Talk:Q document

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To the editors of this page: I'm afraid it needs to be rewritten.

I am a nonspecialist reader; today I was reading a series of Wiki articles on biblical scholarship (following up a meatspace argument about the historicity or ahistoricity of Jesus). As usual, wikipedia was endlessly informative and useful and quite good about balancing the discussion between atheist and christian interpretations. But then I ended up here and foundered. The article is basically unreadable and very un-encyclopedia-like; I would suggest that this is because it lacks an introduction, a sentence or two which discusses the state of biblical scholarship, and the various sources for the new testament, and where the Q Document fits into this. I would do this myself, but I know little or nothing about the topic.

A proper intro should read something like:"...a postulated lost textual source for the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. The New Testament is generally recognized by scholars to be composed of writings from three sources; accounts by apostles of Jesus, written sometime after his death, collections of the sayings of Jesus, recorded in the form of epistles, and finally writings of early Christians such as Paul...." The Q document, if it existed, would be a common source for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which are epistles which generally seem to draw on information from the Gospel of Mark, but also information not present in Mark...

I have of course invented the previous (and factually incorrect)sentence to show what a proper introduction might look like if anyone wanted to write it.jackbrown 09:38, 19 December 2005 (UTC)jackbrown

  • I suggest that a couple diagrams could help even more. For example, a diagram of the Two Source Hypothesis with arrows from Mark and Q pointing to Matthew and Luke, as found in textbooks. A highlighted example of a synopsis, separating out Q material with yellow highlighter (as hypothesized), would also help. --Peter Kirby 18:48, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Can someone put this sentence into something resembling a legible sentence:

Further textual analysis tends to confirm this hypothesis as Q, the document generated by subtracting Mark from the intersection of Matthew and Luke, has a thematic structure and consistency that is generally considered unlikely to be due to chance.
It starts off in one direction and goes somewhere else. -- Zoe
It is trying to say that Q has certain themes that are more prominent in itself than in either Matthew and Luke that you would not expect to find by subtracting Mark from them. What this article really needed is a summation of all the arguments for Q, which I've provided now. -- Stephen C. Carlson
But it isn't grammatically correct. -- Zoe
It got rewritten, but that sentence could have used a comma before "as" since it was being used as a conjunction. -- Stephen C. Carlson
  • In a month or two I could add a section about various uses of the stratigraphical hypothesis in the reconstruction of the historical Jesus. I think the arguments for and against need their own page, as most of it is more related to the two-gospel hypothesis than the topic at hand. Or perhaps it could go on the synoptic problem page... whatever. I think history could stand to be divided up into stages, too. NT times to Harnack, Harnack to Kloppenborg, and then stuff from the last twenty years. Perhaps there should also be a page about Kloppenborg's hypothesis, as it's gotten a lot of attention recently, too. Any thoughts on this? Zeichman 20:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

"Two-Source Hypothesis" is hyphenated on another page that refers to it, and I have altered this page so that it is hyphenated here. One newspaper headline says:

New Age-Discrimination Rules Proposed

and another says:

New-Age Discrimination Rules Proposed

The difference in meaning is a good argument in favor of the tradional way of using hyphens. -- Mike Hardy

Contents

[edit] If this article is going to have a "Case for Q" section, should it not also have a "Case Against Q" section?

Feel free to write one. Ashibaka (tock) 02:47, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

  • I added one, based partly on Goodacre's book The Case Against Q. It's always a good exercise to write for the "enemy" POV. :) --Peter Kirby 00:25, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV? I don't think so.

The first line states that "For alert readers of the New Testament, the recognition that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke share much material not found in their familiar source, the Gospel of Mark, has suggested a common second source, called the Q document (Q for German Quelle, "source")."

"For alert readers"? You must be joking. How is that a neutral POV? I've added the NPOV tag because of it. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:58, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

So, what is the Ta bu shi da yu adjective to specify those readers who might notice such things? Insert whatever the appropriate Ta bu shi da yu adjective may be, please, and remove the little tag. --Wetman 04:28, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Andriesb. "Alert readers" has been changed to "New testament scholars." Very telling change indeed. Does one see the shift in emphasis? The POV of Wikipedia is that the alert reader is not to be credited, and only "New Testament scholars" have the requirewd authority. The "alert reader" is very much the person Virginia Woolf dubbed The Common Reader in two collections of essays on literary subjects, as seen by the educated and alert, critical but non-professional reader. Is such a reader now an "elitist" at the cultural level of Ta bu shi da yu? A question to ponder, not to answer. --Wetman 19:52, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Speculative material =

Some have gone so far as to speculate that Q Source was one of the ‘parchments’ used by Paul in the persecution of the early Church.

