1st AD Palestinian Jews Worship Jesus as YHWH!

One of the clearest evidences that Jesus was already being worshiped as YHWH by his Jewish followers in Israel and Jerusalem comes from what the Apostle Paul wrote in his first epistle to the Corinthians. Scholars typically date it around 53-55 AD, less than 20 years of Jesus’ physical, bodily resurrection.

At the conclusion of the letter, Paul breaks out in a prayer to the risen Jesus where he employs an Aramaic expression to do so. The Apostle even transliterates the Aramaic phrase for his Greek speaking audience:   

“If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed.^[a] Marana tha. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.” 1 Corinthians 16:22-23

Footnotes

16:22 Accursed: literally, “anathema.” This expression (cf. 1 Cor 12:3) is a formula for exclusion from the community; it may imply here a call to self-examination before celebration of the Eucharist, in preparation for the Lord’s coming and judgment (cf. 1 Cor 11:17–34). Marana tha: an Aramaic expression, probably used in the early Christian liturgy. As understood here (“O Lord, come!”), it is a prayer for the early return of Christ. If the Aramaic words are divided differently (Maran atha, “Our Lord has come”), it becomes a credal declaration. The former interpretation is supported by what appears to be a Greek equivalent of this acclamation in Rev 22:20 “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE; emphasis mine)

“If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed.^[a] O Lord, come!” 1 Corinthians 16:22

Footnotes

1 Corinthians 16:22 Accursed: = “anathema,” separated from the community. O Lord, come!: in Aramaic Marana tha: a liturgical acclamation in the Aramaic-speaking communities of Palestine. New Catholic Bible (NCB; emphasis mine)

The fact that Paul uses an Aramaic term to invoke the exalted and heavenly Christ to a Greek-speaking audience without having to explain the meaning of it, indicates that this was something already entrenched in the communal worship of the early Christians. It demonstrates that the worship of Christ began among his Aramaic-speaking Jewish followers and was then passed on and taught to their Gentile converts.

We have another early source confirming this, namely, the Didache which may have been written around the middle of the first century, and therefore was composed while some of the Apostles were still alive. The Didache is a manual detailing the dos and don’ts of Christian living, and the practices which the Churches were to observe and how to observe them.

Note what this document says in respect to the partaking of the Eucharist and Christ’s return to judge the antichrist:  

Chapter 10. Prayer After Communion

But after you are filled, thus give thanks: We thank You, holy Father, for Your holy name which You caused to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality, which You made known to us through Jesus Your Servant (tou paidos sou); to You be the glory forever. You, Master almighty, created all things for Your name's sake; You gave food and drink to men for enjoyment, that they might give thanks to You; but to us You freely gave spiritual food and drink and life eternal through Your Servant (tou paidos sou). Before all things we thank You that You are mighty; to You be the glory forever. Remember, Lord, Your Church, to deliver it from all evil and to make it perfect in Your love, and gather it from the four winds, sanctified for Your kingdom which You have prepared for it; for Yours is the power and the glory forever. Let grace come, and let this world pass away. Hosanna to the God (Son) of David! If any one is holy, let him come; if any one is not so, let him repent. Maran atha. Amen. But permit the prophets to make Thanksgiving as much as they desire...

Chapter 16. Watchfulness; The Coming of the Lord

Watch for your life's sake. Let not your lamps be quenched, nor your loins unloosed; but be ready, for you know not the hour in which our Lord comes. Matthew 24:42 But often shall you come together, seeking the things which are befitting to your souls: for the whole time of your faith will not profit you, if you be not made perfect in the last time. For in the last days false prophets and corrupters shall be multiplied, and the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and love shall be turned into hate; Matthew 24:11-12 for when lawlessness increases, they shall hate and persecute and betray one another, Matthew 24:10 and then shall appear the world-deceiver as the Son of God, and shall do signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands, and he shall do iniquitous things which have never yet come to pass since the beginning. Then shall the creation of men come into the fire of trial, and many shall be made to stumble and shall perish; but they that endure in their faith shall be saved from under the curse itself. And then shall appear the signs of the truth; first, the sign of an outspreading in heaven; then the sign of the sound of the trumpet; and the third, the resurrection of the dead; yet not of all, but as it is said: The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him (exei kyrios kai pantes hoi hagioi meth autou). Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven. (The Didache)

