Biblica
The Q Hypothesis

Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont Graduate University

The first clear statement of the priority of Mark among the Synoptics was that of Wilke in 1838. In that same year appeared Weisse's hypothesis of an early but now lost source in addition to the Synoptic Gospels. These two proposals were soon combined to form what is now known as the Two Source Hypothesis (2SH). Holtzmann gave it important support in 1863, and from that time to the present, the 2SH has been the dominant theory of the Synoptic Gospels in the NT scholarly community. That theory posits Mark and the hypothetical Q (short for Gm Quelle, "source") as the principal sources for Matthew and Luke. There are many statements of the logic of Q, but the one generally recognized as the most convincing, and which thus figures prominently in introductions to Q from Harnack to now, is that Q is the material absent from Mark, but present in both Matthew and Luke.

In most of its many variants, the Q theory then goes on to annex some material which is present in Mark, as well as in Matthew and/or Luke. In our opinion, this merely roils the waters. Where it exists, the Markan passage is typically shorter than its counterpart in Matthew and/or Luke, so that the latter forms are in principle open to explanation as expansions of a Markan prototype. Should these explanations succeed, however, they would eliminate from Q one or more passages with Markan prototypes, but that result would do nothing to change the argument for Q as such. As a more fundamental test of the Q hypothesis, we will here consider only the Q material which meets the above classic definition. We reason as follows: If the wider Q is all genuine, no harm will be done by closely examining this sample, but if there should be a problem with the Markan extension, then the Mt/Lk material will be a safer basis for any conclusions about Q. As Harnack says, of the investigation which he recommends,

"Such a work ought in the first place to confine itself with rigorous exclusiveness to the non-Markan passages which are common to Matthew and Luke, to subject these to a thorough investigation from the point of view of grammar, style, and literary criticism in general, and after having thus gained a firm standpoint, to see what definite results may be deduced." (The Sayings of Jesus, xi)

Inventory

No two Q theorists posit exactly the same inventory of Q, or number that inventory in the same way. Those who wish to go back a century may consult the first detailed reconstruction of Q, which is that of Harnack himself:

We will instead work with more recent versions. Probably the most authoritative inventory of Q, in current scholarly perception, is that of IQP (the International Q Project's Critical Edition, Hermeneia 2000). This work divides long sequences, such as the Sermon on the Mount, into many constituent passages, and it often deletes verses or parts of verses from a given passage. It is a highly dissected list. Its inventory is not numbered, but in fact includes 102 items. By contrast, H T Fleddermann (Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary, Peeters 2005), an also prominent treatment, deals with sequences as units (for him, the Sermon on the Mount is one item), and is generally disposed to include whole verses. His list, though closely corresponding to IQP in substance, comprises 38 numbered items.

Of the IQP 102 entries, 20 are crossed out, double bracketed, or surrounded by question marks in the IQP Table of Contents, leaving 82 entries as currently recognized by IQP itself. Of these 82 active entries, 44 have Markan parallels in the IQP edition's own treatment (and another is listed as "Mark/Q Overlap" in Fleddermann 2005), leaving 37 entries to qualify by present definition.

Of this basic inventory, we next ask: is the Matthean or Lukan version the more primitive? If the answer in all 37 cases is "Matthean," a Synoptic theory of the type Mt > Lk is implied, and there is no need to posit a separate source text for this material. If instead the answer is always "Lukan," then the implication is a Synoptic theory of the type Lk > Mt, which would be a surprise for most Synoptic theorists, but here also, no third text is suggested. But if the answer is "sometimes one, sometimes the other," then some outside source becomes a live possibility.

Investigation

The IQP passages to be examined are here listed by their first verses in Luke. For each, we will give a directionality reading for the passage in question, and also consider the placement of the unit ("pericope") in Matthew and Luke. A few general pages have been added where it seemed appropriate.

Conclusion

[To be supplied]

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2 June 2008 / Contact The Project / Exit to Biblica Page