Lord Jesus Christ: Devotions to Jesus in Earliest Christianity.

Sullivan, Kevin P.

LORD JESUS CHRIST: DEVOTION TO JESUS IN EARLIEST CHRISTIANITY. Larry W. Hurtado. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Pp. xx + 746. $55.

Larry Hurtado seeks "to offer a full-scale analysis of the origin, development, and diversification of devotion to Christ in the crucial first two centuries of the Christian movement (ca. 30-170 C.E.)" (2). As H. himself notes, such a task has not been undertaken since Wilhelm Bousset's Kyrios Christos (1913), but is now prudent given both new evidence (e.g., the Nag Hammadi literature) and the need for a reassessment of a number of Bousset's positions. In his opening chapter, H. locates his examination within scholarship relative to the positions of Bousset and the Religions-geschichtliche Schule, while also outlining the scope, terminology, and method to be used throughout. His ten chapters offer a compelling argument for seeing early Christian devotion to Jesus as an extremely early, unparalleled phenomenon that occurred within an exclusively monotheistic framework.

The key to understanding the book lies in being clear about what H. means by "devotion." He states at the outset that "devotion" is his "portmanteau word for the beliefs and related religious actions that constituted the expressions of religious reverence of early Christians" (3). Thus, he aims to examine the ancient sources for evidence of both beliefs and practices.

The ancient sources are then grouped together into chapters by chronology, genre, and provenance. The aim of each chapter is to uncover evidence for early devotion to Jesus Christ. "Early Pauline Christianity" is the first material examined (chap. 2). H. does not seek to be exhaustive in his coverage of the Pauline material, but instead aims to find "the beliefs and practices reflected in his [Paul's] letters ... that likely characterized Pauline congregations by the mid-first century" (153). From this starting point, he then examines the relationship of the Pauline material to that of "Judean Jewish Christianity" (chap. 3).

A significant portion of the book is then given to discussion of the evidence from what H. calls "Jesus books," by which he means all the earliest Christian writings about Jesus, both canonical and extra-canonical. Chapter 4 covers the hypothetical text Q, which, H. argues, was not the product of a distinct Christian community but is nonetheless "an important body of material" (256). Chapters 5 through 7 examine in turn the Synoptic Gospels, Johannine Christianity, and some extra-canonical sources. The evidence from the "Jesus books" suggests to H. that significantly different views about Jesus were circulating by the end of the first century into the early second century. Such variety led to the Christological debates observed in the sources from the second century. Ultimately, from this milieu would come what H. calls a "proto-orthodoxy," which contended with other heterodox forms of Christ devotion. The examination of Christ devotion during this pivotal period is undertaken in the remaining chapters, which look at the second century (chap. 8), Valentinianism (chap. 9) and finally "Proto-orthodox Devotion" (chap. 10).

Since a brief review cannot do justice to a work of this magnitude, my aim here is modest. I wish to raise just two points. First, a question of method: how certain can we be of the actual meaning of religious practice of the early Christians based on textual evidence? While one might accept H.'s definition of "devotion" as including both belief and practice, it is difficult to know whether what is said in various texts is what actually happened on the ground. And even if we can be certain of what actually happened, how certain can we be that venerative actions correlated to acceptance of Jesus as God? Ultimately, we must acknowledge that we cannot be entirely certain of the correlation between beliefs as outlined in texts and actual practice. Thus, the reader will need to consider the merits and limitations of this categorization

Second, on several occasions H. seemed terse (and even dismissive) in his engagement with other scholars' work. Certainly, interests of space come into play in a work already very long; however, having engaged several of the same scholars in my own research, it seemed that H.'s treatment of other positions was not entirely fair. In particular, I note his treatment of C. Fletcher-Louis's work on issues of Jewish monotheism (37-42); the choice not to engage any scholars that oppose the existence of Q (217); and also the presentation of the positions of G. Riley and A. DeConick on the Gospel of Thomas (475-79).

The promotional material for H.'s book states that it is "sure to replace Wilhelm Bousset's Kyrios Christos (1913) as the standard work on the subject." Only time will tell, but in the interim it is clear that H. has provided scholars with a study of impressive scope and erudition that should be read and engaged by all those seeking to understand the origins of Christianity.

KEVIN P. SULLIVAN

Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, Ill.