A bit of continual meandering around some themes introduced by Darrell Bock, with previous posts here and here... Tonight's stroll looks at some questions raised by Bock in chapters 4 & 5 of this book.
So we have a variety of viewpoints all claiming to lead us to the roots of the true Jesus, and the true teaching or faith which he left to his followers. Was the variety of viewpoints found in the the 2nd C also present in the 1st C? Or was this variety a novelty, a subsequent development?
There are a few things to consider as we look at competing claims. One is the nature of the claims. So someone might say, “Jesus was just a first C wisdom teacher, nothing more and nothing less”. Now anyone can hold such a view. The question is rather do the sources hold out evidence for such a view. I might hold that Napoleon was an 18th Century watchmaker. But do historical records point me in that direction?
If one is using only the alternative texts (such as the Gospel of Thomas), is there evidence to support such a claim? Elaine Pagels is persuaded that Thomas is old, at least as old as John’s Gospel, and that it presents us with a non-divine, non-exalted Jesus. But looking at things like saying 77, where Jesus claims he is “above all”, tells us that these texts do not simply provide a us with a picture of Jesus as a simple wisdom teacher. And people in the pews or in the news who claim that Jesus was a mere teacher also tend not to: a] be familiar with such texts; b] quote such texts if they know of them.
Whatever happened to Q?
A lot of weight has been placed on “Q”. Q is thought to be a source for some of the material in both Luke and Matthew. Think of it this way: my brother and I are both writing family histories. We each draw on a collection of notes which came from our great uncle. And we also include our own observations, first hand accounts, and stories from other family members. So parts of our stories would be quite similar (drawing from the same source) and other parts would be unique to each of our writings.
New Testament scholars have looked at Luke and Matthew and said “It looks like these writers have, at some point, been drawing from the same pool of material – either something written down, or particular stories handed on orally. That is why the two gospels share similar stories at certain points.” And so they hypothesized that there must be a source from which Luke and matthew both draw. The name for this source is Q. Now a few points are in order. First is that “Q” has never been found. That in itself presents a bit of a difficulty for historical accuracy, doesn’t it? Second, accepting or rejecting the idea of Q does not put one inside or outside any circle of orthodoxy or heresy. After all, Luke says that he used sources.
The difficulty comes when you try to reconstruct Q, and then come up with a reason for its “disappearance”. First, you have to assume that it was a thing in existence. Second, you have to come up with a description of it. Was it merely a collection of handed on teaching which was then incorporated into the gospels as authentic? Or, as some suggest, was it a larger body of material which was suppressed because it gave an alternative picture of Jesus? So someone like Ehrman makes the claim that it presented a different picture of Jesus, and so it was suppressed by the powers that be. Perhaps there was an early tradition which told the truth about Jesus – that he was a wisdom teacher and nothing more, that all the things and teachings we now associate with the word orthodoxy were later additions, that “we have missed the truth about Christianity” (cf NT Wright in this book). The key question about Q has to do with what one thinks was in Q. Was it a body of sayings and material that was circulated in the tradition, and because of its authenticity (and hence orthodoxy) was simply absorbed into the writing of the evangelists? Or did it have a lot of other things which contradicted the traditional gospels on certain points, and so it was “disappeared” by the orthodox religious mafia of the day?
In chapter 5 Bock gives us a brief tour of the influence of Walter Bauer. Bauer published a work in 1934, which was republished 30 years later in 1964. The English title of his work is “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity”. Bock helpfully points out both positive and negative in Bauer’s work. First, Bauer introduced some methodological considerations: how far can one trust the church fathers in assessing the views of those they were writing against? True enough, yet when one looks at Irenaeus against the sources there is great consistency: he represented the views of his opponents quite well. (Bock 48). A second insight had to do with geography: as Bock states, ideas travel across time and place at different speeds. (49)
So what was Bauer’s thesis? It basically had two pillars: [1] there was a variety of views as to what the original form of the Christian faith was, which could be seen if one looked across the geography at the time; what we call orthodoxy was a later construct; [2] Rome was in control and imposed its version of orthodoxy across the church, that’s how and why “orthodoxy” came into being.
Bock devotes a good deal of energy (see Bock 48-55) referencing subsequent scholarship debunking Bauer’s thesis, although he notes that Bauer’s contribution to method are important.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.