As we have seen in “The Deity of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel” and in the “Deity of the Messiah in the Old Testament”, Muslims often object to the deity of Christ claiming it is a late invention of Christians introduced hundreds of years after Christ lived in AD 1C Palestine . Not only can we see clearly who Jesus is in Mark’s Gospel, and in verses that point forward to the coming of the Messiah in the Old Testament, we can also see Christ himself appearing in the Old Testament.
It is clear from reading the New Testament that Jesus is the central focus of everything. In the Quran too, Jesus is mentioned far more often than many realise. He is mentioned by name (as “Isa”) 25 times1 and if you count other references where he is referenced in the 3rd person and by title, as many as 187 times2. However, in the New Testament, a document of comparable length3, Jesus is mentioned well over a thousand times by name4. For a discussion on the differences between the Jesus of the Bible and the Quran, see “Who has the Real Jesus, Christians or Muslims?”
In the Old Testament however, Jesus as a figure seems surprisingly illusive to Christian eyes. If, as Christians claim he is God who has existed from all eternity, you might expect to see more of him in the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures, even if it wasn’t until the 1st century that the incarnation took place, and he permanently took on humanity living among us as a man (John 1:14). Of course, there are many references to him in the Old Testament. There are many prophecies that point forward to his coming5, and “types” that shadow the shape of his life and ministry6, but do we meet Jesus himself as a person in the pages of the Old Testament?
Initially we might conclude that it just isn’t possible for God to appear in the Old Testament, or at least not possible for anyone to survive such an encounter. When Moses desires to see God’s face in Exodus, he is told, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20)
There are times though when God is seen in the Old Testament in very real ways. These are known as “theophanies”. The term “theophany” means “appearance of God” and comes from the Greek word “theophaneia” with “theo” meaning “God” and “Phaneia” from the verb “phaino” (φαίνω), meaning “to appear” or “to show.”
Even in Exodus 33, while Moses is told he cannot see God, he does see him, albeit in a veiled way with God’s hand shielding him, with just his back seen by Moses. Even in the same chapter Moses is known as one with whom the Lord would speak to “face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:11)
Elsewhere in the book of Exodus too, God is seen. Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel are invited to the mountain of God. After going up, rather than dying they saw God, and “God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.” (Exodus 24:9-11)
If God is unseen and unseeable yet seen, what is going on? The position that many have held, is that the times when God is seen in the Old Testament are appearances of the Son, the second person of the Trinity, known also as Christophanies.
The New Testament would seem to concur with this, with John stating in his prologue, “no one has ever seen God…” However, John goes on to say that “the one and only Son, who is himself God and in the closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”
Christophanies generally don’t play a large role in modern Bible teaching, either being relegated to sidenotes in sermons, going unmentioned7 or explicitly denied8, however for the early church and the Reformers (and some modern Bible teachers) the idea of the Son of God appearing in the Old Testament played a significant place in their understanding of who Christ is. Even in early Jewish thinking there was an understanding of an appearance of a divine figure even if they didn’t fully understand who this figure was.
Having an understanding of the times when Christ appeared can be useful in showing that the Christian view of Jesus of God wasn’t a 4th Century invention, or invented by Paul, but something that can be found throughout Scripture, including the New Testament.
Even from as early as the first chapters of Genesis, we see Christ appearing as the divine Word of God. When John introduces Jesus as the Word (in Greek, Logos) in his Gospel it is thought that he is being heavily influenced by Greek philosophical thought. In Greek thinking the Logos referred to the underlying order and structure of the cosmos. However, the concept of the Word goes right back to the beginning of the Bible story.
Walking in the cool of the day
In Genesis 1 God brings everything into existence by his word, speaking things into existence, with the phrase, “And God said…” repeated 7 times in the chapter resulting in the various stages of creation9. Chapter 2 then zooms into the creation story giving the account of the creation of mankind and the resulting relationship between humanity and their creator. God is very much present in the chapter, which is seen by the extensive use of language showing proximity10. However, in chapter 3, following Adam and Eve’s act of sin, we read of God appearing, walking in the Garden. Genesis 3:8 states: “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
The verse could simply be saying that as God walked in the Garden, he made a noise, and this was the noise they heard which made them flee and hide. This itself would be a clear indication of God appearing physically. However. interestingly, in Jewish tradition, there is the idea that it was specifically the Word of the Lord who appeared as a person in the garden. The Targums are Aramaic translations and paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible. These translations were created during the Second Temple period11 and continued to be developed in the subsequent centuries. Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan both state specifically that, “they heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God (“Memra Debar” in Aramaic) walking in the garden”12 giving weight to the idea that it was Christ as the second person of the Trinity who was walking in the Garden and presumably then the one who in verse 21, killed the first sacrifice and clothed them with the skins. A very sobering thought as he knew that he would one day become the ultimate sacrifice for sins. The Targum (Jerusalem) specifically has the Word of God speaking in the following verse, “the Word of the Lord God said, Behold, Adam whom I have created…” before expelling them from the Garden13.
