Abstract:
Christians among the Greek-speaking Israelites referred to Jesus as,
inter alia, 'Son of God'. The connotation of this honorific title differs
from the usage of that by Israelites prior to Hellenistic influence, who in
the First Testament referred to their messianic king as 'Son of God'.
The new connotation was, to a Hellenistic audience, a commonality. According
to Rudolf Bultmann it was 'gemeingriechische Denke '. The article
aims at identifying three different types of the notion 'Son of God' in
Graeco-Roman and Hellenistic-Semitic literature: the divine human as
miracle worker, the pre-existent God-like figure who is paradoxically
associated with human fate, and the cosmological figure who is identified
as God's Wisdom. It is shown that all three types occur in the Second
Testament as interpretations of the soteriological meaning of Jesus' birth
and death.
