Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and

Theology
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Temptation and Authority: Sapiential Narratives in Q

Hugh M. Humphrey
Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology 1991; 21; 43
DOI: 10.1177/014610799102100202

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 TEMPTATION AND AUTHORITY:
SAPIENTIAL NARRATIVES IN Q

HUGH M. HUMPHREY

Abstract
In 1987 John Kloppenborg suggested that the account of the Temptations of Jesus was added last to the earlier strata
of "Q" materials in order to ascribe to them the legitimacy stemming from a "tested" wisdom teacher. The arguments
offered to support that view, however, are not entirely persuasive. It is argued here instead that the Temptations of Jesus
found in Q/Luke 4:1-13, par. Matt 4:1-11 should be viewed as the opening narrative of the earliest, sapiential stratum
of Q. Criticism is also offered of Kloppenborg’s arguments concerning the Centurion’s Son episode in Q/Luke 7:1-10,
par. Matt 8:5-13; this, too, should rather be viewed as a narrative part of that earliest Q material. The parallel supporting
the interpretation of the Temptation account and the alternation of paradigmatic narrative scenes with sapiential sayings
collections is the Wisdom of Solomon, indicating the continued influence of the wisdom tradition upon early Christianity
and its literary forms.

n his 1987 study, The Formation of Q, John Kloppen-
borg noted that some of the materials in this collection
of sayings attributed to Jesus are &dquo;organized about motifs
of the coming judgment, the urgency of repentance, the
impenitence of ’this generation’ and the ramifications of
Gentile faith&dquo; (101). These materials include John’s
preaching of the Coming One in Q3:7-9, 16-17 [the Q
texts are cited according to their chapter and verse
indications in the Gospel of Luke]; John, Jesus, and &dquo;this
generation&dquo; in Q 7:1-10, 18-28, 18-35; the Controversies
with Israel section in Q 11:14-52; the Preparedness for the
End material in Q 12:39-59; and the Eschatological Dis-
course in Q 17:23-37.
It wasalso Kloppenborg’s contention that these clus-
ters which emphasize judgment and the call to repen-
tance represent a later stage in the development of Q.
Attention to the ways in which these materials are joined
to the other clusters of sayings in Q show that they have
been interpolated into the clusters of sayings which lack
these characteristic motifs and are organized according
to different principles.
I will disagree principally with Kloppenborg’s judg-
ment that the Temptation Narrative belongs to the last
stage of the redaction of Q, marking the movement from
a concern preeminently with sayings material toward a
concern for narrative material (262), and will suggest
that the movement towards narrative so much a
phenomenon of Q as of the wisdom movement’s own
change of direction, occurring even before the explicitly
It is useful at this point to summarize the results of
Kloppenborg’s analysis of the first part of the Q materials.
The illustration below on p. 44 shows the order of Q and
the formative strata of Q.
The sequential numbering and the pericope names
follow Kloppenborg’s own arrangement (74-76) which,
of course, continues to the end of the Q material. The
items inside the single-line boxes are the &dquo;announcement
of judgment&dquo; materials in Q. For Kloppenborg these
&dquo;announcement of judgment&dquo; materials were inter-
polated into the already existing &dquo;sapiential speeches&dquo;;
he asserts that a compositional analysis of Q6:23c and
Q10:12, 13-15, materials which conform to the motifs
of the &dquo;announcement of judgment&dquo; stratum, shows that
they must be considered to have been added to the sur-
rounding material, rather than the surrounding material
having been added to them. Thus, Q6:23c and Q 10:12,
13-15 have been placed in italics, to indicate that they
intrude upon the originally coherent sapiential speeches
in which they are found. Finally, the broken-line box
around #3 indicates Kloppenborg’s judgment that this
&dquo;Temptation Story&dquo; is the last of the pieces to be joined
together into the collection of sayings we call Q. Klop-
penborg’s presentation has been altered in one respect,
however, because #20, the &dquo;Centurion’s Son&dquo; episode, has
been separated from what follows it; for Kloppenborg,
this passage opens the second &dquo;announcement of judg-
ment&dquo; collection, but we shall have to examine his
reasons for that placement.

