Book Review: How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

I hope that the preceding studies will have communicated to readers something of the intriguing questions and hotly contested issues that justify and comprise the historical investigation of early devotion to Jesus. It may be somewhat unsettling for some Christians, at least initially, to explore the origins of Christian faith as a subject of historical inquiry. I trust, however, that Christians will see that a historical appreciation of the emergence of devotion to Jesus need not pose a challenge to continuing to revere Jesus as rightful recipient of devotion with God. Indeed, I hope that Christians will welcome any light that can be cast on the faith of their religious forebears from the earliest period of the Christian movement.

Larry W. Hurtado
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

The thing that struck me the most as I finished Hurtado's book, was that he never once said point blank, "Jesus is God". In fact, he didn't come to a definite conclusion one way or the other on the matter (barring the above-quoted statement). He simply presented his evidence, discussed why he disagreed with opposing views, and let the reader come to his or her own conclusions. I rather like that.

Hurtado is a scholarly writer but he did "tone down" the chapters of this book, allowing them to be a bit more accessible to the "average reader". The first four chapters were originally presentations he gave as part of the inaugural lectures in the Deichmann Annual Lecture Series at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel (2004). The last four chapters were taken from some of Hurtado's earlier published works. I wouldn't recommend this book for a little light reading before bedtime, but I do recommend it for someone who wants to investigate the history of early devotion to Jesus by his Jewish and Gentile disciples, particularly within the context of 1st century Jewish monotheism.

I very much appreciated Hurtado's attention to the environment, sociology, history, and theology of the Jewish people of 1st century "Roman Judea" and how it became possible for Jews to revere Jesus while not (apparently) violating the Shema (God is One). I also never concluded that Hurtado's evidence resulted in Jesus being co-equal to God in deity...exactly.

The book repeatedly makes use of the term "dinitarianism" (as opposed to "binitarianism", which would be two Gods; God the Father and God the Son) which generally means that God shared or more accurately, that God "delegated" some of His authority and divine nature to the Jewish Messiah, allowing high honors to be afforded Jesus, but only for the glory of God. Hurtado paints a picture of Jesus as a unique being with a position in the spiritual hierarchy unlike any other being. He is worthy of honor and glory, but only as it glorifies the Father. In other words, Jesus doesn't stand alone as an object of devotion and is only acknowledged in reverence as it relates to worshiping the One God.

The biggest problem for this book to solve was not how Gentile converts to the Messianic (early Christian) faith could worship Jesus as God and God (the Father) as God, but how Jews could bend, twist, or mutate ethical monotheism to allow Jesus to be granted "divine honors". The answer is that Jesus was seen as divine, but not actually "God" by the Jewish disciples. He was (and is) a unique entity who was granted a special status by God as Messiah. However, even Hurtado's mountain of evidence in an early occurrence (within the first 30 years of the ascension) of reverent honors being given to Jesus, does not result in the more modern understanding in God is God and Jesus is God too. Although Hurtado didn't say it outright, how we understand the divine nature of Jesus has indeed "mutated" from the original Jewish perspective that existed within Paul's lifetime. The viewpoint of the status of Jesus has changed from what the Jewish apostles saw and taught, to how subsequent generations of Gentile Christians chose to believe in and respond to Jesus. It is more than likely that the Greek pagan "understanding" that a man could be honored as a "god" became a large part of the development of what we now see as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It didn't originate, as such, from the first Jewish disciples.

Hurtado spent a great deal of time and effort factoring in Jewish perspectives of Jesus including a point Levertoff and the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary made about how the death of a great tzadik (righteous sage) could atone for the sins of many, including the nation of Israel (Hurtado, pg 21). However, Hurtado (pg 28) did miss that Jews can and do pray in the merit of (in the name of) a great Rebbe all the time, so that isn't an an iron-clad indication of "godhood" as such.

Hurtado did repeat, on a number of occasions (starting on pg 30), that although Jesus was the first sage or Prophet to be afforded a sort of devotion usually associated with God alone, he was not treated as co-equal to God or as another "person" of God or the "Godhead". In fact, the book states (pg 53) that Jesus continually subordinated himself to God the Father (which I consider that aspect of God referred to as Ayn Sof in Kabbalistic thought) and the words of the Master reflect this most clearly:

Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." -John 5:19

"By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me." -John 5:30

If Jesus made a point to subordinate himself to God and if that's how his early Jewish disciples came to understand him, then it would not violate Jewish monotheism to give honors to Jesus, just as God delegated honors to the Son, and not have it be the worship that is given to God alone. Humanity must exalt God and God only. God exalts the Messiah and gives him a special and unique divine status among all beings in existence. That seems to be the general message I get from reading Hurtado. It isn't the same message I get from Evangelical Christianity that God is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God (and as in other books I've reviewed that have addressed the Christ as deity issue, Hurtado barely mentions God's Spirit and never suggests that it is also God).

