How Lady Wisdom Became Flesh with Dustin Smith

In the beginning was the Word, but what if the Word was Wisdom all along? This week we welcome Dustin Smith, New Testament scholar at Spartanburg Methodist College and host of the Biblical Unitarian Podcast, to talk about his book Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John, which traces how John's portrait of Jesus draws on Lady Wisdom from Proverbs, Sirach, and the wider Jewish wisdom tradition. Was Jesus a consciously preexistent Son, or the embodiment of a personified attribute of God? And why are the women of John's gospel the ones who actually get it, while the twelve remain the "duh disciples"? Support Data Over Dogma and get every episode early and ad-free, plus exclusive bonus content — become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma Get your Data Over Dogma merch at our online store: https://data-over-dogma-shop.fourthwall.com/ Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dataoverdogma Follow us: Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/dataoverdogmapod TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@data.over.dogma.pod Threads — https://www.threads.com/@dataoverdogmapod X — https://x.com/data_over_dogma Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod Get Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book, The Bible Says So: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/bible-says-so-9781250347466/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You know, Dan, I've been traveling lately. I know you've done a lot of traveling lately. We are both avid travelers and the job depends on us traveling sometimes as well. And one of the things about travel is that you do not get to have your own bed.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Lamentably, no.

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• 3:04Speaker 03

  They don't get it. I joke with the students. That's why they're called the disciples. They just don't get it sometimes. Okay, you can steal that.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion. And we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. And in a shocking twist of events, we've got a good one for you all today.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  So who's ever heard of that?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  We have a guest with us today. This is a friend of mine named Dustin Smith. Welcome to Data Over Dogma, Dustin. Thank you for being here.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  We really appreciate your time. And Dustin is scholar of New Testament at Spartanburg Methodist College in South Carolina, and probably Spartanburg, South Carolina. And Dustin is also the host of the Biblical Unitarian Podcast, which, as we discussed in our pre-game, our exclusive content that we do for members of our Patreon,

• 4:18Speaker 01

  was featured in an episode discussing a straw poll I took at a conference that Dustin and I attended together in Rome. So good times. If you want to hear about that story, you can go over to Patreon and check that out.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, Dan really raked the muck over there in Rome. So you'll want to hear that story because that was actually a really fun one.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was gonna say, I should bring up this interesting little fact.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Unitarianism is a fascinating tradition. When I was doing research for a paper, I've got a couple of papers on this, actually. In fact, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, I have the entry on monotheism in that. And I discussed this in there as well. When dictionaries first started including entries for the word monotheism, they started in the early 1700s. And between the early 1700s and Webster's in 1828, every last dictionary that had an entry for the word monotheism, defined it as the doctrine of the Unitarians. And the idea that it means belief in only one God is not in any dictionary until 1828,

• 5:32Speaker 01

  when they, I guess they were just like, we're done with the Unitarian thing. It's time to move on.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  And to be clear, because I'm the guy that has to like translate for us less in the know folks. Unitarianism in this case does not mean Unitarian universalism. Like, it's not just the nice people who, you know, who won't say the name of Jesus when they're doing their Christmas hymns or whatever. It's Unitarian.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Why don't we let, why don't we let the host of the Biblical Unitarian Podcast explain to us what the word that we can't pronounce actually means?

• 6:07Speaker 00

  That's exactly it.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Sure, yeah. So Unitarianism is just the belief that the God of Israel is only one person, the Father alone, in the same way that you, Dan, are only one person. And you, Dan, you're only one person, and I'm only one person. So the idea is that the early Christians and the writers of the Hebrew Bible understood the God of Israel to be the Father alone. And contrast deliberately to Trinitarianism, which teaches that the God of Israel is actually three persons.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  So when Jesus in John 17:3 refers to God the Father as the only true God, and then his son, that being the other person, you take that seriously, in other words?

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Yes, Jesus, the historical Jesus was a Unitarian. He was not a Trinitarian.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  How dare you? How dare you, sir? Heresy. We're not even five minutes into the show and we're already heretics.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Well, we, yeah, that's, we've been, no, that's something that we, we're not beating those charges. But Dustin and I participated in a conference held in Rome this last, was it, was it June? It was only in June that we were there? Good grief. It seems like a lifetime ago. But, and this conference was on Christology. And I was, I was at the same conference the year before when it was held up in Milan. And a friend of mine was like, yeah, I'm going to be running the next one. And I was like, I need to be there. And I had a great time, but Dustin talked a bit about wisdom Christology. And we're here to talk about a book that Dustin published.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  It's from 2024, Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John. A wonderful discussion published by Whipfen Stock on what exactly wisdom Christology is and why it seems to pervade every single chapter of the Gospel of John. And I'm excited to talk about this because Christology has been, long been one of the, one of my main research interests. I talk a lot about conceptualizations of deity, of scripture, of religious identity, but Christology is a big part of this. Can you just give us a 30,000 foot view on what wisdom Christology is? And maybe how it differs from what other people who have ever heard the word Christology might understand?

• 8:30Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, I'm gonna take you up to the 55,000 foot view because we're gonna need to start with what Christology is, period. Because we, not all of us have advanced degrees in all of this stuff.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Let's lay our scene in a broader sense.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Sure, sure. So Christology generally is just the Ology of Christ. It's just the study of the person of Christ. And wisdom Christology is the ways in which the New Testament authors would portray the person of Christ by applying the roles and the traits and the descriptions and the characteristics of God's wisdom to the man, Jesus Christ.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  So not just, one of the things that I've,

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Found interesting about your book is that we're not just talking about he had he like Jesus was wise. That's that that's not that's not what we're, I mean, it's maybe a part of it, but but this goes much bigger than just Jesus was a wise guy that God imbued with wisdom.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  It's a bit more sophisticated than that.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Wisdom has a much bigger, a much bigger meaning in this case. So maybe, I mean, your book starts with talking about wisdom and and sort of in the Hebrew Bible, the traditions that of of wisdom. Why don't you start us there and launch us into what we what we mean when we're talking about wisdom and and personified wisdom, that sort of stuff?

