After my post yesterday about the “priority of Mark” (the view almost universally held among scholars that Mark was the first Gospel written and that Matthew and Luke used it for many of their own stories) I received a number of queries from readers about the “Q” source. So I better address that as well.
Matthew and Luke obviously share a number of stories with Mark, but they also share with each other a number of passages not found in Mark. Most of these passages (all but two of them) involve sayings of Jesus — for example, the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer. Since they didn’t get these passages from Mark, where did they get them? Since the 19th century scholars have argued that Matthew did not get them from Luke or Luke from Matthew (for reasons I’ll suggest below); that probably means they got them from some other source, a document that no longer survives.
This came to be known as the “Sayings Source.” The scholars who developed this view were principally German, and the word in German for “source” is “Quelle.” And so, for short, scholars call this hypothetical lost document Q.
Some scholars have called into question this hypothetical document Q — especially my friend and colleague at Duke, Mark Goodacre, who is on the blog. But its existence is still held by the great majority of scholars as the most likely explanation for the accounts, mainly sayings, of Matthew and Luke not in Mark (as you might imagine, there are numerous other ways to explain these agreements: maybe Mark was first, then Matthew copied Mark, and then Luke copied both Matthew and Mark; or maybe Matthew was first and then Mark condensed Matthew and then Luke copied Matthew; maybe … you could go on for a very long time).
The scholars who work deeply in this area get WAY down into the weeds, and I’m not going to go there. Instead I’ll explain simply why most scholars don’t think either Matthew or Luke was copying the other and discuss a few more interesting features of the lost Q source. Here is what I say about it in my discussion of the Synoptic Problem in my textbook on the New Testament:
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Once Mark is established as prior to Matthew and Luke, the Q hypothesis naturally suggests itself. Matthew and Luke have stories not found in Mark, and in these stories they sometimes agree word for word. Whence do these stories come?
It is unlikely that …
The Rest of this post is only for members. If you want to learn more, JOIN! It costs less then 50 cents a week, all the money goes to charity, and you’ll come to know so much your friends won’t be able to *stand* you….
Bart – So what was Mark’s source for his gospel?
We don’t know if he had written texts, but certainly oral traditions — maybe *only* oral traditions.
Is it possible that Q–whatever it was–was written about the same time as Mark’s gospel, not yet very widely copied and distributed, and this is why Mark didn’t have it? I always had this idea of it being this older document, a pre-gospel, but Mark was very eager to know all he could about Jesus, and it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have tried to lay his hands on anything he could find.
Also, is there any opinion on what language Q would have been written in? I’m going to assume there are, so I’m asking what opinions exist.
Yup, that’s possible. Q must have been in Greek, given the verbatim agreements, in Greek, between Matthw and Luke in Q material.
And if it was in Greek, Mark could have read it. Which furthers the notion that, for whatever reason, he couldn’t lay his hands upon a copy. So roughly contemporaneous. Certainly written long after Paul’s epistles, which Mark does seem to know about.
And Mark not being able to access Q is yet another argument for his priority. A problem for any biographer. If you write the first one, there will be resources denied to you that later biographers will be able to employ.
What about the Gospel of the Hebrews? We going to get to that soon?
I don’t think he knew about it, so I wouldn’t say that he couldn’t find a copy.
Hey N Braith,
Eusebius has an extract from Papias (c100) that preserved a tradition received from John that Mark’s source was Peter:
“regarding Mark who wrote the Gospel, which he [Papias] has given in the following words: ‘And the presbyter [John] said this. Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord’s sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements.'”
(See chapter VI: http://earlychristianwritings.com/text/papias.html)
But as I understand it, no scholars today believe the Gospel was written by Mark (a real person who had access to Peter). Written anonymously, it was later attributed to Mark as a way of associating it with Peter.
Conservative evangelical scholars continue to think so.
You are right, Wilusa – Mark’s gospel was published anonymously, and there were ancient figures who tried to associate it directly with Peter (Justin Martyr does so), but most Church fathers and authorities claim it was written by Mark, someone who didn’t follow Jesus and was a fringe figure in the New Testament.
If the early Church wanted to associate an anonymous gospel with Peter, why did they not claim Peter wrote it like Justin Martyr did? Ancient Christians had no hesitation in inventing Gospels, Acts, Apocalypses and epistles in Peters name, so why did they select a relatively insignificant figure like Mark as the author?
The most likely answer is that Mark was the true author, and despite the attempts of Justin Martyr (and maybe others?) to ascribe it to Peter, the name of true author was preserved.
Are you suggesting that the document described by presbyter – which Papius is trying to associate with the Gospel –
was actually Q?
Hi Scott,
My comment above was about Mark’s gospel, but Papias later describes Matthew’s gospel origins, which I think does describe Q.
Papias states that John told him: “Therefore Matthew put the ‘logia’ (sayings) in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language, but each person interpreted them as best he could.”
John, therefore, claims that Matthew composed a sayings gospel in Aramaic. Some scholars think that Q was originally composed in Aramaic, before being translated to Greek. The Greek version was then used as a source for Matthew and Luke.
Matthew was a tax collector, and one of the only disciples of Jesus we know could read and write. As an eyewitness of Jesus and a former tax collector, he would have had the necessary experience and literacy skills to compose an ordered account of the sayings and parables of Jesus.
Fascinating! Are there any instances of verbatim agreement between Q and the Gospel of Thomas? Also, what is the likelihood that the special M and L materials were not actually sources used by Mt and Lk, but were simply the literary creations of the authors of Mt and Lk themselves?
