All along, I’ve
been hoping to provide a true picture of the earliest church – it’s leadership,
it’s worship patterns, how it understood itself in the context of the world. The
truest picture we have, with as much detail as we can provide.
In that
respect, 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). What was
striking about this earliest church was that “devotion to Jesus as God” was not
only characteristic “always, everywhere, and by all” of the earliest
Christians. Such devotion was not only
ubiquitous among earliest Christians, but it was “noteworthy phenomenally
early”, it appeared with “unparalleled intensity”, and it appeared even in the
midst of an “exclusive monotheistic environment”.
Here is a
word about his method of pursuing that study.
In any study of earliest
Christ-devotion the letters of Paul certainly must loom large, for these
invaluable writings reflect an intense religious devotion to Jesus at a
remarkably early point in the emergence of the Christian movement. But some
readers will perhaps wonder why I commence here with a chapter on Paul, and
then turn to an analysis of early Jewish Christianity in Roman Judea
(Palestine). In strict chronological order there were, of course, Christians
before the apostle Paul, as we learn from Paul himself. In his letter to Rome,
for example, Paul sends greetings to Andronicus and Junia, two members of the
Roman church who were fellow Jews and who “were in Christ before me” (Rom 16:7
[see my posts on Andronikos and Junia, Part
1 and Part
2 – JB]), and in his letters to Galatians Paul refers to “those who were
apostles before me” in the Jerusalem church (Gal 1:17). By all accounts the
first groups in the emergent Christian movement were made up of Jewish
adherents in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Roman Judea (Palestine). Once again,
among the relevant evidence (indeed the earliest evidence we have) are
references by Paul to Christian groups in “Judea” as far back as his own
conversion on the early 30’s (79-80).
Hurtado here
notes that “it might seem more logical” to begin with a direct analysis of
those “pre-Pauline” Christian groups. And in fact, he interacts with John
Dominic Crossan, who does so (“The Birth of Christianity, New York: Harper
Collins, 1998) while avoiding Paul in this discussion. “But in developing his views
of Christian groups of the 30’s and 40’s [Crossan] depends upon, and
hypothesizes from and about, material from sources that are in fact much later
than Paul” such as the four canonical Gospels; other “Gospels” that are much
later (“Gospel of Peter”, “Gospel of Thomas”), and the Didache.
But Paul’s
letters are dated in the 50’s and 60’s, and his conversion “is most likely to
be dated within a couple years (at most) of Jesus’ execution, that is, within
what in terms of social history must be regarded as the “birth” of the Christian
movement” (83). In fact, Paul frequently speaks of his interactions with other
individuals from earlier dates. In that respect, he provides a reliable
eyewitness account of the church in the 30’s and 40’s A.D.
Paul’s acquaintance with Palestinian
Jewish Christians and their faith goes back even earlier than his participation
in the Christian movement. Prior to his conversion, as a zealous Pharisee, he
had become sufficiently acquainted with the beliefs and practices of Jewish
Christians to determine that they were so dangerous as to justify his firm
efforts to “destroy” the Christian groups and the ideas they promoted (as he
testifies in Gal. 1:13-14; 1 Cor. 15:9; and Phil 3:6).
Furthermore, according to autobiographical
statements in his letters, following his conversion Paul was active in
Christian circles in Arabia, Damascus, and then “the regions of Syria and
Cilicia”; and in the first few years he became personally acquainted with
Cephas (Peter) and James the Just, leaders of the Jerusalem church (e.g., Gal.
1:13-24; 2 Cor. 11:32-33). The Paul who wrote the letters that we date in the
50s had been for some time prior a very widely and well-connected participant
of the Christian movement, acquainted with Jewish Christians of
Judean/Palestinian provenance all through the 30s and 40s as well as with
Gentile congregations of the 50s (the main period of his Gentile mission). We
can put locations of Pauline activity on the map of the Roman world with
confidence (e.g., Jersualem, Damascus, Antioch, Thessalonica, Philippi,
Corinth), and we have names of people involved with him (e.g., Barnabas,
Timothy, Silvanus, Titus, and a rather impressive list of others that we could
put together from Paul’s letters).
In other words, in any thorough
discussion of Jewish Christians of these early decades, it is not only appropriate
to take full account of Paul and the rich evidence in his letters, it is a
failure of method not to do so.
Summarizing
his own method for looking at Palestinian Jewish Christianity of the 30s and 40s,
Hurtado gives these reasons:
1. Pauline Christianity is the earliest
form of the Christian movement to which we have direct access from undisputed
firsthand sources.
2. Paul’s letters, which are addressed
to Christian circles already established and operative in the 50s, also incorporate
and reflect emergent Christian traditions of belief and religious practice from
still earlier years.
