Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§4.6 The Flight from Dogma
logically determined reconstruction of Christianity's beginnings is vulnerable to
heavy criticism. 137 In particular, he has given the tradition of Jesus commissioning
his disciples in mission (Mark 6.6-13 pars.) a definitive role for the Jesus
movement as a whole. 138 He fails to ask about the rhetoric of various passages on
the cost of discipleship (e.g., Luke 14.26) and interprets them too literally. 139 His
interpretation is at times rather tendentious; for example Matt. 19.28 indicates
that the task of the twelve 'lay among the twelve (scattered) tribes of Israel'; and
Acts 13.1 shows Antioch to be 'the "home" of a group of wandering charismatics'.
140 And his understanding of tradition as kept alive by wandering
charismatics rather than in and by settled communities seems to owe more (unrecognized)
to a romantic conception of wandering bards than to a sociology of
community tradition (see chapter 8 below). In short, it is only by setting various
sayings of Jesus into the context which Theissen proposes that he is able to interpret
them as he does. Whereas, as we shall see, such sayings do not diminish in
radical force when understood as a call to reshape the social conventions of Jesus'
day. Nevertheless, Theissen's reconstruction of an earliest stage of the Jesus
tradition kept alive by homeless itinerants, with clear parallels in worldrenouncing
itinerant Cynic philosophers, has had far-reaching influence, particularly
on the neo-Liberal Jesus to be described below in §4.7. 141
Shortly following Theissen, John Gager's Kingdom and Community made
a substantial stir, but its treatment of Jesus was too much dependent on an analytic
model drawn on the template of later millenarian movements (particularly
Melanesian cargo cults) to be of lasting significance. 142 Other works have been
137. For a critique from a sociological perspective see particularly J. H. Elliott, 'Social-
Scientific Criticism of the New Testament and Its Social World', Semeia 35 (1986) 1-33; R. A.
Horsley, Sociology and the Jesus Movement (New York: Continuum, 1989, 2 1994) 30-42. Horsley
characterizes Theissen's presentation of the Jesus movement as 'a modern domestication of
the Gospel materials' (39).
138. Theissen is also overly dependent on Didache 11, repeating the mistakes made in
the debate about Charisma and Office (Charisma and Amt) occasioned by the publication of the
Didache at the end of the nineteenth century (see my Theology of Paul 566-67); Crossan, The
Birth of Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998) Part VIII, pushes still further down the same
line (see below, chapter 14 n. 72). Similarly, his concept of 'charisma' owes more to Weber than
to Paul, for whom charisma was an essentially community function (Rom. 12.4-6; 1 Cor. 12.4-
27).
139. See further Horsley, Sociology 43-50; 'this uncritical use of individual texts in support
of contentions that most in fact do not attest' (45).
140. First Followers 9.
141. See below, chapter 7, n. 96. Theissen was to some extent anticipated by
P. Hoffmann, Studien zur Theologie der Logienquelle (Münster: Aschendorff, 1972, 2 1975)
332-34.
142. J. G. Gager, Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity
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