What reason is there to believe that 1st C Jews thought that being the Son of God = God? One poster ask me the above question. Does anyone have a scriptural answer? I have one and will post it soon.
My answer! The Jews have what is called &quot;idioms.&quot; One of those idioms is called the &quot;son of&quot; idiom and can be found both in the Old Testament and New Testament.
For example in the OT you have &quot;Sons of prophets.&quot; (1 Kings 20:35; 2 Kings 2:3, refer to men belonging to a prophetic band. &quot;Prophethood&quot; (that which distinguishes &quot;prophets&quot; from &quot;non-prophets&quot;) is the very nature that unities the &quot;sons of the prophets&quot; with their metaphorical fathers, &quot;the prophets.&quot;
The same holds true for the following examples. &quot;Sons of the goldsmiths at Nehemiah 3:31. Sons of the troop (2 Chronicles 25:13) are men of the army. Sons of affliction (Proverbs 31:5) are afflicted ones. I think you get the idea.
In the NT, &quot;Son of peace (Luke 10:6 refers to a peaceful person. Who was the Son of perdition?&quot; (John 17:12, 2 Thessalonians 2:3) is the lost one, This is applied to Judas and the antichrist. One more, &quot;Sons of thunder&quot; was the appellative applied by Jesus to James and John at Mark 3:17 because it signified something outstanding about their character.
What about Jesus Christ who identified Himself on numerous occasions as &quot;the Son of Man&quot; and as &quot;the Son of God.&quot; The idiom DOES intend the meaning of a shared nature between ANY father, and his son and thus between &quot;THE Father and THE Son.&quot;
The &quot;Son of God&quot; title is entirely consistent with trinitarian doctrine which states explicitly that the Son is of the same NATURE of the Father. Christ really IS the &quot;son&quot; of God and therefore, BY DEFINITION shares the distinctive nature of his father just as ALL sons bear the distinctive nature of their fathers.
That Jesus is ALSO the &quot;Son of Man&quot; (obviously in the metaphorical sense, given the fact that his actual father was NOT any man) is also consistent with the doctrine of the trinity which claims that Christ was indeed truly a man.
There was a reason why the Apostle John ends his gospel account by stating his authorial intent at John 20:30-31. &quot;Many other signs therefore Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; vs31, but these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is (1) Christ/Messiah, (2) the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.&quot;
If you read the context of the following verses you will notice a pattern or trend in what the Jews conclude by Jesus' words. John 5:18, John 10:30, John 19:7 and the trial record at Matthew 26:57-65. It boils down to, &quot;Are you the Christ/Messiah, and are you the Son of God?&quot;
This is the question the high priest Caiaphas said to Jesus at Matthew 26:63. &quot;And the high priest said to Him, &quot;I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether (1) You are the Christ/Messiah, (2) the Son of God.&quot; Caiaphas puts Jesus under oath to swear as to His true identity. Jesus answers at Luke 22:70 by saying, &quot;Yes, I am.&quot; (NASB)
Most of the information regarding Jewish &quot;idioms&quot; is taken from the following site. http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/OTeSources/23a-Prophets/Text/Articles/Bess-SonOfGod-GTJ.pdf
The article was written in 1965 and I only had some written notes of it from many, many years ago. I decided to look it up and I found the complete article. He also deals with the terms &quot;Firstborn&quot; and the term &quot;Only Begotten.&quot;