches Rome, the heart of the empire, he preaches “without hindrance” (Acts 28:30-31).3 Luke’s point is clear: While Israel spurned his inheritance and became dispossessed at a particular historical moment, the seat of all earthly power will nevertheless soon succumb to the word of God. The Romans will listen.
As Jerusalem lay in ruin, the mission to ward off the destruction of the Jewish nation no longer possible, the story of the Christian gospel would be retold and reinvented—its original aims reimagined. The fruit of this grappling with the onslaught of history—guided, of course, by scripture and spirit—would blossom into the narratives of the New Testament: the Gospels and Acts. In these works John and Jesus had not been sent to ready the Jewish people to greet their kingdom, but to set into motion the enlightenment of an eager world outside the bounds of Israel. New tenants, those from among the nations, would manage God’s vineyard from now on. Strange guests would feast without Israel in God’s messianic banquet hall. The prodigal son who set out from his father’s house a Jew would return a Greek.
1—And later among those Gnostic Christians who repudiated the God of the Old Testament.
2—It should not be missed that Paul Judaized his Gentile converts in a variety of ways too. He was not, however, as thorough as others.
3—In accordance with Luke’s rhetorical priorities—to present the conversion of the empire at the hearing of Israel’s gospel as the foreordained will of God—he has good reason to exclude the martyrdom of Paul under Nero from his narrative. Luke may well recognize that Nero’s hostility towards Christians was unusual and not characteristic of the subsequent emperors who would carry out God’s will with regards to delinquent Israel in AD 70. By means of this omission Luke strongly implies that it was the Jews, not the Romans, who were responsible for Paul’s death.
Scribes of the Kingdom 
Adam was the Son of God’s (Luke 3:38) and Jesus the firstborn of Creation (Romans 8:29, Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:6, 12:23).
In his early letters, Paul compared Jesus to Adam and called him the Last Adam. But why would Jesus sacrifice himself for the sins of Adam?
Did Jesus believe he was Adam? That might explain why he sacrificed himself his sin. Jesus alledgely said, before Abraham was born, I am.
Adam was the father of humanity rather than the Jews. Hence, the idea that Christianity should be open for everyone, might have had an early beginning.
In other words, Paul might not have invented it.
LikeLike
I think Romans 5:12-21 might shed more light on this. While the Adam-narrative rarely plays a role in the wider Jewish eschatological narrative, the Adam phenomenon is used to describe the effectiveness of Jesus’ sacrifice. Jesus is not identified as Adam himself but as a type of Adam (a second Adam). V14 Adam was a type of the one to come (the Christ).
It’s also not the case that Jesus sacrificed himself for the sins of Adam. As per Romans 5, since it was through an Adam type that many could be “infected” by sin, it was an Adam type that could rectify this by being the conduit to counter sin and death. This imo nullifies the evangelical belief that “only God could die for the sins of the world” when it clearly says that it was an Adam type that was required.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I see that as an afterthought. It does not explain Jesus’ motivation to do it. If Jesus was a human [which seems plausible] then why did he do it, why did he believe he existed before Abraham, and why do people think he was the Son of God. Jesus believing himself to be Adam [the first man], might answer all those questions.
LikeLike
Luke 9:22 From Jesus’ (Synoptioc) point of view, it was as the ‘son of man’ that he had to give his life so the many. Not as a representative of all humanity, but as a representative of the “many”. This “son of man” motif is what Jesus reapplies to himself from Daniel [7] where the “one like a son of man” represents the saints of the most high[v18]. Of course the figure in Daniel is to become a ruler, but Jesus and/or the synoptic tradition reapplies this to Jesus where he becomes ruler by being “obedient unto death”. So Jesus’ motivation at least in the synoptics is based on his self understanding as the son of man, who must become a martyr on behalf of many in Israel.
