Since the beginning of the quest for the historical Jesus, scholars have dismissed the idea that Jesus could have identified himself as God. Brant Pitre challenges this widespread assumption and makes a robust historical case that Jesus did consider himself divine. Carefully explicating the Gospels in the context of Second Temple Judaism, Pitre shows how Jesus used riddles, questions, and scriptural allusions to reveal the apocalyptic secret of his divinity. Ultimately, Pitre argues that the origins of early high Christology can be traced to the historical Jesus’s words and actions. Scholars and students of the New Testament—and anyone curious about the Jewish context of early Christianity—will find Pitre’s argument a necessary and provocative corrective to a critically underexamined topic.