I moved this statement from the main article. It could be a garbled form of a genuine position, but as written I'm not aware of a single scholar that advocates this. There are a lot speculative things about Q, but let's at least include those that a fair number of scholars actually hold. Stephen C. Carlson 03:30, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

[edit] Miscellaneous material

It should also be noted that the prominent liberal theologian Dr. John Robinson, concluded that Matthew's Gospel was written as early as 40 A.D. (see: Augustinian hypothesis). This is argued would undermine the Q document which accepts a later date.

Robinson did not reach any definite conclusion but deliberately set out to test the limits of what could be proven, not necessarily to prove such things as an AD 40 date of Matthew (yes I've read his book). More importantly, some have placed Q in the 30s and so this presents no absolute problem for a Q, only a subjective one (i.e. scholars who place Q in the 40s or 50s would be wrong, but that does nothing to affect the plausibility of the existence of Q).

John Wenham who the work that many scholars find to be one of the most prominent works supporting the traditional Augustinian hypothesis wrote the following in his work "The [Church] fathers are almost unanimous in asserting that Matthew the tax-collector was the author, writing first, for Hebrews in the Hebrew language: Papias (c. 60-130), Irenaeus (c. 130-200), Pantaenus (died c. 190), Origen (c. 185-254), Eusebius (c. 260-340), Epiphanius (c. 315-403), Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315-86) and others write in this vein. The Medieval Hebrew gospel of Matthew in Even Bohan could be a corrupted version of the original. Though unrivaled, the tradition has been discounted on various grounds, particularly on the supposed unreliability of Papias, from whom some would derive the whole tradition." (John Wenham, Redating Matthew, Mark & Luke (1991), p. 116).

I have pared this down to what is necessary (it's a variation on the Farmer argument).

Historian David Hackett Fischer considers historical immediacy to be one of the key determinants of historicity and the church father Papias is a very early source in regards to testimony that the Matthew wrote his gospel first. Papias wrote the following:
I will not hesitate to add also for you to my interpretations what I formerly learned with care from the Presbyters and have carefully stored in memory, giving assurance of its truth. For I did not take pleasure as the many do in those who speak much, but in those who teach what is true, nor in those who relate foreign precepts, but in those who relate the precepts which were given by the Lord to the faith and came down from the Truth itself. And also if any follower of the Presbyters happened to come, I would inquire for the sayings of the Presbyters, what Andrew said, or what Peter said, or what Philip or what Thomas or James or what John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples, and for the things which other of the Lord's disciples, and for the things which Aristion and the Presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, were saying. For I considered that I should not get so much advantage from matter in books as from the voice which yet lives and remains." (Eusebius (III, xxix).
According to Irenaeus, Papias was "a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp , a man of primitive times," who wrote a volume in "five books" (Against Heresies 5.33.4; quoted by Eusebius Hist. Eccl. 3.39.1). Polycarp is considered to not tolerate any deviation from the traditions of Christianity and he often asked his readers to turn back to the faith delivered to Christians from the beginning. [1] In Ephesus, Polycarp was a disciple of the Apostle John, who appointed him to be Bishop of Smyrna. [2] Matthew being written first is generally not accepted by Q source proponents.

All this is irrelevant because Papias, as quoted by Eusebius, does not say the Gospel of Matthew was written first.--Peter Kirby 21:06, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious Material

This was moved from the main text (Stephen C. Carlson 04:56, 24 September 2005 (UTC))

Prof. Mack has argued that it is a non-Christian source. There is no direct reference to the resurrection or the Virgin birth and many of the quotations in Q would be considered blasphemy in the time of Jesus.
In any event, all we can say for certain is that ‘Q’ Source is not referred to by any of the Church Fathers as a Christian work, and no copy of Q has ever been found. It is a hypothetical source.

