Jesus and Other Sons of God: Luke's Christology and Mediterranean Myth

In a world full of demigods, heroes, daimones, and Olympians, how did early Christians conceptualize Jesus's divinity? What symbols, images, and literary motifs were available to them as elements of an emerging belief in Christ as divine? Scholars have focused upon the origins of "high Christology" for decades. Only recently have we begun to address how early Christians inscribed and communicated that belief to others in the ancient Mediterranean.

In Jesus and Other Sons of God, Daniel B. Glover takes up these important, interlacing questions of formative Christian belief. Glover focuses this study upon the author of Luke and Acts, situating him firmly within his historical, social, and literary contexts. Against those who have asserted that early Christian literature was written exclusively or primarily for Christians, Glover argues that Luke wrote for an audience of well-educated, literate peers--a cadre of elite cultural producers who were interested in new religious movements. With this reimagined readership in mind, Glover demonstrates that Luke not only wrote among and for the literary elite but also as and like one of them. In retrieving the presentation of Jesus's deity in Luke/Acts, Glover elucidates how Luke adopted and to some extent adapted both the rhetorical-literary practices and mytho-theological convictions of his milieu to give expression to the way he understood Jesus.

This important study offers at once a more precise picture of Luke's social location, religious engagement, and literary procedure as well as a thorough and historically coherent reading of Luke's Christology in its ancient Mediterranean setting. Scholars and students of New Testament, early Christianity, and religion in antiquity will benefit from the incisive insights yielded by Glover's groundbreaking book.

Daniel B. Glover is Assistant Professor of New Testament at the School of Theology and Ministry, Lee University.