No, Q and Thomas have overlaps but not extensive verbatim agreements. Yes, in theory all the M and L materials could have been the evangelists’ creations, but there would be no compelling evidence to think so (we *do* have evidence they used sources, on the other hand).
“we *do* have evidence they used sources, on the other hand”
Ohh – that’s interesting – would those be written or oral sources?
I always assumed they were oral traditions passed down.
We do know they used written sources, so there’s no reason to think they didn’t use more than just the two we know. Luke says he knows of “many”
I continue to be amazed that, given a choice between two models – the first being a straightforward simple one and the second a speculative convoluted creation – NT scholarship will inevitably pick the latter.
Obviously, “the great majority” of scholars do not like the implications of dumping Q. It solves the synoptic problem nicely, but creates the stark realization that Matthew and Luke may not be independent attestations of Jesus of Nazareth! Add to that the growing realization the John has a Luke dependency and we have scholarship in denial.
So, here is what happened. Mark is the first and base document and likely dates from the 70’s. The second one is Matthew who uses Mark, expands on it, makes Jesus the new Moses and creates new verses, identified as Q – about 1900 years later. Some decades after Matthew we have Luke, now having Mark and Matthew in front of him. He copies from both and those verses he copies from Matthew will be identified as Q…..
If Q is/was a written document, and both “Matthew” and Luke” used it, would that imply Matthew and Luke lived fairly close to one another? I envisage two students writing papers and using the same reference book in the same library. If that were true, I would think the two would either know each other or have at least heard of one another since they shared the same interest and wrote their gospels roughly contemporaneously . Are there any theories about Matthew and Luke being “neighbors”? If so, then their corresponding “M” and “L” sources may also have been local. Maybe they were classmates!!
No, it could have circulated easily — a traveler to Rome from Antioch or Alexandria could have taken a copy, for example.
So then, Paul’s letters were based on oral traditions?
No, his letters are not filled with narratives and sayings of Jesus. His letters are specific original compositions addressing problems that had arisen in his churches.
I think, Bart, that Geza Vermes towards the end of his life came to doubt the existence of Q. Is that your reading as well and, if so, did you discuss it over lunch when he visited your university?
No, we didn’t. And I didn’t know that!
Ignore my comment. I have gone back through all the books I have of his and I can find find two references to Q, one of which alludes to the, ‘Supposed pre-existing hypothetical source, Q,’ in one of his later works. Perhaps I inferred from this wording that he wasn’t convinced of its existence. I’ll keep looking and if I find anything more substantive I will post the reference.
“…you’ll come to know so much…” is true! A blogger said he is learning more on your blog than he did in seminary.
Ha!
I learned a lot in a very good seminary. I have learned a lot here, and it has enriched tremendously what I had previously learned.
What are some of the primary arguments disputing the existence of Q? (Without getting too deep into the weeds!)
Ah, that is indeed a bit weedy. But one big one is that there are places where all three Synoptics have a story — so Matthew and Luke took it from Mark — but Matthew and Luke have verbatim agreements with each other *against* Mark. These are never extensive, and so they are known as the “minor agreements,” and they would, naturally, suggest that one of the two got the story not (just) from Mark but from the other.
Mark Goodacre is a New Testament scholar who believes Luke used Mark and Matthew as sources. Here is an episode of his NT Pod podcast where he makes the case against Q.
http://podacre.blogspot.com/2010/02/nt-pod-26-case-against-q.html
Is there reason to believe Q is likely to be one document? Who’s to say Matthew and Luke didn’t have access to several of the same documents? It doesnt seem that hard to believe that oral traditional can account for at least some of the material either.
Yup, it’s possible. But there’s no hard evidence for that, so most scholars don’t go that route.
Dr. Ehrman, I’ve come to change my view of Q. At first I thought it might have predated Mark — possibly as early as within 10 years of Jesus’ death — but I have since arrived at the conclusion that Q was an interdependent source (or document) that developed outside of the Jewish Christian community of Jerusalem, well after Jesus’ death. I think, at this point, that the first version of Mark (similar, but not exactly like our current version of Mark) was probably written in the late 40s/early 50s, which appears to be a time when the Christian apocalyptic apostles were starting to bump heads with the remaining apocaplytic apostles of John the Baptist (as hinted at in Acts 18:24-28, 19:1-7; which is supposedly several years after Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, which must have occured after 41 CE). What it looks like to me happened was that Paul and the other Christian apostles needed to develop a rationale for why and how both John and Jesus were right, and by creating a narrative where Jesus starts his messiah-ship with John’s baptism they do just that. What we get from Mark is a product of that synergy. Mark was the first attempt to put down on paper the “gospel message” as it was proclaimed by a subset of Christian apostles right around the time that apostles like Paul and his companions were most active in the western Mediterranean.
The Q source, on the other hand, is rife with that I call extra-apocalyptical concerns. That is, Q appears to be concerned with those very same Three Cs that I categorized the Parables into. To refresh your memory, the three Cs stand for commission, community and catastrophe. Commission parables are those that tell Christians to go out into the world, both Jewish and Gentile, and spread the “good news” (e.g. the parable of The Sower). The community parables are those in which Jesus is telling his followers how to play nice. That is, they are meant to provide a set of rules or ethical behavior for an established brotherhood (e.g. The Faithful Servant). Catastrophe parables are meant to show Jesus playing prophet by foreshadowing his own death and resurrection (e.g. The Evil Tenants). As I’ve mentioned previously, I have judged all of these parables as not coming from Jesus but from the early Christian community, mainly because they all, for the most part, presume and take for granted Jesus no longer being physically present to decide these matters. For that reason I think these parables are products of the next cohort of Christians, probably in the late 50s/early 60s.
