Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.1998, Blaðsíða 181

Death, Jesus, Derrida
philosophic mimetic, this hidden sayings collection reveals an utterly different
attitude towards the death of Jesus than is to be found in the elaborate cult
of Christ in the writings of Paul. But if missing is the epitaph of Jesus, would
he have rested in peace? Was there still to come the “rest of the dead”
(Gos.Thom. 51)?
Scalded Repose
The absence (or at best the paucity) of references to the death of Jesus in these
two sayings collections, the Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptic Sayings
Source, causes the reader at the end to begin reading all over again just like
the writing had left an open end. Jacques Derrida claims:
The idea of the book, which always refers to natural totality, is profoundly alien
to the sense of writing. It is the encyclopedic protection of theology and of
logocentrism against the disruption of writing, against its aphoristic energy, and,
..., against difference in general. If I distinguish the text from the book, I shall
say that the destruction of the book, as it is now under way in all domains,
denudes the surface of the text. That necessary violence responds to a violence
that was no less necessary.59
The impulsive expectation of meeting the end of Jesus—which when not
found—turns into a frustration or annoyance. Surely, Jesus must be silenced
at one point or the other. Seeley, who is otherwise interested in applying
Derrida-like literary critical or deconstructive way of thinking to the study of
the New Testament, falls, on the other hand, into this metaphysical pit of
having to force the death of Jesus to the picture of his living anecdotes
(chriae) as if this paradox had to be present in these sayings collections.
Seeley would seem to have added the voice of Paul to the written sayings of
Jesus—a procedure he otherwise argues against with Derrida, namely, to put
voice over writing.60
Seeley correctly observes the tension between the emphasis on the spoken
the issue, vide his, Q and the History of Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,
1996) 393-424, praesertim 418-423. Robinson suggests that the Q movement, finally,
assimilated with the community of Christians behind the gospel of Matthew, vide his, “The
Q Trajectory: Between John and Matthew via Jesus,” in Birger A. Pearson ed., Tlie Future
of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress,
1991) 173-194, praesertim 193-194.
59 OfGrammatology, G. Ch. Spivak transl. (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1974)
18 [De le Grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967)].
60 Vide his, op. cit., 1994, praesertim 8-15.
179