The binitarian mutation

Larry W. Hurtado's "How on Earth did Jesus become a God?" is a summary of two more extensive works by the same author, "Lord Jesus Christ" and "One God, One Lord". Some of the chapters are edited articles from scholarly journals. The book is probably intended for students of theology, New Testament studies and comparative religion. It's on the same level of difficulty as, say, Bart Ehrman's "Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium". In other words, easy for nerds who avidly argue the pros and cons of Ehrman, Loftus, Carrier and the Jesus Seminar on the web, but perhaps a bit too difficult for the general reader!

Hurtado is a Christian, and his book does have a Christian agenda. Still, the book is very interesting in its own right. The author attempts to prove all his points by using the usual historical-critical method. "How on Earth did Jesus become a God?" reminds me of Martin Hengel's works. Indeed, Hurtado mentions Hengel at several points in his argument.

The author believes that Jesus was worshipped virtually as a god already a few years after his execution. The apotheosis of the historical Jesus of Nazareth wasn't a drawn-out, evolutionary process. Rather, it was a dramatic innovation, a kind of cultural or religious "mutation". It must have happened almost immediately after the crucifixion and the (supposed) resurrection. The earliest Christian writings, the letters of Paul, consider Jesus to be in some sense divine. Thus, the idea that Jesus was elevated to divine status only by the late Gospel of John (or even later in some versions), cannot be sustained. Paul was converted to Christianity only a few years after the execution of Jesus. Hurtado also rejects the alternative claim that it was Paul himself who invented the divinity of Jesus. Before his Damascus road experience, Paul had been a persecutor of the Jewish Christians. But why would a Pharisee like Paul persecute the followers of Jesus? At this point in time, Judaism was extremely heterogeneous, and while various strands of Judaism were often in conflict, they are not known to have persecuted each other violently (besides, the Romans probably wouldn't have allowed it). There must have been something very special and unique about the earliest Jewish Christians, which made the other strands of Judaism react in an unprecedented fashion against them. Hurtado believes that this unique feature was precisely the worship of Jesus as a divine or near-divine figure.

Since Hurtado rejects a slow, evolutionary growth of the Jesus-is-divine notion, he also opposes the concomitant view that the exaltation of Jesus was a result of pagan influences on the Gentile Christians who gradually became dominant. Early Christianity's high view of Jesus was a mutation within the Jewish monotheistic tradition, not a foreign import. However, there is another view which has gained some followers lately: perhaps Judaism wasn't really monotheist to begin with? This is the thesis defended by Margaret Barker in her "The Great Angel", but also by some other scholars. Hurtado freely admits that Judaism wasn't monotheist in the "pure" sense demanded by modern scholars (who may perhaps be subconsciously influenced by Protestantism or Rabbinical Judaism - my observation). Angels, righteous prophets or the Messiah were often seen as intermediaries between God and man. Examples include Michael, Yahoel, Enoch, Moses and Elijah. Another example is Wisdom. These intermediaries were often given a surprisingly exalted status, representing some of God's attributes. The angel Yahoel even wears part of God's sacred name. However, Hurtado believes that there was no corporate worship of angels or exalted humans within Judaism. Sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem were to YHWH alone. Thus, while Jesus could conceivably be identified with, say, Enoch or Michael, actual corporate worship of Jesus would have been beyond the pale for all known Jewish groups in existence at the time. Therefore, the emergence of such worship only a few years after Jesus' death, demands a radical, non-evolutionary explanation.

Hurtado believes that the only possible explanation is that the earliest followers of Jesus experienced something they interpreted as divine revelation, and patterned their responses accordingly. Of course, the revelations in question would be the resurrection appearances of Jesus (Hurtado only discusses those mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15) and the Damascus road experience of Paul. Christians would consider these events to be objectively true and valid supernatural events, and this is presumably Hurtado's position, as well. However, the author believes that revelation in general can change a religious tradition beyond recognition, and that such revelations (no matter their veridical status) cannot be reduced to mere responses to social stress or other purely material factors. Unfortunately, Hurtado doesn't discuss comparative religion at length, despite a promise in the first section of the book to do so. He mentions Muhammad, Baha Ullah, Guru Nanak, the Teacher of Righteousness, the Ghost Dance and Japanese new religions as other examples of such stunning religious innovation, but then drops the issue. Does he consider these examples a threat to the theological conviction that Jesus' resurrection was unique? (Curiously, he doesn't mention Joseph Smith on his list of innovative prophets.)

Speaking of theology, Hurtado calls the earliest Christian conception of God "binitarian". On the one hand, God the Father and Jesus were distinct persons. On the other hand, Jesus reflected the glory of God to such a great extent, that he nevertheless became the object of worship traditionally only bestowed upon YHWH in the Jewish monotheistic tradition. While a "binitarian" god is probably more than, say, Ehrman would be prepared to swallow, it still falls short of evangelical Christianity or Catholicism. Besides, a distinct person who reflects the glory of the Father isn't exactly the same thing as a person in the Trinity. Ironically, our author might have gotten into trouble during the time of Theodosius the Great! He also accepts the results of modern scholarship on many other issues, including the pseudonymous authorship of the Gospels, the late date of John, the allegorical character of some Gospel stories and the existence of frequent anachronisms in the same. Thus, the worship bestowed upon Jesus in Matthew proves that the readers of Matthew around AD 80 worshipped Jesus as a god - it doesn't prove that the historical Jesus was worshipped in such a manner. How the Christian reader reacts to this, is presumably dependent on his or her own theological agendas. Of course, Hurtado's subtext is anything but "liberal": his real point is that the early Christians started to worship Jesus as a god because the resurrected Jesus told them that he, in fact, *was* God. This might also explain the above-mentioned reluctance to engage other revelations from a comparative perspective.

Even so, I admit that "How on Earth did Jesus become a God?" does make a powerful case for the innovative, dramatic or "mutational" view of Christian origins. Those critical of this work must prove the following: that there was corporate worship of angels or other intermediary beings in Judaism, similar to the worship of Jesus as somehow divine; or that Jewish groups in Palestine really did persecute "heretics" other than the Jewish Christians. I'm open to suggestions on both points...

Meanwhile, Hurtado's ideas about a "binitarian" mutation do make a certain logical sense. If the binitarian mutation was supernatural, or just one of those things that happens, is (perhaps) another question entirely... ;-)