I would place the Q sources in the same timeframe. Why? Because Q appears to be concerned with many of the same topics and ideas that we find in the Three Cs parables. Q is loaded with quotes that concern commission, community and catastrophe. In Q, Jesus cannot be more clear about the apostolic duties of his followers (He said, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few; beg therefore the master of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.” “Go. Look, I send you out as lambs among wolves.”). In Q, Jesus is regularly prescribing proper community ethics and behavior (“Be merciful even as your Father is merciful. Don’t judge and you won’t be judged. For the standard you use to judge will be the standard used against you.”). Q doesn’t have many catastrophe quotes — probably because the gospel of Mark is already all but consumed by Jesus presaging his death and resurrection — but Q does have several allusions to it ( “A wicked generation looks for a sign, but no sign will be shown to it, except the sign of Jonah.”)
Hence, this is why I think the “gospel” message evolved in the following order, with each layer added atop the previous, like a cake:
0th, Fire and brimstone, paradise and inferno, Heavenly Host vs Demon Army…yada, yada, yada…
1st, Jesus’ death and resurrection as a sign of imminent judgment, reward and punishment (Apocalypse layer)
2nd, Jesus prophesying his own death and resurrection as evidence that he was/is the Messiah (Catastrophe layer, also Mark)
3rd, Jesus proclaiming that his followers must go out into the world and spread the “good news” of the coming eschaton (Commission layer)
4th, Jesus telling his followers how they should behave as they dig in for the long haul (Community layer)
It’s been suggested that Luke’s “sermon on the plain,” specifically his bothering to mention that Jesus was standing on a plain or level place, shows that Luke was aware of and did not like the location of Mathew’s Sermon on the Mount, perhaps because it made Jesus look like a second Moses. That always made sense to me, but you evidently don’t agree.
I don’t know of any early Christian who disliked the comparison of Jesus to Moses, off hand (other than someone like Marcion, much later). And the bigger problem is that the material in the sermon on the mount is scattered throughout Luke: it’s not the same sermon in a different location.
It’s pure conjecture, but have scholars considered that Paul may have written “Q” while acting as a scribe for Peter and James during his 15-day visit to Jerusalem?
No, I suspect that no one would buy the theory. For one thing, if Paul composed a lengthy collection of Jesus’ sayings, it would be very strange indeed that his letters are notable precisely for almost never citing Jesus’ sayings.
except for “the worker is worthy of his wages”…..
There are three quotations altogether in 1 Corinthians: 7:10; 9:14; and 11:22-24.
much appreciated.
There is also Luke quoting Paul quoting Jesus (Acts 20:35) as saying: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” This line, of course, is not corroborated in any of the canonical gospels. However, it has a definite ring of authenticity. Is there independent attestation of it in any of the surviving, extra-canonical sources?
If not, this is an excellent example of the incalculable cost of the 4th century, book-burning jihad by the church empowered by the Roman Empire in it’s death throes — a crime against history and scholarship rivaled only by the burning of the Library at Alexandria. This mindless destruction was in fact a crime against all humanity, and the Christian faith in particular for those of us who believe that Jesus of Nazareth actually WAS a divine emissary, and feel perfectly competent to assess the record for ourselves rather than being preemptively protected from “heresy” by self-proclaimed, “infallible” popes declaring what is and isn’t “inerrant.”
The Catholic Church did (after the Galileo unpleasantness) recast both doctrines into de facto impotence. Prods, meanwhile, abandoned one while keeping the other — which is odd in as much as the words mean the same thing.
No, it only is found in Acts, unfortunately.
I’m not aware of a book-burning jihad by the church. What are you thinking of?
Incidentally, how could Paul, the most dogged and successful proselytizer of the emerging Christian “Way,” have been so unfamiliar with what “the Son of God” actually taught?
Postulating that Jesus’ death was the once-and-for-all sacrifice that finally sated the vengeful Yahweh was, indeed, a clever to way to eliminate adhering to the Law as an obstacle (perhaps, an insurmountable one) to his mission to proselytize erstwhile pagans. But wasn’t it the direct contradiction with the teachings of Jesus, himself, on this that provoked the conflict he had with the disciples who actually knew, heard and followed Jesus during his ministry?
Further, doesn’t Paul’s reply to a question from one of his churches about eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols clearly betray his ignorance of the fact that Jesus had addressed the essential issue quite unambiguously (Mk 7:18-19//Mt 15:11//Th 14), giving the opposite answer? Mark actually ends this pericope with the explicit editorial comment: “Thus he declared all foods clean.”
You have insightfully observed that Paul transformed the religion of Jesus into a religion ABOUT Jesus. Just so. Still, how could he have been so oblivious of the words of the Incarnate Word?
It seems weird only to people with a New Testament that begins with four long books containing the words of Jesus. Our form of Christianity is like that. Paul’s form was very, very different. I know it’s hard to get one’s mind around.
Bart, how would we know that any of the ancient manuscripts, like P54, were not part of the Q document, rather than attributed to the gospels?
P54 doesn’t contain any sayings of Jesus. And none of the manuscripts of the Gospels consists only of sayings of Jesus, one after the other.
