The Gospel "Q"

[Ghosty]

Well, I don’t know much about the scholarship on Daniel, but I know that the Letters of Paul have been debated since they first became widely circulated. The earliest Church Fathers expressed doubts about some of the letters being written by Paul himself, though few doubted their Inspiration. I’m comfortable with those criticisms because they come from people who were very close to the sources themselves, and were far more likely to know better than even the best modern scholars.

 

[twf]

Yes, but how could 1 Timothy be inspired if it is not written by Paul himself? Because the author claims to be St. Paul, and speaks with Paul’s authority, giving important instructions to his ‘bishop’ Timothy.

 

[Apolonio]

If we are tossing hypotheses around, I would like to offer this one. The “Q” source is Our Lady, Mary the Mother of God.

Response:
Hmm. Well, I do think that the Gospel of John was influenced by Mary. However, I don’t think the “Q” is really Mary. The Q is a bunch of sayings from Jesus. And back in that day, oral tradition was a major form of transmission. They would memorize sayings and hand them on. This might be the reason why there are some differences in the Gospels.

 

[twf]

But we must remember that there are no actual contradictions. Every supposed contradiction has been addressed at some point or another. Jesus and his disciples probably spoke Aramaic, so that would also account for slightly different wording…translating the Aramaic into Greek. As well, word for word quotes are not necessarily necessary, as long as it conveys the exact same thing that Christ meant it to.

 

[Ghosty]

I don’t know the specifics of 1 Timothy, but I do know that the writings are inspired because the Church tells us so. The Church had much debate on the subject when it formed the canon, so I’m sure these matters were dealt with. The only way we know that ANY works are inspired is through tradition and the Church, so I have no problem putting faith in works that may not have been written by the person they’re attributed to.

 

[J_Chrysostomos]

Ghosty:

The only way we know that ANY works are inspired is through tradition and the Church,

I disagree with this - not because you’re saying the Church helps us know which are inspired, but that it is the ONLY way to know. The books of the Bible also attest to their own inspiration! If you look at the books within the canon today, you will find no error, many ideas that were proven correct centuries later, and a remarkable unity throughout - despite the fact that the first book was written by Moses in 1400 BC and the last was written by the Apostle John in AD 100. The books which are uninspired - Thomas, Enoch, etc., are replete with errors, contradictions, and (often) clear heresy and denial of what the inspired Scriptures say. They prove themselves to NOT be inspired just as the Biblical books prove themselves to be so.

so I have no problem putting faith in works that may not have been written by the person they’re attributed to.

So… if Tradition claims they were written by Paul, and they weren’t, doesn’t that mean Tradition has erred? Or even worse, if the book says it’s written by someone in the text (Paul’s letters, Gospel of John by inference, Book of Daniel) and it wasn’t written by that person, then that book has error and should be chucked. The Church Fathers, the great Catholic theologians, and the Reformers all agree that Scripture must be inerrant to be inspired, and I think Pope Leo XIII basically said to ascribe error to Scripture is heresy. Unbelief creeping in our “commentaries” has driven many away from the faith, and therefore is dangerous and should be fought.

 

[Ghosty]

So… if Tradition claims they were written by Paul, and they weren’t, doesn’t that mean Tradition has erred? Or even worse, if the book says it’s written by someone in the text (Paul’s letters, Gospel of John by inference, Book of Daniel) and it wasn’t written by that person, then that book has error and should be chucked.

The Church can not teach heresy. Period. Heresy can exist within it, but it will never be a part of Church teaching. To claim otherwise is to claim that Christ was a liar.

Scripture can not defend itself, nor can it explain itself, and therefore can’t be relied upon to tell us itself whether or not it’s inspired. I could take the New Testament and change every word except the parts required in your argument to demonstrate Inspiration, and sell it as divine Scripture. Where would your argument be then? How would you be able to tell the truth from fiction, espescially if I did this just 100 years after the death of Christ? There would be absolutely no way for you to know it was the inspired word. Only Tradition can tell us what is Scripture, this is why it took hundreds of years for canon to finally get settled; it couldn’t attest to its own veracity. Tradition existed BEFORE Scripture by definition, and Scripture is the Inspired recording of Tradition in addition to unique divine revelations. It’s not as if someone was following Christ around writing down the Gospel of Mark as they went.

Insofar as the letter itself goes, I’m not certain that Tradition itself DOES claim it was certainly written by Paul. It could have been dictated, or it could have been written under Paul’s authority. Both would have been acceptable at the time, and could have used Paul’s name and claim of authorship.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

So… if Tradition claims they were written by Paul, and they weren’t, doesn’t that mean Tradition has erred? .

