The Q Gospel

Great Debates
1

In this recent thread , Diogenes and Iscariot began debating the “Q document hypothesis”. I had been under the impression that the vast majority of scholars of early Christianity accepted this hypothesis, but I’s links seem to indicate that anti-Q scholarship is undergoing something of a renaissance. I’d like to continue that discussion here.

For those not familiar with the topic, the Q document hypothesis is an answer to the question, “How did the Gospels come to be written?” The first part of the answer involves noticing that the first 3 Gospels (the “synoptics”) contain much material that is close to word-for-word the same. It’s unlikely bordering on impossible that this much verbal agreement could come from oral tradition; there must have been some common documents that the authors used as sources. The first major result of this line of study was that Mark was the first gospel written, and Matthew and Luke are dependent (either directly or indirectly) on Mark. (As is usual, I am using Matthew, Mark, and Luke as the names of the authors of the gospels. This doesn’t mean, for example, that I believe the person who wrote Matthew was the same Matthew that is mentioned in Matt 9:9. The gospel itself never identifies the author, and the title “The Gospel According to Matthew” was likely added long after the book itself was written. But we have to call the author something, so let’s call him Matthew.) Since the non-Q theories in question accept Mark’s priority, let’s not debate that part here.

The second step was to realize that if you remove the bits of Matt and Luke that look like they were copied from Mark, you are left with quite a few verses in both gospels that still have a high degree of verbal agreement. There are several possible explanations for this fact. Here are a few:

  • Matthew used Mark as a source, and Luke used Matthew (and possibly Mark, too). This is the Farrer hypothesis .
  • Luke used Mark, and Matthew used Luke. This position doesn’t seem to be held by anyone, so let’s drop it.
  • Matt and Luke both used a second written source in addition to Mark. This is the Q document hypothesis .

There are, of course, many other possibilities .

The argument, in brief, for the Q document hypothesis. The main objection to Q is that there are places where Matt and Luke agree with each other, and Mark has a different version.

The big problem for the Farrer hypothesis is to explain why Luke would excise these verses from Matt and collect them in a separate section. If Luke had Matt in front of him, why wouldn’t he just leave those verses in place? If he’s moving things around in Matt, why does he choose to move exactly those verses that don’t come from Mark? This is very hard to understand in the Farrer hypothesis. Goulder takes a shot at explaining away these problems.

Well, got to stop for now. I’m leaning toward the Q hypothesis. Perhaps Iscariot can hold up the anti-Q side.

2

In my theology class, the prof. definitely believe in Q. That was back in '91 or '92…

3

I can add only a little to the argument here. The material that is comon to both Matther and Luke, but absent in Mark
[list=a]
[li]has a very high degree of correlation. The texts align far more accurately than parallel passages contained in Matthew and Mark, for example.[/li][li]consist mainly of sayings and quotations of Jesus.[/li][/list]
This seems to be the strength of the Q hypothesis. The weakness is the lack of any textual evidence outside the Bible for such a document. I have wondered if Q could not have been an oral source that both Matthew and Luke consulted.

4

I think it’s safe to say that the non-Markan commonalities in Matthew and Luke cannot be a coincidence of independent compositions. This leaves us with only two real possibilities. They either used a common written source (Q) or Luke copied Matthew.

The Q hypothesis is by far the stronger of the two and I think that the Farrer hypothesis is extremely weak. Look at his “10 reasons to question Q” page.

Argument from absence. Q can easily be inferred and it is not remarkable in any way that an early sayings gospel may have been lost.

No ancient author ever referred to the books of Nag Hammadi either but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. Know one knew about the Gospel of Thomas until 1945. So this is an another argument from ignorance.

The assertion that no scholar believes that Papias’ Logia were Q is a little disingenuous. What scholars say is that Q, as a Greek composition cannot be the sayings gospel which Papias says Matthew compiled in Hebrew.

That is not to say that Q could not have been based on an earlier Hebrew sayings gospel, only that Q as it appears in the Gospels cannot be Papias’ Hebrew Logia.

The first objection is just semantic quibbling. The fact that there are some narrative framings and sequences in Q may not conform precisely to the definition of a “sayings gospel” but that’s really beside the point. The narrative framings and sequences are still commonalities no matter how you characterize their genre.

