Larry Hurtado

Larry Hurtado (1943-2019) was a Canadian-American New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity whose work significantly impacted understanding of early Christian devotion to Jesus and its implications for monotheism. Professor Emeritus of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of Edinburgh, Hurtado pioneered research on early high Christology, arguing that worship of Jesus as divine emerged remarkably early in the Christian movement, within the first decades after Jesus' death. His influential works, including "Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity" (2003) and "How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?" (2005), challenged evolutionary models of Christological development. Hurtado's concept of "binitarian worship" demonstrated how early Christians maintained Jewish monotheism while incorporating Jesus into their devotional practices, reshaping scholarly understanding of how Christian theology of God emerged from its Jewish matrix.