Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§ 12.6 The Kingdom of God
instances where it can be equally or more persuasively argued that Thomas has
de-eschatologized the tradition which it has drawn upon. 400
(4) The argument also trades, with equal discomfort, on the literary paradigm
of tradition transmission, as though one could reach not only the earliest but
even the original form by simple process of subtracting redaction from the later
versions. But if my appeal to recognize the distinctive character of the oral
traditioning process has any merit, we will have to acknowledge also both a continuity
of tradition from the start and the unlikelihood of major new emphases being
interjected which conflicted in serious measure with the established tradition.
(5) Too little weight has been given to the lack of support for the corollary
hypotheses on which the coherence of the argument depends. The opposition between
Jesus and John is overstated; the sequence discussed above (§ 12.5c), as
well as the affirmation that the gospel began with John (§11.2c), indicate a more
positive relation between them and that the break with John was not necessarily a
denial of John's message. 401 The only disciples of John that we know to have
joined Jesus did so at the very beginning (§ 11.2b); there is no other evidence of
disciples of John joining the Jesus movement later and bringing in John's apocalyptic
preaching as something different (if that was what distinguished the two,
one would presumably join Jesus only in order to leave behind John's preaching!).
And as noted above, it makes more sense to read the judgment pronounced on the
Galilean towns in the context of Jesus' known Galilean ministry rather than in the
context of an early church mission of which we have no other evidence.
All in all, the arguments based on the QlThomas conjunction are insufficient
to break the earlier consensus. The weight, spread, and consistency of the
twofold emphasis in Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom cannot so readily be
nullified. Jesus was remembered as speaking of both the kingdom's future coming
and its impact already in the present. The earlier tradents, no more than the
Evangelists, evidently found no difficulty or inconsistency in recalling both emphases
as integral to Jesus' message. That fact should be allowed to guide reconstructions
of Jesus' preaching more fully than has usually been the case.
Can the issue be handled more sophisticatedly than by simply excising one
or the other emphasis? For the presence of both emphases in the Jesus tradition
does still pose something of a riddle to the modern interpreter. To us, if not to the
first tradents, a claim that the kingdom is both yet to come and already active in
the present does seem to pose difficulties of conceptualisation. How could Jesus
have held and taught both emphases? What understanding of 'the kingdom of
400. See also Allison, Jesus of Nazareth 126-27, citing particularly GTh 35, 41 and 103,
but referring also to GTh 10,16, and 91.
401. Crossan, e.g., argues that Jesus broke with John over the Baptist's apocalyptic message
{Historical Jesus 259).
469