This, I think (!), will be my last post for now on the Q source apparently used by Matthew and Luke for many of their sayings materials, a source that must at one time have existed (since Matthew and Luke appear both to have had access to it), that was written in Greek (otherwise Matthew and Luke could not agree word-for-word in places – in Greek — in their non-Markan sayings material), and that contained almost exclusively (or exclusively) sayings of Jesus.
There are many other issues that we could discuss about Q, but for now I would like to end by mentioning just one. It is regularly and routinely maintained by New Testament scholars that one of the striking features of Q is that it contains a list of Jesus’ sayings and no passion narrative – no account of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Scholars then draw a conclusion: the death of Jesus was not important to the community that produced the Q document.
I have to admit, I’m not completely convinced of this claim, even though I appear to be in the minority on this matter. My view is that we can’t know whether this document copied by Matthew and Luke had a passion narrative. How could we know, really? The one and only access we have to this document, assuming it existed (as I do), is through passages that Matthew and Luke have in common that are not found in Mark. Technically speaking, if either Matthew or Luke drew any of its material from Q and the other did not, then we would have no way of knowing whether that material in Matthew or Luke (but not both) came from Q or from somewhere else (M, L, or the author’s own imagination).
In theory it is possible…
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Yes, I agree with all your logic here! I’m surprised that you’re in a minority of scholars seeing it this way.
It would be sad if this were your last post on Q! It’s great reading.
This is interesting speculation here. But when I read Q theories they seem so removed since it is a hypothetical source that neither we nor any church father. The only problem really with Q is that it doesn’t exist.
“For the Gospel of Thomas it is not the death and resurrection of Jesus that brings salvation. It is the correct interpretation of his “secret sayings.”
If this is also true of Q, could Q be proto Gnostic? Admittedly, crumbs would be more evidence than one could muster for that idea and If I recall correctly you date Thomas to sometime in the second century. So the only basis for the question is the “sayings format” and perhaps Q lacked a passion narrative.
I think you touched in this in your piece, but if lets say the “Markan community” viewed Jesus as fully human, is it such a stretch to think the “Q community viewed him as a philosopher” or prophet worth quoting.
I don’t think that alone would make it proto-gnostic — there would need to be some kind of gnostic cosmology behind it (but there does not appear to be)
Could not the same argument be made of the birth stories and the post resurrection stories? Or are they too diverse between M and L to be from a common source?
Yes, way too diverse: different narratives and no significant verbal overlaps.
Does Paul seem to have known Q?
Thanks, as always!
No, apparently not!
Five stars. I am just surprised to hear that your conclusions are not shared by the majority of scholars..
Yes, I’m usually surprised when people don’t agree with me. 🙂
This entire series on Q has been terrific. Thanks!
Can you recommend any books on this hypothesis that Q had a radically different view of Jesus than the synoptics? I’ve been interested in the idea that the real Jesus was vastly different than the Jesus described in the NT.
My first encounter with the idea was in an essay on “The Gattung [i.e., genre] of Q” in a book by Helmut Koester and James Robinson called Trajectories in Early Christianity (back in the early 80s). You might also look at Burton Mack’s book the Lost Gospel — not sure if it takes this line or not, but wouldn’t be surprised if it did.
The Burton Mack book has a preview on Amazon and it looks like it looks like it discusses a Q non-Christian Jesus movement. Looks like he has other very interesting books. Thanks!
I was hoping for an Amazon preview of the James Robinson essay, but they don’t have one. Google Scholar, however, links to what appears to be a complete copy of the book on OpenISBN. If anyone is interested I’m going to post the link on the forums shortly.
Are there any traces in Luke’s and Matthews reworkings of Mark’s passion narrative that could indicate supplements from Q?
None that is certain.
Yes, I totally agree. Another one of my personal gripes is when people try to sort Q into further hypothetical layers. Isn’t appealing to one hypothetical source risky enough?!
I completely agree.
Given that Paul’s letters pre-date the four gospels, it is surprising to me that none of them refer to Paul directly. As you have pointed out on many occasions, the gospels become more like Paul in terms of his Christology as they advance along the timeline from Mark to John but progressively less like Paul regarding his heavy emphasis on apocalypticism.
