Whoever Hears You Hears Me: Prophets, Performance, and Tradition in Q - Softcover

Horsley, Richard A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1563382725 ISBN 13: 9781563382727

Publisher: Trinity Press International, 1999

Synopsis

Here is a challenge to New Testament scholars to engage in a fresh analysis of Q. The authors argue that recent American study of Q has been dominated by those trained in form-criticism and oriented to Hellenistic rather than Judean culture, resulting in the extreme atomization of the Q sayings and reconstructions of Jesus and his first followers as Cynics, and in the de-politicization and de-judaization of the Q materials and Jesus.

Also determinative of the current situation has been the assumption in New Testament studies of textuality, of an ethos of written communication and of textual models for analysis. However, as is recently becoming clear from studies of oral and written communication, the communication situation of Jesus and his first followers was almost certainly oral. Horsley and Draper therefore contend that it is time the interpretation of Q took seriously the oral communication environment in which this material developed and continued before Matthew and Luke incorporated it into their Gospels.

This book, then, applies approaches to oral-derived literature from oral theorists, socio-linguistics, ethnopoetics, and the ethnography of speaking to the Q materials. The result is a developing theory of oral performance that generates meaning as symbols articulated in the appropriate performance situation resonate with the cultural tradition in which the hearers are grounded.

Richard A. Horsley is Professor of Classics and Religion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Jonathan A. Draper teaches at the University of Natal, South Africa.

About this title

Review:

"A tour de force that recasts the basic terms dominating the current discourse on Q. Methodologically, Horsley and Draper do not focus on isolated sayings but on a sequence of discourses that are help together by a common rationale. Hermeneutically, they describe Q as an oral-derived text that functioned in repeated recitation. Historically, the authors show how Q was embedded not in itinerant radicalism, but in the Mosaic covenantal tradition that aimed at renewing the social order. The Jesus of Q if hereby restored to his rightful place in Jewish culture. A vitally important book, one that should reshape our thinking and perception of Q." Werner H. Kelber, Rice University--Sanford Lakoff

"This provocative book, written from within the current discussion but challenging several of its major theses, is a welcome contribution that will move the discussion forward. It argues that Q (and Jesus) are to be understood in their Jewish matrix rather than in the context of Gentile Cynic popular philosophy, that Q and Jesus are more influenced by the prophetic tradition than the wisdom tradition, and that the books of the Hebrew prophets are more important than the Gospel of Thomas for understanding Q and Jesus. Though Q was a written document, the book contends that it derives from the oral communications situation of the earliest followers of Jesus, and that the recent stratification of Q as a basis for reconstructing the character of Jesus and his message is a house of cards." M. Eugene Boring, Texas Christian University--Sanford Lakoff

"A sweeping reassessment of scholarship on Q An important and controversial book that no NT researcher can ignore." Fred W.--Sanford Lakoff "Religious Studies Review "

About the Author:

Richard A. Horlsey is Professor of Classics and Religion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is author of Galilee: History, Politics, People; Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee: The Social Context of Jesus and the Rabbis; and editor of Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society, all published by Trinity Press. Jonathan A. Draper is Professor of New Testament in the School of Theology at the University of Natal.

About this edition

• Publisher: Trinity Press International
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1563382725
• ISBN 13: 9781563382727
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336