apocalyptic materials were added. Kloppenborg misreads

the function of the Temptation narrative, which together
with the Centurion’s Son episode (Q 7:1-10) create para-
digmatic scenes of Jesus as God’s righteous one, whose
word is to be heard because it is an expression of God’s
will for men.
Hugh M. Humphrey, Ph.D. (Fordham), author of A Bibliography
for the Gospel of Mark 1954-1980 (New York/Toronto: Edwin
Mellen Press, 1981), and an earlier article in BTB (vol. 19), is
Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University,
Fairfield, CT 06430.

43

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44 Biblical Theology Bulletin

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According to Kloppenborg, each of these strata has its
own distinctive context. Because the characteristic
motifs of the sapiential speeches include a high value
on poverty, the renunciation of violence, an attitude of
forgiveness, &dquo;discipleship ... conceived in the most
radical social and personal terms,&dquo; and a pejorative
reference to things &dquo;Gentile,&dquo; these wisdom materials are
seen to derive &dquo;from a Greek-speaking Jewish Christian
community which had not yet engaged fully in a
Gentile mission&dquo; (241). Here we find &dquo;the radical wisdom
of the kingdom of God&dquo; (242) coming to expression.
By contrast, the &dquo;announcement of judgment&dquo; mate-
rials reflect the failure of the mission to Israel. The Q
woes in their final form and the five speeches in this
stratum are generally aimed at a much more broadly con-
ceived group: &dquo;it includes all of Israel or’this generation’
(7:1-10,31-35; 11:29-32, 49-51)&dquo; (167). A Deuteronomistic
kind of theology which views Israel as under the threat
of judgment is in view at several points (167). This
stratum of materials serves a dual purpose, therefore: it
both strengthens the community itself and it interprets
for them &dquo;the experience of persecution, rejection and
even the failure of their preaching of the kingdom&dquo; (168).
Despite these comments about the contexts of the two
strata at the time of their composition, Kloppenborg is
careful to assert that he is tracing a literary history and
not a history of the tradition for the various materials
within each stratum (244-245). Yet it is precisely this
literary history which is of interest to us here, because
it allows us a lens through which to view developments
within an early Christian community. There is nothing,
of course, which absolutely precludes each of these
written compositions from having their place of origin
in different communities, rather than in one single,
growing and developing community. Still the work of
R. A. Piper in tracing the aphoristic materials in Q does
find them in both of Kloppenborg’s strata and finds them
used in fundamentally the same manner, an observation
which does suggest continuity rather than discontinuity
between the two stages of Ql (sapiential) and Q2
(announcement of judgment) materials.
Perhaps it should at least be mentioned that the texts
which were the focus of an earlier discussion on the rela-
tionship of Jesus to the figure of personified Wisdom in
the Jewish literary tradition, sometimes taking the form
of a &dquo;Sophia-ology&dquo; (U. Wilckens; M. J. Suggs) or the form
of a &dquo;Wisdom Christology&dquo; (F. Christ), are treated differ-
ently by Kloppenborg. On the one hand there is the
Sophia saying in 7:35 and the Sophia oracle in 11:49-51,
both of which Kloppenborg places within the secondary
&dquo;announcement of judgment&dquo; materials. On the other
hand, in the earlier stratum, apparently paradoxically,
is placed the text in Q 10:21-22; Kloppenborg acknowl-
edges that this has a Christology which surpasses that
of Q7:31-35 and Qll:49-51 ~201), one which &dquo;articulates
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45
the community’s self-understanding as the privileged
recipients of the revelation of the kingdom&dquo; (202). This
is,.however, placed within the sapiential stratum because
it is seen as consistent with Jesus’ status as the unique
envoy of Wisdom expressed in Q 11:29-32, 33-36 and
especially Q 12:8. That earlier discussion of what these
texts say about Jesus may need to be reopened, because
it is not just a matter of their being found in each of the
two strata. As Piper has pointed out, there would seem
to be a significant difference between the aphoristic
sayings material in Q which derived its strength and
persuasiveness from its appeal to human experience and
the &dquo;Sophia&dquo;/Wisdom texts where there is an insistence
upon the community’s enjoying a unique revelation. Yet
after reviewing these texts and the scholarly discussion
of them (Piper: 162-184), he is able to c6nclude that
&dquo;despite functional distinctions in the use ofuaphoristic
sayings and of ’Sophia’ sayings in the double tradition,
the epistemological gulf between the two njay not be so
_ wide as to require that these sapiential traditions derive
from widely separated circles or times&dquo; (184). That
conclusion would seem to locate Q 10: 21-22 appro-
priately enough within Kloppenborg’s sapiential stratum,
but it does not fully explain the employment of Sophia/
Wisdom texts in a judgment setting. Still, the use of the
Sophia/Wisdom texts also in the later apocalyptic
stratum does suggest some measure of continuity
between Q 1 and Q2, rather than discontinuity.
