From: "Stevan Davies" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 15:34:27 +0000 Subject: Re: Q2 and Thomas Thank you to Bill Arnal. Once I've read his letter a couple more times I'll be considerably more knowledgable about the sayings traditions than I was when I got up this morning. And I don't mean that sarcastically! But let's leave Klop and Mack aside and bring ol' Marcus Borg on stage for awhile. He himself believes, and he has insisted in print that it is the consensus among scholars, that Jesus was not an apocalypticist and therefore sayings such as the future Son of Man sayings are later creations. However, if it is the case that Q2 is pulling those sayings out of existing tradition rather than making them up only two possibilities occur to me. 1. Jesus said them. 2. There was some other community, not the Q folks, who had some sort of message that was rejected by the masses and this peeved them to such a degree that they made up the apoc. sayings. But this is a bit much, as it would mean that the complicated arguments that Mack makes to show the mindset of the frustrated Q folks applied also to some other otherwise unknown group who did make up such sayings at a period quite considerably earlier than Q2 such that their sayings became an accepted part of the oral tradition from which Q2 took its stuff when the Q folks also got frustrated. So, evidently, there was a collection of rather savage Kingdom of God as vengeance sayings circulating prior to Q2. Wouldn't that imply pretty strongly that Q1 would have known them but deliberately chose to leave them out? The only other alternative is that they came into being between the time of Q1 and Q2 in some other community than Q. Subsequently those sayings, or at least their ideology, was picked up by Q and Mt Mk Lk Pl and it was known to Jn and Th. If the sayings derive from Jesus we do have reason to think that Thomas knew of that sort of saying and left them out. If Q1 also did so then there may be interesting evidence of a somewhat widespread pre-synoptic tendency to reject one principal element of Jesus' message Stage one: The eschatological Jesus 30AD Stage two: Q1/Th rejection of the eschatological Jesus 50AD Stage three: Q2 etc. reaffirmation of the eschatological Jesus 60AD [Stage four: Re-rejection of the eschatological Jesus 1980AD] That would make the Q1/Thomas stage a particularly interesting one to explore, it seems to me. What have we got there? A sapientializing of eschatology followed by an eschatologizing of the sapiential? That sounds silly, but it is what you are left with, I think, if you assume that Q didn't make up the Q2 eschatological sayings. So, enlighten me WA or somebody. Where did the Q style day of the Son of Man sayings come from? The Q people didn't make them up (Klop) and Jesus didn't make them up (Borg). Or did Jesus make them up? Isn't that the simplest hypothesis that fits the evidence, even Klop's Q1/Q2 evidence? But even those who think J spoke of a coming Kingdom in some sense or other do NOT usually prefer to think that the Kingdom expected to be anything like what the Q sayings say it will be like, i.e. fire and brimstone and flood and lightning and woe unto Bethsaida and Capurnaum cast into hell, and I will come on the clouds with the angels whilst the stars fall from their spheres and woe unto her who is with child in those days. E.P. Sanders writes in *The Historical Figure of Jesus* "As a desperate measure, people whom this [Jesus' eschatological message] makes uncomfortable can say that everybody misunderstood Jesus completely. He really wanted economic and social reform. The disciples dropped that part of his teaching and made up sayings about the future kingdom of God - which they then had to start retracting, since the kingdom did not arrive. This assumes that we can 'know' things for which there is no evidence, while simultaneously 'knowing' that the evidence we have is based on total incomprehension. Such views merely show the triumph of wishful thinking." (page 183). I think on 'crosstalk' this would be regarded as a 'flame' by Sanders against Crossan and Borg and Kaylor and the JSem consensus. So did Jesus offer the view that God would kill everyone on earth except those who agreed with Jesus? Or was this a later invention and, if so, by whom and why? What's going on here? Steve