The second objection is equally weak. Mathhew and Luke depart from Mark at the same points, but since bothe were using Q as a supplemt, this only makes sense. Luke does not follow Matthew’s chronology completely so that would have to be explained by Farrer.
Farrer goes on in this manner making one fairly weak objection after another. It is also notable that he must completely lop off Luke’s Nativity Narrative in order to make his hypothesis work. He does this because Luke’s Nativity has no discernable relationship to Matthew and contains a directly contradictory geneology.

The problem is that there is simply no stylistic or literary reason to truncate Luke and hypothesize an interpolated Nativity. The style of Luke’s Nativity is perfectly in sync with the rest of his gospel and with Acts, and there is no evidence that any version of Luke ecer existed sans Nativity.

I really can’t see any reason to chuck out Q, and I’m not aware that there is any sizable movement in scholarship to reconsider it.

5

Please substitute “Goodacre” for “Farrer” in my above post. It is the Farrer hypothesis but I am arguing with Goodacre’s points.

6

Luke would have had good reason to avoid the Matthean redactive ordering–Matthew’s Gospel is distinctly Jewish, for a Jewish-Christian audience. Luke’s, in contrast, clearly isn’t. Indeed, de-Hebraizing his sources is one of Luke’s strongest redactional techniques.

And, as you noted, he doesn’t move all of the verses that come from Matt. He doesn’t move “exactly” those elements. There are both major and minor agreements between the two. It’s difficult to fathom why those occur with the Q hypothesis, because they shouldn’t occur at all.

Why does Luke know Matthean redactive techniques if he doesn’t know Matthew? That’s rather curious, to say the least.

A bigger problem along these lines is suggested by Peter Kirby (who, ironically enough, is the man who pointed me in the direction of the Farrer hypothesis some time ago), in his article arguing for the existence of Q–why doesn’t Luke use the longer version of narratives found in both Matthew and Mark? Why does he only seem to be familiar with the Markan version?

http://earlychristianwritings.com/q-exist.html

But his argument runs into the same flaw as the one above–why would we expect Luke to utilize Matthew’s version of stories that don’t serve Luke’s means?

Perhaps an argument of my own, at this point, in the contrary direction would be prudent.

The temptation narrative sits rather oddly in Q. In all of early Christian material–both hypothetical and known–there is only one source in which the temptation narrative in the form we receive it in Matthew and Luke doesn’t seem out of place–the gospel of Matthew.

Matthew, with his emphasis on paralleling Jesus with both Moses and Israel during the Exodus, is the only source whose redactive techniques indicate he would fabricate such a narrative–and the narrative is doubtlessly a fabrication.

Matthew took Mark’s brief mention of a temptation–the meaning of which is largely unclear to us now, as it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose in Mark’s gospel–and added to it. Matthew, it would appear, made up the entire thing.

If Matthew made up the temptation narrative, why does Luke know it?

Regards.

7

It’s not an argument from silence if we should expect to hear a sound.

Origen and Eusibius both mention the Gospel of Thomas, which is the only work found in the NHL we should really expect them to mention. That’s about the dozenth time you’ve done that. If you don’t know, you don’t know. Don’t try and bluff your way through, I’m going to catch you at it. I promise.

The rest are too obviously tailored to a specific belief system. There’s no reason for them to be aware of them, much less to mention them.

There is reason for us to expect classical sources to mention Q. It’s 1) Supposedly an early source, which we should thus expect appeals to early on, before there was much to appeal to and 2) In keeping with “orthodox” Christianity.

The misuse of obvious Hebraisms in Matthew’s gospel argues firmly against this. Matthew was, pretty clearly, a Greek speaking Jew–he only quotes the LXX.

Matthew wouldn’t have been able to read a Hebrew gospel. Papias is full of shit.

If Q was a narrative gospel, then neither Matthew nor Luke followed that narrative. If nobody followed the narrative, then it’s equally possible that Luke just used Matthew and ignored his narrative, instead of ignoring Q.

No it wouldn’t. You would need to explain why we should expect Luke to follow Matthew’s chronology completely. We don’t just presume that he should. Luke has his own redactive techniques, there’s no reason to expect him to use Matthew’s.

Farrer doesn’t get rid of Luke’s infancy. You just made that up wholesale. The only person, thus far, who has suggested that the infancy should be stricken is me. You really need to quit doing that.

