Honoring the Son

Jesus in Earliest Christian Devotional Practice

L. W. Hurtado, Michael F. Bird

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781683590972
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Études bibliques

Before the New Testament or the creeds of the church were written—the devotional practices of the earliest Christians indicate that they worshipped Jesus alongside the Father. Larry W. Hurtado has been one of the leading scholars on early Christology for decades. In Honoring the Son: Jesus in Earliest Christian Devotional Practice, Hurtado helps readers understand early Christology by examining not just what early Christians believed or wrote about Jesus, but what their devotional practices tell us about the place of Jesus in early Christian worship.Drawing on his extensive knowledge of early Christian origins and scholarship on New Testament Christology, Hurtado examines the distinctiveness of early Christian worship by comparing it to both Jewish worship patterns and worship practices within the broader Roman--era religious environment. He argues that the inclusion of the risen Jesus alongside the Father in early Christian devotional practices was a distinct and unique religious phenomenon within its ancient context. Additionally, Hurtado demonstrates that this remarkable development was not invented decades after the resurrection of Christ as some scholars once claimed. Instead, the New Testament suggests that Jesus--followers, very quickly after the resurrection of Christ, began to worship the Son alongside the Father. Honoring the Son offers a look into the worship habits of the earliest Christians to understand the place of Jesus in early Christian devotion.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

In the following pages, I want to make these points: (1) In the ancient Roman world, worship was the key expression of “religion,” not beliefs and confessional formulas; (2) the key distinguishing feature that marked off Roman-era Judaism in the larger religious environment was its cultic exclusivity, the refusal to worship any deity other than the God of Israel; (3) this exclusivity involved refusal also to worship the adjutants of the biblical God, not simply foreign deities; (4) in this context, the emergent place of Jesus in earliest Christian worship and devotional practice along with God in a “dyadic” devotional pattern represents something highly notable, even more significant historically than the familiar christological titles and confessional formulas; and (5) the place of Jesus in early Christian devotion can be described in specific actions that allow us to consider any putative parallels, and so to note and confirm any innovation in comparison with the Jewish religious context in which devotion to Jesus erupted.

I have explored these matters for over thirty-five years now in a number of publications ranging from essays focused on this or that particular issue or bit of evidence to larger works, from my 1988 book, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism, to my large 2003 volume, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, and subsequent studies.1 In this book I draw on this body of work to emphasize how remarkable and significant the earliest expressions of devotion to Jesus were in their historical context. New Testament scholars (along with many other scholars of early Christianity) have often tended either to overlook the significance of worship, or have downplayed its importance in favor of a focus, almost entirely, on christological titles and other expressions of beliefs about Jesus. I grant the obvious importance of these, but, as I wish to show in what follows, I also want to underline the phenomena of earliest Christian worship, particularly the ways that the risen Jesus featured in worship.

THE PLAN OF THIS BOOK

I first briefly describe the scholarly context of the following discussion. I do not attempt anything close to an exhaustive catalog of scholars, but instead focus on key figures and key works that have been influential and/or that constitute noteworthy options, and with specific reference to the origins of the worship of Jesus.

Then, I begin my own case with a brief discussion demonstrating the centrality of worship in ancient religion. This is necessary because, especially in Western cultures, scholars and the general public have come to regard doctrines and confessional statements as the key expressions of religion, almost to the exclusion of anything else, and typically to the neglect of early Christian worship practices.

Thereafter, I introduce “ancient Jewish monotheism,” which was expressed most directly and explicitly in a refusal to worship the many deities of the Roman period, confining worship to the one God of biblical tradition. I address both terminological issues and issues of substance, my main point being that Roman-era Judaism was known for the exclusivity of its worship. The one God alone was to be worshipped. This exclusivity, I contend, is the crucial historical context in which to perceive the significance of the devotional pattern characteristic of earliest circles of the Christian movement.

Next, I survey some key texts that reflect the major christological claims characteristic of earliest Christian circles. I concentrate on Paul’s Letters in particular because, by common scholarly judgment, they preserve our earliest evidence of the beliefs about Jesus professed in the very first years, the key letters written roughly 50–60 CE.