Here, the manual applies to the risen Christ the very words of the Greek rendering of the prophet Zechariah’s prophesy of YHWH coming to the earth with all his saints:

“... and the Lord my God (exei kyrios ho theos mou kai pantes hoi hagioi meth autou) shall come, and all the saints with him.” Zechariah 14:5 LXX

Looking at the English rendering of Zechariah’s Hebrew text shows how remarkable this connection to Jesus is:

“Behold, a day is coming for Yahweh when the spoil taken from you will be divided among you. Indeed, I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished, and half of the city will go forth in exile, but those left of the people will not be cut off from the city. Then Yahweh will go forth and fight against those nations, as the day when He fights on a day of battle. And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south. And you will flee by the valley of My mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel; indeed, you will flee just as you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then Yahweh, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him!... And Yahweh will be king over all the earth; in that day Yahweh will be the only one, and His name one... Then it will be that any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, Yahweh of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths. And it will be that whichever of the families of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, Yahweh of hosts, there will be no rain on them.” Zechariah 14:1-5, 9, 16-17

It is YHWH who comes down to the Mount of Olives in order to live in Jerusalem so as to begin his reign as King over all the earth.

And yet Jesus’ Jewish followers were proclaiming that Jesus is that YHWH whose feet will descend upon the Mount of Olives when he returns with his saints to kill the antichrist and judge the living and the dead:

“And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. They also said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.’ Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away.” Acts 1:9-12  

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” 2 Corinthians 5:10

“so that He may strengthen your hearts blameless in holiness, before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.” 1 Thessalonians 3:13

“This is a plain indication of God’s righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering. Since it is right for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give rest to you who are afflicted and to us as well at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, executing vengeance on those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might, when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed—for our witness to you was believed.” 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10  

“Let no one in any way deceive you, for it has not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the sanctuary of God, exhibiting himself as being God. Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things? And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. And then that lawless one will be revealed—whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming—” 2 Thessalonians 2:3-8

“I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by HIS appearing and HIS kingdom... For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved HIS appearing... At my first defense no one supported me, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them. But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that through me the preaching might be fulfilled, and that all the Gentiles might hear. And I was rescued out of the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed, and will save me unto HIS heavenly kingdom; to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” 2 Timothy 4:1, 6-8, 16-18

Once again, Jesus will do what the Hebrew Bible expressly teaches YHWH comes to do:

“Let the rivers clap their hands, Let the mountains sing together for joy Before Yahweh, for He is coming to judge the earth; He will judge the world with righteousness And the peoples with equity.” Psalm 98:8-9

“Let the field exult, and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy Before Yahweh, for He is coming, For He is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness And the peoples in His faithfulness.” Psalm 96:12-13

“before the presence of the Lord (tou kyriou): for he comes (hoti erchetai), for he comes (hoti erchetai) to judge the earth; he shall judge the world in righteousness, and the people with his truth.” Psalm 95:13 LXX

Coming back to the initial point, the Aramaic term which Paul employed Marana tha is a clear indicator that the worship of Jesus as YHWH Incarnate began among his Jewish followers in Jerusalem. This is a fact, which is uncontested by scholars and theologians as the following citations show. All emphasis will be mine:

... As I shall discuss in detail, the earliest liturgical prayer that was used by the very primitive church in Palestine was the Aramaic formula, marana tha. Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, and this prayer was not a polite form of address to an esteemed teacher. The Aramaic word mar could mean “sir” or “divine ruler,” but the prayer makes no sense unless it is addressed to a teacher with divine attributes. As C. D. Moule emphasized:

You do not call upon a dead Rabbi to “come” (marana tha); and since it is demonstrably possible for mar to signify also a divine or transcendent being, it appears that in this context it must have done so. Conversely, kyrios, too, could be applied to men . . . but it carried transcendental associations in the Greek speaking Jewish Christianity from which Gentile circles must have received their earliest instruction; it was closely associated with God himself.³ 

The devotional practices of the primitive church, for which there is substantial evidence, clearly demonstrate that Jesus was worshipped as divine right from the beginning of the Christian movement. This is nothing short of astounding, considering that this worship practice erupted in the context of an exclusivist monotheistic Judaism and that the early disciples did not see this worship as inconsistent with Judaism, but as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. (Dean L. Overman, A Case for the Divinity of Jesus: Examining the Earliest Evidence [‎ Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009], pp. 19-20)

2.5 THE OLDEST PRAYER OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN OUR POSSESSION IS THE ARAMAIC PRAYER TO JESUS AS DIVINE, MARANA THA.

