OK, I changed my mind. I feel like I need to do a little more of James D. G. Dunn's, The Partings of the Ways. Chapter 11 is entitled, "Is Christianity Monotheist? The First Great Debate."
Hebrews
Dunn begins with Hebrews. His interpretations of wisdom language and Adam imagery are largely the same for Hebrews as they were for Paul and thus do not indicate a parting with Judaism for Hebrews with regard to monotheism. Dunn leans toward a fairly strong Platonic bent to Hebrews and so aptly concludes, "If Philo remains within the spectrum of recognizable and acceptable first-century Judaism, would the same not be true for Hebrews also?" (276).
James
James is no sweat on this issue. It barely expresss any Christology to speak of!
1 Peter
1 Peter also has no new spin on Christology that might be in tension with monotheism, although Dunn does discuss 1 Peter 1:20: "Jesus was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake." Does this statement imply pre-existence? I wonder if Simon Gathercole would say yes, given his expose on "I have come"language in the New Testament.
But Dunn cites the Testament of Moses 1.14: "Moses says, 'He designed and devised me, and he prepared me before the foundation of the world that I should be the mediator of the covenant.' No one would suggest that this statement implied Moses literal pre-existence.
Matthew
Matthew has a wisdom Christology in which Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. Matthew seems to modify Q and allude to Sirach in ways that imply that Jesus is God's wisdom. Dunn nevertheless concludes "that the terms of Matthew's christology are thoroughly Jewish and would have been so perceived by Matthew's Jewish readers when they made their own assessment of the significance of that christology" (281).
Revelation
The worship of Jesus in Revelation is indeed striking. In my opinion, it is more striking than anywhere else in the NT. Dunn points out precedents and parallels in Ezekiel 1 and Daniel 7 that show how imagery both of the Son of Man and the Ancient of Days are applied to Jesus.
Dunn concludes that "the visions of Revelation ... seem to be stretching that pattern [of apocalyptic] and indeed beginning to break it" (286).
Yes, Revelation would be unacceptable to the rabbinic Judaism that was beginning to take shape after the destruction of Jerusalem. But, then again, there are non-Christian Jewish movements within post-70 Judaism that they would similarly condemn. Yahoel, the angel of the Lord in the Apocalypse of Abraham was surely far too similar to God for rabbinic Judaism to accept.
It is during this period that the "two powers" in heaven heresy was arising and being defined as heresy by some rabbis. We remember that other rabbis--Akiba and especially Elisha ben Abuyah--had visions of Metatron as a second divine power in heaven. Similarly, Merkabah mysticism is similarly beginning to bloom. This wild and wacky world of post-70 apocalyptic and mystical Judaism is hardly what we tend to think of as "orthodox" Judaism. Dunn by the way argues in this chapter that the Parables of Enoch post-date AD70 (292-93).
John
At the end of a lengthy discussion of John--the longest in the chapter--Dunn concludes wisely, "So far as the Jewish authorities were concerned, the claims made by the (Johannine) Christians had gone too far: the Jesus of John's Gospel had made himself God" (299). On the other hand, "as far as the Fourth Evangelist was concerned, and the Christian Jews for whom he spoke, however, this last was a false evaluation of their belief" (299)--that is, that they had "knocked away the final pillar of second Temple Judaism," monotheism. Dunn claims, "John saw himself still as a monotheist."
If I were to explore these issues on a scholarly level, something I have neither the time nor the opportunity to do, I think statements like these are somewhat simplistic. To my surprise, I have felt like Dunn was simplifying things in this book for a somewhat more popular audience. I know it hardly seems that way in my circles, but there is a large number of really smart lay Christians out there who used to read Dunn's stuff, just like they read Tom Wright's stuff now.
Anyway, that's the only way I can explain why Dunn oversimplifies things in the book. I doubt we can study Revelation or John on a scholarly level without concluding they both had a composition history. I further suspect that their namesakes may not have been involved in the final stages of composition. We thus have to consider seriously the possibility of Christological development even within each book.
John clearly teaches that Jesus was pre-existent. John further is clearly in a major conflict with its Palestinian Jewish environment. Since J. Louis Martyn it has been passe in Johannine scholarship to see in the blind man ousted from the synagogue a reflection of the Johannine situation. Dunn says, "There is ... no indication that such a confession [of Jesus as Messiah] became a make or break issue between Jewish Christians and leaders of Judaism prior to 70. The earlier disputes, as we have seen, were about the Temple and the Torah. But in Palestine, Jews were evidently able to believe that Jesus was Messiah and yet remain largely undisturbed before the Jewish revolt" (289).
John sees Jesus as the exclusive revealer of God. As we've implied, Dunn sees most of the Daniel 7 speculation as consequent on the fall of Jerusalem. (292-93). Emerging rabbinic Judaism began to clamp down with the 12th Benediction condemnation of the minim. This condemnation probably was not formulated with Christians specifically in mind, but some certainly did come to include Christians under its condemnation.
John, however, sees Jesus as the exclusive revealer of God. Dunn suggests that "No one has ascended to heaven" in John is a polemic against other forms of mystical Judaism at this time, hints of which we also find in Colossians and possibly Hebrews 1.
Daniel Boyarin's term is a better description of what we find in Revelation and John than "parting." We are surely witnessing in these NT books the partitioning of the ways between some forms of Christianity and some forms of Judaism.
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In the raising of the issues that develop in late antiquity, the next questions to ask are:
When did the Rabbinic form of Judaism become normative--Seth Schwartz and Catherine Heszer have an interesting interpretation on that. I took a class with Seth where he claimed that the difference between ancient Judaism and medieval Judaism is that in medieval Judaism, people actually listened to the Rabbis. Quite provocative, but I think he was trying to shock his Rabbinical students into different lines of thinking.
Scholarship on Jewish Mysticism has speculated on how the Hekhalot literature relates to Rabbinic forms. Hekhalot texts use a lot of Rabbinic jargon, for example. Some have wondered whether these were the bad students sitting in the back of class using magical means to remember their Torah. Others think that only great Rabbinic masters would have been initiated into the mystical circle. Others see it as outside. It is an interesting question, though. The Jewish Pseudepigrapha you mentioned that post-date the NT also add some interesting elements to the mix.
And then who controlled the synagogues? With the high degree of imagery used in late antique synagogues that clearly contravene Rabbinic (and perhaps even biblical) interpretations of images, it seems doubtful that the Rabbis controlled all or many of them.
There were plenty of groups probably included under the Birkat ha-Minim. But the Talmud also has some interesting discussions of when a Nozri (a Christian) comes into the synagogue and reads from the Torah scroll, of what to do--and this is not a discussion of the Birkat ha-Minim. I think Schaefer may talk about or refer to this in his book, "Jesus in the Talmud."
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