PAUL’S theologia crucis ΑS AN INTERMEDIATE STAGE
OF THE TRAJECTORY FROM Q TO MARK

I

One of the major issues, which occupies serious biblical scholarship during the last decades, is the study of Q. Not so much as a solution to the Synoptic problem, but because of the effects it has caused to the conventional picture of Christian origins, which dominated biblical scholarship for almost a century. The well-known to scholarly circles second source of the Synoptic tradition, now lost, seems to expound a radically different theological view from the mainstream kerygmatic expression of the early Church. Taken together with the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas, the widely held among scholars conviction of the existence of an early “Christian” document (Q, i.e. a document with a semi-canonical status) lacking not only (i) a historical structure of Jesus’ life of a Gospel type, i.e. with a “Passion and Resurrection Story”, but also (ii) any reference of the soteriological significance of Jesus’ death,[i] “challenges the assumption that the early Church was unanimous in making Jesus' death and resurrection the fulcrum of Christian faith.”[ii] The results of recent research on Q “has revealed the complexity of early Christian literary activity and also contributed to a reassessment of the originating impulse(s) of the whole Christian movement”.[iii]

In fact, the challenge of Q to the conventional picture of Christian origins, and by extension also to the quest of the Historical Jesus and the predominance of the pauline interpretation of the Christ event, is more far-reaching than the making of a little room for yet “another Gospel,” another early Christian community etc. If Q is taken seriously into account the entire landscape of early Christianity with all that it entails may need to be radically revised, at least thoroughly reconsidered.[iv]

II

Of course, there have been voices from the discipline of Archeology for some time now,[v] pointing out that the extant archaeological evidence supports this view.[vi] But none (or very few) could have ever listen to them, nor was biblical scholarship ready to review or put to a test the conventional picture of early Christianity. Yet, a quarter of a century ago a number of scholars from all Christian traditions tried to analyze the origin of the theological significance of Jesus' death.[vii] They all illustrated that there was no unanimity among the first Christians with regard to the interpretation of Jesus' death on the cross. In fact, there was a considerable variety of attempts to give a theological interpretation to Jesus' death.[viii]

Besides the so-called “soteriological” interpretation, according to which the raison d’ être  of Jesus' death on the cross was the salvation of humankind, one can count at least another four (4) crystallized interpretative attempts, with which the early Christian community was trying to grasp the mystery of the crucifixion:

(a)  The "prophetic" interpretation,[ix] according to which Jesus' death was given no expiatory significance, being rather seen as the true continuation of the persecution, sufferings and violent end of the Old Testament prophets.

(b)    The "dialectic" interpretation,[x] according to which Jesus' death was dialectically contrasted[xi]) to the resurrection with the stress on the latter, making again no soteriological hint to the cross.

(c)    The "apocalyptic" (or "eschatological") interpretation,[xii] where too Jesus' death is referred to as having no soteriological significance, but was seen as an eschatological act in full agreement with the divine plan. And finally,

(d)    the "eucharistic" or "covenantal" interpretation,[xiii] pointing also to other than the expiatory significance of Jesus' death. His blood has rather sealed the new covenant that God established with his people.

The almost unanimous preference, I concluded my analysis almost 20 years ago,[xiv] in the later New Testament literature to the so-called “soteriological” interpretation, which of course can surely be traced to the period before Paul's conversion (cf. 1 Cor. 15:3ff.), was “due to its hellenistic background, compared with the more or less Jewish background of all the other interpretations”. I stretched a little further my argument advancing the hypothesis that:

“the lack of any reference in other pre-pauline strata of the early Christian tradition…would suggest a limited usage in the early Christian community. On the other hand, the prophetic interpretation, traces of which are found in almost all layers of primitive Christianity (Q-community, hellenistic community, marcan community, pauline community), suggests that it was widespread during this creative period”.[xv]

III

Few years ago I argued that:

“the time has come for scholarly research to distance itself as much as possible from the dominant to modern scholarship syndrome of the priority of the texts over the experience, of theology over ecclesiology. There are many scholars who cling to the dogma, imposed by the post-Enlightenment and post-Reformation hegemony over all scholarly theological outlook (and not only in the field of biblical scholarship or of Protestant theology), which can be summarized as follows: what constitutes the basis of any historical investigation, the core of Christian faith, cannot be extracted but from given texts (and/or archeological evidence), from the expressed theological views, from a certain depositum fidei  (be it the Bible, the Church (or apostolic) Tradition etc.); very rarely is there any serious reference to the eucharistic/eschatological experience that preceded them, in fact from the communion-event which was responsible and produced these texts and views”.[xvi]

