Endnotes – Did the Apostles Believe Jesus is God?

  1. Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, vol 3 of The Story of Civilization (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 563.
  2. A. H. McNeile, Introduction to the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 463, 464
  3. The title Lord is freely used in both Testaments to refer to God and Jesus. In the Old Testament the Hebrew word for Lord was Adonai. In the Septuagint and the New Testament the word translated “Lord” is Kurios. Both Adonai and Kurios were used for God by the Jews.” Josh McDowell & Bart Larson,Jesus: A Biblical Defense of His Deity (San Bernardino: Here’s Life, 1983), 33.
  4. Paul L. Maier, Ed, Eusebius, The Church History (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1999), 149.
  5. Although most early Christians believed in Jesus’ divinity, the church didn’t clarify what that meant until the Council of Nicaea in 325 A. D., when the Roman emperor Constantine convened church leaders together to deal with Arius’s view that Jesus was a created being. However, after an intense debate over the meaning of the apostles’ words about Jesus in the New Testament, all but two of 318 church leaders reaffirmed the majority Christian belief that he is fully God, co-eternal, co-equal and with the Father and Holy Spirit (See “Mona Lisa’s Smirk”).
  6. See “Jesus.doc” to discover the reliability of the New Testament
  7. Martin writes, “Contrary to the translations of The Emphatic Diaglott and the New World Translation, the Greek grammatical construction leaves no doubt whatsoever that this is the only possible rendering of the text…. in their New World Translation Appendix 773-777 attempt to discredit the Greek text on this point, for they realize that if Jesus and Jehovah are “One” in nature their theology cannot stand….” Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults (Minneapolis, Minn: Bethany, 1974), 75.
  8. F. F. Bruce, The Deity of Christ (Manchester, England: Wright’s [Sandbach] Ltd., 1964
  9. F. F. Bruce, “The ‘Christ Hymn’ of Colossians 1:15-20,” Bibliotheca Sacra (April-June 1984): 101.
  10. D. Guthrie & J. A. Motyer, The New Bible Commentary: Revised (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1973), 1144.
  11. Bruce, ‘Hymn’, 101-102.
  12. Although the author of Hebrews is unknown, some scholars believe it was written by Paul.
  13. The Amplified Bible, Zondervan
  14. Kenneth S. Wuest, Word Studies in the Greek New Testament, Vol. II (Grand Rapids, MI:, Eerdmans, 1986), 41.
  15. John Piper, The Pleasures of God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2000), 33.
  16. Norman Geisler & Peter Bocchino, Unshakable Foundations (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2001), 297.
  17. J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press), 54.
  18. Peter Kreeft & Ronald K. Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics(Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 152.
  19. “The Granville Sharpe rule of Greek grammar states that when two nouns are join by kai (and) and the first noun has the article and the second does not, then the two nouns refer to the same thing, Hence, great God and Savior’ both refer to Christ Jesus.” (The Moody Handbook of Theology, p. 225).
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