Abraham
The idea of the “Memra Debar” appearing in human form is also seen in the account of Abraham. In Genesis 15:1 we read that the “the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision”. We might think that Abraham was just seeing the vision in some kind of dream. However, in v4 we read that the Word of the Lord, came to him and then v5 took him outside, which suggests the physical presence of a person. Then in v9 Abraham is commanded to bring to him the various animals that will be used for sealing of the promise that God made to him. Interestingly it isn’t until v12 that Abraham falls into a deep sleep strengthening the idea that it was the Lord appearing to and interacting with Abraham in a real way. Interestingly, The Targums sees a continuity in the interaction between Abraham and the Word of the Lord who had appeared to him rendering Genesis 15:6 as “And Abraham believed in the name of the Memra (Word of the LORD), and the LORD counted it to Him as righteousness.”14
Abraham’s encounter with the three visitors in chapter 18 and 19 gives more weight to the idea that it was Jesus who appeared to him as God. In Genesis 18:1 Abraham is visited by three men. He prepares food for them (v5) and they eat (v8). In Genesis 18:16, the men get up to leave for Sodom, and in v22, they leave, at least two of them, as in chapter 19:1 we are told that only two of them arrive at Sodom15. Abraham however remains standing before the LORD (Genesis 18:22 cf. Genesis 19:27), the dialogue continues and at the end of the chapter Abraham returns home. In the next chapter however, the scene turns to Sodom and the encounter of the two angels and Lot and the resulting judgement. In Genesis 19:24 however, we are told specifically, “the LORD rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens.” In this verse the LORD is mentioned twice showing us that there are in this context at least two individuals who are said to be the LORD working in unity together to bring judgement. The LORD in heaven, and the LORD on earth, specifically the Father in heaven and the Son in human form16. Again, the Targum brings some clarity showing that it was the “Word of the Lord” who “caused to descend upon them bitumen and fire from before the Lord from the heavens.”17
The New Testament also gives us reason to conclude that Abraham saw Christ himself. in John 8 Jesus is in depute with the Jewish leaders, and Jesus knowing they were plotting to kill him (John 8:40, cf. Mark 3:6), compares their actions to Abraham’s, “As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things.” This claim would only make sense if Abraham would have had the chance to meet Christ and try to kill him. It’s not a surprise then when John 8 concludes with one of the clearest claims of Jesus being the LORD (John 8:58).
John Owen, the 17th C theologian speaking of Abraham’s encounter with the Lord, concludes: “There is therefore in this place an appearance of God in a human shape, where one distinct person in the Godhead, who now represented himself to Abraham in the form and shape, where later he would dwell among men, would be “made flesh” from Abraham’s seed. This was the chief way that Abraham “saw his day and rejoiced;” which proves his pre-existence before his incarnation, more than just the promise of his coming (John 8:56-58). This was a solemn introduction to his taking of flesh, a revelation of his divine nature and person, and a pledge of his coming in human nature to converse with men.18”
Alongside Jesus appearing as the Word of the LORD, he also appears as the Angel of the LORD. While angels in the Bible are those created by God to serve him and “do his bidding”19, the term angel, (in Hebrew “malak”, Greek, “aggelos”) is not always used to refer to created beings. The word just means “messenger”. John the Baptist is referred to an “aggelos” in Matthew 11:10, James uses the same word for the spies sent to spy out the land as “aggalos” too in James 2:2520.
There are a number of occasions where an “Angel of the LORD” appears, but rather than being a created being given the role of messenger, it is clear it is the LORD himself who is appearing.
