Both Jewish monotheism and an effort to distinguish itself from the pagan Roman culture shaped the “early and explosively quick” devotion to Jesus in earliest Christianity

I’m continuing to work through Larry Hurtado’s work Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, ©2003).

In addition to the remarkable life, death, and resurrection of Jesus himself (the net effect of which was to polarize the responses about him, “with some so negative as to justify his crucifixion and some so positive as to form the basis of one or more new religious movements of dedicated followers), two other factors that shaped “earliest Christianity” (especially during the lives of the Apostles, and prior to the year 100 A.D.) included: monotheism in the New Testament, and also the effects of the religious environment.

Of the concept of monotheism, Hurtado writes:

In 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 Paul engages at some length unavoidable questions for Christians living in Roman cities, questions about their participation in pagan religious activities; and his direction are to shun these activities entirely. He refers to the pagan religious ceremonies as eidolothyta (8:1, 4), “offering to idols,” reflecting scornful attitude toward the pagan deities characteristic of his Jewish background. Over against what Paul calls derisively the many “so-called gods in heaven or on earth” of the religious environment, he poses the “one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ” (8:5-6) In 10:14-22 Paul again demands that his converts completely avoid participation in the “worship of idols (eidololatria), insisting that participation in the Christian sacred meal (“the cup of the Lord … the table of the Lord”) is incompatible with joining in the religious festivities devoted to these other deities, whom he here calls “demons” (10:20-21) (pg. 48).

Interesting here that two centuries later these “gods” called “demons” by Paul are, according to Everett Ferguson, re-named by the “Church” in wholesale fashion as “saints”. He notes, “the martyrs and the saints received the homage once given to these very “gods” that Paul denounced as demons. “When Christianity replaced paganism, the saints took over the functions of the specialized local deities” (Ferguson, “Backgrounds of Early Christianity” Third Edition, Grand Rapids/Cambridge, UK: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., pg. 182). But that’s not the point Hurtado is making here.

Continuing:

Though Paul freely states a willingness to adapt himself on a number of matters “to those [Gentiles] outside the law” (9:21), he maintains a totally negative stance toward worship of anything or anyone other than the one God of Israel and the one Kyrios Jesus Christ.

Worship, he defines as “the actions of reverence intended by the person(s) offering it to express specifically religious devotion of the sort given to a deity in the culture(s) or tradition(s) most directly relevant to earliest Christiainty. That is, I use the term to designate “cultic” worship, especially devotion offered in a liturgical setting and intended to represent, manifest, and reinforce the relationship of the devotee(s) to a deity (38).

This monotheism was so strong and ingrained and “exclusivist”, Hurtado points out that the book of Revelation, for example “shows both the continuing influence of Christian Jews outside Palestine late in the first century and also how among such Christians monotheism continued to be the emphatic context within which they offered devotion to Christ”. He notes that the author of Revelation

… accuses the churches of Pergamum and Thyatira of accommodating some who encourage others to “eat food sacrificed to idols” (Rev 2:14-15, 20). It is difficult to be sure of what precise behavior is in view here, but this pejorative wording indicates clearly that the author thinks it compromises in some way the monotheistic exclusiveness he regards as obligatory for Christians. Running throughout the book is a contrast between worship of God (e.g., 4-5; 7:9-12; 11:15-19; 14:6-7) and improper worship of idols (e.g., 9:20-21) and of the Beast (e.g., 13:5-8, 11-12; 14:9-11). Moreover, as Bauckham noted in two passages John is forbidden to worship [or even bow down before] even the glorious angel who as divine emissary brings the revelations of the book (19:19; 22:8-9). These things all indicate a complete contempt for the larger religious life of the Roman world and a strong (indeed, one could say fierce) fidelity to the tradition of exclusivist, monotheism that extends to a prohibition against the worship of heavenly representatives of God. The scene in Revelation 5 where the Lamb is pictured receiving with God the idealized worship of heaven, is all the more remarkable in light of this, and surely indicates an amazingly exalted status of Christ in the religious belief and practice advocated by the author. In fact, as I have demonstrated in One God, One Lord, we have no analogous accommodation of a second figure along with God as recipient of such devotion in the Jewish tradition of the time, making it very difficult to fit this inclusion of Christ as recipient of devotion into any known devotional pattern attested among Jewish groups of the Roman period. It is important to note the specific nature of the devotional pattern reflected in these Christian texts. There are two key components: (1) a strong affirmation of exclusivist monotheism in belief and practice, along with (2) an inclusion of Christ along with God as rightful recipient of cultic devotion (pg. 50).

In addition to this fierce monotheism (while worshipping Christ as God) in early Christianity, many elements of the Roman culture – “the Roman-era religious environment” – influenced early Christianity. “At least since the classic study by Edwin Hatch, scholars have taken seriously various influences of the Greek background and roman religious setting of early Christianity. How could there be any group or individuals not shaped in various ways by the cultural setting in which they live? How could any group such as the early Christian circles, concerned to communicate with and recruit from their contemporaries, not deliberately seek to make their efforts meaningful in terms appropriate to the setting? So of course, in these senses at least, early Christians were shaped, and shaped themselves, by influences of their environment” (pgs 74-75).

But despite this cultural closeness, the earliest Christians took pains to “push back” against the culture, and to establish points of distinction with the environment around them:

I mention here two things in particular. First, it is clear that in their efforts to commend their religious views and practices, the early Christians sought to differentiate their message from others of the time. That is, they took account of their religious environment much more consciously and critically than they would have had hey seen their message and devotional pattern as simply one of many acceptable versions of religiosity of their cultural setting. This means that the Roman-era religious environment was influential, but not only, perhaps not primarily, in terms of the simple or direct appropriation of ideas and practices. In their efforts to articulate and justify their distinctive in message and practice in the Roman-era religious setting, and in their reactions against features of the religious environment, their religious rhetoric and religious practices were also shaped. For example, I contend that the rising frequency in the Christological use of divine sonship language that we see in the Christian writings of the late first century and thereafter may very well reflect a reaction against the contemporaneous increase in the use of the same rhetoric in the emperor cult under the Flavians and thereafter (75-76).

So if the earliest Christians adopted a particular rhetoric or ritual, it wasn’t for the purpose of imitating it so much as to distinguish their own beliefs.

Second, it is also clear that the early Christian movement suffered opposition and criticism, initially from other sectors of the Jewish matrix and then in the pagan religious and political arenas as well. The Jewish opposition and critique came immediately, at least from the Jerusalem authorities who colluded with Pilate in bringing Jesus up on the charges that led to his execution. In fact, of course, the execution of Jesus itself meant that opposition to any positive thematizing of him was there even before what is usually regarded as the birth of the Christian movement! As already argued … this condemnation of Jesus would have put tremendous pressure on his followers either to capitulate or to reinforce and defend any positive claims about him (75-76).

He also looks at Paul’s “preconversion opposition to Jewish Christians” as a “very vigorous example” that “Jewish opposition obviously involved polemics against Jesus and any attempt to make him religiously significant by his followers.” With these and other examples, Hurdado notes that the earliest Christians had to struggle against their “often adversariarial” religious environment as “a major factor driving and shaping the early and explosively quick Christ devotion of early Christian circles” (77).

Next time, Lord willing, I’ll look at Paul’s letters as evidence not only as a source for Paul’s own struggles and theologies, but also as evidence of the “pre-Pauline Christian groups” with whom he interacted in those first 20 years after the death and resurrection of Christ.