Q

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allisonP

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What(who) is Q?
I saw a page on earlychristianwritings.com that talked about Q.

As someone who is seeking the truth here I do not want to fill my head with stuff that will only confuse me more. :whacky: KWIM? :ehh:
So I thought I would ask you wise people what you knew about it.
 
Q is from the German “Quelle” meaning “source”.

It is ASSUMED by many of the modern Biblical scholars that, because of the similarities in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) that the writers of the gospels had some secret written mega “source” from which they all drew and which has somehow been lost, strayed, or stolen by those rabid Catholics. . . :rolleyes:

It is not a proven hypothesis.

Personally, if there were anything from which those writers (and John as well) “drew from” in writing their gospels, it would be a human person–Mary. How else would we know that “she pondered these things in her heart” etc.

Personally, I am not impressed by the “Q” theory. (In case it wasn’t obvious, LOL). IMO, people should be paying more attention to what Jesus taught and being obedient and humble, rather than trying to dissect every word in the gospels and throw doubt on everything from its writers (why CAN"T they be simply Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, pray tell) to its “dubious” interpretations. . .and don’t even START me on the gnostics and Constantine. Not till I’ve checked my blood pressure! 😃
 
Do the synoptics have similar, even identical, passages? They must have taken material from an unacknowledged (and, to us, undiscovered) source. Let’s call it Q (from the German Quelle = “source”). The one thing these biblical scholars know for sure is that any account we read must have been taken from an earlier account that is lost to us. It can’t be the case that Matthew and Mark and Luke wrote their Gospels based on their own legwork, occasionally using the same witnesses’ testimonies and writing more or less independently. They must have plagiarized a now-lost document.

Karl Keating: catholic.com/thisrock/1998/9802up.asp
 
Q is a supposition. There is a tendency for some modern scholars to assume that there is a common written source for Matthew, Mark, & Luke…
Now, this is just my own idea, but I have mentioned it before in discussions on this subject, so for what it is worth:
The traditional teaching for generations has been that the first Gospel was Matthew in Hebrew/Aramaic, & that our present Matthew, Mark, & Luke all used Matthew (Aramaic) as a source…Well, wouldn’t that be what “Q” is supposed to be?
I guess I just have to wonder at the motives of teachers/scholars in trying to raise up an idea that confuses & upsets people’s faith in the Gospel accounts, when there is a perfectly good, & perfectly orthodox, explanation for what they are talking about…
My point is, that you really don’t need to worry about this so-called “Q”, because believers have always known that there were oral & written sources that went into the writing of the Scriptures…Only, it seems like, these days, there are a lot of people with a need to prove that those of us who take the Bible seriously are somehow missing out on their “brilliant new discoveries”.
And, yes, it’s true, Mary was a source who was right there. The apostles & other disciples of Jesus were sources that were right there. There were all kinds of sources, including the original written documents that were used…There were oral sources–As someone whose grandfather was the last in a long line of folks whose main source of history was the old Oral Tradition from the Appalachians, I can tell you, that the Oral Tradition was word for word. It was extremely reliable.
It’s just a modern label. Don’t let it confuse you!
 
To give a purely literary definition, Q is that material that is found in both Luke and Matthew, but not in Mark.

So, the hypothesis is, if Matthew and Luke didn’t get this material from Mark (and note that this merely assumes that Mark was written first), then they must have used another common source, and that unknown source is called Q. No physical evidence of Q has ever been discovered.

Really, the literary definition is about all there is.
 
Not only is it just a literary definition, but the whole Q theory seems to be based on an assumption that the Holy Spirit was somehow limited in how He inspired the Gospels…
(It probably shows that I think Q is just silly…People who doubt the inspiration of Scripture have to have their other, fall-back explanations of how it was written. Once we assume that the Bible is actually true, & God-inspired, there is no need for things like Q to trouble us…).
 
When I was studying scripture in college back in the 70’s I studied about what is known as “Q” source or gospel.And from these studies I do see the possibility of a one time existance. I base this on the internal evidence mentioned above - those common saying in Matthew and Luke but not Mark. Also, some of the same sayings and stories can be found in non canonical gospels as well (which can be used as further proof).