Just a thought, even if only to play devil’s advocate, regarding the idea that Matthew and Luke were not independent: It might seem strange to suggest that Luke followed the order of the Mark/Matthew double tradition but not the Matthew material, but perhaps Luke would have been less inclined to break a double tradition than a single one, especially if perhaps he disagreed with Matthew or recognized Mark as being an older tradition. Is that really so implausible?
Also, those who argue against Mark being written first seem to claim Matthew was first. Are there compelling reasons to suggest that the priority of Matthew is any more plausible that the priority of Luke? If one argues that condensing the Q material is a more likely edit than breaking it up and spreading it out, that would be one reason to favor Luke using Matthew over Matthew using Luke (still realizing the most scholar favor independent use of Mark and Q).
…Oops. I meant reason to favor Matthew using Luke.
The problem I have with the view is that it would mean that he had the two Gospels on his lap (no one used desks back then) and one by one compared each and every story to see if it was in both or not (remember: some are in different locations in the Gospels) and then relocating it. Sounds unreasonably convoluted as an editorial procedure to me.
They must have used writing surfaces of some sort. Also, could they not have dictated to a scribe as they referred to their sources? Paul was using scribes more than 20 years earlier.
It seems strange, but they appear to have written on their laps. (Didn’t have dining room tables either! Go figure)
How did John manage to use four or more sources then? If comparing two texts was hard enough, how about integrating several? Without desks or tables? Did they have books and parchment spread out all over the place? Did they sprawl out on the floor? Given the resources they lacked, which modern folks take for granted (a desk even), it’s surprising they didn’t make more errors and literary seams than they did. Or perhaps there were A LOT of re-dos even before the first edition came out.
Yes, I can see how that would seem confusing! But John’s way of using sources is very different from what the “no-Q” hypothesis would require of Luke. In John’s case, he simply had several books that he took stories from for different parts of his Gospel. In the no-Q hypothesis, what had to happen is that Luke had Matthew on his lap. And whenever he came across a story, he read through Mark’s Gospel to see if it was there as well. If not, then he changed it’s place in Mark’s Gospel. Then he went to the next story of Matthew and did the same. For the entire Gospel. The only alternative to that would be if he had memorized Mark’s Gospel completely and could do it all in his head. And as you might imagine, there is no evidence of that.
Is there compelling reason to favor Matthew priority over Luke? I agree that Markan priority is solid. I am just curious as to why those who doubt Markan priority favor Matthew over Luke.
I”ve often wondered that too. I don’t know a single scholar offhand who argues for Lukan priority, but on the surface, I’m not sure why.
I think might know the answer: Here’s a start: “To the Jew First, then to the Gentile” Romans 1:16
To me, Matthew seems to be the most ‘primitive’. My understanding at the time is that it was originally written in Aramaic, for Jewish eyes. While the expansion of the gospel to the outside world of gentiles is certainly present in Matthew, it is couched in terms that I think would have been highly offensive to roman eyes. And, to me, it seems to be Pre-49 A.D. since it does not once contain the word ‘circumcision’ or any other form of the word.
Does the existence of Q then imply that there were some followers of Jesus who revered his teachings but either didn’t believe in, or didn’t have a tradition of the resurrection? One would think there’d almost have to be, considering the preservation of Jesus’ more apocalyptic sayings.(?)
“Thus it is entirely possible, for example, that Q had a Passion narrative, and that neither Matthew nor Luke chose to use it, or that one of them chose not to do so (so that some of the verses of Matthew’s or Luke’s Passion narrative not found in Mark actually derive from Q). At the same time, it is equally possible that Q in fact was almost entirely sayings, without a Passion narrative (or nearly any other narrative). Regrettably, we will never know, unless, of course, archaeologists should serendipitously discover Q itself!.”
Actually, having re-read your post more carefully it seems you’ve already answered my question. It appears there’s no way to know, given that it *could* have included the passion narrative.
Yes, this has been a major theme in scholarship: was the Q community one that htought the words of Jesus, not his passion, brought salvation to his followers? Hard to say! That is, though, the view apparently of the later Gospel of Thomas!
I find this and your Mark posts interesting.
You suggest there may have been a “Passion” story in Q. The Gospel of Thomas of course has no such passion story, and as has been noted, it doesn’t need one, such a story would make no sense in context with the first Thomas phrase that those who understand the (Thomas) sayings “will not taste death”, indicating the way to life is through wisdom-knowledge, not belief in the Crucifixion narrative.
You’ve listed the Q sayings. Have you or some other scholar examined these sayings to see if they offer such a path to life as in Thomas?
Yes, that has been a major theme in scholarship since about the 1970s.
If there is a path to life absent the Crucifixion narrative then the central Church teaching is useless (which in my opinion it is anyway). Has this idea been looked at, by whom, and with what result?
Yes indeed — there were Christians in the early church who thought that the crucifixion was irrelevant to salvation — or even that it never actually happened!
Well, that’s interesting. Can you give some reference to where I can explore this idea of the Crucifixion being unimportant or not happening at all? Thanks.
Ah, I think I’ll post on that!
Great! Thanks.
Are there extra-biblical texts, perhaps in the patristic literature, that might contain hints of Q not directly derived from Matthew and/or Luke? E.g., coherent passages that might contain M or L Q sayings, but are more extensive? Or did Q just disappear after M&L?
No, nothing else that can reliably be assigned to Q, anywhere!
