The Origins of Devotion to Jesus in its Ancient Context

Professor Larry Hurtado has investigated extensively and written about the origins of Christianity

Reverencing Jesus in prayers, hymns, and other devotional actions may be so familiar a part of Christian life and worship that we may not realize how much it was an innovation in the historical setting in which it first appeared.  To be sure, in the larger Roman religious environment of the early first century A.D. there were many deities and divinized human figures, all of whom received worship of various types in the general populace.  But the Jesus-movement (which became “Christianity”) emerged in the more specific setting of ancient Jewish tradition, in which the exclusivity of the one biblical deity was of paramount concern.  In Jewish practice, public worship, including especially sacrifice, was to be restricted solely to the God of Israel, and it was considered idolatry to worship any other figure.  The many gods and deified heroes of the larger Roman world were regarded in Jewish tradition as false and blasphemous.  In this context, the inclusion of Jesus in the worship practices of the early circles of the Jesus-movement was a remarkable and, indeed, unique development.