I then turn to what is in fact the material that I most wish to emphasize, and that is the evidence of the kinds of devotional practices reflected in our earliest texts, particularly practices in which the risen Christ had a prominent place as joint recipient with God. I discuss specific practices and their significance in the context in which they first appeared. It is perhaps this emphasis on the specifics of earliest Christian devotion that is one of the contributions that I have tried to make over many years. I contend that the place of Jesus in earliest Christian devotional practice is the most remarkable feature of the young Christian movement, constituting what we may describe as a distinctive “mutation” in ancient Jewish tradition, a uniquely “dyadic” devotional pattern in which God and Jesus are recipients.

THE SCHOLARLY CONTEXT

Before I lay out my case for the nature and significance of earliest Jesus-devotion, I sketch here the scholarly context, focusing on key earlier and contemporary studies that primarily address historical questions about how Jesus came to be given the cultic devotion that is reflected already in Paul’s Letters (our earliest Christian evidence).

Over the entire twentieth century, particularly influential were a group of scholars in Göttingen typically referred to as the religionsgeschichtliche Schule (history of religion school).2 These included Hermann Gunkel, William Wrede, Ernst Troeltsch, Wilhelm Heitmüller, and Paul Wernle, all of whom were active in the early decades of the century. But probably the most well-known and influential member of this group was Wilhelm Bousset, and his most relevant publication was his book Kyrios Christos: A History of Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus, which appeared initially in German in 1913. As the title indicates, it was a wide-ranging analysis of christological beliefs and devotional practice from the earliest moments after Jesus’ execution down to the end of the second century CE. It remains an impressive piece of work, in breadth of coverage, in depth of engagement with the topic, and in the lively way that it was written. The English translation (made from the fifth German edition) was published much later, in 1970, which reflected the continuing importance of the book and the interest in it several decades after its initial appearance.3

A major factor in Bousset’s subsequent influence was the strong affirmation of his book by Rudolf Bultmann, surely one of the most important New Testament scholars of the twentieth century. Bultmann had assisted in the preparation of the second edition of Kyrios Christos (1921), published after Bousset’s untimely death. Bultmann also wrote a short introduction to the fifth German edition (1965), declaring, “Among the works of New Testament scholarship the study of which I used to recommend in my lectures to students as indispensable, above all belonged Wilhelm Bousset’s Kyrios Christos.”4

But from the outset, well before Bultmann’s endorsement and long before the English translation, Bousset’s book acquired a wide and powerful influence, effectively setting the agenda for all subsequent studies of the origins of devotion to Jesus. Already by 1917, Geerhardus Vos’s essay “The Kyrios Christos Controversy” required sixty-eight pages to review the academic debate over the book to that point!5 The key issue in that debate was whether the origins of the worship of Jesus lay in Jewish circles of believers in Jerusalem, or, as Bousset contended, in diaspora settings such as Antioch and Damascus, where he posited believers were more subject to pagan influences in which divinized heroes and multiple deities were more acceptable than in Roman Judea. There were immediately major critiques in Germany, which prompted Bousset to write a small monograph replying to his critics.6 Among English-language scholars as well, there were critics, and at least two important lecture series delivered in response to Bousset’s book.

The book by J. Gresham Machen, The Origin of Paul’s Religion, sprang from his 1921 Sprunt Lectures at Union Theological Seminary (Virginia), his aim being a critical engagement with Bousset’s work, particularly his view that Paul’s religious beliefs were shaped by “Hellenistic Christianity” and not by the “primitive Christianity in Palestine.”7 A few years later, in his Bampton Lectures, A. E. J. Rawlinson stated his intention “to grapple constructively in English with the work of Bousset and of other writers belonging to the so-called religionsgeschichtliche Schule.”8 Rawlinson’s critique was particularly remembered for his characterization of the Aramaic cry “Maranatha,” in 1 Corinthians 16:22 as “the Achilles heel of the theory of Bousset,” noting Bousset’s varying attempts “to get rid of it.”9 Rawlinson’s point was that, contra Bousset, this Aramaic phrase (“Our Lord, come”!) could only be taken as indicating that Jesus was addressed in cultic acclamation as “Lord,” initially in Aramaic-speaking Jewish-Christian circles in Roman Judea, not only in diaspora locations more subject to pagan religious influences. Nevertheless, Bousset’s book commanded wide assent well after its appearance, as reflected in the enthusiastic responses to the English translation in 1970.10

