Johnnie Ellington II August 18, 2015 at 2:19pm · The Alexandrians pray to Jesus, whereas in Edessa all prayers are addressed solely to God the Father...

Johnnie Ellington II

August 18, 2015 at 2:19pm · 

The Alexandrians

pray to Jesus, whereas in Edessa all prayers are addressed solely to God the Father.... Both are

shocked at the practices and beliefs of the others.

Given this great diversity among early Christians, at what point did the doctrine of Jesus’

divinity actually develop? And what were the factors contributing to the spread and

eventual formalization of this doctrine?

Searching for the answers to these questions is especially difficult because there are no

known surviving documents from the ‘Mother Church’, the original Christian community

in Jerusalem. For an extensive discussion of this point, see S.G.F. Brandon’s book JESUS

AND THE ZEALOTS (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967, pp. 148-159). We will review his

arguments in a few pages.

But first, we need to look more closely at the differences that Paul had with other

followers of Christ. Remember that Paul never met Jesus, nor did he study with the

original apostles. His knowledge of Jesus and his teachings came mostly through

personal inspiration. Hyam Maccoby states (THE MYTHMAKER. Harper and Row, 1987,

pp. 3-4):

Paul claimed that his interpretations were not just his own invention, but had come to him by

personal inspiration; he claimed that he had personal acquaintance with the resurrected Jesus,

even though he had never met him during his lifetime. Such acquaintance, he claimed, gained

through visions and transports, was actually superior to acquaintance with Jesus during his

lifetime, when Jesus was much more reticent about his purposes. Clearly Paul, however good his motivations, could not pass on to us the exact words or

actions of Jesus during the years he taught on earth. He had no way of knowing exactly

what they were.

It is inevitable that he would be in some conflict with those who were actually with Jesus

during those years. Their experiences and their memories of a flesh and blood man would

necessarily be different from the Jesus he knew from his visions