Son of God

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"Son of God" is a biblical phrase from the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), and the New Testament. According to Christian tradition, it refers to Jesus, whom they believe to be the only begotten son of God. The term was widespread during the life of Jesus, as Roman emperor Augustus was known as the "son" of the deified Julius Caesar including on coins minted in his reign.

1 "Son of God" in Judeo-Christian terms
2 "Son of God" in other belief systems
3 See also
4 External links

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"Son of God" in Judeo-Christian terms

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In the Tanakh

In the Tanakh, the phrase "son(s) of god" has multiple meanings:

The Hebrew phrase Benei Elohim, often translated as "sons of God", describes angels or immensely powerful human beings. See Genesis 6:2-4 and Job 1:6. Many Bible scholars believe that this reflects usage in pre-Biblical near-eastern mythology.

It is used to denote a human judge or ruler (Ps. lxxxii. 6, "children of the Most High"; in many passages "gods" and "judges" seem to be equations). In a more specialized sense, "son of God" is a title applied only to the real or ideal king over Israel (II Sam. vii. 14, with reference to King David and those of his descendants who carried on his dynasty; comp. Ps. lxxxix. 27, 28).

Israel as a people is called God's "son", using the singular form (comp. Ex. iv. 22 and Hos. xi. 1).

In the Tanakh the term itself does not connote any form of physical descent from, or unity of essence with, God. The Hebrew idiom conveys an expression of godlikeness (see Godliness) or great power.

In Judaism the term "son of God" is rarely used in the sense of "messiah." Psalm 2 refers to God's appointed king of Zion as both God's messiah and like a son.

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In the Deuterocanon (Apocrypha) and Pseudepigrapha

This literature contain a few passages in which the title "son of God" is given to the Messiah (see Enoch, 55:2; IV Esdras 7:28-29; 13:32, 37, 52; 14:9); but the title belongs also to any one whose piety has placed him in a filial relation to God (see Wisdom 2:13, 16, 18; 5:5, where "the sons of God" are identical with "the saints"; comp. Ecclesiasticus [Sirach] iv. 10).

In Judaism, it is through such personal relations that the individual becomes conscious of God's fatherhood, and gradually in Hellenistic and rabbinical literature "sonship to God" was ascribed first to every Israelite and then to every member of the human race (Abot 3:15, 5:20; Ber. 5:1; see Abba). In one midrash, the Torah is said to be God's "daughter" (Leviticus Rabbah 20).

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In the New Testament

The New Testament speaks of "son of God" pertaining to Jesus and to a larger body of followers of Jesus. Some believe that Jesus did not differentiate his sonship with the sonship of others.

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Jesus

Jesus accepted the title of "son of God" multiple times in the Gospels. This has sparked much disagreement about his meaning because he gave no clear explanation. Interpretation ranges from meaning equivalency with divinity or being the Messiah to a special relationship with God to merely being part of the brotherhood of humanity who share in the sonship of God.

References of the devil or demons calling Jesus "son of God":

That "son of God" sometimes means "messiah" (rather than "godly person") in the New Testament, is also acknowledged in the Greek lexicon of Walter Bauer.

The question arises as to whether the term "son of God" possesses in the New Testament the same sense found three centuries later at the time of the Nicene creed. However, the New Testament teaching that God appeared in the form of man (as Jesus) does not depend on whether "Son of God" normally has this Nicene meaning. John's Gospel explicitly says that God appeared in the form of man (Jn 1:14; cf 1:1), and Paul taught that Jesus created the world (Col 1:16). This eventually affected the Christian usage of the term "son of God", as Raymond Brown explains.

Some suppose that the phrase "the only begotten son" (John 3:16) is another rendering for "the beloved son." The Septuagint translates ("thine only son") of Gen. 22:2 by "thy beloved son." But in this translation there is apparently a special use of the root, of frequent occurrence in rabbinical literature, as a synonym of ("choose," "elect"); the "only begotten" thus reverts to the attribute of the "servant" who is the "chosen" one.

Some say that the Gospel of John and the First Epistle of John have given the term "son of God" a meta-physical and dogmatic significance. Many hold that the Jewish Alexandrian Logos concept has had a formative and dominant influence on the presentation of the doctrine of Jesus' sonship in the Christian writings. The Logos in Philo is designated as the "son of God"; the Logos is the first-born; God is the father of the Logos ("De Agricultura Noe," § 12; "De Profugis," § 20).

A few biblical scholars hold that in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus never styled himself the son of God in a sense other than that in which any righteous persons might call themselves "sons" or "children" of God. However, since in Matthew's Gospel God himself specially speaks from heaven to call Jesus his Son (Matt 3:17), and since the devil assumes that the true "son of God" can perform miracles (Matt 4:3), and since Jesus says he will judge all men (25:31), the Gospel of Matthew does not simply present Jesus as a good man. According to this theory, all the authors of the New Testament and all the first century followers of Jesus which these earliest Christian books of the New Testament represent, collectively misunderstood a basic claim of Jesus, while all who did understand happened to leave no surviving records. Many scholars find this theory historically unconvincing.

Christians believe the Resurrection of Jesus vindicates Jesus's claim to a unique relationship to the Father.

A few scholars have suggested Jesus is threatening the authority of the caesar who also took the title "Son of God" as shown by ancient, Roman coinage.

In modern times, Christians calling Jesus the "Son of God" denotes his divine characteristics.

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Christians

In the First Epistle of John, the writer writes that Jesus "to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God" (1 John 1:12 New Living Translation) and repeats this in 3:1. In like manner, the Gospel of Matthew records Jesus saying, "Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." (Matthew 12:50 New Living Translation) It is common to hear Christians refer to eachother as "children of God."

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In modern English usage

In modern English usage, the Son of God is almost always a reference to Jesus Christ, whom traditional Christianity holds to be the son of the God, eternally begotten of God the Father. Not all Christians hold to the idea of the Trinity.

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"Son of God" in other belief systems

Human or part-human offspring of deities are very common in other religions and mythologies.

In the Rastafari movement it is Haile Selassie who is considered to be God the Son, as a part of the Holy Trinity by insistent followers (he himself never accepted the idea officially or otherwise).

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest recorded legends of humanity, Gilgamesh claimed to be of both human and divine descent.

Another well-known son of a god and a human is Hercules.

In Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas is sometimes referred to as "goddess-born"; his mother was Venus.

A great many pantheons also included genealogies in which various gods were descended from other gods, and so the term "son of a god" may be applied to many actual deities as well.

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