Abstract
The interpretation of Q 6:27 highlights a perennial problem in biblical scholarship. If Jesus commanded his disciples to love their enemies—and scholars are in virtually unanimous agreement that he did—how are we to understand this imperative in its original Jewish context? How are we to affirm that Jesus criticized his own tradition—which did not encourage love of enemies—without falling into anti-Jewish rhetoric? Our contemporary concern with Jesus' Jewishness should not preclude us from recognizing the possibility that Jesus criticized certain aspects of the Jewish tradition. The purpose of this essay is to isolate a distinctive element of the early Jesus tradition in its original Jewish context, identify its Christological implications, and explore how an intra-Jewish polemic was subsequently transferred onto inter-religious Jewish/Christian relations.
The “Sayings Gospel” Q is an important source for reconstructing Christian origins, a central site of conflict and debate in the field of New Testament studies (Kloppenborg Verbin 2000: 446). Named after the German Quelle for “source,” Q is a collection of approximately two hundred and thirty five verses found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but not in the Gospel of Mark. A Palestinian Jewish document dating between 40 and 70
The “Sayings Gospel” Q is also our best source for reconstructing the “historical Jesus” (Robinson 1993; Kosch: 30–58; Lührmann 1991; Schröter 1998: 173–200; Kloppenborg 1996: 307–44; 2001: 149–90; Horsley: 175–209; Allison 1997: 60–61). The study of the “historical Jesus” cannot be conflated with the study of Q (Ingolfsland: 217–32), but in Q “we are nearer to Jesus than anywhere else on the pages of history” (Robinson 2005: 180, 183). Q has significant implications for the study of the “historical Jesus” (Kloppenborg 1996: 315–19; Cameron 1996: 351–54; Koester: 345–49). If “Q gives no evidence of knowing items that otherwise it might have been expected to have employed … [then] it is very doubtful that these should be ascribed to Jesus” (Kloppenborg 1996: 334).
While some scholars continue to view Q as little more than a “grab—bag” of assorted sayings with no discernible organizing structure, Tendenz or framework (Meier: 181), and some doubt the very existence of Q (Farrer; Goulder 1989a; 1989b; 1996; Goodacre 1996; 2000; 2002), most scholars think that Q contains complex compositional traits that make it a distinctive literary product of Second Temple Judaism. Q is characterized by a Deuteronomistic perspective of Jewish history (Derrenbacker and Kloppenborg Verbin 2001: 75), a feature it does not generally share with the synoptics or the New Testament. Like the Qumran texts, Q represents a remarkable creativity in scriptural exegesis, drawing on common biblical patterns and templates, seeking “both to share in the cultural authority of scripture but also in some measure to co-opt it” (Newsom: 6; Crawford), assuming “the independence and freedom not only to rewrite Scripture but also to turn it upside down and even contradict it” (Allison 2000: 194; Fishbane: 275–300).
The author(s) of Q recognized the authority of the Torah and held the prophetic literature in high esteem. Q is partial towards the Psalms, Isaiah, and the Pentateuch. Q contains a high number of biblical references, indicating an intimate knowledge of biblical tradition; its author(s) intended their audience to discover this borrowing (Allison 2000: 182–84). The author(s) and audience of Q knew the scriptures well enough to recognize the connections being drawn, as, for example, in the application of an “exodus pattern” to the sayings material. Q has a tendency to “re-write” scripture (Willey: 70). Q “often creates a contrast with subtexts or even inverts them” in order to “express something provocatively” and create a sense of “distance” between it and the biblical subtext (Allison 2000: 192). Q, like 11QTemple, alters Mosaic law and creates new Torah (Allison 2000: 212). In Q 6:27–45, Q modifies and adds to “Mosaic demands” (Allison 2000: 33). In Q 14:26, Q inverts the commandment to “honor your father and mother” (Allison 2000: 62–64). Is Q reversing scriptural referents because it is experiencing tension with its parent-tradition? Q may be in tension with its scriptural forebears, but this is a creative tension. Q relates to scripture by subverting it and its intertextuality is “an illustration of the interpretive freedom of Jewish rhetoric” (Allison 2000: 197).
