The Early High Christology Club (EHCC) was a loose association of scholars from various backgrounds and different religious traditions.
They all became convinced that the early circles of the Jesus movement regarded their Lord as having “high” or divine status.
Carey Newman, executive editor at Fortress Press, joins David Capes on “The Stone Chapel Podcast” to talk about the beginning and contribution of the “club” to modern scholarship.
Both Capes and Newman were founding members of the club, and unfortunately, they are the only surviving members.
Over the roughly 25 years the club “met,” it boasted some of the most significant voices in New Testament Studies: Larry Hurtado, Alan Segal, Paula Fredriksen, Donald Juel, April DeConick, Martin Hengel, Pheme Perkins, N. T. Wright, Marianne Meye Thompson, Richard Hays and a host of others.
As an informal club, it had no membership. But scholars who heard of the group wanted to become members and own one of the coveted coffee mugs produced by Baylor University Press.
To be a member, a scholar needed to have written books or articles making the case that the evidence demonstrates that Jesus is worshiped from early moments of the movement and set in such close association with God that he could properly be referred to as divine.
After relating the “founding myth” of the organization in the mid-1990s Carey Newman situates the club within the stream of scholarship.
Some regard the worship of Jesus to be a later development in the first century (60-70 years after the execution of Jesus). Others think it happened much later (hundreds of years). But members of the EHCC generally make the case that historically it arose for various reasons within the first decade of the movement.
Several Early High Christology Club members have lectured at the Lanier Library: Larry Hurtado, Richard Hays, Mike Bird, and N. T. Wright. Among the special collections, the library has the libraries of two of the founding members: Alan Segal and Larry Hurtado. It also houses many of the books of Peter Davids and David Capes, two key members.
The late Larry Hurtado’s blog is a good source of information about the club as well as all things New Testament: https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com
The title of the book neither David or Carey could remember was Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity (Baylor University Press, 2007).
Unfortunately, church often teaches people that they should not ask certain questions. But Bill insists that we should have freedom to ask all questions in the church. This book is to help equip parents and church leaders to answer those questions.
When people say the Bible is full of errors, Bill asks: “show me one.” He knows that they are just parroting what they heard in class or on cable channels.
For Bill doubt is not the opposite of faith; instead doubt helps us to learn. Faith often grows and succeeds through genuine doubts.
Bill is president of BiblicalTraining.org, a non-profit organization offering excellent educational resources to local churches.
Dr. Mounce has been an educator, a pastor, a writer, a Bible translator (English Standard Version and New International Version) and is affectionately known as “Mr. Greek” to hundreds of thousands of his students who have used his Greek textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek.
In his lecture at the Lanier Library in April 2022) he met head on the challenges people often face when thinking about whether they should trust the Bible.
To read more about Bill, go to his website: BillMounce.com
Bill Mounce appeared on “Exegetically Speaking,” a podcast of the friends and faculty of Wheaton College, to talk about BiblicalTraining.org. To hear that podcast (8 minutes) click here.
To watch Dr. Mounce’s lecture at the Stone Chapel click here.
Steve Ortiz (PhD) directs the Lanier Center for Archaeology at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. Since he was a young man, he has been digging up Israel and teaching students what archaeology has to teach us about the Ancient Near East and the world of Scripture. Steve fell in love with archaeology as a young boy and with the guidance and encouragement of his father, he has made it his life long pursuit.
In this podcast he talks about his own archaeological adventures as well as the mission of the Lanier Center for Archaeology. Dr. Otiz and his colleague, Tom Davis, have the most vibrant and important school for training others in how and why we do these excavations. They are currently recording inscriptions in Egypt and excavating sites in Israel with other schools and universities.
The artifacts left behind by civilizations is referred to as ‘material culture. The material culture of the Bible has a great deal to teach us about the world of Abraham and his kin.
Rodney Reeves joins David Capes to talk about Spirituality according to John on the Stone Chapel. He is senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He’s been a pastor but also an academic. He has taught New Testament at Northern Seminary, Southwest Baptist University, and Williams Baptist University.
Dr. Reeves and Dr. Capes discuss the differing approaches taken by both John and Paul when it comes to spirituality.
Dr. Reeves defines spirituality in a Biblical sense, and then discusses the effects it has on varying topics in the Gospels, letters and Revelation. He then takes their differences in literary, philosophical, and theological choices. He gestures towards the devotional applications, ultimately giving rise to a modern calling for Christians to “come and see.”
A Word in Edgewise 
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