The German scholar, Andreas Lindemann, (http://www.kiho-wb.de/personal/andreas-lindemann/) wrote an essay included in the ‘New studies in the synoptic problem, Oxford conference April 2008: Essays in honour of Christopher M. Tuckett’ about Q in the Apostolic Fathers.
He concludes (p.719) that “…in some of the texts [of the Apostolic fathers] we can find traces for the opinion that at the end of the first century and beginning of the second century CE Christian authors still had access to the Q source. Both of the two quotations of synoptic tradition in 1 Clement [13.2 and 46.8] seem to be identified as sayings from Q.” He goes on to say that Didache, Barnabas, Ignatius and Polycarp also show familiarity with Q.
Are you familiar with this essay, and if so, what do you think of Lindemann’s analysis?
I’m not familiar with that particular essay, but I do know the argument — and I know the Apostolic Fathers exceedingly well (I translated them for the Loeb Classical Library). I don’t think there’s really any evidence of their knowledge of Q.
Two questions, Dr. Ehrman –
1. Are you saying or suggesting that Gos. Thom. is pre-Markan? Many scholars think so, but (as with everything else), there is disagreement.
2. A number of scholars suggest that Matthew was partly or primarily aimed at Jewish Christians in an attempt to get them to sever their ties to Judaism completely. Do you agree?
1. No, I firmly think Gospel of Thomas was composed decades after Mark; 2. No, I see no evidence at all of that.
It would be great to read about your counter arguments against the pre-Markan school. The below interview of Stevan Davies is the top and has the most solid arguments what I have found so far.
“…scholars sometimes seem to conclude that some fictions are more fictional than others and Thomas is in that category. From that line of thought some seem to conclude that the Gospel of Thomas should be dated later than canonical fictional material that is somehow regarded as less fictional. This is absurd.”
https://cruxsolablog.com/2009/11/10/interview-with-stevan-davies-part-ii/
I’m afraid I disagree. There is *more* historical information in our earlier sources than in Thomas, which almost certainly post-dates the canonical Gospels.
Bart, I do love your thinking and reasoning. It is great to hear your arguments against the religious conservatits. In the same manner, it would be great to hear our reasoning against more liberal scientists. Below, are a couple of liberal claims. What is your position towards these?
“The assumption that they, the first century Christians known to us, knew a great deal more than we do about the historical Jesus is not backed up by the evidence we have. They really didn’t even particularly care about the historical Jesus… but why didn’t they? They did care enough to presume that a single individual in the course of a rather short period of activity gave rise to their religion, and the meaning of their lives, and their hope for immortality, but why they didn’t care enough to try and sort out what that individual actually thought about anything?”
“it doesn’t get better than that. Paul writing about his own life ca. 35 AD tells us that there were churches in Judea immediately after Jesus’ death, that they were doing something sufficiently illegal to be persecuted by him, a Pharisee, that those churches posed a threat to whatever authority Paul represented, and that later on Paul joined those churches having been informed, by spirit possession, that what he knew they were teaching (you don’t persecute if you don’t think you know what the subject of your persecution is up to) was right after all.”
https://cruxsolablog.com/2009/11/13/interview-with-stevan-davies-part-iii/
I’m not sure what you’re asking me to react to.
Do you think Jesus actually predicted his suffering and death or did the gospel writers pen the predictions as a means of explaining the crucifixion? Why was any additional suffering necessary for the Apostles if they simply believed the apocalyptic message of Jesus?
I don’t think the Gospel predictions are historical. As to additional suffering: different authors have different explanastions (they were imitating Jesus himself, e.g.)
Interestingly, I was re-reading N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God while on the train today. So much of it feels irrelevant to the discussions on your blog, because it mostly seems to be a critique of older critical views such as Bultemann’s; Wright spends a large part of the book showing that early Christians, rooted in apocalyptic Judaism, believed in resurrection as a bodily and not spiritual event, something which I already knew from reading your writings. So I only re-read the part where he defends the historicity of the Gospel resurrection narratives, which is really the meat of the book. Even there, he spends quite a bit of space attacking views that hardly any critical scholars hold, like Crossan’s idea that the Gospel of Peter contains material pre-dating the canonical Gospels.
But where Wright’s views are in opposition to yours he makes some really bad arguments; he places a lot of weight on the whole “no one would have invented women at the tomb because women weren’t regarded as reliable witnesses” trope, which you’ve since critiqued very powerfully. I think his argument suffers from a paucity of imagination and misses the literary power of the women-at-the-tomb motif, considering that a major theme of all of the Gospels is that Jesus’ true followers are the marginalized and downtrodden. He also seems to think that Luke’s emphasis on the real-body-ness of the resurrected Jesus (the broiled fish and so on) couldn’t have been invented to counter docetism in the early church because “if Luke had been writing in order to combat that sort of view, it is unthinkable that he would have included in the same chapter the Emmaus Road story, with its unrecognized and then disappearing Jesus, then the account of Jesus appearing suddenly in the upper room, and finally the ascension itself.” But that doesn’t make any sense to me either; surely the proto-orthodox wouldn’t have disagreed with the docetists that Jesus, both pre- and post-resurrection, had superhuman powers; so there seems nothing incongruous about juxtaposing Jesus’ humanity with his superhuman abilities in a work intended to counter docetists.
(Sorry for rambling, and sorry if I’m making no sense / completely wrong.)
Yes, Tom Wright is a very learned and well-known scholar. And we disagree massively, on so many things!
