This is probably one of the most level headed approaches to how we might define Jesus theologically vs historically. The point you make about how the divinity of Jesus was not obvious is incredibly important. This allows historically informed and spiritually minded persons the grace to be comfortable with uncertainty, but understanding how we got to where we are. Moses was one archetype for understanding and growing closer to God and Jesus is perhaps simply another more clarifying lense to examine the unseen God with.
What are your thoughts on Daniel 2:46? Here a prophet is given sacrificial homage, which is usually given to God.
Might be another place of the deified prophet, and/or could help Jews (and Christians) to contextualise the cultic honour which Christians give to Jesus.
I am not sure how responsive this is but a couple thoughts. Modern scholarship teaches us that the Bible, whose earliest source texts are polytheistic, does not necessarily articulate a sharp ontological distinction between capital-g God who is the only proper object of worship and a "god" in the sense of a celestial power--and the word in Hebrew (אל and its derivatives) is the same. But in Judaism's rabbinic form and certainly by its medieval form in Maimonides this distinction takes deep root: there is capital-G God, the transcendent source of all being, perfectly simple and indivisible, and then a wide variety of creatures (including, perhaps, some "supernatural" like angels and demons) who all have more metaphysically in common with each other than with their transcendent creator. And that's the trouble I have with reconciling this story about Jesus with Judaism. I am not sure it is inconsistent with normative Jewish theology to have prophets who are "divinized" in the sense of raised to the status of angels. But I think it is definitely inconsistent with normative Jewish theology to think that a human can be "divinized" in the sense of traversing that more fundamental ontological gap--something that Jews would not claim today about Moses or Elijah.
Hasidism does not strike me as inconsistent with this, both because Hasidism itself arouses intense anxiety and criticism precisely for the places where it seems to break from orthodox Jewish thinking about these topics, and because Hasidic views are usually capable of being expressed as (and defended as merely expressing) more deflated views less inimical to non-Hasidic Jewish theology.
This is probably one of the most level headed approaches to how we might define Jesus theologically vs historically. The point you make about how the divinity of Jesus was not obvious is incredibly important. This allows historically informed and spiritually minded persons the grace to be comfortable with uncertainty, but understanding how we got to where we are. Moses was one archetype for understanding and growing closer to God and Jesus is perhaps simply another more clarifying lense to examine the unseen God with.
What are your thoughts on Daniel 2:46? Here a prophet is given sacrificial homage, which is usually given to God.
Might be another place of the deified prophet, and/or could help Jews (and Christians) to contextualise the cultic honour which Christians give to Jesus.
I am not sure how responsive this is but a couple thoughts. Modern scholarship teaches us that the Bible, whose earliest source texts are polytheistic, does not necessarily articulate a sharp ontological distinction between capital-g God who is the only proper object of worship and a "god" in the sense of a celestial power--and the word in Hebrew (אל and its derivatives) is the same. But in Judaism's rabbinic form and certainly by its medieval form in Maimonides this distinction takes deep root: there is capital-G God, the transcendent source of all being, perfectly simple and indivisible, and then a wide variety of creatures (including, perhaps, some "supernatural" like angels and demons) who all have more metaphysically in common with each other than with their transcendent creator. And that's the trouble I have with reconciling this story about Jesus with Judaism. I am not sure it is inconsistent with normative Jewish theology to have prophets who are "divinized" in the sense of raised to the status of angels. But I think it is definitely inconsistent with normative Jewish theology to think that a human can be "divinized" in the sense of traversing that more fundamental ontological gap--something that Jews would not claim today about Moses or Elijah.
Hasidism does not strike me as inconsistent with this, both because Hasidism itself arouses intense anxiety and criticism precisely for the places where it seems to break from orthodox Jewish thinking about these topics, and because Hasidic views are usually capable of being expressed as (and defended as merely expressing) more deflated views less inimical to non-Hasidic Jewish theology.