I think it’s safe to say that the gospel of John (e.g. pre-existence) deals very little with the synoptic traditions and has a very different goal given the times. In the John if pre-existence is in the mix at all, it is as the Logos (1:1) and not as Adam. And even here Jesus uses the “son of man” motif to justify the authority he has received. He was called the Son of God in recognition of being the messiah and king of Israel (John 1:49). Israel’s King was called the begotten son of God .
I think it’s important to understand how different traditions get weaved in to tell a story especially in the gospels, which allows us to see that just one tradition (e.g. Adam) doesn’t explain everything. NT writers did a lot of cherry picking from the OT which if put together would make a big contradictory mess.
ps: apologies for the long reply.
LikeLiked by 2 people
No, thank you for your reply. It is not too long. I do think that most people at the time understood Son of God as King of the Jews, so the Romans crucified him for it. He probably meant it literally, otherwise the scriptures would not say that he called God ‘Father’. So he probably believed he was God’s son in a more literal sense.
LikeLike
I don’t think Jesus saw himself as God or as a literal son of God. (I believe the immaculate conception stories were invented after Jesus’ death.) I think he saw himself as God’s chosen/anointed (Messiah), so he referred to himself as God’s son (not unlike Adam and David being sons of God). Calling God “father” affirmed this special relationship.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In the Epistle to the Philippians, Paul cites a poem stating Jesus is God in nature (Philippians 2:6-11). Scholars believe it is an older poem dating from the earliest days of Christianity, says Bart Ehrman in How Jesus Became God. How did the earliest Christians come to believe this if Jesus did not teach he was the Son of God in a more literal sense?
LikeLike
It doesn’t say Jesus was God in nature, that’s a pretty bad theologically motivated mistranslation. It says Jesus was in the form (morphe) of God/a god. Morphe as a rule always refers to outward appearance or perception. Andrew Perriman (postost.net) has some pretty good investigative articles just on this topic, the first of which I think is this -> https://www.postost.net/2022/11/pre-existence-exalted-christ-paul-what-books-about-and-why
Just to put things into context, being called “son of God” meant vastly different things in the Jewish context vs a more Greco-Roman context. It has very different meanings and these meanings got interchanged when Christianity leaned more towards the non-Jewish side of the isle.
We can’t disconnect Jesus from his native Jewish tradition because the language is difficult for us to parse. In the Jewish context there were no literal sons of God. Every son of God was called so for a very specific reason, and Jesus’ understanding as well as his disciples’s can very well be understood with reference to this, and it makes way more sense. In contrast, it’s the Greco-Roman idea of “son of God” that we are more familiar with, and has a more literal sense (the son of a god by default becomes a god), and this was adopted by later Greco-Roman Christianity to speak of Jesus. Psalm 2:7 is the type of language that gets used of Jesus.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, but from a Jewish perspective, it would still blasphemous to say that Christ was in the form of a God. And John say, the Jews wanted to stone him for blasphemy, because he allegedly said, ‘I and the Father are one.’ I think there is more to it than most scholars think.
LikeLike
From a Jewish perspective, that’s true. It’s why such a phrase/idea never gets used in a Jewish context. The letter is written to the Philippains who weren’t Jews. For the so-called “pagans”, someone being in the form of a god would be no problem. Perriman’s view is that this hymn is using the pagan context to convey an idea in terms of what they already understood. It’s not the only explanation; Paul could also be referring to Jesus’ exalted state and then looking back on how he did not consider this status something to be taken by force, but rather humbled himself. Also, if you read the entire passage it says Jesus was “hyper-exalted”, meaning exalted to a status higher than before. If there’s nothing higher than God, and he was already God, how can he be exalted even higher?
The jews did not stone Jesus for saying ‘I and the Father are one’. They said “you being a mere man, make yourself (a) god”. I know most translations say “God” here, but “a god” again is the most consistent both contextually (consider Jesus’ response) and grammatically. It’s just not popular. They are referring to Jesus’ special claim to authority by virtue of his special relationship to the Father, which is exactly what Jesus affirms in his response. This is the problem with proof-texts, they ignore what comes before and after, and thereby ignore the context.
