different hermeneutical contexts.
With occasional exceptions (e.g., The Lord’s Prayer, Against Divorce), Crossan deals only with gospel material. However, his arguments are appropriate to a wider range of material. Compare the following:
“Are grapes gathered from thorn-bushes, or figs from thistles?” (Matt 7:16b)
“Figs are not gathered from thorns-bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.” (Luke 6:44b)
“Can a fig tree . . . yield olives, or a grapevine figs?” (Ja 3:12a)
With regard to form, Matthew and James have rhetorical questions; Luke states a gnomic truth. With regard to content: Luke and James begin with figs, Matthew with grapes. Matthew and Luke contrast fruits with prickly plants that do not bear edible fruit; James contrasts fruits with plants bearing different edible fruit.
Advances in rhetorical criticism have since confirmed many of Crossan’s observations, but gone beyond them as well. By focusing on the way ancient rhetoricians worked with the chreia, rhetorical critics have demonstrated how sayings of Jesus could be and were transformed for rhetorical effect (at any stage of transmission) according to the methods of chreia elaboration as outlined in the ancient progymnasmata (exercises preliminary to training in rhetoric).3
The relevant point for this study is that individual sayings of Jesus underwent significant transformations in form and meaning depending on how they were used—in much the same way ten Christian preachers can apply the same given lectionary passage, on the same Sunday, in ten different ways, depending upon their particular congregations’ social and historical contexts and perceived needs. Compare again the previous New Testament examples, but with a little context added:
“You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn-bushes . . . ?”
“For each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorn-bushes . . .”
“Can a fig tree, my brothers, yield olives . . . ? Neither can salt water yield fresh.”
The broader Matthean context has Jesus warning the crowd to beware of false prophets, who are to be identified in the metaphor as “thorn-bushes” and “thistles” that do not bear (good) fruit. Luke’s context has Jesus admonishing listeners in the crowd to examine the “fruits” of their own lives and thereby consider their quality of character. The implied readers of James, who are viewed as religious family members, are exhorted to watch their tongues, because good and evil should not proceed from the same source. The contrast of the metaphor is less sharp here and more an issue of like producing like fruit. In each of the examples, however, what is essentially the same saying of Jesus—in this case an aphoristic teaching that applies a specific metaphor to express the necessary congruence between moral nature and resulting activity—is used in a different literary context, exists in a different form, and consequently has a different hermeneutic.
In subsequent chapters, I will track the development of the Treasure in Heaven saying of Jesus, a saying that is remarkable for its utility and breadth of interpretive applications in New Testament and other early Jesus movement writings. Elements of the Treasure in Heaven saying are found not only in the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but also in extra-canonical Q and the Gospel of Thomas. It was used in the Pauline epistolary tradition (Colossians) as well as in the Letter of James. Not only are no two of these eight versions of the saying exactly alike, but the saying is broadly applied under two vastly different topoi, or motifs, of the Jewish Wisdom tradition: the proper disposition of wealth and the search for divine wisdom or knowledge. These different topoi are not particular either to gospels or to epistles; each topos is found in both genres. The saying functions as exhortation or prohibition—sometimes both—as a rationale for moral behavior, and as a prophetic warning against unethical behavior. In short, it is one of the most widely used and broadly interpreted sayings of Jesus and is therefore a prime candidate for studying the development of sayings traditions in the first century of the common or Christian era.
Thesis and Approach
My primary thesis in this study is that the Q and Thomas versions of the Treasure in Heaven saying (Q 12:33; GTh 76:3) are particularly relevant to discussion concerning the development of sayings traditions. It is my contention that, on the one hand, the Thomasine Treasure in Heaven saying was well known in the first century and played a pivotal role in the early transmission of the saying, influencing or being modified in three canonical versions (Luke 12:33; John 6:27; Col 3:1–2). And on the other hand, the use of the saying in James (5:2-3) reflects knowledge of Q, which was also an early and foundational version of the saying for the gospel tradition (cf. Matt 6:19; Luke 12:33). Ironically, both extra-canonical gospel versions of the Treasure saying may have found their earliest canonical expressions in the epistles.
One ramification of this thesis, if it holds up under close scrutiny, is important for our reconstruction of the development of early Christian texts and communities because there is the implication that some sayings traditions (as represented in the Gospel of Thomas, for example), eventually excluded for their perceived heretical theology or for their use by groups excluded from the mainstream, were recognized as authoritative in the first century. However, the point should not be overstated. This study focuses on one saying of Jesus, not an entire collection, such as we find in the Sayings Gospel Q, the Gospel of Thomas, or in the many non-Q collections of parables and aphoristic sayings found in, for example, Matthew 13, Mark 4, and Luke. I stress this caveat later in the chapter by comparing pairs of studies by James M. Robinson and Risto Uro that lead to apparently contradictory results—results that are only contradictory, however, if one begins with the fallacious assumption that the Gospel of Thomas as we know it represents a relatively stable, unchanging tradition throughout the history of its oral and written transmission.
The International Q Project was formed in 1983 with two goals in mind. The first goal was to provide, for the first time, a relatively objective, non-idiosyncratic reconstruction of the text of Q—as far as this is possible—by an international team of scholars. The other was to provide a complete history of 200 years of research on Q reconstruction. The first goal was achieved in two stages: the publication of IQP reconstructions in the Journal of Biblical Literature4 and the subsequent publication of The Critical Edition of Q.5 The second goal is coming to fruition in the gradual publication of Documenta Q databases. Chapter 2 is largely a product of my work on the database for Q 12:33–34.6 The advantage of chapter 2 is that it provides a running commentary on my reconstruction of Q 12:33-34—supported by judicious use of notes—as well as a brief review of Matthew’s and Luke’s theological purposes in redacting Q a brief discussion of Mark’s adaptation of the Treasure saying (Mark 10:21). The reader can always refer to the Documenta Q volume for a complete survey of research on any given variation unit. Reference to the Gospel of Thomas and other non-synoptic versions of the saying is minimal and mostly relegated to the footnotes—the evaluations are largely based on issues specific to Matthew and Luke and their redactional tendencies.
Chapter 3 originated as an internal International Q Project paper looking at the relationship between Matthew, Luke, Thomas, and Q. When I discovered the importance of John 6:27 for understanding the transmission history of the saying, I revised and expanded the paper, presenting it to the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. It was subsequently published in a volume of collected essays commemorating the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library.7 Chapter 3 represents a significant revision of the published essay.
I discovered an epistolary version