Significant evidence that Jesus was worshipped as divine in the devotional pattern of the very earliest church is given by the very early date of the Aramaic prayer marana tha. Jesus and his first disciples spoke Aramaic,¹⁴ and the very earliest Palestinian churches also spoke Aramaic.¹⁵ The Aramaic word mar (and derivatives such as myrh) has essentially the same meaning as the Greek word kyrios. Mar means “Lord” and was a typical polite address indicating respect, such as one might use for an esteemed teacher or rabbi, but it could also mean divine ruler.

The Aramaic phrase marana tha is the oldest liturgical formula known to New Testament scholars. This is the most ancient prayer of the primitive church in our possession and appears in Paul’s letter to the Greek-speaking church in Corinth, written about two decades after the crucifixion of Jesus. In First Cor. 16:22 Paul incorporates this Aramaic expression at the close of this verse, writing in Aramaic, “Marana tha!” which means, “The (our) Lord come!” As we shall see, it is in the meaning of mar as divine ruler that we have very early evidence that the earliest Christian church, the church in Palestine, worshipped Jesus as God. This worship in Palestine preceded any influence from the church in Antioch or other places of Hellenistic culture. It is incorporated by Paul and is pre-Pauline, derived from the early Aramaic-speaking followers of Jesus. (Ibid., pp. 25-26)

And:

In approaching this question we should note that one of Paul's repeated emphases in 1 Corinthians is that sectarian attitudes have no place, and that he and other leaders such as Cephas (associated with Jerusalem) and Apollos (whom Paul refers to as building upon his work among the Gentiles in 3:5-9 and as coming to Corinth in 16:12, also associated with diaspora settings in Acts 18:24) are involved in a common religious effort (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:10-15; 3-5-23; 4:1-7). We have noted that this emphasis on a common tradition of core beliefs and christological claims is expressed in 15:1-7. It is worth remembering, too, that in 16:1-4 Paul explicitly reminds the Corinthians of his offering for Jerusalem, and that at the end of this epistle he gives the Aramaic invocation, maranatha (which I will discuss further shortly), its Semitic and traditional cachet likely intentional. All this indicates Paul's concern to oppose certain unacceptable innovations in Corinth by reasserting traditional beliefs and practices that link Jewish and Gentile circles of the Christian movement. I suggest that it would have ill served this concern to cite beliefs and liturgical practices that were not supported by such important circles as the Jerusalem church, and that were innovations characteristic of only some other sectors of the early Christian movement.³¹

Indeed, in the opening sentences of 1 Corinthians Paul addresses the recipients as those who "together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1:2), which explicitly makes the liturgical practice that was familiar to the Corinthians (to "call upon the name" of Jesus) also generally characteristic of believers irrespective of location ("in every place"). We have noted that Jewish Christian critics of Paul who claimed links with Jerusalem went into Pauline churches such as Corinth with critical intent. Paul would thus have been rather foolish to claim something not embraced by Judean believers as universally shared liturgical practice. Had he done so, it would have laid him open to attack. To reiterate a point made earlier: surely Judean Jewish Christians, shaped by the well-attested Jewish concern about avoiding the worship of any figure other than the one God, could not have countenanced the cultic reverence of Jesus practiced in Corinth and characteristic of Pauline Christianity if it were not also a part of their own corporate devotional life. Yet, to judge by the issues that Paul is constrained to engage in the Corinthian correspondence, there was no objection on this matter. The more reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that there was no objection because this cultic reverence of Jesus was in fact a shared devotional pattern among Judean and Pauline circles.'

As reinforcement of this judgment, I return to that particularly striking piece of evidence that Jesus was invoked in the cultic setting of Aramaic-speaking believers, the appeal to Jesus cited by Paul in 1 Corinthians 16:22, maranatha.³² Though a small artifact of early devotional practice, its importance and meaning justify more extensive discussion. First, this expression obviously derives from the cultic life of Aramaic-speaking Christians, and is likely a prayer/invocation-formula. This is consistent with its appearance at the end of this epistle, for Paul characteristically used liturgical expressions in the opening and closing of his epistles. Furthermore, the same expression appears also in our earliest extant collection of Christian worship material, the Didache, as part of a prayer to be offered at the end of the Eucharist meal (10.6). Also, an equivalent Greek expression appears in Revelation 22:20 ("Come, Lord Jesus"), where it, too, is obviously a prayer-appeal.

