Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity by Richard Bauckham

Author:Richard Bauckham [Bauckham, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-11-28T20:42:00+00:00

Petitionary prayer to Jesus is not, as such, worship of Jesus. But two phrases drawn from the language of the Old Testament cult are highly suggestive of the centrality of Jesus as object of religious devotion. First, Acts 13:2 portrays the prophets and teachers at Antioch 'worshipping [leitourgounton] the Lord [Jesus]'. The verb, which in Jewish usage referred to the cultic service of God, must here, in connection with 'fasting, refer to prayer in the broadest sense with Jesus as its focus. The second phrase is more widely used and more significant. In both Acts and Paul (whose usage here certainly reflects pre-Pauline Christian usage)," Christians are those who 'call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ' (1 Cor. 1:2; cf. Rom. 10:12-14; Acts 9:14, 21; 22:16; 2 Tim. 2:22; Hermas, Sim. 9:14:3) 12 The phrase, no doubt drawn into Christian usage especially from Joel 2:32 (Acts 2:21; Rom. 10:13), regularly in the Old Testament refers to the worship of God (e.g. Gen. 4:26; 12:8; 13:4; Ps. 105:1).13 Its early Christian usage indicates a cultic practice of confessing Jesus as Lord that was regarded as the defining characteristic of Christians (cf. Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3; Phil. 2:11). As Hurtado points out, this 'ritual use of Jesus' name reflects an explicit identification of Jesus as an appropriate recipient of such cultic devotion ... It represents the inclusion of Jesus with God as recipient of public, corporate cultic reverence .114 Hurtado also connects it with the wider use of the name of Jesus in early Christian religious practice: baptism, healings, exorcisms 15 In all these cases, there seems to be an association of the Lord (kurios) Jesus with the divine name in the Hebrew Scriptures, often represented in Greek by kurios (while Maranatha may well attest an equivalent association already in Aramaicspeaking Jewish Christianity). As Philippians 2:11 attests, where the divine name appears, worship cannot be far behind. We must reckon with a very early inclusion of Jesus in the identity of the Lord YHWH that integrated Jesus also into the worship of YHWH. This integration was so central as to make 'those who call upon the name of the Lord' a defining characteristic of Christians from a very early date.

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