Matthew E. Gordley - New Testament Christological Hymns Exploring: Texts, Contexts, and Significance

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M y fascination with understanding early Christian praise of Jesus in light of its broader cultural context began in Ross Wagners 2001 doctoral seminar, Earliest Christianity in Its Greco-Roman Setting, at Princeton Theological Seminary. It was in this class that I first read ancient hymns written in honor of the Egyptian goddess Isis and was struck by the surprising familiarity of the language. Though there was no borrowing of specific phrases or exact expressions, the Isis aretalogies showed a way of praising a divine savior that seemed to breathe a similar air to the praise passages in the New Testament oriented around Jesus as Savior. What was the nature of the relationship between these very different kinds of texts from antiquity? I explored these ideas further in my doctoral studies at the University of Notre Dame and, under the guidance of David Aune, wrote my dissertation on Colossians 1:15-20 in its Jewish and Greco-Roman hymnic and epistolary contexts. That volume was subsequently published in 2007 as The Colossian Hymn in Context: An Exegesis in Light of Ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman Hymnic and Epistolary Conventions. From there it was a natural step to expand my explorations of the use and functions of hymnody in antiquity, the results of which are reflected in my 2011 Teaching Through Song in Antiquity: Didactic Hymnody Among Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians.

Though it had been in my mind for some time to produce a survey of the New Testament christological hymns that would bring to bear the findings of other studies to discuss the significance of the phenomenon of New Testament hymns more adequately, I owe the creation of the present book to Larry Hurtado and Dan Reid. It was Dan Reid, a student of Ralph Martin and well acquainted with his work on the Philippian hymn, who saw the need for a contemporary study of this kind. Larry suggested my name to Dan as someone who might be willing to write such a book. Since the publication of a book provides an opportunity to publicly recognize the individuals who have shaped it, I must certainly start then by acknowledging Larry Hurtado, Dan Reid, and the staff of IVP Academic who have brought this book to completion. Dans editorial work from the start and his suggestions in the shaping of the final version of this book improved it immensely from what I had envisioned originally. The same can be said of the anonymous reviewers who offered many excellent suggestions for strengthening this book.