Secondly, this cultic appeal is addressed to the exalted Jesus.³³ The maranatha expression is thus clearly evidence of corporate cultic devotion to Jesus in the Aramaic circles where the expression first emerged. More important than philological arguments over the connotation of the Aramaic term mar (lord) and whether it was used as a divine title (it was) is the fact that the expression represents the cultic invocation of Jesus. For this shows that he was a recipient of devotion in the worship gathering of Aramaic-speaking believers in the earliest decades of the Christian movement.³⁴

The only serious question about the maranatha expression is its geographical provenance: Does it come from Judean circles such as the Jerusalem church, or (as has sometimes been asserted) did it emerge in an allegedly very different kind of Christianity, in places such as Antioch or from otherwise unknown groups in "northern Syria”? ³⁵ I have two points to make in answer to this question.

First, the circles to which Paul points his Gentile converts and to which he strives to link his congregations are specifically Judean Jewish Christian circles, and it is Jerusalem that Paul registers more than once as having a historic primacy, as we have noted already (e.g., Judean believers cited in 1 Thess. 2:14-16; the importance of agreement with Jerusalem leaders in Gal. 2:1-10; the spiritual indebtedness of Gentile Christians to Jerusalem Christians in Rom. 15:25-27; the importance of a generous expression of solidarity with Jerusalem Christians in 2 Cor. 8-9; his geographical characterization of the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem in Rom. 15:19). By contrast, Antioch and any other congregations supposed by some scholars to have had formative influence on "the Christ cult" are never specifically cited in Paul's epistles as coreligionists with whom he particularly promotes solidarity, as models for his converts, or as centers to which he grants any special importance or spiritual indebtedness. In short, we have no basis for thinking that Paul regarded Christian circles in Antioch and Syria as having any special significance for patterns of devotion and beliefs. Instead, all indications are that Paul promoted tangible links and a sense of shared religious endeavor between his congregations and Judean Christian circles in particular. So it seems more likely for Paul to have taught his congregations the Aramaic liturgical expressions that he mentions in his epistles (maranatha, and also Abba in Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15) because they came from the Judean circles with which he sought to foster a sense of spiritual linkage among his churches.

Secondly, if "the Christ cult" were the significant departure from the beliefs and practice of the "Palestinian primitive community" as portrayed by Bousset, and/or the Judean "Jesus people" portrayed more recently by Mack, we should expect to find evidence of objections from Judean believers. The silence that I have already noted on this matter is telling.

For these reasons, therefore, as uncomfortable as it will be to certain cherished opinions, the more likely answer to the question about the original provenance of this Aramaic liturgical expression, maranatha, and the more likely matrix for the cultic devotion to Jesus that the expression reflects, is Judean Christianity, and the Jerusalem church in particular. Admittedly, this means that in an astonishingly short period of time this significantly innovative cultic pattern emerged, and among circles made up of people whose religious tradition did not dispose them to such cultic reverence of figures other than the one God. Later in this chapter we shall consider what might have prompted this notable development; my point here is that the evidence requires us to place it astonishingly early. I defer to later in this chapter the question whether there were other circles of Judean followers of Jesus among whom this cultic devotion to Jesus was not practiced. My point here is that the Christ-devotion promoted by Paul seems to have had its origins in at least some circles of Judean Christianity that included Jerusalem.

31. As Hengel and Schwemer have noted, especially in Romans it is most likely that Paul invoked traditions that he knew the Roman Christians would recognize as connected with Jerusalem. To put it mildly, in Romans, especially, there was nothing to gain in citing traditions that would have been disavowed by Jerusalem!

32. Oscar Cullmann's discussion of maranatha and the cultic life of Palestinian Jewish Christian circles in The Christology of the New Testament, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963; German ed., 1957), 203-15, remains essential reading on the subject.

33. Bousset's varying and desperate attempts to avoid the plain force of the maranatha expression (followed also by Bultmann) are discussed by Cullmann, Christology, 213-14.