Could it be that Q’s (alleged) lack of a passion narrative served as an indirect way to refute Paul’s single-minded faith in Jesus’s death and resurrection?
The Didache and the Epistle of James seem to take more direct aim at Paul without ever mentioning his name. Is there a scholarly consensus as to why – except for Luke Acts – Paul is not directly referenced (to my knowledge) in 1st and 2nd Century writings that postdate his?
Yes, possibly.
Paul is mentioned in the letters of Ignatius (for example) at the beginning of the 2nd century and extensively in the writings of Irenaeus and Tertullian at the end. You may want to see my student Benjamin White’s book on Paul for an up to date discussion of the use of Paul in early Christianity
Thanks, Bart.
I’ll check my university’s library to see if they have B. White’s book.
Your position here is so well argued that I’m disappointed you’re in the scholarly minority. It seems to me that some of the Q enthusiasts have gone way overboard reconstructing a whole “Q community” based, as much as anything else, on their own feelings about what early Christianity should have been like. On a related point: Some of those same scholars believe Q had different sets of sayings added to it over the years. According to them, it is possible to distinguish layers or “strata” in Q. The oldest layer would then reflect Christianity in its most primitive form. What are your thoughts about that?
I don’t think there was a single primitive form of Christianity, but lots of very early forms. But no, I don’t think we can deduce layers in Q.
I’m glad to hear you say so about the single primitive form. Some of your critics, especially Robert Price, who I respect, take your use of ‘proto-Orthodoxy’ to mean that you think there was one faith arising from the disciples and became the religion we know today. I take it that perhaps you think there were pre-Catholic Christians who eventually formed the Catholic church, regardless of whether they came directly from the earliest believers or not. Is that clear? Do I understand your position on ‘proto-Orthodoxy’?
Yikes!! Why would they think I thought *that*???
Because they don’t read your blog, I guess. Or read your work closely enough.
With regard to the “passion narratives,” I have struggled with the concept of the atonement almost as much as I have struggled with the theodicy problem and the concepts of the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity. Have you ever thought about writing a book on the atonement starting with the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament? A working title might be: “The Blood of Jesus: How Jesus Became Thought of As Being the Blood Sacrifice for the Sins of Humans.”
Interesting idea!
Prof Ehrman
Off the subject but I attended your lectures at the Smithsonian today and enjoyed them very much. Sorry for the trouble with the airline. I hope you are able to make connections with your bags at some point. You did arrive in time for the good weather. It was snowing here in DC yesterday.
I’m looking forward to your new project about oral tradition and memory. Very interesting discussion.
A question relating to your lecture about Pilate. How likely is it that a “criminal” like Jesus would get a personal interview with the Governor of Judea? I can see a flunky shoving a death warrant parchment in front of him to sign but wouldn’t someone a little lower in the bureaucracy handle the day to day administration of justice in the field? Are we supposed to imagine that the two thieves crucified along side Jesus also got a personal session with Pilate?
Thanks!
Thanks — I enjoyed them too.
As to your question: I’m afraid I don’t really know! (We have such sparse records about such things. Off hand I don’t know of anything relevant. Maybe someone else on the blog does?)
Hmm. One thought that’s crossing my mind is that Jesus was taken up on political charges, and I’ve gotten the impression that keeping the lid on unrest in Judea was one of Pilate’s main jobs (and was why he came to Jerusalem for Passover). So maybe he was more likely to deal with the Jesus than with (say) a thief, who wasn’t posing any particular challenge to Roman rule?
Makes sense to me.
A little off topic, but is there evidence pointing towards there having been a “Signs Source”? Do you personally think that such a source is likely to have existed?
Yes, I do — I may say something about this on the blog.
DR Ehrman:
Mathew and Mark were not eyewitnesses. The author of Luke was not an ‘eyewitness’ either, although he claims to have received his sources from ‘eyewitnesses’…
Luke 1:1,2
1-Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us,
2-just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,
—————————————————————
However Paul knew some ‘eyewitnesses’, i.e., Peter John and James. He states in one of his undisputed letters to the Corinthians, that He also had seen Jesus after His resurrection from the dead, in the same manner Cephas and all the apostles, including James and other witnesses who were not apostles, had seen Him…Paul also claims that Jesus died for our sins and that He was raised on the third day according to the scriptures… So Paul not only had the testimony of the ‘eyewitnesses’ themselves but he also had ‘scriptures’… What scriptures was he referring to? I don’t think he’s speaking about the old testament here… Do you? Even If he was, he nonetheless had the witness of the ‘eyewitnesses’ i.e. Peter, John and james…Do you agree?