I think that who wrote what is small t tradition, maybe better called legend. This can be in error. It is to be differentiated from capital T Tradition which is guaranteed true.

 

[loyola_rambler]

Joe Kelley:

I think that who wrote what is small t tradition, maybe better called legend. This can be in error. It is to be differentiated from capital T Tradition which is guaranteed true.

Bingo! Too many people are willing to accept the superstitions of the Middle Ages as absolute truths just because “that’s what the Church has always taught”. The reality is that the teachings of the early Church were primarily oral. That’s where the Ikons of the Eastern Orthodox developed and why the majority of apostolic representations are pictoral.

Is there or was there a Q gospel? Possibly. Let’s not forget that there were several non-canonical gospels. They were left out of the original Bible at the Council of Nicea. Further, it’s possible that Constantine had many writings destroyed that didn’t support his agenda. Like the book burnings of Nazi Germany, the destruction of original writings or all known copies of extent writings makes it impossible to know what’s actually been lost.

At best, Q is a prototype of early Christian teachings. It’s hypothetical and will never be able to be proven one way or another. One of the things that perpetuates the theory is that the writings of Naj’ Hammadi predate the earliest existing copies of the Bible. We know that the Bible has been twisted many times throughout history for the political motives of various rulers and that there is quite a bit that we have to take on faith. If the writings found at Naj’ Hammadi are more authentic, then where did the other writings come from and why don’t they match exactly? And if they did match, they would only be able to match if all of the authors were exposed to identical teachings. There could only be identical teachings if there was a common writing used by all apostles in teaching in distant lands. Thus, the “common writing” would be the Q gospel.

But…is it real or just deductive reasoning? Call us from heaven when you get the answer.

 

[J_Chrysostomos]

loyola rambler:

Is there or was there a Q gospel? Possibly. Let’s not forget that there were several non-canonical gospels. They were left out of the original Bible at the Council of Nicea. Further, it’s possible that Constantine had many writings destroyed that didn’t support his agenda. Like the book burnings of Nazi Germany, the destruction of original writings or all known copies of extent writings makes it impossible to know what’s actually been lost.

This sounds like Dan Brown. I for one don’t think God would allow books He wanted in the canon to be destroyed by some emperor. Also, the non-canonical gospels were ALL written long after the apostles died, while Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written between 50 and 90 AD - well within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses.

We know that the Bible has been twisted many times throughout history for the political motives of various rulers and that there is quite a bit that we have to take on faith.

The Nag Hammadi texts were all written later and universally condemned as heretical by the Fathers of the Church. Unlike the canonical scriptures, the NH books don’t have a uniform theology, and they certainly don’t match up with what the OT and NT says. (E.g. the Gospel of Thomas saying a woman has to become male to inherit the kingdom of God)

There could only be identical teachings if there was a common writing used by all apostles in teaching in distant lands. Thus, the “common writing” would be the Q gospel.

Or - now this is a crazy idea - maybe Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John actually did write what we’ve always believed them to have written! Maybe there is no Q - just four guys writing about Jesus’ life based on eyewitnesses and their own experiences. There is NO evidence for a “Q” - no fragments, no mention by the Fathers, no nothing. The whole Q idea was developed by liberals who wanted to “de-mythologize” scripture and find a “historical Jesus”.

 

[Ghosty]

The Nag Hammadi texts were all written later and universally condemned as heretical by the Fathers of the Church. Unlike the canonical scriptures, the NH books don’t have a uniform theology, and they certainly don’t match up with what the OT and NT says. (E.g. the Gospel of Thomas saying a woman has to become male to inherit the kingdom of God)

Exactly. The Nag Hammadi type were condemned as heretical long before Constantine. Incidently, Constantine himself was a heretic later in his life, as were his children, so the Church actually survived in spite of their actions.

 

[Melchior]

Apolonio:

I think “Q” is not a document, but oral tradition.

It is neither as there is no evidence for it. It cannot be a tradition because there was no “Q” “tradition” prior to a few decades ago. So it cannot be argued from either a documentary or traditional standpoint since it is a theory built of literally nothing.

It is the intellectual equivalent of me saying, out of the blue, that Spider-Man comic books were really based on an earlier comic book we will call “X”. Now I have no evidence or source documents to support this and it has never been suggested before. But since we know that spiders existed prior to Stan Lee and Men existed prior to Stan Lee that Stan Lee must not really be the person who wrote the original Spider-Man Comics.

See? Pretty believable right? Completely logical.