“Love Your Enemies”: Q 6:27–28, 35c–d
The most significant realization in recent Q studies was that Q contained extensive sapiential traditions (Wilckens 1959). In 1964, James M. Robinson argued that the Gattung of Q (logoi sophōn) belonged to wisdom literature's “sayings” collections (Robinson 1964: 77–96; 1971: 71–113). Indeed, many Q sayings can be identified form-critically as “wisdom” literature. Q is not a “grab-bag” of sayings, but rather a collection of compositional units. For example, Q specialists have identified Q 3–7 as an integrated unit, a complex composition intended to describe John and Jesus in light of their mutual relationship (Allison 1997). Within this larger unit, the Inaugural Sermon (Q 6:20–49) is a central component. The Sermon's coherent voice and ethic is widely regarded as early Jesus tradition (Robinson 1982: 172). The problem is that Q contains both wisdom instruction and judgment sayings. The final redaction of Q incorporated a mid- to late first-century Jewish reformulation of Deuteronomistic judgment on Israel (Lührmann 1969; Jacobson; Sato; Vaage; Mack; Kloppenborg 1987). Eschatological expectations frame the beginning and end of Q. In Q 3:7–9, John's preaching is explicitly eschatological. The beatitudes (Q 6:20–23) anticipate eschatological reversal. The end of the Sermon (Q 6:46–49) warns the listeners of the consequences resulting from their attitudes to the teachings of Jesus. The entire Sermon is eschatologically oriented (Tuckett: 141–43; Schulz: 168; Kloppenborg 1987: 292; Lührmann 1969: 69–71). In Q 10:9, the kingdom of God has drawn near. In Q 10:4–12, the mission to Israel seems to have an eschatological time-table. In Q 11:49–51, “this generation” is threatened with divine judgment. Q 12:8 promises that those who confess or deny Jesus now will be rewarded or punished before the angels. Q 13:18–21, the parable of the mustard seed, refers to an eschatological future. According to Q 13:24, a few will be able to enter through the “narrow” door, i.e., the end-time is coming soon. Q 12:54–56, a saying about the “signs” of the times, alludes to being able to predict the “weather” from the clouds. Q 12:57–59 describes the importance of reconciliation before it is too late. Q 12:39–46 (the parable of the thief) is evidence for a belief in the delay of the parousia. The coming of the son of man will be sudden, unexpected, and imminent. In Q 12:42–46 (the parable of the servants), the “coming” time will be disastrous for the unprepared. According to Q 17:22–37, the son of man will come without warning. Q 22:30 promises that Jesus' disciples will judge the twelve tribes of Israel at the end-time. An “eschatological outlook pervades large parts of the Q material” (Tuckett 1996: 161).
The Inaugural Sermon (Q 6:20–49) stands in some tension, therefore—literarily, thematically, ethically, and theologically—with this theme of imminent judgment.
This notable dissonance between Q's wisdom instruction and its pronouncement of judgment, both literarily and theologically, along with scholarly embarrassment about Jesus' apocalyptic profile in Q, has resulted in the development of compositional theories which emphasize the sapiential elements in Q as “formative” and the apocalyptic elements as secondary or “redactional” (Kloppenborg 1987).
We need not rehearse here the criticisms made by Richard Horsley (1991), John Collins, Harold Attridge, Dale Allison (1997) and Christopher Tuckett (1996), all of whom have identified serious weaknesses in assuming any generic incompatibility (or literary dissonance) between wisdom and apocalypticism in Q. The problem may be better illustrated by a brief examination of the beatitudes. The Inaugural Sermon begins with a series of beatitudes (Q 6:20–23), a common form of sapiential literature (Hengel 1999: 224–33; Kloppenborg 1987: 243–62, 325–27; Jacobson: 255; Carruth: 108–09; Catchpole: 80; Douglas: 125; Tuckett 1996: 226). Q's beatitudes share the structural and formal features of wisdom blessings (Kloppenborg 1987: 188). The beatitudes represent reversals of what is generally regarded as dire circumstances: the poor, hungry, and mourning are blessed, rather than destitute and forlorn (Tuckett 1996: 141). Q 6:20–23 also introduces the theme of eschatological reversal, a radical counter-cultural stance that subverts traditional expectations and assumptions (Meadors: 305–14). The beatitudes oppose the conventional wisdom that the affluent and comfortable are blessed (Betz: 17–36; York). This reversal of expectations is characteristic of Q's “language of reversal,” its “inversionary ethical injunctions and encomia on detachment from cultural norms” (Arnal 2001: 160). Q envisions a world where “conventional values are inverted and turned on their heads” (Arnal 2001: 2; Allison 2000: 104; Zahn: 183; Guelich: 415–34; Betz: 121, 123–24). There are many such “reversal” sayings in Q (Q 3:8; Q 4:5–8; Q 6:20–23; Q 6:27–28; Q 6:32–34; Q 7:9; Q 7:22; Q 12:2–3; Q 13:30; Q 13:18–19; Q 13:20–21; Q 14:11; Q 14:16–18; Q 14:26; Q 16:18; Q 17:33).
