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8 Four Alternative Tradition Histories or Textures in Early Christology We have tested the Kyriocentric vision conjecture in a variety of ways using three bodies of material: Second Temple apocalypses, early Rabbinic (Tannaitic) literature, and the canonical New Testament. We have seen that the conjecture accounts quite well for the basic features of New Testament Christology: the confession of the Lord as Jesus (Kyrios Iēsous), the dedication of divine prayers and devotions to Jesus (as well as to God the Father), the raising of Jesus from the grave, various notions of the embodiment of the Lord in Jesus, binitarian formulas, and the proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah, son of David.1 In spite of these confirmations, our conjecture would be weakened, however, if it could not do justice to the variety of alternatives in the New Testament and other early Christian literature (at least through the second century). In this chapter, we shall develop a method for approaching that subject and support it with a few examples from that literature. First, we need to differentiate our method from a leading predecessor. From Trajectories to Textures (A Model of Development) As a result of the work of James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester, scholars have often thought in terms of texts that lie on different “trajectories” in early Christianity. The main idea was that only one of those trajectories would lead to proto-orthodox theologians like Irenaeus and the early baptismal creed (the “Roman Symbol”).2 The idea of trajectories was clearly helpful for illustrating the diversity of early Christian beliefs and practices and freeing historical theology from the “triumphalistic” accounts of orthodox heresiologists. However, thinking in terms of trajectories can be misleading if its use suggests that written texts were intentionally composed in order to articulate a comprehensive, unified point of view, or that they represented the sum total of 233 the beliefs and practices of their communities.3 It is more realistic to shift the focus from written texts to the communities that produced them. It will also be helpful to think in terms of overlapping tradition histories or textures in order to avoid the assumption that divergent developments were separate trajectories (like those of projectiles or comets). The idea of trajectories is based solely on the differences among various traditions, whereas that of a woven texture allows for commonalities as well as the differences. In the following discussion, we shall find that several documentary sources can be used to illustrate more than one tradition history.4 If the texts had been written with a view toward giving us a full account of the beliefs and practices of their communities, the overlap of traditions (or interweave of narrative threads) would undoubtedly have been even greater. In general, one cannot assume that the absence of a certain idea in a particular text reflected a lacuna in the community that produced it. We can assume that the challenges and demands of their times induced them to select some traditions and work with them, more than with others, to be sure, but we must also allow that only a few of these challenges were met by putting these traditions into writing.5 Our own method has been to think in terms of communities that rehearsed received traditions (on the supply side) and augmented or revised those traditions in order to address challenges that arose both within their fellowship and in their efforts to present their case to other parties (the demand side). According to our conjecture, most of these challenges arose from the need to superpose two distinct portraits, or interweave two distinct narratives, for Jesus. In the line of sages and prophets (hasidim), Jesus was remembered as a fleshand -blood teacher, with whom the disciples had walked for years, who had prayed to and taught about God as his Father, and whose ministry was cut short when he was condemned to death and crucified. In the history of Kyriocentric visions, however, Jesus was the name (or his was the voice and face) with which the Lord identified himself when the disciples cried out to him in their distress in the wake of Jesus’ death and burial. For those who tried to account for this paradoxical superposition, there was a pool of traditions to draw from: traditions about theophanies, the resurrection, embodiments, intermediary figures, and suffering servants (ch. 7). In short, the tradition pool had lots of different pieces. From the viewpoint of the Catholic Church, as it emerged in...

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