Temptation Narrative
.. -It
.
And now, finally, the matter of the Temptation Nar-
rative. Kloppenborg treats this as a distinct piece within
’
.
Q for the following reasons:
(1) It is a true narrative. The other narratives in
Q7:1-10 and Q11:14 show only &dquo;marginal interest&dquo; in the
narrative component and are really ~apophthegms. In
Q4:1-13, by contrast, speech is used &dquo;as the servant of
narrative.&dquo;
(2) Its form as a three-part deba te and’ its mythic motif
are unparalleled in Q.
(3) Explicit biblical quotations are rare in.Q; only here
and in 7:27 are they introduced by &dquo;it is written.&dquo;
(4) &dquo;The title [the son of God] is not found elsewhere
’
in Q&dquo; (247).
(5) The Temptation Narrative implies that Jesus
should be a worker of miracles, but elsewhere in Q
miracles are events which portend the coming of the
Kingdom.
(6) Finally, the &dquo;direct confrontation between Jesus
and the devil [not Beelzebul or Satan as elsewhere in Q]
is unique; elsewhere Jesus’ opposition comes from ’this
generation&dquo;’ (248).
46
In Kloppenborg’s view, these reasons establish the
Temptation Narrative as a separate piece, an addition
to the other strata discernible in Q. It could have been
added for any one of the variety of reasons Kloppenborg
reviews: as a polemic against Israel; for its paradigmatic
value, either of Jesus’ obedience or of Jesus as the model
of voluntary powerlessness and absolute dependence
upon God; or for Christological apologetics, to counter
enthusiastic and thaumaturgic tendencies within the
community; or as a rejection of Zealot Messianism. But
Kloppenborg has found weakness in most of these sug-
gestions and when forced to suggest an answer to his own
question, &dquo;Why was the temptation account added to Q?&dquo;
(256), judges that &dquo;the most likely answer is that the
redactor regarded the story as having paradigmatic and
aetiological significance for the rest of Q. It served to
illustrate and legitimate the mode of behavior and the
ethos of the Q group. As hero and leader of the Q
community, Jesus pro-vided an example of the absolutely
dependent, non-defensive and apolitical stance of his
’
followers&dquo; (256~.
The effect of the addition of the Temptation Narrative
to the Q material was to bring into that material a motif
of temptation or of the ordeal of the wise and faithful
man. Kloppenborg goes on to show that &dquo;this motif com-
monly occurs at the beginning of wisdom collections&dquo;
(1987: 260). Thus the &dquo;placement of the testing story after
the predictions of John and just before the beginning of
Jesus’ main activity (preaching) conforms the opening
sequences of Q to the narrative pattern shared by the
legends about Abraham and Job, and the Graeco-Roman
hero biographies&dquo; (262).
AN ALTERNATIVE READING OF THE DATA
And now let us argue an alternative view of the
Temptation Narrative. The reasons Kloppenborg offers
for understanding the Temptation Narrative to be the
last addition to the Q materials need closer examination.
Kloppenborg notes, first of all, that the Temptation
Narrative in Q4:1-13 is &dquo;true narrative&dquo; and is dis-
a
tinguished from the rest of Q by that fact. Yet he
compares it to Q7:1-10 which is also a &dquo;true narrative&dquo;
and which he has no difficulty assigning nonetheless to
the &dquo;announcement of judgment&dquo; materials stratum.
