The Making of a Passion Gospel
Kari Syreeni
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks are due to Svenska Kulturfonden, Finland, who, in cooperation with Åbo Akademi, granted my sabbatical year and made this book possible. I am also thankful for the feedback from the research seminars at Helsinki University (Risto Uro), Uppsala University (James Kelhoffer), King’s College London (Joan Taylor), and Oxford University (Markus Bockmuel). I also thank Ismo Dunderberg (Helsinki) for his useful comments on the manuscript.
My previously published work on John includes the following articles. None of them are reproduced in this book, but all have been revisited in writing a chapter or parts of a chapter.
“Incarnatus est? Christ and Community in the Johannine Farewell Discourse,” in Jan Mrázek and Jan Roskovec (eds.), Testimony and Interpretation: Early Christology in Its Judeo-Christian Milieu: Studies in Honour of Petr Pokorný JSNTSup 272; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2004, 247–64. The article tentatively introduces my overall hypothesis on the redaction of John.
“The Witness of Blood: The Narrative and Ideological Function of the ‘Beloved Disciple’ in John 13–21,” in Antti Mustakallio (ed.), Lux Humana, Lux Aeterna: Essays on Biblical and Related Themes in Honour of Lars Aejmelaeus. PFES 89; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society/ Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005, 164–85. Much of the article is used in Chapter 4 of the present study.
“Working in the Daylight: John 9:4–5 and the Question of Johannine ‘Literary Archaeology’.” SEÅ 70 (2005), 265–79. Parts of Chapter 7 develop the theme of this article.
“A Feminine Gospel? Jungian and Freudian perspectives on the Gospel of John,” in J. Harold Ellens (ed.), Text and Community: Essays in Memory of Bruce M. Metzger. 2 vols.; NTM 19; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007, 2:573–90. Some general notions concerning the patriarchal ethos of John echo this article.
“Partial Weaning: Approaching the Psychological Enigma of John 13–17.” SEÅ 72 (2007), 173–92. Some general observations in Chapter 8 reflect this article.
“Testament and Consolation: Reflections on the Literary Form of the Johannine Farewell of Jesus,” in Juha Pakkala and Martti Nissinen (eds.), Houses Full of All Good Things: Essays in Memory of Timo Veijola. PFES 95; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2008, 573–90. Parts of Chapter 8 are based on this article.
“From the Bridegroom’s Time to the Wedding of the Lamb: Nuptial Imagery in the Canonical Gospels and the Book of Revelation,” in Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro (eds.), Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns (2008), 434–72. Parts of Chapter 7 develop the theme of this article.
“Divine or Human Emotions? The Character of Jesus in the Gospel of John,” forthcoming in René Falkenberg, Marianne Bjelland Kartzow and Louise Heldgaard Bylund (eds.): Nordic Interpretations of the New Testament: Challenging Texts and Perspectives (Studia Aarhusiana Neotestamentica 5), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2018. A minor part of Chapter 6 is based on this article.
Two forthcoming manuscripts—“The Scope of the Johannine Prologue” and “Crises and Trauma: Modeling the History of the Johannine Community”—will be published later in Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts (eds.), The Johannine Prologue and its Resonances (JOST 4; Leiden: Brill) and Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts (eds.), John’s Gospel and its Sources (JOST 5; Leiden: Brill). These articles are alternative versions of chapters 3 and 9, with a slightly different focus.
The biblical quotations are from the NRSV, if not otherwise indicated. The translations of the Nag Hammadi texts are from James M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English (rev. edn; Leiden; New York; Köln: Brill, 1996).
The book is dedicated to my sons, Sampo and Ahti.
Kari Syreeni
The day before Christmas, 2017 St Karins, Finland
AB Anchor Bible
ABBREVIATIONS
ABRL Anchor Bible Reference Library
AASF Annales Academiae scientiarum fennicae
BBB Bonner biblische Beiträge
BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium
Bib Biblica
BJS Brown Judaic Studies
BNTC Black’s New Testament Commentaries
BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
BZ Biblische Zeitschrift
BZNW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
CBNTS Coniectanea Biblica New Testament Series
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CRINT Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum
EKKNT Evangelisch-katolischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament
ETL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanensis
FN Filologia Neotestamentaria
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments
HTKNT Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament
HNT Handbuch zum Neuen Testament
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HTS Harvard Theological Studies
IB Interpreter’s Bible
ICC International Critical Commentary
ITQ Irish Theological Quarterly
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament
JSNTSUP Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement Series
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
LD Lectio divina
LNTS Library of New Testament Studies
Neot Neotestamentica
NCB New Century Bible
NCBC New Cambridge Bible Commentary
NHMS Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies
NIBC New International Biblical Commentary
NTOA Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus
NovT Novum Testamentum
NovTSup Supplements to Novum Testamentum
NTAbh Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen
NTL New Testament Library
NTS New Testament Studies
ÖTK Ökumenischer Taschenbuchkommentar zum Neuen Testament
PFES Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society
RAC Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum
SBAB Stuttgarter Biblische Aufsatzbände
SBB Stuttgarter Biblische Beiträge
SBLDS Society of Biblical Studies Dissertation Series
SBLMS Society of Biblical Studies Monograph Series
SBS Stuttgarter Bibelstudien
SP Sacra Pagina
SEÅ Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok
THKNT Theologischer Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament
TNTC Tyndale New Testament Commentaries
TynBul Tyndale Bulletin
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Altrn und Neuen Testament
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche
C 1
hapter
INTRODUCTION: A PASSION FOR JOHN
All scholarly voyages with John are different.1 The present study is based on updated “travel notes” on my more than twelve years with this early Christian text. According to a winged saying, the Gospel of John is a pool in which small children can paddle and elephants can swim.2 I have learned a harder lesson: John is a sea where children and elephants alike risk getting drowned. As long as the safe coast where I once started is still in the horizon, it might have been wise to turn back and head for the dry land, as many Johannine scholars have done.3 A withdrawal
1. Cf. Robert Kysar, Voyages with John: Charting the Fourth Gospel (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2005). Kysar describes his voyage of some forty years in terms of hermeneutical shifts: from historical criticism through theological criticism and new literary criticism to postmodernity (p. 1). William Loader’s path has been less winding; his new monograph Jesus in John’s Gospel: Structure and Issues in Johannine Christology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017) basically details the structure of Johannine Christology presented in a 1984 article.
