muTron the homeless

Hello internet scholars. I am making my way through Burton Mack's "Who Wrote the New Testament (or via: amazon.co.uk)" and I had a question about the Q document. Mack writes that scholars now identify three layers in Q that help to trace the development of the early Jesus movement (these being Q1, Q2, and Q3). Mack writes that Q1` is mostly wisdom teaching material, Q2 introduces apocalyptic punishment for those rejecting the Kingdom / Jesus movement, while Q3 suggests a withdrawal from the public forum and a softening of the judging Q2 material, invoking patience for the faithful as they await a future reward.

Though this progression seems to make sense a question arose in my mind:

1) Understanding that Q is a hypothetical reconstruction of the shared teaching material common to Luke and Matthew but not found in Mark, what is the historical method used to separate the layers of Q from early to late? More clearly, how do we know the earliest strata of Q tradition is the wisdom teaching instead of the apocalyptic stuff - How do we know Q2 follows from the Q1 material and not vice versa?

S.C.Carlson

According to John S. Kloppenborg's analysis in his Formation of Q (or via: amazon.co.uk), the wisdom layer contains judgment-layer redactions, but the judgment layer does not contain wisdom redactions. This indicates to Kloppenbord that the wisdom layer, as a literary entity, preceded the judgment layer; hence Q1 is the wisdom layer and Q2 is the judgment layer.

Kloppenborg rightly cautions that the literary history of Q need not correspond to the tradition history. In other words, just because the judgmental stuff is later than the wisdom material in Q does not necessary mean that it is later in the oral tradition that preceded Q. It is just that, as Q was being composed, the original nucleus of the text was wisdom material.

Stephen

S.C.Carlson

For more about this, please see my summary of Kloppenborg here: http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/...2sh/klop87.htm

mountainman

Other questions I'd be asking myself in this issue are:

1) Is Q Buddhist? There are some interesting threads on this.
2) Is Q Essenic? For example, see here.
3) Were the Essenes Buddhists?
4) Why was Apollonius of Tyana calumniated by the chief christian scribe?
5) Did the chief christian scribe forge Jesus into Josephus?
6) Did the chief christian scribe forge Jesus' Letter to Agbar?
7) What else did the chief christian scribe forge Jesus into?
8) Why on earth would he "forge", and when and where and how?
9) etc



Pete

Clivedurdle

Being particularly thick, as both wisdom and apocalyptic writings predate the Gospels - Ecclesiastes and Daniel for example - what are these assumptions about one being before the other?

And what if Revelation is an early Jewish apocalyptic writing converted to xian? This Q stuff feels like it has not got much support outside of looking at the gospels and nothing else! What if revelation predates the gospels?

Why are we not looking - as in Genesis etc - at different editors?

mountainman

Here is the thread reference
Influence of Buddhism on Christianity?

S.C.Carlson

There are no such assumptions. Kloppenborg's analysis is about the history of Q's composition, based on the exact form of its (reconstructed) Greek text.

The dating of Revelation is irrelevant to the compositional analysis of Q.

Perhaps because what happened so many centuries in another language is not pareticularly relevant to the history of how Q was composed in the first century?

Stephen

muTron the homeless

Ah, that makes sense, dividing Q1 from Q2. But, from my reading of your links, Kloppenborg only extrapilates two layers of Q. What of the 3rd layer Mack accepts as important? Mack notes this includes an upgrade in Jesus mythology to that of a divine entity talking with god as his father and debating Satan in matters of temptation. I am speaking as a layman of course.

Trying to find out which, if either, preceeds the other, seems kind of important to me in terms of trying to get to the historical core of the hypothetical text. Wisdom teacher vs. apocalyptic prophet. Or perhaps some sort of combo platter.

(Not ignoring Mountainman or Clive but I'm not sure their concerns are related to my question of the building of the Q tradition.)

S.C.Carlson

For Kloppenborg, Q3, the third layer, is pretty much just the Temptation.

Stephen

Gamera

Needless to say, trying to discern "layers" in a putative ms which may never have existed and which in any case no scholar has ever seen or will likely ever see, has a mediaeval schoolmen's air about it.