Page 316 - History of The Quranic Text | Kalamullah.Com

296 THE HISTORY OF THE QUR'ANIC TEXT

that theideaof 'makingdisciples' iscontinuedin 'teachingthem,'
so that the interveningreference to baptism with its trinitarian
formula wasperhaps a later insertioninto the saying. 67

TheDeiry ofJesus.
WhetherJesus ever referred to himself as the Son of God depends
almost exclusively on Luke 10:22,

No one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who
the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son
chooses to reveal him.

These words are repeated verbatim in Matthew 11:27, the reason
being that Luke and Matthew both lifted this passage out of Q 68
But these words emanate from the third layer of Q, the layer added
by Christians around 70 C.E. 69 Neither of the two earlier layers, in-
cluding the original Q as kept by the very first followers of Jesus,
contains anything about the deity ofJesus Christ. Additionally, the
phrase 'Son of God' isfound in the O'T under several different guises
and meanings, none of which imply a direct Sonship since that
would run counter toJewish monotheism.?? In Jewish thought 'the
Son of God' refers to a man who bears a moral (rather than physical)
connection to GOd,71 and so it is possible that early Christians used
this appellation forJesus in that sense, having been brought up in
the Jewish tradition. If such is the case then the influence of Hel-
lenism, in which emperors liked to view themselves as directly des-
cended from the gods, may be to blame in switching the perception
of later Christians from the idea of a moral relationship to that of
one directly physical.
Returning to the NT, the KJV's rendering of 1 Timothy 3:16
discusses the divinity ofJesus in human form: 'And without con-
troversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the
flesh..." Modern textual analysis has cast this reading into doubt,
with all current versions opting instead for "He [or Who or Which]
was manifest in the flesh." Other instances of textual criticism
weakeningJesus' divinity are Mark 1:1 ("the Son of God" omitted);

67 Dictionary if the Bible, p. 1015.
68 Seethiswork pp. 279-80.
69 B.L. Mack, TheLostGospel: TheBook if Q& Christian Origins, pp. 89, 172.
70 Seefor example, Genesis 6:2,]ob 38:7, and Exodus 4:22.
71 Dictionary if the Bible, p. 143.