How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee

NOTES

Chapter 1: Divine Humans in Ancient Greece and Rome

1.Those who have read my other books will recognize the story, as I have had occasion to tell it before. See my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2012), 32–34.

2.Translation of F. C. Conybeare, Philostratus: The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950), vol.2.

3.Since Philostratus was writing after the Gospels were in circulation, it is entirely possible—as many critics have pointed out—that he was influenced by their portrayal of Jesus and that, as a result, he himself created the similarities between his account of Apollonius and the Gospel stories. That may indeed be true, but my point is that his pagan readers would have had no difficulty accepting the idea that Apollonius was another “divine man,” like others who were widely known.

4.Translation of A. D. Melville, Ovid: Metamorphoses (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986). All quotations are drawn from Book VIII, 190–93.

5.My friend Michael Penn, professor of religious studies at Mount Holyoke, informs me that there are indeed cases of twins from different fathers—a phenomenon known as heteropaternal superfecundation—but the woman’s two eggs need to be fertilized within a relatively short interval from one another. Amphytrion had been away at war presumably for several months.

6.According to the Greek biographer of philosophers, Diogenes Laertius, Plato was sometimes considered to have been a son of the God Apollo (Lives of Eminent Philosophers 3.1–2, 45).

7.Translation of B. O. Foster, Livy: History of Rome Books I–II, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1919).

8.For Suetonius, I am using the translation of Catharine Edwards, Suetonius: Lives of the Caesars (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000).

9.For the information in this paragraph, see John Collins, in Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 53.

10.There are numerous valuable studies of the emperor cult. For one that has become something of a classic of modern scholarship, see S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984). More recently, see Jeffrey Brodd and Jonathan Reed, Rome and Religion: A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on the Imperial Cult (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011). Among studies of the imperial cult in relation to early Christianity, the following two are particularly noteworthy: Steven J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), and most recently, Michael Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in Its Social and Political Context (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011).

11.Translation of H. E. Butler, The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1920).

12.For more on this point of view, see the older classic study by Lily Ross Taylor, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (Middletown, CT: American Philological Association, 1931).

13.See the discussions in the books cited in note 10.

14.From Price, Rituals and Power, 31.

15.From Price, Rituals and Power, 54.

16.Translation of A. M. Harmon, Lucian V, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1936).

17.Price, Rituals and Power, 55.

18.For the idea of a divine pyramid, see Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1983).

19.For a discussion of this view, and why it is a mistake to assume it when dealing with antiquity, see especially Peppard, Son of God, 9–49.

Chapter 2: Divine Humans in Ancient Judaism

1.For an authoritative account, see E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992).

2.See the scholarly discussions of Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Angel Veneration and Christology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), and Charles A. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998).

3.The HarperCollins Study Bible, ed. Harold W. Attridge (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2006), 88.

4.Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology, 68.

5.It is important to note that the term satan in Job 1 and 2 is not a proper name but means the accuser. It refers to an angel in God’s divine court who is in the role of “prosecutor.”

6.Translation of J. Z. Smith in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol.1, Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), slightly modified.

7.Translation of A. F. J. Klijn, “2 (Syriac Apocalypse of) Baruch,” in Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol.1.

8.Translation of F. I. Andersen, in Charlesworth, ed., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol.1.

9.Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (London: SCM Press, 1988), 82.

10.Translation of E. Isaac, in Charlesworth, ed., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol.1.

11.See John J. Collins, “Pre-Christian Jewish Messianism: An Overview,” in Magnus Zetterholm, ed., The Messiah in Early Judaism and Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 16.

12.Michael A. Knibb, “Enoch, Similitudes of (1 Enoch 37–71),” in John C. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow, The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 587.

13.Knibb, “Enoch, Similitudes,” 587.

14.Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977).

15.For a slightly fuller treatment, with a bibliography for more complete accounts, see Thomas Tobin, “Logos,” in David Noel Freedman, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol.4 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 348–56.

16.All translations of Philo are from C. D. Yonge, The Works of Philo (reprint ed.: Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993).

17.John J. Collins, “The King as Son of God,” in Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 1–24.