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. So this actually is kind of what got me started on to taking this topic seriously. I had an assignment 10 or 11 years ago where I had to translate through the book of Proverbs. And in Proverbs 1 through 9, you have this figure that keeps appearing, which is God's wisdom. And God's wisdom is just his wise attribute, the way that God wisely interacts with this creation. And oftentimes, God's wisdom is equated with his commandments, or his understanding, or his instructions. But in Proverbs 1 through 9, God's wisdom, in order to get the readers to take God's wisdom seriously, she undergoes personification.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  And because the Hebrew noun for wisdom, which is hokma, is grammatically feminine, wisdom gets personified as a female figure. And the same thing happens with the Greek noun, Sophia, which is also grammatically feminine. And so you've got woman wisdom or lady wisdom, and she's going around in Proverbs, chapter 1, and she acts as this prophetess. And she's like, Hey, turn at my reproof, listen to me. And if you don't do this, bad things are going to happen, just like all the Hebrew Bible prophets do. And then in chapter 3, she's a tree of life, and she offers life, and she has glory. And she says, Come and embrace me. And then in chapter 8, she's this preexistent, we're not exactly sure, is she an architect? Is she a child? Is she just this helper? And then in chapter 9,

• 11:25Speaker 03

  she's a home builder that provides bread and wine to those who come in and participate of her meal, which is just a way of saying embracing all of her wise teachings, and she promises life. And that's really interesting. But then, what happened was, when I got to the end of the book of Proverbs, in chapter 31, which is the passage that men typically don't read, because it's the passage about the excellent wife, you know, the virtuous woman. So in chapter 31, verses 10 through 31, it's the last section, which seems to be the only section in Proverbs that, at least originally, was deliberately written to women. Okay. And in that passage, what I noticed in reading, like, all these different

• 12:04Speaker 03

  characteristics of this, this ideal virtuous woman, this noteworthy wife, is that there were things that are said about her that were formally said about God's wisdom. And I was like, That looks familiar. That looks familiar. That looks familiar. And after a while, I was like, Well, I found like 11 different things here that are said about this ideal wife that were formally said about preexistent heavenly personified wisdom. And I thought, Well, that's really interesting. What's going on here? We've got this preexistent personified attribute of God that has become embodied into this actual human woman. But no one thinks that this woman has preexisted her birth, or that she is the creator, or that she's a member of the triune goddess. She just is embodying God's wise teachings

• 12:49Speaker 03

  in a real way. And then I went to the commentaries, and I found out that people have known about this for a long time. And I was like, Oh, well, I'm not really that bright. I just

• 12:56Speaker 01

  That always takes the wind out of my sails when I'd like, I came up with the coolest idea ever. And then it's like, No, they've published on that for longer than the United States has been a country. It's like, ah.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  And so that was interesting. I found that the idea that this preexistent personification can become embodied into actual human beings is already there as a clear teaching in the Hebrew Bible. Okay. And so we see the early Christians that are taking these things about God's wisdom, or about God's word, which basically, wisdom and word, by the time you get to the first century, are basically overlapping synonymous categories. Okay. When they start to take those things about wisdom and word, and they start to say, Well, wisdom became flesh, or the word became flesh, and they start to identify Jesus by attributing to him roles and the traits and the characteristics and descriptions of wisdom and word to this

• 13:49Speaker 03

  human Jesus of Nazareth. There's actually continuity with what was going on there in Judaism. And so what I demonstrate in chapter 2 of the book, is that it kind of starts in Proverbs, but you can also see it in Ben Sirah. And you can also see it in the Dead Sea Scrolls in a document called the Genesis Apocrypha. And you could also see it in the first century with Philo of Alexandria, who has four successive women, Sarah, Rebecca, Leia, and Zipporah, who are identified as God's wisdom. And so what the early Christians are doing with Jesus is actually in continuity with Judaism. They're not something that's saying something

• 14:28Speaker 03

  that's been influenced by evil Greek philosophy or anything like that. But what was interesting, though, is that with these Jewish portrayals, they're basically saying, This is where you're going to find God's wisdom. You're going to find God's wisdom in this these virtuous people, and these virtuous wives, or in the case of Ben Sirah, in this high priest. And so the early Christians are saying, Well, actually, God's wisdom is climatically going to be found in the person of Jesus Christ. But in doing so, they're not saying that Jesus consciously preexisted his birth. He is just the embodiment of a personification. It's the word that was in the beginning with God. It wasn't the Son that was in the beginning with God. And if the word or wisdom, if they're just personifications, then it changes the

• 15:12Speaker 03

  way that we have the conversation about the topic of preexistence when it comes to the Gospel of John.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Well, I think I want to backtrack just a little bit, because you mentioned wisdom, hokma, Sophia, but you've also got the word, the logos. And there are actually a handful of divine attributes that are personified in one form or another going on in Second Temple Judaism. And so you also have the ruach, the spirits, the penevma, that's another one that kind of stays distinct in in a lot of respects. And then in later Judaism, you have the shekhina and things like that. So this is something that's quite common in Second Temple period Judaism, to understand these attributes of God to be kind of semi-independent,

• 15:59Speaker 01

  kind of communicable, personified features of God. And I think you see, and one of the things that I think Philo is trying to do is kind of consolidate a lot of these things, and kind of harmonize the received tradition, which includes identifying wisdom as the logos. And that is important for your discussion of the logos hymn in John 1. Can you talk a little bit about some of the points of contact that you found in the the prologue to the Gospel of John, the famous, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, kay, theosino logos, and how that plays into why the author of the Gospel of John

• 16:42Speaker 01

  seems to be presenting the foundation of their Christology in wisdom terms, even though the word doesn't occur in there?

• 16:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a good question. And anyone that is picking through commentaries on the first chapter of the Gospel of John, they're going to notice that the scholars identify these parallels between what is said about the word in the prologue, which is the first 18 verses of the Gospel of John, and things that were formally said about God's wisdom in Jewish wisdom literature. And that has become now the dominant category of what has actually influenced the Gospel of John. I know there's some debate on that still, but at least that's kind of currently where the consensus is. And so just taking things like, in the beginning was the word. Well, that was already being said about God's wisdom, because in Proverbs, chapter 8, verses 22 through 23, personified wisdom says in the

• 17:32Speaker 03

  first person that she was there. And actually, in the Septuagint of Proverbs 8, verse 23, it says that she was there in our he, there in the beginning, the very same phrase that we have there in John 1:1, which also is a quote from Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1. So wisdom was there in the beginning.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Sorry to interrupt. The the Septuagint translator you're thinking is quoting the Septuagint translation of Genesis 1:1 to kind of draw out that allusion?

