5. The_Early_Christian_Mutation.mp4
5. How_Early_Jews_Started_Worshiping_Jesus.m4a
The source examines the origins of early Christian devotion to Jesus, arguing that it represents a significant mutation in Jewish monotheism. While acknowledging that the Jewish tradition of divine agency, which accommodated a chief agent figure next to God, provided the conceptual groundwork for understanding Jesus' exaltation, the author insists that this was insufficient to explain the unique binitarian shape of early Christian worship. This devotional innovation, which included Christ as an object of cultic veneration through hymns, prayer, and confession, is traced back to the earliest Jewish-Christian communities and is attributed primarily to powerful religious experiences of the risen Jesus, such as visions of his superlative divine glory and authority. Ultimately, the text contends that this binitarian piety arose from these transformative experiences combined with the pressure to remain faithful to the Jewish commitment to the uniqueness and supremacy of the one God.
How did the first followers of Jesus, who were devout monotheistic Jews, begin to worship him alongside the one God they already revered? This question presents a central paradox in the history of Western religion. It wasn't just a matter of new ideas or beliefs; it was a puzzle of religious practice. Within a few short years of Jesus's execution, a community of strict monotheists began to include a second figure at the very center of their devotional life.
This radical shift has often been misunderstood. But by analyzing the earliest Christian evidence, modern scholarship has uncovered a revolutionary story. Here are four of the most surprising and impactful findings about how devotion to Jesus actually began.
A common misconception holds that the worship of Jesus was a late development, a gradual drift away from Jewish monotheism that occurred as pagan, polytheistic converts flooded the new movement. The earliest evidence, however, tells a different, far more radical story.
This "mutation" in devotion began almost immediately—within the first few years after Jesus's execution—and it started among Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians in Palestine. Crucially, the historical record shows this was an internal development within the Jewish tradition of the first century, not an import from the outside. It was a homegrown innovation, a "mutation within that species of religious devotion" that grew directly from Jewish soil.
The binitarian shape of early Christian devotion did not result from a clumsy crossbreeding of Jewish monotheism and pagan polytheism under the influence of gentile Christians too ill-informed about the Jewish heritage to preserve its character. Rather, in its crucial first stages, we have a significantly new but essentially internal development within the Jewish monotheistic tradition.
The most significant change in early Christianity wasn't simply giving Jesus lofty titles like "Messiah" or "Son of God." The true innovation, the one that signals a fundamental shift, was the emergence of new devotional practices that placed Jesus at the center of worship in ways previously reserved for God alone. This reverence wasn't an abstract theological concept; it was a lived, practiced reality at the heart of their community gatherings from the very beginning.