The Origin Of Divine Christology

This book offers a new contribution by addressing alternative hypotheses and previously neglected evidence using transdisciplinary tools.

The origin and development of divine and resurrection Christologies are among the most important and controversial issues in the study of Christianity. One reason why there is a lack of consensus among scholars—even though they have access to the same historical material—is that different scholars analyze the material differently. Building upon his previous monographs The Origin of Divine Christology (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Routledge, 2020), Andrew Loke demonstrates the fallacies of reasoning in the analyses of the works of numerous scholars such as Bart Ehrman, Paula Fredriksen, David Litwa, Richard Carrier, Raphael Lataster, Daniel Kirk, Matthew Larsen, and Dale Allison. Loke defends his proposal that a sizeable group of earliest Christians perceived that Jesus claimed and showed himself to be truly divine and resurrected, and replies to objections to his previous works. He contributes to the discussion on ancient Jewish monotheism, exalted mediator figures, comparison with Greco-Roman literature, Jesus-mythicism, Markan Christology, the historical reliability of the New Testament, as well as the use of philosophical and theological categories and the use of psychological studies on parallel apparitions, cognitive dissonance, mass hysteria, pareidolia, and memory for the study of early Christology.

Lectures in which the distinguished theologian argues that "development" is closer to the truth than "evolution" as a description of the genesis of Christology.

This work brings to light the Trinitarian riches in Thomas Aquinas's Christology.

In his recent book How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee historian Bart Ehrman explores a claim that resides at the heart of the Christian faith— that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. According to Ehrman, though, this is not what the earliest disciples believed, nor what Jesus claimed about himself. The first response book to this latest challenge to Christianity from Ehrman, How God Became Jesus features the work of five internationally recognized biblical scholars. While subjecting his claims to critical scrutiny, they offer a better, historically informed account of why the Galilean preacher from Nazareth came to be hailed as “the Lord Jesus Christ.” Namely, they contend, the exalted place of Jesus in belief and worship is clearly evident in the earliest Christian sources, shortly following his death, and was not simply the invention of the church centuries later.

This text is designed for students and academics studying the doctrine of the incarnation. James Dunn clarifies in detail the beginnings of the belief in Christ as the Son of God and discusses the historical context of such beliefs. Exploring key titles and passages within the New Testament, he argues that the incarnation cannot simply be understood in terms of the "myth of heavenly or divine being come to earth", but should be grounded in the New Testament context of meaning.

This book is a greatly revised and expanded edition of Richard Bauckham's acclaimed God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (1999), which helped redirect scholarly discussion of early Christology.

This study demonstrates that angel and angel-related traditions, especially those growing from the so-called "Angel of the Lord" in the Hebrew Bible, had a significant impact on the origins and early development of Christology to the point that an Angelomorphic Christology is discernable in several first century texts. Significant effort is given to tracing the antecedents of this Christology in the angels and divine hypostases of the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Jewish literature. The primary content of this volume is the presentation of pre-150 CE textual evidence of Angelomorphic Christology. This religio-historical study does not spawn a new Christology among the many scholarly "Christologies" already extant. Instead, it shows the interrelationship of various Christological trajectories and their adaptation from Jewish angelomorphic traditions.