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that's a good point, because what we see in the first five verses of the prologue are a lot of these themes. We have God, we have God creating in the beginning, we have God creating with his word, we have life, we have light, we have light separating darkness, we have light interacting with human beings. All of those themes are present in Genesis, chapter 1. Okay. So on top of the fact that we have all those themes that are resonating there, we have that initial phrase, in the beginning, which is there in the Septuagint of Genesis, chapter 1. But Genesis, chapter 1, is not the only passage that the author of the prologue is indebted to. He's also indebted to Proverbs, chapter 8, where you have personified wisdom that was there in the beginning with God. She was

• 18:45Speaker 03

  there beside him. Like, personified wisdom says this in Proverbs, chapter 8, verse 30. She says, I was beside him. I was with him.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Okay, I was I was looking at verse 22, looking in the Greek. But no, you've got verse 30.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Yes. So in Proverbs 8, 23, you have the phrase, in our he, there in the Septuagint.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Yep. Very cool. I hadn't picked up on that before. I don't think I've looked at the Greek of the wisdom stuff in Proverbs 8.

• 19:15Speaker 03

  I'm being fact checked here. That's all right.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. So what I

• 19:20Speaker 00

  You wrote the book, Dan. You don't need to question it that much. Let's not get too granular here.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's an interesting insight that I hadn't picked up on before.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so basically throughout the prologue, I have found 20 different things that are being said about the word that were already being said about God's wisdom. So of course, God's word is in the beginning. God's word was with God. God's word fully expresses God. God's word is being personified. In John, chapter one, verse three, it says, "All things were made through the word," not by the word, by the way. God is the Creator, but God creates through His word. And that's already there. And of course, in Genesis, chapter one, it's there in Psalm 33, verse six. But there, even in the Hebrew Bible, in Psalm 104, verse 24, you know, Adonai creates all things with His wisdom. And it's also there in Proverbs 3:19,

• 20:14Speaker 03

  where, you know, Adonai, with wisdom, made the heavens with understanding, with His knowledge. And so the idea of the God of Israel creating with His word and with His wisdom, both of those things are already being said there in the Hebrew Bible. The key thing there is that the Gospel of John is not innovating. It's not saying anything new. It's actually in continuity with the Hebrew Bible and showing that this portrayal of Jesus is at least not something completely new. It's something that at least they're trying to connect with the expectations that are already there in the Hebrew Bible. And the key thing that I've found that when it comes to verse 14, where the word becomes flesh, tabernacles among us, we beheld His glory, the glory of a unique Son, full of grace and truth. Like nearly everything in that line was already being said about God's

• 20:59Speaker 03

  wisdom, because God's wisdom came down out of heaven and became flesh in Proverbs, chapter 31, and Ben-Sira, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and in Philo. All right, tabernacling among us, that's there in Seeroc, chapter 24. Beholding the glory, wisdom offers glory in Proverbs, chapter three, and in Proverbs, chapter eight. You know, she's described as unique in Wisdom of Solomon, chapter seven. She offers grace and truth. All those things are there in Proverbs. So the point is, like, anyone who is reading the prologue that has all of this context available to them is going to see what the author is trying to do. The author is taking things that were formally said about God's wisdom and applying that to Jesus. And the key thing also is that by the time the Gospel of John was written,

• 21:44Speaker 03

  the early Christians have already been doing this for some time. You can see this in Matthew and Luke. You can see it in Q. You can see it in Paul. I gave my presentation at the conference where I talked about Colossians, where it happens. It's also there in Hebrews, chapter one. The Gospel of John is just like taking this Christology that's already been around for two generations, and he's just turning it all the way up to maximum volume, and he's putting it on every single one of the chapters in the Gospel of John.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  So Dan, you've heard me talk ad nauseam about the fact that we've got construction going on at the house. We are

• 22:20Speaker 00

  I've heard the construction.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you heard the construction, too. We're finishing our basement. We're actually adding on to the house. We're doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this, because we, I wanted to get a new car, and I wanted to do these, these improvements to the house. But we had to pay off our old car, and that took actual planning, which you know I hate. And so I really had to shift my thinking quite a bit when it came to my finances. And we had to set dates, and we had to create a budget. And it was so satisfying to actually make a plan. And then even though it took some discipline, and there were some bumps in

• 23:07Speaker 01

  the road, we actually succeeded. And we're able to pay off a car, got a brand new car. And it feels so relieving to know that if we actually set these goals and plan for them and stick to them, it goes from, oh, this will never end, actually feeling like you have control over stuff. And that has made a huge difference to me and to my family.

• 23:30Speaker 00

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• 25:33Speaker 01

  Now, if I recall, when we were in Rome, we discussed the possibility of the author of the Gospel of John having read Philo. And you suggest that, that they probably were not reading Philo. Do I recall that correctly?

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think that the Gospel of John is demonstrating his, at least the influence of Philo. Although I do think that the things of Philo are out there. But I don't see the direct lines of connection just. I think what has actually influenced him are these various Jewish portrayals of God's wisdom being personified.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Okay, so the, the logos theology that we see pretty clearly in Philo, you're suggesting has kind of been packaged with wisdom ideas. And that's, that's the, the point of contact with the author of the Gospel of John?

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. So we already have that in some of this Jewish literature. So like in Proverbs, chapter one, personified wisdom says that, you know, words are coming out of my mouth. Okay. So wisdom and word are closely related. And in Seeroc, chapter 24, God's wisdom again comes out of the Most High's mouth. And so there's already that close relation before Philo was even born. So I think Philo takes that, and he runs with it. But Philo, I don't think begins it. I think he is

• 26:53Speaker 01

  He's not the originator of that idea.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  And so they're already, they've already become integrated within Jewish theology by this time period.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Okay. Is there a reason then that, that the author of the Gospel of John chooses to focus on logos instead of Sophia?

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, and that's a great question. But I think because in the Gospel of John, the portrayal of Jesus is the one that is speaking the words of God. And he's being portrayed as this figure from Deuteronomy 18, verses 15 through 18, where the God of Israel says that, "I'm going to raise up this prophet like Moses from among your countrymen, and I'm going to put my words into his mouth. And he's going to speak all the things that I say, and you need to listen to him. And if you don't listen to him, I'm going to hold you to account." And so in the Gospel of John, Jesus is portrayed as this prophet like Moses, that the God of Israel has put his own words into this mouth. And to portray Jesus as the spokesperson, the spokesman for God, who is constant in the Gospel of

• 27:54Speaker 03

  John, saying, "You need to listen to my words. But my words, they don't belong to me. They belong to the one who sent me." You know, they don't originate with Jesus. He's just the agent of God who speaks authoritatively on God's behalf. Portraying Jesus as the embodiment of the word is better for that Christological portrayal than to say he's the embodiment of God's wisdom. But it's not really an either or, because really both of them are overlapping.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Same thing. Yeah. Well, one of the things I found interesting in the book, and actually kind of resonates with some of the work I've done on concepts of the self and, and loci of agency and cognition and authority and stuff like that. You, you emphasize the idea that the logos, or that Jesus is not consciously the logos. Jesus is not like, I can remember all the way back to creation. This is not suddenly the, this logos is now, I've put on my skin suit. But the logos possessing, indwelling, somehow authorizing the, the

• 29:00Speaker 01

  person of Jesus to, to be the spokesperson for God. And I'm curious if you've done any work on the concepts of, of the self and spirit possession and that kind of stuff? Because we see related ideas in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in, in a lot of literature from this time period. It's, this is not out of step, really, with ideas from that time period about, about spirit possession and things like that. Do you relate this idea to that? Or do you think there's something else going on where, when Jesus is like, oh yeah, I got the logos in me?

