Jesus among the gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World

by Michael F. Bird

After several centuries of controversy, the early church came to an uneasy consensus that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. In his divinity, orthodox Christianity claimed, he shared fully in the nature of the uncreated creator God. But was this doctrinal position crafted from whole cloth in the era of the great ecumenical councils? How did earlier Christ-followers understand Jesus in light of their convictions about the one supreme deity and in the context of a cultural milieu saturated with gods?

In Jesus among the gods, Michael Bird gives renewed attention to divine ontology—what a god is—in relation to literary representations of Jesus. Most studies of the origins of early Christology focus on christological titles, various functions, divine identity, and types of worship. The application of ontological categories to Jesus is normally considered something that only began to happen in the second and third centuries as the early church engaged in platonizing interpretations of Jesus. Bird argues, to the contrary, that ontological language and categories were used to describe Jesus as an eternal, true, and unbegotten deity from the earliest decades of the nascent church.

Through comparison with representative authors such as Philo and Plutarch, and a comprehensive analysis of Jesus and various intermediary figures from Greco-Roman religion and ancient Judaism, Bird demonstrates how early accounts of Jesus both overlapped with and diverged from existing forms of religious expression. However Jesus resembled the various divine agents of Greco-Roman religion and Second Temple Judaism, the chorus of early Christian witnesses held Jesus to be simultaneously an agent of and an analogue with the God of Israel. Among the gods, Jesus stood in clear relief, a conviction that may have been refined over time but that belongs to the emerging heart of Christian confession.

Genres: Christianity, Theology, New Testament, Biblical Studies, History

492 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 15, 2022

About the author

Dr. Michael Bird (Ph.D University of Queensland) is Lecturer in Theology at Ridley Melbourne College of Mission and Ministry. He is the author of several books including Jesus and the Origins of the Gentile Mission (2006), The Saving Righteousness of God (2007), A Bird’s-Eye View of Paul (2008), Colossians and Philemon (2009), Crossing Over Sea and Land: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (2009), and Are You the One Who is to Come? The Historical Jesus and the Messianic Question (2009).

Reviews

[Matthew Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book.

[Sara Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second-to-last chapter is pretty long and dense, so it took me a while to get through. But the last chapter is so helpfully written and summarizes the book so well that I’d say it’s worth the read! Dr. Bird’s knowledge on cultural influences regarding christology is incredibly impressive! I predict I’ll be coming back to this book as a resource in the future!

[Kendall Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book the makes a contribution to current conversations about divine Christology in early Christianity. The most interesting part of the book was Bird's arguments about divine ontology in the ancient world. I found that this part of the book didn't seem to be as integrated with the massive "mega-chapter" on intermediary figures. The discussion of intermediary figures was, in my opinion, bloated and unnecessarily tedious. If the basic comparative point is all we're trying to get out of this, I'm not sure a book-length chapter was exactly necessary. The closing chapter's comments about thinking through hellenistic and jewish influences and comparanda for Christology was nuanced and extremely well-done.

[Charles Meadows · Rating 5 out of 5]

Massively researched tome on the state of Jesus studies. Authors like Richard Bauckham, Larry Hurtado, and NT Wright have opined that the NT suggests Jesus was identified as YHWH very early on, in disagreement with earlier critical scholars who saw this as a late and sequential development. The last decade has brought challenges to Bauckham et al, based on the complicated concept of "divininity" in both the Greco-Roman (divine emperors and different tiers of "gods") and Jewish (angels and divine mediator figures in the Dead Sea Scrolls) worlds. How do these affect what we mean by calling Jesus divine? Bird does a fantastic job of laying this all out.

[Daniel MacDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bird makes a great argument for the uniqueness of Jesus’ divine identity. He’s very clear about the Jewish base and the Greco-Roman influences in speech. This book is mostly filled with data to support his conclusion at the end of chapter 5.

[jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a landmark work of extraordinary scholarship and reasoned argument that I find fully convincing.