Much hinges on the particular decision that Q7:1-10 is
more apophthegm than narrative, more narrative in the
service of speech; much depends also upon decisions
made about the original form of the Centurion’s Son
passage in the Q material. Since we will discuss it in
more detail below, it may suf~ce to agree that Q7:1-10
has a narrative character. Yet it is placed by Kloppen-
borg in the apocalyptic/judgment stratum! But if Q7:1-10
can be narrative material in one of the Q strata, why a
priori should Q 4:1-13 be omitted?
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.-_, ·Vl. Jf.J.L
Yet another reason for the Temptation Narrative’s
being understood as adistinct passage is its form as a
three-part debate and its &dquo;mythic&dquo; motif. Admittedly
there is no other narrative piece with a three-part debate
in Q. But is Q necessarily the only term of comparison?
At least one other term of comparison is possible, that
of the Wisdom of Solomon. In Q 4:1-13 we find two
parties, Jesus and &dquo;the devil&dquo;; we find the motif of testing;
we find the challenges to be threefold; and we find the
specific question being the identity of the righteous man
as &dquo;son of God.&dquo; But that is exactly what one finds in
Wisdom 2:17-18:
us see if his words are true,
Let
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
for if the righteous man is God’s son,
he will help him
and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
Wisdom 2:17-18 is a narrative in which there are two par-
ties in conflict, the righteous man and the &dquo;ungodly,&dquo; the
latter being of the party of the &dquo;devil&dquo; (Wis 2:24). The
motif of testing is clear. And clear also are three
challenges. The first challenge is to see if the righteous
man’s words &dquo;are true.&dquo; That is, of course, the essence
of the first Temptation, where Jesus is challenged to
misuse the power and authority of his word by
commanding something frivolous, that stones be turned
into loaves of bread; but Jesus’ response shows that his
words are true, for he defers to the true bread which
sustains life, the word of God. The second challenge of
the ungodly toward the righteous man is to &dquo;test what
will happen at the end of his life.&dquo; That is, however, the
essence of the second Temptation in which Jesus is asked
to throw himself from the pinnacle of the Temple to his
probable death. The third challenge of the ungodly
pertains to the righteous man’s being truly a &dquo;son of God,&dquo;
a challenge echoed in the third Temptation where Jesus
is challenged to change his allegiance from serving God
to serving the devil; the emphasis here is placed on the
&dquo;I f you are God’s son ...&dquo; in Wisdom 2:18, i.e., if you are
really righteous before God and his true servant....
There is, moreover, that matter of the references to
&dquo;if you are God’s son.&dquo; Kloppenborg had asserted that the
Temptation Narrative was distinguishable from the rest
of Q by its use of the title &dquo;the Son of God.&dquo; Yet the
definite article is not present before &dquo;son&dquo; in Q4:3 and
4:9, just as it is not present in the similar phrasing in
Wisdom 2:18.
And so, these comparisons suggest that an entirely
appropriate term of comparison for the Temptation Nar-
rative in Q4:1-13 can be found in the story of the testing
of the righteous man in Wisdom 2. There we find a
&dquo;three-part&dquo; sequence, the distinctive phrasing, &dquo;if you
are God’s son [or, a son of God],&dquo; and the &dquo;mythic&dquo;
element of &dquo;the devil.&dquo;

But Kloppenborg’s position that the Temptation
Narrative could not be part of one of the original strata
in Q rested first of all upon its being a &dquo;true narrative,&dquo;
which would make it significantly different by genre
from the speech material elsewhere in Q. Here, again,
the term of comparison should be extended beyond Q
itself to the Wisdom of Solomon. There one finds a
similar assemblage of narrative scenes and speech
materials: In Wisdom 2:10-5:23 we find a narrative piece,
followed by an abrupt turn to the direct address/speech
of Solomon to the &dquo;kings&dquo; in 6:1-9:18; followed in turn
by a narrative account of Wisdom’s mighty acts in
chapters 10 and following. Given the precedent for the
joining of narrative and speech material into a single
collection of sapiential materials, it is just as much valid
to suggest that the Temptation Narrative began the first
sapiential speech in the earliest (compositionally)
stratum.