• 29:35Speaker 03

  I do actually relate to this, and this is some of the feedback that I've received after having published this book, is that I've been able to kind of refine some of the things. And I think one of the things that I've actually changed my mind on, yes, I was wrong on this. Okay. I do actually think that in John 114, where the word becomes flesh, I actually think that that took place at the baptism. I think it's at the time when the spirit, at least all four gospels, they portrayed the beginning of the ministry of Jesus at this baptism, where the spirit comes upon Jesus, and he's empowered for his role as Messiah, but he's also coronated publicly for his role as the Jewish Messiah. And of

• 30:18Speaker 03

  course, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the voice from heaven echoing Psalm 27, you are my son. But then in John's gospel, it's John the Baptist saying, you know, like, this is the son of God right there. And you already see that in John 114, where the word becomes flesh. And what do we find? The unique one of the Father, you know, you have that the first time you get the son of God language there is at this particular point. So I think that from the perspective of the gospel, John, at the baptism, that's when Jesus receives the spirit, receives the word, receives the wisdom, kind of like all together in one. And it's difficult to kind of like parse those out. But I think all those things are taking place. And that's why he doesn't do miracles prior to that point. So I do think

• 30:59Speaker 03

  it's a, I wouldn't say a possession, I would say it's an empowerment. It's, it's the, of course, the coronation for the role as the son of God, as Messiah. And I'm sure your listeners know that son of God is just a title for the Messiah, for the Jewish Christ. And that's, that's important to remind people all the time. It's a, it's not an ontological relation to the God of Israel.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this, from what I presented at the conference and stuff I've worked on for a long time, I really like the, I think there are many different facets to the Christology, the Christologies that are presented in the New Testament. But I think that dovetails nicely with the idea of Jesus as in a species of divine image. And the baptism, the indwelling of the spirit, the endowment, the, you know, coronation, all of that fits well with the idea of the activation of a, or the authorization of a divine image, which is what I think is, is sits closest to the surface in the gospel of John. But, but yeah, I think there's,

• 32:05Speaker 01

  I'd like to see more work on, on that, on, on the idea of this endowment, indwelling, coronation, that event, and how it relates to other manifestations of this idea of someone's faculties, or something like that being taken over. Because you can go all the way back to Exodus, and such and such is, you know, they have the spirit of, of art or craft or whatever. And that's why they're the ones who are going to design and build the temple and stuff like that. This, this is kind of all over ancient Judaism. So I'd love to see more work on that. But I was, I was curious about that. I was, that kind of sprung to mind when I was reading through the, the part, that part of the book. Dan, anything? I've been, I've been bogarting the conversation.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  You have been. I've been fascinated. I'm just, I'm just here, I'm just suddenly just washing away with you. I will say that one of the things that I was interested in and wanted to talk about was, and you kind of, you hinted at it, Dustin, but the idea of wisdom, the personification of wisdom, whether it precedes, whether, whether, whether that precedes life on earth, and whether that means that Jesus, as the personification of God's wisdom, means that Jesus pre-existed this realm. And so, would you talk a little

• 33:31Speaker 00

  bit about that? And then, and, and sort of where you land on that question?

• 33:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a really important point, because I think a lot of the debate over the gospel of John is trying to figure out in what sense, or what is the correct way to articulate the pre-existence of Jesus. And there are several passages where it seems like Jesus, without any other qualification, is just kind of talking about pre-existence in some manner. But I think, once we understand that the gospel of John is trying to portray Jesus as the embodiment, or if you want to say the incarnation, some people don't like that, but just say, you know, the infleshment of personified wisdom, then we can understand at least what he's trying to say, and maybe what he's not trying to say. So, again, if what was in the beginning, if in John 1:1, is in the beginning was the word, and God's

• 34:19Speaker 03

  word, you could look through the Hebrew Bible, the noun devar 1400 times, and you can look up that word. And I've looked up every one of those occurrences, and never once does devar refer to a conscious person. The word word is not a person, it's not the son. It's, now, this is going to shock some people, the word word means a word, okay? Speech, an utterance, okay? Something that comes out of your mouth. Okay. And, you know, I keep pointing people because I have to keep teaching this over and over again. I'm like, you know, if it's resonating with Genesis, chapter one, we're like in Genesis 1:3, and God said, let there be light, God speaking, his words are creative and powerful, and, you know, bringing all things into being. But that word that's coming out of his mouth,

• 35:01Speaker 03

  that's not Jesus, that's not the son, that's just his word, that is powerful and creative and able to form these things into existence, or however you want to put that. And so, we can see that, it's also there in John 1:3. But let's, let's move back to this, this figure of personified wisdom. Because in Proverbs, chapter eight, which is kind of like the longest exposition of personified wisdom, speaking in the first person, she basically speaks in the first person. It's the biggest, I would say, personified chapter in the Hebrew Bible. And she's trying to get people, she's trying to get the readers to like, listen to her, and to accept her, and to follow after her. And then she makes this interesting argument, that I think if you're tracking carefully, it actually makes

• 35:43Speaker 03

  a lot of sense. She's trying to say, the reason why you need to listen to her is twofold. One, she's ancient, and Jewish people like ancient things. And two, God himself used wisdom to create the heavens and the earth. So if it was good enough for the God of Israel, certainly it's good enough for the readers of Proverbs to be taking, taking God's wisdom. And so, from Proverbs, chapter eight, verses 22, all the way through the end of the chapter, she's just saying that, you know, I was there in the beginning. And there's an open question as to whether, Proverbs 8:22, is whether God had acquired wisdom, or whether God created wisdom. The Septuagint translator actually took it as creation. And I think that the

• 36:24Speaker 03

  author of Colossians 1:15 also understood it as, as creation.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Well, it's, it's, it's about procreation, the metaphor in, in Proverbs. At least it seems to me, the verbs have to do with giving birth to avail, things like that. And certainly, I think in, in Colossians, who, which may or may not have been written by Paul, but I think the, and, and you're talking about, yeah, you're, you're talking about the, the creation of wisdom, which is suggestive of the idea of the, the firstborn of all creatures, as a reference to Jesus not existing at one point, and then being created, correct?