It's as if God "shared" something with Jesus that no other being possessed (pg 95). The closest analog we have is Moses, and when we understand that God elevated the name of the Messiah above every name, we see that the merit of Yeshua (Jesus) is the highest form of merit, not unlike (but superior to) praying to and approaching God in the merit of Moses or Abraham, or the patriarchs or the prophets.

Hurtado spends an entire chapter analyzing Philippians 2:6-11 as an ancient, honorific hymn acknowledging Jesus, which I wrote about last week. At that time, I drew a comparison between the Kabbalistic concept of Ayn Sof as "the Father" and the Shechinah (Divine Presence) as somehow being manifest as "the Son". If Judaism can see the Ayn Sof, the unobservable, unknowable, ultimate creative force that is God and the Shechinah as the physical, visible, touchable, "experience-able" manifestation of God in our world and not see those two concepts as "two God", then it may be possible to apply the same illustration to God and the Messiah and still have One God.

I'm not saying that Hurtado went this far in his presentation of early Jewish and Gentile devotion to Jesus, but for me, it's the logical extension of what Hurtado has written. Glory and honor is given only to God through the Messiah (pg 137), not for the sake of Jesus alone. That may well satisfy the Jewish requirement of monotheism and still give the ancient (and modern) Jewish disciples the ability to give honor to the Messiah's divine and unique status. The subsequent Gentile believers, not having a Jewish educational and experiential background, very likely "took it too far" (I'm extrapolating from Hurtado's writing now) as evidenced (one example) by the Johannine community being evicted from the synagogue for "blending" God the Father and God the Son (the Jewish Messiah). This probably (my opinion) is because the newly-minted Gentile Christians couldn't "get" how Jews saw God and the Messiah as closely related, but still different and separate. When a Jew says "God is One", then He's One". Subsequent Gentile Christian doctrine made it possible for the One to be two in the eyes of the Jewish Messianics, crossing the line, so to speak, between worshiping God and honoring the Messiah, and worshiping God and Jesus as "co-Gods".

Hurtado goes so far as to refer to Jesus as plenipotentiary, which paints a picture of Jesus as a "person" who has been delegated full authority and power by the source, as God's representative and "ambassador" but not creating Jesus literally as a God. It's like the President granting our nation's ambassador to a foreign country full powers and rights to negotiate a treaty. It doesn't make the ambassador the President, but it does give him/her complete authority to make a treaty as if the ambassador were the President. They are two separate people, each with their own status and position, but certain powers and rights are granted from one to the other.

This probably isn't what some of you wanted to hear, but it's what I get out of Hurtado's book as filtered through my beliefs and my personality. That's what a book review is.

Whatever you may think of my conclusions, I highly recommend Larry Hurtado's How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? if you want an honest, well considered (especially in his treatment of 1st century Judaism), and thoughtful perspective on how Jesus came to be granted divine honors and worship by his Jewish and Gentile disciples...and how that carries forward to those of us today who call ourselves disciples of the Master.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Chasing Cars

Who, being in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the form of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

-Philippians 2:6-7 (NIV)

Moreover, it appears that the meaning of "being in the form of God" may have been presumed as apparent and known to the intended readers, for the text does virtually nothing to explain this interesting phrase.

Larry W. Hurtado
Chapter 3: A "Case Study" in Early Christian Devotion to Jesus
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

This is probably premature and I'm sure I have no business posting this opinion on the web without a lot more study to back it up, but it's what's on my mind just now, so here it is. As many of you who read this blog regularly know, I'm pursuing, among other things, some sort of understanding of the deity of Jesus. Just how is Jesus God the Son and how is God the Father also God? Is there a way to understand the "mechanism" of this process and particularly, how early in "the church" it became apparent that Jesus was (and is) divine?

I'm not going to render a detailed analysis of these questions but I've been wrestling with a few thoughts lately.

