Did the early Christians believe that Jesus was God?

Christians believed Jesus was truly the Son of God since the beginning, long before the Emperor Constantine ruled the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Here is some evidence: - The 4 Gospels present and reflect the belief of the very early Christian communities that Jesus was divine. By the beginning of the 2nd Century, the 4 canonical Gospels were already in place (See next question). - The Gospels point to Jesus’ power over evil forces (miracles are called ‘Dynamis’ or power in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; and called ‘Signs‘ in John). Through his power, Jesus ushered the kingdom of God and expelled the Devil in a way that suggests his divine authority. In his famous Sermon, he does not speak on the authority of earlier Rabbis but on his own authority “But I say to you..” (Cf. Matt 5). He “clearly presents himself as changing the governance of the world and of human lives” (Cf. Raymond Brown; “An introduction to New Testament Christology”) - Jesus forgives sins – reserved to God alone. He changes the names of his disciples - reserved to God alone in Jewish tradition (Cf. Cepha to Peter). And he alone is the Judge at the end of times of all people. - At his baptism and transfiguration, the Father testifies to his divinity (Matt 3:17, 17:5). - In the oldest accounts, Jesus takes upon himself the divine name “I AM” (Mark 6:50; compare with John 8:58) which is the way God revealed himself to Moses, the name reserved to God alone. He also refers to himself as “the Son of Man” which does not refer to his humanity but to his divinity as revealed in Daniel in the Old Testament: “In my vision at night I looked and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped him.” (Daniel 7:13-14) - Peter confesses the divine sonship of Jesus (Matt 17:17), and Thomas exclaims “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28)- The Jews understood Jesus’ claim that he considered himself divine and wanted to stone him since he made himself “equal to God” (John 10: 33) - Modern historical scholarship shows that by the year 35 AD there were already hymns and confessions of faith in the Church praising Christ as God and quoted in Paul’s letters which talk about Jesus being “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1, 15-20) and in the very nature of God “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness” (Ph 2:6-7) - Current exegesis has established that Jesus called God his Father “Abba” in a unique way unknown in Jewish tradition. While Jewish tradition avoided calling God by his personal name, Jesus refers to God by that intimate relationship thus changing the terms of relating to God in a significant way (Cf. J. Jeremias, “Abba”, 1966; J. Meier, “Jesus”, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 1990). - As Christians started to form their distinctive communities and believed Jesus was God, the Jewish Rabbis in their Council of Jamnia condemned Christians decisively after the destruction of the Temple (70 AD). - The early Church Fathers, well before the time of Constantine, are quoted decisively in support of the divinity of Christ: Ignatius of Antioch (1st century-107), Clement of Alexandria (105-211), Irenaeus of Lyons (c.140- 200?), Justin Martyr (c.100-165), Origen (185-252). - The fact that early Christians believed in the divinity of Christ is also found in Roman and Jewish sources of the first and second centuries. Pliny the Younger (61-115 AD), a Pagan Roman Senator and writer observes in his letter to the Emperor Trajan that Christians in their assemblies chanted a hymn to Christ as God. (Ep., X, 97, 98). The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus refers to Christ in his Antiquitates iudaicae (XVIII, 63-64) towards the end of the first century.