"THE WAY": How Christianity Came To Be

The following is from one of my posts on FaceBook (at the Gospel of Thomas Association). I thought it might be of interest here, as well. If it is, I will update "here" when I "continue" there.

The earliest followers of Jesus, after his crucifixion, were called the "People of The Way".There were at least three distinct "streams of transmission" in the early days of what I will refer to as "the Jesus Movement". Two of these streams were quite similar" The Thomasine stream and the "Q" stream. A third stream was considerably different, and I will refer to it as the stream of the "Easter Event".

The stream which we now refer to as "Q" was probably identical with "The Way", and consisted of those followers of Jesus, most probably in Galilee, who preserved and attempted to emulate the teachings of Jesus relating to "the proper WAY to LIVE". Meanwhile, over in Syria, a parallel group of Jesus followers were doing much the same thing, and fortunately for us, they wrote down that which they wanted to teach and preserve.

It should be noted that BOTH of these groups were following the teachings OF Jesus. Neither of these groups dealt with (or considered important) his death. And neither of these groups professed any belief in his RESURRECTION. In case anyone missed the implication of what I have already claimed, the Q-stream represented "a single group" of Jesus people, living in (or coming from) "a single locale".

Now for that "third group": I am going to call them the Easter People", but we could just as easily refer to them as "the Petrine stream", as these were the people who believed in and proclaimed that "He Is Risen". These are the people who "couldn't let go" of their former mentor and leader, and who constructed a myth (not a bad word!) that would allow them to "make sense" of the events that they had just witnessed.

They had all expected to "have important roles" in the "coming Kingdom" that they thought Jesus had taught them about (the "coming" part was probably an apostolic invention...we Thomasines "know" that Jesus was speaking about something that was "right before our eyes" although we did not see!). These followers, principally centered about (I believe) Peter, NEEDED to have a way to understand how Jesus' teachings were true yet he was crucified. I have no idea whether they absconded with the body, or whether Jesus had simply passed out and had been "taken for dead", only to revive, run away with M.M. to France, etc. etc. It doesn't matter.

What matters is that the Easter People created a kerygma, a christology that transformed the "man" Jesus" into "the son of God" (as a Divine Person)... and then these Easter people met up with the Q Community. (to be continued).