2. The saying, with small variations, has been attributed to both Augustine and Gregory the Great, and has been popular among modern scholars as well. See Paul N. Anderson, The Riddles of the Fourth Gospel: An Introduction to John (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 245 n.1 to p. 1.
3. Hartwig Thyen is the best-known example of a scholar who started with the (Bultmannian) axiom of John’s redacted nature but landed with an understanding of the Gospel as a unified work of literature. See Hartwig Thyen, “Die Erzählung von den betanischen Geschwistern (Joh 11,1 – 12,19) als ‘Palimpsest’ über synoptischen Texten,” in F. van Segbroeck, C. M. Tuckett, G. Van Belle and J. Verheyden (eds.), The Four Gospels: Festschrift Frans Neirynck (vol. 3; BETL 100; Leuven: Peeters, 1992), 2001–50; p. 2001. His voyage can be followed more closely in his Studien zum Corpus Johannaeum (WUNT 214; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). My itinerary is shorter and less dramatic. In Finland and Sweden the scholarly opinion has always been divided. Rafael Gyllenberg, former professor at Åbo Akademi University, treated John as a literary unity. In Helsinki, Markku Kotila was for independence, Raimo Hakola adopted a synchronic sociological approach, and Ismo Dunderberg suggested John’s use of synoptic Gospels at a late stage, while Lars Aejmelaeus, in a Finnish-language trilogy on the resurrection of Jesus, was explicit on John’s use of the Synoptics. Heikki Räisänen, the Doctorvater of nearly all Finnish New Testament
from behind the present Gospel back to its present shape would not be difficult to rationalize in terms of sober scholarship. However, for me, the depth and width of the Gospel is so much greater than its visible shape that I have not been able leave it totally unexplored. There is a passion for learning more, but after all years of exploration I feel committed to gather some of the findings, knowing that much more remains to be done.
The Hypothesis: A Passion Redaction of John
Much of the little I have learned thus far is included in the present book, which substantially reworks a number of articles published between 2003 and 2016. All these articles rest on a particular hypothesis about the making of John. In this chapter, I articulate the basic hypothesis and elucidate its background. Since the hypothesis implies that there was a Johannine predecessor which did not contain a passion story, a brief comparative look at the Q Gospel and the Gospel of Thomas is motivated. A short discussion of the synoptic “passion gospels,” comparable to the final John, then follows. Finally, a few words about methods are in order.
In a nutshell, I suggest that the passion narrative, together with the passionresurrection plot in its entirety, belongs to a late redaction of the Fourth Gospel. This passion-oriented redaction is so extensive and vital to the present form of the Gospel that I call it the becoming of John. At the same time, the contours of an extensive literary document are discernible in the main bulk of Jn 1–12. Not only a literary entity, the non-passion substratum is also a layer of tradition, which in a more fragmentary way is found in subsequent parts of John. While a precise reconstruction of John’s literary predecessor remains conjectural, there are enough signs of how the passion-oriented redaction has reinterpreted the older stratum. Several drastic shifts of meaning were occasioned by ever deepening reflections on the passion narrative’s consequences for the non-passion tradition. The present book argues for this general thesis by analyzing some of the most conspicuous literary and theological accents in this process of reinterpretation, and by recovering the profile of the early Johannine stratum.
Thus, I am not content with “letting John be John,”4 but try to see how John became the Gospel it is. Most of the observations on which my hypothesis
scholars in my generation, did not focus particularly on John, but in his magnum opus The Rise of Christian Beliefs: The Thought World of Early Christians (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010) he took a mediating position: “The later layers [of John] may presuppose some knowledge of the Synoptic Gospels” (p. 68). In Sweden, Birger Olsson’s important text-linguistic study Structure and Meaning in the Fourth Gospel: A Text-Linguistic Analysis of John 2:1-11 and 4:1-42 (CBNTS 6; Lund: Gleerup, 1974) was essentially in favor of John’s literary unity.
4. Cf. James D. G. Dunn, “Let John Be John: A Gospel for Its Time,” in Peter Stuhlmacher (ed.), Das Evangelium und die Evangelien: Vorträge vom Tübingen Symposium 1982 (WUNT 28; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1983), 309–39.
rests have been made before several times, and often better, by other scholars, who however evaluate the data differently. Neither are the core elements of the hypothesis unprecedented. For example, the three-edition hypothesis proposed by Wilhelm Wilkens (1958) urged that it was only the heavily reworked final edition that turned the Fourth Gospel into a “Passion Gospel.”5 My hypothesis also resonates with the assumption of an underlying “Signs source” (but not Fortna’s “Signs Gospel”),6 particularly if one includes substantial discourse material in such a source, roughly adding Bultmann’s Offenbarungsreden to his Semeia-Quelle. The “Signs source” variant suggested by Jürgen Becker in his commentary on John is also interesting. This extensive Johannine source would have a chronological and geographical movement from John the Baptist and a Galilean period to Jesus’ rejection in Jerusalem—yet without a passion-resurrection narrative.7 I would not stress these aspects of the plot as much as Becker does; instead I find some key themes and temporal markers more important.8
More recently, John Dominic Crossan has sketched a still closer equivalent to the passion redaction hypothesis. In his The Birth of Christianity, Crossan offers the following vision:9
I consider that John’s Gospel developed over certain major stages. First, there was an independent collection of miracles and aphorisms that were creatively integrated so that the miracle-signs represented as physical events (bread,
5. Wilhelm Wilkens, Die Entstehungsgeschichte des vierten Evangeliums (Zollikon: Evangelischer Verlag, 1958). According to Wilkens, already the Grundevangelium included a passion story (and the appearances in John 20). The second compositional stage was the addition of speech sections, but only the Evangelist’s subsequent rearrangements and added material made it into a veritable Passionsevangelium.
6. See Robert Thompson Fortna, The Gospel of Signs: A Reconstruction of the Narrative Source Underlying the Fourth Gospel (SNTSMS 11; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). I have mostly taken note of Fortna’s later, more comprehensive study, The Fourth Gospel and its Predecessor: From Narrative Source to Present Gospel to Present Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1988). Fortna has somewhat modified his reconstruction in the latter book. I have occasionally also referred to W. Nicol, The Semeia in the Fourth Gospel: Tradition and Redaction (NovTSup 32; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972).