34. On the uses of mar, see now J. A. Fitzmyer, "The Semitic Background of the New Testament Kyrios Title," in his A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays, SBLMS 25 (Missoula: Scholars, 1979), esp. 123-25. There is also an infrequently noticed reference to the term as a title of royal acclamation in Philo, Flaccus 36-39, where Alexandrians mock Agrippa in a parody.

35. Bousset (e.g., 119-38) argued for "Hellenistic communities in Antioch, Damascus, and Tarsus" as the matrix of the worship of Jesus, and in his latest view on the subject proposed that maranatha was an Aramaic translation of a liturgical expression that originated in Greek! Burton Mack takes essentially the same unlikely view of the origin of "the Christ cult" in A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 98-102. On this question, see now esp. Hengel and Schwemer, 279-91. (Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity [Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., September 14, 2005], pp. 172-175)

Finally:

The evidence that comes from Palestinian Aramaic and Hebrew texts that bear on this issue now supports, in my opinion, the second of the views set forth above: that the absolute use of kyrios for Jesus was originally of Palestinian-Semitic religious background. I set forth the arguments in full in an article in the Conzelmann Festschrift.¹¹ From the various evidence available today it seems quite likely that there was an incipient custom among both Semitic- and Greek-speaking Jews of Palestine to call Yahweh 'adon, mare, or kyrios. The Hebrew evidence was cited from Ps 114:7 in the canonical psalter, from Ps 151:4 (in 11QPs a 28:7-8), and from deuterocanonical Ben Sira 10:7. Greek evidence can be found in Josephus, Ant. 20.4,2 §90; 13.3,1 §68 (in the latter case, even in a quotation from Isa 19:19); and also in Philo (Demut, nom. 2 § 12; Quisrer. div. heres 6 §22-29; Desomn. 1.63), if I may be permitted to add a non-Palestinian source. The Aramaic evidence was cited from two Qumran texts: (a) 11QtgJob 24:6-7, which translated Job 34:12, Of a truth, God will not act wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice. In Aramaic this becomes, hk‘n sd' 'lh' I ysqr wmr \y‘wt dyn\ "Now will God really act treacherously, and will the Lord [pervert justice]?"¹² Here the absolute state mare', "Lord," stands in parallelism with 'elaha\ "God." Mare' here is not a translation of Yhwh, but of sadday, because the tetragrammaton is used in the Book of Job only in the prologue, epilogue, and final speech of Yahweh, whereas in the dialogues of the book it is practically non-existent.¹³ Another instance of the absolute usage of "Lord" can be found in the Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran Cave 1: bryk 'nth Ί ‘lywn mry Ikwl ‘lmym dy 'nth mrh wslyt‘l kwl', "Blessed are you, Ο God Most High, my Lord for all ages; for you are (the) Lord and ruler over all" (lQapGen 20:12-13; cf. also 20:15).¹⁴ In these instances, which I had already set forth earlier, the title for God is found not only in the absolute usage, but also in the absolute state of the noun in Aramaic, mr’/mrh. Now, however, in the new Enoch material from Qumran Cave 4, we have a clear instance of the absolute usage of the title for God in the emphatic state of the noun, marya’. It is found in 4QEnb 1 iv 5: [wlgbry'l ‘mr m]ry 'z[l n’ ‘l mmzry . . .], "[And to Gabriel] the [L]ord [said]: 'G[o now to the bastards . . .']”.¹⁵ Moreover, what is striking here is that the Greek translation of Enoch, which is extant for this part of 1 Enoch (10:9), reads: kai to Gabriel eipen ho KS.¹⁶ Although the first letter of mry’ is missing in this Aramaic text, it is nevertheless certainly restored on the basis of the Greek version. We had often suspected that the emphatic form of the noun would be written with the final radical yodh, as in later Aramaic and Syriac, but now the form with it is clearly attested in this Palestinian Aramaic text from Qumran, which copy Milik dates "in the middle . . . of the second century" B.C.¹⁷ This text, then, supplies further evidence to that which has gradually been building up for what was an incipient custom among Semitic-speaking and Greek-speaking Jews of Palestine in the last century prior to Christianity of referring to Yahweh as "Lord" or "the Lord." Even though we do not yet have a clear case of Yahweh, the tetragrammaton, being translated directly as mare’ or marya’, it was scarcely "unthinkable in Jewish usage" to refer to God as "the Lord."

