0. Jewish_Worship_and_the_Jesus_Paradox.m4a
This scholarly introduction outlines a focused investigation into how early Jewish Christians reconciled their traditional exclusivist monotheism with the practice of cultic veneration of the exalted Jesus, a phenomenon known as the "binitarian shape" of their devotion. The author argues that this worship of Jesus as a divine figure alongside God emerged extremely early—within the first decade of Christianity—and was rooted in a complex understanding of ancient Judaism, not later influences from pagan polytheism, as previously argued by some scholars. The core problem is to explain how this fundamental shift in devotion occurred without the benefit of the later doctrine of the Trinity, suggesting that early Christians drew on Jewish traditions of divine agency while also developing a unique modification in their religious practices. Ultimately, the work posits that the cultic veneration of Jesus was the most distinguishing and potentially controversial feature of early Christian devotion, necessitating an in-depth focus on the Jewish background to explain its origins.
How did the very first followers of Jesus—devout Jews committed to an exclusivist monotheism—begin to worship him alongside the one God of Israel? This is one of the most significant and puzzling questions in the history of Western religion.
A common assumption is that the deification of Jesus was a late development, an idea that slowly seeped into Christianity centuries after his death as pagan converts brought their polytheistic habits into the church. But the earliest historical evidence we have tells a radically different and far more surprising story.
The problem emerges in the earliest Christian writings we possess. In a letter written only about two decades after the crucifixion, the Apostle Paul, a former Pharisee, summarized the core of Christian devotion this way:
...for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Cor. 8:5-6)
For a first-century Jew, this statement was a theological earthquake. To place a second figure, Jesus Christ, in this unique relationship with the one God was a radical move that seemed to violate the core of their ancestral faith. This "binitarian shape" of devotion was precisely what other Jews would have found so baffling and offensive, a practice later polemics would condemn as the worship of "two powers in heaven." Here are four surprising facts about how this unprecedented practice began.