I haven't really had the time that this thread would require but skimming a bit and to chime in: this is false
See
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=μορφή&la=greek
You'll note that "nature" is not one of the definitions of morphe. You might also compare this to the lexicon entry for φυσις, which refers to the origin, or the "the natural constitution or form of something as the result of growth". (
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=φυσις&la=greek#lexicon)
Although I would also say it's not clear how changing the word from "form" to "nature" would invalidate the conclusion that the passage attributes divinity to Christ.
More generally, It seems to me that your argument begins by taking as a premise that 1st century Jewish monotheism involves an absolute metaphysical commitment in a very particular way, and then rejecting the possibility of readings of New Testament texts which would seem to be at odds with that premise. The problem is that the premise itself is flawed, both in the sense that if you read Jewish literature from the time you'll find that the monotheism is more monarchical than metaphysical, and also in the sense that even beyond the question of the divinity of Christ in the N.T. there are passages that challenge the premise that early Christians held to such a strong form of monotheism regardless.
With regard to monarchical flavor of 1st century Jewish monotheism, here is a short text which gets the flavor, shamelessly stolen from N.T. Wright's
Paul and the Faithfulness of God which goes into more detail and cites other texts as well (pp. 619-622)
Lord God, Creator of all things, you are awesome and strong, yet merciful and just. You alone are king and kind; you alone are bountiful, you alone are just and almighty and eternal. (2 Macc. 1:24-25)
The "you alone" repetition is
ho monos, that is from the same adjective from which we get the term monotheism, which is a 17th century coinage. This and similar passages don't tell us anything about
what God is, but establish a kind of identity in relation to the religious expectations of the Jewish people. "You alone are king" is the essence of this monotheism.
These sorts of considerations have led scholars like Richard Bauckham to consider early Jewish monotheism as centered around the
identity of Israel's God, rather than a particular metaphysics, and in so doing to make sense of what it might have meant to early Christians for Jesus to be divine:
"In my view high Christology was possible within a Jewish monotheistic context, not by applying to Jesus a Jewish category of semi-divine intermediary status, but by identifying Jesus directly with the one God of Israel, including Jesus in the unique identity of this one God. I use the term 'unique identity' as the best way of speaking of the uniqueness of God as generally conceived in early Judaism.
The concept of identity is more appropriate, as the principal category for understanding Jewish monotheism, than is that of divine nature. In other words, for Jewish monotheistic belief what was important was who the one God is, rather than what divinity is. We could characterize this early Jewish monotheism as
creational monotheism,
eschatological monotheism and
cultic monotheism.
That God alone - absolutely without advisors or collaborators or assistants or servants - created all other things... That when YHWH fulfils his promises to his people Israel, YHWH will also demonstrate his deity to the nations, establishing his universal kingdom, making his name known universally, becoming known to all as the God Israel has known. This aspect I call eschatological monotheism. Finally, there is also cultic monotheism. Only the sole Creator of all things and the sole Lord over all things should be worshipped, since worship in the Jewish tradition was precisely recognition of this unique identity of the one God.
Early Christology was framed within the familar Jewish framework of creational, eschatological and cultic monotheism. The first Christians developed a christological monotheism with all three of these aspects."
(
http://library.word-life.org/subjects/Theology/Pauls Christology of Divine Identity.pdf)
He goes on to discuss various evidence for such a "high Christology" by showing how the N.T. authors applied these creational, eschatological, and cultic ideas about the one God to Jesus himself. Evidence such as the inclusion of Christ in the creation of the cosmos (John 1, 1 Cor 8:6, Rom 11:36), in the eschatological concerns of salvation and judgement, and as a proper object of Worship.
It also includes the use of the term κυριος in the Septuagint and NT, and the structure of 1 Cor 8:6 in relation to the Jewish Shema. It's true that the arguments are more complex than offering proof texts, but I think it should be kept in mind that while there are no perfectly straightforward single passages which say "Jesus is God" (and certainly, as you repeat often, not the much later trinitarian conception), nor are there any straightforward passages which declare what God
is in any sense. It's the lack of focus on metaphysics which leads to the suggestion above that the category of Jewish monotheism of the time is identity rather than nature.
Beyond those arguments, N.T. Wright develops a view of early Christian Christology based on the Wisdom literature of the 2nd Temple period, which explains what it might mean for Paul or other early Christians to think of Jesus as "being included in the identity of the one God of Israel".
I wrote about some of these texts here:
http://www.religiousforums.com/thre...-jewish-monotheism.174547/page-2#post-4193775 .
Essentially, the personification of the "Wisdom of God" provides a blueprint for how early Christians may have conceived of Christ's divinity.
To sum all of that up, while it's not as simple as citing a single verse, there does seem to be compelling evidence that early Christians attributed a kind of divinity to Christ. The reason the arguments are not that simple is that the categories employed in their thinking are quite a bit different to the ones we are accustomed to, hence the need to shift perspectives from the idea of "what" God is to "who" God is in order to make sense of the Jewish monotheism of the time. All of these considerations are a challenge to your fundamental premise about that monotheism.
I also mentioned that beyond the question of Christology, there are N.T. texts that seem to challenge your premise in another way. Based on your interpretation of Jewish monotheism, you would surely disallow anyone from sharing in the Divinity of the one God, and not just Jesus, and yet that is exactly what the N.T. encourages of all Christians, as is very directly stated in 2 Peter 1:3-4:
"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature. (θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως)"
I think the problem is your use of monotheism as a premise amounts to a kind of anachronistic eisegesis that prevents you from reading the text in a more historical and critical way.
