The Entombment of Christ or Deposition from the Cross (1602–1603) is a masterwork of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It was originally located in Santa Maria in Vallicella, a church built for Saint Phillip Neri's Oratorian order, and adjacent to the buildings of the order. A copy of the painting is now in the chapel. The painting was originally commissioned by Alessandro Vittrice in 1601, and completed by two years later. Now, after some eloping, it is among the treasures of the Vatican Pinacoteca.
(larger image)

Throughout the New Testament the phrase "son of God" is applied repeatedly, in the singular, only to Jesus. "Sons of God" is applied to others only in the plural. The King James version of the New Testament calls Jesus God's "only begotten son"

(John 1:14, 3:16-18, 1 John 4:9)

• "begotten"
  Greek: μονογενής
  single of its kind, only

• "his own son" (Romans 8:3).

• "own"
  Greek: ἑαυτοῦ
  himself, herself, itself, themselves

It also refers to Jesus simply as "the son" in contexts in which "the Father" is used to refer to God.[12]

¹⁶ "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

" John the Baptist came to bear witness concerning Jesus. Nothing more fully shows the darkness of men's minds, than that when the Light had appeared, there needed a witness to call attention to it. Christ was the true Light; that great Light which deserves to be called so. By his Spirit and grace he enlightens all that are enlightened to salvation; and those that are not enlightened by him, perish in darkness. Christ was in the world when he took our nature upon him, and dwelt among us. The Son of the Highest was here in this lower world. He was in the world, but not of it. He came to save a lost world, because it was a world of his own making. Yet the world knew him not. When he comes as a Judge, the world shall know him. Many say that they are Christ's own, yet do not receive him, because they will not part with their sins, nor have him to reign over them. All the children of God are born again. This new birth is through the word of God as the means, 1Pe 1:23, and by the Spirit of God as the Author. By his Divine presence Christ always was in the world. But now that the fulness of time was come, he was, after another manner, God manifested in the flesh. But observe the beams of his Divine glory, which darted through this veil of flesh. Men discover their weaknesses to those most familiar with them, but it was not so with Christ; those most intimate with him saw most of his glory. Although he was in the form of a servant, as to outward circumstances, yet, in respect of graces, his form was like the Son of God His Divine glory appeared in the holiness of his doctrine, and in his miracles. He was full of grace, fully acceptable to his Father, therefore qualified to plead for us; and full of truth, fully aware of the things he was to reveal. " (John 1:15-18 ESV) [13]

It is generally agreed that the language Jesus ordinarily spoke was Aramaic, even if he perhaps also spoke some Greek (see Aramaic of Jesus). The lack of primary sources in Aramaic about the life of Jesus makes it impossible to determine whether he himself or others referred to him in that language as "a son of God" or as "the Son of God" or neither.

Historians believe Alexander the Great implied he was a demigod by actively using the title "Son of Ammon–Zeus". (His mother Olympias was said to have declared that Zeus impregnated her while she slept under an oak tree sacred to the god.) The title was bestowed upon him by Egyptian priests of the god Ammon at the Oracle of the god at the Siwah oasis in the Libyan Desert[5] The title was also used of wonder-workers.[6]

While in a polytheistic culture rulers and heroes were called sons of Zeus or Poseidon or Apollo or some other god among many, Christians, being monotheists[1], consider Jesus to be the son of the only God there is.

By historical method

[]

"Sons of God" according to Judaism

• The Hebrew phrase Benei Elohim, often translated as "sons of God", is seen by some to describe angels or immensely powerful human beings. The notion of the word as describing non-divine beings most likely comes from the Targumic Aramaic translation, which uses the phrases "sons of nobles", "Bnei Ravrevaya" in its translation.[11] See Genesis 6:2-4 and Book of Job 1:6 (בן ben אלהים 'Elohiym, "that the sons" son, grandson, child, member of a group + "of God" the (true) God).
• It is used to denote a human judge or ruler (Psalm 82:6, "children of the Most High"; in many passages "gods" and "judges" can seem to be equations). In a more specialized sense, "son of God" is a title applied only to the real king over Israel (II Samuel 7: 14, with reference to King David and those of his descendants who carried on his dynasty; comp. Psalm 89:27-28).
• Israel as a people is called God's "son", using the singular form (comp. Exodus 4: 22 and Hosea 11:1).

