This sprawling (almost 700 pages) collection of essays covers a lifetime of important scholarship by Hurtado, whose books "Lord Jesus Christ" and "Destroyer of the Gods" have had a huge impact on biblical studies.
One of the essays challenges the liberal (for example, Ehrman) argument that the earliest Christians thought of Christ as merely another angel. Hurtado notes that Bauckham "pointed to two striking instances where the seer's misguided attempts to offer worship to the angel...are forbidden by the angel" (p 99).
As Hurtado pointed out, devotion to an angel was possible, but worship was reserved "for the one God" (p 125).
Hurtado contends that Jewish monotheism resisted "worshiping any figure but the one God of Israel" (p 215), and Second Temple Jews did not accept even the Maccabaean heroes or angels as rightful recipients of cultic worship. These beliefs were held to firmly by the earliest Christians, which makes their including Jesus Christ as worthy of worship so different and so significant.
In one essay, Hurtado argues that he Aramaic maranatha in 1 Cor destroys Bousset's theories (p 42).
"This reverence if Jesus is completely unlike anything we know in the pagan movements of the Roman era. Jesus is not reverenced as a new god, or a deified hero...Instead, Jesus is incorporated into an exclusivistic devotion in which there is room only for one God and one Lord...binitarian exclusivistic monotheism" (p 325).
Among scholars "the clear majority view Mark's purpose being more didactic than polemical, and so see the Twelve as functioning to provide the readers with lessons in discipleship" (p 433).
To do justice "to all the evidence regarding the Twelve in GMark, we must conclude that 1) Mark portrays them as having two roles, both positive and negative, and 2) that it is in this duality that the evangelist's purpose is served and disclosed...GMark's readers were likely expected to see the Twelve as representative of the Christian calling to follow Jesus and to participate in the mission of the gospel" (p 437).
Regarding the women, the tomb, and the ending of Mark, Hurtado points out that in the Roman era, it was regarded as more respectful women if you avoided mentioning their names in a public sphere. This is another reason the naming of the woman at the end of Mark is important.
Hurtado rejects the view of some that when the women were silent they were disobedient. On the contrary, by studying other uses of the phrase Hurado contends the "phrase indicates that they did not broadcast their experience beyond those to whom they were sent. Hurtado finds that "the women's testimony was known within Christian circles as part of the tradition associated with the resurrection of Jesus" (p457).
Hurtado points out that it is very significant that "the earliest key readings of GMark from the first century, represented in GMatthew and GLuke, reflect a very positive understanding of the ending of GMark" (p 458).
In a brilliant essay about Acts, Hurtado notes the significance of "the Greek word Nazoraios (the Nazarene)...applied to Jesus...but not elsewhere in the NT" (p 513). Another title for Jesus in Acts that also
likely "stemmed from early circles of Jewish believers is the Greek word pais,...'child'...the application of the term to David...suggests that pais could sometimes carry a royal-messianic flavor" (p 514).
Hurtado argues that Acts "uses terms dropped out of Christian discourse as the Christian movement became dominantly Gentile" (p 515). Acts presents Jesus as the "true Messiah of Israel, the fulfilment of OT prophecy"(p 522).
Hurtado concludes that in Romans and Galatians "Paul's assertions of Jesus' divine sonship" cannot be "derived from pagan ideas of divine sonship" (p 531).
A devotion to Jesus "appeared quickly and very early, more like a volcanic eruption than an than an incremental process" (p 583).
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