STUDIES IN
EARLY CHRISTOLOGY

MARTIN HENGEL

Published by T&T Clark International

A Continuum imprint

The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

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Copyright © T&T Clark Ltd, 1995

First published 1995

Reprinted 1998, 2001

This edition published 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrievel system, without permisson in writing from the publishers.

Figures 1 and 2, pp. 177–78, copyright © O. Keel, 1972.

Reprinted with permisson

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0567042804 (paperback)

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Contents

Foreword

1 Jesus, the Messiah of Israel

2 Jesus as Messianic Teacher of Wisdom and the Beginnings of Christology

3 ‘Sit at My Right Hand!’

4 The Song about Christ in Earliest Worship

5 The Dionysiac Messiah

6 The Kingdom of Christ in John

7 Christological Titles in Early Christianity

Index of Modern Authors

Index of Names and Subjects

Index of Chief Passages Cited

to

CHARLES KINGSLEY BARRETT

in gratitude

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Foreword

Christology, the doctrine concerning God’s revelation in Christ and the salvation wrought through Christ, constitutes the core of Christian theology and belongs to the centre of the church’s proclamation. This significance is already evident in the writings of the first ‘theologian’ Paul, who says of himself that on the way to Damascus he received the gospel ‘through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 1:12) when ‘God chose … to reveal his Son in me’ (Gal. 1:16). When the apostle Paul refers in his letters to ‘the gospel of God’1 or, more frequently, to ‘the gospel of Christ’,2 the basic notion of God’s self-revelation is being cast in terms of the inseparable ‘solidarity’ of the Father and Son, an idea which later would come to characterize the trinitarian understanding of God in Christianity. In Paul both the Father and Son can be addressed and invoked as ‘Kyrios’, and sometimes it is unclear (perhaps intentionally so) just which one is intended. Further, to a certain extent both are similarly addressed as the coming judge3 and can be credited with the opus proprium Dei, i.e. creation itself.4 The Father has sent his Son into the world, and the Son is reconciling the present fallen world to the Father through his death on the cross. In restoring the world to the Father, the Son assumes the Father’s glory, though, to be sure, this all happens εἰς δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦ πατρός (Phil. 2:11). We may be reasonably certain, then, that this first Christian author and theologian, whose unique—because apostolic—authority spans into the present, tells in his writing of an event between God and humanity, between heaven and earth; it is an event of incomparable drama with a programmatic comprehensiveness which supersedes anything ...