Discussion Group Report

"It should bring to an end the myth, the history, the mentality, of the Gospels. But nobody's going to want to read it!" says Burton L. Mack, retired professor of New Testament at the School of Theology at Claremont and the author of a best-selling book about the origins of Christianity. He is talking about a scholarly document, a reconstructed Greek text of "Q," a hypothetical first-century work composed mostly of sayings of Jesus.

Charlotte Allen discusses the work done on Q in "The Search for a No-Frills Jesus," in the December 1966 Atlantic Monthly. Many scholars believe that Q served as a literary source for the Gospels of Mathew and Luke, which contain numerous parallel passages. Other scholars believe it never existed, since there are no manuscripts of it or references to it in ancient literature. Contained in the parallel passages are many of the teachings of Jesus that Christians place near the heart of their faith: the Lord's Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes, the Golden Rule, and the admonition, "You cannot serve God and Mammon."

Although some scholars who are Christian believers endorse the Q hypothesis, a cadre of biblical scholars including Mack argue that the teachings of Jesus in Q hold the key to an understanding of Jesus that is fundamentally non-Christian. They maintain that the authors of Q did not view Jesus as "the Christ" (the promised Messiah) or as the redeemer who had atoned for their sins by his crucifixion or as the son of God who rose from the dead. Rather they esteemed him simply as a roving sage who preached a life of possessionless wandering and full acceptance of one's fellow human beings, no matter how disreputable or marginal. He was a Jesus for third-millennium America, with little supernatural baggage but much respect for cultural diversity.

Some Q scholars saw Jesus as a leader in a Q community in Galilee consisting essentially of Cynics. Mack describes Galilee "as a kind of beachhead where the surge of political crosscurrents constantly kept the people on their toes." It had, he says, a multiethnic population that felt little loyalty to Jerusalem. Jesus was a countercultural guru who encouraged his Galilean followers to "experiment with novel social notions and life-styles," to question "taboos on intercourse with people of different ethnic roots," and to "free themselves from traditional social constraints and think of themselves as belonging to a larger human family." "It's over," Mack said. "We've had enough apocalypses. We've had enough martyrs. Christianity has had a two-thousand-year run, and it's over."

Mack's explanation has its critics. James Robinson contends that Mack has gone a bit over the top, having tilted his translation to make it more in keeping with a Cynical image.

The Search for a No-Frills Jesus

"It's all faux history," says Luke Timothy Johnson. "...we know so little about Christianity in Galilee." Richard Horsley's book, Galilee: History, Politics, People, says, "My book pulls the rug out from under the Cynic sage...The sapiential figure--that's our modern typology, something we've made up. Q is prophetic--it's traditional Bible prophecy...it was functioning in a dynamic way in the oral tradition...Jesus played out the role the script called for."

Q is speculative scholarship, which is more tolerated in the American university than in the European academy. There is also an understandable lack of willingness to accept that there are limits to what historical research can provide by way of hard information about Jesus and his early followers. The only first-century texts dealing with first-century Christianity are specifically Christian documents.

Robinson comments, "I think that Jesus was an important person, one of the most important people who ever lived. In modern times many enlightened types have become skeptical, and we look down on the uneducated types who believe. It's a sort of a pity that all that most of us know about Jesus is from the creeds, which we can't believe in. This focus on the sayings is a way to make Jesus comprehensible in this age. Jesus was giving people the kingdom--a kind of selfless society where everybody is supposed to have a trusting attitude toward one another."

Educated Europeans and Americans have come to see the purpose of religion is its social utility as an enforcer of morality among the poor. The Gospels, or Q, give a more radical commandment, which requires one to make a gift of everything, of one's very self. Allen feels that it may be worthwhile that scholars in Claremont and elsewhere have pulled out the texts as a distilled reminder. I agree, but I ask, is it healthy-minded for us to give everything, even our very selves, thus possibly denying ourselves the fulfillment of our own personal needs? Wouldn't it be better for us simply to love others as ourselves and to give thoughtful consideration to their needs while expecting them to give us the same consideration?