• 37:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. And so, what's happening is that it's, it's God's wisdom that is this first created thing. And God's wisdom ultimately comes down out of heaven and becomes embodied into, you know, the human Jesus. All right. So technically speaking, it's not Jesus himself, it's not the son, it's not the person of Jesus that pre-existed. He pre-existed as God's wisdom. And if God's wisdom is not a conscious person, by the way, it would be a conscious female person, it would be a pre-existing son, it'd be a pre-existing daughter. That's, now, that didn't stop some of the early church fathers from saying some very silly things, but we're not going to go there. But, again, this, this

• 37:45Speaker 03

  idea that noteworthy human beings can be the embodiment of pre-existent wisdom, without attributing to those human beings, a conscious pre-existence, or a role in creation, or being alongside the God of Israel in heaven in the beginning, as you can see, like in Proverbs 31, or in those other texts we talked about. Again, that was, that was a very Jewish, it was thoroughly Jewish, and the, the use of Proverbs, it was thoroughly biblical as well. So I think that what Jesus is doing in the gospel of John, the Johann and Jesus, is that he sees his own ministry as a continuation of what the word was doing in the beginning. And so we can see some interesting tips with this. Okay. So, like in John 1:4, it says,

• 38:28Speaker 03

  in this, this personified word, okay, which I think the, the word is, is being personified there as a masculine figure, just kind of as a resignation to the, the personified wisdom there in Proverbs 8. So in him is not in the son, it's in the word being personified as a masculine figure, was life, and that life was the light of humanity, and the light is shining in darkness. Okay. You have noticed in verse four, things happened in the past. He, what, there was life. The light was the light of humanity. Verse five shifts to the present. The light shines, present tense. Okay. And so, what do you have in the narrative of the gospel of John? You have Jesus, who is the embodiment of this word. And what

• 39:10Speaker 03

  is he? He's the light of the world. Okay. He's separating light from darkness. He's healing blind people, and telling people who can see that they're actually blind. So all the things that the word was doing in the beginning, Jesus continues that in his own ministry. And so, he's able to retroactively say, glorify me with the glory that I had before the world was, because in the beginning, personified wisdom possessed glory, according to Proverbs 3:16 and Proverbs 8, verse 18. Okay. So that's what I think is going on in, in the gospel of John, is that Jesus speaks of pre-existence in terms of this personified

• 39:49Speaker 03

  word or personified wisdom, not as a conscious son who was pre-existing. And again, that's a thoroughly Jewish idea that I think the gospel of John is latching on to.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Now, now, there's another identification of the wisdom, of wisdom with the law in, in other parts of, of ancient Judaism. Can you talk at all about how, if that is reflected at all in your opinion, and anything going on in John? Because I immediately think of... John 10, 34 through 36, where the word of God came to an unnamed group of people, and God said, "You are gods." And in the rabbinic interpretation, this is Psalm 82 being interpreted as a reference to the Israelites receiving the law at Sinai. And then Jesus says, "If the scriptures, which you can't annul, call those humans gods,

• 40:42Speaker 01

  why are you hassling me for saying I'm the Son of God?" So, the word seems to be referring to some degree to the law in that passage. But also, I think the idea is also, hey, guess who was also the word? Can you talk at all about what you see there?

• 41:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we have two particular texts, one from Baruch and the other one from Sirach, to where God's wisdom becomes embodied in the Torah, in the commandments, the Law of the Commandments. Okay, so you have this sense of embodiment in a book, okay? But the whole point there is like, okay, where do we find God's wisdom? How do we seek after it? You know, if we try to seek after God's wisdom, how can we tangibly do that in a real way? And so, those authors are saying, "Well, if you want it, follow after the commandments, follow after the laws of Moses." Okay? And so, we have this interesting thing going on there in John, chapter 10.

• 41:39Speaker 03

  And I think it's interesting because it's all of this connection after the "I and the Father are one," which is the neuter word "one," which is like "one in purpose, not one in person," or "one in being or essence."

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:56Speaker 03

  And of course, they characteristically misunderstand Him. And that's a key thing that a lot of people need to understand about the Gospel of John, is that there is a thematic point of misunderstanding. And it occurs 16 or 17 times in the Gospel of John. Very briefly, just as I have the opportunity to talk about it, this is how it works. Point number one, Jesus will say something provocative. Point number two, His interlocutors will misunderstand Him, either by interpreting Him literally, or by asking an appropriate question. And then there's an optional point, number three, where either Jesus or the narrator will clarify what Jesus means. But the whole point is that Jesus will say something, and to interpret Him literally is actually to misunderstand Him. And so, if we are coming to the conclusions of the reader, as readers, of the opponents

• 42:41Speaker 03

  of Jesus, then actually, we are coming to the wrong conclusions, because the readers are constantly, or the, excuse me, the interlocutors are constantly misunderstanding Jesus. So, Jesus says this thing.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Just to interrupt, because that's kind of my want on the podcast. I think of it's not the Gospel of John, but Mark 2, where His accusers are thinking, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" And Jesus is like, "Mm, mm, mm," and says, "So that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive." And a lot of folks who argue for Trinitarianism in that passage are like, "Well, if only God can forgive, then obviously, Jesus must be saying He's God." And it's like, it explicitly says they're wrong, and that they need to learn this thing. So, yeah, it certainly seems like that's kind of a gospel trope, that every accusation is a misunderstanding.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And once you start to see how this works, it's very clear to see, it continued to happen over and over and over again. So, of course, Jesus says that, "I and the Father are one." They pick up stones to stone Him. And then He's just like, "Hey, for which of my good works are you doing this for? You know, I've spoken many good things from the Father." Notice He's speaking, He's saying He's the embodiment of God's Word. And He's like, "It's not for those, it's for blasphemy, because you, being a human being, have made yourself out to be God or divine." And of course, what most people do is they stop there, and they assume that what they're saying is true. But Jesus doesn't agree with them. He doesn't say, "Amen, you're correct," or "That's right," or "Bravo," clap. He goes and He clarifies. And what He does to clarify is that He gives kind of this, from lesser to greater. He says, "Okay, let me tell you about Psalm 82.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  Okay, here, the word of God came to these men, and they were called gods." Okay? So, if they were authorized by the God of Israel, because the word of God came to them, and then He goes, "What do you say about me, who was sanctified and sent into the world?" Notice, "I also was authorized by the God of Israel, and I'm claiming to be the Son of God." In both cases, both subjects are authorized in a legitimate way by the God of Israel. And He's saying, "If it's true about this category, and it can't be nullified, why is it not true about me as well?" Okay? So, He clarifies their misunderstanding by saying, "Look, I'm not making myself out

• 45:02Speaker 03

  on my own in this sort of cavalier way. I'm not making myself out to be God. The God of Israel has authorized me. He has sanctified me." And sanctification is, again, "The Spirit has come upon me at my baptism, because I am claiming to be the Christ, you know, the Jewish Messiah," which is kind of the main Christological point of the Gospel of John. I think that's what's going on there, but there's a lot that we could say and unpack, and we would be here for hours if we wanted to go through all those details.

