C.K.Barrett's denial of Jesus' self-perception as the Son of God in Mark 13:32

In a previous post, I argued that, according the proper, positive use of the criteria of authenticity, Jesus' self-perception as "The Son of God" is likely to be historical.

However, historian C.K.Barrett comments about this saying that "The description of Jesus by the most honorific title available would be precisely the sort of compensation that tradition would introduce" (Jesus and the Gospel Tradition, pp. 25-26. emphasis in blue added).

Reading carefully Barrett's book, you'll discover that NO EVIDENCE is provided for such conclusion. It's actually an ASSUMPTION. It assumes that the title "Son of God" is precisely what the later Christians would introduce to refer to Jesus.

The problem with Barrett's assumption is not just that no evidence for it exists, but that applying the criteria of authenticity to the saying provides POSITIVE evidence for the authenticity of it. And you cannot refute positive evidence simply assuming, without evidence, alternative interpretations (just because they're palatable for you). It only reveals your prejudices, not what the evidence is implying. (Analogy: Think about the creative pseudoskeptical a priori assumptions about psychics using all kind of undiscoveried tricks which weren't detected by the researchers. You simply cannot assume that this was the case without any evidence; you have to actually provide positive evidence for the psychic's deception or for the technical incompetence of the experiments in order to make plausible the charges of fraud. Simply assuming that positive evidence for psi is fraudulent or product of undetected tricks, with not supporting evidence whatsoever, tell us more about your prejudices, than about the evidence).

Concretely, the saying in Mark 13:32 passes the criterion of embarassment:

In the saying, Jesus is portrayed as being ignorant of his second coming. But the early Church thought that God is essentially omniscient, hence if Jesus is considered to be God, he couldn't be ignorant (specially of his own second coming).

Ignorance is not what the early Church would attribute to a man that they considered to be the all-powerful, all-knowing God.

Moreover, according to Scripture, God knows the time (Zech: 14: 6-9). Hence, if Jesus was considered to be God, then it is impossible to his followers to portrait him as being ignorant of the time of his second coming.

This evidence suggests that, contrary to Barrett's no based in any evidence assumption, the saying in question is authentic and Jesus thought of himself as God's (unique) Son.

Finally, Barrett's assumption that the "Son of God" was a later addition which was written back into Jesus' lips can be challenged on independent grounds: The obvious problem that faces such assumption is that it doesn't explain the origin of such a belief: why hard-core monotheistic Jews would, suddenly, change his worldview in order to consider that a man (Jesus) was God?. It would be extremely blasphemous for them to claim such a thing.

As New Testament scholar Larry Hurtado comments "This intense devotion to Jesus, which includes reverencing him as divine, was offered and articulated characteristically within a firm stance of exclusivist monotheism" (Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, p. 3. Emphasis in blue added).

As agnostic philosopher Anthony O'Hear concedes: "We should remember that his first followers were pious Jews, to whom the claims being made would have seem blasphemous had they not been given strong reason to believe them-- and where better than from Jesus himself? (Jesus for beginners, p. 84)

They had every religious predisposition against the view that any man could be God (note that this predisposition, being theologically central and essential to them as monotheists, is even stronger than the predisposition against the view that resurrection of a person would occur before the general resurrection).

Given this context, Barrett's assumption is intrinsically very unlikely.

In general, the motivation behind most efforts to avoid this historical conclusion about Jesus' self-perception as the only "Son of God" rests on ideology: Mainly, theological dislike for a Jesus like that, strong animosity against the traditional Christian view of Jesus and atheistic and religious pluralistic wishful thinking.