How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? HISTORICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT EARLIEST DEVOTION TO JESUS Larry W. Hurtado WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN / CAMBRIDGE, U.K. © 2005 Win. Β. Eerdmans Publishing Co. All rights reserved Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 255 Jefferson Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503 / P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K. Printed in the United States of America 10 09 08 07 06 05 7654321 ISBN-10: 0-8028-2861-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-8028-2861-3 www.eerdmans.com To Alan Segal, scholar and friend PREFACE INTRODUCTION PART I: ISSUES AND APPROACHES ι. How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Approaches to Jesus-Devotion in Earliest Christianity 2. Devotion to Jesus and Second-Temple Jewish Monotheistic Piety 3. To Live and Die for Jesus: Social and Political Consequences of Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity 4. A "Case Study" in Early Christian Devotion to Jesus: Philippians 2:6-11 PART II: DEFINITIONS AND DEFENSE 5. First-Century Jewish Monotheism 6. Homage to the Historical Jesus and Early Christian Devotion 7. Early Jewish Opposition to Jesus-Devotion 8. Religious Experience and Religious Innovation in the New Testament 179 EPILOGUE 205 APPENDIX 1: Opening Remarks to the First Deichmann Annual Lecture Series 207 Horst-Heinz Deichmann APPENDIX 2: Are There Good Reasons for Studying Early Christian Literature at Ben-Gurion University? 215 Roland Deines INDEX OF MODERN AUTHORS 217 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 222 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE AND OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES 228 n March 2004 I had the honor to give the inaugural lectures in the IDeichmann Annual Lecture Series at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Beer-Sheva, Israel). Revised versions of these lectures form Chap- ters One through Four of this book. In response to requests from my Is- raeli colleagues, and with the encouragement of Eerdmans, I have also in- cluded several essays that originally appeared as articles in journals (Chapters Five through Eight) and that are directly relevant, to the issues in view in the Deichmann lectures. The annual lecture series at Ben-Gurion University, which I was privi- leged to inaugurate, forms part of the Deichmann Program for Jewish and Christian Literature of the Hellenistic-Roman Era, a project that owes much to the vision and generosity of Herr Dr. Heinz-Horst Deichmann. I am pleased that Herr Deichmann's opening address for the lecture series is included in this book (see appendix 1). The central aim includes promot- ing the academic study of the New Testament in Israel as an important his- torical resource for analysis of Jewish religion of the Roman period. I am pleased to have been invited to participate in the formative stages of the program, and I will watch with much interest the further developments. For both my wife and me, one of the additional pleasures of the time in Beer-Sheva was to make the acquaintance of Herr Deichmann and Frau Deichmann, who honored the lectures with their faithful attendance. The lectures represented now by Chapters One through Four of this book were written originally for an audience made up largely of educated and interested people but who might well not have much acquaintance with either the early Christian texts or the approaches and conclusions of the scholars concerned with them. My audience in Beer-Sheva was almost entirely Israelis from Ben-Gurion University and the wider community. In this published form, I have largely focused my efforts on stylistic improve- ments, clarification and slight expansion of some points, and some addi- tional references in the footnotes for those who may wish to study issues further. So I trust that a rather wide readership will find these chapters ac- cessible and informative. Chapters Five through Eight derive from journal articles originally addressed to fellow scholars in Christian origins, and re- flect this in the many footnotes and references to other primary and sec- ondary literature. I have included these studies here because they are par- ticularly important in providing further support for positions that I present in Chapters One through Four (especially Chapters One through Two). I have limited myself to some small stylistic changes in refitting these essays for this book. But I hope that interested readers will have no trouble in following these discussions as well. Because Chapters Five through Eight represent some of the previous studies upon which I build in the earlier chapters, there are, unavoidably, some matters that get re- peated. Usually, however, issues treated in more summary fashion in the earlier chapters are developed more fully in the later ones. My hosts in Beer-Sheva received me and my wife so warmly that we felt as if we were family members returning home after a long time away, although it was our first visit to Ben-Gurion University and we were strangers to those who welcomed us. In particular, I thank Professor Zipporah Talshir (who was then serving as head of the Department of Bi- ble and Near Eastern Studies) for coordinating many details locally (and for the enjoyable dinner party at her home during our visit). I also thank all those who attended the lectures and engaged me with questions and suggestions, which made me feel that I had been able to speak to matters of interest for them as well as for me. Dr. Cana Werner and Dalia Amara (a graduate student in the department) prepared Hebrew translations of my lectures, which were available for any in the audience who wanted them. After my revisions for publication, they reworked their translations and translated the four journal articles for publication of this book in Hebrew through Ben-Gurion University Press. My hearty thanks go to both of them for their generous contributions of their time and talents to the lec- ture series and the Hebrew edition of this volume. My friend, Dr. Roland Deines (an impressive New Testament scholar in his own right), first approached me informally in May 2003 about giv- ing the inaugural lectures in the Deichmann annual series. During our week-long visit to Israel, Roland also kindly guided my wife and me around several historic sites in the Negev, Jerusalem, and the Galilee, offer- ing us the benefit of his extensive acquaintance with archaeological mat- ters relevant to Second-Temple Judaism and early Christianity. Our whole time in Israel was informative, stimulating, and enjoyable, and Roland's generosity with his time is a major reason. He also was instrumental in ar- ranging for the translation of the lectures and the publication of the He- brew edition of this book. I am also grateful to have been allowed to present some of the Deichmann lectures in other settings subsequently. In September 2004, I gave a version of Chapter One as a public/faculty lecture at the University of Lund, Chapters One through Two as the Broady Lectures at Stockholm, and Chapter Three as one of the Exegetical Day lectures at the annual meeting of the Uppsala Exegetical Society. I thank Kari Syreni for organiz- ing that itinerary, as well as Thomas Kazen in Stockholm and Bengt Holmberg in Lund, who were involved in arrangements in their respective cities, and all the Scandinavian colleagues for their warm welcome. I also gave Chapters One through Three as the Paddock Lectures at the General Theological Seminary, New York City, in October 2004. Dr. John Koenig nominated me for this, and I also thank his colleagues for electing me as a Paddock lecturer, and Dr. Robert Mullin in particular for overseeing arrangements and for making my visit comfortable and enjoyable. It is an honor to have been invited to join an illustrious line of previous lecturers in the Paddock series that includes William Temple and J. N. D. Kelly, and I am very pleased with the interest shown in my lectures by the numbers who at- tended and the animated discussions that followed each of them. As already indicated, Chapters Five through Eight were previously published as journal articles. They are part of a number of publications on particular issues in a line of research that led to my large recent book, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids/Cam- bridge: Eerdmans, 2003). The specifics of the original publications are given in a source note at the beginning of each of these chapters. I am very grateful to the several journals in which these essays first appeared (and their respective publishers) for their permission to include these articles in this book. I have made only slight changes to these studies. Because they were originally prepared as discrete studies, unfortunately certain points are dealt with in more than one of them. All of the studies in this book reflect the enormous debt that I owe to many other scholars of previous and contemporary times, those with whom I disagree as well as those whose views I find more congenial. My sense of indebtedness and gratitude is reflected in the many footnotes. But I am sure that my debt extends much farther than I realize and have been able to credit in this way. I dedicate this volume to my friend, Alan Segal, who has advocated and demonstrated serious engagement with the New Testament as comprising an important body of sources for historical analysis of Second-Temple Jew- ish tradition, which is also a key aim of the Deichmann Program. Edinburgh September 2005 The title of this book is deliberately provocative, but I do not wish to offend anyone. It expresses a double entente that captures two key em- phases in the following pages.