Studies in Early Christology

Martin Hengel famously said that the earliest Christology was also the highest and more development happened in the first twenty-years of the Christian movement than happened in rest of the formation of christological dogma over the succeeding centuries. Many scholars, such as Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham, have developed and defended his line of enquiry in a burgeoning area known as “early high christology.” However, the claims of “early high christology” have been contested as the nature of Jewish monotheism, Jesus’ self-understanding, the christology of Paul and the Evangelists, and other areas have all been contested (see e.g., Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God). Therefore, the purpose of the Studies in Early Christology (SEC) is to engage in a study of these disputed areas with a view to clarifying the issues, responding to criticisms, furthering the debate, and – most of all – offering compelling accounts of the emergence of early christology/Jesus devotion by Christian groups in the Greco-Roman world.