What or Who is Q?

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My Catholic Bible mentions a Q in it’s commentary as some kind of source? Can anyone give me a little advice on what or who that is or what it means?

Thanks
 
This is probably a reference to the so-called “Q Document”(q if for quelle in German, which means source). Its existence is only a speculation among historians. It is thought that there may be such a document which was the source for some new testament writings.
 
I’ve heard of the Q references to the gospels…It’s like an early edition that the Gospel writers may have had. It’s very similar to the Gospel of Mark. It makes some sense to. Most of what is in the Gospel of Mark, the shortest Gospel, is in the other Gospels.
The recognition of 19th-century New Testament scholars that Matthew and Luke share much material not found in their generally believed common source, the Gospel of Mark, has suggested a second common source, termed the Q document. This hypothetical lost text — also called the Q Gospel, the Sayings Gospel Q, the Secret of Q, the Synoptic Sayings Source, the Q Manuscript, and (in the 19th century) The Logia — seems most likely to have comprised a collection of Jesus’ sayings. Recognizing such a Q document is one of two key elements in the “two-source hypothesis” alongside the priority of Mark.

The two-source hypothesis is the most widely accepted solution to the Synoptic Problem, which concerns the literary relationships between and among the first three canonical gospels (the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke), known as the Synoptic Gospels. Similarity in word choices and event placement shows an interrelationship. The synoptic problem concerns how this interrelation came to pass, as well as the nature of this interrelationship. According to the two-source hypothesis, Matthew and Luke both used the Gospel of Mark, independently of one another. This necessitates the existence of a hypothetical third source in order to explain the double tradition material where there is agreement between Matthew and Luke that is not in Mark. This hypothetical source is named Q out of convenience.
 
Of course one of the problems with the “Q” hypothesis is that there is no mention of any such writing in the Patristics. We certainly know of the existence of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John from an early date, but no other mystery source.

No evidence exists for it. It is theory based on the similarity to the Synoptic Gospels.
 
rsesar has given a good summary of the issue and why people hypothesize a Q.

I would just point out that even if one accepts that was a Q (a hypothetical collection of Jesus-sayings – which seems a reasonable enough hypothesis given the coincidence of sayings in Matt and Luke), there is still the issue that the only two Q-communities that we know of are those of Matthew and Luke. It does not seem to designate some an autonomous Christian tradition about Jesus (unless we find new documents, which is of course always possible). Instead, as far as we know, if it existed (either as a text or oral collection of sayings) it only existed as something integrated into the Apostolic traditions that ultimately took written form in Matthew and Luke.

salaam.
 
It’s entirely possible that Q was an orally transmitted collection of “sayings” of Jesus, which would account for both the similarities of syntax and phrasing and the absence of reference to any Q document. We moderns tend to underestimate the abilities of cultures to preserve large volumes of material by oral transmission.
 
Q is the hidden gospel of Jesus. It is believed by several scholars that this gospel was found in a stone vase beneath the sands of Syria, near Antioch, where a prominent Christian community was started by St. Peter. It is believed that when Jesus proclaims Peter to be the rock and foundation of the church in Matthew 16:18 that Jesus bestowed Peter with this papyrus, knowing full well that he himself would soon be put to death.

It is a series of wisdom statements, similar in style to those of Confucius, Muhammad, Buddha, et. al. Some scholars believe that Q is the true gospel which Jesus came to proclaim, or, in short, the actual Word of God.

…

(I just made all of that up…sorry…I couldn’t resist…:o :rolleyes: 😛 :o)
 
The theory that the synoptic gospels all had a single source, a written document.

Of course, it makes much more sense that they had a single source…the actual events.

My question is what exactly are they trying to gain in putting forth this theory. Other then adding an extra space between the gospels and the events they portray. Thus giving another venue for error to enter in, or rather another avenue to claim error.
 
A number of scholars are already questioning the existence of Q, so the Q hypothesis (aka Two-Source Hypothesis) is not unanimously accepted as some would have us believe. There are other hypotheses solving the Synoptic problem such as the Griesbach, Farrer-Goulder, Augustinian, or even the Four-Document Hypothesis, which postulates more documents than the Two-Source one.

I wish more Biblical scholars would give a more balanced view of their own rather than just parroting the Markan priority/Two-Source Hypothesis we so commonly hear of today.
 
Of course there’s a Q. It’s known in reputable circles by another name though:

Sacred Tradition.
 
Q is not even listed in the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1914. So is this a hypothesis that has developed since then? If so, what’s it worth for historical reliability?
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Q is not even listed in the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1914. So is this a hypothesis that has developed since then? If so, what’s it worth for historical reliability?
Click to expand...
It’s worth about as much as those ‘real jesus’ documentaries you see on TV around Easter and Christmas every year.

I understand it lines the bottom of a birdcage real well.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Q is not even listed in the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1914. So is this a hypothesis that has developed since then? If so, what’s it worth for historical reliability?
Click to expand...
The Q Hypothesis has been around since the 19th century. Only, it was at that time called Logia (Λ) because the German theologian Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher in 1832 interpreted an enigmatic statement by the early Christian writer Papias of Hierapolis (“Matthew compiled the oracles (Greek: logia) of the Lord in a Hebrew manner of speech”) as giving witness to a sayings collection that was available to the Evangelists, rather than the traditional interpretation that Papias was referring to the writing of Matthew in Hebrew.

By the late 19th century, Logia had turned into Q (Quelle) because doubts began to grow on the propriety of anchoring the existence of the collection of sayings in the testimony of Papias. In the first two decades of the 20th century, more than a dozen reconstructions of Q were made. However, these reconstructions differed so much from each other that not a single verse of Matthew was present in all of them. As a result, interest in Q subsided and it was neglected for many decades until it was revived in the 1960’s with the resurfacing of the Gospel of Thomas amongst the Nag Hammadi library.

So, it could be that by the time the Catholic Encyclopedia was compiled that interest on Q had mostly waned so as to be deemed not worthy of attention.
 
Simon_X said:
My Catholic Bible mentions a Q in it’s commentary as some kind of source? Can anyone give me a little advice on what or who that is or what it means?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Q could very well be St. Matthew’s Gospel in Aramaic. Early Church Historians assert that St. Matthew was the first to write an account of Christ’s words and deeds. St. Mark would have been the second Gospel and the first in Greek. The St. Matthew that we know would have been a Greek translation of St. Matthew’s Gospel that incorporated St. Mark’s Gospel. St. Luke states in his prologue that he borrowed from other texts, so it’s possible that he used St. Matthew in Greek and St. Mark in Greek.

It was quite common at that time to “harmonize” or copy different texts by merging them together in the same document (e.g., preserve parchment, ease of transporting one roll versus multiple rolls, etc.), so it should not shock anyone that the Greek translator of St. Matthew in Aramaic would also have included St. Mark in Greek, and attempted to merge the two Gospels into a coherent whole. This explains many of the seeming internal inconsistencies in St. Matthew (and subsequently St. Luke); the editor was trying to preserve everything that he deemed important from both St. Matthew’s Aramaic text and St. Mark’s Greek text without being duplicative or redundant.

That’s the “SFH” theory 😃
 
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