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• 47:35Speaker 00

  I wanted to ask you, you know, you talked about the female personification of wisdom. And, you know, yes, wisdom is a feminine word in Hebrew and in Greek, but they very clearly chose, these authors clearly chose to make then the personification a woman. I wonder how that interacts with this man coming in. And I know that you provided an example in, I think it was Ben Sirach, about that there's also a man being embodied with wisdom. But I do think, like, here's what I hear.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  Like, I'm a feminist, I'm a guy who thinks that the Bible might have a few too many men in charge, men glorified, whatever. And I love the idea of a woman carrying God's authorization, carrying God's wisdom, carrying being. And maybe there's a sense in which it's saying, "We should be looking to women for wisdom." And then, Jesus comes along, and it's suddenly sort of pulled back to a man. And I wonder, what are your thoughts on how those two things interact, how they interplay,

• 48:58Speaker 00

  what it means in terms of women and men, and how that's been interpreted through history?

• 49:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a good point. There have been a lot of feminist scholars that have actually really helped to kind of clarify a lot of these points, because they're making the very same objections, or at least bringing to the forefront of these concerns. And they're good when we need to listen to them, and that's really important. What I find also that's interesting is that prior to the Gospel of John, you have in the Gospel of Matthew, this interesting line, I think it's in chapter 12, where John the Baptist is in prison, and he hears about the deeds of Christ. Okay? And then Jesus goes, and He talks about, "This is what happened to John the Baptist," and they kind of, you know, ignored him. And, "This is what's happening to me." And they say, "Oh, you're a drunkard and a glutton."

• 49:50Speaker 03

  And then, what Jesus responds with is by saying that, "But wisdom will be vindicated by her deeds." Okay? But remember, John the Baptist said, "Tell me about the deeds of Christ." And in the context, Jesus interprets that as the deeds of wisdom. But He's speaking about Himself. So, when Jesus is speaking about His deeds, He speaks about Himself as continuing on the ministry of wisdom, but He uses that feminine pronoun. Wisdom will be vindicated by her deeds. And that's already there in the Gospel of Matthew.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  Is that usually translated that way?

• 50:23Speaker 03

  It has to be translated. It's a feminine pronoun.

• 50:25Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 50:26Speaker 03

  Oftis, yeah.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  So...

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Sorry. I've read more of your book than I've read of the Gospel of John. So, I'm a little bit more, I'm more ignorant on these things, so...

• 50:38Speaker 01

  One more brief interruption. One other thing that I just remembered, I realized in that conference, Dustin, is that you and I are probably the only Bible scholars I'm aware of at the moment who use modern Greek pronunciation. And when we talk about Greek, you just said "ofti," which is the modern Greek, not the Arasman or the traditional biblical scholar Greek.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  So I appreciate that. Sorry. Go ahead.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  That's okay.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  A moment of solidarity there.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, some appreciation.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  I do teach Greek two times a year and I'm trying to continue to do this, this modern pronunciation. It sounds better. If you go to Greece, that's the way they're using it. And it's actually a whole lot easier. Cause.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Cause all the vowels sound exactly the same.

• 51:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah. When in doubt, you say E. Yeah. So anyone listening, I'm not butchering the Greek. This is a modern pronunciation. So, but yeah, we do have some places to where Jesus seems to speak kind of with this sort of feminine sort of language in regard to wisdom. And so it's not completely like changed. And wisdom has never changed to a masculine figure. That I think that's the key thing. Because, you know, it's still the things that were formally said about God's wisdom are now being embodied in Jesus. And he continues to do those things, carry out those roles and those descriptions and those characteristics. So it's not a diluting of the feminine of God's wisdom.

• 52:15Speaker 03

  And I think maybe there's just a sense in which the creation and the ordering of creation of everything that happens in the earth. If there's a female aspect to that, I'm not sure. I'm trying to be careful because there is a difference between grammatical gender and sexual gender. And I'm trying not to connect those too much there. I don't think that there's any sort of misogynist Christology that's going on by taking the things about God's wisdom and now turning them into the masculine logos. I don't, I don't detect anything like that.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  Cause the irony about all this, and this, I have a part of the chapter where I talk about this, is that the ideal disciples in the Gospel of John are all women. They're all women. Okay. And that's because in Proverbs, chapter nine, Personified Wisdom, Proverbs chapter nine, verse three, she sends out her maidens. And her maidens are the ones that summon people to come in and to partake of the meal that wisdom has prepared. That if you partake of it, you're going to get life. Okay. And so it's interesting because like in chapter two of the Gospel of John, you've got, you know, the wedding. And the interesting thing is that in this story, the wine runs out and Mary, and by the way, there's four different Marys