Yet another of Kloppenborg’s reasons for assigning to
the Temptation Narrative a different and later origin was
that it showed Jesus’ being tempted to perform a miracle,
implying an understanding that miracles derive more
from Jesus’ own power than that they are events asso-
ciated with the dawning of the Kingdom of God as
elsewhere in Q. That seems, however, really to be a
misreading of the Temptation Narrative. The Tempta-
tions, rather, assume that Jesus is presenting himself as
the &dquo;son of God,&dquo; completely in line with the under-
standing in the sapiential stratum of Q of Jesus as the
unique revealer of the Father, the &dquo;son&dquo; through whom
one can know the Father (Q10:22). The Temptations are
focused not on Jesus as miracle-worker, but on Jesus as
obedient and faithful, i.e., as &dquo;righteous&dquo; in the full
wisdom sense, to the Father. The Temptations call upon
Jesus first to mis-use his authoritative word, then to
presume upon his relationship with God (&dquo;tempting
God&dquo;), and then as a last resort to turn away from his
allegiance, his &dquo;serving&dquo; for personal gain. Miracle-
working is a very minor motif in the first Temptation;
and it is absent in the second and third Temptations,
where Jesus’ relationship with God is the focus.
And so it just does not seem that the reasons Kloppen-
borg alleged for the Temptation Narrative’s being foreign
to the kinds of material found in Q and, consequently,
a later addition to Q need to be interpreted as he has
done. They are just as appropriately considered as the
introductory narrative, the paradigmatic testing of the
ideal righteous man, a &dquo;son of God,&dquo; which begins the
Q stratum of sapiential speech material. Kloppenborg
also suggested that the late addition of the Temptation
Narrative to the Q materials (both strata combined) was
made in order to pull Q into line with other sayings
collections such as the Sayings of Ahikar, the Life of
Aesop and Demonax where narrative introductions are
provided for sayings genres which &dquo;legitimate&dquo; the
authority of the speaker (325-327). Perhaps that was the
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47
reason for the placing of narratives of testing before
sapiential collections, but is it necessary to judge that
it was done as the last modification of Q? Why could not
the same reasoning be used to suggest that it was added
to the &dquo;sapiential&dquo; speech material in its earlier form (i.e.,
before the &dquo;announcement of judgment&dquo; material had
been joined to it)?
Centurion’s Son Narrative
The effect of the above arguments has been to reshape
the beginning of the sapiential stratum in Q; instead of
its starting with the Beatitudes (Q6:20-21), it would seem
rather to have begun with the Temptation Narrative, a
paradigmatic episode in which Jesus is tested and he
proves himself a true &dquo;son of God,&dquo; thereby authenticat-
ing his teaching as being &dquo;of God&dquo; and not of &dquo;the devil.&dquo;
In Kloppenborg’s analysis, the sapiential stratum would
continue through Q6:47-49, at which point it is
interrupted by the insertion of material from the
announcement of judgment stratum, beginning with the
Centurion’s Son Narrative in Q7:1-10. Yet there are
several considerations which raise the possibility that
this narrative, too, should be seen as part of the sapien-
tial stratum. Kloppenborg’s interpretation of it as
informed primarily by an announcement of judgment
motif because of the word of Jesus in Q7:9 seems, indeed,
to misplace the emphasis of the story, which is upon the
power of Jesus’ word. That is entirely consistent with
the first Temptation (&dquo;Tell stones to become bread&dquo;) and
with the content of the Parable of the Builders, Q6:47-49,
which immediately precedes it and with the estimation
of Jesus in Q 10:21-22. And so, this episode may be seen
as yet another paradigmatic narrative interspersed with
the aphoristic sayings material, much like the pattern
observable in the Wisdom of Solomon.
