His first academic appointment was at
Regent College in
Vancouver,
British Columbia,
Canada, where he taught from 1975 to 1978. Prior to moving to Canada in 1975 he pastored a church in
Skokie,
Illinois. Thereafter he moved to the Department of Religion at the
University of Manitoba in
Winnipeg, where he was promoted to full Professor in 1988 and taught until 1996. During his time there, he established the University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities and served as initial Director from 1990 to 1992. Shortly after his appointment at the
University of Edinburgh, he established the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins, which focuses on
Christianity in the first three centuries.
He made significant advances in understanding
Jewish monotheism and early Christian devotion to
Jesus. He was an authority on the
Gospels (especially the
Gospel of Mark), the
Apostle Paul, early
Christology, the
Jewish background of the New Testament, and
textual criticism of the New Testament. He was perhaps most well known for his studies on the early emergence of a devotion to Jesus expressed in beliefs about Jesus sharing God's glory, and in a "devotional pattern" in which Jesus features prominently. Hurtado argued that this Jesus-devotion comprises a novel "mutation" in ancient Jewish monotheistic practice. In his later publications, he also urged greater awareness of the historical value of earliest Christian manuscripts as key physical artefacts of early Christianity, drawing attention to such phenomena as the nomina sacra (distinctive abbreviated forms of certain Greek words, e.g., Theos, Iesous, Kyrios, Christos), the Christian preference for the
codex book form, and a number of other features.[8]
The School of Divinity announced that Hurtado had died of
cancer in his sleep on November 25, 2019.[9] Holly J. Carey (
Point University) wrote an obituary in his honour on Christianity Today.[10]
Works
Books
Hurtado, Larry W. (1981). Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark. Studies and Documents. Vol. 43. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
ISBN9780802818720.
OCLC7206722.
——— (1988). One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press.
ISBN9780800620769.
OCLC17234318.
——— (1990). Mark. New International Biblical Commentary. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.
ISBN9780943575162.
OCLC20693882.
——— (1999). At the Origins of Christian Worship: The Context and Character of Earliest Christian Devotion, the 1999 Didsbury Lectures. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press.
ISBN9780802847492.
OCLC44133065.
——— (2003). Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
ISBN9780802860705.
OCLC51623141.
——— (2005). How on Earth did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
ISBN9780802828613.
OCLC61461917.
——— (2006). The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
ISBN9780802828958.
OCLC70668672.
——— (2010). God in New Testament Theology. Library of Biblical Theology. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.
ISBN9781426719547.
OCLC891464651.
——— (2016). Destroyer of the Gods: early Christian distinctiveness in the Roman World. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.
ISBN9781481304733.
OCLC950202343.
——— (2016). Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries?. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.
ISBN9781626005044.
——— (2018). Honoring the Son: Jesus in Earliest Christian Devotional Practice. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
ISBN9781683590965.
As editor
———, ed. (2006). The Freer Biblical Manuscripts: fresh studies of an American treasure trove. Text-Critical Studies. Vol. 6.
ISBN9781589832084.
OCLC69423242.
———;
Owen, Paul L., eds. (2011). 'Who is this son of man?' the latest scholarship on a puzzling expression of the historical Jesus. Library of New Testament studies. Vol. 390. London & New York: T & T Clark.
ISBN9780567521194.
OCLC670507593.
Articles and chapters
——— (1997). "Greco-Roman Textuality and the Gospel of Mark: A Critical Assessment of Werner Kelber's The Oral and the Written Gospel". Bulletin for Biblical Research. 7: 91–106.
doi:
10.2307/26422322.
JSTOR26422322.
——— (1999). "New Testament Studies at the Turn of the Millennium: Questions for the Discipline". Scottish Journal of Theology. 52 (2): 158–178.
doi:
10.1017/S0036930600053606.
S2CID170502319.
——— (2003). "Homage to the Historical Jesus and Early Christian Devotion". Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 1 (2): 131–46.
doi:
10.1177/147686900300100201.
——— (2018). "Observations on the "Monotheism" Affirmed in the New Testament". In Beeley, Christopher A.; Weedman, Mark E. (eds.). The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. pp. 50–70.
ISBN978-0813229959.
References
^"About Me". Canon Fodder. Charlotte, North Carolina: Michael J. Kruger. Retrieved December 28, 2019.
^Capes, David B.;
DeConick, April D.;
Bond, Helen K.; Miller, Troy, eds. (2007). Israel's God and Rebecca's Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity; Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press. pp. xv–xvi.
ISBN978-1-60258-175-3.
^Stenschke, Christoph (April 30, 2009). "Review: How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus. Larry W. Hurtado, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. xii + 234, ISBN 978-0-8028-2861-3". Evangelical Quarterly: An International Review of Bible and Theology. 81.
Leiden:
Brill Publishers: 175–177.
doi:
10.1163/27725472-08102012.
eISSN2772-5472.
ISSN0014-3367.
^
abCapes, David B.;
DeConick, April D.;
Bond, Helen K.; Miller, Troy, eds. (2007). Israel's God and Rebecca's Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity; Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press. p. xv.
ISBN978-1-60258-175-3.