Wright’s argument (and he makes several along these same lines) uses what I call the fallacy of the argument from incredulity – it is so incredible that human imagination could have come up with such an idea that it could have come from God. Jews and Muslims have made similar arguments:
Jews: it is too incredible that Jews could have survived all these years on their own, so God must have helped them.
Muslims: It is too incredible for an illiterate merchant’s factor to have written the beautiful poetry of the Qur’an, so God must have dictated it to him.
Off topic but I have a question on christology. In “How Jesus became God” you argue that the first Christians after the resurection had an exalted christology as relected in the Synoptics. However an incarnational christology also quickly developed as reflected in Paul’s letters. How do you think the Jerusalem church viewed this aspect of Paul’s teaching? It doesn’t seem to have generated the same level of controversy as that of gentile circumcision. Would both christologies have been anathema to the Jews?
I wish we knew! But alas, it is a gaping hole in our knowledge (one of many).
I think this depends on what you mean by “incarnational”. If you mean that God himself is incarnated within the physical body of Jesus, then I don’t think even Paul believed that. If you’re talking about an angelic being taking on a human form, then I think that not only could an ancient Jew have believed that, but most ancients probably would have taken it as a given. That is, of course angelic beings took human form, because even in the Torah and the Prophets we read about angelic beings in human bodies, e.g. the angels who come to Lot, the angels who come to Abraham, the angel who wrestled with Jacob, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if Paul thought that this was exactly who Jesus was, an angelic being (possibly the divine essence of Wisdom) who becomes “incarnated”.
So Q can be taken as evidence of a community who valued Jesus’ sayings and teachings more than the implications of his crucifixion and resurrection?
Are there any sayings in Mark that can be seen as having had a common ancestor with any of the sayings in Q?
thanks
Only if Q didn’t have a passion narrative. And yes, htere are some overlaps between Mark and Q, that scholars have tried to explain in various ways (common oral traditions?)
1.There is no evidence of a Q document—no references to it, no traces of it itself. True, we know of lost documents—but that’s because they’re referred or alluded to or quoted from. Many missing documents there is evidence for. For Q, none. None unless you cite the passages where Matthew resembles Luke and there’s no Markan parallel. But for these similarities, there’s an explanation that doesn’t require the postulation of the an entity for which there’s no evidence.
2. Matthew 26:68 and Luke 22:64 both conclude a passage from Mark with the words (translated) “Who is the one who smote you?” If Q had no passion narrative, how account for this parallel?
3. Matthew 13:31-2 and Luke 13:18-19 closely track Mark 4:30-2 except that Matthew and Luke have, and Mark does not, “a person having taken it,” “became a tree,” and “branches.” If Luke had Matthew, the three parallels would be easy to explain. How does the Q hypothesis account for them?
My dependence on Mark Goodacre will be apparent to you. (It’s his “Ten Reasons to Question Q” I’ve stolen from. I want to add that E.P. Sanders is among those who doubt Q’s existence.
2. Possibly a common oral tradition both of them knew. 3. See my earlier post (common oral traditions; each had the same form of Mark at that point that differs from the one we have, etc.
I’ve asked Mark if he’d be willing to post his views here on the blog, and he’s thinking about it.
Please, Professor Goodacre–I know you’re busy, but you are our champion and we need you to come forward with your slingshot and slay the beast!
LOL!! Now now, Dr. Ehrman isn’t a beast. But I do see “Q” as the scholastic version of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. I’m so glad I was spared the temptation to get into it, because I could have easily become an addict. I checked out Farmer’s Synopticon: (the color coded Greek Mat/Mk/Lk) recently. It is a fascinating puzzle, if one dates the Gospels late, but, as I put them pre-trial of 62 A.D., Luke is obvious, to me, softening Matthew’s anti-Pharisee tone.
Back to Bigfoot. Once upon a time, there was a mysterious man-like creature rumored to inhabit the jungles of Africa. A strange looking orange type was also heard about in Asia. At some point in the 1800’s, or thereabouts (not sure about the history of the ‘orange beast’ (I’m making that one up)) these strange mythical beasts were actually found. Bones were recovered. Aha! Proof! Then (Gasp!) One was… seen!!! and …. shot. (we’re talking real live National Enquirer stuff here!!! Man Like Beast!!!)
Then…. they were put….. in….. zoos. Sigh. Today we call them “Gorillas”. Mystery over. Ho hum. No more mythical excitement. Now we have to go searching for something else. Y’know, I heard there’s a man like creature that roams some forests in North America……….. or the north pole!! Back to the excitement! Sasquatch! The Abominable Snowman!!!
Seriously. I watched an orangutan in the Waco Zoo. I could watch him all day. A Real Live Bigfoot. But since we have photographs and can pay to see him, (for like $5, next to the giraffe exhibit) His mystique is GONE…. so sad.
In the real live world of documents we have truly missing things, that we know are missing and will probably never be found. Such as Aramaic Matthew. Plenty of documentary evidence with no logical reason to suspect that it did not exist at some point. And its gone. Then there are the writings of Papias, which we only have fragments, quotations preserved by other writers. Then there’s Hegesippus. And the Greek writings of Irenæus. Lost writings of Clement of Alexandria….(his “outlines”) . Those are our real live mysteries, our missing documents. Our ‘orangutans’ and ‘gorillas’.
But “Q” has so much intrigue, that 100’s of 1,000’s of pages have been written on it….. because….. it suggests……. ???????
