Excerpts
Like a Child
Excerpt from The Jesus Sayings
Rex Weyler
The early, pre-gospel Jesus followers also told a story of the spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness, where he allegedly encounters Satan. Academic opinion splits on whether or not Jesus predicted a cataclysmic end of the world as did John the Baptist, but if he did, he returns from his private contemplations in the desert with a somewhat revised plan: Accept your poverty and give away anything that you have to others who ask. In such verses, Jesus refers to his audience as “the poor … the hungry … the weeping” and he encourages them with the message that their poverty brings them closer to righteousness.
This, then, signals the beginning of a radical new message: Don’t just purify yourself with ritual and wait around for God to save you; rather act now on behalf of others. God takes care of you. You take care of others. That is the kingdom of God.
Jesus weighs in on the very issues raised by John the Baptist’s mission: purity, atonement, authority, and kind acts. However, whereas John emphasized purity and preparation for the cataclysmic end of the world, Jesus cuts to the mundane chase of poverty and survival: help your neighbours. Jesus departs from the Jordan River wilderness and returns to the villages of Galilee. He rejects purity rituals and dietary rules and he takes up eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. Compared to the ascetic John, he appears almost self-indulgent.
However, the record will reveal method in his radical style and distinctive voice. The Thomas gospel, which appeared, at least in part, between 30 and 60 CE, only mentions John the Baptist once (Thomas 46):
Jesus said, “From Adam to John the Baptist, among those born of women, no one is so much greater than John the Baptist that his eyes should not be averted. But I have said that whoever among you becomes a child will recognize the kingdom and will become greater than John.”
Here, the break with the Baptist appears explicit. Jesus honours his mentor John and does not deny the apocalypse of Jewish tradition, but neither does he emphasize it. Jesus tells his audience to avoid religious pretensions and emulate a child, innocent and natural. Lucky are the poor to be near the Kingdom. We shall find that Jesus turns his disciples’ attention to “righteousness,” to compassion here and now.
If the single, dubious historical reference in Josephus and Paul’s own letters were all we had, we would know almost nothing about the life, deeds, and teachings of Jesus. Fortunately, other followers recorded events and sayings during the first three decades after the death of Jesus, before the earliest gospels appeared. Some of this material remained lost to history and only presumed through attacks by later writers and evidence in known gospels. However, in the late nineteenth century, ancient documents began appearing on the European antiquities market that led archeologists on a search for the lost sayings of Jesus.
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Gospel of Thomas, The Scholars’ Translation by Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer.
Gospel of Thomas at Early Christian Writings, comparative translations, commentary
The earliest layers of pre-gospel writing about Jesus:
Mack – former New Testament professor at the School of Theology, Claremont, California – translates and explains the early, pre-gospel source for the Luke and Matthew gospels known to scholars as the “Q” (German “Quelle” or “source”) sayings.
John Kloppenborg first identified layers of development within this “Q” source material, and Mack identifies these layers in his translation, as:
Q1 (c. 40-60 C.E.): The very earliest writings of the followers of Jesus, who viewed Jesus as a wise sage teaching a practical morality. Here we find the core sayings: Love your enemy, turn the other cheek, a tree is known by its fruits, seek and find, share the light inside, and the divine kingdom is like a mustard seed, small, almost invisible, but it will grow like a wild plant in the fields of society and become something useful.
Q2 (c. 65 to 75 C.E.): Shifting ideas among the peasant Jesus communities, portraying Jesus as a child of heavenly wisdom (Sophia) and reacting to social rejection and conflict with Pharisees. The community reconciles the apocalyptic vision of John the Baptist with the moral teachings of Jesus.
Q3: (80 to 90 C.E.) The Jesus community changed after the fall of Jerusalem to Rome. They appear disappointed that Jesus did not return as they believed he would in their lifetime, and now they depict Jesus as a celestially begotten son of God. Mythology begins to eclipse practical moral advice. This layer greatly influences the written gospels.
Burton L. Mack, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q & Christian Origins (HarperCollins, 1993).
John S. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections (Fortress Press, 1987).
Marcus Borg, The Lost Gospel Q: The Original Sayings of Jesus (Publishers’ Group West, 1999)
See Chapter 3, “Down by the River,” and Chapter 4 “Child in the Kingdom,” in The Jesus Sayings.