The Essential Jesus

This isn't so much of a formal review as a few thoughts on Crossan's Book which I read over the autumn (fall) last year.

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Unlike John Dominic Crossan's previous works "The Essential Jesus" is more of a popular level text, which claims to be "the definitive presentation of Jesus' authentic sayings and teachings". Essentially it's a compilation of what Crossan considers to be the earliest, and authentic, sayings of Jesus alongside some of the earliest examples of Christian art. There's a brief introduction, ("Contexts") before the main section which lays out each saying on a fresh page and intersperses it with images of this early art (largely sculptures on sepulchres). The final two sections contain notes on the images, and then an inventory of images.

Crossan's methodology is very controversial, and he his fair share of ardent admirers and vitriolic critics alike. In terms of the collection of sayings, the raw information displayed here is already present in "The Historical Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography", but by making this collection the core feature of this book, it brings Crossan's reformed gospel into clearer focus. The use of images also contributes to the clarity of image that Crossan lays before his readers.

One the points that I found most interesting is Crossan's theory that two characteristics typified Jesus's Kingdom program - eating and healing. To support this theory he not only relies on the historical texts but also the sheer number of the earliest Christian images which depict meals or healings. Out of 60 typical images, 27 are eating scenes, and 19 are healing scenes. Whilst I'm not convinced that art is any less subject to bias, ideology and removal if deemed offensive, it's certainly an interesting point. Certainly the artistic evidence supports the textual evidence on this point, and it's interesting that this aspect, and particularly it's political implications, tend to be underplayed today. I intend to follow this up at some stage with an examination of the frequency which these two features figure in Jesus biopics. Certainly the miracles are often underplayed. How will the meal scenes fair?

The other point which I found interesting was Crossan's skill in making familiar texts fresh once again. Crossan provides his own translation for each text, based on his own five point process. i - both individual and social, ii - both political and religious, iii - sayings require both interpretation and translation, iv - structural and spatial presentation to return to the original more memorable phrases, v - minimal and poetic, also to reflect the original easy-to-remember format. However, in places, the new translation seems less memorable than the standard canonical versions. Perhaps that simply reflects my own familiarity with these canonical version, but whilst overall Crossan achieves his objective, in places it seems to only make things less easy to remember.

What really breathes fresh life into these texts is the way he asks after certain sayings "but how is the Kingdom of God like that"? It's a incredibly simple question, but pretty soon I realised that in many places I had uncritically accepted the explanation I had been given years ago (at Sunday school probably), and had not really listened to those texts since. Whilst Crossan's "Mediterranean peasant" filter gives him a particular angle on these things, even those who reject the prominence Crossan gives it will find the question helps them look at things anew.

So overall it was an interesting and challenging read. I should be clear that I don't agree with all of Crossan's approach. In places it is overly pessimistic, in others it's more Mediterranean than Jewish. But even despite my misgivings he has a number of fascinating insights which make "The Essential Jesus" well worth a read.

The Lost Gospel, Q

I read Marcus Borg's "The Lost Gospel Q: The Original Sayings of Jesus" yesterday. I say Borg's but really his role was to be consulting editor and contribute a preface which, somewhat unusually, comes after Thomas Moore's introduction. However, neither man is responsible for the main section of the book - a collation and translation of the various sayings of Jesus that form the hypothetical source known as Q - This work was completed by Mark Powelson and Ray Riegert.

Whilst I'm not so much of a Q-sceptic as Mark Goodacre, whose two books on the subject are well worth a read, I'm certainly cynical about Q, and the amount of certainty that seems to rest on the hypothesis. So it was with mixed feelings I plucked this book off the shelf. Part of me thought it would be interesting to read all this sayings material in one volume, not to mention reading Borg's preface. On the other hand, bringing all the material into just one volume seems far too confident and final to me.

For the uninitiated, Q is one of the solutions to what has been called the synoptic problem - the fact that the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke contain so much similar material to one another. It is generally accepted nowadays that Mark's gospel was written first, and the reason that it shares so much common material with the other two "synoptic" gospels is because the writers of those gospels knew Mark's gospel, and based their gospels on it. (There are, some who maintain that Matthew was also the source for Mark, but I'll put that aside for now).