7. Jürgen Becker, Das Evangelium nach Johannes (2 vols.; ÖTK 505, 1979), 1:112-120.
8. Sydney Temple, The Core of the Fourth Gospel (London and Oxford: Mowbrays, 1975), was a less useful variant of an underlying narrative-discourse source hypothesis. My problems begin with the suggestion (author’s note, p. viii) that “a scribe kept a record of Jesus’ words and actions” ca. 25–35 CE, and that “the Fourth Gospel was possibly composed by John, the son of Zebedee, using the scribe’s record as the core around which he wrote his gospel” ca. 35–65 CE. Temple’s reconstruction includes the passion story.
9. John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering what Happened in the Years immediately after the Execution of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1998), 112.
sight, etc.) what was announced by the aphorisms-dialogues as spiritual events (“I am the bread, light,” etc.). Second, pressure from groups accepting the synoptic gospels as the dominant Christian model resulted in the necessity of adding John the Baptist traditions at the start and passion-resurrection traditions at the end of a gospel which, left to itself, would have begun with that magnificent hymn at the start in John 1:1-18 (without the Baptist, of course) and concluded with that equally magnificent discourse at the end in John 14–17. Third, the pressure from groups accepting Peter as the dominant Christian leader necessitated the addition of John 21.
My hypothesis took shape independently of Crossan, but some of the similarities are striking. The first observation that pushed me toward a similar model was the summary nature of Jn 12:37-50, which looked very much like the end of a gospel, so much so as the beginning of ch. 13 seems to launch another story. The introduction of the Beloved Disciple in John 13 seemed to confirm that suspicion, and further analysis unearthed many more signs of a reinterpretation of Jn 1–12 in the rest of the Gospel. At the same time, the independent theological profi le of Jn 1–12 was becoming clearer. Martinus de Boer’s Johannine Perspectives on the Death of Jesus (1996) nurtured my hypothesis at an early stage. His analysis was based on a multistage compositional model, advanced by J. L. Martyn and Raymond E. Brown, which opened a window into the historical progression of Johannine thought. Although this model assumed that the passion story was there in the earliest edition of John, de Boer concluded that in this edition “the death of Jesus is implicitly regarded as an embarrassment” and that “salvation had (or has) little, if anything to do with Jesus’ death.”10 If that is the case, I thought, why would the earliest form of the Johannine Gospel narrate Jesus’ death at all?
This was a question that I found, afterward, to resonate with Ernst Bammel’s discussion of the farewell section.11 Bammel emphasized that, in distinction from Jewish farewell traditions, Jn 13–17 is marked by
the absence of a description of death and funeral. True, such an account can be found in John 18–19. There is, however, no doubt whatever that these chapters were written by a different hand nor is there any indication that the unit of chapter 13–17 was composed with the intention that it would be concluded by an account of the death of the speaker which then came to be replaced by the passion story we now find in the following chapters. What we actually encounter in the farewell discourse is, we are driven to say, a hint of the ascension rather than of a violent death.
10. M. C. de Boer, Johannine Perspectives on the Death of Jesus (Kampen: Pharos, 1996), 93–94.
11. Ernst Bammel, “The Farewell Discourse of the Evangelist John and Its Jewish Inheritance,” Tyndale Bulletin 44 (1993), 103–16; p. 111.
My solution is more complex than Bammel’s. In the final Gospel, the farewell section betrays the same “hand” that added the subsequent chapters, but the main point is that Bammel discerned an earlier Johannine layer of tradition where Jesus’ departure was not conceptualized according to a death-resurrection pattern.
So it was a cumulative process that lies behind my hypothesis. However, I would not object if, for the sake of convenience, my redaction hypothesis is regarded as an elaboration of Crossan’s vision. I have problems with some points in Crossan’s hypothesis.12 In essence, however, I endorse the idea that the passion stratum is secondary to the prologue and the main bulk of Jn 1–12, and that parts of the farewell scene in Jn 13–17 belong to the non-passion stratum. And just for sure, I doubt some of Crossan’s further suggestions about the earliest gospel sources.13
To have a vision is one thing. To prove it, or at least make it appear a plausible option, is another thing. Huge problems arise as soon as Crossan’s idea is fleshed out. The provenance of the Johannine passion and resurrection narrative, the making of the farewell section Jn 13–17 that bridges the first “book” of John and the passion-resurrection narrative, and the numerous anticipations of the passion plot in Jn 1–12 are among the toughest questions.
Whatever its faults or merits, the hypothesis owes a great deal to my coming from the field of synoptic studies. By way of comparison, Crossan might never have come to his ideas concerning John without his eagle-eye view on nascent Christianity and its literature. D. A. Carson once addressed the challenge of the “Balkanization” of Johannine studies.14 Although a passion redaction hypothesis is easily dismissed as one more idiosyncrasy that will soon “litter the graveyards of Johannine scholarship,”15 I hope to show that the considerations that led me to it
12. I do not assume that the sequences dealing with John the Baptist are secondary to the prologue in the fashion implied in the above quotation. Also, the farewell address and the final prayer in Jn 14–17, together with the footwashing and betrayal scene in John 13, are to be excluded from any literary reconstruction of the Johannine “predecessor,” although some elements there reflect the older tradition-historical stratum.
13. I do not engage in discussions of the Gospel of Peter (or Crossan’s Cross Gospel), which I find dependent on the canonical Gospels, not to speak of the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark. Cf. Stephen C. Carlson, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2005).
14. D. A. Carson, “The Challenge of the Balkanization of Johannine Studies,” in Paul Anderson, Felix Just, and Tom Thatcher (eds.), John, Jesus, and History, vol. 1: Critical Appraisals of Critical Views (Atlanta: SBL, 2007), 133–59.
15. Peter W. Ensor, Jesus and His ‘Works’: The Johannine Sayings in Historical Perspective (WUNT 2/85, Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1996), 16. Ensor’s overriding impression is that the various source and development theories are “speculative,” at best “ingenious and yet unprovable” (p. 23). One wonders if Ensor’s quest for the historical Jesus based on John in its present form fares any better. For example, to account for the difficulty at Jn 14:31 Ensor hypothesizes that the announcement “Let us go from here” may have been a preliminary sign of Jesus’ intention to leave, or else the ensuing speeches may have been said on the way
are not based on partisan scholarship. Quite the contrary; the Johannine question cannot be divorced from the synoptic problem, and both should be seen in the larger context of the emerging and evolving gospel literature.
