Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflicts and the Setting of Q

This volume challenges Gerd Theissen's dominant thesis of "wandering radicals" as the earliest spreaders of the Jesus tradition. Several conclusions emerge: (1) the textual evidence for the "wandering radicals" hypothesis is not tenable and it must be replaced with one that more closely comports with the evidence: (2) the immediate context of the Jesus movement, and of Q in particular, is the socio-economic crisis in Galilee under the Romans; and (3) the formation of Q is the product of Galilean village scribes in the Jesus movement reacting to the negative developments in Galilee that affected their social standing.

Arnal moves decisively beyond earlier Q studies, which focused almost exclusively on literary history without dealing with the social realitites of the first century.

William E. Arnal is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada). He is co-editor of and contributor to Whose HIstorical Jesus? (1997).