Well I got myself into another Sunday School assignment, this time I offered to lead a discussion on the Lost Gospel of Q, or the Q document or just Q, depending on whatever you want to call it.
A little background, after graduating with my BA I spent a little time doing some graduate work in CA studying the Christianity of antiquity, my interest was in the Coptic/Gnostic library that came from the Nag Hammadi find of 1945, but the Institute, once famous for its association with the Nag Hammadi Library, had changed its focus to the International Q project. I became a bit of an unwilling participant. I left after about 6 months, to rejoin J. in N.M.
Last night, as we were beginning our nightly sojourn into slumber, J. asked me one of those leading “if” questions. If I hadn’t left the Institute, to go and court my one great love, would I have stayed on, and finished my work? I suppose it would have meant never looking into my children’s eyes, thought I know that isn’t what she meant. Is my interest still there? Well, suffice it to say, I happy to lead an Adult Sunday School class on the subject, but I am not sure I would want to spend the rest of my life arguing over the subtle nuances of a Greek iota.
Q, you see, is a document buried within the New Testament, specifically, the synoptic (seen-together) gospels, which were originally written in Greek. Now, truth be told, it has been a while, fifteen years, since I wrote my last paper on the subject, and while I have kept a cursory eye on new publications about Q, I am anything but an expert. So, I dutifully dusted off a few books from the shelf and settled in to a good night's read.
Q is really fascinating, especially if you gloss over some of the controversial aspects of its genesis. You can’t get bogged down in how someone goes about finding a document within a document, especially one redacted so many times. You have to put aside, the “which gospel came first” question and accept that better minds than mine have managed to sort out the primacy of Mark. Finally, (my favorite) that Mark, according to Karl Ludwig Schmidt’s “The framework of the story of Jesus,” is itself a story made up of several smaller stories that were themselves put together by the author Mark for the purpose of inventing the biographical narrative, putting an end to the assumption that the narrative constituted a historical record.
So the New Testament gospels were written, using Mark as a guideline for the biographical narrative, and Q for the sayings of Jesus. What is Q? James Robinson in his “Logoi Sophon” hypothesized that Q was a kind of collection of wisdom sayings, a handbook of instruction filled with maxims, proverbs, injunctions and popular philosophies that offered insights into how to navigate modern living. The difference between Q and other types of pamphlets of its day? Well, Q was comprised of sayings by the teacher Jesus, but more importantly, contained prophetic and apocalyptic passages that were uncommon in other works of the genre. John Kloppenburg suggested that Q was probably itself a document that was edited many times and that the prophetic and apocalyptic language was probably added later as a kind of injunction against misbehaving. Don’t give to the poor? Don’t get into the kingdom of Heaven.
A couple of interesting things stand out for me. While Q may not get scholars (people, critics, the media) any closer to the historical Jesus, it does get us closer to the historical Jesus community. The addition of these injunctions shows very clearly the kinds of struggles and adaptations that were necessary for the community to bond together from a group of possible itinerants (i.e.” Do not carry purse, or bag, or sandals, or staff; and do not greet anyone on the road”) into a growing, thriving community.
Secondly, Q1, the original layer of Q, is without prophetic or apocalyptic language. It contains no birth, death or resurrection motifs, and while it is loosely organized into a narrative, it is essentially a prescription for how to live your life. Many of its sayings exhort the same lessons we try to teach our children: When asked, give, when in need, ask. Do not lie. Do not do what you hate. Eat what is in front of you whether it is meager or sumptuous. Do not be consumed with worry. Life is hard. Be cautious and courageous. Trust God. Be kind.
Some people would point to the absence of the story of Jesus as evidence that the Gospel narrative is nothing more than a myth in the making. However, I doubt that Q was the only story in town, and suspect that the narrative chunks of Jesus’ life that made up Mark were floating around with the same regularity as Q. In fact, I find these kinds of discussions about the rise of ritual and myth as detractive from the true story of Q. Rather I see in Q a kind of possibility for a religion besieged by so much distrust and animosity. From the reformation on, people have been questioning its authority. The whole "who is the historical Jesus" question seems somehow aimed at the authenticity of the religion as a whole.
Just yesterday I was talking to a long time friend who also goes to the class. He was saying that while he finds our class discussions interesting, what he is really hungry for, what he really wants, is more interaction that addresses how we integrate faith into our daily lives. J. is fond of saying “I can’t think myself into right action, but I can act myself into right thinking.” Maybe this is the core of Q? That faith is made manifest in works, and not just our lofty ideas about God and our good intentions. With that perspective in mind, I think I am going to reread Q one more time...
3 comments:
A prof. I had last quarter reviewed in class some of the various theories as to the sources of the New Testament--Q, proto-Luke, proto-Matthew, whether Luke simply borrowed from Matthew, etc. His own conclusion was that *none* of the theories was at all satisfactory, and that the influences between the documents which now exist as the Gospels are too complicated for us to be able to make simple statements like "Mark was written first" and "Matthew and Luke drew upon Q."
I'm not sure whether to think that such thinking is a cop-out, or simply a more honest scholarly approach than most people are willing to take.
It sounds like your Prof. is quoting from Raymond Brown's "An introduction to the New Test."
I thought this quote from http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96dec/jesus/jesus.htm summed it up nicely "Given that no one's proposed solution to the Synoptic Problem seems entirely satisfactory, the best way to regard the problem may be simply as that: a problem, probably unamenable to ultimate solution until someone uncovers a text. The hypothesis that a collection of Jesus' sayings was patched together by those who revered him is about as helpful as any in understanding the Synoptics' composition, so it is not surprising that most biblical scholars accept it. Luke himself hints at the existence of something like Q, in the beginning of his Gospel: "Many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word."
I thought you did a great job leading the class on Sunday as well as deftly handling the stickier points of Q as it applies to Jesus, the whole kung-fu grip version and historial persona.
Sorry we'll be away the next two Sunday's and miss Q 2.0 and Q 3.0.
Rock on.
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