Mel

 

[AmandaCatherine]

Melchior:

It is neither as there is no evidence for it. It cannot be a tradition because there was no “Q” “tradition” prior to a few decades ago. So it cannot be argued from either a documentary or traditional standpoint since it is a theory built of literally nothing.

It is the intellectual equivalent of me saying, out of the blue, that Spider-Man comic books were really based on an earlier comic book we will call “X”. Now I have no evidence or source documents to support this and it has never been suggested before. But since we know that spiders existed prior to Stan Lee and Men existed prior to Stan Lee that Stan Lee must not really be the person who wrote the original Spider-Man Comics.
See? Pretty believable right? Completely logical.

Besides, we all know that the winners are the ones who write history, and they of course destroyed any documents that contradicted them! So we should believe whatever seems the least believable, since that must be the truth. No evidence=it must be true, according to this logic!

 

[buffalo]

The winners write history? Were the Nazi archives and testimony taken true or false after WWII?

 

[AmandaCatherine]

buffalo:

The winners write history? Were the Nazi archives and testimony taken true or false after WWII?

I was being sarcastic, but there are many gnostic types out there who are spreading that idea, including Dan Brown. I’m not sure what you are asking regarding WWII.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

On a lighter note …

Applying Biblical Criticism to *The Lord of the Rings, *from Mark Shea:
[markshea.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_markshea_archive.html](Catholic and Enjoying It!: 12/01/2002 - 01/01/2003)

One standard staple of biblical criticism for the past century has been the theory that the Old Testament isn’t composed of “books” that somebody “wrote” but is instead a pastische of “sources” that religio political factions “assembled”. If you find yourself thinking “Only an academic–and a German one–could suppose that the foundational literature of Western civilization could be pasted together by a committee and only an academic–and a German one–could suppose that you find out what the text really means by dissolving it in the acid bath of deconstruction to tease out the supposedly original Yahwist (J), Elohist (E), Priestly (P) and Deuteronomic (D) sources”, you’re right. The theory has run into trouble (since nobody seems to agree on which cut n paste fragments belong to which source and nobody knows why the editors who allegedly stuck all these sources together did what they did. But, as with pure naturalistic theories of evolution, your task is to shut up and bow to your superiors, not ask obvious questions.

In the spirit of redaktion criticism, Bruce Baugh now offers some preliminary theories on the variation in sources used by the makers of the Two Towers. I think he’s on to something.

Jackson is clearly operating from Rohanian sources for purely political reasons. Truly educated people can see these things right off the bat. It’s obvious to any thinking person that the whole “Tolkien Authorship Myth” must go. The Lord of the Rings was not “written” by a so-called “author” named “Tolkien”. Rather, it is a final redaction of sources ranging from the Red Book of Westmarch, to Elvish Chronicles, to Gondorian records, to tales of Rohirrim which were only transcribed centuries later. The various pressure groups which preserved these stories all had their own agendas. For instance, the Gondorian records clearly seek to elevate the claims of the Aragorn monarchy over the house of Denethor. So the record has been sanitized. Indeed, many scholars now believe the “Faramir being healed by Aragorn” doublet of the “Frodo being helped by Aragorn” is a sanitized version of the murder of Denethor by Aragorn through the administration of poison. “Faramir” never existed and is a corruption of “Boromir”, who died under uncertain circumstances in the wilderness. Since the scenes of Aragorn healing “Frodo” also take place in the wilderness, most scholars conclude that “Frodo” is a mythic echo of Boromir, whose quest for Power is like Aragorn’s quest for the Throne. Perhaps, Boromir was one of Aragorn’s first victims. Of course, the whole “Ring” motif appears in countless folk tales and is to be discounted altogether. The real “War of the Ring” was doubtless some small tribal dispute that was exaggerated by bardic sources, much like the Exodus or the Fall of Troy. Gandalf appears to have been some sort of shamanistic figure, introduced to the Narrative by W (the Westmarch source) out of deference to local Shire cultic practice.

to be continued …

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Rohan seems to have been of much help to the establishment of the Aragorn monarchy and so R sources find their way into the final version of the LOTR narrative, but greatly altered so as to give Theoden a subordinate role. Meanwhile, we can only guess at the Sauron and Saruman sources, since they seem to have been destroyed by the victors and give a wholly negative view of these doubtlessly complex, warm, human and many-sided figures. Scholars now know, of course, that the identification of Sauron with “pure evil” is simply wrong. Indeed, many scholars have become quite fond of Sauron and are searching the records with a growing passion and zeal for any lore connected with the making of the One Ring. “It’s all nonsense, of course,” says Dr. Gol M. Smeagol, “There never was such a Ring. Still… I… should… very much like to have a look at it. Just for scholarly purposes of course.”