In the Jewish literature that was not finally accepted as part of the Hebrew Bible, but that many Christians do accept as Scripture (see deuterocanonical books), there are passages in which the title "son of God" is given to the anointed person or Messiah. The title belongs also to any one whose piety has placed him in a filial relation to God.

It has been speculated that it was because of the frequent use of these books by the Early Christians in polemics with Jews, that the Sanhedrin at Yavneh rejected them around AD 80.

Augustus as son of a Roman god, not Son of God (Yahweh)

In 42 BC, Julius Caesar was formally deified as "the divine Julius" (divus Iulius). His adopted son, Octavian (better known by the title "Augustus" given to him 15 years later, in 27 BC) thus became known as "divi Iuli filius" (son of the divine Julius) or simply "divi filius" (son of the Divine One), because of being the adopted son of Julius Caesar[2]. He used this title to advance his political position, finally overcoming all rivals for power within the Roman state. The title was for him "a useful propaganda tool", and was displayed on the coins that he issued.

The word applied to Julius Caesar as deified is "divus", not the distinct word "deus". Thus Augustus was called "Divi filius", but never "Dei filius", the expression applied to Jesus in the Vulgate translation of the New Testament[3], as, for instance, in 1 John 5:5, and in earlier Latin translations, as shown by the Vetus Latina text "Inicium evangelii Ihesu Christi filii dei" preserved in the Codex Gigas. As son of Julius Caesar, Augustus was referred to as the son of a god, not as the son of God, which was how the monotheistic Christians referred to Jesus.

Greek did not have a distinction corresponding to that in Latin between "divus" and "deus". "Divus" was thus translated as "θεός", the same word used for the Olympian gods, and "divi filius" as "θεοῦ υἱός" (theou huios), which, since it does not include the Greek article, in a polytheistic context referred to sonship of a god among many, to Julius Caesar in the case of the "divi filius" Augustus. In the monotheistic context of the New Testament, the same phrase can refer only to sonship of the one God. Indeed, in the New Testament, Jesus is most frequently referred to as " ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ" (ho huios tou theou), the son of God.

Jesus as divine

But of the Son he says, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.
(Hebrews 1:8)

1. a son
   • rarely used for the young of animals
   • generally used of the offspring of men
   • in a restricted sense, the male offspring (one born by a father and of a mother)
   • in a wider sense, a descendant, one of the posterity of any one,
     1. the children of Israel
     2. sons of Abraham
   • used to describe one who depends on another or is his follower
     1. a pupil
2. son of man
   • term describing man, carrying the connotation of weakness and mortality
   • son of man, symbolically denotes the fifth kingdom in Daniel 7:13 and by this term its humanity is indicated in contrast with the barbarity and ferocity of the four preceding kingdoms (the Babylonian, the Median and the Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman) typified by the four beasts. In the book of Enoch (2nd Century) it is used of Christ.
   • used by Christ himself, doubtless in order that he might intimate his Messiahship and also that he might designate himself as the head of the human family, the man, the one who both furnished the pattern of the perfect man and acted on behalf of all mankind. Christ seems to have preferred this to the other Messianic titles, because by its lowliness it was least suited to foster the expectation of an earthly Messiah in royal splendour.
3. son of God
   • used to describe Adam (Lk. 3:38)
   • used to describe those who are born again (Luke 20:36) and of angels and of Jesus Christ
   • of those whom God esteems as sons, whom he loves, protects and benefits above others
     1. in the Old Testament used of the Jews
     2. in the New Testament of Christians
     3. those whose character God, as a loving father, shapes by chastisements (Heb. 12:5-8)
   • those who revere God as their father, the pious worshippers of God, those who in character and life resemble God, those who are governed by the Spirit of God, repose the same calm and joyful trust in God which children do in their parents (Rom. 8:14, Gal. 3:26), and hereafter in the blessedness and glory of the life eternal will openly wear this dignity of the sons of God. Term used preeminently of Jesus Christ, as enjoying the supreme love of God, united to him in affectionate intimacy, privy to his saving councils, obedient to the Father's will in all his acts

Christians as children of God

"Son of a god" in other belief systems

Ancient mythology contains many characters with both a human parent and a god parent. They include Hercules, whose father was Zeus, and Virgil's Aeneas, whose mother was Venus.

