Coincidentally, as my friend Kevin Scull was presenting a paper on Ignatius (“Self-Effacement in the Letters of Ignatius and Paul”) at NAPS, the class he was teaching (“Earliest Christian Documents in Historical Context”) was scheduled to address Ignatius’ writings (the very same day, in fact!). Clearly, Kevin could not be in both Chicago and Los Angeles at the same time, even if it was the same topic that demanded his attention. I was honored that he requested I step in for him to lead his seminar of about a dozen students on the topic of Ignatius. I had a great time.

It was a three hour seminar that began with a writing exercise (the class fulfills a “Writing II Requirement” or a “W” course at UCLA) on word precision and verb tense–not as dry as it sounds! The students had to have their rough draft of their final paper completed by that class session, so, they had examples to share with their peers.

Then we switched to Ignatius, the students having read his letter to the Ephesians and to the Romans. They had done some background reading from Ehrman and a scholarly article dealing with why Ignatius was arrested (external persecution or internal strife?). We spent some productive time discussing the major themes that Ignatius cares about: martyrdom, bishops, unity, and false teachings. We tried to connect the dots between his concerns regarding bishops, unity, and false teachings (false teachings bring dissension, the bishop dictates the boundaries of unity, etc.).

We tried to discern what those false teachings might have been. They identified “flesh” as an important topic in Ephesians, but weren’t sure what to make of it. One student thought that this could have been something “christological,” but when I explained docetism to them, they didn’t seem convinced that the false teachings were solely docetism. They thought that Ignatius was emphasizing spirit just as much as flesh in his comments, so they thought it could go either way.

When I told them about the old view that there was a singular “docetic Judaizing” group that Ignatius was fighting against in all congregations, just about every student thought this was ridiculous–as their faces expressed. This was a group very suspicious of the work of “scholars.” They almost reminded me of the way the sixteenth century Anabaptists talked about “the wicked scribes.” But their distaste was less for religious reasons as it was for logical ones. To paraphrase one student, “It seems like these scholars just decide some things, which have very little evidence, sound like good ideas and everybody just goes along with it and bases more work on it.” Teaching the issues of historical scholarship, particularly in the ancient world, to undergrads often reminds one of the speculative house of cards we academics live in.

For the rest of the class session, we talked about how Ignatius compares and contrasts with Paul (including the theme of Kevin’s own presentation on self-effacement) and the nature of persecution of Christians in the early second century (they had also read the Pliny and Trajan exchange, and a comment from Tertullian on how Christians get blamed for everything).

I love my own classroom, but it was nice to take a step back from seventeenth-century absolute monarchy and teach Christian origins again. And for a great group of students, too. Every student contributed something valuable to the discussion. I could tell that Kevin had been helping these students through some very challenging terrain in a masterful way. In the end, though, it does make me somewhat sad that I will not get to teach next year–even if it means I’ll be more productive in my research. I’ve already been looking for ways to keep a foot in the pedagogical waters next year.

As he announced on his blog yesterday, Kevin gave a little lecture on Q today in Bartchy’s undergrad class on the historical Jesus: “I suppose I should have posted this last week for the many out of towners who will surely want to fly in for this lecture.” So, it is for posterity’s sake that I would like to relay some of the topics he covered for the undergrads.

Actually, so that Kevin  gets mauled neither by the Q fanatics nor by members of the Q Liberation Front, I would like to emphasize that this was merely a wee taste of Q-studies goodness for the undergrads. I thought his lecture was an excellent (and energetic) introduction to what would otherwise be a boring topic for non-specialists.

First off, what is Q? Q is argued to be the second source used by Matthew and Luke in addition to Mark. It is a theoretical source, but based upon intriguing similarities between Matthew and Luke. Kevin introduced the discussion on Q by suggesting three categories of text parallels:

1. High Agreement: Here we have texts (shared by Matthew and Luke, but not Mark) that have a high degree of shared vocabulary and exact word order parallels.  Here he cited Luke 11:9-13 // Matthew 7:7-11.
2. Medium Agreement: In passages with less precise agreement between Matthew and Luke (minor vocabulary and word order differences), we may have evidence of Q, but it has been redacted (fancy word for edited) to meet the literary needs of the author (e.g., make the story more sophisticated, highlight overall themes from that Gospel, etc.).  His example was Luke 16:16 // Matthew 11:12-13.
3. Low Agreement: This is where things get sticky. This category would include shared stories with quite dissimilar wording. Here he cited Dunn’s work in Jesus Remembered, suggesting that these sorts of passages which are currently attributed to Q might be better attributed to oral tradition. So, a very high level of redaction is possible, but oral tradition could be a better option. Kevin shared two passages from Dunn: Luke 17:3-4 // Matthew 18:15, 21-22 and Luke 14:15-24 // Matthew 22:1-14.

Kevin mentions on his post, “As a teaser, in my lecture I will present the basics of Q and then discuss the possibility that Q as currently agreed upon may be both too short and too long.  How is that for an unusual statement.” In the lecture, Kevin pointed out the logic that if some of the passages currently attributed to Q may be better understood as oral tradition, then Q is too long. That is, putatively complete  “Q” documents constructed by teams of Q scholars (not that they all agree, mind you) may include too many sayings.

On the other hand, there may have been sayings in Q that did not make it into either Matthew or Luke. Luke only uses 55-60% of Mark, so even if he uses 80% of Q, then we’re still missing a big chunk. Therefore, Q is too short. That is, these scholarly reconstructions of Q are unable to include everything that Q originally contained.

It seemed like many of the undergrads were actually engaged in this mundane topic, which is a credit to Kevin’s excellent presentation style. My favorite question afterwards was a student who asked something to this effect: “So, is this process ongoing… like, if they found another Gospel, would they adjust what Q looks like?” It seemed he meant another first-century Gospel. My eyes shot wide open. “If they found another Gospel”? As Bartchy has said about other scholarly discoveries, this is the sort of thing that gives scholars orgasms. If we found another first-century Gospel, half the scholarly world would probably drop dead from excitement. Kevin simply noted for the student that if we found another Gospel, that document would not only have an effect on studies of Q, but would be worked on from every conceivable scholarly angle.

Great job, Kevin! Thanks for the excellent lecture.