I am looking again today at Mark Goodacre's 10 reasons to question the Q hypothesis. Ten Reasons to Question Q
This is an overview of grounds for scepsis about Q. These ten points are intended to function not as self-contained, knock-down objections but rather, when taken together, to encourage some critical questioning of the Q hypothesis.
- No-one has ever seen Q
Current literature on Q abounds with editions of Q, investigations into its strata, studies of the communities that were behind it and analyses of their theology. In such circumstances, it is worth allowing ourselves the sober reminder that there is no manuscript of Q in existence. No-one has yet found even a fragment of Q.
- No-one had ever heard of Q
No ancient author appears to have been aware of the existence of Q. One will search in vain for a single reference to it in ancient literature. For a while it was thought that 'the logia' to which Papias referred might be Q. Indeed, this was one of the planks on which the Q hypothesis rested in the nineteenth century. But no reputable scholar now believes this.
- Narrative Sequence in Q
Q apparently has a narrative sequence in which the progress of Jesus' ministry is carefully plotted. In outline this is: John the Baptist's appearance in the Jordan, his preaching, Jesus' baptism, temptations in the wilderness, Nazara, a great Sermon, Capernaum where the Centurion's Boy is healed, messengers from John the Baptist. This narrative is problematic for the Q theory in two ways. First, it contradicts the assertion that Q is a "Sayings Gospel" that parallels Thomas. Second, this sequence makes sense when one notices that it corresponds precisely to the places at which Matthew departs from Mark's basic order (in Matt. 3-11) and where Luke, in parallel, departs from that order. In other words, it makes good sense on the assumption that Luke is following Matthew as well as Mark.
- Occam's Razor
The British medieval philosopher Occam suggested a fine working principle: that entities should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. How then has Q escaped Occam's razor? Luke's independence of Matthew, the thesis that necessitates Q, is thought to be confirmed by Luke's apparent ignorance of Matthew in the passages they both share with Mark (triple tradition passages). But the existence of agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark in these very passages suggests otherwise.
- Major Agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark
A clear and famous example of major agreement between Matthew and Luke against Mark is provided by the Parable of the Mustard Seed:
Matt. 13.31-32 Mark 4.30-32 Luke 13.18-19 He put another parable
before them, saying: 'The
kingdom of heaven is
like a grain of
mustard seed, which
a person, having taken it,
sowed in his field; which,
though it is the smallest
of all the seeds,
when
it has grown is the
greatest of the
vegetables, and it
becomes a tree,
so that the birds of
heaven come and nest
in its branches.' And he was saying,
'How shall we liken the
kingdom of God, or in
what parable shall we put
it? Like a grain of
mustard seed, which when
it is sown upon the earth
is the smallest
of all the seeds on the
earth and when it is sown,
it grows and becomes the
greatest of all the
vegetables, and it
produces great branches,
so that the birds of
heaven are able to nest
under its shade.' Therefore he was saying:
'What is the
kingdom of God like,and
to what shall I liken
it? It is like a grain of
mustard seed, which
a person, having taken it,
put in his own garden and
it grew
and it
became a tree,
and the birds of
heaven nested
in its branches.'
The parts shown in red illustrate the agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark. Location is also important: both Matthew and Luke, unlike Mark, pair this parable with The Leaven (Matt. 13.33 // Luke 13.20-21). Since the Q hypothesis is founded on Luke's independence of Matthew, agreement like this, agreement against Mark in both wording and order, should not be present. But the force of such major agreements tends not to be felt because of appeal to the phenomenon of 'Mark-Q overlap', both here and elsewhere (e.g. the Temptation; John the Baptist; Beelzebub). Does this then put the Q-sceptic in a no-win situation? Not quite. The Q hypothesis has a well-known achilles heel, the Minor Agreements.
- Minor Agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark
There are about a thousand Minor Agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark. There is barely a pericope in the triple tradition (Matthew-Mark-Luke) that does not feature any. Among them are some that are so striking that Q begins to look vulnerable. For example:
Matt. 4.12-13 Mark 1.14, 21 Luke 4.14, 16, 31 12. AkousaV de oti
IwannhV paredoqh,
anecwrhsen
eiV thn Galilaian. 13. Kai
katalipwn thn Nazara
elqwn katwkhsen eiV
Kafarnaoum . . . 14. Meta de to
paradoqhnai ton Iwannhn,
hlqen o IhsouV
eiV thn Galilaian . . .
