Vorkosigan

This was posted by Peter Kirby to XTALK. I thought I'd post it here, for discussion. Not only does this post bear on the question of Q, it also provides a plausible alternative explanation for the incredible silences about Jesus' life in the early Xtian literature. Very thought-provoking.

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Hello,

I have just finished reading Philip Jenkins's _Hidden Gospels_. Most of the book is dedicated to delineating the mythic fascination with the quest for uncovering previously unknown gospels and exterminated heresies. This is interesting in its own right, even though it constitutes a sort of meta-scholarship rather than a discussion of the evidence proper concerning early Christian history. However, there is one extract in which Jenkins proposes a theory that would have consequences for our understanding of the sources concerning Jesus and the early church, the stated subject of this list. So I thought it would be appropriate to reproduce this passage for the comments of the knowledgeable participants in this discussion group.

It has often been noted that the reconstructed Q and the Gospel of Thomas do not have anything to say about the atoning nature of the death of Jesus and his subsequent resurrection. Rather, the focus is on the sayings of Jesus in these works. Assuming the existence of Q and an early date for Thomas, which is certainly an issue itself, this has led some to theorize that the earliest Jesus movement did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus but rather remembered him as a wisdom sage and that the idea of a saving death and resurrection developed as the church attracted Hellenistic constituents. This is the basic theory presented by Burton Mack and others.

Against this conclusion, Jenkins proposes a different theory to explain the silence of Q & Thomas on the death or resurrection of Jesus. I would like to know what the list members think of his proposal, and so I will quote it, although I hope I have not gone too far beyond fair use.

_Hidden Gospels_, pp. 73-78.

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Mysteries of Faith

A reluctance to put key ideas in writing may explain some of the puzzling ebsences from sayings documents such as Q and Thomas. Perhaps these collections were intended as an instructional or evangelistic device, for
proselytes who would later be instructed into the deeper mysteries of the emerging faith: they were intended to intrigue rather than explain. These texts might even have been intended to be as cryptic and superficially
nonthreatening as possible in order to disarm the suspicions of potential persecutors. Anyone who reads the New Testament book of Acts finds first-century Christians portrayed as evangelizing openly in the streets,
but there was a fudnatmental difference between such preaching and the fact of writing down the core doctrines of the faith.

To a modern audience, it is incredible that a gsopel or any writing about Jesus would fail to mention the essential doctrines of the religion, even an idea as basic a the Resurrection, but such a gap would not have surprised an ancient reader. Religious scriptures of all types had a very different role in ancient times from what we consider normal today. The notion that the essential doctrines of a religion can or should be plainly laid out for everyone in scriptural form, as opposed to liturgy and oral teaching, is a distinctly modern and Protestant view. The idea that cheap editions of sucha precious text as the Bible could be freely distributed on the streets, or left in hotel bedrooms, would have seemed quite bizarre, not to say blasphemous, to early Christians. Jesus' followers lived in a world when the most ambitious and successful religions only gradually revealed their innermost secrets to believers, after a lengthy process of initiation: these were the mystery religions, formed by devotees of Mithras, Isis, and other divine figures, usually movements from the East.

Patristic writers show that some Christians shared this reluctance to broadcast the great truths of the faith. Around 200, Clement of Alexandria wrote that "it is requisite, therefore, to hide in a mystery the wisdom
spoken, which the Son of God taught. . . . And even now I fear, as it is said, 'to cast the pearls before swine, lest they tread them under foot, and turn and rend us.' For it is difficult to exhibit the really pure and
transparent words respecting the true light, to swinish and untrained hearers." Believers were to "receive the secrete traditions of the true knowledge, and expound them aloft and conspicuously; and as we have heard in
the ear, so as to deliver them to whom it is requisite; but not enjoining us to communicate to all without distinction, what is said to them in parables." For Origen, as for other Alexandrians, Jesus' parables were
laden with secrete meanings that were only gradually to be realeased to the multitudes: Jesus himself had told his apostles that to them alone was it "given to know the mysteria of the kingdom of God," the mysteries contained in the parables. Origen defended the church's right to restrict the realease of "gospel truths": "But that there should be certain doctrines, not made konwn to the multitude, which are (revealed) after the exoteric ones have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity alone, but also of philosophic systems, in which certain truths are exoteric and others esoteric." The evangelists, he argued, had been cautious about which of Jesus' teachings "were to be committed to writing, and how this was to be done, and what was by no means to be written to the multitude, and what was to be expressed in words, and what was not to be so conveyed."