One a priori obstacle to the passion redaction hypothesis may be the scholarly tradition of speaking of “John and the Synoptics.” This served well in the nineteenth century, but should be considered a bad habit in modern scholarship. As a conceptual model, it tends to regard the individual Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke as a single entity against which the “fourth” Gospel is interpreted. I will deal with the “John and the Synoptics” issue in the next chapter, but one of its unhappy consequences must be mentioned. Apparently, for all their differences, John has one thing in common with “the Synoptics”: the passion narrative. However, if we go behind the final Gospels and assume the two-source theory, things are different. Before Mark, the passion story was in all likelihood not connected to other Jesus material, which may have partly existed as short collections. And about the same time Mark wrote the first passion gospel, there was another—now lost—model for a gospel without a passion story: the Q Gospel.16 A few generations later, the Gospel of Thomas provided another example. To imagine what a non-passion gospel may have looked like, a glance at Q and Thomas will be helpful.
Q and Thomas—Non-Passion Gospels
Coming originally from Matthean studies, I am convinced that the two-source theory is the best overall solution to the relationship between the first three canonical Gospels. More precisely, the two-source theory works best when it comes to Matthew. It may be more in need of auxiliary hypotheses in the case of Luke, whose reference to “many” predecessors (Lk. 1:1) is likely more than a figure of speech. The whole truth in the matter is probably much more complicated than the rough version of the two-source theory suggests, but for our immediate concern it suffices to reaffirm Markan priority and the existence of the Q Gospel.
The two-source theory hardly needs an apology among critical scholars; it is still the default position, though it is not unchallenged. However, I take Q as a written gospel with a distinctive literary and theological shape more seriously than some mainstream exegetes. As Crossan notes, “There is a growing difference between those who regard the Q Gospel as a major gospel text and those who accept its
to the Garden of Gethsemane (p. 154). This kind of explanation, Ensor assures, is “a more historically realistic solution” than the hypothesis that chs 15–17 are a later insertion.
16. The customary designation “Sayings Gospel Q” is problematic since the Q Gospel, as I see it, is on the verge of becoming a semi-narrative account of the way of Jesus and his disciples. The combination of narrative and discourse elements in Q makes it a more suitable point of comparison than the Gospel of Thomas, where the lack of passion narrative is easier to explain as a matter of literary genre.
existence and contents but not its significance and implications.”17 A comfortable way of accepting the hypothesis in theory but rejecting it in practice is the slippery use of the designation ‘Q’ to refer both to the common non-Markan material in Matthew and Luke and to the hypothetical, reconstructed Q text, and additionally, to an amorphous Q tradition. That such usage obscures the distinctiveness of Q as a literary product, albeit a hypothetical one, is as plain as is the opposite mistake of succumbing to the illusion that, thanks to the earlier reconstructions and more recently the efforts of the International Q Project, we now have the very Q text in original Greek (with accents and all) before our eyes. What I presuppose is just the results of genuine Q research. However, there is another, more sophisticated strategy that seemingly addresses the specifics of modern Q research and commends a measure of caution (which is always needed), while in fact serving to undermine the whole enterprise.
James Dunn’s dealing with Q in his magisterial Jesus Remembered provides a sharp critique of the first strategy and, regrettably, an erudite example of the latter.18 Dunn notes initially that Q “still remains a persuasive working hypothesis for the substantial majority,” a majority among which he counts himself. He then stresses the uncertainties of the reconstruction of Q, questioning whether Matthew and Luke really preserved most of Q, and stressing the substantial variation (from nearly 100 percent to around 8 percent) in verbal agreement between Matthew’s and Luke’s Q renderings, concluding that “the confidence in the existence [sic] of ‘Q’, based as heavily as the hypothesis is on the passages towards the 100% end of the scale, must inevitably be weaker in regard to passages towards the 8% of the scale.”19 The variation is interesting indeed, but most scholars would say that the 100 percent passages provide the argument for the existence of Q, while the 8 percent passages show the difficulties with reconstructing its precise contents and wording. Dunn’s discussion coheres with the question mark in the subtitle of the section (“A Q Document?”). The second question mark hangs over the existence of a Q community, and the annihilating conclusion runs as follows: “While the hypothesis that Q represents teaching material of/for one or several communities is entirely plausible, the further hypotheses that there were distinctively ‘Q communities’, in effect isolated from other early Christian communities, depends on deductions which go well beyond what the data of Q itself indicate.”20 It is an effective move to describe attempts at specifying the group(s) behind Q as “further hypotheses.” It is also clever to evoke the phantom of “isolated” Q communities, which are seldom postulated by Q scholars.
Dunn’s third question mark concerns the redaction of Q. Here, the target is John Kloppenborg’s hypothesis of subsequent redactions of Q, especially his
17. Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, 111.
18. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Christianity in the Making, vol. 1; Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2003), 147–60.
19. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 149.
20. Ibid., 152.
reconstruction of the earliest sapiential layer (Q¹). Kloppenborg’s model is undoubtedly vulnerable; the existence of Q¹ as a single document may well be questioned and its designation as sapiential is open to discussion.21 However, Dunn does not “particularly wish to dissent from the working hypothesis that Q was a carefully structured document.” He even grants: “Certainly the case for seeing Q as structured round the motif of coming judgment and on the lines of Deuteronomistic theology is impressive. As is also the evidence marshalled of interpolations into earlier material.”22 The classic groundbreaking study of Q redaction is Dieter Lührmann’s Die Redaktion der Logienquelle (1969).23 Lührmann had (needless to say) never heard of Kloppenborg’s Q¹, but was nevertheless able to discern the Q redactor’s techniques and main theological emphases. After Lührmann much progress and many proposed refinements24 have been made, but pinpointing the uncertainties of one (though influential) recent model can hardly invalidate Lührmann’s basic observations.25
21. It must be said, however, that Kloppenborg’s stratification model “has been frequently employed in misconstrued ways, which in turn have generated a widespread belief that it might be grounded more in theological and ideological assumptions than in observations of a literary and stylistic nature.” Giovanni B. Bazzana, Kingdom of Bureaucracy: The political Theology of Village Scribes in the Sayings Gospel Q (BETL 274; Leuven, Paris and Bristol: Peeters, 2015), 4. At the same time, Bazzana himself problematizes the binary wisdom vs. apocalyptic (pp. 16–19).
22. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 152–53.
23. Dieter Lührmann, Die Redaktion der Logienquelle (WMANT 33: Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1959).
24. The most recent proposal I am aware of is Yoseop Pra, Q—The First Writing about Jesus (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2016). Pra suggests a redaction history with four editions.
25. See, for example, the relatively cautious composition model of Arland D. Jacobson, The First Gospel: An Introduction to Q (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1992). Jacobson sees the “deuteronomistic-wisdom perspective” as the main unifying framework at the “basic, compositional stage” of Q (p. 76). Like Jacobson (and unlike Kloppenborg), I would not insist on the primacy of the sapiential material or literary genre in Q. What we can observe is the cooperation of wisdom motifs and a deuteronomistic view of history in the composition of Q. There is also considerable agreement on the existence of a late redaction, which has brought in more narrative elements into Q. James G. Williams, “Parable and Chreia: From Q to Narrative Gospel,” Semeia 43 (1988), 85–114, p. 109, rightly argues that Q “is well on its way toward the form of the narrative gospel.” In addition, I would stress the continuity from Q to the (much more throroughly narrativized) Gospel of Matthew. Cf. James M. Robinson, “The Q Trajectory: Between John and Matthew,” in Birger A. Pearson (ed.), The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 173–94; p. 193: “It would seem clear that the Q movement—at least a significant part of it—merged into the Matthean community, bringing into Matthew . . . the traditions of Jesus that Q had transmitted.”
Given Dunn’s strategy, his conclusion that “the questions of the date, place, and reasons for (Q’s) composition may be too much a matter of obscurum per obscurius”26 does not surprise. Q as a distinctive literary text, with palpable theological, social, and other concerns, has in effect been ruined. Then there is little if any use for Q in practical analysis. While it is methodologically sound to avoid building too many further hypotheses on the basis of already hypothetical entities, another sound principle is that one take responsibility for the hypotheses one actually assumes. Whatever may be said of Crossan’s specific theories, I subscribe to the ethos of his repeated concession: if his source hypothesis (in this case, concerning John’s Gospel) “is wrong, everything I build on it is invalid. And again, the same goes for the opposite position.”27 This is simply the ethos of fair play.
What consequences for Johannine studies does it have if we take the Q hypothesis, and the work done on Q, seriously? It is certainly a reminder that we cannot take the canonical Gospels as a self-evident model for what lies behind John. The recognition of Q’s independent kerygmatic profile since Heinz Eduard Tödt (1959)28 and its redactional, unified literary character since Dieter Lührmann (1969) should make it clear that it is not just a “source” but really a gospel. 29 As a non-passion gospel, Q provides an early alternative model for gospel literature. Admittedly, a comparison between Q and the Johannine predecessor does not show striking formal similarities. The themes and the rhetorical structure of the Q discourses are far from Jn 1–12. It may still be significant that the Q speeches, at some places, strike a middle ground between the aphoristic, shortcut arrangement of the Gospel of Thomas and the more generous, thematically rounded discourses in John; and then there is the “Johannine thunderbolt” Q 10:21-24.
The narrative outlook of Q may provide better hints. Kloppenborg notes that Q has developed a comprehensive “narrative world,” which extends from Abel and the foundation of the world (Q 11:49-51)30 to the coming of the Son of Man (17:23-30)
26. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 159.
27. Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, 114.
28. Heinz Eduard Tödt, Der Menschensohn in der synoptischen Überlieferung (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1959; 2nd edn 1963).
29. For a discussion of the genre of gospel with special attention to Q, see Christoph Heil, “Evangelium als Gattung: Erzähl- und Spruchevangelium,” in Thomas Schmeller (ed.), Historiographie und Biographie im Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt (NTOA/StUNT 69; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 62–94. Heil accepts the widespread term “Spruchevangelium” (Sayings Gospel) for Q but notes also Q’s tendency toward narrativity (p. 72). In a sense, of course, the discussion of whether Q should be considered a “gospel” is anachronistic, because εὐαγγέλιον only came to designate a written text in the beginning of the second century. According to James Kelhoffer, Conceptions of “Gospel” and Legitimacy in Early Christianity (WUNT324; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 39–75, esp. p. 72, this innovation must be placed after both Mark and Matthew but before the Didache.
30. In referring to the Q text, scholars use Luke’s verses; thus Q 11:49-51 means the reconstructed Q text behind Luke and its Matthean parallel.
and includes the time of the patriarchs, Lot, Solomon, Jonah, the death of Zechariah (11:51a) and John the Baptist (7:18-35), as well as the projected activities of Jesus’ disciples (10:2-3,16; 12:2-12, 22-31).31 Further, Arto Järvinen’s narrative analysis of Q shows how the characterization of Jesus and his followers contributes to the unfolding of Q’s plot.32 There is also a semi-narrative (partly biographical, partly catechetical) progression in the broad arrangement of the material according to an intrinsic logic: first things first (John the Baptist as forerunner proclaiming the Coming One, 3:16, Jesus’ first programmatic speech, etc.) and last things last (the coming of the Son of Man, 17:23-37, judging the twelve tribes 22:28-30). Most reconstructions of Q also include narrative sequences. A healing narrative (7:1-10) exemplifies Jesus’ extensive healing activity (7:21-22). If the temptation narrative (4:1-13) is included, as a late insertion, it is a further indication of Q’s narrative openness, even proclivity, when compared with the Gospel of Thomas. Even without the temptation narrative (and account of Jesus’ baptism, as some assume), Q’s opening section about John the Baptist and Jesus (from 3:3, 7–9, 16-17 to 7:18-35) has an impressive narrative framework. The Baptist proclaims Jesus as the Coming One. Later, having among other things delivered a thematically wellformed inaugural speech (Q 6:20-49), Jesus responds to the Baptist’s disciples who have arrived and ask him if he really is that Coming One (Q 7:19). Subsequently, however, the narrative elements are fewer. If a Markan side-glance is allowed, it would seem that the very beginning of the gospel is being narrativized.
