JESUS ACCORDING TO THE “Q” - The Earliest Portrait of
the Historical Jesus
Author: Robert D. Brinsmead
August 2008
The Significance of the “Q”
Document
For some time it has been accepted by the historical Jesus scholars, whether Catholic,
Protestant or Jewish, that Mark was the earliest of the four NT Gospels. It was
written by an unknown Gentile Christian source around 70 AD. Some 15-25 years
later, Matthew and Luke, written also by unknown sources, both copied Mark.
They also added sayings of Jesus that were drawn from another common but
unsighted source. It was the German scholars who first coined the term “Quelle” (meaning “Source”) to identify this unsighted
source material used by Matthew and Luke. It now simply goes by the name Q.
One hundred years of Jesus scholarship has confirmed the existence of an early
“Sayings Gospel” thought to have been in circulation during the 50’s of the
first century CE. We are indebted to a number of scholars who in very recent
years have been able to carefully and painstakingly reconstruct the Q. James M.
Robinson is one of these scholars. The following outline draws heavily, but not
exclusively, from his recent book, Jesus: According to the Earliest Witness.
The scholarly methods used in the reconstruction of the Q have been as rational
and as scientific as the methods used by the cosmologists who actually
discovered the existence of the planets Uranus and Pluto before they were
sighted, or by Einstein who theoretically discovered that E=MC2 long before it
was demonstrated to be true, or by physicists who have discovered a sub-atomic
world that no one, including themselves, has ever seen. We say this in answer
to the objection that the existence of the Q must be uncertain on the grounds
that it has never been seen.
The Content of the Q Document
The Q was essentially a Sayings Gospel. It preserved the core sayings and
teaching of the historical Jesus in their earliest form. The people responsible
for this Sayings Gospel obviously felt that the most significant thing to
record about Jesus was what he said. There is very little said about what he
did, and less to indicate who he was.
· There is no apocalyptic element in the teaching of Jesus according to Q -
nothing said about the end-time with its widely expected cataclysmic events.
· There is no mention of
any of the great nature miracles – like stilling the storm, walking on water,
feeding the multitude.
· There is no mention of
the apostles.
· There are no religious
practices advocated – no religious fasting, no observance of
· There is nothing said
about the organization of the Christian Church.
· There is nothing said
about Jesus death and resurrection even though Q was obviously written and in
circulation after these events.
· There is no Christology
in Q – nothing said to foster the veneration of Jesus’ person as the Savior of the world. Rather than laud him, Jesus simply
wants his hearers to do what he says. (Evidently his followers eventually came
to think it was far easier to venerate Jesus than to do what he said.)
· The focus of Jesus’
sayings is on this world as the domain of God’s creation rather than on the
next world or the hereafter.
The Way of Life Advocated in the Q Document
Q contains simple yet radical “way of life” sayings:
· Jesus taught an active and practical love of one’s enemies that would mirror
his Abba Father who sends rain upon good and bad people alike. In the
historical context of a hated Roman occupation that the Jewish people were
anxious to resist with violence and bloodshed at the first opportunity, Jesus
teaching would have seemed quite disloyal to the national aspirations. It also
flew in the face of the bitter and sometimes bloody factionalism that was rife
among his own people.
· No retaliation, revenge
or pay-back justice.
· Forgiveness should be endlessly
and unconditionally extended to others.
· Never be judgmental of
others, and beware of being confident and smug about being in the right.
· Trust in the Abba
Father’s care and reflect in your life his overwhelming generosity to all.
· Rejection of family ties
that compete with or hinder any of the above.
The Methodology of Jesus’
The mission methodology of the Q is so odd that it gives us some insight into
why some people, including Jesus’ own family, said he was mad. He sent
“workers” into the Galilean villages with these rather bizarre instructions –
· No shoes – go barefoot.
· Carry no food or extra
clothes.
· Carry no scrip. (Satchel,
bag)
· Carry no purse with
money.
· Carry no protective
stick. (To ward off dogs or robbers)
· Greet no one on the road.
· Beg for food and lodgings
at a house.
· Pronounce the arrival of
the
· Heal the sick in the
house of the host.
As bizarre as the above methods may seem, in the historical context of the
recent execution of John the Baptist and the suspicion of any subversive
activity by the powers that be, workers plying the roads looking like lonely,
bare foot and defenceless beggars would be less likely to arouse the suspicion
of the authorities.
The
The Q contains two oft-repeated phrases that uniquely belong to Jesus: these
are the
On the lips of Jesus the
· Is something that has already arrived, and not something which is merely imminent.
· Its arrival is joyfully
announced as “gospel” and celebrated with eating and drinking.
· It is not something that
is apocalyptic or cataclysmic as in John the Baptist and the popular Jewish expectation.
· It is not something that
is revealed or demonstrated in any outward show, but is rather like yeast
hidden in the dough or seed germinating in the ground. It is manifested in
ordinary people doing very ordinary or human things.
· It is something that
people were entering in Jesus’ day.
It is easy enough to translate the phrase “
In recent years, some Jesus scholars have demonstrated quite conclusively from
Jesus’ own Aramaic language that the term, “son of man”, so often on the lips
of Jesus, was not a title. It simply meant “son of humanity” or “this man.”
That understanding is now almost universally accepted by contemporary Jesus
scholars, whether Catholic, Protestant or Jewish. We might summarize the main
features of Jesus “son of man’ sayings as –
· An expression of Jesus’ solidarity with the entire human race.
· The implication that his
source of authority was an enlightened human consciousness.
· Courage to do the human
thing no matter what custom, culture, religion, law, Scripture or political
correctness might dictate. (Some may call this love, compassionate,
unconditional acceptance of others, mercy, non-judgmentalism - attributes that
an enlightened human consciousness will recognize as supremely human. There are
a number of powerful reasons why, on the evidence, I prefer to subsume it all
under the term, “doing the human thing.”
· A teaching to indicate
that any man can recognize that he is also a son of man as Jesus was. (With
apologies to the sexist language, women are of course included in this human
solidarity/equality)
· A teaching that ordinary
people doing the human thing is the only means by which the Abba Father or the
People simply doing the human thing, therefore, are the
Some Inconvenient Questions
· How is it that none of the creeds of the Churches, whether the early
ecumenical creeds, the Roman Catholic creeds or the Protestant creeds say a
single thing about the teaching of Jesus?
· Should not the authentic
teaching of Jesus take precedence over the Church’s teaching about Jesus?
· Is the distinctly
non-religious nature of Jesus sayings compatible with the elaborate religious
rites, orders, hierarchies, offices, garments, books, vestments, days, places,
sacraments, prayers and dogmas?
· Is the Jesus of history
really the same as the Jesus of the Creeds, or has the Jesus of history been
embellished, reshaped, packaged, religionized and
venerated to become the Jesus of faith?
· If the Jesus Sayings of
the Q were nailed to the door of the Church as a monk once nailed a protest
against Indulgences to the door the Church, how would the Christian religion
survive?
Just asking!
RDB
Web Published – August 2008
Copyright © 2008 Robert D.
Brinsmead