The Origins of the Worship of Christ

Abstract

"The great German scholar Johannes Weiss called the worship of Christ 'the most significant step of all in the history of the origins of Christianity'.' The American scholar David Aune has written, 'Perhaps the single most important historical development within the early church was the rise of the cultic worship of the exalted Jesus within the primitive Palestinian church.'2 In this essay I wish to discuss the origins of this fascinating feature of early Christianity. I begin with a quotation from 1 Corinthians 8:5-6, from a letter of the apostle Paul written c. AD 52-55, scarcely 20 years after the death of Jesus. "