“As to the Genesis, St. Luke has his own infancy narratives. . .”-Austin Farrer, On Dispensing With Q.

  1. Luke’s Gospel flows just fine without the infancy. Why doesn’t Luke make any mention of JBap’s “relationship” to Jesus later? Why is everything that follows completely independent of the Nativity? That’s not Lukan. That would be stylistic reason to question it.

What, exactly, do you find in Luke’s nativity that evidences Lukan style “perfectly in sync?”

In Greek please. You stated you were familiar, and one can’t analyze Lukan literary style in English.

  1. Luke may have been fully aware of Matthew’s infancy, and simply ignored it–it’s by far the most obvious Mosaic parallels in Matthew’s gospel, Luke would have had good reason to avoid it–Luke avoided obvious Judaic influence.

Luke could have had a great deal of L material pertaining to infancy. Luke’s possession of several infancy traditions would account well for the irreconcilable dates provided throughout–he’s amalgamating independent traditions.

Consensus doesn’t make it correct. I am aware, for example, that E P Sanders–certainly among the highest echelon of Biblical Scholarship–does not accept Q. You can’t just wave your hand and make that go away by declaring consensus.

Regards.

8

Okay, let’s substitute Goodacre. You’re still making up the infancy narrative position. Goodacre says nothing of the sort. The only person thus far who has is me.

Regards.

9

It definitely enjoys a majority among Biblical scholars, but that majority is deceptive.

Among Biblical scholars at large, Q enjoys a priori acceptance. It’s simply been accepted for nearly 200 years–most scholars are scarcely aware of contrary positions, and can simply recite the standard arguments by rote. They take it prima facie because it has enjoyed such wide acceptance, for so long.

Among scholars geared more specifically toward the synoptic problem, there is considerably more dispute. See the Synoptic-L academic E-list, for example. Membership is, I believe, still restricted to academics or very informed layman, though I could be mistaken on that, it’s been quite some time since I joined, so they may have loosened the requirements since then. At any rate, there’s much to be gleaned simply from observing, which is what I generally do anyway.

Regards.

10

The correlation between Matthew and Luke is too strong, on phrases that would not have been axiomatic, for them to have relied on oral tradition. They are either relatively dependent, with Luke using Matthew, or they are relatively independent, and used a common written source.

Regards.

11

The Kloppenborg article I referenced in the other thread can be found here

http://sbl-site.org/Publications/JBL/JBL1201.pdf

Michael Goulder’s Response can be found here

http://sbl-site.org/Publications/JBL/JBL1212.pdf

This is not light reading–the arguments presented are technical and rely on a reasonably high level of familiarity. Thus I’ll extend the offer in advance to do what I can to clarify anything anyone has trouble understanding.

Regards.

12

Further reflection has led me to the inescapable conclusion that dialogue with Diogenes is a waste of my time:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=4716090#post4716090

If others would be interested in picking up the gauntlet, I’ll certainly carry on.

Regards.

13

I disagree that we should expect to hear a sound.

I’m not bluffing through anything. Eusebius and Origen were both far more likely to have been referring to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas than to the Coptic sayings Gospel. It was in wider circulation and it belonged to the Gnostic “heretics” to which they both allude.

Papius is a classical source and Papius mentions a Hebrew sayings gospel compiled by Matthew. I know Q is not a direct translation from Hebrew, but maybe, just maybe, Papius was wrong about the language? In any case we’re talking about some pretty obscure literary origins and we don’t know what was lost. As to authority, Once, Q became embedded in Matthew, then Matthew itself would become the authoritative text and there would no longer have been a need to appeal to a less formed sayings gospel.

Eusebius was full of shit too but you seem to take him at face value.

Like I said, isn’t it possible that Papius simply got the language of composition wrong? That’s really the only sticking point for whether Papius’ Logia could have been Q. It makes slightly more sense to me that he would have gotten one detail wrong than that he would have invented a sayings gospel out of whole cloth.

It’s not a narrative gospel, it just has a narrative sequence and has some narrative framings built into the pericopes. Scholars actually believe that Luke better preserves the narrative sequence and reconstructions of Q follow Luke’s chronology. How is it that Luke would know how to fix Matthew’s sequencing if Luke’s only source was Matthew?

