Martin Hengel on the Origins of Christology

‘The comparison of the three hymns in the Johannine Prologue, the Letter to the Hebrews and the Letter to the Philippians shows, first of all, that christological thinking between 50 and 100 C.E. was much more unified in its basic structure than New Testament research, in part at least, has maintained. Basically, the later developments are already there in a nutshell in the Philippian hymn. This means, however, with regard to the development of all the early Church’s christology, that more happened in the first twenty years than in the entire later centuries-long development of dogma.'
Martin Hengel, ‘Christological Titles in Early Christianity,’ in The Messiah, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), p. 443.