against the influential views of Wilhelm Bousset and the religionsgeschichtliche Schule of a century ago.9 Bousset famously argued that the Christ cult, or the worship of Jesus as divine, first emerged in early “Hellenistic Gentile” circles, under the influence of the pagan, polytheistic environment.10 Larry Hurtado has noted the existence of “principal agents” in monotheistic Jewish texts and notes that they are sometimes given “an amazingly exalted status.”11 He contends that these figures reflect