Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §7.4
tern of suffering-vindication, in fact, is rather close to what is implied in the Q allusions
to Jesus' death.
Third, a further fallacy is the assumption that communities of disciples
were isolated from one another and that documents were written only for the use
of the scribe's own community — as though teachers who had been teaching the
same range of tradition for many years suddenly found it necessary to commit it
to writing for the community already long familiar with that tradition through
their teaching. But the evidence of our earliest sources is that communities maintained
communication with one another; and it is more probable that tradition
was written down in order to facilitate communication at a distance. 56 It is hardly
likely that Luke was the only one who knew that 'many (had) taken in hand to
compile an account of the things that had been accomplished among us' (Luke
1.1). And we simply do not know how widely Q was circulated. The fact that
both Matthew and Luke had access to copies points in a different direction.
In short, while the hypothesis that Q represents teaching material of/for
one or several communities is entirely plausible, the further hypotheses that there
were distinctively 'Q communities', in effect isolated from other early Christian
communities, depends on deductions which go well beyond what the data of Q
itself indicate. 57
c. A Redactional Q?
The other matter on which it is necessary to take issue with Kloppenborg is his
argument that Q can be stratified into an earliest sapiential layer (Q 1 )» 58 and a
secondary prophetic redactional layer (Q 2 ), 59 more or less equivalent to Koester's
apocalyptic redactional layer. 60 Certainly the case for seeing Q as structured
56. See again below, §8.6d.
57. Cf. Lindemann, 'Logienquelle Q' 17-18. E. P. Meadors, Jesus the Messianic Herald
of Salvation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995) notes the improbability of both Matthew and
Luke combining sources which were christologically incompatible (15); his central thesis is
that the two sources, Mark and Q, are 'utterly compatible with one another' (particularly ch. 9,
and conclusion 316).
58. Kloppenborg sees Q 1 as made up of six clusters of sayings: (1) 6.20b-23b, 27-35,
36-45, 46-49; (2) 9.57-60 (61-62); 10.2-11, 16 (23-24?); (3) 11.2-4, 9-13; (4) 12.2-7, 11-12;
(5) 12.22b-31, 33-34 (13.18-19, 20-21?); (6) 13.24; 14.26-27; 17.33; 14.34-35 {Excavating Q
146).
59.Q4.1-13; 11.42c; 16.17 are attributed to the final redaction (Q 3 ) (Excavating Q 152-
53).
60. Koester notes that Kloppenborg assigns to the secondary stage not only sayings
about the judgment of this generation and about the coming of the Son of Man but also the entire
sections in which these sayings are embedded (Q 3.7-9, 16-17; 4.1-13; 12.39-59; 17.23-37;
and the Q materials in Luke 7.1-35 and 11.14-52). Koester argues for 'a more explicit eschato-
152