These views were met with criticism on the basis of a suspicion of a latent return to the pre-critical approach to the Gospels, and were further connected with my expressed post-modern concerns.[xvii] I do not hide my discontent of modernism, if not for anything else at least because it has over-rationalized everything from social and public life to scholarship, from emotion to imagination, seeking to over-control and -limit the irrational, the aesthetic and perhaps even the sacred. In its search to rationalize and historicize all, modernism has transformed not only what we know and how we know it, but also how we understand ourselves. Hence the longing by a wide range of intellectuals (not limited to scholars) for wholeness, for community, for Gemeinschaft, for an antidote to the fragmentation and sterility of an overly technocratic society, and at the end of the road a content to post-modernism. Having said all these, it is important to reaffirm what sociologists of knowledge very often point out, i.e. that modernism, counter (alternative) modernism, post-modernism, and even de-modernism, are always simultaneous processes. Otherwise post-modernism can easily end up and evaporate to a neo-traditionalism, and at the end a neglect or even negation of the great achievements of the Enlightenment and the ensuing critical order and of course the democratic structure of our (Western) society.[xviii]

I felt obliged to affirm all these and reaffirm that all I argued for was a reminder of the priority of the eschatological experience of the early Christian community over against its literary products (texts, Bible etc), admitting of course at the same time that

“ very early, even from the time of St. Paul, there has been a shift - no matter for what reasons[xix]- of the center of gravity from the (eucharistic) experience to the (Christian) message, from eschatology  to christology  (and further and consequently to soteriology),  from the event  (the Kingdom of God), to the bearer and center of this event (Christ, and more precisely his sacrifice on the cross).... (concluding)  that the horizontal-eschatological view was the predominant one in the early Church, both in the New Testament and in subsequent Christian literature. The vertical-soteriological (and pauline) view was always understood within the context of the horizontal-eschatological perspective as supplemental and complementary.[xx]

This, however, is not something uncommon, even among the most fervent supporters of modernism within biblical scholarship of our time. More and more studies come out, and more and more scholars appear, admitting the priority of the “eucharistic” behaviour and/or “common meal” eschatological anticipation of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries, of Jesus himself “eating together” with his disciples, and of course of the early Christian community.[xxi] This wide recognition of the importance of what has come to be called Eucharist in dealing with Christian origins, brought new dimension to the understanding of its earliest stages. We are talking, of course, of the Eucharist neither in the sense of a mystery cult, nor as a mere ritual, but as the living expression of the ecclesial identity of the early Christian community, an expression of a koinonia of the eschata, and a proleptic manifestation of the Kingdom of God, a vivid act of a community living in a new reality.

IV

The issue at stake, therefore, is how our Jesus-tradition-literature moved from an eschatological, experiential, didactic (saying [sophiological]?)[xxii] pattern, to a historical Markan type. To put it in different terms, how the ritual developed into a story. How we moved from Paul, who did not care about the Jesus of History  (II Cor 5: 16f), to a pauline Gospel of Mark. And equally, how one can explain the trajectory of Jesus’ traditions from a (non-pauline) Saying literary genre (Q and Thomas) to a Story literary genre (Mark and then the rest of the canonical Gospels).

Previously, before the consolidation of the Q hypothesis, everything was woven around the assumption of a soteriological emphasis from the very beginning of the Christian origins. According to this explanation the trajectory goes as follows:

The soteriological significance of Jesus of Nazareth -> Paul -> Post-pauline Christianity (Gospels: Mark etc. - John) ->and then on to Catholic/Orthodox Christianity.

 The new explanation, on the contrary, places a great deal of importance on the assumption of the priority of the eschatological teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, being re-enacted and performed around the “common-meal” eschatological fellowships, and the ensuing “eucharistic” expression of the first Christian community. According to this analysis the early Christian community was developed in two trajectories:

(i) Q -> James -> Didache -> Thomas..... and then on to marginal Christian groups, especially Gnostic Christianity.

(ii) Paul -> Mark -> Acts ....and then on to early Orthodoxy.

It is quite interesting that the later Catholic/Orthodox Christianity preserved both the eucharistic/eschatological element, prominent to the first trajectory, and the soteriological/christological one, around which the second trajectory was developed.