Seriously. Compare Unique Luke with Unique Matthew. Then ask yourself which book you would present to Burrus with Paul standing at your side……. I’ll bet if I reached for the one that starts with the letter ‘M” Paul would SMACK that hand of mine!
Oooooh! I just squeeled out loud! Please, please agree to do a post on Q.
“I’ve asked Mark if he’d be willing to post his views here on the blog, and he’s thinking about it.”
On first reading, I thought you were talking about the author of the Gospel of Mark!
For some reason this post does not appear on the daily list of posts: https://ehrmanblog.org/category/public-forum/
That may explain the few responses here.
I’ve noticed this happening a few times before, perhaps Steve is on vacation?
It’s supposed to happen automatically. I’ll look into it!
1 Peter 3:21 says that “baptism… now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as [a pledge to God from] a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ….” (brackets show A footnoted translation from the NRSV.)
This seems to differ both from John’s baptism of repentance and Paul’s dying and rising with Christ. Is this a distinct view of baptism in the NT?
Yup. And it’s very hard to figure out.
One of your objectors argues that the Q hypothesis should be rejected because it threatens the claim that Mt & Lk independently attest the existence of Jesus. Do you think it’s valid to reason from the assumption that Mt & Lk must be independent attestors? We’re still left with Paul, Mark, Q, and John, plus the non Christian sources, no?
Silly argument. They have lots of stories about Jesus not from Q or Mark.
I red Mark Goodacre´s book called “The synoptic problem” and I found his reasonings very persuasive. Would be nice to see you two debating this (and other issues) for semi laymen audience! But (correct me, if I´m wrong), he is not necessarily against Q, he “just” says, that standard argument for Q is based on wrong presumptions. I was a bit disappointed with your book “Jesus before gospels”. Surely, it´s an interesting and well researched book, but there was something lacking – it focused almost entirely on oral transmission of stories about Jesus. Just layman thinking – there is a gap of some 35-40 years between Jesus crucifixion and Mark´s gospel (and even more time between Jesus´ death and Matthew and Luke). Suppose you were a greek speaking gentile from Antioch, who converted as a young man around 50 CE (say twenty years after Jesus execution). Did you celebrate eucharist? Did you recite Lord´s prayer? And if so – where did you get it from? And let´s say you went on business trip ten years later and converted your friends from another city during the trip. Maybe you wrote them some letters, that recorded “your” version of Lord´s Prayer and other stuff. Maybe you recorded your oral traditions (think of the Signs source identified in John). Seems to me, like many christian communities scattered across the world, reach independently a phase, when they felt urgency to write down and summarize all they knowledge and they did it in a form of ancient biography, i.e. gospel (synoptic communities – maybe they were somewhat close to each other?, johannine community, community of gospel of Peter, possibly Egerton community and who knows how many others. Maybe writing down your own gospel was an unavoidable thing for christian community at certain stage of their development?
Hi Dr. Ehrman,
The primary reason for not adding the birth narratives into the reconstruction of Q seems to be that Luke and Matthew lack the word for word agreement we would expect if they shared Q for that material. Does this mean the verbatim agreement in other double tradition is much stronger than in the birth narratives?
I would LOVE to see a conversation between you and Mark Goodacre on this topic, thanks for mentioning that.
Cheers,
Sean
The British scholar Alan Garrow has compiled an extremely compelling argument that Q never existed. In seven short videos totaling 52 minutes of viewing time he pretty much proves beyond any doubt that Matthew used both Mark and Luke, and what we imagine as the “Q source” was actually Matthew copying and reorganizing Lukan material directly. See these videos here: https://www.alangarrow.com/mch.html. It is virtually impossible to believe in the Q theory once you’ve seen this data. Bart, if you see any holes in his arguments I would be grateful to hear them.
I’m afraid I don’t know him or his work. The problem is always that it is very hard for someone without advanced training in a field (whether neuro-science, astronomy, evolutionary biology, philosophy, or biblical studies!) to see the holes in an argument that an expert can see pretty quickly. So we’ll see if he convinces any scholars!
You are an expert. I will lay a wager that you cannot find any holes in Garrow’s argument, and that in fact you will be convinced of his resolution of the Synoptic Problem. If you are not convinced, document whatever holes you see on this page. If you are convinced, post a statement that you believe he may have a viable solution to the Problem. Either way, once your assessment is posted, I will donate $1000 to your blog as a thank you for the time you invested to view his presentation and formulate a response.
Ah, that’s tempting. How long are these videos?
A total of 52 minutes viewing time. There are five as I recall, averaging about ten minutes each.
Sounds interesting. Views that are held onto for a long time can be very hard to shake, even when presented with strong evidence. It took a long time for me to comprehend that the Gospels might not ever have been anonymous the way we think of it since I’d been taught that, had read that in virtually every commentary that I laid hands on for decades.
In fact, I came across this blog in my search for ‘anonymous’ and ‘gospels’ while digging…. I’d never heard of Dr. Ehrman……
Then I found Eusebius…..
Without having watched the videos I’ve become convinced, by looking at ULuke and UMatthew that Matthew would have been a monstrous problem at the trial of 60-62 in Rome. Luke had ample opportunity in Philippi during the 50’s and during his 57-59 stint in Jerusalem to compile his information. Matthew, to Roman eyes, would have made Jesus out to truly be an instigator. (just look at the 7 woes).
Is it possible mark and luke talked to each other on what to write rather than relying on Q.
