Sunday, February 14, 2016

Candidates for Jewish Worship

I am working through a section of a chapter that first presents various proposals for entities the Jews might have worshiped in some way in addition to or subordinate to God. My earlier delineation of categories is here.

Category 1: Were other beings worshiped alongside YHWH?
  • Two powers in heaven (Segal)
  • Elohim, the Great Angel (Barker)
  • Divine consort, etc (Hayman)
Category 2: A subordinate entity worshiped in harmony with the worship of YHWH
  • Yahoel (Capes, Apocalypse of Abraham)
  • Metatron/Enoch (3 Enoch)
  • Son of Man (Bauckham - "exception that proves the rule," 1 Enoch)
  • Moses in Ezekiel the Tragedian (Schenck, in a derivative way)
  • Adam (Fletcher-Louis, Life of Adam and Eve)
Category 3: How early did Christians begin to worship Jesus?
  • Very early (Hurtado, Bauckham, current majority)
  • Late first century (Dunn, Casey)
Category 4: Degree of continuity with Judaism
  • High continuity (Bauckham)
  • Early, distinct innovation (Hurtado)
  • Significant discontinuity that developed over time (Dunn, Casey)
  • Blasphemy (Segal)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Ken, this is an interesting and helpful exercise and I look forward to seeing what you have to say in print. I have several comments on this way of laying out scholarly views.

1. I'm surprised that you say that Bauckham has a “high continuity” view of the relationship between early Christology and Judaism. I would have put him in the “radical discontinuity” box.
2. Also, he would see some continuity with biblical revelation, but not with Jewish theology prior to Christianity (I think). It may be helpful to distinguish between scholarly views on the relationship of Christology to Judaism and the relationship of Christology to OT.
3. In my recent publication (Jesus Monotheism, Volume 1 - see www.jesusmonotheism.com) I do have a discussion of Adam along the lines you suggest. Though I give equal prominence to the Son of Man figure.
4. Is there a reason that you have left out the argument of William Horbury that Jews venerated/worshipped rulers on analogy to the Greco-Roman ruler-cult?

Have you discussed Moses in Ezekiel the Tragedian recently? Have you defended “worship” of Moses in that text against the recent criticism of that view by Bauckham?

Crispin (Fletcher-Louis)

Ken Schenck said...

Thanks Crispin. I have a copy of your recent book on my desk. :-) I'll take another look at Bauckham. Thanks for reminding me of Horbury. I had a piece in a second Dunn Festscrift on the worship of Jesus among early Christians (Jesus and Paul).

Unknown said...

Oh, I'm sorry I missed your Dunn Fest. piece. That book is not in Oxford or in the British Library. What's the title of your piece?

Ken Schenck said...

The chapter is titled, "The Worship of Jesus among Early Christians: The Evidence of Hebrews," in Jesus and Paul: Global Perspectives in Honor of James D. G. Dunn. A Festschrift for his 70th Birthday. B. J. Oropeza, C. K. Robertson, and D. C. Mohrmann (London: T & T Clark, 2009).

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Paul-Perspectives-festschrift-Testament/dp/0567629538/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455889669&sr=8-1&keywords=Oropeza+Jesus+and+Paul