If such evidence be acceptable, then another aspect of the kyrios–title for Jesus in the New Testament has to be reconsidered. If, as seems likely, the title ‘adon, or mare’, or kyrios were, indeed, in use among Palestinian Jews for Yahweh, and the title were borrowed by Palestinian Jewish Christians for Jesus from such a usage, then it would seem that it was used of him as a means of expressing his transcendent and regal status. In this, I find myself thrust back to the explanation of the meaning of the title that O. Cullmann once advocated, even though for reasons quite different from his.¹⁸ The title would suggest a Gleichsetzung of Jesus with Yahweh, a setting of him on a par with Yahweh, but not an Identifizierung—because he is not ‘abba. This would, then, imply perhaps a higher christology for him than the kyrios–title derived from a Hellenistic pagan context of the eastern Mediterranean world. It would also imply that the kerygma of the Palestinian church actually included a recognition of him as mare’ and kyrios. It would root in Palestine itself the christological confession of Kyrios Iesous (I Cor 12:3; Rom 10:9), among the Hebraists as well as the Hellenists. It would, therefore, deny that the title was solely the product of the evangelization of the Greek world, being applied to Jesus by Greek-speaking apostles or disciples alone.

The absolute usage of this title would also make intelligible the acclamation preserved in 1 Cor 16:22, maranatha—an acclamation that may be as old and as primitive as the absolute usage itself. Perhaps the acclamation does not explain the emergence of the absolute title, but it does help to provide a context in which the absolute title is intelligible.

II. The Aramaic Acclamation Maranatha

The ancient acclamation maranatha has been called by J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan "an old Aramaic watchword . . . misunderstood in most of our English versions down to the AV."¹⁹ It is preserved for us, first of all, by Paul and, strangely enough, in that most Greek of his letters, 1 Corinthians (16:22). There it forms part of his final farewell to the Corinthians and of his blessing upon them: "I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. If any one has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Maranatha! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you." Moreover, it is also preserved in Didache 10:6, where it forms part of the final blessing of an ancient eucharistic liturgy: "Let grace come and let this world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David. If any one be holy, let him/her come! If any one be not, let him/her repent. Maranatha! Amen." Cf. Apostolic Constitutions 7.26,5...

Patristic writers such as John Chrysostom and John of Damascus thought that the expression maranatha was Hebrew;²² but eventually it was correctly identified as Aramaic in the patristic tradition: Theodoret of Cyrrhus speaks of it as written in "the language of the Syrians."²³ (Joseph A. Fitzmyer S.J., To Advance the Gospel: New Testament Studies (The Biblical Resource Series (BRS)) [Wm. B. Eerdmans-Lightning Source, 1998], pp. 222-224)

Attempts to explain the meaning of the phrase throughout the centuries have been numerous. It is clear, however, that the first problem to be resolved is the division of the words involved in it, for the meaning depends on how the phrase is to be divided. It is precisely on this point that the new Palestinian Aramaic texts of Enoch shed some light. However, before we consider this new evidence, it may be wise to recall how the problem of the division arose.

The best explanation of marana tha remains that of an ancient acclamation, held over from some primitive Palestinian liturgical setting,⁵⁷ which can no longer be specified more precisely. Paul would have made use of it at the end of 1 Corinthians as part of his final blessing on the community to which he writes. The brief, almost disjointed, concluding phrases of that blessing make it difficult to say whether marana tha goes with the preceding or the following phrase. To me it makes more sense to relate it to what follows and to regard it as an acclamation referring to Jesus' parousiac coming, understood at least as eschatological and regal, and perhaps also as judicial.⁵⁸

In any case, the Palestinian Aramaic evidence that now bears on the phrase helps to relate the words to a primitive Jewish-Christian context, the same to which I sought earlier to relate the kyrios–title for Jesus itself. It thus gives evidence of a veneration of Jesus by early Jewish Christians as the "Lord," as a figure associated with Yahweh of the Old Testament, even as one on the same level with him, without saying explicitly that he is divine.⁵⁹ (Ibid., pp. 228-229)

Further Reading

WHEN PROTESTANTS ARGUE LIKE ARIAN HERETICS