Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§12.6 The Kingdom of God
ous sequences may be detected as elaborations and developments of particular
emphases or more specific themes. But it is impossible to root out sequences or
either emphasis in toto without seriously distorting the tradition. Such would
probably have been the scholarly consensus until the 1970s, 391 and most still find
themselves driven to conclude that some sort of both-and, already-not yet description
is unavoidable. 392
b. Does Q Provide the Key?
The major developments since the 1970s consensus have been the stratification
of Q and the greater significance accorded to the Gospel of Thomas. As already
noted, Kloppenborg has disentangled a primary sapiential layer in Q composed
of six 'wisdom speeches'(Q 1 ) and concluded that a second apocalyptic layer,
made up of five judgment speeches (Q 2 ), was worked into the texture of Q 1 . 393
The fact that Q 1 seems to accord so well with the non-apocalyptic character of
Thomas strengthened Koester's conviction that Thomas not only contains early
material but was itself composed very early. More to the point here, the mutual
come' emphasis reflected the teaching of the early communities (The Beginnings of Christian
Theology' [1960], New Testament Questions of Today [London: SCM, 1969] 82-107 [here 101-
102]); and we have already noted the Jesus Seminar's antipathy to an 'eschatological Jesus'
(chapter 4 n. 174 above). Koester, however, points out that the age of Augustus was an age of
'realized eschatology' ('Jesus the Victim' 10-13), thus undermining the principal argument for
'realized eschatology' as the most distinctive feature of Jesus' message on the criterion of dissimilarity.
391. Ladd's distinction between present 'fulfilment' and future 'consummation' well expressed
the consensus position (Jesus and the Kingdom). Typical of the existentialist perspective
of the Bultmann school is H. Conzelmann, An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament
(London: SCM, 1969): 'The contradiction between the "present" and the future sayings is
only an apparent one. The two have the same significance for human existence: man's attitude
of the moment towards the coming kingdom' (114). Manson's argument {Teaching 117-30) that
the coming of the kingdom in Jesus' ministry is to be identified with one or other of the turning
points in that ministry, most probably Peter's confession (Mark 8.27-30), is a variation of the
older idea of two clear stages in Jesus' ministry, which Schweitzer developed in his own way
(§4.5a above).
392. E.g., Schürmann, Gottes Reich 143; Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theologie 1.72;
Gnilka, Jesus of Nazareth 135, 146, 149; Meier, Marginal Jew 2.450-54; Theissen and Merz,
Historical Jesus 275. Crossan criticizes Meier for being 'honestly unable to combine what are
not only divergent but even opposing strata of the Jesus tradition' (Birth 145-46), as though the
interpreter's 'inabilities' should be a determinative factor in assessment of data. It is always a
puzzle how commentators can be so sure of the irreconcilability of elements which Q and the
Synoptic Evangelists were content to put side by side.
393. See above, chapter 4 n. 166.
467