Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §10.1
conclusions already emerging in chapter 6. As we look at various aspects of the
mission of Jesus our starting point will almost always be the Jesus tradition preserved
in the Synoptic Gospels. We will certainly want to draw upon the traditions
preserved by John at various points. And every so often we may expect a
version of Jesus tradition in the Gospel of Thomas, in other Gospels, in Paul, or
elsewhere, or in textual variants, to shed fresh light on elements within the
broader sweep of tradition. But that broader sweep is much more likely to be provided
by the Synoptic tradition than by any other source or combination of
sources. The best test of the historical value of other versions (that is, as witnesses
to what Jesus said and did) is almost always concord and coherence with
the Synoptic tradition. Consequently, it is the Synoptic tradition which will be
the main focus in what follows.
Within the Synoptic tradition the importance of Q steadily increased
throughout the twentieth century. As very early testimony to the teaching of Jesus,
the Q material will obviously have to be given close attention. There is a serious
danger, however, of overconfidence in recent years on our ability to specify
three aspects of Q in particular: (1) What is the relation of Q to the non-Markan
material shared by Matthew and Luke (q) — that is, does all q = Q? (2) Do we
know the length, order, and text of Q with sufficient detail to permit confident
redactional analysis of Q itself and of its use by Matthew and Luke? (3) In
compositional analysis of Q, is it possible to determine the character of the pre-Q
material, whether a distinct layer (an earlier composition?) or simply different
teachings of Jesus recalled individually or already grouped in coherent clusters
for teaching purposes? The answers to these questions will vary from item to
item as well as from scholar to scholar.
For my part the more important point to be observed is that the great bulk
of the Q material is presented as teaching of Jesus himself. Even if we may not
simply deduce from that that everything in Q 'goes back to Jesus', we are not
thereby driven to the alternative conclusion that Q is only the teaching of early
(Galilean?) communities and that we can say nothing more than that. Tertium
datur: the Q material is remembered by such communities as teaching given by
Jesus, and we should respect the claim implicit in that memory. If the Synoptic
tradition does not give us direct access to Jesus himself, neither does it leave us
simply in the faith of the first-century Christian churches stopped well short of
that goal. What it gives us rather is the remembered Jesus — Jesus not simply as
they chose to remember him, but also as the impact of his words and deeds
shaped their memories and still reverberated in their gatherings.
b. Second, this line of argument is confirmed by our study of the oral phase
of the Jesus tradition (chapter 8). This encouraged the conclusion that the impact
of Jesus is still discernible in the stories and teachings which were performed in
the earliest disciple/church gatherings and which gave these gatherings their
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