Ever since reading "The Word became a human being and lived with us, and we saw his Sh'khinah, the Sh'khinah of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14 from the Complete Jewish Bible translated by David H. Stern) some years ago, I've tried to imagine the connection between the Shechinah (Divine Presence) as it descended upon the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert and the living, breathing, human Messiah:

And he set up the enclosure around the Tabernacle and the altar, and put up the screen for the gate of the enclosure. When Moses had finished the work, the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud had settled upon it and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. When the cloud lifted from the Tabernacle, the Israelites would set out, on their various journeys; but if the cloud did not lift, they would not set out until such time as it did lift. For over the Tabernacle a cloud of the Lord rested by day, and fire would appear in it by night, in the view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys. -Exodus 40:33-38 (JPS Tanakh)

This passage, and the analogous event in Solomon's Temple (1 Kings 8:10-11), indicates that the Shechinah is not just a cloud of fog and a fancy lights show, but that it is the physical manifestation of God in our world. It isn't the totality of God, however:

Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest? -Isaiah 66:1

If God can't (or won't) squeeze His total "self" into the Mishkan or Temple, what was in Solomon's Temple and where was the totality of the God of the Universe? Are we talking about two Gods here or different manifestations of God's nature?

Ever since I read Levertoff and the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary on his work, I have been approaching a closer understanding of the Jewish Messiah as, somehow, mystically, metaphysically, a "container" or "expression-in-flesh" of God's Shechinah (which is considered a feminine aspect of the Divine, making things all the more interesting). Looking at the JewishEncyclopedia.com definition under "In the Targumim":

The majestic presence or manifestation of God which has descended to "dwell" among men. Like Memra (= "word"; "logos") and "Yeḳara" (i.e., "Kabod" = "glory"), the term was used by the Rabbis in place of "God" where the anthropomorphic expressions of the Bible were no longer regarded as proper. The word itself is taken from such passages as speak of God dwelling either in the Tabernacle or among the people of Israel...

No, this doesn't get any easier and in fact, it gets even more off the beaten path (at least my beaten path). I think the reason the whole "deity" issue is so hard to grasp is that, in Christian circles, we tend to try and understand it all through completely rational, intellectual means, or just abandon all hope of coming to any understanding at all. Engaging in a mystic understanding is pretty tough for most believers to accept.

Now let's compare the Shechinah to another concept, this time from Kabbalah as described at AynSof.com:

Ayn Sof (sometimes transliterated as Ein Sof) refers to the infinite Divine (or G_d). In Hebrew Ayn Sof means "Boundlessness", but is usually translated as "Without End." Often it is referred to as the "Infinite No-Thingness." It should be understood that this does NOT mean that Ayn Sof is "nothing" for It is NOT a THING, but is a "somethingness" that we cannot define in human terms. Ayn Sof, in the Kabbalistic tradition, is the ultimate source of all creation or existence!

Ayn Sof, at least as far as my limited understanding can describe it, is the infinite, invisible, unknowable, non-object object, non-entity entity, ultimate creative force, God (God the Father?).

I hate to reduce these concepts down and make them too simple, but would I be so far out of the ballpark to suggest that there is an infinite, invisible, non-corporeal, God, and then suggest there is some part of Him that He can shrink, humble, extend, and intersect with the created Universe; a part of Him that He can allow us to see, touch and some part of Him with which we can interact? Can I then apply that part of Him with which we can interact, that part we saw in the Tabernacle and in Solomon's Temple to the existence and being of the Messiah?

I don't propose this as an answer but suggest it as a possibility. I'll probably be pursuing this for years. I'm sure I'll write more about this. Yes, I'm an unqualified amateur. I'm like this guy:

You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it.
The Joker (played by Heath Ledger)
The Dark Knight (2008)

I'm a dog chasing cars. I'm not sure I'd know what to do with one if I ever caught it, but I just can't help chasing cars.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Who to Believe?

In this New York Times bestseller, leading Bible expert Bart Ehrman skillfully demonstrates that the New Testament is riddled with contradictory views about who Jesus was and the significance of his life. Ehrman reveals that many of the books were written in the names of the apostles by Christians living decades later, and that central Christian doctrines were the inventions of still later theologians. Although this has been the standard and widespread view of scholars for two centuries, most people have never learned of it.

Amazon.com product description of
Jesus Interrupted by Bart Ehrman

In "How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?" Larry Hurtado investigates the keen 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. Directed at readers across religious lines, this book argues that whatever one makes of such devotion to Jesus, the subject at least deserves serious historical consideration.

Amazon.com product description of
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God by Larry W. Hurtado

I've just started reading Hurtado's book, but I'm already impressed with both his scholarship and humility. I've already read and reviewed Ehrman's book and although I don't agree with all of his conclusions, he too makes a compelling case. And thereby lies my problem.

