4. Early_Christian_Worship_of_Jesus.mp4
4. How_Jesus_Worship_Began.mp4
4. Worshiping_Jesus_Defined_Christian_Doctrine.m4a
This topic meticulously argues that the worship of Jesus was not a late or peripheral development, but a central and defining feature of early Christianity, originating within the earliest Palestinian Jewish communities. It highlights that this devotional practice, evident in early prayers, acclamations like Maranatha, and the use of christological doxologies and hymns, fundamentally shaped Christian identity. Critically, the text emphasizes that Christians practiced the worship of Jesus while tenaciously adhering to exclusive Jewish monotheism, leading to a unique theological development where Jesus was included as the object of divine worship alongside God, a tension resolved by later Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Ultimately, the continuous tradition of worshipping Jesus served as a christological principle, requiring a theological understanding that affirmed Jesus's divine nature.
How did a faith born from the heart of Jewish monotheism—a tradition fiercely committed to the worship of one God alone—begin to worship a man, Jesus of Nazareth? It is one of the most significant and perplexing questions in the history of Western religion. For decades, the long-held scholarly theory, often associated with the Bousset school of thought, was that the worship of Jesus was a later development, a product of pagan Hellenistic influence as the faith spread from its Jewish cradle into the polytheistic Roman Empire.
This post, drawing on key findings from modern historical scholarship, reveals a very different story. The historical evidence challenges that older narrative, presenting several surprising and counter-intuitive truths about the origins of this revolutionary religious practice.
Contrary to the "old view" that the worship of Jesus was a later phenomenon, the evidence points decisively to its origin within the "earliest Palestinian Jewish Christianity." Far from being a fringe practice, it was so central that it became a defining characteristic of the new movement.
In his letters, the Apostle Paul repeatedly refers to Christians as those who "call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:2). This was not a novel turn of phrase; it was a direct appropriation of Old Testament language used for the cultic worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel (e.g., Joel 2:32). This simple, defining title reveals that from a very early date, believers were including Jesus within the unique identity of the Lord they worshipped.