21. Kai eisporeuontai eiV
Kafarnaoum . . . 14. Kai
upestreyen o IhsouV en
th dunamei tou pneumatoV
eiV thn Galilaian . . .
16. Kai hlqen eiV Nazara
. . . 31. kai kathlqen eiV
Kafarnaoum . . .
For those without knowledge of Greek, there are two key points here. First, Matthew and Luke both agree against Mark in the order of Jesus' itinerary. Jesus visits Nazara before he goes to Capernaum. Further, both Matthew and Luke use a unique spelling here - not Nazaret (Nazaret) or Nazareq (Nazareth) but Nazara (Nazara). This Minor Agreement, so difficult to explain if Luke is independent from Matthew, can only be removed by the suggestion that Nazara could have appeared in Q, a troublesome solution which increases the number of narrative elements in Q (cf. point 3 above) and makes Q look more like Matthew (cf. point 4 above).
- Minor Agreements in the Passion Narrative
If one were to find a Minor Agreement between Matthew and Luke in the Passion narrative (Matt. 26-28 // Mark 14-16 // Luke 22-24), then this would be stronger evidence still against the existence of Q, for no-one thinks that Q has a Passion Narrative. The good news is that there are several Minor Agreements in this material, the most striking of which is this:
Matt. 26.67-8 Mark 14.65 Luke 22.63-4 Tote
eneptusan eiV
to proswpon autou
kai ekolafisan auton,
oi de errapisan
legonteV,
profhteuson hmin, Criste,
tiV estin o paisaV se; kai hrxanto tineV
emptuein
autw kai
perikaluptein
autou to proswpon
kai kolafizein auton
kai legein autw,
profhteuson. kai oi andreV oi
suneconteV auton enepaizon
autw deronteV, kai
perikaluyanteV
auton
ephrwtwn legonteV,
profhteuson,
tiV estin o paisaV se;
Or, for those who would prefer to see this in English:
Matt. 26.67-8 Mark 14.65 Luke 22.63-4 Then they spat in
his face, and struck him;
and some slapped him,
saying,
"Prophesy to us, Christ!
Who is the one who smote you?" And some began to spit on him,
and to cover his face,
and to strike him,
and to say to him,
"Prophesy!" And the men who were holding him
mocked him, beating him,
and having covered his face,
they asked him saying,
"Prophesy!
Who is the one who smote you?"
Here, then, we have a five-word verbatim agreement between Matthew and Luke against Mark - tiV estin o paisaV se; (tis estin ho paisas se?) - an agreement that is all the more noticeable for its use of the verb paiw (paiõ, to strike), which occurs only here in Matthew and only here in Luke.Michael Goulder (Luke, pp. 6-11) has placed some stress on this Minor Agreement as a key one in the case against Q, and rightly so - the leading defence from Q theorists (Tuckett, Neirynck) proposes that every single manuscript of Matthew has been corrupted at this point to include five words (tiV estin o paisaV se;) not originally there (for details, see my Goulder and the Gospels, pp. 101-7; with a response by Frans Neirynck, 'Goulder and the Minor Agreements, ETL 73 (1997), pp. 84-93 (91-2).).