Not so with the end and goal of Mark; whatever the uncertainties with reconstructing Q, it is clear that Q lacks a passion-resurrection (or empty tomb) narrative.33 In older research, this was often explained as being due to Q’s catechetic Sitz im Leben. Q was considered to presuppose the “Easter kerygma,” that is, the Markan or synoptic passion-resurrection narrative and the Pauline tradition recorded in 1 Cor. 15:3-7. That Q did not include a passion story was not considered a sign of its deviant theological profile, even if it was deemed a flaw
31. John S. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 373.
32. Arto Järvinen, “The Son of Man and His Followers: A Q Portrait of Jesus,” in David Rhoads and Kari Syreeni (eds.), Characterization in the Gospels: Reconceiving Narrative Criticism (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 180–222.
33. As always, there are dissidents. See, for example, Eric Franklin, “A Passion Narrative for Q?” in Christopher Rowland an Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis (eds.), Understanding, Studying and Reading: New Testament Essays in Honour of John Ashton (JSNTSup 153; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 30–47. Interestingly, Franklin would exclude resurrection appearances and the empty tomb narrative from the Q text. Q “presents a Christology very much akin to that of the Epistle to the Hebrews where Jesus’ suffering again leads to and enables his exaltation to the right hand of God and where the resurrection is made virtually redundant. But Jesus lives: Q comes from a truly eschatological community” (p. 46). This fascinating hypothesis suffers from the fact that the article is “written by one who is not himself convinced of the necessity to advocate the use of a Q at all” (p. 47)!
and justified the designation of Q as a “half gospel.” However, since Heinz Eduard Tödt’s seminal work scholars of Q no longer speak of the gospel’s “understandable silence” or “regrettable defect.”34 The passion-resurrection plot is not simply absent or missing from Q. Rather, Q envisions Jesus’ lasting significance and the vindication of his death within a different theological framework. Far from being a mere supplement to a uniform, pan-Christian Easter kerygma, Q embodies a distinctive conceptualization of the kerygma.
In discussing the interpretation of Jesus’ death and its vindication in Q, John Kloppenborg35 rightly stresses that Q’s relative silence on Jesus’ death is not due to ignorance, indifference, or some remarkable aberrance. Q does know of Jesus’ death, and it does deal with its significance. Moreover, Q represents an early treatment of Jesus’ death, one that is probably earlier than Mark’s narrative and perhaps as early as Paul’s view of Jesus’ death. Q’s theological framework includes at least two distinct motifs that interpret Jesus’ fate. On the one hand, the deuteronomistic understanding of the prophets’ violent death applies to Jesus and his followers. Hereby Jesus’ fate is regarded as the typical, indeed climactic death of a God-sent prophet (Q 6:22-23, 11:47-51). On the other hand, Q identifies John the Baptist and Jesus as “the children of Wisdom (Sophia)” (Q 7:35), a designation that no doubt applies to Jesus’ followers as well, since they have received the revelation (Q 10:21-22) and are more blessed than prophets and kings (10:23-24). Kloppenborg also finds Q elaborating on most of the distinctive elements that belong to what Nickelsburg (1972)36 has termed “the wisdom tale,” the conglomeration of Wisdom motifs that amounts to a narrative of the sending, provocative actions, trial, possibly but not necessarily death, and finally the vindication of the righteous one.
Kloppenborg asserts that both the deuteronomistic and the wisdom traits are to be understood in Q collectively rather than individualistically. This is true, but there are applications that pertain specifically to the vindication of Jesus’ death. Q 14:27 (“whoever does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple”) evokes Jesus’ shameful death on the cross and interprets it as a paradigm of following Jesus.37 Individual and collective meaning merge here, but in a way
34. Rightly Risto Uro, “Apocalyptic Symbolism and Social Identity in Q,” in R. Uro (ed.) Symbols and Strata: Essays on the Sayings Gospel Q (PFES 65, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), Helsinki, Finnish Exegetical Society—Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996, 67–118, p. 111 n. 127: “To argue that Q does not presuppose the Easter stories of the canonical gospels in not an argument from silence. Q reflects the vindication of Jesus in its own peculiar way.”
35. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q, 369–79.
36. George E. W. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism (HTS 26; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 68–92.
37. David Seeley, “Jesus’ Death in Q,” NTS 38 (1992), 222–34, interprets Q 14:27 from a Cynic and Stoic perspective, yet without arguing against a deuteronomistic line of interpretation. Because there is no reference to Israelite prophets in this Q saying, Seeley’s
that makes Jesus’ death not just typical, but archetypal. Though making this veiled and indirect, yet unmistakable reference to Jesus’ death on the cross, it is not in the interest of Q to narrate the passion story. Rather, Q highlights the ultimate vindication of Jesus in terms that seem to omit the passion:
I tell you, you will no longer see me until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Q 13:35b)
Taken literally, the saying would imply Jesus’ disappearance before his death. After all, Jesus must be alive and well to be able to say this. In the Q context, he is addressing the Jerusalemites (who would be able to see him if he were to be crucified), and it is reasonable that Q did not imagine him as speaking from the cross. However, immediately before this statement there is a reference to the killing of the prophets, which makes the composition ambivalent.38
Dieter Zeller has made a good case for interpreting this saying in terms of Jesus’ assumption or removal to heaven.39 The saying, which probably belongs to the main redaction of Q, would understand Jesus’ end on the analogy of Elijah or Enoch, both of whom were removed to heaven and held in reserve for a future, eschatological role. The “no longer seeing” recalls the description of Elijah, who disappeared prematurely so that his successor Elisha “no longer saw him” (2 Kgs 2:12). This sudden disappearance encouraged in later tradition the expectation that Elijah would return in a forensic end-time role. Elijah is not the only such figure to disappear. Baruch and Ezra were reported to have been assumed to heaven in order to have an eschatological role, and we find the removal of Enoch in 1 En. 70–71, who (according to 71:14) is subsequently installed as the Son of
interpretation cannot be excluded, but certainly the master/follower imagery is also at home in a Jewish prophetic tradition. Järvinen, “The Son of Man,” 222, rightly stresses the general paraenetic nature of Q 14:27: Jesus’ cross is “a concise and grotesque symbol of the radical call to discipleship.”