In the first paragraph, the contents of Q are in Matt and/or Luke. How's that blasphemous? In the second paragraph, we don't know Q's name, so how can we say for certain that it was not referred to by any of the Church Father at all much less as a Christian work? Stephen C. Carlson 04:56, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ties to documentary hypothesis

I think there should be a short section noting the similarity of this hypothesis to the documentary hypothesis, since they were both formed around the same period of biblical scholarship and they both introduce lost sources to the books of the Bible. AUhl 02:57, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Isn't the documentary hypothesis about the first five books of the Jewish bible? This is about a completely different set of books in a completely different part of the Christian Bible. I don't see how they are related, other than both being origin hypotheses. Clinkophonist 14:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus template

The only reason I added the {{Jesus}} template was that there is a link to this article from it (I was going from link to link to see which articles were where). However, upon further examination, I note that the link I clicked on was Jesus' sayings according to the Christian Bible which redirects here. Apparently, Clinkophonist transferred the original article to Wikisource and (according to edit history) "[redirected] to the closest article on wikipedia to the topic" [3] אמר Steve Caruso (desk/poll) 01:52, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

AH! That makes a whole lot of sense now. Hmm.. Maybe just remove the link from the template? If someone clicks on a link in a template that says "Quotes" in regards to Jesus, I do not think they are refering to a hypothetical sayings Gospel.--Andrew c 02:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Alrighty, link stricken from the template. Much better :-) אמר Steve Caruso (desk/poll) 02:48, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "The Logia"

tThis Wikipedism betrays unfamiliarity with the literature. --Wetman 21:39, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Deuteronomism

"Certain themes, such as the Deuteronomistic view of history, are more prominent in Q than in either Matthew or Luke individually."

Something is wrong with this sentence, specifically the phrase "are more prominant in Q." No copy of Q exists. There is no consensus reconstruction of Q. How can we make a statement with this type of certainty? The given reference doesn't clear any of this up nor does it make any direct reference to Deuteronomism. More even importantly how is agreement between theories a proof?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.63.71.49 (talk • contribs) 3 August 2006.

This is like saying "Q contains the word 'blanket' 5 times as much as the rest of Matthew or Luke". Out of context, it would make sense if phrased "The material believed by scholars to have originated from Q contains the word...", however I believe that context is established already in this article, therefore the further explanation about what Q is, isn't needed. Regardless if it is a hypothetical grouping of sayings, or an actual early document, it is a clear fact that the material called by scholars "Q" has a different tone/set of themes than the rest of Matthew or Luke. That is all this sentence is saying. Whether this is a coincidence, or has another explanation is up for debate, but this article is about the Q hypothesis. Hope that helps.--Andrew c 16:51, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yes, another proposed link

I have been instructed to post here http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/q.html. The article defends Q as originally a separate document, and which was compiled around 80, after GMark was known, but before GMatthew & GLuke were written. Of course it would help if you like this webpage and post it as a link. Thanks. If posted, I will add up on it my name and a link to my bio, as I did for my front page, http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/index.html (which is already posted as a link on three Wikipedia pages).Bernard

[edit] Perrin and Wright

I have removed this from the main article:

Some scholars cite the contextual history of the pre Nicene canon which contained the controversy over Justin Martyr's student and later Valentinian Tatian and his Gospel harmony the Diatessaron, which could be perceived as almost the reverse argument of Q[ref]Thomas and Tatian: The Relationship Between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron by Nicholas Perrin published by the Academia Biblica Society of Biblical Literature 2001 ISBN-10: 1589830458[/ref]. It is noted that a harmony gospel was possibly attempted by Ammonius Saccas.

This sentence makes no sense, and I do not understand how this is a reverse argument of Q. I read the linked page in question, and the only thing I saw was that Perrin and Wright theorized that Thomas (not Q) was based off of the Diatessaron. I almost changed the wording to reflect that, except Thomas is off topic here. Please figure out a better, more informative way to convey this information. I'm sorry I couldn't fix it myself, but I do not understand what is trying to be said. Thanks-Andrew c 14:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Which sentence, there is more then one there? Also if the gospel of Q basis it's origin (even partially) on the existence of the Gospel of Thomas (which it does) then whats to understand from the reference? So you are now saying that the theory of Q does not use the Gospel of Thomas as a proof or support, that a quotes Gospel existed?