If you read all these individual verses through a trinitarian lens, I suppose that’s the only way you’ll see it. But if you consider the NT traditions as a continuation of the same prophetic traditions in the NT, there is no divergence as to YHWH’s nature/being; Jesus was the chosen servant, the son of man, appointed lord, king, and messiah, put to death and exalted by God.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you. It is very helpful. I am going to try to make my case of Jesus being Adam reincarnate. The crucial thing to understand is that the Jewish tradition and scriptures pose limits on how Jewish followers viewed Jesus and that gentiles had more freedom, so that the Gospel of John may reveal things the other gospels do not.
The Gospel of John is strikingly distinct from the other Gospels of the New Testament. In the first three Gospels, Jesus appears human. In the Gospel of John, he appears godlike. To Jews, it is a strange and blasphemous notion to call Jesus godlike or a god, but to the surrounding cultures, such as Greek, Roman and Egyptian, it is not unusual to deify humans. At first, most Christians were Jewish, and they most likely would not have accepted Christ as a godlike figure.
Christianity had non-Jewish converts very early on. Around 42 AD, a group of Christians founded a church in Antioch outside the Jewish lands. Possibly, they were thrown out of the synagogue because of their heretic views concerning the godlike nature of Christ and became refugees fleeing persecution. For non-Jewish followers, Jesus probably was godlike, not a human Jewish prophet. Otherwise, they would not have followed him.
A group of scholars believe there was a separate Johannine community, distinct from the Jewish Christians, with the Gospel of John and the letters of John as its scriptures. These writings point to a community with an intense devotion to Jesus as the definitive revelation of God with whom they were in close contact through the Holy Spirit.
The Gospel of John is written in good Greek, has a sophisticated theology with seven signs and Jesus seven times saying, ‘I am.’ The author seems to have used several sources, such as the Gospel of Mark and Luke. John shares vocabulary and presents events in the same order. One of the sources of the Gospel of John could have been an insider account written by a disciple.
The Gospel of John indicates Jesus’ ministry lasted three years, suggesting more detailed knowledge of the original author. The other gospels lack that historical detail. And the Gospel of John itself says a disciple wrote it. The other Gospels do not say that, and Luke notes that his account was handed down to him by others.
If that is correct, the close relationship between God and Jesus, and Jesus believing himself to be eternal, may have historical substance. Jews could not consider it because of their religion, but gentiles did not have that limitation, and scriptures are written from the perspective of their authors.
The Gospel of John probably has undergone several redactions. If one of the sources is an insider account, and the Joainite community did not have the theological restrictions of Judaism, John could reveal more and be more historically accurate than the other gospels, most notably after identifying and eliminating these redactions.
It agrees with Jesus being Adam. It would make him both human and eternal. It is not what most biblical scholars believe, and the evidence in the scriptures is not strong (it depends on Adam being the Son of God and Jesus being Firstborn of Creation in a more literal sense than most scholars assume), but it could explain a few things, for instance, why Jesus sacrificed himself for Adam’s trangressions.
LikeLike
I don’t think you need to resort to reincarnation, a wholly foreign idea within Judaism, to explain the death of Jesus. The idea put forward in Hebrews, one of the earliest NT writing says the death of animals could cover sins but could not usher in the new and better covenant.
Adam’s hardly mentioned in the NT, and when he is, it’s usually to reference him as the first human or to lay the groundwork for wifely submission. The only exception I see is 1 Corinthians where the negative impact of Adam’s first transgression is contrasted with the positive impact of Jesus’ death.
I know someone pointed out in a comment on the last post that Witherington argued for Lazarus as the author of the 4th Gospel. Whether or not it was Lazarus, I think Witherington’s arguments show that it was most likely not one of Jesus’ first 12 Galilean disciples.
LikeLiked by 1 person