The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ

by Brant Pitre

his original Jewish audience

when Jesus speaks about “the Son of Man,” he is referring to another prophecy from the book of Daniel:

the famous vision of the four beasts and the coming of “one like a son of man”

And that, of course, is precisely when Jesus began his public ministry: during “the reign of Tiberius Caesar”

Daniel’s mysterious prophecy of the death of the Messiah.

What sometimes goes unnoticed is that when Jesus predicts that he will suffer and die, he repeatedly refers to himself as “the Son of Man.”

Daniel’s prophecy of the death of the Messiah for understanding Jesus.

According to the book of Daniel, the Messiah will not just come in glory; he will also suffer and die.

“What?! The Old Testament actually predicts the timing of the death of the Messiah? Why haven’t I heard this before?”

Jesus fulfilled them.

Jewish historian Josephus, the fourth-century Church historian Eusebius, and the famous seventeenth-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal:

however one calculates the exact dates spoken of by Daniel, the 490 years between the restoration of Jerusalem and the coming of the Messiah are undeniably completed before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70.

They were waiting for the coming of the kingdom of God and the messianic Son of Man.

the central claim—that the one true God became man in Jesus of Nazareth—

Jesus did in fact claim to be God.

He did so, however, in a very Jewish way.

These riddles were designed to force his audience to ask the question “Who is this man?”

the full meaning of these actions can only be fully understood in the context of ancient Jewish Scripture and tradition.

does not mean that he didn’t claim to be divine.

flat-out wrong.

ignore

substance

“the LORD” (all caps), I am referring to the Hebrew name of God (YHWH).

depicting Jesus as possessing God’s own power over the sea and water.

In the Old Testament, “I am” is often used for the divine name of God

“I am” (Hebrew ’ehyeh; Greek egō eimi) is a name. It is another name for “the LORD” (Hebrew YHWH), the God of the universe.

God of Moses: he is eternal. He has no beginning; he has no end;

Indeed, the sacred name YHWH can be translated...

He is revealing his divine identity to them.

theophany—an appearance of God—

Transfiguration

his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them.

“transfigured” (Greek metemorphōthē)

Why do Moses and Elijah appear on the mountain with Jesus?

Moses represents the Law, the first five books of the Bible, and Elijah represents the Prophets, the second major part of the Jewish Scriptures.

there is a better explanation for why Moses and Elijah appear,

both Moses and Elijah experience theophanies—

Mount Sinai, the mountain of divine revelation.

Notice also that neither Moses nor Elijah could look at God.

On the mountain of the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah are finally allowed to see what they could not see during their earthly lives: the unveiled face of God.

In Jesus of Nazareth, the one God now has a human face.

Jesus, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, now “shines from within;

he does not simply receive light, but he himself is light from light.”

Not only does Jesus speak and act as if he is God, but God speaks and acts as if Jesus is his divine Son.

what would only later become clear: a plurality of persons in the one God.

“the Messianic secret.”

wrongly to classify Jesus as a revolutionary and seek his execution;

It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of this insight into Jesus’s practical strategy for revealing who he is.

Because the truth about his divine identity is even more momentous than his messianic identity,

But Jesus reveals his divine identity in the same way he reveals his messianic identity—