Alexandrians were notoriously fascinated by the idea that Christianity was a religion of "mysteries," but other Christians demonstrated a taste for presenting doctrines in cryptic form, to the extent that modern scholars can debate whether a given text is indeed Christian. We can illustrate this with the famous tombstone inscription of one Avircius Marcellus, "a disciple of the pure shepherd" who died in Phrygia (in modern Turkey) around 180. This allusive text records how Avircius had traveled "with Paul before me . . . and Faith everywhere led the way and served food everywhere, the Fish from the Spring - immense, pure, which the pure virgin caught and gave to here friends to eat for ever, with good wine, giving the cup with the loaf."
Like any text froma mystery religion, the inscription is intended to baffle outsiders, while preaching to the initiated. But even in this disguised format, there are no references to some of the most potent doctrines of the faith, including the incarnation, death, or resurrection of Christ, absences of a sort we repeatedly note in written texts.

Gospels played a critical role in the process of revealing the "mysteries" of Christianity. These scriptures contained the most cherished treasures of the faith, namely, the words of Jesus and an explanation of the significance of his death and resurrection. These holy truths were not to be lightly shared, and at least some churches prevented converts to Christianity from hearing the gospels and their mysteries until after they had been formally initiated into the new religion, by means of baptism. Prior to this, they held the probationary status of catechumens, and in the early centuries, catechumens were barred from participating in many parts of the service, including, it seems, the reading of the gospel. Even today, Orthodox church services admonish catechumens to depart before the saying of the creed and the beginning of the sacred eucharistic mysteries.

In various third- and fourth-century texts concerning church order, we hear that prospective Christians were required to fulfill lengthy periods of candidacy and teaching before they were finally permitted to hear "the
word," "the gospel," whatever that may have meant exactly. While undergoing instruction, most of their scriptural lessons apparently came from the Old Testament, not the New. Paul Bradshaw notes that the fourth-century document known as the Apostolic Constitutions may "reflect the two stages of teaching, since it indicates that the catechumens first learn about creation, the Old Testament saints, etc., and only after baptism do they learn about Christ's incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension." As late as the fifth century, church councils had to specify "that catechumens are to hear the reading of the gospel," showing that this practice was new, and perhaps controversial. It is a matter of debate how much of those inner
secrets had spread to become public knowledge, at least in general form, yet the church remained cautious about exactly how these "mysteries" were presented at large.

The Sayings in Which You Have Been Instructed

With these church practices in mind, it is useful to look again at Q and Thomas, with a view to the religious mysteries that they do not mention, which conspicuously included "Christ's incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension." The common explanation for these lacunae is that the early communities either did not know these doctrines or else set no store by them, but we can now see that a quite different explanation is possible.
Perhaps Q and Thomas reflect a time in the early church when evangelists aroused the interest of potential recruites, especially gentiles, by promoting the image of Jesus as a provocative teacher, who in some
infuriatingly unspecified way could promise victory over the grave. In modern terms, these texts could be seen as teasers or recruitment brochures. New seekers would gradually be tuaght the fuller version of the truth, and ultimately the core doctrines of Jesus' saving death and resurrection.

This gradual method has implications for the process of committing Christian
ideas to writing. Initially, the community might write the actual words of
Jesus, which were too enigmatic to reveal much to the casual observer, but
it would be some years or decades before they would venture to write down
the still more sensitive doctrines of the new faith. (Paul and others did
write such doctrines, but only when communicating with fellow initiates.) A
record of sayings like Q could have circulated for years independently of
the more theologically elaborate materials, without this meaning that these
latter doctrines were unknown or undeveloped. Matters would have changed
after the 60s, with the death of important early leaders such as James and
Peter, and the disasters of the Jewish revolt, which cumulatively threatened
to cut the community off from its roots and to obliterate native traditions
about Jesus. This apparently provoked a decision to write the community's
beliefs and history more fully. By the end of the first century, the
canonical gospels supplied the complete instruction and enlightenment
promised to those converts who had originally been intrigued by something
like Q.

