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The Spirit in Second Temple Jewish Monotheism and the Origins of Early Christology

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The Spirit in Second Temple Jewish Monotheism and the Origins of Early Christology THE SPIRIT IN SECOND TEMPLE JEWISH MONOTHEISM AND THE ORIGINS OF EARLY CHRISTOLOGY Andrew W. Pitts and Seth Pollinger Following the last several decades, the rich and developing discussion con- tinues over the nature of pre-Christian Jewish and Jewish Christian mono- theism, especially with reference to the origins of christological doctrines. Until fairly recently, many believed that Jewish monotheism de ned itself by numerical singularity and, consequently, allowed very little exibility in identifying entities other than Yahweh, strictly de ned, as God. A number of recent scholars have questioned these assumptions, pointing to person- i ed attributes (e.g. wisdom, the Logos) or exalted intermediary gures as evidence of a “exible” Jewish monotheism. They suggest that these divine qualities or mediatorial agents provided a monotheistic conceptual frame- work where high Christology could have naturally originated within the Jewish heritage of the earliest Christians. These scholars typically set such views in contrast to the old Kyrios christologies, which purported that Jesus’ divinity must have arisen due to polytheistic and henotheistic inuences that penetrated Christian theology through the Gentile mission. While we agree that the new school Jewish christologies ofer an improved assessment for the origins of early Christology over the old school Hellenistic models, we still nd that their analogies are insu cient. First, in Jewish monothe- ism, the divine attributes were too ontologically similar with Yahweh to provide an adequate antecedent to the Christian Messiah, a separate agent. Attributes, no matter how they are personi ed, are too closely identi ed with Yahweh’s primary instantiation of the divine identity to form a con- vincing analogy with the incarnate Christ. Quite diferent from Jesus—an agent said by the New Testament authors to share in the divine identity— wisdom is one of Yahweh’s attributes. Yahweh cannot be reasonably dis- tinguished from the essential attributes that constitute his essence. Second, mediating agents were too ontologically dissimilar to Yahweh to provide an adequate antecedent to the Christian Messiah. Angels, exalted patriarchs, and the like do not share in the divine identity, again, making an analogy with Christ hard to bear out. Consequently, we propose, that the devel- opment of what we call functional Spirit-monotheism within ancient and Second Temple Judaism provides a more suitable matrix for the origination 136 andrew w. pitts and seth pollinger of early christological beliefs, especially when combined with messianic movements within early Judaism and their applications within rst-century Christianity. 1. Second Temple Jewish Monotheism In relation to discussions of early Christology, three views on the nature of Second Temple Jewish monotheism have emerged within the last century. We shall refer to these as numerical monotheism, mediatorial monothe- ism, and functional monotheism. It is our position that only functional monotheism has the necessary explanatory resources to account for the nature of ancient and Hellenistic Jewish monotheistic belief, on the one hand, and the origins of early Christology, on the other. Unfortunately, up to this time, advocates for functional monotheism have not rigorously expli- cated or substantiated its precise theoretical structure from the primary sources. Consequently, its de nitions and roles need further clari cation and its evidence needs further evaluation. In addition, the current con gu- ration of functional monotheism does not contain appropriate antecedents that help ground a belief matrix that would allow for the rise of high Chris- tology within a strictly Jewish framework. 1.1. Three Possible Congurations for Second Temple Jewish Monotheism Traditionally, historians of early Christianity have represented Jewish monotheism in terms of non-exible numerical oneness. We shall refer to this view as numerical monotheism. Wilhelm Bossuet’s Kyrios Christology, a classic representation of the old religionsgeschichtliche out of which so many of the nineteenth-century German christologies were generated, is based upon the assumption of this version of Jewish monotheism. Since his rigidly assumed structure was unable to locate belief in Jesus’ deity within the Jewish Christ cult due to the assumption of its rigid structure, he was forced to look instead for its origins in Gentile Christianity, where, purport- edly, Hellenistic believers related Jesus to Greek cult deities and heroes, and eventually exalted him to a state of divinity.1 As a fairly contempo- 1 Wilhelm Bousset, Kyrios Christos: Geschichte des Christusglaubens von den Anfängen des Christensums bis Irenaeus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1921; orig. 1913). For Bousset’s contribution to the study of early Christology, see Larry Hurtado, “New Testament.
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