KlT Kleine Texte für Vorlesungen und Übungen
KZNT Kirchliche Zeitschrift zum Neuen Testament
LSJ Henry G. Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon
LSJ Supp E. A. Barber, editor, Greek-English Lexicon: A Supplement
LXX Alfred Rahlfs, editor, Septuaginta: Id est: Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes
MeyerK H. A. W. Meyer, Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament
MT Masoretic Text—Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
Mus Muséon
NA27 Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th ed.
NHMS Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies
NHS Nag Hammadi Studies
NIGTC The New International Greek Testament Commentary
NovT Novum Testamentum
NovTSup Novum Testamentum Supplements
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
NTAbh Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen
NTD Das Neue Testament Deutsch
NTR New Testament Readings
NTS New Testament Studies
NTTS New Testament Tools and Studies
RSR Recherches de science religieuse
RTP Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie
SAC Studies in Antiquity & Christianity
SBLSP Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers
SBT Studies in Biblical Theology
SecCent The Second Century
SNT Studien zum Neuen Testament
SNTIW Studies in the New Testament and Its World
SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series
TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament
THKNT Theologischer Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament
TRu Theologische Rundschau
TS Theological Studies
TU Texte und Untersuchungen
UBSHS United Bible Societies Handbook Series
UNT Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche
ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche
chapter 1 Introduction
Why This Book?
One of the more significant lessons we have learned from biblical scholarship is that traditions about Jesus were not passed down in any kind of linear or uniform fashion. We know with certainty that the teachings of Jesus were transmitted through a variety of media including, but not exclusive to, sayings collections, rules for church order, instructional and hortatory letters, liturgies, and apostolic word-of-mouth. We know that individual writings of the New Testament and other early Jesus movement literature usually reflect not singular, but multiple sources.
The most obvious example of this latter reality comes from gospel studies. Regardless of one’s theory of the source relationships between canonical gospels, it is clear that a variety of sources are involved. Even if one begins with the most fundamental and widely-held hypothesis—the two-source hypothesis (Matthew and Luke used Mark and another source, “Q”)—one is still faced with the likelihood of additional “M” and “L” sources used by Matthew and Luke respectively, as well as sources used in the composition of Mark and Q themselves.
Part and parcel of the problem of identifying sources and the forms they took is discerning in what ways and to what purposes oral tradents, collectors of traditions, and gospel writers modified their sources in order to address new and different social contexts. Simply put, sayings of Jesus found in more than one gospel are rarely identical. And while some differences can be readily identified as changes befitting the individual gospel writers’ stylistic or grammatical preferences, other differences reflect their theological or cultural viewpoints—perspectives that become apparent through a close reading of the entire respective work and by comparison with other gospels.
Still other differences can be attributed to various pre-gospel stages of transmission. Form critics, beginning with Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Dibelius, have demonstrated the tendency of nascent Jesus movements to shape the sayings traditions according to their particular needs.1 More recently, John Dominic Crossan showed how regularly the gospel writers shaped the core of aphoristic sayings by various means, such as contraction, expansion, substitution, transposition, and conversion, and then further shaped the interpretation of those sayings by combining or clustering them and then embedding them in larger speech units and narratives.2 And so, with even the subtlest of modifications, an aphoristic saying can take different forms, such as maxim, rhetorical question, admonition, or prohibition and take on different meanings in different hermeneutical contexts.
With occasional exceptions (e.g., The Lord’s Prayer, Against Divorce), Crossan deals only with gospel material. However, his arguments are appropriate to a wider range of material. Compare the following:
“Are grapes gathered from thorn-bushes, or figs from thistles?” (Matt 7:16b)
“Figs are not gathered from thorns-bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.” (Luke 6:44b)
“Can a fig tree . . . yield olives, or a grapevine figs?” (Ja 3:12a)
With regard to form, Matthew and James have rhetorical questions; Luke states a gnomic truth. With regard to content: Luke and James begin with figs, Matthew with grapes. Matthew and Luke contrast fruits with prickly plants that do not bear edible fruit; James contrasts fruits with plants bearing different edible fruit.
Advances in rhetorical criticism have since confirmed many of Crossan’s observations, but gone beyond them as well. By focusing on the way ancient rhetoricians worked with the chreia, rhetorical critics have demonstrated how sayings of Jesus could be and were transformed for rhetorical effect (at any stage of transmission) according to the methods of chreia elaboration as outlined in the ancient progymnasmata (exercises preliminary to training in rhetoric).3
The relevant point for this study is that individual sayings of Jesus underwent significant transformations in form and meaning depending on how they were used—in much the same way ten Christian preachers can apply the same given lectionary passage, on the same Sunday, in ten different ways, depending upon their particular congregations’ social and historical contexts and perceived needs. Compare again the previous New Testament examples, but with a little context added:
“You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn-bushes . . . ?”
“For each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorn-bushes . . .”
“Can a fig tree, my brothers, yield olives . . . ? Neither can salt water yield fresh.”
The broader Matthean context has Jesus warning the crowd to beware of false prophets, who are to be identified in the metaphor as “thorn-bushes” and “thistles” that do not bear (good) fruit. Luke’s context has Jesus admonishing listeners in the crowd to examine the “fruits” of their own lives and thereby consider their quality of character.