- The Phenomenon of Fatigue
When one writer is copying the work of another, changes are sometimes made at the beginning of an account which are not sustained throughout - the writer lapses into docile reproduction of his / her source. This phenomenon of 'fatigue' is a tell-tale sign of a writer's dependence on a source. Matthew, for example, correctly calls Herod tetraarchV ('tetrarch') in 14.1, only to lapse into calling him the less correct basileuV ('king') in 14.9, apparently reproducing Mark (6.26) who has called him basileuV ('king') throughout. Likewise, Luke re-sets the scene for the Feeding of the Five Thousand in 'a city called Bethsaida' (polin kaloumenhn Bhqsaida, Luke 9.10) only to lapse into the Markan wording later, 'We are here in a deserted place' (wde en erhmw topw esmen, Luke 9.12, cf. Mark 6.35).It is revealing that this phenomenon also occurs in double tradition (Q) material, and always in the same direction, in favour of Luke's use of Matthew. Take the Parable of the Talents / Pounds (Matt. 25.14-30 // Luke 19.11-27). Matthew has three servants throughout. Luke, on the other hand, has ten. But as the story progresses, we hear about 'the first' (19.16), 'the second' (19.18) and amazingly, 'the other' (o eteroV, Luke 19.20). Luke has inadvertently betrayed his knowledge of Matthew by drifting into the story-line of his source (see further my 'Fatigue in the Synoptics', NTS 44 (1998), pp. 45-58).
- The Legacy of Scissors-and-Paste Scholarship
Q belongs to another age, an age in which scholars solved every problem by postulating another written source. The evangelists were thought of as 'scissors and paste' men, compilers and not composers, who edited together pieces from several documents. Classically, the bookish B. H. Streeter solved the synoptic problem by assigning a written source to each type of material - triple tradition was from Mark; double tradition was from 'Q'; special Matthew was from 'M' and special Luke was from 'L'. Most scholars have since dispensed with written 'M' and 'L' sources. The time has now come to get up-to-date, and to dispense with Q too.
- Recognising Luke's Literary Ability
Belief in Q has been an impediment to the proper appreciation of Luke's literary ability, for Luke's order has traditionally been explained on the assumption that he was conservatively following a Q text. But it is not at all inconceivable that Luke should have imaginatively and creatively re-ordered material from Matthew. Take, for example, the ideal placing of the Lord's Prayer (Luke 11.1-4; cf. Matt. 6.7-15), introducing a section on Jesus' teaching on Prayer; or the 'Consider the Lilies' passage (Luke 12.22-34; cf. Matt. 6.25-34), so appropriately following on from the Lukan Rich Fool (Luke 12.13-21). Far from 'unscrambling the egg with a vengeance' (R. H. Fuller), the thesis of Luke's use of Matthew helps us to see how Luke avoided his predecessor's more rigid, thematic approach in order to develop a plausible, sequential narrative, just as he told us he would do (Luke 1.3).
I am looking again today at Mark Goodacre's 10 reasons to question the Q hypothesis.
Ten Reasons to Question Q
This is an overview of grounds for scepsis about Q. These ten points are intended to function not as self-contained, knock-down objections but rather, when taken together, to encourage some critical questioning of the Q hypothesis.
- No-one has ever seen Q
- No-one had ever heard of Q
- Narrative Sequence in Q
- Occam's Razor
- Major Agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark
- Minor Agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark
- Minor Agreements in the Passion Narrative
- The Phenomenon of Fatigue
- The Legacy of Scissors-and-Paste Scholarship
- Recognising Luke's Literary Ability
Current literature on Q abounds with editions of Q, investigations into its strata, studies of the communities that were behind it and analyses of their theology. In such circumstances, it is worth allowing ourselves the sober reminder that there is no manuscript of Q in existence. No-one has yet found even a fragment of Q.
No ancient author appears to have been aware of the existence of Q. One will search in vain for a single reference to it in ancient literature. For a while it was thought that 'the logia' to which Papias referred might be Q. Indeed, this was one of the planks on which the Q hypothesis rested in the nineteenth century. But no reputable scholar now believes this.
Q apparently has a narrative sequence in which the progress of Jesus' ministry is carefully plotted. In outline this is: John the Baptist's appearance in the Jordan, his preaching, Jesus' baptism, temptations in the wilderness, Nazara, a great Sermon, Capernaum where the Centurion's Boy is healed, messengers from John the Baptist. This narrative is problematic for the Q theory in two ways. First, it contradicts the assertion that Q is a "Sayings Gospel" that parallels Thomas. Second, this sequence makes sense when one notices that it corresponds precisely to the places at which Matthew departs from Mark's basic order (in Matt. 3-11) and where Luke, in parallel, departs from that order. In other words, it makes good sense on the assumption that Luke is following Matthew as well as Mark.
