Hurtado Honoring the Son

Jesus in Earliest Christian Devotional Practice
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68359-097-2
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

Reihe: Snapshots

Before the New Testament or the creeds of the church were written-the devotional practices of the earliest Christians indicate that they worshipped Jesus alongside the Father. Larry W. Hurtado has been one of the leading scholars on early Christology for decades. In Honoring the Son: Jesus in Earliest Christian Devotional Practice, Hurtado helps readers understand early Christology by examining not just what early Christians believed or wrote about Jesus, but what their devotional practices tell us about the place of Jesus in early Christian worship. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of early Christian origins and scholarship on New Testament Christology, Hurtado examines the distinctiveness of early Christian worship by comparing it to both Jewish worship patterns and worship practices within the broader Roman--era religious environment. He argues that the inclusion of the risen Jesus alongside the Father in early Christian devotional practices was a distinct and unique religious phenomenon within its ancient context. Additionally, Hurtado demonstrates that this remarkable development was not invented decades after the resurrection of Christ as some scholars once claimed. Instead, the New Testament suggests that Jesus--followers, very quickly after the resurrection of Christ, began to worship the Son alongside the Father. Honoring the Son offers a look into the worship habits of the earliest Christians to understand the place of Jesus in early Christian devotion.

Larry W. Hurtado is Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is the author of many books and articles, notably Destroyer of the Gods and Lord Jesus Christ.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hurtado, L. W.

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2

WORSHIP IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

For various historical reasons, most of us shaped by Christian tradition (at least in the West) have likely come to think that the key expression of one’s religiousness and religious stance is a confessional statement, a creed, a series of propositions stating beliefs. Certainly Christians have invested considerable energies in developing confessional statements and working out theological themes over a long time. Think of the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, or the many subsequent creedal statements that have defined, and often divided, Christian groups and denominations down the centuries.

Especially in the Protestant Reformation and on into the seventeenth century, agreement in confessional statements tended to dictate whether people were extended Christian fellowship or were shunned, or even put to death. Indeed, agreement in details was required, not simply basics. For example, think of the bitter disputations and mutual shunning connected with differences over how to express the religious significance of the Eucharist. Whether you confessed “real presence,” “transubstantiation,” or one of the other theological formulas of the time could determine whether you were treated as a fellow believer or a heretic. Indeed, most Christian circles of the time insisted on agreement on how you understood the Eucharist as a condition for sharing it. Odd, is it not? Participation in this core ritual supposed to be emblematic of Christian fellowship was made to depend, not on being baptized and the Christian profession of faith, but on agreement in this or that theological formulation about how Eucharist was to be understood!

And, of course, subsequently, differences over sometimes quite intricate issues of theology have been the basis for mutual shunning. I have heard of “five-point” Calvinists rejecting “three-point” Calvinists! Effectively, everything depended on full agreement to a set of confessional statements. In short, the dominant view has been that doctrine was crucial and the core of a religion, and worship a mere corollary of doctrine.

But in the ancient Roman world, things were different.1 What we would call “religion” was mainly ritual actions, particularly sacrifice.2 Of course, there were beliefs too. For example, people obviously had to believe that gods existed and that they would respond to the right sort of petition as a premise for engaging in those ritual actions. But, for the most part, religious beliefs were more implicit and not foregrounded in the way that beliefs came to be in Christian tradition.3

Moreover, in general, the various deities of the Roman world had little to say about daily behavior or “ethics,” the principal exception being the Jewish deity and the many commandments in his Torah. But for most “pagans,” teaching about “ethics” was more the province of philosophy, not religion.4 Instead of doctrines or behavioral teachings, we could say that it was what deities you worshipped and the nature of the worship that you practiced that defined you religiously. In short, “cultic practice,” especially sacrifice, the equivalent of what we mean by “worship,” was typically the heart of Roman-era religion.5

People of the time approached the traditional deities generally because they needed some divine help, and the usual practice was to offer or promise the deity in question some gift in anticipation of, or return for, answering the prayer for that help.6 This is reflected in the many ex voto objects found in ancient pagan shrines. These were typically small physical items given to the deity/temple as an expression of thanks. For example, if the deity healed your foot, you might offer the deity’s shrine a small replica of a foot (along with a sacrificial offering, of course). These objects were produced by local craftsmen and available for sale to those who visited shrines and temples.