In this context, we find special significance in the opening passage of Luke, the gospel which includes Q in the form closest to the original. Writing to a certain Theophilus, Luke describes how he had decided to "write an orderly account . . . that you may know the truth about the things (logoi) of which you have been informed." But logoi can also mean words or sayings rather than things, and the fourth-century Lating translation in the Vulgate renders logoi as verborum, "words." The word logoi also appears in the opening of the Greek text of Thomas, "these are the secrete sayings which the living Jesus spoke." If logoi has this meaning in Luke, then the passage might be translated rather differently. Luke is actually promising
to write the fulll truth about the sayings in which Theophilus has been katechethes, "instructed," a word related to catechumen. A century ago, Kirsopp Lake made the ingenious suggestion that the logoi referred to here might have been "a series of sayings used for the instruction of converts, which Luke is providing with a historical framework." Perhaps Theophilus, like other converts of the late first century, had received his instruction by means of the sayings in Q, but now he had been fully initiated, he had earned the right to know the full story, of which Q formed only a suggestive component.

Once narrative gospels like Luke were in existence, Q had entirely lost its
original function, and it is not surprising that the text ceased to exist as
a separate document. (Some years later still, at least some churches
decided that even the words of Jesus were too sacred to be wantonly
displayed before the uninitiated, and began to exclude catechumens
altogether from hearing any part of the gospel.) Related sayings gospels
survived in various forms, and were adapted by Gnostic and other groups for
their own purposes. Perhaps around 140, one of these became our present version of Thomas. Q and Thomas did not become hidden gospels because they exemplified an alternate tradition of early Christianity, but rather vanished because they represented an outmoded literary genre. There never was a "Q community" or a group of "Thomas people" distinct from the mainstream Jesus Way, that is, the incipient Christian Church.

These documents look as strange as they do to us because they were never intended to offer anything more than a partial or suggestive introduction to the faith. The communities which created these texts would have been appalled to find that anyone, whether contemporary heretic or later scholar, could have taken these documents as entire or rounded statements of the Jesus movement, which stood or fell on the truth of those core ideas, the Cross and the Resurrection. Alternatively, they might have been pleased that their subterfuge had been so effective.
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Comments anyone?

best,
Peter Kirby

CX

I found this entire essay quite fascinating and intelligent. I have only one or two very minor niggles.

Firstly it is not LOGOI, but LOGWN. The difference is minor, but worth noting for a Graecephile like myself. The 'wn' ending is the genitive plural. It takes the genitive case ending because it needs to agree with the preposition PERI that precedes it.

That being said I think it is an understatement to say that LOGWN "can" mean words, rather it only means words. I have often word why it is regularly translated as "things". If anything I'd say this makes the argument more compelling.

james-2-24

- Why would Paul refer to the death and resurrection of Jesus as being foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews if, as is claimed, these things were only preached to those in the know? Clearly Paul preached Jesus death and resurrection to non-christians.
- It has the synopic gospel communities holding gnostic beliefs
- the apostle Paul is unaware of these "teaser" documents that were meant to draw converts in. When the teachings of Jesus in Q and Thomas would have significantly helped his case he fails to use them.
- the explaination runs counter to all we know about the Christian gnostics who made use of the gospel of thomas.
- The gospel of thomas already has a complete salvation theology contained within it. It does not read as a teaser.
- The theology of Q and Thomas run counter to the "resurrection/salvation" message, they don't just fail to mention it
- proto-catholic church fathers pour scorn on the gospel of thomas
- we know from the earliest extant documents that there was a wide diversity of christian beliefs and a subsequent wide diversity to documents that were regarded as scripture. Trying to have a synoptic community to accept Q & Thomas as teasers is unnecessary and not the most plausible explaination to such documents

....etc.....

Marduk

Doesn't Jesus himself requier his disciples to go out and preach "The Gospel". Thought that was the whole point, not keep it a secret.

Paul is the one who rarely, if ever, even mentions a historic Jesus. Now this guy claims that they only talk of a historic Jesus. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">