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One God, One Lord (Part 10)

Two of the major influences on Larry Hurtado’s work were a book and a friendship.  The book was Alan Segal’s classic Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (SJLA, 25; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977).  The book has been re-published twice to my knowledge, most recently by Baylor University Press (2012).  Segal examined the rabbinic sources about early manifestations of what is called the “two powers” heresy in Judaism.  Certain rabbis condemned these “heretics” (minim) who appear to be reverencing two deities, therefore violating one of the basic tenets of Jewish monotheism.  Segal’s work is useful for understanding the complex interactions among Jews, Christians and Gnostics in the centuries that followed Jesus’ execution.  Some of the Jewish heretics condemned may have been Jewish Christians.  But as Hurtado noted, something more than beliefs about Jesus are being challenged; likely it had to do with the Jewish Christian propensity of reverencing Jesus in ways later rabbis deemed blasphemous. 9781602585492

The other influence was the friendship that struck up between Alan and Larry over the next few years.  Alan endorsed the first edition of One God, One Lord (1988) and the second (1998).  Alan and Larry came from two different worlds, but they became fast and good friends.  Alan was a Jewish New Testament scholar from the Northeast.  Larry was a Christian New Testament scholar from the Midwest, who loved Canada and his adopted home in the UK.  They had much in common and much in difference, but the differences were made sweeter over time as they spent time together at professional meetings and in Larry’s and Shannon’s Edinburgh home.

Both Alan and Larry were founding members of the Early High Christology Club (along with Carey Newman and David Capes).  In a future post, I’ll share the founding myth of the club.

In 2007 colleagues conspired to produce a Festchrift in honor of them both (Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity, Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal, eds. David B. Capes, April D. DeConick, Helen K. Bond and Troy A. Miller [Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2007]). Each were told they were writing an essay for the other in the others’ Festschrift.  They didn’t know it was a joint Festschrift until the reveal in San Diego in 2007. When they realized what was happening, it was a great moment.

When Alan became “unwell” a few years later, we were all glad we had not waited a few years before we honored them with this volume.  Carey, Larry and I flew to New York a few weeks before Alan died to visit him in the hospital near his home.  As with all good friends, his death left a hole in our lives.  We miss Alan, his quirky sense of humor and ability to order food in 21 languages, and now we miss his friend.

 

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One God, One Lord (Part 3)

I continue to work through the preface to the second edition of Larry Hurtado’s ONE GOD, ONE LORD.

One of the criticisms leveled against Larry Hurtado’s work on Christ-devotion has had to do with his claim that reverence for Jesus is a significant innovation. On the contrary, critics assert that precedents did exist for the practice in Judaism before Jesus.  In other words, the counter-claim is that “well, we’ve seen this all before . . . or at least something like it.”Larry-Hurtado-1756565

In the Life of Adam and Eve God orders all the angels to reverence Adam since he is made in God’s image.  Might this be an antecedent to the worship of Jesus as the bearer of the image of God (a new Adam)?  Hurtado says no because there was no Jewish group who took up any sort of religious reverence for Adam.  Hurtado writes: “in my view the absence of any Adam-cultus practice is crucial” (xiii).  If it could be demonstrated that devout Jews took up the worship of Adam (in imitation of the angels) and that there was evidence for Adam-devotion, then it might be a different story.  So there is no analogy here for the programmatic inclusion of Jesus as a recipient of devotion as we see in early Christianity..

Another scholar pointed to the story of Joseph and Asenath (15.11-12).  In that account Asenath asks an angel to tell her his name so she could worship him.  But this is not an antecedent either because the angel refuses to give her his name.   This is part of a larger angelic-refusal tradition that characterized a number of second temple Jewish writings.  What we have here then appears to be a corrective to any that might take up angel-worship (a common feature of paganism in places).  Jewish monotheism ruled out the worship of angels.

1 Enoch is often cited by those who believe the worship of Jesus was not as innovative as Hurtado argues. In 1 Enoch there is a figure known as “the Elect One” or “Son of Man” to whom obeisance is given (1 Enoch 48.5-6; 62.9) in some grand, eschatological future.  But again Hurtado notices that no Jewish groups actually engaged in the worship of this figure.  No cult has yet been identified.  The situation is somewhat complicated because when you dig down into 1 Enoch, some scenes appear to show how one day the nations of the world will reverence God’s people, Israel (Isa 45.14-15; 49:7, 23).

In various writings Crispin Fletcher-Louis thinks there is a precedent for the worship of Jesus in those scenes that depict the faithful bowing down before the Jewish High Priest in second temple texts.  The primary evidence comes from a non-Jewish writer in the 4th century BCE who describes how on certain, high religious occasions the devout would offer proskynesis, that is, bow down before the High Priest.  But in that day and culture, such a posture indicated only that one is giving respect due to a king, general, priest, or other person in high position.  Hurtado concludes: “It [the proskynesis before the high priest] is hardly evidence of a pattern of cultic devotion directed toward the Priest in ancient Jewish worship gatherings” (xiv).

We will have more to say on this in our next post.  Page numbers are taken from the most recent edition of Hurtado’s One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism, 3rd edition (T & T Clark, 2015).

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One God, One Lord (Part 2)

I continue to work through the preface to the second edition of Larry Hurtado’s ONE GOD, ONE LORD.