Kloppenborg, while admitting that the episode in
Q7:1-10 is linked to the preceding parable by two catch-
words (&dquo;Lord&dquo;: 6:46, 7:6; and &dquo;word&dquo;: 6:46, 49 and 7:7),
discounts this because he thinks that &dquo;the miracle story
has little to do with any of the specific themes of the
Sermon&dquo; (1987: 117). And while the centurion does
manifest great faith in Jesus’ word, &dquo;this is less related
to Jesus’ function as a teacher than it is to his [&dquo;power&dquo;]
as a miracle worker&dquo; (ibid.). Moreover, this interest in
Jesus’ miracle-working power is seen as linking Q7:1-10
with Q7:18-23, as does the more important implied
criticism of Israel’s lack of response to Jesus’s &dquo;author-
ity&dquo; in 7:9; cf. 7:35). And so, what appears to separate
Q7:1-10 from the preceding parable is viewed as out-
weighing those catchword linkages: a focus upon Jesus’
power or authority and the criticism of Israel. But let us
examine each of these a bit more closely.
First of all, it really is not clear that the focus of the
Centurion’s Son episode is upon Jesus’ &dquo;authority,&dquo;
 48
understood as a miracle-working power. Indeed, in the
story, the centurion compares himself to Jesus precisely
on the characteristic of &dquo;authority&dquo;; he also stands under
authority and has &dquo;authority&dquo; over others (7:8) and
certainly not in the sense of being a miracle worker.
What the passage afhrms is that Jesus, like the centurion,
has an authority and his word is one which must be
listened to and obeyed, just as the centurion’s commands
must be carried out by those below them. This is, then,
yet another-thematic-link back to the preceding
parable, where the emphasis had been on hearing the
&dquo;word&dquo; of Jesus and &dquo;doing&dquo; it (cf. Q6:46, 47). The cen-
turion’s request that Jesus &dquo;speak the word&dquo; so that the
. son/servant’ might be &dquo;healed&dquo; need not be a request for
a physical healing, but for. the teaching/revelation of
God’s will/wisdom which saves men. There are, after all,
only the request for the dealing&dquo; in Q7:8 and the resolu-
tion of the story in Q7:10 on which to base an interpreta-
tion of this passage ¡~s a &dquo;miracle story.&dquo;
The focus, therefoi e, would appear to be upon the con-
trast between the authority of the centurion and the
authority of Jesus. The narrative expresses that contrast
immediately in the admission of the centurion: &dquo;I am not
worthy ...&dquo;~(7:6~. In view of the Temptation Narrative’s
having established Jesus as the &dquo;son of God&dquo; who can
teach the word of God authentically, and in view of the
preceding parable where response to Jesus’ word is made
the critical factor in being saved before God, that con-
trast of the two authorities is entirely obvious. Jesus’
authoritative word is the one which can give the wisdom
one needs to be righteous before God. As the Wisdom
of Solqmon says,
&dquo;Who has learned thy counsel, I
; unless thou hast given wisdom
.
and sent thy holy Spirit from on high?
And thus the paths of those on earth were set right,
and men were taught what pleases thee,
and were saved by wisdom.&dquo; (9:17-18)
Turning from the matter of the Centurion’s Son Narra-
tive as a &dquo;miracle story&dquo; to its supposed implied critique
of Israel, we would have to admit that, if Kloppenborg
were correct that Q7:9 was a critique against Israel for
its lack of response to Jesus’ authority, there might be
reason for reading Q7:1-10 as indeed better associated
with the &dquo;announcement of judgment&dquo; materials which
follow than with the sapiential speech which precedes
it. Several considerations make that decision problem-
atic, however. First of all, the words &dquo;I have not found
such faith in Israel&dquo; (Q7:9) do not necessarily imply a
critique, judgment against Israel; they can in context
a
be anadmiring exclamation at the extent of the cen-
turion’s faith; admiration is apparent, after all, in the
words which lead into the saying, &dquo;he marveled at him.&dquo;
Secondly, it is not clear that before this point in Q Israel
has in fact failed to respond to Jesus; even in the
Downloaded from http://btb.sagepub.com by on March 24, 2009
judgment stratum which follows Q7:1-10 that emphasis
is not intimated until Q7:31-35 and not next encountered
in Q until Q10:12-15. And finally, assuming that Q7:9
itself does pertain to the judgment stratum [and perhaps
also the material which follows it in the Matthean order:
Matt 7:10, 11-12], how can one preclude the very real
possibility that just this verse [or, these verses] were not
inserted into the Q sapiential stratum just as Kloppen-
borg had argued that Q6:23c and Q10:12, 13-15 were?