In an essay published in 1979, however, I laid out several important matters on which I contended that Bousset had been incorrect, and I argued that it was necessary to address the origins of the worship of Jesus again and on correct bases.11 In subsequent publications, I have referred to Bousset’s work both appreciatively and also with criticism.12 Bousset was correct to identify what he called the “Kyrios cult,” the treatment of the risen Jesus as recipient of worship, as the most important phenomenon to investigate. But he was incorrect in claiming that this could not have emerged in an authentically Jewish context, and instead only in a setting where pagan religious influences operated.

Bousset was also correct to acknowledge that the worship of Jesus erupted early, so early that it was the form of early Christian faith that the young Pharisee Saul of Tarsus had initially opposed and then subsequently embraced. That is, even on Bousset’s reckoning, the “Kyrios cult” emerged within the first few months or years at most after Jesus’ execution. On the chronological issue, thus, I view Bousset as much closer to the truth than some subsequent scholars such as J. D. G. Dunn and Maurice Casey (engaged later in this work) who have contended that the worship of Jesus only emerged in the late first century, and did not characterize the devotional practices of Paul and his churches.13

As to the chronological issue, in my view, one of the most important essays of the late twentieth century for the study of Christian origins was Martin Hengel’s “Christology and New Testament Chronology.”14 For Hengel showed concisely but cogently that the textual evidence did not allow for the sorts of elaborate and multistage developments in earliest Christian circles that have sometimes been posited.15 As Hengel (and also Bousset) noted, already in Paul’s undisputed letters, dated around 50–60 CE, the earliest extant Christian texts, we see a developed devotional pattern in which Jesus is invoked and acclaimed as the “Lord” of the gathered worship circle, the agent of God’s creation of the world, and the uniquely exalted figure to whom all of creation is to give obeisance. Moreover, in these letters these things are not so much taught as they are presumed as already familiar to Paul’s intended readers. In Hengel’s words, “The time between the death of Jesus and the fully developed Christology which we find in the earliest Christian documents, the letters of Paul, is so short that the development which takes place within it can only be called amazing.”16 The elapsed time in question is a scant twenty years.

But, we must also note (1) that Paul was “converted” from opponent to enthusiastic proponent of the Jesus movement within only a year or two at most after Jesus’ death (as Bousset had agreed), (2) that the Jesus-devotion reflected in Paul’s Letters is most likely the stance that he had previously opposed and then came to embrace at that early point, and (3) that Paul persistently underscored and sought to maintain links with the Jerusalem church and its leadership, not with Antioch or other diaspora centers. These all lead to the conclusion that the historical development in question, the treatment of Jesus as the “cult Lord” rightfully entitled to the sort of reverence otherwise confined to God, was amazingly early and explosively rapid, not an incremental process. To cite Hengel’s memorable characterization of the time span of the approximately eighteen years between Jesus’ death and the earliest of Paul’s letters, “In essentials more happened in christology within these few years than in the whole subsequent seven hundred years of church history.”17

The key point to take from the foregoing is that the risen/exalted Jesus became the recipient of cultic devotion and was lauded in remarkable christological claims from within the very earliest years after his crucifixion. The point of difference between the presentation of matters by Bousset on the one hand and the view of others such as Hengel and myself is whether this development could have emerged initially in circles of Jewish believers in Roman Judea. But, to underscore the point, even in Bousset’s scheme the emergence of devotion to Jesus as Kyrios of the worship-gathering was astonishingly early. Further, to reiterate another point made earlier, Bousset and others, including those who disagreed on other matters, agreed that this cultic devotion to Jesus was momentous—indeed, the most signif...