Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.1998, Qupperneq 180

Jón Ma. Asgeirsson
not a philosophical dialogue about how to confront the final exit with dignity
and free of “boundaries” nor about persecutions in terms of “blessings” but
a mythological collection of sayings in an arbitrary chronological order when
viewed from formal characteristics and contents that seemingly divide the
document into several distinguishable strata.56 Seeley argues that the other
four passages from the Q document which he considers containing a reference
to the death of Jesus apply that concept to the Hebrew epic in a “progressive”
manner as the understanding of the community of his death would have
changed over time. While Seeley is most correct in noting a certain develop-
ment in these passages or the more rigid presence of the Deuteronomistic
motifs in the same, they address the community itself but not Jesus. Why is
it that the Q people find themselves in a situation in which they turn the
Hebrew epic against their fellow Jews: Placing, as it were, themselves on the
suffering side of the Deuteronomistic tradition? To recall or imitate the death
of Jesus? Hardly! Would it not rather be rooted in being persecuted for their
radical ethics echoed in the teaching of Jesus? In this “utopian” ethics, as
Robinson has so called,57 it is easy to observe an increasing tension that ulti-
mately would collapse on its own humanly impossible radicalism. What the
main redaction of Q expresses in terms of separation between the Q com-
munity eventually evolves into assimilation with institutional practices of
Jewish communities or into early Christian circles.58 Yet, with or without
“prophets” is used in a “limited way.” He argues that it reveals the unusual “mimetic
pattern” applied to Jesus in Q 14:27 (as a philosopher?) and, thus, not purely Deutero-
nomistic as yet, ibid., 138-139.
56 On the characteristics of the strata in the document Q identified by Kloppenborg, vide his,
The Formation ofQ: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections, Studies in Antiquity and
Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1986) 102-262, 317-237.
57 Vide his, The Jesus of the Sayings Gospel Q, Occasional Papers of the Institute for
Antiquity and Christianity, J. Ma. Asgeirsson ed., 28 (Claremont, CA: Institute for
Antiquity and Christianity, 1993); idem, “Afterword,” in Birger A. Pearson, The Gospel
according to the Jesus Seminar, Occasional Papers of the Institute for Antiquity and
Christianity, J. Ma. Asgeirsson ed., 35 (Claremont, CA: Institute for Antiquity and
Christianity, 1996) 44-48.
58 C/. John S. Kloppenborg,“Nomos and Ethos in Q,” in James E. Goehring et al. eds., Gospel
Origins and Christian Beginnings: In Honor of James M. Robinson, Forum Fascicles
(Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1990) 35-48. Kloppenborg referes to this tendency in Q
as “a Torah-observant Jewish Christianity” or Q as depicting “Jesus as a Torah radicalizer”
and argues that such passages as Q 4:1-13; 7:27; 16:17; 11:39-41; and 11:42c all attest to
a late (third) redaction of Q, ibid. Daniel Kosch argues on the other hand that these
instances be early in the Q tradition, Die eschatologisclie Tora des Menschensohnes.
Untersuchungen zur Rezeption der Stellung Jesu zur Tora in Q, NTOA, M. Kiichler and
G. TheiBen eds., 12 (Freiburg & Göttingen: Universitátsverlag & Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1989), passim. Christopher M. Tuckett offers a more intermediary approach to
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