The British medieval philosopher Occam suggested a fine working principle: that entities should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. How then has Q escaped Occam's razor? Luke's independence of Matthew, the thesis that necessitates Q, is thought to be confirmed by Luke's apparent ignorance of Matthew in the passages they both share with Mark (triple tradition passages). But the existence of agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark in these very passages suggests otherwise.
A clear and famous example of major agreement between Matthew and Luke against Mark is provided by the Parable of the Mustard Seed:
| Matt. 13.31-32 | Mark 4.30-32 | Luke 13.18-19 |
|---|---|---|
| He put another parable before them, saying: 'The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a person, having taken it, sowed in his field; which, though it is the smallest of all the seeds, when it has grown is the greatest of the vegetables, and it becomes a tree, so that the birds of heaven come and nest in its branches.' | And he was saying, 'How shall we liken the kingdom of God, or in what parable shall we put it? Like a grain of mustard seed, which when it is sown upon the earth is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth and when it is sown, it grows and becomes the greatest of all the vegetables, and it produces great branches, so that the birds of heaven are able to nest under its shade.' | Therefore he was saying: 'What is the kingdom of God like,and to what shall I liken it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a person, having taken it, put in his own garden and it grew and it became a tree, and the birds of heaven nested in its branches.' |
The parts shown in red illustrate the agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark. Location is also important: both Matthew and Luke, unlike Mark, pair this parable with The Leaven (Matt. 13.33 // Luke 13.20-21). Since the Q hypothesis is founded on Luke's independence of Matthew, agreement like this, agreement against Mark in both wording and order, should not be present. But the force of such major agreements tends not to be felt because of appeal to the phenomenon of 'Mark-Q overlap', both here and elsewhere (e.g. the Temptation; John the Baptist; Beelzebub). Does this then put the Q-sceptic in a no-win situation? Not quite. The Q hypothesis has a well-known achilles heel, the Minor Agreements.
There are about a thousand Minor Agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark. There is barely a pericope in the triple tradition (Matthew-Mark-Luke) that does not feature any. Among them are some that are so striking that Q begins to look vulnerable. For example:
| Matt. 4.12-13 | Mark 1.14, 21 | Luke 4.14, 16, 31 |
|---|---|---|
| 12. AkousaV de oti IwannhV paredoqh, anecwrhsen eiV thn Galilaian. 13. Kai katalipwn thn Nazara elqwn katwkhsen eiV Kafarnaoum . . . | 14. Meta de to paradoqhnai ton Iwannhn, hlqen o IhsouV eiV thn Galilaian . . . 21. Kai eisporeuontai eiV Kafarnaoum . . . | 14. Kai upestreyen o IhsouV en th dunamei tou pneumatoV eiV thn Galilaian . . . 16. Kai hlqen eiV Nazara . . . 31. kai kathlqen eiV Kafarnaoum . . . |
For those without knowledge of Greek, there are two key points here. First, Matthew and Luke both agree against Mark in the order of Jesus' itinerary. Jesus visits Nazara before he goes to Capernaum. Further, both Matthew and Luke use a unique spelling here - not Nazaret (Nazaret) or Nazareq (Nazareth) but Nazara (Nazara). This Minor Agreement, so difficult to explain if Luke is independent from Matthew, can only be removed by the suggestion that Nazara could have appeared in Q, a troublesome solution which increases the number of narrative elements in Q (cf. point 3 above) and makes Q look more like Matthew (cf. point 4 above).
