I studied with the Greek Orthodox, and I have taken many things into considerations.
But I don’t see those verses saying Jesus is God (El) or Thomas acknowledging Jesus as God (El).
I see those verses as Jesus saying he is Elohim (god) and Thomas acknowledging Jesus as Elohim (god).
This is completely consistent with Jewish belief.
**I personally believe what lead the early church into believing Jesus was God, was their ignorance of Hebrew and Jewish Theology.
A combination of gentile converts to Christianity and ignorant Jewish converts of their own theology and the Hebrew language.**
With all due respect, this argument lacks any objective merit. Jesus was a devout Jew. The twelve Apostles He chose–who accompanied Him throughout His public ministry, who personally witnessed the miracles he performed, his resurrection, and his ascension, and who authored ten books* of the New Testament, including two of the Gospels–were devout Jews. St. Paul, the author of 2/3 of the New Testament, was such a devout Jew that he originally approved of the execution of the first Christians (see Acts 8:1) and sought to destroy the Church (Acts 8:3) because he believed what they were preaching to be blasphemy. Also, it is widely agreed that Jesus, a devout Jew, taught and instructed the Apostles, all devout Jews, in Aramaic, a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew.
These Apostles–personal witnesses to Jesus’ ministry, resurrection, and ascension–were the ones who traveled the ancient world and founded the first churches. They then appointed as their successors to lead the churches when they left, men whom they had personally taught and instructed. Furthermore, they not only founded churches among gentile communities, they debated with rabbis and scholars of the Mosaic law in the synagogues to teach the truth of the Gospel to their Jewish brethren (see, e.g. Acts 17:1-4). Thus, of necessity they had to be learned in Hebrew and Jewish theology to effectively participate in such debates. Universally, the Apostles and their successors taught that Jesus was God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Blessed Virgin Mary; that for our salvation he suffered death on the cross and was buried; that he rose from the dead on the third day, ascended into heaven, and will come again in glory at the end of time to judge the living and the dead.
By way of example, Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John (the Apostle who was closest to Jesus while He was alive, and whom Jesus appointed to care for His mother Mary upon His death), wrote in 110 A.D., “For
our God, Jesus Christ, was,
according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb of Mary, of the seed of David, but
by the Holy Spirit.” (Letter to the Ephesians, 18) Ignatius explicitly identifies Jesus as God, yet distinguishes him from both God the Father and the Holy Spirit. This unequivocally shows a belief in the Trinity among the earliest Christians, who were taught by the Apostles themselves. By the way, Ignatius wrote the foregoing while on his way to Rome to be violently executed for these beliefs. Do you think that he (or any of the Apostles and the countless others martyred in Christianity’s first years) would willingly march to his death, a death he knew would be extremely violent and painful, if the idea that Jesus was God had come from his own ignorant and flawed understanding of Jewish theology? I know I don’t. Belief like that comes from something outside of yourself, something that gives you reason to have 100% certainty that you are right in your belief. I don’t know of any man that would be willing to die for something he is only 95% or even 99% sure is true.
Yes, there were a lot of gentile converts in the early church, but the foundational belief that Jesus is God came from men who were devout Jews, familiar with the Scriptures and Jewish theology.
*The ten books being the Gospels of Matthew (1) and John (2); the First (3) and Second (4) Epistles of Peter; the First (5), Second (6), and Third (7) Epistles of John; the Epistle of James (8); the Epistle of Jude (9); and the Revelation to John (10).