Chapter 3: Did Jesus Think He Was God?

1.Dale Allison, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998); Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999); Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews (New York: Vintage, 1999); John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 4 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991–); E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 1993); Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (London: Collins, 1973).

2.I discuss these discrepancies, contradictions, and historical problems at length in Jesus, Interrupted (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009).

3.Among the classic studies are Alfred B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960), and Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982). For a recent survey of all the important studies, see Stephen E. Young, Jesus Tradition in the Apostolic Fathers (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).

4.See my discussion in Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet, or, for a thorough treatment, vol.1 of Meier, A Marginal Jew.

5.See the discussion of the Pharisees in E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992).

6.For a fuller account see my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet.

7.I have seen this argument in various forms over the years, and I have to admit that I do not know who originally came up with it.

8.See my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet.

9.See John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1995).

10.See my book The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), 153–70.

11.I do not think that the tradition of the “triumphal entry,” where Jesus rides into Jerusalem to the acclaim of the crowd who acclaim him the messiah who is to come, can be historical. If such a scene had really happened, Jesus would have been arrested on the spot.

12.See the work cited in note 10.

Chapter 4: The Resurrection of Jesus: What We Cannot Know

1.Scholars are in wide agreement that the final twelve verses of Mark were added by a late scribe. The book almost certainly ended at 16:8. See my discussion in Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 65–68.

2.Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 106.

3.Scholars speak of the seven undisputed Pauline letters: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. The other six do not appear to have been written by Paul. See my book Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2011), 92–114.

4.Historians have had numerous debates about the chronology of Paul’s life, but it is reasonably clear that he became a follower of Jesus two or three years after Jesus’s death, based on the chronological details he provides in some of his letters, especially in Gal. 1–2, where he writes such things as “three years later” and “after fourteen years.” When one crunches the numbers, it appears relatively certain that if Jesus died around the year 30, Paul became his follower around the year 32 or 33.

5.Daniel A. Smith, Revisiting the Empty Tomb: The Early History of Easter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 3.

6.For someone who wants to take the account as historical, the best solution is that Joseph was acting out of a sense of piety, wanting to provide a decent burial for someone—even an enemy—because that was the “right” thing to do. But nothing in Mark’s account leads to this suggestion, so within the narrative itself, where the burial tradition comes on the heels of the trial tradition, it appears to create an anomaly.

7.Bruce Metzger, “Names for the Nameless in the New Testament: A Study in the Growth of Christian Tradition,” in Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann, eds., Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, 2 vols. (Münster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1970), 1:79–99.

8.John Dominic Crossan, “The Dogs Beneath the Cross,” chap.6 in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1994).

9.Cited in Martin Hengel, Crucifixion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 76.

10.Translation from The Works of Horace, Project Guttenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14020/14020-h/14020-h.htm#THE_FIRST_BOOK_OF_THE_EPISTLES_OF_HORACE.

11.Cited in Hengel, Crucifixion, 54.

12.Translation from Robert J. White, The Interpretation of Dreams: Oneirocritica by Artemidorus (Torrance, CA: Original Books, 1975).

13.Hengel, Crucifixion, 87.

14.Quoted in Crossan, “Dogs,” 159.

15.Translation of Charles Sherman, Diodorus Siculus, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1952).

16.Translation of J. W. Cohoon and H. Lamar Crosby, Dio Chrysostom, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1940).

17.Translation of Clifford H. Moore and John Jackson, Tacitus Histories, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1931).

18.Translation of William Whiston, The Works of Flavius Josephus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979).

19.Crossan, “Dogs,” 158.

20.Translation of E. Mary Smallwood, Legatio ad Gaium (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961).

21.See, for example, Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2010), 349–54.

Chapter 5: The Resurrection of Jesus: What We Can Know

1.My thanks to Eric Meyers, scholar of ancient Judaism and archaeologist of Palestine, from crosstown rival Duke, for providing this information in a private correspondence.

2.It is important to note: I am not disputing that Paul and others thought that Jesus was raised on the third day. I’m saying that this view—important because it was a fulfillment of scripture (see pp. 140–41)—may not have arisen until weeks or months later.