Dale Allison has suggested that Jesus speaks in Q by his own authority, like a “new Moses,” and “like Moses, rewrites part of the Torah, and experiences a new exodus” (Allison 2001: 395–428, 423). In Q 4:1–13, Jesus cites Deuteronomy texts related to the wilderness temptations of Israel, including the “forty years/days” motif, Israel/Jesus' temptations by hunger, putting God to the test, and idolatry. Matthew has played this up by locating the Sermon “on the Mount,” and having Jesus deliver a series of “antitheses” intended to correct, intensify or “fulfill” Mosaic law. Furthermore, the Sermon contains themes “classically associated with Leviticus 19” (Allison 2001: 411; Catchpole: 101–34; Tuckett 1997: 3–26, 25; 1996: 431–34). For example, Leviticus 19:18 (“you will love your neighbor as yourself”) may be echoed in Q 6:36 (“Be full of pity”). The central part of the Sermon “may be intended to offer some sort of expansion of or contrast with the holiness code” in terms of mercy, not holiness (Allison 2001: 413):
And the Lord said to Moses, “Say to all the congregation of the people of Israel, ‘You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy.” (Lev 19:1–2). Be merciful/full of pity, just as God is merciful/full of pity [Q 6:36]
Q presents Jesus, as does Matthew, as a new “law-giver.” Jesus' re-interpretation of the law is authoritative in Q, and it is this legal authority which marks the range of our reconstructions of the “historical Jesus”: he is somewhere along a spectrum that contains, at one end, the religious reformer within Judaism and, at the other, the one who replaces the ethnic limitations of Jewish law with a new universal revelation for all humanity. Here we must be careful not to support a false dichotomy between Jewish particularity and Christian universalism. Given the Jewish ethnicity of both Q and Jesus, the universalistic tendencies in the Jesus tradition are still, by definition, Jewish.
Nonetheless, this sensitivity towards anti-Judaism should not blind us to identifying the very real tensions that exist in the tradition. Q 6:27, for example, provides us with an early and authentic Jesus tradition that was undoubtedly challenging, uncomfortable, difficult, and demanding for Jesus' disciples to observe: “love your enemies”:
Love your enemies and pray for those persecuting you so that you may become sons of your Father, for he raises his sun on bad and good and rains on the just and unjust.
Here is an instance in which a Q saying can safely be said to be “sapiential” in its literary-generic form but not in its social and theological context (Douglas: 116–31; J. Piper: 53–72; Hoffmann: 61; Cahill; R. Piper).
Q 6:27 easily meets multiple criteria for authenticity: multiple attestation, embarrassment, dissimilarity, coherence, and distinctiveness (see also 1 Thess 5:15; Rom 12:17; 1 Pet 3:9). It is highly unlikely “that the early church should invent the saying and thus impose upon themselves such a troublesome requirement” (J. Piper: 56). The saying was probably used for “hortatory” purposes (Dibelius 1935: 246), i.e., to provide ethical instructions as “eine urchristliche Didache” (Jeremias: 21). Yet Q 6:27 also challenges a tradition which typically stereotyped “others” as enemies.
In the Hebrew Bible, the enemies of Israel are often regarded as the “enemies” of the God of Israel. God promised Abram that his descendants would include “kings” (Gen 17:6) and possess their enemies' cities (Gen 15: 17–21; 22:17). The festival of Passover commemorates the defeat of Israel's enemies. During the exodus, Moses defeats the Amalekites and God promises to oppose them from generation to generation (Exod 17:10–13, 14–17). Moses kills the Amorites (Num 21:34–35), defeats the Midianites, and kills all the males, taking the women and children captive (Num 31:1–54). God kills the men, women and children of Heshbon (Deut 2:33–36), destroys the followers of Baalpeor (Deut 4:3), and promises to fight for Israel if she obeys the covenant (Exod 23:22–30).
