Questions About The Q Gospel

[Neon Genesis]

I understand and mostly agree with the Q gospel theory most biblical scholars put forward. I understand that the similarities between the synoptic gospels point to an earlier source that likely served as the proto-type for the canonical gospels. But even if there is a Q gospel, how do we know that it contains the recorded sayings of the historical Jesus? Let's say it was the Gnostic Christians who won the religious battle over who gets to be a "true" Christian and the Gnostics had destroyed all the copies of the synoptic gospels. How would we have been able to determine that the synoptic gospels contained the authentic sayings of the historical Jesus if the Gnostics won and became the orthodox Christians? Would scholars have then presumed that the Gospel of Peter and Thomas contained 18% of the historical sayings of Jesus and we would be debating the historicity of the gospel of Peter?

[MagickMonkey]

While I don't deny the possibility of the jesus myth being based on a real person, I strongly doubt there is any record of what he actually said.

[dB-Paradox]

I'm kinda new to the Q gospel idea, but it makes sense to me. The Matthew and Luke gospels have much of the same material as the Mark gospel which is agreed upon as the first canonical gospel. Therefore Matthew and Luke copied. But both Matthew and Luke also contain similarities which are not in Mark. Why do they have these similarities? They must have had another source, the famed Q gospel. But that doesn't explain whether or not the Q gospel would contain the recorded sayings of Jesus any more than it explains that Mark contains them. How do we know Mark contains accurate information? We don't! We just know that both Matthew and Luke copied Mark and another source. It explains very little about actual sayings.

[Shyone]

I'm kinda new to the Q gospel idea, but it makes sense to me. The Matthew and Luke gospels have much of the same material as the Mark gospel which is agreed upon as the first canonical gospel. Therefore Matthew and Luke copied. But both Matthew and Luke also contain similarities which are not in Mark. Why do they have these similarities? They must have had another source, the famed Q gospel. But that doesn't explain whether or not the Q gospel would contain the recorded sayings of Jesus any more than it explains that Mark contains them. How do we know Mark contains accurate information? We don't! We just know that both Matthew and Luke copied Mark and another source. It explains very little about actual sayings.

Well, a couple of things. First, given the changes in context that the sayings are used for, it appears reasonable to assume that the sayings were transmitted mostly has sayings rather than stories. This suggests they were written down because someone thought the words themselves were memorable.

 

Also, the closer propinquity to Jesus' reported death makes them better candidates for sayings written down by someone that either may have heard them or who got them from someone who heard the words spoken (and, as happens, added what he thought he remembered).

[dB-Paradox]

How do we know they were sayings written down any closer to Jesus death than the book of Mark? We don't really know what the Q gospel is, do we?

[Antlerman]

How do we know they were sayings written down any closer to Jesus death than the book of Mark? We don't really know what the Q gospel is, do we?

Here's a translation of Kloppenborg's work on Q. THE COMPLETE BOOK OF Q.pdf

 

In this you will see three layers of saying from various time periods. The earliest are in bold and reflect simple aphorisms in often playful tones. The second layer, in normal type reflect a later more serious apocalyptic tone, condemning of the Pharisees who opposed the early movement and the movement's frustration with them in the type of condemnatory rhetoric. The 3rd layer, in italics, reflects an even later period of moving towards a personification of Jesus as form of Divine Wisdom.

 

What are the closest to original? I'd say layer one, those in bold type font in the attached pdf.

THE COMPLETE BOOK OF Q.pdf

[Neon Genesis]

In a recent episode of the Reasonable Doubts podcast, "Which Jesus?", they made the opposite argument, that the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus were the earliest teachings of Jesus and all the stuff from Luke's gospel about the kingdom being within are later additions to Q. You can get the episode here if you want to listen to it: http://doubtreligion.blogspot.com/2010/08/rd-extra-which-jesus.html

[Guest Valk0010]

The way i figure it, if you have the historical jesus, as a given or somehow already proven, then logically "at least some" if the phrases would have been accurately preserved, even to the point of the gospels as we known them. That said, with the root idea behind the Q gospel already establish, it goes without saying that the Q gospel would have "at least some" accurate sayings.

 

I would say unless somehow the classic mythicist position is correct, some truth would be in the sayings we know of, and therefore in the Q gospel.

 

One of the reasons, Q is dated in the 50's is because Paul never mentions it.

