[ks-open] Re: Q Sayings Gospel in Korea?

[goodwin]

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Brother Anthony wrote:

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> I think that we need more information to understand what you are asking.
> The way you use "new" in talking about "Q" is confusing us. "Q" is the
> usual abbreviation of the German "Quelle" used to designate the
> hypothetical set of "Sayings of Jesus" that "Luke" and "Matthew"
> (whoever they were) are both assumed to have used in expanding the
> Gospel of Mark. This "Two-Document" hypothesis was first propounded by
> Weisse in 1838 and more fully set out by Holtzmann in 1863. There is no
> such separate book in existence, and it would not have been a "Gospel"
> (systematic story of the words and deeds and death of Jesus) but a
> compilation of sayings rather like the Gnostic "Gospel of Thomas" which
> I suspect you might rather be thinking of.
> Just trying to help.

Hi Brother Anthony:

As the folks here in Texas say, "I 'ppreciate that!" But everything needs
context and maybe I should have given more. Sorry!

Before I do that though, for the sake of fairness, we should be clear that
your groups' views (you speak of an "us" as being confused by my question)
are, to echo one critic, "... hardly self-evident ... admit debate and
remain contested ... by different New Testament scholars."
Vaage, Leif.  E., (1994) "Galilean Upstarts: Jesus' First Followers
According to Q" p.7 (see link below)

"Q", or what is now quite commonly referred to as "Q Sayings Gospel" does,
in fact, now exist as a separate work; i.e., as a book on a shelf. As well,
this is a recent development.
See, for example, either the latest "Critical Edition of Q: A Synopsis
Including the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark and Thomas with English,
German, and French Translations of Q and Thomas, edited by James M.
Robinson, Paul Hoffmann, and John S. Kloppenborg, Managing Editor Milton C.
(Moreland. Minneapolis: Fortress, and Leuven: Peeters, 2000.)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0800631498/ref=pd_sim_books/104-2561930-9349525

Or see John Kloppenborg's older (1988) Greek-langauge compilation published
in his work, "Q Parallels: Synopsis, Critical Notes, and Concordance".
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0944344011/qid=1002295221/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_2_5/104-2561930-9349525

On the more substantive matter you raise. Of course. You are right. "Q"
comprises sayings, or teachings. But this is no reason to assume, as your
group does (or have I misinterpreted you?), that "Q" did not once also exist
as (a more traditionally understood) written collection of those same
sayings.

For this is precisely the interpretive assumption which has recently proved
so remarkably invigorating within certain schools of NT scholarship. Thus,
as Leif Vaage (University of Toronto) wrote six years ago, "I ... assume
that Q once existed and that, furthermore, the text of Q as used by Matthew
and Luke in the composition of their gospels can still be recovered ..."
"Galilean Upstarts, p.7"
 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1563380900/qid=1002301079/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_0_2/104-2561930-9349525

By the way, there are also avaialble a range of other translations of
varying quality of the Q sayings Gospel from people like Marcus Borg and
Burton mack. Here's Borg's book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1569751005/qid=1002301228/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_3_7/104-2561930-9349525

Mack's 1993 book on Q
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060653752/ref=bxgy_sr_img_b/104-2561930-9349525
is especially controversial because it argues that Q, as he reads it, poses
a fundamental and unavoidable challenge to the current, generally accepted
version of the origins of Christianity.

That such a challenge could be possible at all is something with which Vaage
concurs because, as he says, "I ... assume that it is Q's formative layer
[NB. Q itself comprises 3 strata.] that recalls Jesus' first followers in
Galilee, the earliest embodiment of Christianity' known to us."
"Upstarts" p.7

What it is that Mack himself argues, however, is that that the first people
to really take Jesus seriously --who came together, circa 30, 40, 50, C.E.,
to celebrate the notion that there, before them, had gone a very, very
unique man-- did NOT seem to become entangled in (what would later become
for other followers) doctrinal, or theological matters --such as whether or
not Jesus had or had not been the son of God, had or had not had that
consciousness of himself, was or was not resurrected, etc.

These earliest followers Mack considers "true Christians", and yet they seem
to Mack (based on Q stratum 1) to have NOT taken as central to what they
were doing, thinking, etc., the necessary belief, for example, in Jesus'
divinity.

As Mack puts it: "Q ... is the earliest ... record we have from the Jesus
movement, and it is precious ... That is because it documents the history of
a single group of Jesus people for a period of about fifty years, from the
time of Jesus in the 20s until after the Roman-Jewish war in the 70s. The
remarkable thing about this group is that they developed into a tightly knit
community and produced a grandly sweeping mythology merely by attributing
more and more teachings to Jesus. They did not need to imagine Jesus in the
role of a god or tell stories about his resurrection from the dead in order
to honor him as a teacher. The earliest layer of the teachings of Jesus in Q
are the least embellished of any of his sayings in any extant document. That
means that Q puts us as close to the historical Jesus as we will ever be.
Thus the importance of Q is enormous. It has enabled us to reconsider and
revise the traditional picture of early Christian history by filling in the
time from Jesus until just after the destruction of Jerusalem when the first
narrative gospel, the Gospel of Mark, was written."
Source: Who Wrote the New Testament? : The Making of the Christian Myth
(1996) p.47
 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060655186/qid=1002296929/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_3_2/104-2561930-9349525

>From this, one implication arises: Ought the meaning of the phrase "to be a
Christian" be essentially or exclusively a matter of believing X,Y, or Z
about the world (as most of my Christian Korean graduate students here at
Texas A&M assure me it is), or can it be a matter of living a certain type
of life, a praxis, in accordance with certain (admittedly only attributed)
teachings or sayings of a fellow named Jesus.

Robert Funk (http://www.westarinstitute.org/Fellows/Funk/funk.html),
Director of the Westar Institute and founder of the Jesus Seminar (
http://www.westarinstitute.org/index.html) in an online article entitled,
"The Coming Radical Reformation Twenty-one Theses" expresses this rather
starkly this way: "The resurrection of Jesus did not involve the
resuscitation of a corpse. Jesus did not rise from the dead, except perhaps
in some metaphorical sense. The meaning of the resurrection is that a few of
his followers—probably no more than two or three—finally came to understand
what he was all about. When the significance of his words and deeds dawned
on them, they knew of no other terms in which to express their amazement
than to claim that they had seen him alive."
http://www.westarinstitute.org/Periodicals/4R_Articles/Funk_Theses/funk_theses.html

John Crossan, however, has, to my mind, a far more attenuated and therefore
more convincing argument about how the Jesus movement understood talk of
resurrection in his book:
"The Birth of Christianity : Discovering What Happened in the Years
Immediately After the         Execution of Jesus" (1999)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060616601/qid=1002300054/sr=2-3/ref=sr_2_3_3/104-2561930-9349525

You may think all this is rather "beyond the pale", I don't know. But it's
sure a hot topic here in south central Texas among my Christian Korean ESL
grad students (wow! that's a mouthful) --almost none of whom had heard of
the existence of the new synopses of Q, not to mention its contents or the
debates now engulfing them.)

best,

Mike Goodwin
(College Station, TX)