3.For the ancient idea that spirit was still made of “stuff,” see Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1995).

4.For a relatively brief overview, see my book Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), chap.6. For the most up-to-date and authoritative treatment, see David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2010).

5.Translation of James Brashler in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 4th ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).

6.See my fuller discussion on pp. 305–7.

7.Dale C. Allison, Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (New York: T & T Clark, 2005).

8.My friend Joel Marcus, New Testament scholar at Duke, has maintained that some apocalyptic Jews may have held an alternative view in which there would be a spiritual, not a physical, resurrection of the dead; he finds this alternative view in the book of Jubilees. If that is true, then this would have been very much the minority view among apocalypticists. And it is not in evidence in the teachings of Jesus, as is clear from his insistence that there will be “eating and drinking” in the kingdom and that people will be “cast out” of the kingdom, and so on. I scarcely need stress that if Jesus (like most apocalypticists) understood that the resurrection would be physical, this too would have been the view of his followers.

9.Richard P. Bentall, “Hallucinatory Experiences,” in Etzel Cardeña, Steven J. Lynn, and Stanley Krippner, eds., Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2000), 86.

10.Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2010); N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).

11.Gerd Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry (New York: Prometheus, 2004), 19.

12.Michael Goulder, “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision,” in Gavin D’Costa, ed., Resurrection Reconsidered (Oxford: One World, 1996), 54–55.

13.Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 298.

14.On visions of Mary, see pp. 198–199; on UFOs, see the fascinating study of Susan A. Clancy, Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2005).

15.See Bentall, “Hallucinatory Experiences.”

16.Bentall, “Hallucinatory Experiences,” 102.

17.Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, pp. 269–82.

18.Bill Guggenheim and Judy Guggenheim, Hello from Heaven! (New York: Bantam, 1995).

19.See, for example, René Laurentin, The Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary Today (Dublin: Veritas, 1990; French original, 1988). The examples that I give below are all drawn from this book.

20.I should stress that Wiebe is not a religious fanatic on a mission. He is chair of the philosophy department at Trinity Western University and is a serious scholar. Still, at the end of the day, he thinks that something “transcendent” has led to some of the modern visions of Jesus that he recounts. In other words, they—or some of them—are veridical.

21.I am not saying that Paul necessarily made up the story of the five hundred himself; he may well have inherited it from an oral tradition. Moreover, there is no telling how traditions such as this come to be made up—but it happens all the time, even in our day and age. It is not always the result of someone “lying” about it. Sometimes stories just get exaggerated or invented.

22.See John J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol.1, Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), n. c2, 387.

23.In this case I am using the term veridical not only to mean that they saw “something” that was really there, but to mean that the something they saw really was Jesus.

24.Some manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke contain an account of Jesus’s ascension in 24:51. As I argue in my book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011), that passage was probably added by scribes; it was not what Luke originally wrote.

Chapter 6: The Beginning of Christology: Christ as Exalted to Heaven

1.See my book Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2011), 92–114.

2.For a standard scholarly treatment, see James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 33–36.

3.You can find discussions of all these issues in any good critical commentary. Two of the most authoritative and hefty are Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), and Joseph Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven, CT: Anchor Bible, 1997).

4.See pp. 76–80.

5.Michael Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in Its Social and Political Context (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011).

6.Cited by Peppard, Son of God, 84.

7.Christiane Kunst, Römische Adoption: Zur Strategie einer Familienorganisation (Hennef: Marthe Clauss, 2005), 294; cited in translation by Peppard, Son of God, 54.

8.Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (London: SCM Press, 1988). A much fuller treatment can be found in his magnum opus, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003).

9.See Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 29–32.

10.See Dunn, Christology in the Making.

11.See Peppard, Son of God, 86–131.

12.See my brief discussion in Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 158–61; for a full discussion at a scholarly level, see my book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011), 73–79.

Chapter 7: Jesus as God on Earth: Early Incantation Christologies

1.See pp. 59–61.

2.Charles A. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 27.