If one were to find a Minor Agreement between Matthew and Luke in the Passion narrative (Matt. 26-28 // Mark 14-16 // Luke 22-24), then this would be stronger evidence still against the existence of Q, for no-one thinks that Q has a Passion Narrative. The good news is that there are several Minor Agreements in this material, the most striking of which is this:
| Matt. 26.67-8 | Mark 14.65 | Luke 22.63-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Tote eneptusan eiV to proswpon autou kai ekolafisan auton, oi de errapisan legonteV, profhteuson hmin, Criste, tiV estin o paisaV se; | kai hrxanto tineV emptuein autw kai perikaluptein autou to proswpon kai kolafizein auton kai legein autw, profhteuson. | kai oi andreV oi suneconteV auton enepaizon autw deronteV, kai perikaluyanteV auton ephrwtwn legonteV, profhteuson, tiV estin o paisaV se; |
Or, for those who would prefer to see this in English:
| Matt. 26.67-8 | Mark 14.65 | Luke 22.63-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Then they spat in his face, and struck him; and some slapped him, saying, "Prophesy to us, Christ! Who is the one who smote you?" | And some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to strike him, and to say to him, "Prophesy!" | And the men who were holding him mocked him, beating him, and having covered his face, they asked him saying, "Prophesy! Who is the one who smote you?" |
Here, then, we have a five-word verbatim agreement between Matthew and Luke against Mark - tiV estin o paisaV se; (tis estin ho paisas se?) - an agreement that is all the more noticeable for its use of the verb paiw (paiõ, to strike), which occurs only here in Matthew and only here in Luke.
Michael Goulder (Luke, pp. 6-11) has placed some stress on this Minor Agreement as a key one in the case against Q, and rightly so - the leading defence from Q theorists (Tuckett, Neirynck) proposes that every single manuscript of Matthew has been corrupted at this point to include five words (tiV estin o paisaV se;) not originally there (for details, see my Goulder and the Gospels, pp. 101-7; with a response by Frans Neirynck, 'Goulder and the Minor Agreements, ETL 73 (1997), pp. 84-93 (91-2).).
When one writer is copying the work of another, changes are sometimes made at the beginning of an account which are not sustained throughout - the writer lapses into docile reproduction of his / her source. This phenomenon of 'fatigue' is a tell-tale sign of a writer's dependence on a source. Matthew, for example, correctly calls Herod tetraarchV ('tetrarch') in 14.1, only to lapse into calling him the less correct basileuV ('king') in 14.9, apparently reproducing Mark (6.26) who has called him basileuV ('king') throughout. Likewise, Luke re-sets the scene for the Feeding of the Five Thousand in 'a city called Bethsaida' (polin kaloumenhn Bhqsaida, Luke 9.10) only to lapse into the Markan wording later, 'We are here in a deserted place' (wde en erhmw topw esmen, Luke 9.12, cf. Mark 6.35).
It is revealing that this phenomenon also occurs in double tradition (Q) material, and always in the same direction, in favour of Luke's use of Matthew. Take the Parable of the Talents / Pounds (Matt. 25.14-30 // Luke 19.11-27). Matthew has three servants throughout. Luke, on the other hand, has ten. But as the story progresses, we hear about 'the first' (19.16), 'the second' (19.18) and amazingly, 'the other' (o eteroV, Luke 19.20). Luke has inadvertently betrayed his knowledge of Matthew by drifting into the story-line of his source (see further my 'Fatigue in the Synoptics', NTS 44 (1998), pp. 45-58).
Q belongs to another age, an age in which scholars solved every problem by postulating another written source. The evangelists were thought of as 'scissors and paste' men, compilers and not composers, who edited together pieces from several documents. Classically, the bookish B. H. Streeter solved the synoptic problem by assigning a written source to each type of material - triple tradition was from Mark; double tradition was from 'Q'; special Matthew was from 'M' and special Luke was from 'L'. Most scholars have since dispensed with written 'M' and 'L' sources. The time has now come to get up-to-date, and to dispense with Q too.
Belief in Q has been an impediment to the proper appreciation of Luke's literary ability, for Luke's order has traditionally been explained on the assumption that he was conservatively following a Q text. But it is not at all inconceivable that Luke should have imaginatively and creatively re-ordered material from Matthew. Take, for example, the ideal placing of the Lord's Prayer (Luke 11.1-4; cf. Matt. 6.7-15), introducing a section on Jesus' teaching on Prayer; or the 'Consider the Lilies' passage (Luke 12.22-34; cf. Matt. 6.25-34), so appropriately following on from the Lukan Rich Fool (Luke 12.13-21). Far from 'unscrambling the egg with a vengeance' (R. H. Fuller), the thesis of Luke's use of Matthew helps us to see how Luke avoided his predecessor's more rigid, thematic approach in order to develop a plausible, sequential narrative, just as he told us he would do (Luke 1.3).
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