It’s one of the options that has to be considered, but there are very good reasons for thinking it didn’t work this way (they get a bit technical, but maybe I’ll repost some of them; in the mean time, if you look up Q Source on the blog, youj’ll probably find some discussion of it)
Hi there Bart.
Do you think – as some Scolars Di- that The Gospel of Thomas was originally a much larger text? Could it then maybe have been a contender for Q ?
No, it appears to be complete, but there’s no way, of course, to say for sure. It can’t be Q because most of Q is not in Thomas and most of Thomas is not in Q, and what is shared between them is invariably worded differently.
Even a cursory comparison of how Matthew and Luke modified their foundational source, Mark, suggests (to me, anyway) that both authors must have taken time off from their day job as doctors. Luke is identified elsewhere in the canon as a physician. His gospel appears to have essentially preserved what he “borrowed” from Mark. The putative Matthew, were he around today, could have made a good living dispensing “spin” on behalf of politicians. This author was clearly a master redactor — who didn’t hesitate to make whatever revisions he felt necessary — including to the very words of Jesus, himself! — to insure that his account comports with his own theological suppositions.
As I noted previously in another thread, Matthew modified BOTH sides of the initial interaction between the Rich Young Ruler and Jesus, clearly to eliminate the problematic “No one is good except God alone” line (Mt 19:16-17 vs. Mk 10:17-18//Lk 18:18-19.) But that is certainly not the only example.
[Getting to the question in the next post]
Matthew actually concocted dialog between John the Baptist and Jesus (Mt 3:14-15) to acknowledge — though, strangely enough, not actually redress — the Who’s Who problem created by the ritual ablution. He also softened some of Jesus’ too fastidious standards by, for instance, inserting a disclaimer into the absolute prohibition of divorce (Mt 5:32 vs. Mk 10:11-12//Lk 16:18). And these are merely the first examples that come to mind.
Such emendations by Matthew are easily recognized because we not only have his source, Mark, for comparison, but also the unredacted versions of these pericopes in Luke. The purpose served by Matthew’s alterations is as single-minded as it is self-evident — to correct what that author regarded as theological missteps and misstatements by Jesus.
Is there anyway to similarly separate wheat from chaff in what Matthew and Luke got from Q — notwithstanding that, unlike with Mark, we don’t have the Q source for comparison?
Scholars certainly work hard to do this, but in the end it is hard to establish any kind of cretainty.
I find Q confusing.
Let’s say the order of stories in Mark is: A, B, C, D, E; and in Matthew: A, E, I, O, U.
Sentence #1:
“why would an author [Luke] follow the sequence of one of his sources [Mark], except for stories that are not found in his other one [Matthew]?”
I think the “not” in this sentence must be an error.
Stories in Mark that are *NOT* found in Matthew are: B, C, D
Sentence #1 says that Luke follows Mark’s order with respect to A, E but *NOT* (ref: “except for”) with respect to B, C, D.
But surely it’s the other way around: Luke follows Mark’s order with respect to B, C, D but not with respect to A, E.
Sentence #2:
“these stories found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark are almost always inserted into a different sequence of Mark’s narrative”
Stories found in Matthew but not in Mark are: I, O, U
So if Luke has them in the order U, I, O, we hypothesise Q as the source of this order.
So if I’m right about #1, and Luke’s order is B, U, E, C, A, I, D, O, then perhaps Q’s order is U, E, A, I, O.
I think…
I can’t go into depth here. Some passages are in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Other passages are in Matthew and Luke but not Mark. For the passages that Matthew and Mark both have — those stories in Luke tend to be in the SAME sequence as Matthew. For the passages that Matthew has but Mark does NOT — those stories in Luke tend to appear in a DIFFERENT sequence from Matthew. So I think the “not” is correct, no?
It just gives me a headache (figuratively not literally). Needs a diagram.
Oh, there are plenty in the books on it. YOu’ll find some in teh books I refer to in my chapter on the Synoptic Problem in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction. But yea, makes my head spin too, once it (my head) gets into the weeds.
First of all, thank you for this synopsis. If you are familiar with April DeConcick’s work on GTh (“Original Gospel of Thomas” journal article) and John (“Voices of the Mystics”), would you agree with her principles on dating GTh in four or five evolving layers dating between 30-120 CE; and, would you agree with her thesis that the Johannine community seems to interact with the Thomasine community in John? Thank you for making yourself available in this forum. In my view so many authors have fortified castles after the first hit and are not at all available. I appreciate your liberating ministry and pursuit of truth, wherever it takes us. Blessings.
I”m very familiar with it indeed. I think it’s a fascinating thesis, even though I’m not sure the details can be sustained. And I haven’t heard that it has caught on. But I liked it very much myself.
Is there any scholarly dating of Q? Also thank you for “Forged”. It was life changing and instructive. In the same vein of “Forged”, why should we believe “Luke” or “Matthew” about additional written sources? For example, I noticed that “Luke” steals a story from 1 or 2 Kings and turns it into a supposed miracle that Jesus performs. (I extracted Markan and Q sources and examined the rest individually.) Clearly these editors had theological goals in their stories? Why shouldn’t we believe they were dramatized and fictionalized stories based on community issues a la mystic sources and Greek myth sources leading up to the 80s CE? Again, thank you for your presence and participation on this blog. Blessings,
Most scholars put Q either at the time of or (maybe more often) before Mark, so in the 60s or even 50s. My view is that we can’t know. There’s really no way to say, other than that it had to be earlier than both Matthew and Luke.