Tracking Down What Jesus Said
This is a great time to get back to Jesus. I mean that particularly in the sense of getting back closer to the historical Jesus and learning about who he was in the first century of this era.
Today there are more scholars studying the historical Jesus, more popular articles appearing on Jesus and more television specials being aired on Jesus than ever before. And one of the most fruitful ways of studying Jesus is getting back to what Jesus said.
What did Jesus say? This question is not as straightforward as it might sound, because it is not just a matter of picking up the New Testament gospels and reading whatever is attributed to Jesus there.
The gospels are powerful portraits of Jesus, meant to edify and persuade and move one to Christian faith rather than simply to inform or to pass along historical information. The real question remains: Can we get behind the gospel accounts to find out what Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish teacher, might have said in the 1st century?
The good news is that we have excellent tools and sources at our disposal today to allow us to get closer to what Jesus said. I suggest three approaches that may shed new light on the historical Jesus and what he had to say.
The first approach is the study of a text we call “Q” (from the German Quelle for “source”). It is widely assumed by scholars today that behind the New Testament gospel accounts is a text that was used by Matthew and Luke in the composition of their gospels, and that this text was a gospel of sayings of Jesus. We further assume that this text was written around the middle of the 1st century, only 20 years or so after the crucifixion of Jesus. This text, when carefully reconstructed from the New Testament gospels, may give us a good sense of what Jesus said and taught.
The second approach is the study of a newly discovered text, found in its entirety in 1945 and now fully available for our examination, titled the Gospel of Thomas. Like Q, the Gospel of Thomas is a gospel of sayings of Jesus, but they tend to be more mystical and enigmatic. Because of the very early style of many of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas, a good case can be made that it also was composed in the 1st century.
The third approach is more innovative. I propose that Islamic sources, which revere Jesus as a prophet of Islam and preserve numerous sayings of Jesus, may also be very helpful as we try to recover the historical Jesus. (Incidentally, there are also a few sayings of Jesus preserved in Jewish sources.)
Islamic author Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali, for example, includes dozens of sayings of Jesus, some of which resemble sayings from Q, Thomas and the New Testament gospels, others of which are quite different. Some of these Islamic sayings may derive, like sayings in Q and Thomas, from early Middle Eastern traditions.
What does Jesus say in these sources? Here is a sampling of his teachings from these sources:
* “Whoever knows and does and teaches will be called great in heaven’s kingdom.” (Islamic source)
* One day Jesus was walking with his followers, and they passed by the carcass of a dog. The followers said, “How this dog stinks!” But Jesus said, “How white are its teeth!” (Islamic source)
* “This world is a bridge. Pass over it, but don’t build your dwelling there.” (Islamic source)
* “Seek and do not stop seeking until you find. When you find, you will be troubled. When you are troubled, you will marvel and rule over all.” (Thomas)
* “I am the light over all things. I am all. From me all has come forth, and to me all has reached. Split a piece of wood. I am there. Lift up the stone and you will find me there.” (Thomas)
* “Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, so that you may become children of your Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” (Q)
* “When someone slaps you on the cheek, offer the other as well.” (Q)
* “The way you want people to treat you is how you should treat them.” (Q)
These sayings raise interesting questions about many modern-day beliefs. Sayings in Thomas, for example, call into question the popular enthusiasm about the millennium.
One passage relates that followers said to Jesus, “When will the kingdom come?” Jesus said, “It will not come because you are watching for it. No one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘Look, there it is.’ The Father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth and people do not see it.”
Getting back to what Jesus said is an exciting venture. It will inform, and it may challenge and inspire, just as the Sermon on the Mount, now recognized as coming from Q, inspired Tolstoy, Schweitzer, Bonhoeffer and Gandhi. The study of sayings of Jesus opens up new possibilities for interreligious dialogue among Jewish, Christian and Muslim people, and it also may have an impact upon Christian faith. Hearing what Jesus said, and listening anew, may transform us in surprising ways.
(These issues will be discussed at a three-day international conference on “Images of Jesus” at Chapman University. The conference, which will begin at 9 a.m. Monday in Argyros Forum 209, is free and open to the public. Information: (714) 997-6636.)
Professor Marvin Meyer is chairman of the department of religious studies at Chapman University. He is the author of several books, among them “The Gospel of Thomas” and “The Unknown Sayings of Jesus.”
On Faith is a forum for Orange County clergy and others to offer their views on religious topics of general interest. Submissions, which will be published at the discretion of The Times and are subject to editing, should be delivered to Orange County religion page editor Jack Robinson.