I think however there is a common misperception about “Q”. The misperception is this; Q was a completed work similar to the 4 Gospels. But what scholars teach is Q was mostlikely a list of saying and some parables but not in a narrative form. I guess the best way to describe it is to say it was similar to the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament such as Proverbs. So what Matthew and Luke would be working with is a list of common sayings not a complete life of Christ.

This could also explain why Q no longer exist. It was not needed once the Gospels were completed and in common use. Also, it may not exist because during the times of persecutions, one thing the Romans would do was to destroy and Christian writings they could get their hands on in their effort to destroy Christianity.
As a matter of history during most of the Roman persecutions the Romans would concentrate on destroying first on the leadership and second on our literature.

So understanding Q as a list of sayings and not a full narative, plus the internal evidence which seems to exist, I accept the possibility and probrability of Q having existed.

Finally, I do agree that most of this discussion should remain within the academic relm because as part of the popular discussion I see more confussion than enlightenment.
 
TEME525, I understand what you are saying about the possibility of Q as a disparate collection of sayings, rather than a discrete document.

However, the theory still relies on Mark being written first, in order to be a source for Matthew and Luke. Traditionally, Matthew was considered to be the first Gospel written, written for the Jewish community. For myself, I remain unconvinced of Marcan priority, and tend to believe in the traditional sequence with Matthew first.
 
To me Q as the primordial source of the Gospels, sometimes as an actual book, is as unscientific as “dark matter” in Cosmology: a patch to save face.

AAMOF, although I’m unsure about its genesis, it sounds to me as pandering to Protestants, as Catholics know that there’s always been Sacred Tradition before Sacred Scriptures and the former was the origin of the latter.

Some passages are identical in the Synoptics because they are facts, others aren’t because the author decided to emphasize different aspects of the same facts and others are missing because the author decided to ignore it.

No wonder it’s impossible to find any kind of evidence of Q, IMHO.

Besides, I really dislike such archeological analysis and desconsctruction of Sacred Scriptures. It’s missing the forest for the trees.

:blessyou:
 
quick funny anecdotal story -

I had this professor at a seminary I took some classes - I run into him now and then at different events.

I asked him about the synoptic gospels - namely that theory that Mark wrote first and Matthew/Luke borrowed from him and “Q”. I asked him why we didn’t accept X’s statement (I forget who X is - some early writer) that Matthew originally wrote his gospel in Hebrew. He said we didn’t have a copy of it.

I said “We don’t have a copy of Q yet you believe in that”.

(He smiled at me and said he didn’t necessarily believe in a Q - but he didn’t say what he does believe)
 
Heck, I thought you were talking about the British Secret Service’s special technical assistant as seen in 007 and recently played by that British comedian.

CDL
 
This is just specualtion but what if this mysterious Q source was the Catholic Church. The Gospels were all orally spoken first and then written down second.
 
Q: A book that four other books were supposedly derived from. Even though there is no evidence that this book has ever existed. No scroll. No shread of paper. No patirsitc references. Nada.

A sourceless source. Gotta love it. :rolleyes:

Mel
 
This is a great read:

The Church in History Information Centre
Code: 
		 [www.churchinhistory.org](www.churchinhistory.org)

		  **THE AUTHORS OF THE GOSPELS**

		 **[According to the Clementine Tradition]**

		 **By**

		 **Dennis Barton**

		 **
The Gospels are Historical**

The theory that Mark’s gospel was the first to be written dominates New Testament Studies today. This theory has led to serious **and widespread **doubts about the historical reliability of the Gospels, upon which our understanding of Christianity is built.
Code: 
		 'The Authors of the Gospels' sets forth an alternative view.  Using primary sources written 			by the earliest Christian historians (**The** Church Fathers) and the findings of modern literary analysis,the author argues strongly in favour of a return to the chronology widely used prior to the time 			of Jerome.

		 This would conform to the traditional teaching of the Church that two of the Gospels were written 			by eyewitness companions of Jesus.** The author 			points out that this teaching was recently renewed in a Dogmatic Constitution, Dei Verbum, of the Second Vatican 			Council.**

		 **K.J.Gajewski**
 
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