The eleventh book I want to mention by Jimmy Dunn is Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence. (2010)Thus far in this series:
1. The Evidence for Jesus (1985)
2. Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1970)
3. Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (1977)
4. Christology in the Making (1980)
5. "Once more, ΠΙΣΤΙΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ" (1991)
6. The New Perspective on Paul (2005)
7. The Partings of the Ways (1991)
8. The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (1996)
9. The Theology of Paul the Apostle (1998)
10. Jesus Remembered (2003)
Its authors include the leading scholars of that moment, and it extends beyond the Protestant canon into the Roman Catholic canon and even into 1 Enoch. It is a tremendous resource for those oriented around the original meanings of the biblical texts.
2. Somewhere also hiding in my library is his 1988 book The Living Word, which I have failed to mention thus far. A second edition came out in 2009 with added chapters on the gap between the academy and the church and preaching. This is a fascinating book, neither fully modern or postmodern. The book, like its thesis, embodies the fact that it is in the nature of traditions to get modified over time. The Bible itself embodies the modifications of past traditions.
So he suggests that concepts like inerrancy undermine the ongoing authority of the Bible because it does not allow the past to continue as a living word. I sense my earlier edition is in a box in the garage from my recent move and I have just ordered a copy of the new edition. I probably should give his 2009 edition a read.
By the way, Helen Bond wrote a memorial to Jimmy in which she mentions the shelves after shelves of books, library style, in his office on the front of Abbey House on the Palace Green in Durham. After he retired, Meta had to enact discipline about the acquisition and reception of books. I was delighted to see that he donated his library to St. John's College, although I have to wonder where they will put them all! Perhaps I vaguely remember an expansion?
While I am on the subject of tributes, I should point out the memorials of Scot McKnight, Loren Stuckenbruck, James McGrath, B J Oropeza, John Squires, Nijay Gupta. These all ring true on a deep level. It was not just the scholar that was so great but also the man. There are plenty of scholars who are brilliant but downright unpleasant or even worse. Jimmy was as spectacular as a person as he was a scholar.
3. Let me also mention that Dunn edited The Cambridge Companion to St. Paul in 2003. It is again a wonderful overview and introduction to Paul's letters with entries by some of the best Pauline scholars of that moment. I see that Bruce Longenecker has just come out with a new 2020 edition of the Cambridge Companion, with a new set of scholars to suit this moment.
Bruce is one of Dunn's heirs. I was glad to overlap with Bruce one year at Durham. He was teaching for Cranmer Hall at the time.
4. Although it is a magnificent volume, in the end the need to choose twelve books resulted in the omission of Beginning from Jerusalem, the second volume of Jimmy's summa series, Christianity in the Making. I mentioned volume 1 of this series in my post yesterday, Jesus Remembered. The series title, "Christianity in the Making" is reminiscent of his earlier book Christology in the Making.
Nevertheless, Beginning from Jerusalem is indeed a magisterial 1175 page volume, coming out in 2009. It understandably uses Acts as its basic template--what other choice do we really have? As we would also expect, it interweaves introductions to Paul's letters that are agreed to come from the hand of Paul. This is exactly the way that I teach New Testament Survey.
I might mention some of Dunn's decisions on dating. He dates Galatians neither to Paul's early days at Antioch (a favorite for many) or to Ephesus (as I do) but to Paul's time at Corinth. With regard to 2 Corinthians, Dunn sees it as one letter, however one written with new information coming in as he traveled and without taking the time to edit it into a tidy whole. He puts Philippians and Philemon at Rome, as they are traditionally located, with Colossians penned there also largely by Timothy, as we have mentioned.
The last chapter is on the legacy of first-generation leadership. He had already suggested a date for Paul's death as somewhere between 62-64. He does not think Paul was alive when Ephesians was written, but sees Ephesians as a celebration of Paul. I found his thesis on James intriguing, namely, that James is a collection of James' teaching in Greek rather than a letter composed by James in Greek. Dunn ultimately concludes that 1 Peter must surely be Petrine material, although is again quite open to the idea that someone else (Silas?) put it together.
