Preparing for Session Three

Reading from A New Christianity for a New World—
	Chapter 5: The Original Christ (pages 79–96)
Chapter 6: Watching Theism Capture Christianity (pages 97–112)

Supplementary reading of Biblical passages—
	You may wish to read and reflect on these texts as selected examples of how early Christian representations of Jesus developed as the NT texts were being composed over the first hundred years following his death:
	Philippians 2:5–11; 	[written by Paul ~60 CE]
Mark 6:1–6; 7:24–30; 	[anonymous text from early 70s]
Matthew 16:13–20; 	[anonymous text written ~90 CE]
Luke 2:41–52; 	[anonymous text from late 1st C or early 2nd C]
John 1:1–18	[anonymous text from early 2nd C]

What, if anything, do these descriptions of Jesus have in common?
How well do they relate to your own understanding of Jesus?

Reflection task—
	Some NT scholars have identified a set of 37 sayings found in two very early and apparently independent Christian collections of Jesus’ sayings: the Sayings Gospel Q and the Gospel of Thomas. In their view, this “Common Sayings Tradition” has a strong claim to be the earliest known collection of Jesus’ words as they would be older than anything in the NT except the 7 genuine letters of Paul (Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians and Philemon). While being a very early collection does not guarantee that all the sayings are authentic, it does provide an interesting window into the most primitive memory of Jesus.
For those with access to the Internet, the full text of the Common Sayings Tradition is available in a color-coded version at the following site: 
http://www.faithfutures.org/Education/CST_Texts.pdf

Black & white photocopies are available for the rest of us.