The Mosaic law contains a complex and problematic legislation of violence (Lev 20:9, 10, 13, 27, 24:16, 17, 26:14–38; Num 6:15, 13:12–16, 18:20, 19:18–19, 21:18–21. See also Boustan; Siebert; Dawkins: 71; Nelson-Pallmeyer; Penchansky: 82–86; Schwartz; Trible; Wink: 84). Israel is commanded to “utterly destroy” all those in the land of Canaan (Deut 7:1–2; Num 33: 50–56). Israel is to pick up the sword and “wipe out their names from under heaven … destroy them” (Deut 7:17–26). The people of Israel are not to “leave alive anything that breathes” (Deut 20:16). They are to drive out the Hittites, Ammonites, Canaanites, and Jebusites from the land (Exod 3:8, 17, 13:5, 23:23, 33:2, 34:11; Deut 20:17; Josh 9:1, 12:8, Judg 3:5). Israel is to be the “sword of the Lord” (Lev 18:24), and salvation is often associated with the defeat of enemies (Exod. 14:30, 15:1–3a, 4a; Ps 18:45–48a; Isa 25:9–10). God instructs Israel to “pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you” (Lev 26:7–8).
In the books of the Prophets, Israel's enemies are often characterized as appointed by God in the judgment of Israel, indicating that the authors and redactors of these books were capable of creatively adapting the changing historical fortunes of Israel into new theological narratives which both absolved God for Israel's military defeats and provided hope that God had a master plan that incorporated Israel's suffering as the Lord's “Servant”: Israel's “enemies” were sometimes God's instruments. Cyrus the Great was heralded as the Lord's “messiah/anointed” (Isa 45:1), not because he came from the line of David, but because God “appointed” him to liberate the people of Israel. As James Sanders (2009: 62–63) has noted, “The disaster of the Assyrian and Babylonian destruction of Israel and Judah had had to be faced, and the Torah and Prophets explained it as God's judgment…. They also made it clear, however, that the judgment was not only punitive but constructive,” that a righteous “remnant” would emerge from this disaster (Jer 34; Ezek 36), that suffering would lead to hope (Hosea 2:14). The “prophetic corpus was essentially an argument affirming the uses of adversity” by God.
This brief review of Israel's attitude towards “enemies” is not intended to discount passages which encourage service to enemies (Exod 23:4–5) or love of one's neighbor (Lev 19:18), even if the Mosaic commandment to love one's neighbor refers only to fellow Israelites. There are also biblical passages which proscribe hatred and vengeance (Lev 19:17–18; Prov 20:22; 24:29, 17; 25:21–22; Jon 4:2). For example, Proverbs 25:21–22 (cited by Paul in Romans 12:20) does instruct Israel to feed enemies, but it does not instruct love of enemies. Moreover, Proverbs 25:21–22's instruction—which is said to have the intended effect of “heaping coals of fire on their heads”—may refer either to “an Egyptian expiation ritual” for guilt (von Rad: 133) or a “metaphor for embarrassment” intended to humiliate enemies in the context of an honor/shame society (Whybray: 149). In either case, it is questionable whether Proverbs 25:21 should be considered “comparable, if not identical” to Q 6:27–28 (contra Schröter 2012: 56). Allison (2002: 470–71) has also drawn our attention to Jewish sources that describe God as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Exod 34:6), a God who is “good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made” (Ps 145:8–9) for he loves “all that exists” (Wis 11:22–12:2), a God who does not take “any pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezek 18:23). Such texts illustrate internal tensions within the biblical tradition and show that some Jews (and Christians) in antiquity were indeed “distressed” by biblical tales of (prophetic) violence (Allison 2002: 478). So why did Israel's enemies need to be so brutally and thoroughly wiped out in the exodus narrative? Were they enemies simply because they “occupied” their land? Exegetes have suggested that perhaps Israel's traditional enemies were exceptionally wicked and deserving of divine punishment (Deut 18:12); that the Lord was exceedingly patient and forbearing with their wickedness; that the biblical tradition belongs to another age in which the annihilation of one's enemies was the norm; or that the nature of God was “progressively revealed” down through the centuries, culminating in Jesus. These may all be viable ways of absolving God from wrongdoing in his endorsement of acts of violence in the exodus narrative.