I've been turning this issue over in the back of my mind for awhile, but reading Hurtado yesterday forced the issue to the surface, something like an eruption at Old Faithful. It wasn't the only catalyst, but I'll explain the rest in a moment.

I've been reading books written by all of these scholars, theologians, and Bible experts and trying to put everything they're telling me into some kind of framework that makes sense and helps me sort out my faith. The problem is, most of them make a sort of sense and I can see all of their points of view. They're well educated and they know their stuff. The problem is, they don't all agree with each other. The real problem is, I don't operate at anywhere near their level of intelligence or education. How am I supposed to critique and evaluate one view vs. the other? How am I supposed to read all these books and say "this one's right and that one's wrong?"

This isn't just a matter of deciding between Ehrman, a New Testament scholar who is an agnostic and most assuredly doesn't believe in the deity of Jesus, and Hurtado, a Professor of New Testament Language and theology at the University of Edinburgh, who certainly does make a case for the deity of Christ, but all of the other learned teachers who have published their opinions and understandings.

For instance, Hurtado mentions Maurice Casey and his book From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God, which I also reviewed and found convincing, and refutes Casey's conclusions that the church arrived at the decision to "make" Jesus a God centuries after the resurrection and ascension. Hurtado makes a pretty good point about the early adoption of the worship of Jesus, but I either have to take his word for it that Casey is wrong or somehow replicate Hurtado's and Casey's research and see for myself, which is beyond my cognitive and educational abilities.

It's not just the big time experts either. I happened to mention (and I've been mentioning this a lot), that I find Paul Philip Levertoff's perspective on the Gospels to be particularly convincing, largely because Levertoff seems to solve many of my personal problems with the traditional Christian viewpoint on Christ. However, there are other opinions that oppose my personal judgment:

Let us stop to consider what you are arguing here: you are arguing that a first-century Jewish teacher is better understood in the context of eighteenth-century Jewish mysticism from Poland derived primarily from a thirteenth-century work of Jewish mysticism from Spain than in the context of his students' (John) students' (Polycarp) students (Iraneus) ninety years later.

While I think you can make a case that the unique perspectives of a Chasidic Jewish scholar who lived less than 100 years ago might say more about the ancient Jewish teachings of Jesus than Gentiles who lived much closer to the time of Christ, I'm hardly an expert and after all, I can be wrong. The young man who made this comment on one of my recent blog posts is intelligent and certainly better educated in both Christian and Jewish theologies than I am. In trying to understand, explain, and defend my evolving comprehension of who Jesus is and what he taught, I'm barely able to keep my head above water.

How do people do it? How do people seem so completely sure of what they believe, not just in general, but down to the most minute details?

I do have one answer. I noticed something when I was reading Hurtado's book. I bought a used copy from Amazon and the book has various highlights and underlines (apparently made by the original owner of the book) pointing out specific parts of the text. So far, I've noticed that the passages treated thus all support the deity of Jesus and the idea that worship of Jesus as God occurred almost immediately after the ascension and certainly within the first 30 years after the ascension of the Jewish Messiah to the right hand of God the Father.

I think people read books that support the positions they already hold. I previously made the point that I thought Bowman's and Komoszewski's book Putting Jesus in His Place seemed specifically written for an audience that already believed the book's central assumptions (and the book is written as a teaching aid for Bible studies to present the conclusions of the authors).

I suppose only reading books that support your already held beliefs works in a sense, but what about people like me who are trying to get a wider perspective? Are we just supposed to take an expert's or a group of experts' word that they are right and everyone else is wrong? Which expert or experts are we supposed to believe? On what basis do we choose to believe one scholar and not the other? I want to be a good "Berean", but apparently they were a lot smarter than I am.

I can see agnostics and atheists believing Ehrman because his viewpoint supports their own. I can see evangelical Christians believing Bowman and Komoszewski because the points they make in their book support the evangelical view of Jesus. I can see more scholarly Christians who support the deity of Christ going for Hurtado's book because that's what he presents. I can see people like me, who need to believe that Christianity isn't totally and completely divorced from a Jewish conceptualization (Jewish Messiah teaching Jewish disciples, revealing mysteries in a Jewish mystic context in first century Judea...seems like there ought to be a Jewish interpretation being employed to me) gravitating toward people like Levertoff, who see the Gospels as closely mapping to Chasidic mystical teachings.

But are we supposed to make these sort of conclusions based on what seems or feels right to us? Is there nothing objective to our understanding of God? In the final analysis, are we just letting our personalities determine what is right and what is wrong as far as how we understand our faith in Jesus?

If anyone's got an answer to these questions, I'm all ears.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.