Throughout his life Hurtado remained appreciative of the work of Wilhelm Bousset and the History of Religion School.  Bousset’s publication of Kyrios Christos in 1913 (the original German edition)  established him as the leading star in a galaxy of (primarily) German scholars interested in Christian origins.  In particular, Hurtado found value in the ways these scholars went about trying “to understand in historical terms the remarkable way in which Jesus figures in the religious devotion of ancient Christians” (xi, One God, One Lord [T. & T. Clark/Bloomsbury, 2015]).  The problem with these earlier explanations, according to Hurtado, was their simplistic and ultimately faulty model for how Christianity developed.  Bousset and his generation looked to Greco-Roman religions for their understanding of how early Christianity emerged; Hurtado and the new History of Religion School believed the rich and varied Jewish background held the key to understanding how Christianity developed.Larry-Hurtado-in-2016

Three theoretical approaches have dominated the discussions on Christian origins, particularly how Christ-devotion began.

First, some scholars propose that pagan religious ideas and practices were the primary shaping factors.  Not long after the Jesus movement began, non-Jews (therefore, polytheists) flooded into the movement in such numbers that pagan ideas became dominant.  Maurice Casey (From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God, 1991) provides a good example  of this way of thinking.  However, as Larry demonstrated, Christ-devotion did not take several centuries or decades to take shape.  Within two decades of the execution of Jesus, Jewish Christians were reverencing Jesus in ways  that monotheists reverence the one, true God.  Hurtado used the word “mutation” to describe the changes in Jewish religious practice in this period, a period before the end of the first century (AD or CE).   Hurtado described this development as early—as early as we have evidence, Paul’s letters—and explosive.

There is a second approach.  Granting that the emergence of religious devotion to Jesus was early, it is possible to posit that pagan influences had already corrupted Judaism and its monotheistic scruples by the time of Jesus.  While some maintained a strict monotheism, others played more fast and loose with it.  But Hurtado and others have shown that an exclusive monotheism, a strict adherence to God’s oneness, characterized Judaism at that time.  Jews (by and large) saw themselves as separate and wanted to maintain that separation.  Idolatry was foolish and evil.  Devotion to the Roman gods was not tolerated.  Roman era Judaism had been Hellenized but not paganized.  Probably one of the best examples of this is Saul of Tarsus, the Pharisee.

Hurtado’s work represents a third, and from my perspective, a more satisfying approach to the question of how religious devotion to Jesus emerged. It pays attention to the rich and various textures and nuances of Greco-Roman Jewish religion and the chronological reality that whatever devotion emerges, it emerges early.  Cultic devotion to Jesus was a novel development that drew (primarily) on the Jewish religious tradition, practices and concepts.  These traditions, practices, and concepts ultimately “mutate” under the influence of powerful, religious experiences that characterized the earliest communities of Christ followers.

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One God, One Lord

With the death of my friend and mentor, Larry Hurtado, on November 25, 2019, I thought I’d take an occasion to re-read and blog about his classic book, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism. It has been published in its 3rd edition recently by Bloomsbury T. & T. Clark, as a part of its Cornerstones Series.  When I visited Larry in early October, he gave me a copy and signed it “for David, trusted friend, Larry.”  With his passing it is a hallowed possession. larry-hurtado1

The preface to the 3rd edition of the book is brief (one page), dated to 2015.  Larry acknowledged his gratitude that the book was still being read and cited so many years after its initial publication in 1988, about the time I met him.  The publisher made the decision to re-typeset the book but they placed in the margins the original page numbers so it would be easy to compare to the original.  The third edition has an extensive epilogue (30 + pages) which situated ONEGOD, as it was affectionately known among insiders, in Hurtado’s larger research agenda.  Otherwise the text of the book remained the same.

The preface to the 2nd edition (1998) offers some engagement with critics and advocates of the positions Hurtado maintains. Hurtado’s main project is to investigate the origins of religious devotion to Jesus.  This is a unique phenomenon of early Christianity and set it apart both from its Greco-Roman setting and its Jewish background.  Hurtado’s interests are primarily historical. In its 1998 edition Hurtodo did not think it necessary to revise the book because his critics had not persuaded him that his positions needed to be modified.  As is often the case, our dissenters help us sharpen our thinking through a body of evidence.

The book’s focus is the rise (again, in historical terms) of religious devotion to Jesus  in the first century.  At a rather early period (the letters of Paul) we see evidence that Christ was honored and reverenced in the same ways and using the same language of reverence to God.  His major question is: “How is the devotion given to Jesus in first-century Christianity like and unlike patterns of devotion in the Jewish religious background of the first believers?” Could Christ-devotion (a phrase Hurtado coined) have been shaped by conceptions and practices found in ancient Judaism? Where and how do we see Christ-devotion expressed?  Are there historical factors that brought it about?  If so, what are they and why?

For Hurtado, “Christ-devotion” was more than “Christology.”  It was not just beliefs about Jesus held by his earliest followers.  It involved questions about how Jesus might fit into the religious practices. How did Jesus figure into their devotion?  And in what ways could Jesus be considered as associated with, linked with, or identified with God?  These were Hurtado’s guiding concerns.

Martin Hengel said wisely in a blurb that with Hurtado’s book—and other books that followed—that we were witnessing a new Religionsgeschichtliche Schule (a history of religion school).  If there was a new school, then Hurtado must have been its dean.