38. Most commentators do not ask what this saying implies about Jesus’ fate, the focus being rather on whether the saying implies future judgment or salvation for Israel/ Jerusalem. For this discussion, see Dale C. Allison, The Jesus Tradition in Q (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1997), 192–204; Allison argues for the hope of Israel’s salvation. However, Allison also notes that both Q 13:35 and Q 17:22 agree that “the present is marked by the Son of man’s absence” (p. 203). This not seeing in Q can be compared to the prepassion John’s emphasis on seeking and not finding
39. Dieter Zeller, “Entrückung zur Ankunft als Menschensohn (Lk 13,34f.; 11:29f.),” in À cause de l’évangile: etudes sur les Synoptiques et les Actes, offertes au P. Jacques Dupont, O.S.B. à l’occasion de son 70ᵉ anniversaire (LD 123; Paris: Publications de Saint-André/Les Éditions du Cerf, 1985), 513–30. The distinction between assumption and other conceptualizations of “going up” to heaven (disappearance, rapture, resurrection, exaltation, glorification) is not always clear.
Man. Even Moses’ death, though clearly narrated in the Hebrew Bible (Deut. 34:6), could in later tradition be interpreted in terms of assumption.40
It is noteworthy, and something that may help us understand the embarrassing juxtaposition in Q 13:34-35 of the prophets’ killing and the disappearance of Jesus, that the assumption of a prophet or a just man could take place either before or after his death. Which way it takes place is not really the point. Elijah and Enoch were assumed prior to death. Concerning Moses and some other Old Testament figures, whose death and burial were a biblical fact, the later tradition would understandably prefer to imagine an assumption after death (or also, a visionary “assumption” where the hero would see heavenly things before dying). Either way, the prophet or man of God would in effect end his earthly career being removed to God. Either way, he was able to participate in crucial this-worldly turning points, or to appear in visionary experiences (cf. Acts 7:55-56). Be it before or after death, there was no substantial difference from the seer’s point of view: Jesus would now be in the company of Elijah and Moses (cf. Mk 9:4).41 Indeed, the soul of a just man might just as well be taken into heaven at the moment of his death (Acts 7:59). However, for the true Wisdom of God, physical death was more difficult to imagine, let alone to narrate in brutal detail. Since Jesus according to Q was at least a “child” of Sophia, and implicitly more so than John the Baptist, it is not far-fetched to see a connection between Q’s reluctance to narrate his death all too graphically (in the form of a passion story) on the one hand, and the enigmatic hint at Jesus’ disappearance or assumption, on the other.
Leaning on Zeller’s interpretation of Q 13:35b, Kloppenborg suggests that Q may have regarded Jesus’ death as one of a just man or a prophet whom God had assumed, pending some future eschatological role.42 He further notes that Q displays no signs of applying resurrection language to Jesus, despite the fact that Q 11:31-32 speaks of the queen of South and the Ninevites as being raised at the coming judgment. Clearly, then, the passion-death-resurrection scheme is not Q’s way of conceptualizing the vindication of Jesus. My own conclusion is broadly in accordance with Kloppenborg’s judgment, but there seems to be reason to emphasize the ambivalence in Q’s dealing with the actual fate of Jesus. On the one hand, Q seems neither wholly ignorant nor extremely critical of the crucifixion and resurrection tradition (which just proves that the Q group was not isolated from the larger Christian community). There is no straightforward denial of a Markan
40. This tradition seems presupposed in the transfiguration story, Mk 9:2-8.
41. It is often suggested that the Markan transfiguration story was originally a resurrection story. Against this, see Robert H. Stein, “Is the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8) a misplaced Resurrection-Account?” JBL 95 (1976), 79–96. Stein’s arguments are impressive, but his target—against the hypothesis that a resurrection appearance has been moved into the story of Jesus’ mission—is limited. The story, even if narrating an episode in Jesus’ life, may have reused elements of an ascension/exaltation vision and/or may have been developed on the basis of an epiphanic δόξα christology, of which 2 Cor. 3 and Jn 1:14 are further examples.
42. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q, 377.
kind of passion story. Jerusalem as the site of the prophets’ death is mentioned, and the cross is referred to as a suggestive paraenetic image. Yet, Q does not make the passion-resurrection plot its own. Not only does it not narrate it, it also clearly prefers to conceptualize Jesus’ vindication in terms of assumption and the future judgment of Israel. Whether the removal to heaven was before or after Jesus’ death was less important, thus negotiable, although the final Q obviously presupposes Jesus’ violent death. Unless the Markan passion storyline and the Pauline kerygma are held a priori to be the sole and normative early Christian concept, there is no reason to think that Q’s stance was particularly radical or heterodox. The Jesus who speaks in Q is the living Jesus as much as the Markan Jesus or the speaker in the Gospel of Thomas. He once lived on earth, now lives with God, and will return as the Son of Man.
After Zeller and Kloppenborg, Daniel A. Smith has supplied a sustained analysis of the key passage Q 13:34-35, showing the distinctiveness of Q’s christological outlook. Smith distinguishes carefully between the assumption theology of this passage and the customary notion of resurrection belief as distinct ways of conceptualizing Jesus’ postmortem vindication.43 Essentially, Smith confirms Kloppenborg’s line of thought. He also suggests that the empty tomb story in Mk 16:1-8 was originally another postmortem disappearance story reflecting an assumption rather than a resurrection belief, although Mark made it a proof of Jesus’ resurrection.44
It is instructive to connect two general observations concerning the shape and the compositional history of Q. The first is the lack of a passion-resurrection narrative. The second is that much redactional energy was devoted to expanding and in part narrativizing the beginning of the Q Gospel. Several reasons for the latter observation may be suggested, but one palpable redactional interest is to legitimate Jesus’ status as the end-time envoy of God and his teaching. His healing activity together with his proclamation (“evangelizing the poor,” 7:22) is now taken as proof of his divine authorization (7:1-10; 7:18-23). He is the bearer of Wisdom (7:35), whose words are the measure of the coming judgment (7:46-49). The temptation story (4:1-13) legitimates the ethos of the subsequent Q admonitions with Torah, but above all it provides the crucial test of obedience that proves Jesus worthy of his ministry. It is therefore instructive to compare this story functionally
43. Daniel A. Smith, The Post-Mortem Vindication of Jesus in the Sayings Gospel Q (LNTS 338; London: T&T Clark, 2006). See also his “Revisiting the Empty Tomb: The Post-mortem Vindication of Jesus in Mark and Q,” NovT 45 (2003), 123–37. According to Smith, Mk 16:1-8 may be seen as a postmortem disappearance narrative; this raises the possibility that Q and Mark (or a pre-Markan source) may have expressed a belief in Jesus’’ vindication by God in quite similar terms.
