Before
the New Testament or the creeds of the church were written, the
devotional practices of the earliest Christians indicate that they
worshipped Jesus alongside the Father.
Larry W. Hurtado has been one of the leading scholars on early Christology for decades. In Honoring the Son: Jesus in Earliest Christian Devotional Practice,
Hurtado helps readers understand early Christology by examining not
just what early Christians believed or wrote about Jesus, but what their
devotional practices tell us about the place of Jesus in early
Christian worship.
Drawing on his extensive knowledge of early
Christian origins and scholarship on New Testament Christology, Hurtado
examines the distinctiveness of early Christian worship by comparing it
to both Jewish worship patterns and worship practices within the broader
Roman-era religious environment. He argues that the inclusion of the
risen Jesus alongside the Father in early Christian devotional practices
was a distinct and unique religious phenomenon within its ancient
context. Additionally, Hurtado demonstrates that this remarkable
development was not invented decades after the resurrection of Christ as
some scholars once claimed. Instead, the New Testament suggests that
Jesus-followers, very quickly after the resurrection of Christ, began to
worship the Son alongside the Father.
Honoring the Son offers a look into the worship habits of the earliest Christians to understand the place of Jesus in early Christian devotion.