The story in Q7:2-8, 10, after all, does not have a crowd
accompanying Jesus, and the introduction of the crowd
in Q7:9 seems to have been made only to provide the
audience for the saying recorded there.
In sum, it just does not seem that Kloppenborg has
made his case that the Centurion’s Son episode neces-
sarily belonged to the announcement of judgment
stratum. It is linked instead to what precedes it by the
two catchwords and by the theme of response to an
authoritative word and it accordingly formed part of the
sapiential stratum.
Two more observations follow from these arguments:
-If Kloppenborg is correct that the sapiential material
in Q continues with Q9:57-60, then the consequence of
my position is that it continues with two more scenes
in which the response of individuals is portrayed. Not
only do these responses contrast with the example of the
centurion [the &dquo;scribe&dquo; calls Jesus only &dquo;Teacher&dquo; in the
Matthean form of the episode; and one of Jesus’ own
disciples has his own priorities, although he, too, calls
Jesus &dquo;Lord&dquo;], but there could have been a similarity in
the introductions of Q7:1-10 and Q9:57-60 if one looks
at the Matthean wording:
Matt. 7:5 &dquo;a centurion came forward to him ... say-
ing ...&dquo;
Matt. 8:19 &dquo;a scribe came up and said to him....&dquo;
-A more pointed consequence of the placement of both
the Temptation Narrative and the Centurion’s Son Nar-
rative in the sapiential stratum is that the material
Kloppenborg identifies as a &dquo;judgment stratum&dquo; would
now be interrupted at Q3:16-17 and resumed at Q7:18-23
and following. That is a not entirely improbable result.
Q3:16-17 presents John as speaking of the &dquo;One coming
after me&dquo; (Q3:16) and Q7:19 has John the Baptist asking
Jesus if he is &dquo;the one who is to come.&dquo; There is a fluid
and consistent continuation if, and only if, both the
Temptation Narrative and the Centurion’s Son episodes
are associated with the sapiential speech material in
6:20-49.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
The purpose of the above argument has not been to
challenge the Kloppenborg assessment of the formation
of Q, an assessment which is becoming an accepted
starting point for further work on Q, so much as it has

been to refine that assessment and to eliminate
unnecessary tension within it.
First of all, the considerations set forth above refine
the character of the sapiential stratum proposed by Klop-
penborg. It does so by more consistently acknowledging
the character of the Centurion’s Son passage as narrative
and by positioning the Temptation Narrative within the
first compositional layer of sapiential materials. The
consequence of this is to notice that the sapiential
stratum already interwove narrative materials with its
sayings materials, much in the fashion of the Wisdom
of Solomon; it is really not the case, therefore, that the
Temptation Narrative should be seen as evidence that
only in the final stage of its compositional history was
Q beginning to move toward narrative forms.
Moreover, what has been proposed here clarifies what
has the appearance of an inconsistency. When Kloppen-
borg judges the Temptation Narrative to be both sapien-
tial in character and the last element added to the Q
materials, he sets forth a three-stage development for the
composition of Q: (1) a sapiential stratum, with its own
appropriate context; (2) a judgment/apocalyptic/Deutero-
nomic-driven stratum, reflecting an entirely different
context; and (3) the Temptation Narrative, added in order
to establish the authority of the sapiential Teacher.
While the transition in the circumstances of the com-
munity which brought Q into being can be readily
imagined for the movement from the first to the second
stratum, it is not so easy to imagine it for the movement
from the second to the third stage. A community, after
all, which had taken pride in its possessing the authen-
tic revelation of God’s will for them in the teaching of
Jesus and which had esteemed Jesus as the unique
revealer of that revelation could, under the continued
experience of the rejection of that teaching, of Jesus, and
of themselves, have responded with an intensification
of their position; the threats of judgment against this
generation serve as much to reafhrm the beliefs of this
community as they do to castigate and reject those who
have rejected them. And so, the composition of the
second stratum and its addition to the first makes sense.