In Plato's Apology, an account of Socrates' defence at his trial, Socrates meets the accusation of atheism by getting his accuser to admit that, since he had spoken of Socrates as believing in "spiritual agencies", he was admitting that Socrates believed in "spirits or demigods", and since spirits or demigods are "either gods or the sons of gods" (theon paidas not uioi theou), he was illogical in accusing him of atheism.

In the Greek and Roman cultures in which early Christianity expanded after first arising within Judaism, the concepts of demi-gods, sons or daughters of a god, as in the story of Perseus, were commonly known and accepted.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest recorded legends of humanity, Gilgamesh claimed to be of both human and divine descent.

New Testament passages

• υιὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (huios tou theou)
  • Matthew 4:3
  • Matthew 4:6
  • Luke 4:3
  • Luke 4:9
• ὀ υιὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (ho huios tou theou)
  • Mark 3:11
  • Luke 4:41
• [ὀ] υιὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ([ho] huios tou theou) - vocative case is normally without article
  • Matthew 8:29

• θεοῦ υιός (theou huios)
  • Matthew 14:33
  • Matthew 27:54
• υιὸς θεοῦ (huios theou)
  • Mark 1:1
  • Mark 15:39
  • Romans 1:4
• ὀ υιὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (ho huios tou theou)
  • John 1:34
  • John 1:49
  • John 11:27
  • John 20:31
  • Acts 9:20
  • 2 Corinthians 1:19
  • Galatians 2:20
  • Hebrews 4:14
  • Hebrews 6:6
  • Hebrews 7:3
  • Hebrews 10:29
  • 1 John 3:8
  • 1 John 4:15
  • 1 John 5:1
  • 1 John 5:5
  • 1 John 5:10
  • 1 John 5:13
  • 1 John 5:20
  • Revelation 2:18
• his "son", meaning God's - equivalent to ὀ υιὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (ho huios tou theou)
  • John 3:16
  • Romans 1:9
  • Romans 5:10
  • Romans 8:3
  • Romans 8:32
  • 1 Corinthians 1:9
  • Galatians 4:4
  • Galatians 4:6
  • 1 John 4:9
  • 1 John 4:10
  • 1 John 5:11

• ὀ υιὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (ho huios tou theou)
  • Matthew 26:63-64
  • Mark 14:61-62 (equivalent expression)
  • Luke 22:70
  • John 5:25
  • John 10:36
  • John 11:4

• ὀ υιὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (ho huios tou theou)
  • John 3:18 - with "μονογενής" (only-begotten)

• Matthew 11:27
• Matthew 24:36
• Matthew 28:19
• Mark 13:22
• Luke 10:22
• John 1:18
• John 3:35
• John 5:19-26
• John 6:40
• John 14:13
• John 17:1
• 1 John 2:22-24
• 1 John 4:14
• 2 John 1:9, and so forth.
[15]

In Islam

Islam rejects that Jesus was God incarnate or the son of God, stating that he was an ordinary man who, like other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God's message. Islamic texts forbid the association of partners with God (shirk), emphasizing the notion of God's divine oneness (tawhīd). Numerous titles are given to Jesus in the Qur'an, such as al-Masīḥ ("the messiah; the anointed one" i.e. by means of blessings), although it does not correspond with the meaning accrued in Christian belief. Jesus is seen in Islam as a precursor to Muhammad, and is believed by Muslims to have foretold the latter's coming.

Although Jesus is thus a highly respected prophet in Islam, and considered to be the Messiah, Muslims do not believe that he was a son of God. They look on him as the son of the virgin Mary and as a great prophet like other prophets such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad. They believe that associating others with God in any kind of worship, even if the associated person is an angel or prophet, is polytheism and is an unforgivable sin.

Augustus as son of a Roman god

It is generally agreed that the language Jesus ordinarily spoke was Aramaic, even if he perhaps also spoke some Greek (see Aramaic of Jesus).[17] The lack of primary sources in Aramaic about the life of Jesus makes it impossible to determine whether he himself or others referred to him in that language as "a son of God" or as "the Son of God" or neither.

