5. Jesus_on_the_Heavenly_Throne.mp4
5. Jesus_on_the_Throne_of_God.mp4
5. Psalm_110_and_Jesus__Divine_Sovereignty.m4a
Early Christians included Jesus within the unique divine identity of the one God of Israel by applying to him the characteristics of unique divine sovereignty, especially by understanding his exaltation as sharing the heavenly throne of God and participating in cosmic rule. The source emphasizes that the foundational text for this novel Christology was Psalm 110:1, which, unlike its minimal role in Second Temple Judaism, became crucial evidence that Jesus was exalted to participate in the unique cosmic sovereignty that belongs only to God. This exegetical and theological novelty culminated in the worship of Jesus by both angels and humans, an act explicitly understood as recognizing his absolute supremacy and inclusion in the divine identity, placing him unequivocally on the divine side of the distinction between God and "all things." This development, while without pre-existing Jewish models, was possible because Jewish monotheism was defined in a way that permitted Jesus’ inclusion.
How did the followers of a Jewish man from Nazareth come to worship him as the one God of Israel? This is the central question of Christian origins. Many modern readers assume this belief must have evolved slowly over generations—a gradual, mythological drift from honoring a great teacher to deifying a divine being. But modern scholarship reveals a different story, one not of slow evolution, but of a radical and intentional theological leap.
This leap was rooted in a surprising and novel interpretation of a single, crucial Old Testament text. Early Christians, working within a strictly monotheistic Jewish framework, developed their Christology—the theological effort to understand the nature and identity of Jesus Christ—through rigorous scriptural interpretation. They used one verse in particular to make a revolutionary claim about Jesus's identity. What follows are four surprising takeaways that reveal how the interpretation of one passage redefined the boundaries of divinity and placed Jesus unequivocally within the identity of the God of Israel.
A single verse from the Psalms was the most-quoted Old Testament text in early Christianity.
The foundational text for the early Christian understanding of Jesus’s divinity was Psalm 110:1. This single verse is the most frequently cited passage from the Hebrew Scriptures in the first hundred years of Christian literature. This wasn't the work of a single author; the verse appears in nearly every stream of early Christian thought, from the Synoptic Gospels and Acts to Paul's letters, Hebrews, and Revelation. Early interpreters also wove it together with other key texts, like Psalm 8:6 and Daniel 7:13-14, creating a powerful web of scriptural support.
This is astonishing. One might expect the central claim of Christianity to be built on Jesus's own teachings in the Gospels or on a grand prophecy from Isaiah, but instead, the intellectual bedrock was a single, somewhat obscure verse from the Psalms. Early Christians saw it as the key that unlocked the mystery of Jesus’s exaltation. But simply quoting a verse wasn't enough. The way they interpreted it was the truly revolutionary act.