I was considing my position about Q this morning, and I was struck by the irony of my skepticism about it for the lack of direct evidence, given that I wholeheartedly accept the existance of God, even with a lack of direct physical evidence.
Of coures, there is the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, affirming my faith from within, and I believe that some of the healings I've witnessed are of divine origin, etc...
Then again, I suppose there is significantly more data than can be construed as evidence for God than there is data that can be construed as evidence for Q.
I'm not overly troubled by this, just a little irony there.
I think there is no doubt the synoptics have a common "Quelle" they all pour their water from. Haven't really done the reading on the alleged document, there was an interesting book I found at CTS, Matthew Black taking an Aramic approach to the Gospels and Acts. He found that the only instances where there seemed to be an Aramaic layer underlying the text was in instances Jesus was being quoted directly, this was in all the synoptics, their language was extremely similar but the differences show they were probably all translating from the same source.
ReplyDeletePersonally I find it more probable they were quoting from an oral traditon, one wonders though how well Luke would have spoken Aramaic being a gentile and all...
So, Q, don't really know, common tradition serving as the basis for the synoptics, most likely an Aramaic one, pretty certain.
Doing textual criticism on a hypothetical text... that's when academics have lost touch with reality, it is like reconstructing the DNA of King Arthur
Helgi
I have no doubt that there is a common source (ie: Jesus).
ReplyDeleteThe Hebrew version of Matthew, as I tend to view it, might be considered "Q" by some, but I reject a fair amount of what the conventional wisdom says about it.