In 42 BCE, Julius Caesar was formally deified as "the divine Julius" (divus Iulius). His adopted son, Octavian (better known by the title "Augustus" given to him 15 years later, in 27 BC) thus became known as "divi Iuli filius" (son of the divine Julius) [18] or simply "divi filius" (son of the Divine One), [19][20] because of being the adopted son of Julius Caesar.[21][22] He used this title to advance his political position, finally overcoming all rivals for power within the Roman state.[23] The title was for him "a useful propaganda tool", and was displayed on the coins that he issued.[24]

The word applied to Julius Caesar as deified is "divus", not the distinct word "deus".[25] Thus Augustus was called "Divi filius", but never "Dei filius", the expression applied to Jesus in the Vulgate translation of the New Testament, as, for instance, in 1 John 5:5, and in earlier Latin translations, as shown by the Vetus Latina text "Inicium evangelii Ihesu Christi filii dei" preserved in the Codex Gigas. As son of Julius Caesar, Augustus was referred to as the son of a god, not as the son of God, which was how the monotheistic Christians referred to Jesus.[26]

Greek did not have a distinction corresponding to that in Latin between "divus" and "deus". "Divus" was thus translated as "θεός", the same word used for the Olympian gods, and "divi filius" as "θεοῦ υἱός" (theou huios),[27] which, since it does not include the Greek article, in a polytheistic context referred to sonship of a god among many, to Julius Caesar in the case of the "divi filius" Augustus. In the monotheistic context of the New Testament, the same phrase[28] can refer only to sonship of the one God.[29] Indeed, in the New Testament, Jesus is most frequently referred to as " ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ" (ho huios tou theou), the son of God.[30][31]

Son of a god in other belief systems

Ancient mythology contains many characters with both a human parent and a god parent. They include Hercules, whose father was Zeus, and Virgil's Aeneas, whose mother was Venus.

In Plato's Apology, an account of Socrates' defence at his trial, Socrates meets the accusation of atheism by getting his accuser to admit that, since he had spoken of Socrates as believing in "spiritual agencies", he was admitting that Socrates believed in "spirits or demigods", and since spirits or demigods are "either gods or the sons of gods" (theon paidas not uioi theou), he was illogical in accusing him of atheism.[32]

In the Greek and Roman cultures in which early Christianity expanded after first arising within Judaism, the concepts of demi-gods, sons or daughters of a god, as in the story of Perseus, were commonly known and accepted.

In the Rastafari movement, Haile Selassie is considered to be God the Son, a part of the Holy Trinity. He himself never accepted the idea officially.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest recorded legends of humanity, Gilgamesh claimed to be of both human and divine descent.

According to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas teachings, known as Sant Mat or Teachings of the Saints, "Son of God" refers to a living Master who connects souls with the Creator through the Shabd or Holy Spirit.

There are no direct analogues in Chinese culture which has been essentially atheistic among the literate classes since Han times, but the Emperor was generally styled the Son of Heaven and his or her rule was justified by the Mandate of Heaven.

