One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism, Second Edition

212 Pages·2010·4.74 MB·English

by  Larry W. Hurtado

One God, One Lord

One God, One Lord
EARLY CHRISTIAN DEVOTION
AND ANCIENT JEWISH MONOTHEISM
LARRY W. HURTADO
Second Edition
T&T CLARK
EDINBURGH
T&T CLARK LTD
59 GEORGE STREET
EDINBURGH EH2 2LQ
SCOTLAND
First edition copyright © Augsburg Fortress, 1988
Second edition copyright ©T&T Clark Ltd, 1998
Biblical quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the Revised Standard
Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, © 1971, 1973 by the
Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the
Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of T&T Clark Ltd.
First edition published 1988
Second edition published 1998
ISBN 0 567 08657 7
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books, Bodmin
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition vii
Preface xxiii
Abbreviations xxvi
Introduction 1
The Problem 1
Early Christology and Chronology 3
Excursus 6
Complexity in Ancient Judaism 7
The Historical Approach 9
Excursus 9
One God and Devotion to Jesus 11
1. Divine Agency in Ancient Jewish Monotheism 17
Divine Agency Speculation 17
Three Types • Variation of Types • Summary
The Shape of Postexilic Jewish Religious Devotion 22
Angelology and Monotheism 23
A Critique of W. Bousset's View • The Data • Conclusion
Monotheism and Other Divine Agents 35
Summary 39
2. Personified Divine Attributes as Divine Agents 41
Personified Divine Attributes 42
Wisdom • Logos
The Language of Divine Agency 49
vi Contents
3. Exalted Patriarchs as Divine Agents 51
Enoch Speculations S1
Enoch as Son of Man • Enoch as an Angel
Exalted Moses Traditions 56
Sirach • Testament of Moses • Exagoge of Ezekiel • Philo
Other Exalted Patriarchs 64
Exalted Patriarchs and Jewish Religious Devotion 65
4. Principal Angels 71
Angelology and Christology in Previous Studies 72
Principal Angels in Ancient Judaism 75
Principal Angels in Ezekiel and Daniel • Michael in
Other Texts • Other Chief Angel References
Chief Angels and God 82
Chief Angels and the Bifurcation of God
Summary 90
5. The Early Christian Mutation 93
Jesus as God's Chief Agent 93
The Christian Mutation 99
Six Features of the Mutation
Early Christian Hymns • Prayer to Christ •
The Name of Christ • The Lord's Supper • Confessing
Jesus • Prophecy and the Risen Jesus
Causes of the Christian Mutation 114
The Ministry of Jesus • Easter and Afterward
Opposition to the New Movement
Summary 123
Conclusions 125
Notes 129
Index of Ancient Sources 169
Index of Authors 175
Preface to the Second Edition
It is a matter of considerable satisfaction for me that in the ten years
since the original publication of this book the questions it addresses
have continued to draw the attention of seasoned experts and emergent
scholars alike, and that this small volume has been found so useful and
has been so frequently cited in this continuing investigation of the origins
of devotion to Jesus. I am particularly pleased at the interest shown
among newer scholars.1 This new edition gives me the opportunity in
the following paragraphs to attempt a summary of the scholarly
investigation that this book has helped to fuel since its initial appearance
in 1988, and to respond briefly to matters of substance raised by reviewers
and others who have interacted with the book. Perhaps my responses to
these criticisms below will suggest why, other than a few corrections of
misprints in the original edition, I have not thought it necessary to make
substantial revisions to the book. I want to register my sincere gratitude
to all who reviewed the book in its initial dress (I am aware of at least
fourteen such reviews in learned journals) and to those scholars who
have interacted with my arguments and positions in their own published
studies. Those who have dissented from my positions, as well as those
who have built upon them in their investigations, have all either helped
me to sharpen my further thinking or encouraged me to believe that my
research was of service to others as well.
The focus of this book is the religious devotion to the figure of Christ
in first-century Christianity, especially the reverencing of Christ in ways
that connote a view of him as in some way divine. It is essentially an
exercise in historical investigation and analysis, and the major questions
are these: How is the devotion given to Jesus in first-century Christianity
vii
viii Preface
like and unlike patterns of devotion in the Jewish religious background
of the first believers? In what ways might devotion to Jesus have been
shaped by conceptual categories and religious practices of the ancient
Jewish tradition? How does earliest observable Christ-devotion manifest
itself? What historical factors might have been involved in prompting
and shaping it?
In order to answer these questions, a great deal of the book is given
over to the evidence of ancient Jewish religious thought and practice,
and the phenomena of first-century Christ-devotion are discussed (all
too briefly) in the final chapter, along with a sketch of the historical
factors that may account for the emergence of cultic devotion to Jesus.
The investigation is focused here heavily on the earliest stages of devotion
to Jesus in an attempt to understand how it commenced. My original
intention was to write fairly soon after this book a second, much larger
volume tracing the development and diversification of Christ-devotion
across the first two centuries. On account of other writing commitments,
some periods of administrative duties in my former academic setting in
the University of Manitoba (e.g., founding the Institute for the
Humanities there), the disruption of the move from there to my current
post in the University of Edinburgh, and also because there was simply
much more to learn than I had realized a decade ago, it has taken
longer than I had then hoped to produce that volume.2 It is still my
hope to deliver on this larger historical analysis of early Christ-devotion,
and it figures prominently in my writing plans over the next couple of
years.3
A major factor in the extended time involved in the research for this
future volume is the extent of the topic I have termed "Christ-devotion."
To be sure, this takes in "Christology," the beliefs about Jesus held by
earliest Christians and the factors that shaped them. But "Christ-
devotion" involves the wider matters of the role of Jesus in the beliefs
and religious life of ancient Christians. Moreover, I do not approach
the first-century texts by reading them in the light of later creedal
developments and seeking to see how they might anticipate later beliefs.
Of course, these later developments are themselves important, but I
have attempted to approach the earliest stages of Christ-devotion from
the standpoint of the religious matrix out of which it developed: the
Jewish religious tradition, and in particular its powerful scruples about
the worship of the one God.
When the book first appeared, Martin Hengel described it as reflecting
the work of a number of current scholars who "are in some way forming