3. Paul’s own associations with
Christian circles, which include important Jewish Christian figures such as
Peter, James the brother of Jesus, Barnabas, and others, go back to his conversion,
which is to be dated approximately 32-34, and so his acquaintance with beliefs
and practices of Christian circles is both wide and extremely early.
4. Several of Paul’s letters reflect
disagreements between him and other Christians, in particular some Jewish
Christians with different views of the terms for full acceptance of Gentile
converts, making Paul’s writings our earliest and most unambiguous evidence
that there was a certain diversity of beliefs and groups in the earliest
decades of Christianity, and also our best indications of the nature of this
diversity and whatever commonality linked the groups.
5. The Christ-devotion attested in Paul’s
letters amounts to a notable development in the history of religions,
especially when set in the context of the Jewish religious tradition and the
larger Roman-era religious environment, and his letters exhibit this
development as having already taken place at a remarkably early point in the
young Christian movement.
6. Finally, the place of Christ in the
Pauline letters also anticipates, represents, and likely helped to promote the Christological
beliefs and devotional practices that came to be widely characteristic in
Christian groups after Paul.
Contrary to
those who say that there is a dearth of historical material available about the
earliest church, and rather that we ought to rely on what Christians of the 4th
and 5th centuries said about Christ, Christianity, and “the Church”,
beginning with Paul (and the other writings of the New Testament), we have an
incredibly rich source of historical the churches life, practices, “τὸ εὐαγγέλιον”,
earliest worship, “sacraments”, and more.
Hi John,
ReplyDeletethanks for your interesting articles on the early church and pointing to Larry Hurtado's work.
Does Hurtado interact with James D. G. Dunn ?
Muslims like Paul Bilal Williams -
http://bloggingtheology.wordpress.com
(But it looks like he has now changed it to a private web-site.)
- Williams
likes to use James D. G. Dunn to try and say that Jesus originally only taught straight Judaism and simple repentance and the Kingdom of God, and Paul (and, in his view, the writer of John's Gospel) came later and added the Son of God and atonement and the resurrection and justification by faith.
Sounds like another form of the Bauer - Ehrman Thesis.
http://thedebateinitiative.com/
ReplyDeleteWilliams also runs the Muslim Debate Initiative in England - and several who have debated Dr. White are part of his team - Abdullah Al Andalousi, Sami Zaatari, Abdullah Kunde
Hi Ken -- yes, Hurtado does interact with Dunn in a couple of places, but I don't think he touches on that specific question.
ReplyDeleteWhat he's looking for in Paul is evidence that Paul considers Christ as God. And he does go to a lot of length to show that Paul was teaching the same thing the Jerusalem church was teaching -- and that messaging was remarkably consistent about devotion to Christ as God very early on.
Who claims there is a dearth of evidence?
ReplyDeleteWe have the witnesses of many second and third century fathers: Melito of Sardis, Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory the Wonderworker, Tertullian, Theophilus of Antioch, Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Cyprian of Carthage. And those are just off the top of my head.
These men are well within the stream of Catholic-Orthodox thought: sacramental, episcopal, liturgical, mystical.
One of the finest expositions of Christ and His mission issued from the pen of Melito of Sardis:
46 What is the Pascha?
It obtains its name from its characteristic:
from suffer comes suffering.
Learn therefore who is the Suffering One,
and who shares the suffering of the Suffering One,
47 and why the Lord is present on the earth
to clothe Himself with the Suffering One
and carry Him off to the heights of heaven.
It is He that delivered us from slavery to liberty,
from darkness to light,
from death to life,
from tyranny to eternal royalty;
and made us a new priesthood
and an eternal people personal to Him.
69 He is the Pascha of our salvation.
It is He who in many endured many things:
It is He that was in Abel murdered,
and in Isaac bound,
and in Jacob exiled,
and in Joseph sold,
and in Moses exposed,
and in the lamb slain,
and in David persecuted,
and in the prophets dishonoured.
70 It is He that was enfleshed in a virgin,
that was hanged on a tree.
72 It is He that has been murdered.
And where has He been murdered? In the middle of Jerusalem.
By whom? By Israel.
Why? Because He healed their lame
and cleansed their lepers
and brought light to their blind
and raised their dead;
that is why He died.
Where is it written in law and prophets,
' They repaid me bad things for good
and childlessness for my soul,
when they devised evil things against me and said,
"Let us bind the just one,
because he is a nuisance to us"'?
73 What strange crime, O Israel, have you committed?
You dishonoured Him that honoured you;
you disgraced Him that glorified you;
you denied Him that acknowledged you;
you disclaimed Him that proclaimed you;
you killed Him that made you live.
(On Pascha)
Philip -- Someone in one of the "Called to Communion" threads said there was not much information regarding the earliest church. I was responding to that.
ReplyDeleteThanks for citing Melito here.