Is this not one of the points in the article already?

  • "While supporters say that the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas supports the concept of a "sayings gospel," Professor Mark Goodacre points out that Q has a narrative structure as reconstructed and is not simply a list of sayings."

Or this one.

  • "This state of affairs changed in the 1960s after translations of a newly discovered and analogous sayings collection, the Gospel of Thomas, became available. James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester proposed that collections of sayings such as Q and Thomas represented the earliest Christian materials at an early point in a trajectory that eventually resulted in the canonical gospels."

So whats the point of contention? Are you Andrew c now saying that this article does not reflect any connection between Q and the Gospel of Thomas? If it is off topic then why does the topic contain the above quotes? The Q theory states that the Gospels where fabricated from a single text composed of quotes or sayings. Nicholas Perrin stated that the historical proof for Q to validate this is the Gospel of Thomas. Nicholas Perrin states that the Gospel of Thomas was fabricated not from a tradition of a quotes or sayings Gospel (Q) but from a Harmony Gospel called the Diatessaron. So the synoptic problem is resolved either by a quotes gospel or a Harmony Gospel. So in the evolution of the Q theory why is the Diatessaron history omitted? Of course until Nicholas Perrin and Mark Goodacre point out that for the Q theory to work the whole history of a harmony Gospel including canons created by Ammonius Saccas and Tatian (both a matter of history) has been omitted. Why is a contridictory validatable history being ignored? One that shows a tradition of a fabricated quotes Gospel (the Gospel of Thomas) not having it's origin in Q but instead in a Harmony Gospel? Why are you omitting rather then correcting? IF you don't time for one how can you have time for the other? If there is contention please notify me before removing a contribution? Have you not asked for the same? I am open to work with others to make a more effective article. I am reverting my additions, if you can find a better wording please contribute but please don't blanket remove text under the excuse you don't have time to fix it. I will do my best to word it more clearly but the references I gave where clear. LoveMonkey 06:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The Q theory has very little to do, so far as I'm aware, with the Gospel of Thomas, which many many people who accept Q believe has no independent sources beyond the four canonical gospels. Q is based on the numerous similarities between Matthew and Luke that do not derive from Mark, and also on the fact that it is considered unlikely that the authors of Matthew and Luke had access to one another's work directly, because of the different genealogies, the different nativity stories, and so forth. Putting so much emphasis on the Gospel of Thomas seems very problematic to me - it is worth mentioning, but is not the main basis for the Q theory. john k 15:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

No I disagree. Also could you tell Andrew c to stop editwarring on my edits. His arguments seem pedantic. Why is he not on the talkpage here or on the several other aritcles he has went to and edited out, my contributions while deciding which scholars are note worthly and which ones aren't 1. Also why is it now people like Andrew c are deciding what SOURCED information is pertinent and what SOURCED information is not? Also if you want I can source the link between thomas and Q more thoroughly. But I will need you to support me adding content since Andrew c does not seem to do anything but war edit. Thanks LoveMonkey 06:25, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry my edits have offended you. I am really trying to work with you. I moved a controversial section to talk, and before there was consensus on that section, you stuck it back into the article. So I tried to edit your edit to make more sense, and what do I get? You attacking me here on the talk page. I believe my edit gets the point you were trying to convey in a concise manner relevent to this article. Perrin argues that Thomas cannot be used as evidence for Q because he believes Thomas is dependent on a Gospel harmony. Right? Sorry again.-Andrew c 07:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

For clarification edits don't offend me, war editing does. If you would like I can add a list of your war editing to several other articles and contribution to those articles that I made in the past two days. If you where trying to work with me then why all the edits first? No talk pages. Even after I came here and responded and since you did not I re-added the comments and then tried to accommodate you anyway. Your edit by the way does not get the point. It removed the fact that the very basis of Q is the synoptic problem. It removes that canonical historical context addressed by more then just Perrin. You also seem to like to pick and choose which scholars I can and can not add to articles, why is that? Please address this rather then just walking away and starting this whole mess all over again. LoveMonkey 07:47, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

