Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §12.6
confirmation afforded by Q 1 and Thomas to each other became the basis for the
argument of the Jesus Seminar and Crossan that the earliest layer of the Jesus tradition
was itself sapiential and non-apocalyptic. From which point it is but a step
to conclude that Jesus' own preaching had the same character. That is to say, Jesus'
preaching of the kingdom of God did not envisage any divine intervention
into history, any 'apocalyptic' coming of the kingdom. The note particularly of
judgment on 'this generation' entered the Jesus tradition, either through the influence
of disciples of the Baptist joining the Jesus movement 394 or as a result of
the failure of the early church's mission to Israel. 395
This is an impressively coherent argument. But it contains several flaws.
(1) As Kloppenborg has been the first to insist, the compositional history of Q
does not determine the date or origin of the material drawn in to Q at the different
stages in its composition. 396 Even if we are still able to distinguish later from earlier
composition — and I remain unpersuaded that we have adequate criteria for
such a task in a document whose text, content, and length remain so uncertain —
it need only mean that Q 1 brought together one strand of the Jesus tradition. 397
Q 1 , we might say, was simply an extension of the practice, of which we have seen
numerous examples in §§12.4-5, of grouping together material of similar character
and emphasis within the much more diverse range of the Jesus tradition.
(2) The argument trades uncomfortably on the 'one document per community'
hypothesis — as though Q 1 constituted proof in itself that any community
knowing and using it knew of and used no other Jesus tradition, or, alternatively,
was opposed to another community which had (only) the other emphasis. 398
(3) Despite Koester's best efforts, his argument that Thomas bears witness
to an early non-eschatological stage in the Jesus tradition cannot escape the
charge of petitio principii (question-begging). 399 We have noted above several
394. Funk, Honest to Jesus 168: the disciples of John who followed Jesus 'had not understood
the subtleties of Jesus' position'.
395. See above, n. 222.
396. See particularly Kloppenborg, 'Sayings Gospel Q' 323 n. 70, 337.
397. In this case the widespread appearance of the motif of judgment on 'this generation'
within the Synoptic tradition (Matt. 11.16/Luke 7.31; Matt. 12.41-42/Luke 11.31-32; Matt.
23.36/Luke 11.51; Mark 8.12, 38; Matt. 12.45; Luke 11.30, 50; 17.25; see also Meier, Marginal
Jew 2.209 n. 134) and its relative absence elsewhere in the NT suggest a motif recalled as characteristic
of Jesus' teaching and consequently included in retellings of the Jesus tradition (see also
above, §§7.4c and 12.4e). 'It is characteristic of the "this gened" terminology in the New Testament
that it is almost entirely to be found only in the Synoptic Gospels and there exclusively on
the lips of Jesus. It is thus firmly established in the early Christian traditions as an expression
used by Jesus and related to his preaching' (E. Lövestam, Jesus and 'This Generation': A New
Testament Study [CBNT 25; Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1995] 102).
398. See above §7.4b.
399. See further the frequent references to Koester in §§7.6 and 8 above.
468