Hagar
The first occurrence is when the Angel appears to Hagar. She has just been cast out from Abrham’s family into the desert and is about to die. It is then that “the angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert”. Not only does this Angel speak like the LORD (See Genesis 16:10, cf. Genesis 13:16, Genesis 15:5, Genesis 17:2, Genesis 22:17) but she also concludes that the one she saw was God, saying, “You are the God who sees me” Genesis 16:13. This is also affirmed in the text of the narrative as he writes, “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her”.
Burning Bush
One of the clearest examples of the Angel of the Lord appearing is in Exodus 3, when the Lord appears to Moses in the burning bush. We are told specifically in Exodus 3:2 that, “the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush.” As the narrative progresses, we see it is the LORD himself who speaks to Moses from within the bush (v4) confirming in no uncertain terms that he is “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Again, the narrative is clear at the end of verse 6 that Moses was afraid to “look at God”. If the angel wasn’t the LORD himself, the writer of Exodus could have easily qualified that Moses only thought he was looking at God but was mistaken.
It is also significant that it is within this encounter that the God discloses his name to Moses as Yahweh or “I AM WHO I AM”, reinforcing New Testament passages where Jesus refers to himself as the “I AM” of God as clear claims to be the LORD. Some argue that there is a change of voice in the narrative or that the angel speaking is just a representative speaking on behalf of God, but the narrative doesn’t allow for that. Again, Owen states that, “the text will not tolerate any such distinction, but speaks of one and the same person throughout, without any alteration; and this was none other but the Son of God.21”
Joshua
A parallel passage that shows the identity of the Angel is Joshua 5:13-15. Here, one who calls himself the “commander of the army of the LORD” appears to Joshua leading up to the fall of Jerico. In response to Joshua’s worship, rather than discouraging such an act, as the angel does to John in Revelation 22:9, he is commanded to “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” Again, as the dialogue continues, it is the LORD that speaks to Joshua.
The Exodus
Later in the Exodus dialogue we read again of the Angel of the LORD. In Exodus 23, God, speaking of their journey to the promised land, says to Moses, “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.” (Exodus 23:20) If we were to leave the text here, we might conclude that this angel is just a created being sent to guide God’s people. However, as the text continues, we are told things about this Angel that can only be true of the LORD. We read they must, “Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him.” (Exodus 23:24) As it is not the prerogative of an angel to forgive sin this Angel must be the Lord himself, confirmed by the phrase, “my Name is in Him”22.
Judges 2:1-5 affirms that the angel was, the LORD who, “brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors” and the one who made the covenant with the people. Jude 1:5 also affirms the identity of the Angel as Jesus. The ESV reads, “Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” (see footnote in other translations)
Gideon
In the account of Gideon, we also see the Angel of the LORD appearing. In Judges 6:11-12, the Angel appears to Gideon. He comes, sits down under a tree and converses with him. The key verses though are Judges 6:14 which explicitly states that “the LORD turned to him” and Judges 6:16 which again explicitly calls the Angel, “The LORD”. It was only when the food Gideon had prepared was burned up as the angel touched them with his staff that he realised who the angel was, saying, “Alas, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!”. But rather than die after seeing the LORD, the Lord said to him, “Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.”
Commenting on Gideon’s encounter with the Angel, Douglas van Dorn concludes, “Yahweh and the Angel of Yahweh are interchangeable terms, even while Yahweh and the Angel are not interchangeable. In other words, the Angel is both God and not God, or to put it in NT terms, the Angel is God but not the Father; he is the Son of God.”23
Jacob
A further example of the Angel of the LORD being declared as the LORD is in the account of Jacob. In Genesis 31:11 he sees the angel of God in a dream, who in v13 declares to him, “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me.” In the next chapter, before meeting with his brother Esau, Jacob is left alone and during the night he wrestles with a man. (Genesis 32:24) In the conversation that follows, and in response to the blessing the man gives to Jacob, he is convinced that the man is none other than the LORD himself, concluding, “it is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared”, calling the place Peniel meaning “face of God” (Genesis 32:30). At the end his life, as he is blessing Joseph, he correlates God with the Angel: “‘May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the Angel who has delivered me from all harm – may he bless these boys.” Genesis 48:14-16 According to Jacob, God and the Angel are one and the same24.
