Why Did Saul of Tarsus Identify Jesus of Nazareth with the God of Israel?
copyright © 1998 The god of Israel was not just any god. Two thousand years of Christian history, with it’s besetting philosophical temptations, and full-blown deist and transcendentalist and universalist problems, have obscured the fact that, in itself, the identity of the true god (or gods) cannot be predetermined, any more than the identity of “dog” may be generally equated with “Fido.” The fact is that there are many different gods being proposed as candidates for the true One-Allah, the All-seeing Eye, the Great Spirit are just a few one could list.. The god in which Saul of Tarsus believed (quite passionately, to say the very least) was the god whose deeds were recorded in what is now commonly called “the Old Testament” (henceforth to be called “the Hebrew Scripture”). This god created the world and all that was in it. Furthermore, he created humanity as special-this specialness being revealed in the intriguing claim that god made the first man and woman in the image of god. Acco
