“Le Fils de Dieu”: how did the first christians understand and express Jesus’ identity?
Friar Étienne NODET, OP, member of the École biblique et archéologique française, who passed away in February 2024, dedicated his last breaths in Jerusalem finding the answer to that question.
By confronting Saint John’s and Saint Paul’s texts with the scrolls of Qumran, this book invites us to think anew. How to rethink the terms of “Messiah”, “Crucified”, “Suffering servant”, “Fair condemned”, “Holy”, and “Son of God” ? How did the first christians name and identify Jesus?
Étienne NODET, o.p., renews with this crucial question and investigates this historical topic by reexamining the synoptic question and thoroughly studying what the name “Son of God” means.
“Yes, the theme of the Suffering servant of divine nature, as announced by Isaiah, in the Dead Sea scrolls, matters a lot. Yes, among the four gospels, the tale of John, with no Sanhedrin trial, is the closest to the facts, with a coherent chronology. Yes, the title Son of God, has had biblical foreshadowing since King David, and roman foreshadowing since Emperor August. Yes, Saint Paul, whose influence is palpable in the final version of the gospels, used it as well, but linked it to resurrection. For the first christians did not want to deify Jesus, quite the opposite- first and foremost they wanted to affirm his humanity” he said.
The hypothesis extraordinarily changes our perspective in order to restitute the primordial meaning of the Passion.
Photo: ÉBAF, Ordo Prædicatorum.
Dominican, member of the l’École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, professor of intertestament literature for years, specialist of Flavius Josèphe and pre rabbinic historiography, Étienne Nodet († 2024) published at the Éditions du Cerf, just to name a few, Les Samaritains and the translation of the Antiquités juives.
« I read the Scripture in faith » Fr. Étienne NODET, o.p., 1944-2024.
