Biblica_1:Layout 1 21-11-2011 12:59 Pagina 395 395 “SEEK HIS KINGDOM” gories have become hermetically sealed compartments” 15. We “fail to see that in the world from which they have come to us, they were related parts of an organic whole”. The terms “wisdom” and “apoc- alyptic” may be unavoidable, but these remain “flawed categories”. The problem is not “in the texts, but in the categories and methods that we have used to describe and interpret them”. We cannot easily separate traditions and genres that belong together without creating an ahistorical abstraction, i.e., an ideological construction. Q reflects a movement comprised of both sapiential and eschatological be- liefs 16, and while there is nothing especially controversial about positing Q as an early collection of Jesus’ sayings redacted from the perspective of a perceived rejection of the movement, this may have very little bearing on when the text was composed or edited, where it came from and how it relates to the historical Jesus. The stratification of Q simply cannot easily support the weight of radical re-descriptions of the social history of Q, the historical Jesus or Christian origins, and so the deployment of the categories “wis- dom” and “apocalyptic” to promote such attempts by constructing a dichotomous relationship between the two must be approached with due caution. Indeed, nowhere is this debate more problematic than in exegetical approaches to the kingdom of God tradition. II. The Kingdom in Q The “kingdom (“reign” or “rule”) of God” is a central theme of Jesus’ ministry 17. 15 G.W.E. NICKELSBURG, “Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early Judaism: Some Points for Discussion”, Conflicted Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism (SBL SS 35) (eds. B.G. WRIGHT III –L.M. WILLS) (Atlanta, GA 2005) 17-37, esp. 36-37. 16 M. SATO, “Wisdom Statements in the Sphere of Prophecy”, The Gospel Behind the Gospels. Current Studies on Q (ed. R.A. PIPER) (NTSup 75; Leiden 1995) 139-158; C.E. CARLSTON, “Wisdom and Eschatology in Q”, Logia. Les Paroles de Jésus. Memorial Joseph Coppens (ed. J. DELOBEL) (Leuven 1982) 101-119, esp. 116; EDWARDS, A Theology of Q, 78.148; J.S. KLOPPENBORG, “Symbolic Eschatology and the Apocalypticism of Q”, HTR 80 (1987) 287- 306, esp. 291. 17 B. CHILTON (ed.), The Kingdom of God (Philadelphia, PA 1984); C.H. DODD, The Parables of the Kingdom (New York 1961); R.H. HIERS, The