The Old Testament Archetypes of Christ Pt. 3

Christ as Tyre

Throughout the Old Testament, a major restriction exists against the worship of idols, images of gods, or even images of the Jewish god himself (Exodus 20:4, Leviticus 26:1, and Isaiah 44:8-11). Humanity was supposedly created in the image of this god (Genesis 1:27) and so worshipping a man as a god, or even worshipping a god through a man amounts to nothing more than idolatry, expressly forbidden in both the Ten Commandments and elsewhere in the Old Testament. The Jewish god even says it plainly that “God is not a man” (Isaiah 2:22, 14:13, I Samuel 15:29, Numbers 23:19, and Hosea 11:9).
Those who claim to be a god or even godlike, such as the Prince of Tyre apparently did, have the Jewish god’s anger and jealousy, as found in Ezekiel 28:2-8:

...say to the Prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord GOD,
Because your heart is prideful, and you have said,
I am God, I sit at the Seat of God!,
in the midst of the seas,
yet you are a Man, and not God,
though you think your heart to be the heart of God.
Behold, you are wiser than Daniel,
there is no secret that they can hide from you…
Therefore says the Lord GOD:
“Because you have proclaimed your heart the heart of God,
therefore I will bring strangers upon thee—the terrible of the Gentiles—and they shall draw their sword against the beauty of your wisdom,
and they shall defile your brightness.
They shall bring you down to the pit,
and you shall die the death of them that are slain
in the midst of the seas.

This is very similar to a curse on the king of Babylon, found in Isaiah 14, and mentioned in Christ as Babylon. Additionally, it poses a unique challenge for Christian apologists who often use the Old Testament as evidence that Jesus’ life was predicted often in passages usually dealing with other issues, when taken in context. Of all the things Christ was accused of by his enemies, calling himself a god was the most serious, given the ample condemnation of it in Jewish law.
John 8:57-59

Then the Jews said to him, “You are not even fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”
Jesus said to them, “For sure, I say to you, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’”
Because of this, they took up stones to cast at him, but Jesus ran away…

Jesus’ use of the phrase “I am” holds special significance when compared to how the Jewish god referred to himself when telling Moses who to say had sent him.
Exodus 3:14

God said to Moses, “I am who I am . This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ “

In answering the Jews as to his identity, “I am”, Jesus equated himself to their god, as has already been shown to be expressly forbidden. The Jews’ reaction in immediately seeking to stone him and his subsequent flight away shows just how seriously they considered his blasphemy. This incident was not enough to put Jesus off from continuing to calling himself a god. Two chapters later, he becomes even more explicit, even going so far as to even equate himself with so-called “Evil Beings” by misquoting the Old Testament.
John 10:25 and John 10:30-36

Jesus answered them,
“...I and my Father are one.”
Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.
Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of those works do you all stone me?”
The Jews answered him, “We do not stone you for your good works, but for blasphemy; because you, being a man, make yourself God.”
Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law,
‘I said, You all are gods’?

If he to whom the word of God came called them gods, (and the scripture cannot be broken),
then do you say of one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You blaspheme’, just because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?”

Not only does Jesus come right and say he is the same thing as god, but he gives justification for this by misquoting and Old Testament verse, found in Psalm 82:6:
Psalm 82:1-5 and Psalm 82:5-7

God stands in the congregation of the mighty.
In the midst of the Gods he holds judgement:
How long will you all judge unrighteously,
and accept the Evil Ones?
...They know nothing,
neither do they understand,
they walk in darkness,
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I have said, “You are Gods”,
and all of you are Sons of the Most High.
But you all shall die like men,
and fall like rulers!

The “Evil Ones” mentioned in this passage refer to some kind of super-being, most likely an angel. They are called gods by the Jewish god and so Jesus uses this as justification for calling himself a god. In so doing, he equates himself with a group of entities obviously out of favor with the Jewish god, as evidenced by the curse pronounced on them in the last verse, also foreshadowing Jesus’ own ending. Aside from an outright insidious motivation, Jesus seems to have believed the verse was referring to mortal men and therefore he was entitled to call himself a god since his own law said the Jewish god did as much for all men. That notion is further reinforced when Jesus later clarifies some of his meanings, in John 17:21-23:

that they all may be One, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be One in us, that the world may believe that you have sent me.
And the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be One exactly as we are One,
I in them, and you in me, that they may be made Perfected in One…

Jesus is saying that through belief in his god and himself and because of the power he shares as a result, all people may eventually become one with him and god. It would seem he believed the eventual evolution of humanity was to become a god in itself. The root of this apparent pre-existentialist thought remains a mystery, but it further incited the Jews against for the simple reason John makes clear was known to both Jesus and his fo
llowers: he was calling himself god, in clear defiance of Jewish law.
John 5:18

Therefore the Jews sought even more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

In also taking on the title of a god, Jesus then can be shown to expect worship as a deity, the same faith as granted the Jewish god, and even assumes the powers of a god are within him (Mattew 14:24-33, John 20:28-29, John 14:1, and John 5:19-20). Yet, Jesus could not have continued this forever. It was apparent the threat of stoning continually hung over his head as his personal pronouncements grew more bold and the Jewish authorities lost patience with indulging a popular rabbi.

Finally building a strong enough case againt him, Jesus was brought before Roman authorities as an example the occupied Jews keeping a troublemaker in check. Standing before the Roman Pontius Pilate, Jesus received the pronouncement of judgment, even as Pilate tried his best to be lenient. Yet, even this scene is remarkably like Ezekial’s curse on the Prince of Tyre, as found in Ezekiel 28:9-10:

Will you say before him that kills you, “I am God”?
But you are a man, and not God,
in the hand of him who kills you.
You shall die the death of the uncircumcised,
by the hand of foreigners: for I have spoken it!

Indeed, standing before Pilate, Jesus did not make his claim to godhood, and by a foreigner’s hand, received the Roman death sentence of crucifixion, at the age of 33.
Psalm 55:23

And you, God, you will bring them
down to the pit of corruption!
Men of blood and deceit will not live out half their lives,
But, I shall trust in you!

Psalm 146:1-4

Do not put your trust in leaders,
in the Son of Man in whom there is no salvation!
His breath of life departs, he returns to the ground!
On that very day, his plans come to nothing!