At the Origins of Christian Worship: The Context and Character of Earliest Christian Devotion (Biblia.com)

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This volume makes a valuable contribution to the debate about the origins and development of Christianity. Larry Hurtado argues that understanding the nature of Christianity in the first century requires taking full account of the first Christians’ devotional practices because worship was the context in which christological titles and other expressions of faith were given their specific meaning—a...

environment. That is, the earliest Christian images do not appear to have served as objects to which worship was directed.25 This Jewish and Christian lack of cult images, along with their refusal to honour the images of the other gods, was a major reason for the charge against them of ‘atheism’. The ubiquitous use of cult images in Roman-era religion makes the scruples against them among Jews and Christians, even in the Jerusalem temple, very significantly at odds with a major characteristic of

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