However, further examination of Matthew and Luke also reveals that there is also a large amount of material that they have in common. Three broad theories have been suggested to explain this phenomenon. Firstly that Luke knew Matthew's gospel, and used phrases from his gospel as well as Luke's as a basis for his gospel. Alternatively, the process could have worked the other way around with Matthew adapting Luke instead. The most popular solution to this theory, however, is that there was a third source, which, (somehow) was lost to such an extent that it wasn't even preserved by being directly referenced in other ancient texts, which both Matthew and Luke used independently, without knowing each other's work. And it is this lost source which has been named Q (after the German word for source "Quelle").

"The Lost Gospel Q", then, is basically a presentation of a reconstructed version of that source, produced for a wider readership than that which usually dips into books on the synoptic problem. No doubt "The Da Vinci Code" has created increased audience interest for such a book. One does not have to read very far into the book before we find an astounding level of confidence in the composition of this lost source, and its purity in contrast to the canonical gospels. The very first page contains this statement by Moore:

...the four gospels are riddled with the interpretations, biases and agendas of their four editors...The Lost Gospel Q, (is) the scholars' best attempt to render the pure voice of the Gospel Jesus

Now perhaps if Moore was pushed on this he would point out the detail in that statement, but when swept across, as much of the targeted readership would do, then it certainly gives the impression that Q represents a pure voice in contrast to the bias of the canonical gospels. In reality, if Q did exist, it would have reflected the biases of the community behind it, just as much as those of the communities of Matthew, Mark and Luke.

I also find the confidence behind this composition astounding. Borg's statement on page 17 that "Q contains no passion narrative" is sheer conjecture. All we know is that if Q existed then both Matthew and Luke chose Mark's version. That may be, as Borg contends, because Q had no passion narrative, but it may be that Mark's version was simply better, or at least more suitable to Matthew and Luke's purposes than that of Q. Secondly, there is an implicit assumption that the material unique to Matthew and Luke, named M and L respectively, was also not by definition part of Q. That is all very well when naming sources to explain the model, but when attempting to reconstruct the model, it is a little too certain. How do we know that Matthew and Luke incorporated everything from Q into their gospels? That is certainly not the way they handled Mark, both authors excluded certain sections. So how do we know that some of the M and L material was not in the Q source, but that the other evangelist chose to leave it out either deliberately, because it did not suit their purpose, or accidentally? And, as noted with the passion narrative, how do we know that there are incidents that both writers excluded. Borg notes that the Gospel of Thomas also excludes the death and resurrection of Jesus, but to assume that Q follows this pattern rather than the pattern of the other 4 known gospels is also a bit of a leap. The evidence from the earliest gospels is 4:1 against, and Thomas may not even be that early. Certainly it is the least Jewish of all the gospels which suggests a certain period of time is likely to have elapsed for the gospel of a Jewish teacher to drift so significantly. It is certainly possible that Q had no passion narrative, but the burden of proof would lie on those who deny it on this basis.

A brief excursus here to return to the staple ground of this blog. Consider the various films about Jesus. Most of them pick and choose biblical episodes as best suits them. Some incidents occur in all, or nearly all films. Others are very prominent in certain films such as the healing of Jairus's daughter in The Miracle Maker, but entirely absent in others such as the Jesus mini-series. Other parts of the gospel, such as the parable of the shrewd manager, are never included (unless the film is a presentation of the entire gospel). Yet all are in the source material. In other places the film-makers clearly prefer one version of an event to another for example where Il Messia locates the clearing of the Temple at the start of the story, as in John, rather than at in Jesus's final week like the synoptics.

Overall, Borg is a little more cautious than Moore, but the presentation of the actual "gospel" leaves no room for doubt, as it consists solely of the material common to Matthew and Luke, but not found in Mark. The juxtaposition of confident assertion over the nature of Q, and a definitively framed collection of sayings suggests a certainty over Q that is just not fitting a hypothetical source. As a result the books falls halfway between two more sensible positions - either a simple collection of the material that is not in Mark but that is common to Matthew and Luke, or some conjecture based around that common material. If the writers wanted to make all sorts of definitive claims about this gospel it would have been better to include an appendix with a few disputed sayings for the record, and accompanying comments (as we have with all of the canonical gospels).

The book itself is nicely laid out with a number interesting comments, and is a good introduction to the authors' positions. The use of red text for the words of Jesus is also useful here, as are the notes on translation, and the chart equating the Q sayings to Matthew and Luke. However, as an introduction to Q itself it is so overconfident that it loses a little of its credibility.