While peace was certainly envisioned as a divine ideal in Early Judaism—the prophets Isaiah and Micah refer to a day when the nations will beat their swords into plowshares (Isa 2:4; Micah 4:3) and not lift up the sword against other nations and not study war any more—nonetheless, much of the biblical tradition is indeed marked by violence, conflict, and warfare. The Torah “sanctions warfare” (Neusner: 27–28). The Torah expects Israel to “struggle for God's purpose.” It is a “religious duty to resist evil, to struggle for good, to love God, and to fight against those who make themselves into enemies of God. The Torah knows nothing of not resisting evil.” Apart from the Jesus tradition, love of enemies is virtually unknown in Early Judaism. There are striking examples of first-century Jewish Palestinian nonviolent resistance to systemic violence (B. J. 2.174; 2.197), but these, again, did not encourage loving one's enemies.
In Q, the imperative to “love your enemies” is directed towards Jesus' disciples as representative of Israel and based on God's universal love for all. The Sermon itself is an extended exhortation towards love, compassion, and non-violence. The core of the Sermon “appears to be the love command … expanded and elaborated in various ways” (Kloppenborg 1987: 177). In Q 6:27 Jesus commands his followers to “love” their enemies and “pray” for those persecuting them. Martin Hengel calls this the “heart of the proclamation of Jesus, the conscious rejection of violence … unequivocally represented in the oldest sayings-tradition of the logia (Q) source” (Hengel 1971: 26). In Q 6:30, they are to give to all who ask; in Q 6:31, to treat others the way they want to be treated; in Q 6:30, to be full of compassion. There is no compelling reason to limit the identification of Q's “enemies” to local village conflicts as opposed to regarding them as Israel's “enemies” in the broader sense (contra Horsley 1986. See Seitz 1969; Daly 1982; Hengel 1973; Schottroff 1978; Schrage 1988; Wink 1992: 133–36). Some scholars have looked to the social location of Matthew to help elucidate the social setting of this saying. After all, Matthew's Jesus claims to be correcting an older law by “antithesis”: “You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, love your enemies” (Matt 5:43–44).
The Torah, however, does not advocate hatred of enemies (although see Ps 139: 19–22). Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some scholars have sought to locate the origins of Matthew's antithesis in Qumranic hatred of the “Sons of Darkness” (Schubert: 120; Smith: 71–73; Yadin: 241–42; Heinemann: 259; Bietenhard: 753–54). This may be “too daring” and speculative an assumption (Brownlee: 73). The Qumran community is often regarded as hateful and misanthropic in the secondary literature (Rowland: 73), but this portrayal requires significant qualifications. Qumran hatred was not a personal or social “hatred” to be acted out in public, but a rejection of evil in the world (1QS 9). They were to conceal their opposition to the wicked while accepting their temporary domination through non-violent resistance (Sutcliffe: 345–56). The external “enemies” of the community “are not to be repaid with evil but on the contrary with good” (Sutcliffe: 355). Furthermore, “there was to be no private hatred or revenge … enemies were to be repaid with good. Sin was to be hated” (Sutcliffe: 352). The author of 1QS promises that he “will not return evil to anybody, with good will I pursue man” (1QS 10.18). If it is difficult to find any evidence of indiscriminate hatred of enemies in the Qumran library, it is far more difficult to find it in Josephus, Philo, and Pliny's accounts of the Essenes, for they all claim that the Essenes were characterized by their extraordinary love for others. Josephus tells us that the Essenes were “upright managers of anger and peacemakers” (B. J. 2. 135) and swore to “keep faith with all men, especially with the powers that be, since no ruler attains his office save by the will of God” (B. J. 2. 140). Magen Broshi has even suggested that this “Essene teaching of love” influenced Jesus himself (Broshi: 274–83).