3.I should say that this view of Christ as the chief angel has not always been a popular one among New Testament scholars. In no small measure this is because Christ is never explicitly called an “angel” the way he is called “Son of Man,” “Lord,” “Messiah,” or “Son of God” in the New Testament. This is the view, for example, of D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 158. But more recent research has shown that in part the reason the view of Christ as a preexistent angelic being has not caught on more thoroughly is that researchers think that such a view is inadequately exalted for the early Christians. See, for example, Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology, and Susan R. Garrett, No Ordinary Angel: Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims About Jesus (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2008).

4.See the preceding note.

5.Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology, and Garrett, No Ordinary Angel.

6.Garrett, No Ordinary Angel, 11.

7.See the discussion of Romans 1:3–4 on pp. 218–25.

8.I should stress that even though I am calling this a “poem,” literary scholars in ancient Greece would not have done the same because it does not scan. We do not know what the nonliterary elite (that is, the common people) would have accepted or understood to be poetry—or hymns—simply because we have no record of their views. But whatever we call this unit, it clearly is written in more exalted language than the surrounding parts of the letter, and in English usage we typically consider these kinds of exalted compositions to be poems, whether they scan or not.

9.The fullest and best known is Ralph P. Martin, A Hymn of Christ: Philippians 2:5–11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1997).

10.See the discussion of James D. G. Dunn, “Christ, Adam, and Preexistence,” in Ralph P. Martin and Brian J. Dodd, eds., Where Christology Began: Essays on Philippians 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 74–83.

11.For a discussion of Vollenweider’s views, see the helpful article by Adela Yarbro Collins, “Psalms, Philippians 2:6–11, and the Origins of Christology,” Biblical Interpretation 11 (2002): 361–72.

12.The Tetragrammaton in the Hebrew Bible, YHWH (= Yahweh), which serves as the personal name of God, was translated in the Greek version by the term Kurios, which comes into English as “Lord.” And so, when the text indicates that every tongue will confess that “Jesus is Lord,” it appears to mean that everyone will acknowledge that Jesus has the very name of Yahweh himself. It is important to note, however, that Jesus is still differentiated from God the Father, since all this is to happen to the Father’s “glory.”

13.See the fuller discussions in Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), and Joseph Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven, CT: Anchor Bible, 1997).

14.A famous instance occurs in John 3, in which different translators think Jesus’s words end at 3:15 (before the famous line “For God so loved the world. . . .”), and others think they continue until 3:21. Jesus and the narrator sound so much alike that it is impossible to know for certain where one stops speaking and the other begins.

15.On the problems of using the term poem, see note 8 on p. 381. The same issues apply here as in the case of Phil. 2:6–11.

16.Among the many fine critical commentaries on the Gospel of John that deal with these issues, see especially the classic by Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, vol.1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1996).

17.See note 15 on p. 375.

18.See my discussion in Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (San Francisco: Harper-One, 2011), 112–14; for an extensive scholarly treatment, see my book Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), 171–82.

Chapter 8: After the New Testament: Christological Dead Ends of the Second and Third Centuries

1.See my discussion in Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003).

2.A number of these heresies persisted in marginal groups within Christianity, and some of them reemerged at different times and places over history; but the orthodox church deemed them false paths.

3.Translation of J. H. Macmahon in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante Nicene Fathers, vol.5 (reprint ed.: Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994).

4.Translation of G. A. Williamson, Eusebius: The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine (London: Penguin, 1965).

5.This is the thesis of my book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011).

6.All translations of Ignatius are from my edition in the Loeb Classical Library, The Apostolic Fathers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2003), vol.1.

7.The classic study of Marcion is Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, trans. John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1990; German original of the 2nd ed., 1924). For a modern overview, see my Lost Christianities, 103–9.

8.See Karen King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2003); Michael A. Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996); and David Brakke, The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2010).

9.The traditional story of the discovery can be found in the Introduction by James M. Robinson, in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 4th ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).

10.Translation of Birger Pearson, Nag Hammadi Codex VII (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).

11.I do not mean to say that the books that later became the New Testament which embraced such views—for example, Matthew and Mark—were considered heretical. But when exaltation Christologies were no longer acceptable, these sacred books were interpreted in such a way that they were no longer thought to contain exaltation Christologies.

