1As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3Jesus answered, “This man didn’t sin, nor did his parents, but that the works of God might be revealed in him. 4I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. The night is coming, when no one can work. 5While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6When he had said this, he spat on the ground, made mud with the saliva, anointed the blind man’s eyes with the mud, 7and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So he went away, washed, and came back seeing.
8Therefore the neighbors and those who saw that he was blind before said, “Isn’t this he who sat and begged?” 9Others were saying, “It is he.” Still others were saying, “He looks like him.”
He said, “I am he.”
10They therefore were asking him, “How were your eyes opened?”
11He answered, “A man called Jesus made mud, anointed my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went away and washed, and I received sight.”
12Then they asked him, “Where is he?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
13They brought him who had been blind to the Pharisees. 14It was a Sabbath when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15Again therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, I washed, and I see.”
16Some therefore of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, because he doesn’t keep the Sabbath.”
Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” So there was division among them.
17Therefore they asked the blind man again, “What do you say about him, because he opened your eyes?”
He said, “He is a prophet.”
18The Jews therefore didn’t believe concerning him, that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of him who had received his sight, 19and asked them, “Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”
20His parents answered them, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but how he now sees, we don’t know; or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. He is of age. Ask him. He will speak for himself.” 22His parents said these things because they feared the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if any man would confess him as Christ, he would be put out of the synagogue. 23Therefore his parents said, “He is of age. Ask him.”
24So they called the man who was blind a second time, and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.”
25He therefore answered, “I don’t know if he is a sinner. One thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see.”
26They said to him again, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
27He answered them, “I told you already, and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You don’t also want to become his disciples, do you?”
28They insulted him and said, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we don’t know where he comes from.”
30The man answered them, “How amazing! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, he listens to him. 32Since the world began it has never been heard of that anyone opened the eyes of someone born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
34They answered him, “You were altogether born in sins, and do you teach us?” Then they threw him out.
35Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and finding him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of God?”
36He answered, “Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?”
37Jesus said to him, “You have both seen him, and it is he who speaks with you.”
38He said, “Lord, I believe!” and he worshiped him.
39Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, that those who don’t see may see; and that those who see may become blind.”
40Those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?”
41Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.
Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 150-215), when speaking about Jesus, wrote, “Believe Him who is man and God...” This is but one of the many instances where the earliest church theologians taught the divinity of Jesus (as well as his humanity). Although there is a relatively small amount of archaeological evidence of the theology of the early church, there are some finds that give evidence that the early church did in fact worship Jesus as God, in agreement with early church writings.
A very early example of Jesus’ divinity comes not from a Christian, but someone making fun of Christians. It is a graffito etched into a wall of a house at the Palatine Hill in Rome that has a picture of a person looking up to a crucified man with a donkey’s head. A “caption” underneath reads, “Alexamenos worships his god.” Scholars know that many pagans thought Jews (and later Christians) worshipped a donkey. Moreover, another graffiti inscription was discovered in the house that reads, “Alexamenos, a believer.” It is not known whether this graffito incited the other, or was a response to the taunt. The inscriptions have been dated to sometime in the second or third century A.D., and seem to indicate that even at that early time the enemies of Christianity understood that Christians considered the crucified Jesus to be divine.
In 2005 workers expanding a prison near Megiddo accidentally discovered one of the most important archaeological sites in Israel. A rescue excavation was carried out by the IAA under Yotam Tepper. He discovered a building he identified as a Roman military complex, used for housing centurions and their families and containing a military bakery and dated it to around A.D. 230. On one corner of the building he found what he called a “Christian prayer hall.” The room contained stone pilasters embedded in the floor which he theorizes were the base of a table or alter used for the Eucharist. He also found a beautiful mosaic floor with several dedications. One of these read, “The God-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.” This inscription is the oldest known archaeological evidence of Jesus being worshipped as God, and puts to rest many arguments of those who postulate that Jesus was not thought of as God until the mid fourth century.
See also Rome
Bibliography. Clement, Exhortation 10 (ANF 2.197); Sloan, Stephen, The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 125; Tzaferis, Vassilios, “Inscribed ‘To God Jesus Christ’: Early Christian Prayer Hall Found in Megiddo Prison,” Biblical Archaeology Review Website, accessed April 20, 2010, http://www.bib-arch.org/online-exclusives/oldest-church-02.asp.