Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§10.2 Through the Gospels to Jesus
undue focus on the individual sayings within the Jesus tradition. Consequently
the 'new' questers saw the way forward in terms of identifying criteria which
would provide a 'critically assured' core of Jesus' teaching. The question
whether Q (or Q 1 ) gives immediate access to the historical Jesus (just as first
questers were able to rely on Mark) has not been regularly asked (or not asked
enough) in the current revival of interest in Q. 5 Of contemporary questers,
Theissen has been overconfident that the primary level of Jesus tradition sought
to inculcate the practice of charismatic vagrancy. 6 Funk is equally sure that the
quest should begin with the parables of Jesus ('In the beginning was the parable')
and that recognition of the authenticity of aphorisms should depend on whether
they cohered with Jesus' own parable tradition. 7 Benedict Viviano works from
the thirty-one overlapping sayings in Q and Mark to reconstruct a surprisingly
complete picture. 8 In contrast, Sanders has stressed the methodological desirability
of being able to build primarily on 'facts about Jesus' and not just on sayings,
and much of his own study of Jesus depends on his entry point into the tradition
at the 'cleansing' of the temple. 9 Crossan has no doubt that the conjunction of
three vectors (a rather broadly conceived cross-cultural anthropology, Greco-
Roman and Jewish history, and literary or textual analysis), plus his idiosyncratic
stratification of the totality of Jesus tradition, gives him a sure way forward. 10
And Wright is equally convinced that by reading the elements of the Jesus tradi-
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1963, 5 1995) 33-36, 455; ET The Titles of Jesus in
Christology (London: Lutterworth, 1969) 28-34. Hahn accepted this observation in a private
conversation in the late 1970s.
5. It is a/the key question posed repeatedly in the 49th Lou vain Colloquium (2000) —
Lindemann, ed., The Sayings Source Q and the Historical Jesus. For example, J. M. Robinson
assumes the case for distinguishing Q 1 from Q 2 and confidently draws afresh the old Liberal
picture of Jesus as a preacher of God's love, an insight soon lost from sight by the Q 2 redactor
with his contrary emphasis on God as God of judgment (as a result of gruelling experiences
during the Jewish war of 66-70) ('The Critical Edition of Q and the Study of Jesus', in
Lindemann, Sayings Source 27-52 [here 39-47]), while Kloppenborg Verbin repeats earlier
warnings against too quickly reading off the historical Jesus from Q 1 ('Discursive Practices'
149-90; see particularly his 'Sayings Gospel Q').
6. Theissen, First Followers ch. 2.
7. Funk, Honest 136, 165; Funk acknowledges his indebtedness to Patterson, The Gospel
of Thomas and Jesus. Similarly Acts of Jesus: 'The parables and aphorisms form the bedrock
of the tradition. They represent the point of view of Jesus himself (9, 11).
8. B. T. Viviano, 'The Historical Jesus in the Doubly Attested Sayings: An Experiment',
RB 103 (1996) 367-410.
9. Sanders, Jesus 4-5, and ch. 1, 'Jesus and the Temple' (61-76). Cf. already Roloff,
Kerygma, who likewise emphasises that we must reckon not only with the tradition of Jesus'
words but also with the narratives (271), and whose entry point into the tradition is the Sabbath
conflict and the cleansing of the Temple (51-52).
10. Crossan, Historical Jesus xxxi-xxxii; also Jesus xi-xiii; also Birth 146-49.
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