Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §4.4
appeared to be an early source composed exclusively of sayings of Jesus. 88
Here was a sound foundation for the Liberal portrayal of Jesus as a teacher of
timeless ethics; the problem of miracle could be ignored. The fact that Q does
not appear to have contained an account of Jesus' death also diminished the
embarrassment of asking whether Jesus had a theology of his own death as
atonement, though it reintroduced with a vengeance the problem posed by
Reimarus: whether Christianity's subsequent focus on the cross of Jesus did
not transform the simpler ethical message of Jesus into a religion of redemption
postulating the necessity of bloody sacrifice. 89 This identification of Q and
its character has thus proved to be one of the most important developments in
the quest of Jesus, and, as we shall see shortly, its far-reaching ramifications
are still being explored.
Initially it was the establishment of Markan priority which had the most
far-reaching effects. Linked with the early testimony of Papias, that Mark had
written his Gospel as Peter's 'interpreter or translator' (hermeneutes), 90 and
given the high evaluation placed on original sources, the inference was easily
drawn that not only Mark's priority could be assumed, but also his historicity.
The hermeneutical principle at work seems to have been: earliest = historically
closest to Jesus = least reworked = most historical. 91 Thus in the latter part of the
nineteenth century Mark came to be regarded as offering a reliable chronological
outline of Jesus' ministry and became in effect the basic source book for lives of
Jesus. 92 The Markan outline of a 'Galilean springtime' cut short by the gathering
autumnal shadows of the cross thus became the normative pattern of the Liberal
88. Early reconstructions of Q did not include the miracle of Matt. 8.5-13/Luke 7.1-10,
it being attributed by Weisse and Holtzmann to Ur-Markus (Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q
329).
89. Harnack's own conclusions regarding Q are revealing: '. . . this compilation of sayings
which alone affords us a really exact and profound conception of the teaching of Jesus, and
is free from bias, apologetic or otherwise.... This source is the authority for that which formed
the central theme of the message of our Lord — that is, the revelation of the knowledge of God,
and the moral call to repent and believe, to renounce the world and to gain heaven — this and
nothing else' (The Sayings of Jesus [London: Williams and Norgate, 1908] 250-51).
90. According to Papias, 'The Elder used to say this: "Mark became Peter's interpreter/
translator (hermeneutes) and wrote down accurately all that he remembered, not, however, in
order (hosa emnemoneusen, akribös egrapsen, ou mentoi taxei), of the things said or done by
the Lord'" (Eusebius, HE 3.39.15).
91. B. F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus (London: SCM, 1979) observes: 'It was the simplistic
equation of "early sources" with guileless history that led to the exaggeration of the importance
of the synoptic problem' (38).
92. A good example is F. C. Burkitt, The Gospel History and Its Transmission (Edinburgh:
Clark, 1906) ch. 3; also The Earliest Sources for the Life of Jesus (London: Constable,
2 1922) ch. 3.
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