Why would Luke follow the Markan material perfectly and only deviate at Q?

Forgive me if I misunderstood you in the other thread. I thought ou were summarizing Farrer, I didn’t realize you were only putting forth a personal hypothesis.

Perhaps you can explain how i]you* came to a conclusion that Luke’s Nativity should be removed?

How does the Farrer Hypothesis reconcile Luke’s nativity with Matthews…especially the conflicting geneologies?

Re: J the Bap, I disagree that it’s stylistic as much as theological. Luke was not comfortable with Jesus being in a subordinate postion to John the Baptist. As far as the what comes after the Nativity being independent of it, so what? The same can be said of Matthew for the most part.

I think that Luke’s Nativity is more concerened with the significance of the Virgin Birth than with the Matthean case for the Jewish Messiah so Luke has less reason to refer back to the nativity once he has made his point.

This whole thing about dropping Luke’s Nativity is your idea. You make the case. Show me stylistic inconsistencies. In Greek please.

Which would explain why Luke is eager to get past Jesus’ association with J the Bap and would also explain his lack of concern with the Jewish political aspects of the nativity.

Does any of the other Lucan material directly conflict with Matthew? (I actually don’t know, I’m asking sincerely. I should know this but I don’t). If Luke regards Matthew as authoritive enough to use all his Q material then why would he regard his as non-authoritative regarding something as important as a geneology?

14

There’s no reason to think that the Infancy was in wider circulation.

The NHL is Gnostic in character, and there has definitely been heavy Gnostic redaction to the GThom, generally held to have occurred prior to 200 BCE.

Thus Origen and Eusebius would certainly have been familiar with the GThom–the centerpiece of Gnostic theology.

Once again, if you don’t know, you don’t know–this gets funny below.

  1. It’s “Papias.”

  2. No copy of Papias survives. He’s not a classical source, he’s cited by classical sources (this one’s funny–the one that was too much to resist, actually, and I’ll get to it below).

  3. If Matthew was authoritative, and Q superfluous, why does Luke need Q?

This is funny. It’s Eusebius who quotes Papias regarding the Logia.

Without Eusebius, there is no Logia. He can be as full of shit as you like.

Oops.

Enough of this. Again, it’s a waste of my time.

Regards.

15

Oooh…you got me on my spelling…how clever.

I totally disagree that Thomas is a Gnostic Gospel, even thought it was redacted and used by Gnostics.

Nobody knows if Origen meant the sayings Gospel of Thomas or the Infancy but really, my point as it pertained to Q was only that a lack of classical references doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.

Speaking of “funny,” you cite Eusebius as a classical reference for Thomas but then say he’s full of shit about Papias’ Logia.

You can quibble about whether the source is really Papias or Eusebius but the point remains that there is at least one reference to a sayings gospel compiled by Matthew. The only problematic part of this for Q is that it was said to have been compiled in Hebrew.

16

Unfortunately, I’ll be away from my desk for the next week or so, and will be unable to continue this thread.

I ask the reader, however, to consider two basic truths in further investigation of Q. Such simple statements that they should really be axiomatic–and generally are, in every discussion of Luke except solving the Synoptic Problem.

The first is that Luke was self-aware. The second is that Luke was not an idiot.

When Luke sat down with his sources, whatever they may have been, he knew what he was doing. He knew he was about to reshape, reword, and add to his sources. He knew that some things would be redacted, and some things would be made up wholesale. Luke’s self-awareness.

More important for the present discussion, he knew his sources had done exactly the same thing. Luke’s lack of idiocy.

If Luke sat down with Matthew and Mark, he would be aware–as we are–of two simple things. Firstly, that Matthew obviously used Mark. Secondly, that Matthew’s additions to Mark clearly serve Matthew’s theological aims. Luke wasn’t an idiot, and he was doing the same thing himself. He knew what Matthew was up to.

In such a scenario, we should expect Luke to view Mark as the pre-eminent historical source. We should expect Luke to more or less follow the Markan order. Yet he would not have the same view of Matthew. Matthew would have been viewed as a largely literary creation, particularly when it veered from it’s Markan source.

Luke would have no reason to consider such a source authoritative. We would expect Luke to follow Matthew when it served Luke’s purposes, and to ignore him when it doesn’t.