! corinthians 15:3-9
3-For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4-and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
5-and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
6-After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep;
7-then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles;
8-and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.
9-For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
Luke never says that *his* account was based directly on eyewitness reports, just that ultimately the stories went back to eyewitnesses.
Yes, Paul claimed to be an eyewitness of the resurrection and to have known three other eyewitnesses of the resurrection. I wish we knew precisely which scriptures he had in mind!
If Q is mainly composed of the sayings of Jesus, could we expect its passion narrative to also be brief?
I”m not sure it follows, since the sayings were lots of short parables and one-liners, but the passion narrative was a string of events.
Enjoyed your day at the Smithsonian also. Hope you can do one again.
Probably next year at this time!
“It is regularly and routinely maintained by New Testament scholars that one of the striking features of Q is that it contains a list of Jesus’ sayings and no passion narrative – no account of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Scholars then draw a conclusion: the death of Jesus was not important to the community that produced the Q document.”
Do the majority of scholars agree with this conclusion? Wouldn’t their reasoning be similar to that of the mythicists who claim that the teachings and deeds of Jesus didn’t matter to Paul since few references to them can be found in the 7 extant letters?
It’s a good question. I think it is the majority view among supporters of Q that it did not have a passion narrative; but I don’t know if it’s a majority view that Q therefore had a different view of the importance of Jesus’ death.
I like your comment on early Christianity in the plural ‘Christianities’ same with Judaism about 2,000 yrs ago, it should be pluralized as there were numerous groups, each with their own spin on things. Excellent blog, one thing which has always bothered me when speaking with Evangelicals and other fundamentalists is that what you and others discuss, doesn’t filter down to the masses who seem to live according to the words on a bumper sticker I once saw in the US, which read ‘God said it, I believe and that settles it’. On the other hand your giving back to the communities via your blog, which paid for our education, and we paid for theirs, is admirable.
Hi Bart,
I’m a first-time commenter. Love the blog.
In your above blog post you pointed out: “If Q was like that, then we have evidence of *enormous* differences among various Christian communities already in the early decades of the Christian movement.”
I think this is an insight that could be backed up by real-time anthropological data about communities like the Chabad-Lubavitch Jews and their response to the death of their Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson in 1994. Immediately after his death, wildly varying beliefs emerged in the community. Some believe he was Moshiach, still alive but concealed (the police even had to be called in at one point to stop a riot when opposing members wanted to put up a commemorative plaque with the rebbe’s date of death on it). Within that group some even hold views that he was basically equal to Yahweh. Others within the group of “messianists” believe he died, but will come back at some point. The messianists apparently hold their services on the ground-floor of their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY (greeting an empty chair where the concealed Rebbe apparently sits), whereas the non-messianists have their services within the same building (!) on a higher floor. The non-messianists have views that range from the Rebbe never having been or claiming to be Moshiach, to the idea that he could have been Moshiach because in every generation such a potential candidate emerges, but the group didn’t draw in enough other Jews to somehow catalyze his transformation into Moshiach.
Just imagine this group emerging 2,000 years ago (without all the video recordings, etc. of the Rebbe) and an earthquake demolishing their headquarters with the people on the ground-floor getting out in time, but no-one on the higher floor surviving. The “history” of the rebbe would then be written almost exclusively by the messianists. I wonder, drawing from S.G.F. Brandon’s views, whether a similar scenario may have taken place in the case of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, i.e. a group with a, broadly speaking, much different nationalist, Jewish and lower-Christological view of Jesus being wiped out with the other Jews in Jerusalem, allowing for other views to flourish outside of Jerusalem in the vacuum.
I think a book that does a comparative study of these modern-day groups and the widely varying beliefs they hold simultaneously early on after such an event vs. what early Christianity might have looked like, would be really interesting.
Thanks for any response you might have.
Wim
Yes, the parallels are really interesting!