• 53:36Speaker 03

  in the Gospel of John. You gotta keep them all straight in your mind. This is the Mary, the mother of Jesus. So the first thing that she says is she goes to Jesus and she says, hey, we need some more wine. And it's this interesting details, like you, you're thinking, well, how did we get from this? But Mary already knew whom to go to, to get the wine, because she believed that Jesus was the embodiment of wisdom. And wisdom is the one that offers wine in Proverbs, chapter nine. Okay. And so it happens, she is able to turn the water into wine because he's the embodiment of wisdom. And wisdom is the one that gives the wine. Okay. But the disciples at the very, very end of that, it's like, oh, they're the ones that believe afterwards. Okay. But Mary already knew, she already knew who to go to. She already had this, this concept. And she's kind of presented as kind of like the ideal disciple that's there.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  And then you can see this throughout the Gospel of John, like in chapter four, the Samaritan woman by herself goes to the city and is able to convince all them to come in to listen to Jesus. So they get eternal life. That's exactly what the maiden does to where the disciples are like, why are you talking to this woman? What about the food? Like they're just, they don't get it. That's, that's a joke with the students. That's why they're called the disciples. They just don't get it sometimes. Okay. You can steal that.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  Mary and Martha in, in chapter 11, they get, they're kind of like the highlight, even though we tend to think of the racing of Lazarus. And they're the ones that exhibit the properties again of these, these wise maidens. In chapter 19, again, it's Mary, the mother of Jesus, who's like the only disciple that's there at the cross, other than the beloved disciple. And then in chapter 20, the first person to the tomb is not Peter or John, it's Mary Magdalene. Okay. And the interesting thing about her is that she is looking for, like she confuses Jesus for a gardener, this weird little thing. And then she starts grabbing Jesus and Jesus says, stop clinging to me. Well, that's because in Proverbs, chapter three, Personified Wisdom is a tree of life, which is known to be from a garden.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  And it says, the tree of life is going to give life to those who take hold of her. What is she doing? She, she thinks that Jesus is like in a garden and she's just grabbing hold of us. So she believes that he is the embodiment of wisdom. And so you, like, these women are like the ideal disciples in the Gospel of John, and they outshine even the 12. So I think that there is this highlighting of female discipleship as those that are actually understanding Jesus as the embodiment of wisdom and serving as these maidens that Personified Wisdom sends out in Proverbs, chapter nine, verse three.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Now, just, just to, if I recall correctly, the Samaritan woman, after the, all the people from the town come and see, they say to her, now we know for sure. And it's not just because you told us. I'm, I'm curious what, what that rhetorically, how that plays into this. Is there some additional point you think the author is trying to make?

• 56:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there's, there's a lot of points like within that particular story, because prior to her going away. And by the way, she, she goes away as soon as she acknowledges that Jesus is the Messiah, as he is the Christ. Okay. Which is the conclusion that the Gospel of John wants you to reach. It says that in its own purpose statement. And I'm surprised at how many people want to come up with a different Christology than what the purpose statement in John, chapter 20, verse 31, explicitly tells you you're supposed to have. It's like, this is the answer you're supposed to have. Okay. But afterwards she goes away, but at the end of the, of the summary, it says that the entire town believed because of her word. Like it actually attributes her as the reason why the entire town came to belief.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  To where the disciples are coming back and they're just kind of like blundering idiots. But even before that, he's having a conversation with her about providing water and water from a well. And Personified Wisdom in the Jewish literature is the one that provides an abundance of not only food, but food and, and drink. So there's, there's, there's a lot of details actually there that, that resonate with Personified Wisdom, the Jewish wisdom literature.

• 57:39Speaker 00

  Talk a bit, just briefly, we don't have a lot of time, but talk a bit about how, we actually have plenty of time. I don't know why I'm saying that. We got, we got, it's our show. We can talk as long as we want. I'm, I'm wondering about how you, you focused on the Gospel of John. Is the Gospel of John, is, is the Christ of the Gospel of John fundamentally different in some way from, from the synoptic gospels? Or is there like in, in, at least in terms of this wisdom Christology? Or do you think that that's, it's just most present in the Gospel of John and, and, but it's still there in the synoptics? What are your thoughts?

• 58:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. So traditionally, what a lot of people have said is that Matthew, Mark and Luke, the synoptics, being the earliest gospels, have kind of like a low Christology. And they would say the Gospel of John, being the latest, has a high divine Christology. And this of course comes down to what we mean by divine. But when I start to see that the Gospel of John has this wisdom Christology, and that's one of the primary Christologies that's being portrayed in, and there's lots of other things that are being said in it. But also you have wisdom Christology in Matthew and Luke. And there's even one little line in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus is in his hometown. And they, they say, you know, where did he get this wisdom? Like, you know, where, you know, what, what is so special? Like, how was he able to do that?

• 59:03Speaker 03

  They, they admit that Jesus received wisdom and they're not exactly sure where it came from. And then he gets rejected, but the reader knows that he received that wisdom at his baptism. But you have, you know, about six or seven different lines or verses in Matthew and Luke that have this.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  But in the Gospel of John, like I said, you know, the author's kind of taking that dial and turn it all the way up to maximum and just kind of portrayed it in every possible way that he can. And I think what that shows me is that there's actually continuity with all of them. And there's actually not this sort of like high divine Christology. Because one of the, one of the other interesting things about the Gospel of John is that it actually calls Jesus a human being more times than Matthew, Mark and Luke combined. That's interesting. Okay. I mean, Jesus is, I mean, even in John, chapter eight, verse 40, Jesus says, I am a man who heard these things from God. Now, how come Christians don't preach on that? I mean, he calls himself a human being. He distinguishes himself from God. He says he's not omniscient because he's learning things from God.

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  That seems pretty simple. How come we don't believe that? So I think that there's actually continuity between all of them. And I think all of them are portraying, I think, what some scholars are now starting to call a high human Christology. He's a human being who has been highly authorized and highly empowered by the God of Israel. But he's not the God of Israel. He's the son of God. And if you're a son of God, you're by definition not God.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Well, something interesting about the Gospel of John, if we, we can distinguish it from Matthew and Luke, at least the form of Luke that has come down to us, based on the fact that the Gospel of John doesn't go back to Jesus's birth. Matthew and Luke kind of move the threshold of Jesus's divinity, or at least some kind of adoption or participation in divinity back to birth and before birth. John, a lot of people will argue, oh, it goes all the way back to the creation. But it, it takes the logos back to the creation. But if we understand the logos as distinct from the person of Jesus, but something that indwells the person of Jesus, then in that sense, it is a lower Christology.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Is, at least if we're talking about Jesus's divinity, is something that is achieved at the baptism, which is where Mark starts. That gospel. And so I think it is a lot more complex than, than suggesting as, as many people do, that there's kind of a, an incremental pushing the divinity of Jesus further back into time. And it makes it a little less divine than, than even Matthew and Luke.

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's exactly how I see it. And I'm going to continue in my publications and everything else to try to put this back and just kind of level things out instead of just assuming that the Gospel of John has this high Christology where we can just kind of read into it Nicia and Chalcedon. And that's just, that's historically anachronistic. I just don't think it works. And I think what it does, as we're seeing, I mean, all of these, the devil's in the details, obviously. But I think if we slow down, we pay attention to the details, there actually is much more continuity with the other Gospels. And we don't have Jesus being identified as the only true God. He distinguishes himself from the only true God.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm curious. We had Hugo Mendes on a bit ago to talk about his, his new book on the Gospel of John. And one thing I really liked about his book, and I don't think you touch on it much in here, but would, would you argue that the soteriology of the Gospel of John is a theosis soteriology?