This is exactly what Luke does.

What seems to be inevitably overlooked in any discussion of Mark without Q, is that the suggestion that Luke knew Matthew carries with it an implied addendum–he not only knew Matthew’s gospel, but knew exactly what Matthew’s gospel was.

I do not purport to present the solution to the Synoptic Problem. As I noted in the other thread, Q remains my working hypothesis–though for much different reasons than those being presented here.

The question of Q has been largely ignored for nearly two centuries. Austin Farrer, some half-century ago, should have buried it. He decimated every argument presented to the contrary for the next thirty years–it wasn’t until men like Kloppenborg that Farrer was rebutted in any meaningful sense of the term. For thirty years, people appealed to the scholarship of Streeter. No scholar, to my knowledge, endorses Streeter anymore. His arguments were implausible, and abandoned at the first opportunity–or rather, at the first opportunity Streeter could be abandoned without losing Q.

By rights, Farrer should have buried Q, if only to be resurrected later by Kloppenborg et al… Yet there is no indication that he even had an impact until decades later. Why? Why is there so much trepidation about re-entering the Synoptic maze that implausible babblings about a proto-Luke (which nobody endorses anymore) and a proto-Matthew (which is soon to follow suit), are endorsed without addressing the arguments to the contrary?

If Q is really such a secure hypothesis, then there should be no problem re-entering the maze, and finding our way out the same door. Yet there is seemingly great hesitance to do so, all the way up to the level of academia, where arguments for Q’s existence are cited by rote with complete oblivion to contrary arguments. That makes Q the product of recitation, not of reason.

Burton Mack (The Lost Gospel: Q and the Search for Christian Origins) and John S. Kloppenborg Verbim (Excavating Q) managed to write mammoth, highly technical discussions of Q, of its redactional tendencies, of varying stratum. Between these two mammoth tomes, one argument for the relative dependence of Matthew and Luke is presented–in the introduction to Kloppenborg’s work.

To present such in depth discussions of Q, with but one argument for it’s existence between them–with not a mention of Farrer or E P Sanders’ positions on the matter (to name but a couple–both cite Sanders’ book at length. They must have missed Sanders’ conclusions), is a gross miscarriage.

The time for resting on the laurels of 200 year old scholarship has passed. Again, I’m not yet persuaded that Matthew knew Luke, but I’m also not persuaded that we can be certain that the 2SH is the fastest way out of the maze.

Regards.

17

I’m not sure how much discussion we’re going to get until Iscariot returns, but here are a few points to ponder in the meantime.

What do you see as evidence that he does know Matt’s redactive techniques?

This will only fly if you can show how the missing pieces are ones that “don’t serve Luke’s means”. Perhaps you’re referring to this type of argument (Taken from Goulder):

I don’t find this very convincing. While it might explain why Luke omits the Q material in his Markan “blocks”, it doesn’t explain why he carefully collects the excised material and includes it elsewhere, much less explain why he includes it where he does. Goulder’s “beyond our knowing” is basically an admission that the explanation is incomplete. If the Q material was always placed after the corresponding Mark material, the argument might be a bit stronger. But the fact that it’s sometimes placed earlier and sometimes placed later weakens the argument considerably.

You’re obviously too sophisticated to be unaware of the difference between Matthew, the disciple, and “Matthew”, the author of the Gospel According to Matthew.

We know that “Matthew” wasn’t the disciple. For one thing, if he were an actual companion of Jesus, why would he need to copy from “Mark”, who was not an eyewitness, either according to ancient tradition or modern scholarship. So why couldn’t Papias be referring to the disciple, rather than “Matthew”? The scenario I’m envisioning is this: Matthew, the disciple, writes a sayings gospel in Aramaic or Hebrew. Let’s call it the Logia. This gets translated into Greek by several different authors/redactors, as Papias says. One version is Q. Another version is later used as the basis for GThomas. At the time Papias writes, the GMatthew we know either hasn’t been written, or is known by another name. At any rate, it’s not one Papias knows or mentions. Much later, Eusebius is looking for support among early Christian writers for the Gospels Eusebius prefers. One of those is called Matthew, so Eusebius digs up Papias to “prove” Matthew was written by the disciple before any of the other Gospels.