Wherever Jesus and Q derived this distinctive teaching from, Q 6:27–36 incorporates a primitive tradition that commanded love of enemies and required mercy because God was loving and merciful (Allison 1997: 67–95; 2001: 424). If Q 6:27 is reliably authentic Jesus tradition, then it would seem that this saying suggests that the historical Jesus challenged the Jewish biblical tradition of war and violence. But what about that passage in Luke 22:35–38 where Jesus tells his disciples to buy swords? Here Luke seems to be contrasting the time when the disciples were sent without need of any supplies with the present, when they need to protect themselves, perhaps as a temporal reversal of the “mission instructions” (Q 10:1–12; Mark 6:7–13; Matt 10:5–14). The passion narratives do not support this reading (Matt 26:52; Luke 22:51; John 18:11). Perhaps Luke introduced the sword motif to explain why swords were present in the Garden of Gethsemane. Two swords, after all, were not “enough” to resist arrest or mount a rebellion against Rome. Moreover, Q 12:51/Matt 10:34 uses the “sword” as a symbol of Jesus' role in spurring familial divison, not to endorse violence.
The Sermon introduces a vision of God as loving towards all, undermining traditions in which God is violent and vengeful, especially towards his chosen “enemies,” yet echoing prophetic traditions where God's universality is expressed in his divine concern for the traditional “enemies” of Israel (e.g. Amos 9:7). In any case, this is not counter-cultural Cynic philosophy, the “worldly” wisdom of traditional sapiential literature, or an “interim ethic” (contra Schweitzer). This is the assertion of an eschatological reversal of the conditions of everyday life, a highly idealized description of God's will for humanity. The wisdom teachings of Jesus in Q thus constitute, in part, a return to an Edenic state of nonviolence, harmony, and providence (Joseph 2011a: 392–410), echoing the eschatological themes of Urzeit and Endzeit (Allison 2005: 149–97; 2002: 459–78) through a series of Edenic “imperatives.”
The Jesus of Q sets out a “Way” of transformation which has as its goal becoming “like” the Teacher, i.e., like Jesus, the “Son of God.” Jesus has the power and authority to revise or intensify the Mosaic law on divorce, proclaim the “good news” of God's providence, and challenge the Davidic tradition of violence and warfare, all while affirming Isaiah's messianic vision of universal peace and nonviolence (Isa 11). Jesus calls disciples to become “like” him, to imitate God, love enemies, and become “sons” of the Father. The hermeneutic here is sonship. Loving one's enemies is a mark of discipleship and sonship. This is made explicit in Q 6:27, 35c—d, since Q 6:27 is linked to Q 6:35c—d: “so that you may become sons of your Father.” This is the key to discipleship in Q: the true follower of Jesus practices love of enemies in order to become a “son of God.” The “saying on sonship was connected to the love command already in Q and it probably did not ever exist independently since it demands that the deed be mentioned which results in sonship” (J Piper: 61 —62). Sonship depends on “acting like God,” and anyone who wants to be “a son of God must do the same.”
The Christology of Q, therefore, is not easily described as a “low Christology.” The idea that Jesus' identification as “Son of God” (and simultaneous call for his disciples to aspire to “sonship”) is simply an honorific title is inconsistent with how Jesus is otherwise characterized in Q: he is the one kings and prophets have longed to see. He is the “Son of Man,” the end-time judge, the Child of Wisdom, the “Son of God.”
This portrayal of Jesus as the “Son of God” in Q is compatible with an Adamic Christology (Joseph 2011a). Adamic Christology seems to have been “widely current” in the 40s and 50s
Q reflects the theological dissonance between Jesus' command to “love your enemies” and Q's expectation of an imminent judgment, i.e., the extermination of Israel's (internal) “enemies.” Why? Because the concurrent identification of Jesus as the “son of man” in Q—i.e., a figure of apocalyptic judgment—reinscribed the biblical tradition of Deuteronomistic history. Jesus' ethic of nonviolence was undermined by identifying him with the role of a violent, end-time judge. Nonetheless, the dissonance between love of enemies and the coming judgment of the son of man must still be located within a first century Jewish context, not projected onto a Jewish/Christian binary, anachronistically projecting dichotomies of an Old Testament God of fear opposed to a New Testament God of love. Q does not construct a Marcionite opposition between the God of Jesus and the God of Judaism; rather, it conflates Jesus' original teachings with secondary elements adopted from the Enochic Book of Parables (Nickelsburg & VanderKam).
