Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §7.4
Again these matters would not be too serious except that such analysis presupposes,
once again, that the different layers represent different understandings
of Jesus, 'asymmetrical kerygmas', 86 different circles of discipleship. 87 Tensions
within Q become tensions between redactional levels, between different Sitzeim-Leben,
added to the tensions between Q and the circles which focused on the
cross and resurrection. 88 All this is then taken as providing proof that the earliest
responses to Jesus were far more diverse than had previously been recognized,
and that the historical Jesus was first remembered as a teacher of wisdom. But, as
Kloppenborg himself has pointed out, 'tradition-history is not convertible with
literary history': tradition brought in at a redactional stage might be as old as or
older than the tradition redacted. 89
Overall, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the leap from Matthew's
and Luke's common material ('q') to 'Q', to a 'Q community' with markedly different
stages in its development, and thence to a wisdom-teaching/nonapocalyptic
Jesus is too much lacking in visible means of support. The various
attempts to build hypothesis upon presupposition upon hypothesis can scarcely
inspire confidence in the outcome. In what follows, therefore, I will use the Q hypothesis
as a working hypothesis, but not assume a stratified Q (Q 1 , Q 2 , Q 3 ). It
will also be important to recall Streeter's qualification that 'a substantial portion
of the 200 verses in question were probably derived from some other (oral)
source than Q'. 90 The issue will be investigated further below (§8.5).
Doing Things with Words in the First Christian Century (JSNTS 200; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic,
2000) 75-94 (here 85-94). Horsley in Horsley and Draper, Whoever 62-67, sums up his
genre critique: 'The common features that supposedly characterize the sayings clusters assigned
to the different strata either fail to appear in the clusters or do not appear consistently
across the various clusters. The hypothesized layers cannot in fact be differentiated according
to the stated criteria of these features' (67).
86. Kloppenborg, Formation 21-22; Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels 160: 'Q's theology
and soteriology are fundamentally different' from the theology represented by the Pauline
kerygma.
87. So particularly Schulz, who thinks it possible to distinguish a Palestinian Jewish
Christian group on the Syrian border from a later Hellenistic Jewish Christian group in Syria itself
(Q 47, 57, 177, etc.).
88. Contrast Schröter, though his critique is still too dependent on the genre argument
(Erinnerung 35); 'Since a genre can be connected with reality in multiple ways, it follows conversely
that the union of more genres in one text in no way compels the conclusion that these
stemmed originally out of disparate situations' (59, similarly 142).
89. Kloppenborg, Formation 244-45; also Excavating ß 151; similarly Attridge, 'Reflections'
228.
90. See above, chapter 4 n. 84.
158