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Listening to Pre-New Testament Christian Sayings! - Gary Habermas, Habermas said that someone (who name was not remembered) opined that “The earliest Christology is the highest Christology.” So I googled the question: “Who said or wrote that the earliest Christology is the highest Christology.” And the answer was suggested, absent a direct quote, that “The idea that the earliest Christology is the highest Christology is often attributed to New Testament scholars Martin Hengel and Larry Hurtado. Instead of being a specific, direct quote, it is a summary of their influential argument that high Christology—the belief in Jesus’s divinity—did not evolve slowly over time but was a rapid and immediate development within the earliest Christian movement.”
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So, I asked ChatGPT and got this: “Short answer: there isn’t a single canonical “who said that” line, but the slogan sums up a view argued most prominently by Martin Hengel, Larry Hurtado, and Richard Bauckham.
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Bauckham actually uses the phrasing:
“Thus the earliest christology was already in nuce the highest christology.”
He ties this to Psalm 110 and Jesus’ inclusion in the unique divine identity. (euangelizomai.blogspot.com) -
Hengel is widely credited with the thesis (even when not in those exact words): that the crucial developments in Christology happened very early (within the first decades). See summaries of his “early high” stance and collections like Studies in Early Christology. (postost.net)
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Hurtado framed it as “early high Christology”: devotional practices and confessional language that ascribe to Jesus honors due to God from the earliest strata (e.g., 40s CE), arguing this wasn’t a slow, later divinization. (Larry Hurtado’s Blog)
For context on the broader debate (including non-EHCC voices), see quick overviews by Bart Ehrman noting how very early some high claims appear in Paul (Phil 2), even if scholars differ on how that happened. (The Bart Ehrman Blog)
Bottom line: The tidy slogan is most closely quotable from Bauckham; the larger idea is strongly associated with Hengel and Hurtado.
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I recently read Bauckham’s God Crucified, and it is outstanding. Our "imposed Greek lenses” of questions, categories, and modes of thought prevent us from seeing what would have been obvious to a 1st-century Jewish audience. The Greeks were asking “what,” but the Jews were asking “who.” There is a wealth of implications to uncover here, including the “I-Thou” from Martin Buber, neurobiology from Dr. Iain McGilchrist, the role of the ancient creeds (see N.T. Wright, How God Became King), and how we risk ignoring the questions being asked in our culture for the sake of the “questions that we want to answer.”
Huh – Barnes and Noble doesn’t have it. So do I lower myself and order from Amazon (I presume they have it; a lot of publishing contracts require a book to appear there first or even exclusively)?
Don’t know. I got it from Amazon for my Kindle. I’m subscribed at bookbub.com, and get really cheap book offers. Sometimes one is an absolute gem. This is one of them.
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I’m frugal today; I asked ChatGPT: “What claims does Richard Bauckman make in His book “God Crucified”?” and got this:
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“Here’s the nutshell of Richard Bauckham’s thesis in God Crucified:
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#“Divine identity,” not “divine nature”.
Bauckham says Second-Temple Jews distinguished Israel’s God from everything else by who God is (unique identity), especially as sole Creator and sovereign Ruler, more than by abstract “what-ness.” The NT includes Jesus within that unique divine identity—not as a secondary/intermediary being. (Google Books) -
Earliest Christian faith already had “high Christology”.
High Christology (Jesus included in God’s identity) appears at the earliest stratum, not as a late development. Bauckham opposes two common models: (a) a “break” from Jewish monotheism, and (b) development via “intermediary” figures (angels, exalted humans). (Academia) -
Monotheism and worship.
For Jews, exclusive worship functioned as the practical boundary of monotheism. The NT’s worship of Jesus (e.g., prayers, doxologies) therefore signals his inclusion in God’s identity. (Patheos) -
Jesus shares God’s unique prerogatives.
NT writers ascribe to Jesus what marks Israel’s God as unique—universal sovereignty, participation in creation, application of YHWH-texts to Jesus, and the divine throne imagery (“sitting on God’s throne”). These are identity-markers, not mere functions. (Alastair’s Adversaria) -
Shema reconfigured in Christ.
Key passages (e.g., 1 Cor 8:6) split and re-unite the Shema, identifying the one God as “one God, the Father … and one Lord, Jesus Christ”—a decisive instance of Jesus’ inclusion in the divine identity. (This is a flagship example across Bauckham’s papers summarizing God Crucified.) (ntslibrary.com) -
“God crucified” as revelation of who God is.
The cross is not a scandal to be explained away but the definitive revelation of God’s identity: the exalted one is the crucified one. Early Christians came to re-state God’s identity in light of Jesus’ humiliation–exaltation. (Books & Culture) -
Across the NT (incl. Hebrews),
Bauckham extends the argument across corpora (e.g., Hebrews): “Son,” “Lord,” and “High Priest” together depict Jesus as sharing divine identity while fully sharing human solidarity. (The Gospel Coalition) -
Against intermediary/angelic models.
He rejects explaining Jesus’ status by analogy to principal angels or exalted humans; Jesus’ profile doesn’t fit those categories and instead inhabits God’s own unique identity. (the archives near Emmaus)
If you want, I can pull 3–4 concrete NT case studies (e.g., 1 Cor 8:6; Phil 2:6-11; Heb 1; Rev 5) and show exactly how Bauckham thinks each text “includes” Jesus in Israel’s God.
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It’s not showing on bookbub. 
I’m not sure what I clicked but I seem to have just bought a Kindle copy I can read on my laptop.
First class. Black Bart is gold. You cannot tell that he is unfaithed, because of meaningless suffering. He gives the greatest possible good will to Paul.
If he came at all, which is moot for me, he came in to and with the dismal swamp of ANE cultures with feet of clay, and a moral head in the divine clouds.
No, the sales come and go…so I get the daily email and pick and choose as stuff comes up.
Second link is 404.
The Theology of the Book of Revelation is the first and only book of Bauckham’s I had ever read before this past summer.
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