What does not make sense is the suggestion that then
the group would compose the Temptation Narrative
with its &dquo;sapiential&dquo; interests and its climactic citation
of Deuteronomy 6:13, &dquo;You shall fear the Lord your God
and him shall you serve,’ and its absence of apocalyptic
and judgment warnings. How could a group, having
experienced the stress and anguish of rejection and
hostility to the point of hurling apocalyptic warnings
against its opponents, have retreated so quickly from the
position represented by the second stratum? Our sugges-
tion, by eliminating the third element in the composi-
tion of Q, eliminates also an apparent tension in
Kloppenborg’s reconstruction.
A final comment needs to be made with respect to the
&dquo;Sophia&dquo; texts which figured so large in an earlier in-
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49
an vestigation of the &dquo;christology&dquo; of Q. Despite the
arguments of Piper seeking to diminish the exceptional
oharacter of Q7:35 and Q11:49-51, those sayings explicit-
ly attributed to the personified figure of &dquo;Wisdom&dquo; are
embedded in contexts which are characterized by judg-
ment and warning and are appropriately placed by Klop-
penborg in his second stratum. The problem is not so
much the problem addressed by Piper, i.e. the seeming
distance between the experiential &dquo;wisdom&dquo; of the
aphoristic sayings material in Q and the acceptance of
a -unique and privileged &dquo;revelation&dquo; through the teaching
of Jesus in Q 10:21-22. The connection between those
ideas had already been made in a satisfactory manner in
the Wisdom of Solomon, for there we learn that
knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the
world ... , what is secret and what is manifest&dquo; (WisSol
7:17, 21 ) comes from God (WisSol 7:15, 17; 8:21 ); but it
is &dquo;Wisdom, the fashioner of all things&dquo; (WisSol 7:22j who
taught them. Wisdom not only knows the structure of
all things, but can give &dquo;understanding&dquo; (WisSol 8:18), a
sense of how to employ this knowledge morally and well,
for Wisdom is &dquo;with&dquo; God and &dquo;understands what is pleas-
ing in [God’s] sight and what is right according to {his]
commandments&dquo; (WisSol 9:9).
The real problem, however, is the distance between
the sapiential materials and their consistency with the
wisdom tradition and the Sophia &dquo;myth&dquo; authenticating
that tradition, on the one hand, and the employment of
Sophia sayings in a judgment context, on the other. In
the Jewish wisdom tradition, Sophia/Wisdom appeals to
men: &dquo;she hastens to make herself known to those who
desire her; she goes about seeking those worthy of
...
her&dquo; (WisSol 6:13, 16). In Proverbs, Sophia calls out to
men (Prov 8:1-6), inviting them to the companionship
of the dining table (Prov 9:3-6) and offers &dquo;life&dquo; to those
who find her (Prov 8:35). The real difhculty is that the
Sophia of appeal and welcbming has become in Q the
Sophia of judgment. The question which should be fur-
ther examined is not so much the relationship of Jesus
to Wisdom/Sophia in Q as it is this transition which ap-
propriates the Wisdom/Sophia figure in a strikingly
different manner.
In the Temptation Narrative, Jesus had said, &dquo;No one
can live by bread alone&dquo; (Q4:4) and the Centurion had
asked that Jesus &dquo;but speak a word&dquo; which can heal
(Q7:7). In view of the pieces of evidence offered above
for the continued influence of the Jewish wisdom tradi-
tion upon early Christianity, the time has come to con-
sider further the description of that trajectory of wisdom
teaching which binds Jesus and the early Christian com-
munities to the older sapiential desire to &dquo;fear the Lord,&dquo;
finds expression in several writings of the Second Testa-
ment and, one could assert, continues into the Church’s
own development of the understanding of God’s will
today.
50

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1989 Wisdom in the Q-tradition: The Aphoristic
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1970 Jesus Sophia: Die Sophia-Christologie bei den 1970 Wisdom, Christology, and Law in Matthew’s
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Synoptikern. Abhandlungen zur Gospel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
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