"I said, "Ye are gods."" Torah or Psalms?

by Ibn Anwar, BHsc (Hons), MCollT

In John 10:34, Jesus is said to have quoted Psalm 82:6, but the reference that Jesus is made to give is not the Psalms but rather "the Law" which is the common translation for 'Torah' in New Testamanet verbiage. No doubt, Christian and Jewish sources readily explain that the term Torah can be used in two ways: to refer to the five books of Moses or to refer to the Old Testament as a whole. That understanding of the term "Torah" may well resolve the apparent problem in citation in John 10:34 but for the Lukan text where Jesus seems adamant in distinguishing between the Torah and the Psalms as two distinct books. This is clearly seen in Luke 24:44 in which Jesus is said to have uttered: "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning me." If this Lukan text is true, then it would seem that Jesus was not in the habit of conflating the Torah with the book of Psalms as though they may be regarded as one and the same. Since Jesus makes a clear distinction between the Torah and the book of Psalms in the Lukan text, the claim that the Johannine text in 10:34 has Jesus conflating the Psalms and the Torah as one does not appear so convincing after all. It would seem that the Johannine text is indeed a mistake in citation. Professor of Biblical Studies at the University College of North Wales Max Wilcox writes:

"First, the words quoted sometimes seem to be ascribed to the wrong OT book, as for example in John 10:34 a quotation from Ps. 81(82):6 is said to be from the law;... It is perhaps tempting to treat such apparent aberrations as due to slips of memory, 'loose' citation and the like..." [1]

The citation in John 10:34 as it stands does indeed appear problematic because the verse is actually from the Psalms and not from the Torah. To say that the Torah may encompass the Psalms and any other book of the Old Testament while at the same time it may refer to only the five books of Moses is to commit the fallacy known as equivocation and as we have demonstrated Jesus apparently did treat the Torah as separate from the Psalms in Luke 24:44.

Notes:

[1] Wilcox, M. (1988). Text Form. In D. A. Carson & H. G. M. WIlliamson, It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture: Essays in Honour of Barmabas Lindars, SSF. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 194