44. Daniel A. Smith has recently defended his view of Q’s disappearance/assumption imagery over against the hypothesis that Q presupposes a death-resurrection scheme. See his “The Disappearance of Jesus in Q: A Response to Harry T. Fleddermann,” ETL 92 (2016), 301–22.
with the Markan Gethsemane scene. While for Q the initial trial that Jesus passes was a sufficient legitimation, for Mark another, ultimate test of obedience was in order.
Q’s reluctance to narrate Jesus’ death, as well as its understanding of Jesus’ vindication as a postmortem assumption, where Jesus simply disappeared, has obvious implications for Johannine studies. So, too, has the possibility that a similar assumption imagery lies behind the Markan ending. All the implications need not be spelled out here, but I hope to have shown that an early Johannine non-passion gospel need not have been quite extraordinary. More particularly, Q’s inclination toward Wisdom christology and its inherent hesitation to narrate the death of God’s Wisdom should be borne in mind. Then it appears less than evident that the Johannine tradition should quite naturally narrate the death of the divine Logos (Jn 1:1-18). Also, we begin to see in a new light the enigmatic statements in John about Jesus “going away” and being sought but not found (7:33-36; resumed and reaccentuated in 13:33), hiding himself (12:36b), and disappearing from the world but appearing to his disciples (14:19). In view of such statements, the reader would expect a rapture or simply a disappearance.
While Q is a hypothetical source, and therefore vulnerable as an argument for the existence of non-passion gospels, the Gospel of Thomas is hard proof. The problem is to what extent this document is independent from the canonical Gospels. Another moot issue is its religion-historical setting. In these issues, I have adopted the general view represented by several Helsinki scholars, including Risto Uro, whose monograph on Thomas has a rich documentation and a careful assessment of the various hypotheses concerning Gos. Thom. 45 His view, shared by other colleagues in Helsinki, is that this Gospel is an early second-century text, which in its final shape betrays the influence of canonical Gospels. The document is not “gnostic,” but interprets Jesus’ message in terms of the divine origin of the soul.46 It seems that an earlier Thomasine tradition adhered to James the brother of Jesus (cf. saying 12), while the leading role of Thomas (cf. saying 13) represents a later layer; if so, there are likely to be other developments in the Thomasine tradition as well.47
45. Risto Uro, Thomas: Seeking the Historical Context of the Gospel of Thomas (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2003).
46. Here we should be aware of the canonical bias, which tends to “normalize” the New Testament texts and lump together all the rest as “deviant” or “gnostic.” Uro, Thomas, 52–53, rightly reminds that while the christology of Gos.Thom. may seem strange in comparison with New testament Christ-hymns, “exactly the opposite may have been the case for many early Christians.”
47. See Risto Uro, “Who Will Be Our Leader? Authority and Autonomy in the Gospel of Thomas,” in Ismo Dunderberg, Christopher Tuckett and Kari Syreeni (eds.), Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity: Essays in Honour of Heikki Räisänen (NovTSup 103; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 457–85; esp. pp. 462–77. Uro finds several indications that Gos.Thom. 12 derives from a group that took James’ primacy seriously, while the
At this juncture, the possible tradition-historical connections between Gos. Thom. and the Gospel of John will not be pursued further. What is of immediate concern is that Gos.Thom. does not presuppose the death and resurrection of Jesus. Everything in that document is about the living Jesus (Gos. Thom., incipit) who is the Son of the Living One (saying 37), and about the elect children of the living Father (saying 50).48 The Johannine predecessor’s image of Jesus as living with his Father in all eternity (Jn 1:1-2), appearing in flesh (1:14), and, after his mission (12:44-50), returning to the Father (17:6-8) is certainly compatible with Gos. Thom., where his appearance in flesh (Gos. Thom. 28) and departure (Gos. Thom. 12) are presupposed—but not his death. Thus, it is wrongheaded to interpret “the living Jesus” as the resurrected Christ.49 Rather, the history of Jesus is understood here in the same way as in the pre-passion John. A heavenly, eternal being manifested himself on earth and then returned to where he was. As Jesus was, so also his disciples should be “passers-by” (saying 42), temporary visitors in the material world.
following saying (13) redefines the idea of leadership and critiques the hierarchical formation within Christian communities. See further Antti Marjanen, “Thomas and Jewish Religious Practices,” in Risto Uro (ed.), Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on the Gospel of Thomas (Studies of New Testament and Its World; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 163–82. Marjanen’s tentative conclusion is that “the figure of James, the hierarchical understanding of Christian leadership, and the observance of Jewish religious practices belonged together and represented one stage within the religious development of the Thomasine community, whereas the figure of Thomas, the idea of ‘masterless’ Christian self-identity, and a critical attitude toward Jewish religious practices constituted a new option” (pp. 181–82).
48. The attribute “living” is also given Jesus in Gos. Thom. 52; 59; 111 and Father in 3; 37. Although Thomas does not dwell on the nature of Jesus’ preexistence, such attributes suggest that Jesus is seen as both preexistent and divine; thus Antti Marjanen, “The Portrait of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas,” in Jon Ma. Asgeirsson, April D. DeConick and Risto Uro (eds.), Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity (NHMS 59; Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2006), 209–19; pp. 211–12.
49. According to Meyer, “the living Jesus” is “probably not the resurrected Christ as commonly understood, but rather Jesus who lives through his sayings.” Marvin Meyer, The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1992), 67. I suspect this explanation is a bit too modern and “literary.” The Gospel of Thomas does not dwell on the precise manner in which Jesus lives, but Patterson’s interpretation in terms of a (basically Platonic) idea of immortality is obviously right. Referring to Gos. Thom. 112 (“the living will not die”), he concludes: “‘Living’ here means ‘immortal.’ This is why Jesus in Thomas is called the ‘Living Jesus’ (Thom incipit) or the ‘Living One’ (Thom 52). It is not because he has been raised from the dead.” Stephen J. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins: Essays on the Fifth Gospel (NHMS 84; LeidenBoston: Brill, 2013), 83.