4. And so finally I get to the book that was allegedly the focus of this eleventh post: Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? (2010).
I was privileged to see a first draft of this book in 2008, and Jimmy met with James McGrath and me to get feedback on the manuscript at SBL that year. I was impressed again with his ability to sift through detailed evidence and then zoom out to a bigger picture. I had long been wrestling with the same evidence that he seemed to sift through with much more ease.
By the way, Jimmy ribbed James McGrath and me a little about blogging in those days. Why not rather spend our time writing for publication? I think James has managed to balance the two better than I have. Although I cranked out a lot of books on the more popular side by blogging, I have no doubt but that blogging has resulted in me writing far fewer academic articles and books. Nevertheless, it has been good for my mental health.
It seems to me that Worship was a book out of time--at least that is the way it felt to me. Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham had won the day. "Early high Christology" was the prevailing wind. A book arguing for a slow development from reverence of Jesus to worship of him as God did not fit the Zeitgeist, at least not in the circles that read Dunn. True, Bart Ehrman would come out with a much less faith-friendly version of long and slow in 2014. But Ehrman was not really writing for individuals for whom Jesus was the Son of God.
5. This book was a little different in focus from Christology in the Making. That book was about Christology proper, the person of Jesus. Worship was related but about early Christian practice in relation to Jesus. When did the early church come to realize that Jesus was not just an exalted and anointed Messiah but in fact God incarnate? At least that's the way I would put the question.
One can believe that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity and still conclude it took the early church some time to fully understand this fact. Additionally, the canon itself is susceptible to a Trinitarian reading regardless of what might have been in the bubbles above its authors' heads. I do not wish to speculate exactly where Jimmy ended up on the ultimate truth claims.
Dunn at least believed that it took some time for the early Christians to get to that point. By contrast, Larry Hurtado had argued in 1988 that the practices of the early church--praying in the name of Jesus, singing hymns to Christ, etc--implied that they were already worshiping him. By the way, Dunn dedicated this book to Larry, who unfortunately also passed away last year of cancer--during SBL no less.
6. Like Hurtado, Dunn goes through these early practices of the church and language of worship in relation to Jesus. He eventually concludes that the reverence for Jesus in the early church was indeed unprecedented within Judaism, astounding in the light of Judaism. He also notes that God the Father was much more often the focus of prayer and worship. Jesus is more often the enabler of such prayer. As honored as Jesus the Son of God is in the New Testament, his honor is ultimately "to the glory of God the Father" (e.g., Phil. 2:11).
Dunn also travels the well-worn path through how Jews interacted with heavenly figures like angels and such. He concludes that the Jews did not worship them and thus that there was no precedent for Jewish worship of intermediary figures. I think there is possibly a little more nuance here. The key texts to be considered are Ezekiel the Tragedian, the Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch, Adam in the Life of Adam and Eve.
6. I will quote this in conclusion: "The results of this survey are astonishing. Here was the man Jesus of Nazareth, who had been executed within the lifetime of most of those who wrote the New Testament writings... They saw him as their Lord and did not hesitate to ascribe to him as Lord what various scriptures had only ascribed to the Lord God. They called upon his name in invocation and prayer... The seer of Revelation saw visions of universal worship being given to the Lamb. The title or status of God/god was used for him" (145). Yet Dunn also concluded that this reverence for Jesus was inextricably connected to the worship of God the Father.
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Other books or compilations by Dunn mentioned thus far:
Jesus and the Spirit (1975)
Romans 1 and 2 (1988)
Jesus, Paul, and the Law (1990)
Jews and Christians (1992)
Galatians (1993)
The Theology of Paul's Letter to the Galatians (1993)
1 Corinthians (1995)
Paul and the Mosaic Law (1996)
Colossians/Philemon (1996)
Acts (1996)
Christ and the Spirit: Pneumatology (1997)
Christ and the Spirit: Christology (1998)
A New Perspective on Jesus (2005)
Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels (2011)
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