Professor Larry Hurtado on Christian worship of Jesus

Professor Larry Hurtado has an interesting article on early Christian veneration of Jesus.

Professor Hurtado writes ' It is one thing to imagine the deification of a human hero in a setting in which that was entirely expected and had multiple precedents. It is quite another in a religious culture that forbids it! It’s the latter setting in which Jesus-devotion erupted.'

One wonders why Jews did not forbid Christians worshipping Jesus in the middle of Jerusalem. Why were they not killed as idolators?

And what did the Romans think about this 'deification of a human hero' - somebody they had crucified as a potential troublemaker?

A reported letter in Acts 23 says 'Claudius Lysias,

To His Excellency, Governor Felix:

Greetings.

This man was seized by the Jews and they were about to kill him, but I came with my troops and rescued him, for I had learned that he is a Roman citizen. I wanted to know why they were accusing him, so I brought him to their Sanhedrin. I found that the accusation had to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment.'

The Christians were venerating a human, and the dispute had to do 'with questions about their law'?

And the Romans were too dumb to realise that Paul was a follower of somebody they had killed as a potential troublemaker, and who Paul was claiming was still alive and leading their movement?

Where is the elephant in the room? Where did Jesus go in disputes between Christians/Jews/Romans? It is as though he had never been!