The gospel according to "Q"

Factual Questions
1

No this isn’t a question about the continuum.

I read an article online about a theory that has been circulating around Christianity for a couple of years that a master document (code named Q) is the actual source text for the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). This theory came to be thanks to word-print analysis and examination of events as recorded in the current 4 canonized books in the bible. This document may have been written during the actual lifetime of Christ, not years later - being more of a contemporary record than a historical one.

Any insight??

Phouchg Hath Spoken

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2

Scholarly opinion is generally that the three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke; called “synoptic” to mean “viewed together”, comparable) used a single source document that has not survived, called “Q” (from the German Quelle = source).

The earliest New Testament texts are, in fact, some of the letters of Paul. Matthew, Mark, and Luke come later.

The idea is that the earliest followers of Jesus expected his Return at any moment, followed by a Messianic Age of Heaven on Earth. So the stories about Jesus and his teachings were all oral – no need to bother writing things down, when he would be here soon to tell us all again. As the original generation died out, however, there was a desire to set things down in writing.

There are great similarities among the the synoptic gospels. This was traditionally explained in terms of having roots that extended back independently to a common apostolic witness: they all drew from the same information.

However, most scholars today are convinced that there is a direct literary dependency. The theory is supported by:

  • common subject matter
  • correspondance of sequence and continuity of events
  • similar sentence and word order
  • extensive vocabulary agreement, and use of the same harsh grammatical constructions or unusual words.

Of over 600 verses in Mark’s narrative, 90% are in the Gospel of Matthew and 50% are in the Gospel of Luke. The outline of Mark’s narrative is almost entirely reproduced by the other two synoptic gospels, with Luke corresponding to the early part of Mark’s sequence, and Matthew to the later.

In the sections of Matthew that relate the same tradition as in Mark, the use of the same words is over 73%. Luke used about 66% of Mark’s words. The end-time discourse of Jesus shows large blocks of material that are word-for-word the same (Mark 13:5-8, 14-17, 28-32, and parallels.)

The evidence goes on, and I suggest Keith Nicle’s THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS if you are interested. The hypothesis is an initial document called Q, which ceased to circulate independently and fell into disuse in the early church, once it had been incorporated into Matthew and Luke. It is possible that the community responsible for writing Q also held opinions that were later regarded as heretical, and so was rejected from the early church. Mark is NOT assumed to have copied from Q, but Matthew and Luke copied from both Q and Mark.

Some scholars assume Q was a single document. Others use Q as a symbol of convenience, asuming several sources of material present in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark. It is not possible to reconstruct the exact contents of Q, but most scholars believe it is primarily the speeches and sayings attributed to Jesus (exceptions are brief references to John the Baptist, the temptation in the wilderness, and the centurion at Capernaum.) Because Matthew and Luke record the same sayings of Jesus in a different context, the assumption is that Q was a collection of the sayings without any narrative description of the circumstances surrounding the saying.

Q presumably contained no Passion narrative and lacked any reference to the cross. Thus, one thinks of it not as a gospel but as a collectionof miscellaneous sayings, reporting the teaching and preaching of Jesus. This was used by Matthew and Luke to augment Mark’s narrative, which puts more emphasis on the mighty acts and miraculous deeds of Jesus, than on his teachings.a

OK? That’s the nutshell version.

3

I’ve read the Book of Q (or at least what the book I was reading told me was the Book of Q) and as you said, it seems to have possibly been a master document from which the other Gospels arose. It’s been a while, but I think it bore greater resemblance to Matthew, Luke than it did to John (for that matter, from what I remember, John is the earliest of the Gospels. Or at least we have older copies of John than we do of the other three).

As for Mark, it’s already assumed that sections of Matthew and Luke were lifted from Mark and that Q filled in some (or most) of what didn’t come from Mark. Where Mark provided much of the “factual” information about Jesus for Matthew & Luke (where he went, who was doing what), Q seems to provide much of the teachings of Jesus.

Of course, none of this has been proven. There are those who believe that Matthew was written first, and that Luke used that as an inspiration rather than any book of Q. In this case, perhaps Q was written later and condensed the two other gospels instead of being the basis for them. I’ve also read those who believe Luke was first, but there’s less supporting evidence of this and it doesn’t really matter. Either Q was first or it wasn’t – which other Gospel came first is irrelevant to disproving the Mark+Q theory.

If it can be proven that Q was the basis (at least partially) for Matthew and Luke, the question opens up of what to do with it. Is Q then considered canonical? After all, it contains the same information as Matthew and Luke and we have to assume Q is entirely perfect or else Matthew and Luke were drawing the teachings of Jesus from an imperfect source. (Yeah, I know “entirely perfect” sounds redundant, but I mean as opposed to someone saying “well, just the teachings are perfect. The rest of Q is crap.”) To say that the Gospels were based off of a non-canonical work sheds an air of imperfection over the Gospels themselves. However, to say that Q is canon begs the question “So everyone’s been using an incomplete Bible all these years?” I’m sure the religious leaders will have a lot of fun with that one and I’m guessing that they’ll simply discredit Q regardless of any evidence simply to spare themselves the problem.