Notes

1. «  "Jesus' unique sonship is antithetical to concepts of sonship popular in the ancient world. In Hellenism, people believed a man could be a 'son of the gods' in many ways: in mythology, by cohabitation of a god with a woman whose offspring was imagined to be superhuman; in politics, by giving generals and emperors high honours in the cult of Roman emperor worship" (Comfort, Philip W., ed., and Elwell, Walter A., ed., Tyndale Bible Dictionary 2001 ISBN 0-8423-7089-7, article "Son of God").
2. «  From Jesus to Christ. PBS. See “From Jesus to Christ: Chronology” Retrieved 11/16/2009
3. «  See Lewis and Short for the meanings of "divus". The distinction is remarked on also in the online Encyclopaedia Britannica: "It became customary — if emperors (and empresses) were approved of in their lives — to raise them to divinity after their deaths. They were called divi, not dei like the Olympian gods".
4. «  Borg, Marcus, and Crossan, Dominic, The First Christmas, HarperCollins, 2007, p. 96
5. «  "Not the least of the many extraordinary facts about Alexander is that both in his lifetime and after his death he was worshipped as a god, by Greeks and Ancient Macedonians as well as, for example, Egyptians (to whom he was Pharaoh). The episode that led to Callisthenes' death in 327 was connected to this fact. Greeks and Ancient Macedonians believed that formal obeisance should be paid only to gods. So the refusal of his Greek and Macedonian courtiers to pay it to Alexander implied that they, at any rate, did not believe he genuinely was a living god, at least not in the same sense as Zeus or Dionysus were. Alexander, regardless, did nothing to discourage the view that he really was divine. His claim to divine birth, not merely divine descent, was part of a total self-promotional package, which included the striking of silver medallions in India depicting him with the attributes of Zeus. Through sheer force of personality and magnitude of achievement he won over large numbers of ordinary Greeks and Macedonians to share this view of himself, and to act on it by devoting shrines to his cult."Cartledge, Paul (2004). "Alexander the Great". History Today 54: 1.
6. «  Bauer lexicon, 2nd edition, 1979, page 834. In Contra Celsus VI chapter XI, Origen uses the term of the Samaritan Dositheus, without saying he was a wonder-worker, rather saying that, in the case of Dositheus, the title was self-attributed: "Such were Simon, the Magus of Samaria, and Dositheus, who was a native of the same place; since the former gave out that he was the power of God that is called great, and the latter that he was the Son of God." The Samaritan Dositheus claimed to be the Messiah, which may be what Origen meant by saying that he gave out that he was the Son of God (cf. Catholic Encyclopedia: Dositheans).
7. «  While some hold that in previous centuries the Israelites were henotheists, by the end of the Babylonian captivity, Judaism is strictly monotheistic. The Septuagint translation is later.
8. «  Qumran scroll #4Q246 states: "He shall be called the Son of God; they will call him Son of the Most High" (quoted in Mark Eastman: Messiah—The Son of God?; also in Wise, Michael O. and James D. Tabor. The Messiah at Qumran in Biblical Archaeology Review, Volume 18, Number 6. (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, November/December, 1992), p. 61
9. «  Vermes, Geza Jesus the Jew, Fortress Press, New York 1981. p.209
10. «  Paolo Flores d'Arcais, MicroMega 3/2007, p.43
11. «  Five times explicitly (Matthew 5:9, Luke 20:36, Romans 8:14 and 8:19, Galatians 3:26, and implicitly in Galatians 4:6
12. «  For instance, John 3:35-36, 5:19-27, 6:40, 17:1; 2 John 1:9; Matthew 28:19
13. «   Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Bible, Commentaries for the book of John, John 1, "His Divine and human nature" Retrieved 11/16/2009
14. «  John 8:46,Hebrews 4:15
15. «  The other nine instances are John 11:52, Romans 8:16, Romans 8:21, Romans 9:8, Philippians 2:15, 1 John 3:1-2, 1 John 3:10, 1 John 5:2
16. «  Only verses that contain a reference also to "the Father" are listed here.
17. «  The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, p.158
18. «  While Franciscan Friar Massimo Pazzini claimed: "The hypothesis -- often aired in the last two centuries -- that Jesus spoke Greek or Latin is impossible to accept", Ian Young, who teaches Aramaic at the University of Sydney, expressed the general view referred to in the Wikipedia article on the subject: "Some scholars have pointed out that Jesus' homeland, Galilee, in the north of modern Israel, was at that time very cosmopolitan, with a heavy non-Jewish influence. If Jesus was, as the gospels indicate, a carpenter, he may have needed Greek to deal with customers. (...) So it is plausible that Jesus knew Greek."
19. «  Inscription on Porta Tiburtina in Rome
20. «  'Augustus' Gaius Julius Octavius
21. «  As noted below, Augustus was called "divi filius" not "dei filius", the phrase used of Jesus
22. «  Augustus (31 B.C. - 14 A.D.) by Nina C. Coppolino
23. «  John Dominic Crossan, writing in God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (2007), says, early in the book, that "[t]here was a human being in the first century who was called “Divine,” “Son of God,” “God,” and “God from God,” whose titles were “Lord,” “Redeemer,” “Liberator,” and “Saviour of the World.” ... [M]ost Christians probably think that those titles were originally created and uniquely applied to Christ. But before Jesus ever existed, all those terms belonged to Caesar Augustus. To proclaim them of Jesus the Christ was thereby to deny them of Caesar the Augustus. ... They were taking the identity of the Roman emperor and giving it to a Jewish peasant. Either that was a peculiar joke and a very low lampoon, or it was what the Romans called majestas and we call high treason." (Crossan, John Dominic (2007), God and Empire, p. 28).
24. «  "Ostentatiously rejecting divinity on his own account, he rose to power via Caesar's divine image instead" (Augustus, by Pat Southern, p. 63).
25. «  Coins of the Emperor Augustus; examples are a coin of 38 B.C. inscribed "Divi Iuli filius", and another of 31 B.C. bearing the inscription "Divi filius" (Auguste vu par lui-même et par les autres by Juliette Reid).
26. «  "It became customary — if emperors (and empresses) were approved of in their lives — to raise them to divinity after their deaths. They were called divi, not dei like the Olympian gods" (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
27. «  Writing more than a century after the death of Augustus, Suetonius included among a series of wonders associated with his birth a story recounted by a certain Asclepias of Mendes in Upper Egypt that the birth of the future emperor resulted from the impregnation of his mother, while fast asleep, by a serpent in the temple of Apollo, and that her child was therefore called a son of Apollo, an Olympian deity (a "deus"), not a "divus", the word in the title given to Augustus.
28. «  Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon
29. «  Used of Jesus in Mk 15:39; Lk 1:35; Rm 1:4
30. «  In that context there are no other gods to which it could refer!
31. «  Swindler, Leonard J. Biblical Affirmations of Women. Westminster: 1979, John Knox Press, pp. 216-217. ISBN 0664221769
32. «  The following are instances of the use of " ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ" in the New Testament:

    Mt 16:16; 26:63; Mk 3:11; Lk 4:41; 22:70; Jn 1:34, 49; 3:18; 5:25; 11:4, 27; 20:31; Ac 9:20; 2 Cor 1:19; Ga 2:20; Ep 4:13; Heb 4:14; 6:6; 7:3; 10:29; 1 Jn 3:8; 4:15; 5:5, 10, 12, 13, 20; Rv 2:18.

    "Υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ" (huios tou theou) appears in Mt 4:3; Lk 4:3; Jn 10:36. Mark, according to most modern commentators the earliest of the gospels, uses " ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ" once, attributing it to "unclean spirits" who were "making him known" (3:11-12) and "θεοῦ υἱός" (theou huios) in (15:39), putting it in the mouth of a pagan centurion. In the first verse of this gospel, some manuscripts have (in the genitive case) "υἱὸς θεοῦ " (huios theou), others "υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ" (huios tou theou), others omit the phrase in either form; critical editions such as that published by the United Bible Societies therefore bracket the phrase to indicate that in the present state of New Testament textual scholarship it cannot be taken as completely certain that the phrase is part of the text. Paul the Apostle uses "θεοῦ υἱός" (theou huios) of Jesus once, in Romans 1:4, a letter in which he four times (1:9, 5:10, 8:3, 8:32) refers to Jesus as "his son" (literally "the son of him", not "a son of him"). He uses "his son", with "his" referring to God, also in other letters (1 Corinthians 1:9 and Galatians 4:4, 4:6) and uses " ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ" three times (2 Corinthians 1:19, Galatians 2:20, Ephesians 4:13). The other eight are:
    1. John 11:52,
    2. Romans 8:16,
    3. Romans 8:21,
    4. Romans 9:8,
    5. Philippians 2:15,
    6. 1 John 3:1-2,
    7. 1 John 3:10,
    8. 1 John 5:2
33. «  Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for huios (Strong's 5207)". Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2008. 16 Nov 2008. < http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G5207&t=KJV >
34. «  A Hasid, in classic Torah literature, refers to one of piety beyond the letter of the law. Hasidism demands and aims at cultivating this extra degree of piety.
    • Piety. In spiritual terminology, piety is a virtue. While different people may understand its meaning differently, it is generally used to refer either to religious devotion (such as a desire and willingness to perform religious duties), or to spirituality, or often, a combination of both. A common element in most conceptions of piety is humility.
      1. Virtue. Virtue (Latin virtus; Greek ἀρετή) is moral excellence. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting individual and collective well-being, and thus good by definition. The opposite of virtue is vice. Etymologically the word virtue (Latin virtus) first signified manliness or courage. In its widest sense, virtue refers to excellence, just as vice, its contrary, denotes its absence.