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  You're gonna have to define those words before we move on.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Okay, yes, basically, basically, the idea is Jesus is divine, which is something that is communicable, and is the Son of God. And according to John 112, everybody who follows Jesus or obeys him can, you know, he has power to make them the children of God. And then you also have in John 17, the intercessory prayer, Jesus praying that his followers become one with him in precisely the same way he is one with the Father, which is what Jesus says in, in John 1030, I and the Father are one. And so there, there are a lot of scholars, and Hugo briefly glances off of this in his book. And I talk about

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  it a little bit in a, in a paper that I have coming out, hopefully next year in an edited volume, that, that the idea is not just, hey, look at me, I'm divine, but also, hey, you can be too. Do you, do you get a sense for that? Is wisdom, is there a democratization of God's wisdom and the divinity that attends it in the Gospel of John, in your view? Or do you disagree about that?

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  No, I would actually take all of those things. And I would add one additional point to it. Because remember, at the beginning, at the baptism, arguably, we know that's when Jesus receives the Spirit. Well, that's, that's true. We know that happens regardless of how you read John 114. But at the end of the Gospel of John, what's interesting is that Jesus takes that very Spirit that God gave to him, and he gives it to the disciples. You know, he breathes on them. And he says, you know, receive the Holy Spirit. Okay. And so if, if the God of Israel empowered Jesus for his ministry, and then Jesus is going to go away, but he's not going to leave them as orphans, Jesus now empowers his disciples to be kind of like agents of the agent. Okay. And so I take it as, again, if they're empowered

• 1:04:33Speaker 03

  in the same way that Jesus was empowered, and Jesus is empowered as the Son of God, then they also are sons of God. Now, and I'm trying to be careful here, because it's, we do see in the Gospel of John, that there's a sense in which Judaism, or at least the proper way of Judaism, is trying to be redefined here. So if sons of God, or children of God, or members of God's covenantal family is no longer being defined by just being physically born into the community, but is open to those who actually believe and follow the Jewish Messiah, then at least, you know, there, we can see, you know, Jesus came to his own, his own didn't receive him. But those who did receive him, they became sons of God.

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  So I think there's, there's kind of a shifting of the covenantal lines there. And I'm just, I'm trying to be very careful how I say that. So I think that that's all part of it there. Whether I'm going to call it theosis, as in like, they attain like, a full level of divinity in the same way of the God of Israel, that might go a little too far, I think. But it is clear that the oneness that Jesus and the Father share in John 1030 is deliberately meant to be for the disciples as well. But I do take that as a oneness of mission and purpose, which I think is, is communicable through the empowerment of the Spirit.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  As we, I'm, I'm trying to think of a way that I, one of the things that's confusing to me, maybe I'm one of the interlocutors that Jesus would have repudiated, because I don't understand things correctly. But one of the things that I want, I want to understand how I'm meant to walk away from this. So I, so, okay, Jesus is, is, is the new embodiment of God's wisdom. What does that mean to me? How, what does that mean if, as I'm reading it, how, how, you know, I think in your book, you're, the reason

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  that you brought up all of the, all of the sort of the Jewish traditional understandings of this wisdom idea, is to situate it in, as, as a thing that, that the readers at that time would have understood, would have found, it would have been, it would have felt intuitively recognizable to them. But it's not to me. So, so what's, what's, what's the takeaway here? What, how, how does this, how, how should a modern reader use this in their understanding of Jesus?

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's a great question. I think that's arguably the most important question we could ask out of all this, to your credit. And I didn't know you were going to say that. But, but in the, in the Book of Proverbs, you're constantly being told that you need to seek after wisdom, you need to acquire wisdom, you need to buy wisdom, it's more important than jewels and all sorts of money. Like, you need to get it. And of course, the question is, well, how do I do that? How do I do that? Well, at the end of the book, it's, well, if you embody the teachings, then, you know, you could find it there. Or at least if you're a male, and you're interested in females, you, you acquire a wife who is embodying all these teachings. But we have the other Jewish traditions to where God's wisdom is embodied in the law of Moses and the commandments. Okay, so that's

• 1:07:54Speaker 03

  another way that at least the dialogue of where you find wisdom and how you acquire it is, is being situated. But I think after the destruction of the temple, you know, in the year 70 CE, there's, there's, again, this open question, well, how do I do this? How do I acquire and live according to God's wise commandments and wise ordinances? And if the Gospel of John is saying, well, God's wisdom is now climatically embodied in the human Jesus, and for those that actually follow after his teachings, then they can actually share in that oneness that God has actually shared with, with the Son, then

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  they can actually be the wise disciples that wisdom was ultimately trying to, to get, or at least to produce in the Book of Proverbs. And so I think that's what the early Christians were doing. They were trying to say, yeah, you, you may think that God's wisdom is found in the Torah, but now it's ultimately found in the Son, in the Son of God, who I think a son, from the perspective of the principle of agency, is the most qualified agent that a father could actually send. A father can send some hired hands, he can send some servants. But if he sends his own son, that's the one that most accurately is going to represent him from that perspective of the principle of agency. So I think that's probably what is actually taking place. And you can start to see some of that in some of the other

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  writings of the New Testament as well, that also have a wisdom Christology.

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  Well, I think that's a great place to end this. Thank you, Dustin, so much for joining us. Again, the name of the podcast is?

• 1:09:33Speaker 03

  The Biblical Unitarian Podcast.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  All right, go check that out.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  And the book is Wisdom, Christology in the Gospel of John.

• 1:09:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us, Dustin. We really appreciate you coming out.

• 1:09:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  For those of you who want to hear a little bit more of Dustin, you can become one of our patrons over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma. We got a whole really fun report on, on Dustin observing Dan raising Cain over in Rome, and another fun conversation. Dustin, you were generous enough to talk about your own journey. And that was a really fun conversation, too. So head on over there if you can, or you can become a member on YouTube, and you can get other benefits there, or you could do both, you can do whatever you want. Thanks

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  so much to our right hand man, Sam, who, by the way, will have, by this point, will have our new website up and running. It's got a whole bunch of new features, including transcripts of the show, and even if you are a patron, transcripts of our patron, extra stuff. So that's all going to be available to you. So that's really cool. So thanks so much, Sam Holden, for that. Thanks to Roger Goudy for editing the show.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  What's the URL? You want to drop the URL?

• 1:11:03Speaker 00

  Oh, fine. It's, yes, absolutely. You're, that is, that is a wise thing to do. You're embodying wisdom with that, Dan, and I appreciate it. Yeah, it's www dot dataoverdogma pod dot com. You put me on the spot, Dan. Thanks so much to Roger Goudy for editing the show. And thanks to all of you for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next time.

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

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• 1:11:43Speaker 07

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