Note that I’m not saying Q is what they claim. I’m not a religious scholar and only read it in passing and out of curiousity. There’s been lost Gospels found and discredited before and perhaps the same will happen with Q. Certainly it’s near impossible at this point to prove that document A was written in say 65AD and infulenced another document written in 67AD when we don’t have copies of either from that early (as I said, the earliest is the Book of John which was from ~88AD). There’s a lot more work to be done before the Church is forced to issue a statement regarding the validity of Q as canon.

“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

4

Figures that this OP would languish for 14 hours and then someone would answer it while I finally did. :wink:

“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

5

Jophiel, any book of “Q” today is an interpreted reconstruction. We do not have an actual “Q” text. (There is a document called the Didache (or “teaching”) that contains a lot of the material that we suspect was in “Q,” but it was written more as a “Christian Handbook” with both quotes from Jesus and general rules on Christian practices and is generally not recognized as Apostolic in origin. The early Church Fathers knew of the book and nearly always put it among the inspirational books that were not considered Scripture.)

On a couple of your other points:

The oldest manuscript we have of a passage from a Gospel is a section of John that dates to the early second century. It contains (where it has not rotted) Jn 18:31-33 and a bit of Jn 18:37. It is indexed as B 52 (where B is written in Gothic font and 52 is a superscript).

The oldest Gospel is generally considered to be that of Mark, sometime between 64 and 70, although there is a tradition, first recorded by Papias, then recounted by Eusebius, that Matthew was originally written earlier in Aramaic. The version of Matthew that we have is so carefully constructed in Greek, and the statement of Papias is so lacking in external support, that an “original” Aramaic Matthew is not generally considered likely today.

Tom~

6

Tomndebb,

I’m going to have to assume all you said was correct because as I said before, I’m not a scholar in these things. The Book of Q I read was back in college and I have no doubt forgotten some of the details. As for its validity and those implications upon the church, I read a rather long and in depth article about it at:
Rutgers.edu Article
And hope I got the UBB correct.

I didn’t mean to imply that Mark was anything but first in the Gospels (or at least the Gospels minus John which seems to stand on its own in several ways), rather that we had older bits of John than we did anything else. To say that the Gospels were written by the authors they’re attributed to, they’d have to be even older than that, be it 88AD or 110AD. Incidentally, I got the number 88 out of a book at my old university’s library, so I won’t even try to defend it since I have no source at hand.

But you can’t say I didn’t try :wink:

“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

7

So much for the UBB – Here’s the link: http://religion.rutgers.edu/jseminar/q_canon.html

8

Sorry, Jophiel, I originally missed your reply, above. (Must have been the weekend my kids were sick.)

From the Rutgers link to the Jesus Forum:

Two things I note immediately: the Documenta Q is a reconstruction; this whole discussion is part of the Jesus Forum.

While it is nice that someone has tried to reconstruct Q (which was my first guess, above), without an actual, physical Q document, we are left with simply someone’s best guess. (It can be a scholarly guess with a lot of inferential support created with the best of intentions, but it is still a guess.) Creating an “issue” of whether that (recreated) document should be considered canonical is, in my view, an academic game. Everything that is part of Q that should be canonical is already found in the synoptic Gospels. What is the purpose of adding a fifth document that simply repeats information we have? It might be argued that we could glean a better interpretation of the ideas that Jesus really wanted to convey, but that implies that the scholars that recreated the words of Jesus in the “proper” order had no agendas of their own. Since we freely admit that each of the four evangelists did have and agenda, inserting a 20th century reconstruction does not give us an agenda-free view, only a 20th century view. The people arguing the issue are having fun, but I’m not going to get too excited about it.

The second point I noted is the source of the discussion: The Jesus Forum. These guys are doing a lot of heavy analysis and I think that, ultimately, their work will provide new ways for us to look at Scripture.

On the other hand, they are loons. This group sits down and goes through each line of the Gospels, weighing each word and phrase to determine whether an event “really” happened or Jesus “really” said something, then they take a vote to decide how much credence they will assign the validity of each verse. I have a lot of respect for the work of scholars of ancient texts, but I’m afraid that I have no faith in the ability of this group to actually perform this reconstruction correctly. Unless they can prove that none of their votes are swayed by their own political/theological agendas (and that no intra-group personality conflicts ever affect a decision, and that. . .), their reconstruction is not really any more definitive than the earliest efforts by St. Jerome. I do think that they are providing a service; I do not think that they are achieving TRUTH.

Since this same outfit has provided the personnel to recreate Q, I am unpersuaded as to its validity as well. (I am sure that the reconstruction with notes would be an interesting thing to read.)

Tom~