Isaiah
Aside from these references of Christ as the Angel of the Lord, a further notable time when Christ is seen as LORD is when Isaiah sees the Lord seated on a throne. Isaiah himself reports in Isaiah 6:1 that, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple.” We know it was the Lord Jesus he saw as John tells us in John 12:41 that, “Isaiah … saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him”. What is interesting here is that in the one passage John quotes Isaiah 6, a passage focusing on the glory of Jesus as God, together with Isaiah 53, a passage focusing on his sufferings, show the idea that Christ is both Lord and Saviour.
One question worth asking is, if the glory of the divine Son in the Old Testament is so clear, why isn’t there more recognition of these themes among Jews?
We have seen the way the Targum writers have no hesitation of seeing the idea of a divine Word or “Memra” alongside God. According to the Targumists, the “Memra” is the agent of creation25, the one who represents God’s physical presence on the earth26, the object of saving faith27, the one though who God helps and guides his people28, serves as an intermediary between the people and God29 and who is the source of salvation30.
Philo of Alexandria, was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, approximately from 20BC to 50AD. He was well educated in both Jewish religious traditions and Greek philosophy and wrote a number of works including commentaries on the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible). Philo too held to the idea of a divine logos present in Scripture, albeit, in more philosophical terms being deeply influenced by Greek philosophy.
Philo writes, “Let (us) strive to be ordered in relation to (God’s) First-born and eldest Messenger [angelos], the Word [logos]: that is the multi-named Archangel (who was) at the beginning. For he is also called ‘the Beginning’ and the ‘Name of God’ and the "Word" and the ‘Man after his Image’ and ‘Israel the Seer’.”31
While Philo and the authors of Targum literature were not Christian, or held to a Trinitarian view of God, their writings show that a divine Word is present in Jewish thought before the New Testament explicitly identifying Jesus as the divine Logos. This is helpful to show that a divine Christ was not the invention of Christians long after Jesus lived, but a view fully compatible with the Old Testament.
But why don’t modern Jews hold to the idea of a divine Word? One reason is that it is thought that the shift towards an absolute monotheism in Judaism happened partly as a response to Christian Trinitarianism. [Needs unpacking and refs32]
As we have seen above the early church Father’s were confident that the times when God appeared in physical appearance in the Old Testament where appearances of the Son of God.
Irenaeus , a disciple of Polycarp, who in tern was a disciple of the Apostle John (equivalent to the Tab’ Tabi’un in Sunni theology) was a Greek bishop born 130AD known for defending the Gospel. In his book, “Against Heresies”, writes, “…again, when the Son speaks to Moses, He says, I have come down to deliver this people”33
Tertullian was a prolific early Christian writer and theologian of the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries. He writes, “For who was it that talked with Moses, except the Son of God, who is called both Angel and God, who was heard, indeed, and seen in His own right as the Son, but invisibly in the Father’s person? Wherefore did He say, ‘I am that I am,’ and, ‘I Am hath sent me unto you,’ except that He was the Word, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made?”. Elsewhere he says, “… neither was it possible, that God who conversed with men upon earth, could be any other than that Word which was to be made flesh.”
Justin Martyr was an early Christian apologist and philosopher (c. 100 – c. 165 AD) known for his writings defending Christianity. He writes, “Our Christ conversed with Moses out of the bush, in the appearance of fire. And Moses received great strength from Christ, who spake to him in the appearance of fire.”
Irenaeus: “The Scripture is full of the Son of God’s appearing: sometimes to talk and eat with Abraham, at other times to instruct Noah about the measures of the ark; at another time to seek Adam; at another time to bring down judgment upon Sodom; then again, to direct Jacob in the way; and again, to converse with Moses out of the bush.”
Paul of Samosata was Bishop of Antioch from 260 to 268 and heretically taught that Jesus was born only a man not fully divine. A group of six bishops wrote to him in order to ascertain his beliefs before deposing him. In their letter, they claim that they have come to their knowledge of Christ “from both the Old and New Testaments”, and after laying out various texts showing that the Son is the Son from all eternity, they go on to show how his appearing as the Son in the Old Testament is proof of who Jesus is. They write, “We say that this One came down and appeared to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre, one of the three, with Whom the patriarch conversed as with the Lord and Judge seeing that He has received from the Father all the judgment. Concerning Whom it has been written, “The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorra fire and sulphur from the Lord of heaven.” (Genesis 19:24)”, then go on to show that Christ was the angel that appeared to Jacob, and to Moses in the bush.34