Hurtado 2: "Forces and Factors" behind worship of Jesus

Chapter 1 of Larry Hurtado's Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity is entitled "Forces and Factors." In this chapter Hurtado sets out four general elements in the equation of what he considers to be the unprecedented variation (he used to say "mutation" but apparently people took the word negatively) that took place within Judaism with the inception of Christian "binitarianism," the inclusion of the worship of Jesus within the worship of the one God.

Don't be off put by his language. Hurtado is actually quite conservative. The four key ingredients in early Christian devotion to Jesus are:

1. Jewish Monotheism
Hurtado's signature focus here is on cultic monotheism, that is, the exclusive worship of Yahweh in practice. Hurtado rightly recognizes that "the incorporation of Christ into the devotional pattern of early Christian groups has no real analogy in the Jewish tradition of the period" (31). However, I probably would see more precedent in works like Ezekiel the Tragedian, Life of Adam and Eve, and the Similitudes of Enoch than Hurtado does.

At the same time, Hurtado rightly criticizes Crispin Fletcher-Louis in his belief that Jews had a readiness to worship other figures alongside God (37). In particular, Hurtado does not believe Crispin considers carefully enough what kind of honor is being offered in these texts. Once again, Hurtado would say that cultic worship is not offered to any intermediate figure.

Hurtado also criticizes the following for not allowing for modifications to Jewish monotheism. Instead, he claims, these all do not "consider the possibility of significant reformulations and new adaptations of a religious commitment by adherents of a religious tradition" (45).

A. E. Harvey: Not until Ignatius in the early second century do we have the first unambiguous instances of Jesus being described as divine.

Maurice Casey: Casey believes it was impossible for Jesus to have been regarded as divine so long as Christianity was dominated by a Jewish religious outlook (43). Only in the Johannine community, when it was dominated by the attitudes of Gentile converts, was Jesus hailed as God.

J. D. G. Dunn: Hebrews, John, and Revelation may be comparable versions of speculations about divine figures in contemporary Jewish groups. Dunn's position here is of great interest to me, so you might expect to see me engage with his works on this topic later this week.

We can debate some of the details here, and I suspect we will as Hurtado's book goes on. But I believe Hurtado is certainly right about his fundamental claims. There is something unprecedented about early Christian devotion to Jesus and that the earliest Christians did not see their devotion to Jesus to contradict a strict monotheistic belief.

2. The Impact of Jesus' Ministry
In this section Hurtado makes what seems to me (and no doubt to almost anyone reading this) to be an obvious point. We can scarcely understand early Christian devotion to Jesus without taking into account the polarizing effect or outcome of Jesus' ministry (64). Hurtado in this section particularly takes on Burton Mack and others who have used Q to propose that earliest Christianity and the Jesus movement had none of the understanding of early Christianity.

I've alluded to this absurd suggestion before, indeed Wink brings it up in his recent book. I had a good laugh at his suggestion that although the simplest explanation is that Jesus, like John the Baptist and those after him, expected major events to happen in the near future, history is rarely simple. So he, like Mack, Borg, Crossen, and others, want to go with the more complex suggestion that Jesus differed with John the Baptist and the Christians that followed. And mind you, as Hurtado argues, leaving no trace in Paul or the Synoptic gospels of the kind of conflict that must have taken place in the supposed transition to what won out.

It is what it is. Wink and others want to distance Jesus from the Christianity that followed. Schweitzer was right on this score. You may not like this Jesus, but you'll just have to deal with it.

3. The Religious Experiences of the Earliest Christians
Hurtado's strength of taking into account the practice and experience of the earliest believers comes through here again. The vast majority of scholarly discussion talks only of ideas. I am utterly dumbfounded at any scholar who would take issue with a statement like this one: "it is clear that in the tradition that he [Paul] learned and circulated among his churches the resurrection appearances were the crucial bases for the faith that God had raised Jesus from death" (71).

Similarly, "there must have been some who experienced what they took to be revelations sent by God that convinced them that obedience to God demanded of them this cultic reverence of Christ" (72). Mind you, Hurtado remains thoroughly "objective" throughout this section. He does not validate their experiences or draw theological conclusions. He simply points out that no reconstruction of earliest Christianity that does not accept significant impact from Jesus himself and significantly formative "resurrection experiences" among the early Christians is worth a historical dime.

4. Interaction with the Greco-Roman World
Hurtado spends the least time in this chapter on this one. Basically, he recognizes that part of the formation of earliest Christian devotion will have taken place addressing the critique and opposition of both Jewish opponents and those in the pagan religious scene. The early Christians would have differentiated themselves from others in their environment while reacting to others (76-77).

Most likely more to come...