[oddbird1963]

I think Q represents just another lineage or tradition of sayings. As such, the historical verifiability of the Jesus sayings in Q should be taken with a huge margin for error. No one saying can be said to be 100%, 90%, or even 80% certain as to being an original saying of Jesus.

 

Traditions are really just stories created somewhere in the time after Jesus lived which may or may not have a nugget of authentic verbiage in them that can be said to be from Jesus.

 

We just don't know what he actually said. The transmission and preservation of his actual words are lost in the fog of history and the imagination of his followers.

[Neon Genesis]

I don't think we can ever know for certain what the historical Jesus taught and believed if he did in fact exist. I do think we can be pretty certain though of things Jesus most certainly did not do, though. If we presume the synoptic gospels contain sayings that date back to the historical Jesus, besides the obvious supernatural elements being debunked, I think we can be certain Jesus didn't know how to read or write if Jesus was just an ordinary peasant, so the whole story of Jesus reading in the temple is probably false. I think we can also be certain that the majority of the trial of Jesus and execution of Jesus is mythological like the stuff in the gospels where Jesus has lengthy theological debates with people while hung on the cross. Since we know the historical Pilate was a lot more cruel to the Jews than the way he's portrayed in the gospels, we can be certain that the stuff of Pilate trying to set Jesus free was all made up anti-Semitic propaganda.

[dB-Paradox]

I think Q represents just another lineage or tradition of sayings. As such, the historical verifiability of the Jesus sayings in Q should be taken with a huge margin for error. No one saying can be said to be 100%, 90%, or even 80% certain as to being an original saying of Jesus.

 

Traditions are really just stories created somewhere in the time after Jesus lived which may or may not have a nugget of authentic verbiage in them that can be said to be from Jesus.

 

We just don't know what he actually said. The transmission and preservation of his actual words are lost in the fog of history and the imagination of his followers.

This is pretty much how I see it. How can anyone know exactly what was said, and what was attributed to someone else?

[Antlerman]

I think Q represents just another lineage or tradition of sayings. As such, the historical verifiability of the Jesus sayings in Q should be taken with a huge margin for error. No one saying can be said to be 100%, 90%, or even 80% certain as to being an original saying of Jesus.

 

Traditions are really just stories created somewhere in the time after Jesus lived which may or may not have a nugget of authentic verbiage in them that can be said to be from Jesus.

 

We just don't know what he actually said. The transmission and preservation of his actual words are lost in the fog of history and the imagination of his followers.

This is pretty much how I see it. How can anyone know exactly what was said, and what was attributed to someone else?

I think the point of trying to say what is 'authentic' Jesus can be somewhat of a distraction. It could be taken to presume that those are the significant bits and the rest is just a bunch of barnacles hanging on to the sides of it, whereas I think it in a sense it's all significant.

 

Attribution of sayings was a common practice of students of a teacher in that day, where to be able to speak in the 'character' of their teacher was to prove one's knowledge and understanding of how to think like them. It was not a matter of it 'not being the teacher', but that the saying attributed to them, spoken as them, was judged in terms of appropriateness, not who actually said them. So in this sense, they were all "sayings of Jesus". They were all taken and preserved as appropriate by those who were early followers, whether they were the actual Jesus or a student's attribution.

 

Where it gets interesting is how dramatically it morphed into such strikingly different tones, the "Jesus on a good day, Jesus on a bad day" bits. It's as though this practice of attribution by serious students was treated with great license with later adherents to the movement to make him say just about anything that group wanted, within a certain framework of truth though. A reason for that would be because it was now deep into the stage of mythmaking, which was no longer about appropriateness, but about a movement's origin myths. The same could be said of the early Israelites in their imagined origin myths surrounding the character of Moses.

 

So what it appears as is early sayings, perhaps a few actual saying of the actual Jesus along with those of students spoken as Jesus would speak; gaining different quality of attribution at later times in the early movement's evolution (the actual Jesus likely gone by now, killed, or something like that), then layers of mythmaking by social movements that grew out of that; a certain popularizing of a movement in the way the real hippies were co-opted by popular culture to become the long-hair, bell-bottomed, tie-died popular "hippie" of the 60's, whereas the original hippies went and conducted a funeral for themselves and all moved out into Colorado. I imagine this is probably very much what the evolution of Christianity looked like.

 

Can we ever know what the actual Jesus really said? Perhaps to some extent, but it's really more the evolution of it as a whole that is the more fascinating question.