Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity. Edited by Matthew Novenson

Abstract

This volume publishes papers from a colloquium at the University of Edinburgh in April 2019 and is dedicated to the (now late) Larry W. Hurtado, to whose work many of the essays pay homage. After an introduction that reviews the achievements and new questions generated by (what Martin Hengel dubbed) the ‘New History of Religions school’, most of the remaining 12 essays pertain to the character and origins of the belief in Christ’s divinity. Hurtado’s piece offers autobiographical reflections on the origins of the new ‘Schule’ and responds briefly to some criticisms of his own proposals, especially those who think he gives insufficient attention to the formative role of Greek and Roman phenomena (Dieter Zeller, Yabro Collins, Michael Peppard, David Litwa). In a provocative essay, Matthew Novenson evaluates Jewish monotheism in light of Robert Parker’s proposal that there was a ‘universal polytheism’, with ‘a shared assumption that … at bottom the gods you worship are also the gods I do or might worship’ (Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 2017, p. 76). Against the usual view that Jews were exceptional, Novenson finds evidence that some identified their God with Zeus (or Dionysus or Helios) and that others assimilated gentile gods to their own tradition, by means of angelology, demonology, or following the method established by Euhemerus (Isis is Eve, Serapis is Joseph, and so forth).