With regard to the Marcan-Q relations I hinted in an earlier study that Mark did “have (a) knowledge of Q-traditions….. he was acquainted with the Q-Document itself…. (he did not) derive any material therefrom….(because) his attitude to the Q-materials (was) critical”.[xxiii] And this might have been due to Q’s non-soteriological motifs and perhaps to its non-theologia-crucis  orientation, which the pauline tradition was so depended upon.

I take for granted the findings of some (cultural) anthropologists, that in Israel, like in all societies and religious systems, the connection between ritual and story was fundamental. The main story of the Jewish people, the exodus from Egypt, was ritually re-enacted in Israel's major festival, the Passover. And the main promise of Jahwe to his people, i.e. his unilateral covenant to all descendants of Jacob (Israel), was re-enacted in rituals and offerings during all their annual festivals. We also know that these promises of the blessings of that covenant had been a hope rather than a reality, which nevertheless stayed alive and was constantly renewed up to the time of the Historical Jesus. In all its forms (Isaianic, Danielic, Enochic or Qumranic) this hope was celebrated around their common meals in anticipation of the coming of the messianic meal with the anointed priest and/or the anointed king. And there were numerous prophets during Jesus’ time who attempted to re-enact or to prepare for the messianic liberation of Israel.

Coming now to Jesus of Nazareth there is good evidence in all gospel accounts that he, too, celebrated common meals with his disciples and friends, and this not only because he certainly was a devoted Jew, “marginal” or not. And there is no reason to doubt that the early Christian communities celebrated common meals in anticipation to the eschatological/ messianic reality. Most probably the Christian community meals had its origin in meals that Jesus celebrated with his disciples. The question which arises is whether these meals can be reduced only to the last one, commonly called “Last Supper”, before his execution. Paul, our earliest source, seems to anchor the eucharistic tradition he received in the historical situation of the last meal of Jesus with his disciples. Thus, he claims a continuity between the meal celebrated by the community with the meal celebrated by Jesus in the night in which he was handed over.

Recent studies on the original form of the eucharistic accounts of the N.T. have shown that Jesus' last meal, as well as the other common meals, must have been understood in eschatological rather that soteriological sense, i.e. as anticipation of the banquet of God, the banquet in the Kingdom of God. Whatever soteriological significance was later attached to them was certainly understood only within this eschatological perspective, never outside it.

It is not only (i) the apparent eschatological orientation of the overall “institution narratives” in all their forms (Marcan/Matthaean and Pauline/Lucan); it is also clear that (ii) the saying of the cup in its oldest form was not centered on the content of the cup (the wine, and further through the sacrificial meaning of Jesus’ blood, on its soteriological significance), but on the cup as the symbol of the new covenant;[xxiv] and above all, (iii) the bread in its original meaning was not connected with Jesus’ crucified body, but had ecclesiological connotations, starting as a symbol of the eschatological community. Justin Taylor has convincingly argued for the eschatological importance of the “breaking of the bread” in early Christianity.[xxv] Perhaps the intermediate stage in the overall process was the pauline image [term?] “body of Christ”.

The story of Jesus' suffering and death remained fluid for a long time. Evidence for this are the different versions of the passion narrative in the Gospel literature, owing to the oral performance of the story in ritual celebrations. As the early faithful in their ritual celebrations were reading again and again the O.T. lessons and then told the story of Jesus' death, that story was enriched by more scriptural language.

V

At this stage Paul’s theological interpretation of Jesus’ death through his famous theologia crucis – in fact his major contribution to Christianity – played a catalytic role. In view of the fact that, it is stories that create nations, and more precisely stories that can function as a founding element in any religious system, the story of Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection – and by extension the Gospel narratives – proved to be a significant factor in Christianity, by which its original eschatological dimension was able to survive and have a lasting impact in the course of history. The new eschatological community, which expressed its identity in eucharistic ritual, could only be nourished by this version of the story, namely the passion narrative, a version derived from ritual, and which in turn has ultimately its roots in the meal practices of Jesus.

The theologia crucis, the story, and the soteriological interpretation of Jesus’ death in the course of history eventually overwhelmed the earlier ethical, eucharistic and eschatological understanding of Christian identity. Ironically enough, the same process was in force in the understanding of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, where for most of the time the personalistic and soteriological elements overwhelmed the prominent eschatological and ecclesiological ones; not as a deviation and corrupted additional elements, but as a necessary surviving process.