You have to give me more time to respond. I posted at 09:00, 11 January 2007, you replied at 01:21, 12 January 2007 and then you edited the article at 01:31, 12 January 2007. You seriously think 10 minutes was enough time for me to respond here? I'm not going to throw around accusations of 'edit warring', but I will request that you be patient and give me more than 10 minutes to reply before you re-add content to the article. As for your specific concerns. The section in question is called The case against a common second source. We say in the intro that "The two-source hypothesis forms the simplest and the most widely accepted solution to the synoptic problem". I content that the section we have been editing is not the correct place to say that Q is a solution to the synoptic problem. This information is already included in more relevent sections of the article. So I did NOT remove this 'fact' from the article. It removes that canonical historical context addressed by more then just Perrin, if more than just Perrin addresses this, then you need to cite those authors as well. How does this point relate to Perrin's view on Thomas? Maybe this point needs its own bulleted section because it seems out of place where it currently is. Finally, that section is very verbose and convoluted. It was difficult to determine what was trying to be said. It used unfamiliar jargon like "Nicene canon" (gets less than 1,000 google hits). What exactly are you trying to say here? That there was an orthodox tradition of scripture that predates the "Synod of Carthage" and "Damasian list" of the 4th-6th centuries. Ok, point taken. How does the history of orthodox scripture relate to a criticism of Q? Please try rewording what you were trying to say, or explain in more detail here so we can work together. Finally, I am not trying to pick and choose what scholars you can add to this article. Sorry for the confusion.-Andrew c 13:50, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gospel of Thomas

If I remember correctly, it has been argued that the Gospel of Thomas also stated that the format of that book, which was almost entirely quotations, was an additional reason for believing that some sort of "sayings source" was extant in the early years. Badbilltucker 02:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kloppenborg

Ya'll must know a lot about John S. Kloppenborg. Can you help me with rewriting the article recently created on him? nadav 12:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some boldness ahead

Okay, I just finished two books all about Q, so, I'm gonna try to regurgitate this and polish up this article. :) Hang on to your hats! --Alecmconroy (talk) 16:17, 17 November 2007 (UTC)


Regarding Andrew's C "do I have any sources for this new content! :) yes! I do. My own writing style is usually to write, revise, and finally source, as a double check. Often I do this on private subpages, rather than using the article itself as the rough draft. Since the page seemed to be languishing, I went ahead and just started writing on it directly, planning to come back, revise, and source.
If ya think it's best-- there's no reason I need to do this on the article itself, if you think the "half-way finished" product looks to bad, just let me know, and I'll do it on a private subpage. :) --Alecmconroy (talk) 17:31, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
My personal preference is to only keep finished products in the main namespace and leave rough drafts for sandboxes. But you are correct that this is not a top tier article, and that not many people are probably watching this article. So I wouldn't mind if you worked up your revisions here as long as it doesn't take more than a couple weeks.-Andrew c [talk] 19:13, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lots of repetition of the basic idea of the Q document

I've just read through this article and I found that the basic concept of what the Q document is (a theoretical unpreserved source document) is repeated again and again. Each new section (up to "The case for a common second source") seems to say the same thing over and over.

I'm sure the first few large sections of this article could be quite easily summed up much more briefly without losing anything.

Grand Dizzy (talk) 02:01, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] shouldn't it be the four-source hypothesis?

I wouldn't think that the only sources for Matthew and Luke were just Mark and Q... Since both are different gospels wouldn't each have a 3rd source of their own... meaning Luke would have its own sourse and matthew would have its own sourse... so if you arn't talking about just shared sources it would seem that there would be 4 sources involved... Gkeebler (talk) 03:47, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

A great question.
People do talk about "Source(s) unique to Luke" (L) and "Sources unique to Matthew" (M), resulting in a grand total of four sources. But "two-source-hypothesis" is the term used to describe the first step on the attempt to solving the problem-- that Matthew and Luke had "two sources" in common: Mark was one of them, and the other, Q, is "common source(s) that aren't Mark)".
Incidentally, it would be theoretically possible to accept the "two-source hypothesis" without also accepting the existence of sources L and M. Just posit the L are the parts of Q that only Luke quoted, M are the parts of Q that only Matthew quoted. Nobody actually believes that-- the L and M material is just too stylistically different from Q. But I just mention it to show that "four source" doesn't automatically flow from "two source"-- it requires one more step of logic. --Alecmconroy (talk) 04:49, 11 April 2008 (UTC)