From the “biblical Jesus being a composite of people made historical by Josephus” perspective, here is the Passion narrative:
But, what is still more terrible, there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the temple, began on a sudden to cry aloud, “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds (See Matthew 24: 27 and 31), a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!” This was his cry, as he went about by day and by night, in all the lanes of the city.
However, certain of the most eminent among the populace had great indignation at this dire cry of his, and took up the man, and gave him a great number of severe stripes; yet did not he either say any thing for himself, or any thing peculiar to those that chastised him, but still went on with the same words which he cried before.
Hereupon our rulers, supposing, as the case proved to be, that this was a sort of divine fury in the man, brought him to the Roman procurator, where he was whipped till his bones were laid bare; yet he did not make any supplication for himself, nor shed any tears, but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip his answer was, “Woe, woe to Jerusalem!” And when Albinus (for he was then our procurator) asked him, Who he was? and whence he came? and why he uttered such words? he made no manner of reply to what he said, but still did not leave off his melancholy ditty, till Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him.
If someone is looking for source material for the gospels, look to Josephus. The above is but one example. Besides, Josephus wrote speeches in his histories. Speeches and sayings of Jesus would be within his capabilities to write. The “Oral Tradition,” and given, gospels were written when Josephus could read them, the gospels make at least one reference to the account of Josephus (Q source) about the scourging of Jesus son of Ananus and Jesus son of Ananus quiet before a procurator.
The Gospel of Thomas & the Q source not including a passion narrative seems puzzling. It would seem like one rising from the dead – bodily, no less – would warrant some mention at least! It is inconceivable that the author would “knowingly” skip over such a monumental event to get to the “secret sayings.” I would think that perhaps the earliest followers either weren’t aware of a resurrection event or it simply did not happen and was added later.
I think the “salvation theology” found in the Bible is secondary to the actual message of Jesus..which in my opinion was the kingdom of God on earth. If more of us emphasized that and lived as though that were the important message Jesus brought, the world would be an entirely different place then it is now and has been since Jesus died. Salvation theology is “ego” driven. It’s kind of like capitalism is “greed” driven.
The Son of Man Movement towards the Kingdom of the God of Israel was a colossal fail. Visit youtube. Search WBFbySteefen. See the video presentation “Zeitgeist Aquarius: Josephus did not like Christianity; Jesus renounced his religion.” The title is likely to change or a new version of the video presentation may be posted. Currently, that is the most current version, but look for the latest upload on Josephus.
The notion of salvation gives Christianity its reason for being: give me salvation when I need saving because my father died, give me salvation when I need saving because I lost a job, give me salvation when I need saving because I lost my way, give me salvation when I need saving because societal powers do things that harm individuals in society and/or society at large (ruin of souls–see St. Michael’s prayer), give me salvation when I need saving because I’m a caretaker, save my failing endurance and strength…
I’m obviously one of the people who does not believe in “salvation” because I believe this life is all there is. Therefore, to me “salvation theology” just avoids the need to care for one another in this life. It’s selfish because it’s “all about me” whereas Jesus’ true message about caring for one another is all about “the other”.
very interesting professor, i would just like to note isn’t it more plausible that Q didn’t have a passion narrative because isn’t it strange that in over 200 places (i’m sure its far more) they are word for word in agreement and they copy Q almost to a tee for example the speech of john the baptist recorded with 51 words in matthew and 52 words in luke with luke just adding the word “and”, however when it comes to the passion narrative they decide not to copy a single thing? Would that make any sense? Imagine if Q had a passion narrative why would both matthew and luke decide to stop copying it then at that exact point. Imagine if only one of them copied Q such as matthew and the other luke didn’t copy from Q, don’t you think that in at least just 1 place he would copy Q and we would be able to detect it. It wouldn’t make sense that if Q had it and only 1 of them copied it that the second author would neglect it totally, that he wouldn’t use it in so much as 1 sentence. I’m not saying it couldn’t have had a passion narrative i’m just saying isn’t it more reasonable to think it didn’t have a passion narrative?
I’d say we just don’t know.
DR Ehrman:
“If, say, in the 50s CE, Q emerged from…”
Professor, do you think Q was written in the 50s, or was it just an example for your point?
It’s a guess; but I’d say late 50s to mid-70s, anyway….