Jesus' opposition to violence and hatred of enemies is not a “Christian” revelation to be contrasted with “Jewish legalism,” but a radical vision within first-century Palestinian Judaism (Wright 1996). It may have been “the absence of an avenging God before, during, or after John the Baptist's own execution that convinced Jesus of a different type of God” (Crossan: 287), but Jesus' vision should not be used to suggest that “the God of Judaism was a God of violent force and the God of Christianity was a God of nonviolent love. Both religions have taken violence and nonviolence from their God into their traditions and onto their streets” (Crossan: 287). The New Testament clearly portrays God as able to take vengeance on his enemies (Rom 2:8; 12:19; Rev 20: 9, 15; Matt 13:30); so there is no consistent portrait of a God of love within the New Testament.
Here, again, Q provides an explanation for our theological dilemma, for Q contains a number of passages that reflect the social rejection of the early Jesus movement within Judaism. Q employs stereotypes to criticize its opponents and combats stereotypes directed at its leaders, John and Jesus: the Pharisees are “empty tombs” and the “wicked” Jews of “this generation” who fail to respond to the call of Jesus. Burton Mack has argued that “the history of the Q community can be traced by noting the shifts in its discourse documented in its collection of the sayings of Jesus” (Mack: 203). The sharp difference in tone between the sapiential orientation and the theme of judgment in Q may reflect changes in the movement's social orientation and reception (Mack: 131). Mack recognized that changes in social circumstances must have been behind this shift and argued that the Q people experienced “a period of frustration with failed expectations,” which occasioned the language and rhetoric of judgment directed at those who opposed the group or created obstacles for them (Mack: 45). Mack rightly posits “rejection” as a major factor leading to this sudden shift in tone. The people of “this generation” were like children that refused to play in the marketplace, i.e., they rejected the message of John and Jesus (and by extension, the Q group). Mack notes that “the language of divisive conflict” in Q is closely related to “the theme of inclusion versus exclusion, a theme that presupposes the notion of boundaries and borders” (Mack: 136). Q challenges traditional Jewish norms and assumptions of familial piety and ethnic identity. Q draws symbolic boundaries between its in-group and those who have rejected its message. It emphasizes faithfulness to Jesus and draws “social closure” by claiming that the “last will be first and the first last.” Some will “enter” the kingdom; others will be “excluded.” The author(s) of Q are sharply differentiated from Pharisees, the Temple establishment, scribes, and “this generation.” This differentiation seems to be a result of social conflict. In short, the Q worldview was dualistic and polarized: there was the Q community and then there was everybody else, or “this generation.” Nonetheless, Q's conflict with “this generation” is still a Jewish conflict within Judaism. The term “this generation” simply refers to “the non-responsive part of the Jewish people” (Tuckett 1996: 201). The scribes, Pharisees, and Temple elite are being criticized, not the Jewish people or Israel as a whole (Horsley with Draper: 299). At some point, loyalty to the Jesus movement seems to have been in tension with some traditional norms of Jewish cultural identity and community belonging. We find hints of this in Q 3:8, where John warns the crowds that Jewish ethnic identity in and of itself was not deemed sufficient to avoid the coming judgment. Consequently, the author(s) of Q seem to have distanced themselves from those norms, to differentiate themselves from Pharisaic customs, normative family values and ethnic identity, and this differentiation led to social conflict and “hearings before synagogues.”
The Q group experienced social conflict in its history, and this conflict became a major factor leading to the construction of Q's distinctive identity. Yet the social dynamics responsible for producing the apocalyptic rhetoric of violence in Q and the distinctive social identity of the Q community were mutual: the author(s) of Q criticized and condemned their fellow Jews who had themselves rejected and opposed the message and teachings of John and Jesus. Q represents a particularly poignant moment of mutual hostility in the long history of the Judeo-Christian heritage. After Q was incorporated into the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Q's apocalyptic rhetoric, which was originally and solely directed at other Jews, became an effective tool in the polemical repertoire of early Christian evangelists and apologists, and what was once an internal Jewish conflict within first-century Judaism was translated into a conflict between Jews and Christians. The Jew became the other, and Q's condemnation of “this generation” was redirected towards the Jewish people as a whole. Christianity came to be perceived as superseding Judaism, and Judaism and Christianity came to be seen as oppositional paradigms.
In Q 6:27, however, we have an authentic Jewish Palestinian tradition transmitted before these fateful “partings” occurred. Q's instruction to “love your enemies” provides us with reliable evidence for the teachings of the “historical Jesus” and the eschatological, Edenic, and Adamic wisdom of the early Jesus tradition.