12.Translation of Peter Holmes in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante Nicene Fathers, vol.3 (reprint ed.: Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994).

13.A view that the Father suffered was not only repugnant because it seemed illogical that the Creator of all would experience pain, but also because in ancient ways of thinking, suffering necessarily involves a personal change (one was not suffering; now one is). But God is unchangeable. And so it was unthinkable that God could suffer. My thanks to Maria Doerfler for this insight.

14.For an account of Origen’s life and teachings, see Joseph W. Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-Century Church (Atlanta: John Knox, 1983).

15.Translation of G. W. Butterworth, Origen: On First Principles (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973).

16.If this notion of the preexistence of souls seems bizarre to some people today, it did not seem altogether odd for ancient thinkers, as it could be found in Greek philosophers such as Plato.

17.One of the reasons Origen’s views came to be so heartily rejected by later orthodox theologians was that his view of the preexistence and “fall” of the souls was considered highly troubling. If these souls fell and were given the chance once again to be saved through the work of Christ, what guarantee could there be that once they were saved and returned to a place in which they contemplate the glories of God forever they would not fall yet again, starting the process over? For some Christian theologians, this view created enormous uncertainties concerning the finality of salvation and the assurance that a blessed eternal life waited for those who believed in Christ.

18.As Larry Hurtado has especially emphasized; see his One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (London: SCM Press, 1988), and Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003).

Chapter 9: Ortho-Paradoxes on the Road to Nicea

1.Translation of Thomas B. Falls, Saint Justin Martyr (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1948).

2.Translation of Russell J. DeSimone, Novatian (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. Press of America, 1974).

3.Translation of Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963).

4.See the discussion in Franz Dünzel, A Brief History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church, trans. John Bowden (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 41–49.

5.Translation of Stuart Hall in J. Stevenson, ed., A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337, rev. ed. (London: SPCK, 1987).

6.Translation of Edward Rochie Hardy, Christology of the Later Fathers (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954).

7.Translation of Andrew S. Jacobs in Bart D. Ehrman and Andrew S. Jacobs, Christianity in Late Antiquity: 300–450 C.E. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).

8.Some scholars have questioned whether the persecution of Christians was actually the intention that lay behind Decius’s edict. The edict required all inhabitants of the empire to perform a sacrifice to the traditional gods and to receive a certificate indicating that they had done so. Christians, of course, were not able to perform the sacrifices because of their religious commitments, and they were punished upon their refusal. The question is whether the point of the edict was to weed out Christians or instead to affirm the importance of pagan religious ritual. Either way, Christians who refused to follow the dictates of the edict suffered as a consequence.

9.On the growth rate of early Christianity, see Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1984).

10.Translation of Averil Cameron and Stuart Hall, The Life of Constantine (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).

11.For a brief and precise discussion, see Dünzel, Brief History, 49–60; and Joseph F. Kelly, The Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church: A History (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 11–25. For a scholarly assessment of the theological issues, see Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 1–61.

12.Translation from J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3rd ed. (London: Longman, 1972).

13.See the books cited in note 11 above.

Epilogue

1.Among the classic studies of Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity and the rise of Christian anti-Judaism, still very much worth reading, are Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations Between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (135–425), trans. H. McKeating (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986; French original, 1964); Rosemary Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (New York: Seabury, 1974); and John Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983).

2.Translation of Gerald F. Hawthorn, “A New English Translation of Melito’s Paschal Homily,” in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975).

3.See Ruether, Faith and Fratricide. I rely on her account here.

4.Some scholars have questioned whether Ambrose actually played as significant a role in this controversy as he contends in these letters. However one decides the issue, it is quite clear that Christian leaders had assumed previously unheard-of power in their relationship to the state authorities by this time.

5.In addition to Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), see the following two useful anthologies of texts from the period, with introductions: Richard A. Norris, The Christological Controversy (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), and William G. Rusch, The Trinitarian Controversy (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980).

6.Martin Hengel, “Christological Titles in Early Christianity,” in Studies in Early Christology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), 383.