I don’t know why you feel the need to make fun of the other posters. The discussion would be more enjoyable without this kind of remark. There’s something funny in your own post, BTW: redaction of GThomas before 200 BCE? I really doubt that this is “generally held”.

18

[quote=Iscariot]
The time for resting on the laurels of 200 year old scholarship has passed. Again, I’m not yet persuaded that Matthew knew Luke, but I’m also not persuaded that we can be certain that the 2SH is the fastest way out of the maze.

[quote]

I can only agree with you here. If only those %^$&#(@ scholars would get off their butts and do their jobs, we wouldn’t have to do it for them!

:smiley:

19

You’re in luck :slight_smile: I haven’t left yet.

I already cited the Temptation. There’s also the virgin birth (it’s easy to see how Matthew came up with it, not so much how Luke did–unless he knew Matthew), the placement of JBap’s question/answer. And so on.

The only place the Temptation really fits is Matthew. It fairly reeks of Matthean redaction. That’s a fairly strong argument on its own, without getting to the rest. Kloppenborg and Mack both fail to explain the development of the Temptation narrative, observing that it’s late, and commenting on its significance, but failing utterly to explain it’s origin.

Why is Q, who does not tend to engage in Midrash, engaging in Midrash?

More importantly, why should I ignore Matthew as the likely author, when he does engage in midrash, and loves Mosaic themes?

As Goulder notes, Matthew is also favorable to animalia, a tendency seen only minimally in “Q”, and not at all in Luke.

There is also the “minor agreement” in the Passion–probably the most striking of all the minor agreements, made even more striking by the fact that Q doesn’t have a Passion.

Crying “interpolation” seems a bit circular to me–it’s interpolated because it doesn’t appear in Q, therefore Q exists. Other arguments, as Goulder notes, render Q unfalsfiable, and thus meaningless as a hypothesis.

I’m not persuaded by Goulder’s position (Neither, for that matter, is Goodacre, though, like the Gibson note above, it was the product of correspondence, so I’d have to inquire for a more specific reference). Goulder has understated Luke’s creativity–a creativity we see flourish in Acts.

There is no reason to presume that Luke followed anyone’s order, save Mark’s. The argument that he used Q’s order (standardly applied) is, as Goulder notes in his criticism of Documentia Q, circular. It was determined by fiat that Matthew used Q to enhance his theology, while Luke does what he claims to do–assemble an ordered account–and thus reflects an accurate ordering of his sources.

We know Luke doesn’t do that in Acts. It seems reasonable to conclude that he isn’t doing it in his gospel either.

‘d suggest that Papias doesn’t refer to any gospel at all, but simply refers to them as writings, with Eusebius later ascribing authorship to them. It’s odd that Papias’ description of the development of the gospels happens to be bang on for gospels that, by all other accounts, shouldn’t have been named yet. Mark does look like a collection of notes, and Matthew does seem to have a core sayings tradition somewhere behind him.

Why does Papias not only know that, but know them by name? That’s reaching a point that he’s too late to be considered someone who would know of a written gospel by an apostle.

Why is he so obviously wrong about Mark as a disciple of Peter?

Why would a collection of sayings (as you suggested), written by an apostle, not receive any acclaim, from any other source?

Papias is not an issue I’ve investigated thoroughly, I must confess, though an article in the inaugral edition of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus comes to mind, which argued (unpersuasively), that he should be considered a viable witness to oral tradition, while surmising that his witness to textual tradition was negligible.

The latter is the normal understanding–the attributions of Papias simply aren’t taken seriously. That is what Goodacre claimed, and what Diogenes claimed to be false. Yet I still haven’t seen a contemporary scholar cited who thinks the Logia has anything to do with Q.

There’s a difference between an obvious typographical error, and utterly flawed reasoning–which continued in the next post (when did I say Eusebius was full of shit? When did I say Thomas was Gnostic?)

It’s ironic–amusingly so–that someone whose argument is dependent on Eusebius would say that Eusebius was “full of shit.” One must be careful not to poison the well they’re drinking out of. Diogenes wasn’t. That’s funny.

Regards.

20

Oops! I’d had a cite above taken from correspondence with Jeffrey Gibson on the Temptation Narrative, but opted against using it. Thus there is no Gibson cite above.

Apologies.