There were also the scheduled rituals in honor of the traditional guardian deities of the various cities, and even rituals acknowledging the household deities seen as protectors of the family. In the Roman period that is our focus here, there were also rituals devoted to rulers, initially deceased Roman emperors, and then also the living emperor.7 As reflected in the title of a lively account of Roman-era religion, it was “a world full of gods.”8

Indeed, we could also say that cultic practice (worship) was how you affirmed the reality and validity of a deity. So, to refuse to reverence a deity was an offense against the deity, even an act of impiety, and was effectively to deny the deity’s reality. Moreover, in the eyes of many people of the time, refusing to honor the gods might provoke them to retaliate, or at least to take offense. Offended city deities might not protect the city from plague, for example, and offended family deities might not protect the household from disease or other perils.

In the Roman era, consequently, a refusal to worship the gods could generate hostility, and even charges of impiety and atheism.9 Early Christians often suffered hostility for their refusal to honor the gods, and were sometimes even accused of atheism for precisely this reason.10 Indeed, the refusal to take part in sacrifice to the various deities of the Roman world was probably the most offensive feature of the early Christian movement. The second-century pagan critic of early Christianity Celsus expressed a readiness to overlook everything else that he found strange about Christians if only they would relent in their refusal to honor the traditional gods.11 Philosophers of that period sometimes discussed and debated the nature of the gods, and whether they cared for humans, but what mattered was whether you joined in worshipping them. Even those philosophers who expressed doubts about the gods tended to continue to take part in the public rituals in honor of them. There is no indication that philosophical discussions about the gods were intended to have any major impact on the religious practices of the general populace.

For, to underscore the point again, the gods collectively were seen as the guardians of households, cities, nations, even the Roman Empire itself. Honoring the gods (again, especially by sacrifice), thus, was how people sought to ensure divine protection against such dangers as plague, and the gods’ beneficence in such things as the supply of food, health, safe delivery of children, and other matters. To refuse to honor them, therefore, was impious, irresponsible, and even antisocial, for it potentially endangered the family, city, or the larger society. You did not have to ensure that you worshipped all the various deities by observing some sort of checklist; but you were expected to join freely in the worship of any deity when the occasion presented itself. It would certainly have been considered strange to refuse to do so.

Of course, Christians were not the first ones to get into trouble over refusing to worship the pagan gods. Indeed, the early Christian stance was simply a continuation of the cultic exclusivity that characterized Roman-era Judaism, the matrix in which the early Christian movement first emerged. Indicative of this, and indicative also of the importance of cultic practice in the ancient world, note the stories of Jewish resistance to Seleucid efforts to assimilate Jews as related in 1 Maccabees. In 2:15–28, officers of the Seleucid king come to the town of Modein in the Jewish homeland to “enforce apostasy” by persuading Jews to offer sacrifice “according to the king’s command” (which probably means sacrifice to the pagan king’s favored deity). Mattathias refuses, insisting that neither he nor his sons will abandon their ancestral “religion” (v. 22, the translation used in the NRSV). But the Greek word translated “religion” here is latreia (service), which in this context refers to worship practice, the (sacrificial) worship of the God of Israel counterposed here against the worship of the Seleucid deity. For in the story when another Jew complies with the demand of the king’s officer and offers sacrifice on the pagan altar (v. 23), Mattathias kills both that fellow Jew and the officer, tears down the pagan altar, and summons “everyone who is zealous for the law and supports the covenant” to join him in the ensuing revolt (vv. 24–28). Likewise, in the accounts of the Maccabean martyrs the demand put to them is not to sign a confessional statement, but to take part in pagan sacrifice (e.g., 2 Macc 6:18–7:2). In short, Jews and pagans were agreed on at least this one point, that what counted as what we would call “religion” was cultic honor (sacrifice) to a deity. For devout Jews of the time, their worship of God was to be exclusive, and so sacrifice to the other deities was “idolatry,” a matter to which I return in the next chapter. For pagans, this exclusivity and refusal to honor the gods was a particularly objectionable, even antisocial, feature of Judaism.

Somewhat similarly to these stories of the Maccabean period, Pliny (the early second-century Roman governor of Pontus and Bithynia), in his report of his handling of those denounced to him as Christians, says that he required them to recite a prayer to the pagan gods, make supplication with incense and wine to Caesar’s image, and to curse Christ. Note that these are all ritual actions, even the verbal cursing of Christ, and performing...