Objection · Case 04 · The Trinity
Hurtado was a committed Christian. Don’t his conclusions just match his faith?
One objection from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Response
He was, and that should be said plainly. But his thesis has been tested against the sources by scholars who are not, including Bart Ehrman, who in How Jesus Became God accepts that Jesus was regarded as divine in some sense very early, within the first years after the crucifixion. The disagreement among specialists is about what kind of divinity the first Christians attributed to Jesus, not about whether the devotion was early.
About this exhibit
This objection is to Larry Hurtado, historian of earliest Christianity.
Hurtado’s study of the sources concludes that intense devotion to Jesus, including prayer, hymns, and baptism in his name, appears within the first generation of believers, not as a later…
Under Claim 12: The divinity of Jesus was not invented at the Council of Nicaea; Christians worshiped Jesus as divine long before any council met.