Talk:Q gospel

This is a really bad redirect from "Q". "Q Gospel" I could get behind, but to hijack a single letter for such a trivial, single topic??? 05:58, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This is a really bad place to stick this objection. Why you got to be ragging on an innocent article about an important topic in biblical criticism? WazzaHello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me... 06:09, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm cool with this article, just not with "Q" being a redirect to it. 06:36, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Fun stuff
I think someone should make a fun version of this subject, saying that it's a gospel focusing on Q from Star Trek.
 * How about saying it's the Gospel of Avenue Q? 22:43, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Citation needed
" An alternative suggestion is that Matthew was written after Luke, or Luke was written after Matthew, and the later work borrowed phrasings from both the earlier and Mark." - sez who? Sophie Wilder  12:42, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * more importantly, what the fuck does it mean? [[Image:green mowse.png|25px]]Godot  She was a venus demilo in her sister's jeans  16:06, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Sceptical about Q
I've added quite a bit about alternatives to Q and the 2-source hypothesis, because both seem like rather contrived scenarios to me. Usually, historians (at least today) are not in the habit of explaining similarities between two documents through reliance on a common third source unless they have something to suggest such a source exists and/or that that one of the two later authors couldn't have relied on the other. Given that the order of composition of the gospels isn't controversial (practically all non-fundies accept the Mark-Matthew-Luke-John sequence), but that everything else is speculation, I really don't see what the clinching argument for Q is. We don't know that (the author of) Luke couldn't have read Matthew and rewritten Matthew's material to suit Lukan theology, nor that Matthew had to have relied on Q and not simply rewritten Mark according to Matthewan theology (indeed, even the 2-source hypothesis use the last bit as explanation for the non-Mark, non-Q parts of Matthew). When we can't establish anything that would've prevented Luke from reading Matthew and have no trace at all of anything like the Q document, I personally find a scenario without Q far more plausible.

I suspect that the 2-source hypothesis remains popular because New Testament scholarship is an inherently conservative field dominated by theologians, rather than historians, and because it allows an essentially unfalsifiable Q document to hover in the background as a possible link to a historical Jesus (in contrast to the gospels which are obviously theological documents through and through). Another weakness of the 2-source hypothesis and Q is that they assume that Matthew and Mark were only compilers, not creators, while having to admit that some bits were indeed created. Then there's of course the rather glaring weakness constituted by the complete absence of Q or even clear references to Q, whereas even heretical and/or apocryphal gospels and epistles are well-documented through references to them in ancient sources and several of these heretical/apocryphal documents have even survived up to our day (e.g. the Gospel of Thomas). Given that we know from both the history of Christianity and other religions (incl. the OT, btw) that there are few if any compulsions within a religion to abstain from fabricating, rewriting or redacting scriptures, I find this "Matthew & Luke, Copy Editors Inc."-scenario to be contrived, to say the least. And yes, it is actually possible to find interest in and support for "Q-less" hypotheses even in certain theology departments (for instance at Copenhagen University). ScepticWombat (talk) 18:53, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
 * It's a stronger article for it. ʇυzzγɔɒтqoтɒтo (talk/stalk) 19:18, 4 June 2015 (UTC)