How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus

Description

In How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Larry Hurtado investigates the intense devotion to Jesus that emerged with surprising speed after his death. Reverence for Jesus among early Christians, notes Hurtado, included both grand claims about Jesus' significance and a pattern of devotional practices that effectively treated him as divine. This book argues that whatever one makes of such devotion to Jesus, the subject deserves serious historical consideration. Mapping out the lively current debate about Jesus, Hurtado explains the evidence, issues, and positions at stake. He goes on to treat the opposition to -- and severe costs of -- worshiping Jesus, the history of incorporating such devotion into Jewish monotheism, and the role of religious experience in Christianity's development out of Judaism. The follow-up to Hurtado's award-winningLord Jesus Christ (2003), this book provides compelling answers to queries about the development of the church's belief in the divinity of Jesus.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions...

  • 2005-11-02
  • 254 pages
  • Ebook
  • Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Similar books

• 

  How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee

  By Bart D. Ehrman

  The claim at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. But this is not what the original disciples believed during Jesus’s lifetime—and it is not what Jesus claimed about himself.

• 

  Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity

  By Larry W. Hurtado

  For a history of scholarship on the expression , see now Delbert Burkett , The Son of Man Debate : A History and Evaluation , SNTSMS 107 ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1999 ) . In his review of Burkett's book , Dale C.

• 

  When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome

  By Richard E. Rubenstein

  A fascinating volume details the two priests--Arius and Athanasius--mortal enemies who became the major players in the fateful conflict in Christendom to decide whether Jesus was God or the holiest of men until the Reformation and Alexander ...

• 

  Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?: The New Testament Evidence

  By James D. G. Dunn

  Perhaps the worship of Jesus was not an alternative to worship of God but another way of worshiping God. The questions are challenging but readers are ably guided by James Dunn, one of the world's top New Testament scholars.

• 

  At the Origins of Christian Worship: The Context and Character of Earliest Christian Devotion

  By Larry W. Hurtado

  "At the Origins of Christian Worship" can deepen readers' understanding of early Christian worship by setting it within the context of the Roman world in which it developed.

• 

  One God, One Lord, New Edition: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism

  By Larry W. Hurtado

  The classic and ground-breaking work in Christology, with extensive new introduction, evaluating the most recent developments in current scholarship.

• 

  God in New Testament Theology

  By Larry W. Hurtado

  In this important new volume in the Library of Biblical Theology, Larry W. Hurtado introduces the different understandings of God that arise in the books of the New Testament, and explores the ramifications of those views for contemporary ...

• 

  How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature---A Response to Bart Ehrman

  By Michael F. Bird, Chris Tilling, Craig A. Evans

  Dale C. Allison, “The Historians' Jesus and the Church,” in Seeking the Identity of Jesus: A Pilgrimage (eds. ... Leicester, UK: Apollos, 1997); Birger Gerhardsson, The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, ...

• 

  Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries?

  By Larry W. Hurtado

  Indeed, it made it difficult to know how you could function socially and politically (to use our terminology).This book explores the growth of adherents to early Christianity; that all across this early period people became adherents of ...

• 

  How Jesus Became Christian

  By Barrie Wilson

  Sure to be controversial, this is an exciting, well-written popular religious history that cuts to the heart of the differences between Christianity and Judaism, to the origins of one of the world’s great religions and, ultimately, to the ...