Source: Excerpts from Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Essays on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Paternoster, 2008).
How_Early_Christians_Included_Jesus_in_God_s_Identity.m4a
This academic discussion centers on the crucial link between Second Temple Jewish monotheism and the origins of New Testament Christology, which concerns how early Christians understood Jesus's relationship to God and his potential divinity. The text outlines two main scholarly approaches: one that assumes a 'strict' monotheism made attributing divinity to Jesus impossible without a radical break from Judaism, and another that suggests a 'flexible' monotheism accommodated intermediary, semi-divine figures that served as precedents for Christology. Arguing against both, the author proposes that Jewish monotheism was indeed "strict" but defines God's unique identity not by metaphysical essence, but by the criteria of being the sole Creator of all things and sole Ruler of all things, criteria that required exclusive worship. The central purpose is to show that early Christians did not use a category of semi-divine figures for Jesus, but rather integrated Jesus into the unique identity of the one God by applying these established Jewish criteria, particularly distinguishing between unambiguously created beings (like angels) and divine aspects (like Wisdom and Word).
The earliest followers of Jesus were devout, monotheistic Jews. Their faith was defined by an unwavering allegiance to the one and only God, the God of Israel, a belief recited twice daily in the Shemaʾ: “Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one.” How, then, could these same people begin to worship Jesus of Nazareth as divine without shattering the very foundation of their worldview? This question presents a profound historical and theological puzzle.
For years, scholars have offered two primary solutions. The first suggests that in treating Jesus as divine, the first Christians made a radical break from their Jewish faith, abandoning its strict monotheism. The second, more recent view argues that Second Temple Jewish monotheism wasn't as "strict" as we assume; it was a flexible system with a blurry line between God and other "intermediary" divine beings, creating a ready-made category for Jesus.
According to scholar Richard Bauckham, both answers fail because they are asking the wrong questions, based on a misunderstanding of Jewish monotheism itself. The true answer lies not in finding a pre-existing category for Jesus, but in recovering the precise criteria first-century Jews used to define God’s uniqueness—criteria the first Christians would use in a revolutionary way.