Chapter 364 of 404

Notes to Appendix 2

1 Not all scholars who hold this thesis deny that Jesus also uttered eschatological sayings. While I do not find the evidence for their position persuasive, my reason to treat the topic in a historical Jesus book is Mack’s use of their thesis rather than the thesis itself.

2 Lost Gospel, 106-7.

3 Lost Gospel, 34-36.

4 Some seem fairly certain of Q’s shape (e.g., Edwards, Theology of Q), but contrast e.g., Stanton, Jesus of Nazareth, 5; Keck, “Ethos,” 448.

5 Mack, Lost Gospel, 16.

6 Lost Gospel, 34.

7 Mack also recognizes Thomas’s dependence on sayings in Q (e.g., Lost Gospel, p. 182).

8 We do find recycled eschatological traditions in apocalyptic literature. Moreover, even those who contend that the eschatological “layer” in Q is a later addition (and, in Mack’s case, an inauthentic one) nevertheless recognize that eventually Q (before the composition of Luke and Matthew) included eschatological sayings. Why would eschatological sayings become possible at a second “layer” yet violate genre conventions at a layer that could not have been significantly earlier (given the potential time frame between Jesus’ day and an established predecessor to Luke and Matthew)?

9 Lost Gospel, 6.

10 Lost Gospel, 192.

11 For a full-scale, coherent and scholarly reevaluation of the Gospels’ treatment of the Jesus tradition, see especially the six volumes of Gospel Perspectives, although many less conservative studies will also concur with the substance of many of their critiques.

12 Lost Gospel, 238.

13 Mack apparently accepts this letter as Pauline (Lost Gospel, 231).

14 Paul proceeds less in this direction than do many of his contemporaries such as Philo or Josephus.

15 Most significantly Abba and Marana tha; cf. also anathema and Kephas. Such phrases reveal the importance the earliest Jesus movement attached to Jesus’ relationship with (and teaching about) the Father; his Lordship and return; the role of Peter and the earliest, Aramaic traditions.

16 Cf. here Overman’s critique of Mack’s distinctions between Galilean Jesus movements and hellenistic Christ cults in his Myth: the social experiences of Galilean and Diaspora Christians would not have been that dissimilar (Overman, “Deciphering,” 194).

17 For a case that veneration of Jesus belongs to the Jesus movement’s earliest stages, see Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ.

18 Lost Gospel, 74-79 and parts of 73 and 80.

19 Cf. Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:177, on some minimalist Jesus scholarship more generally.

20 Overman, “Deciphering,” 193-94.

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