The Synoptic problem
The two source hypothesis and 'Q'

      An analysis of Matthew's gospel reveals that a good part of the ‘M' source would have been a reactionary element in the early community of Jewish Christians. The manuscript is notoriously inconsistent and such internal contradictions as those we find in such things as the Story of David and Goliath or the Gospel of Matthew are a clear indication of later redaction incorporating opposed sources. Now in the case of Matthew's gospel the ideology of those responsible for this later editing of the work can be clearly identified (the interpolations that cause all the problems are interrelated and do not exist in a vacuum, and come from a strongly conservative, even reactionary source). Now in this case the ‘source' document was not some theoretical ‘M' but rather the redactors themselves. (For a fuller discussion of the issues involved I direct readers to the Bible Commentary on Matthew).

      The literary relationship between Matthew and Luke can be explained by postulating the existence of a second source document known as ‘Q'. But it is also plausible to suggest that the source relationship between Luke and Matthew is explained in the same way that the relationship between the Gospels of Mark and Matthew are explained. Mark was a source for Matthew and Matthew was a source for Luke. Luke did not require ‘Q' and simply picked up this additional material from Matthew, and treated Matthew as Matthew treated Mark in the first thirteen chapters of the book. Matthew was edited as Luke saw fit, to fit the particular agenda of the author of the manuscript we know of as Luke.

      As for Matthew and his supposed dependance on ‘Q' it seems to me that this theory is a kind of ploy (people refuse to acknowledge that ‘Jesus Christ' was a hand puppet that people used in whatever way they saw fit). Now, today, as you can easily tell by listening to churches go on, Jesus Christ is a hand puppet. He is always found to be supporting anything and everything under the sun, while some church with ‘Howdy Doody' sitting on their laps, tries hard not to move their lips. This is obvious, and not much more needs to be said about those churches and their quarreling and internecine squabbles, always, of course, relying on the authority of that Howdy Doody figure we know of as ‘Jesus Christ' with charges of ‘heresy' and ‘disobedience' flying through the air like so much torn fur. There is this line in the Gospel of Luke (an editorial addition to a parable Luke picked up from Matthew) where it states, ‘why don't you decide for yourselves what is right,' and then again we are told, ‘who made me a judge and divider over you?' This is quite remarkable, given the insistence throughout history that one should ‘obey the Pope' or ‘go ask the bishop' and given the constant attempts to force compliance to all sorts of things based, of course, on the authority of that Howdy Doody character known as ‘Jesus Christ', who is both for and against just about any issue or cause you might care to mention.

      Now I just bring all this denominational church squabbling to mind to make a point about the theory of the so called ‘Q' document. Throughout history churches have been using that hand puppet, and anyone who carefully reads the documents of the church, and in particular, who carefully reads the gospel of Matthew, will notice that Howdy Doody tradition did not start at some later time but is in evidence in the very earliest documents of the church (here just considering the canon) and if we include all the documents of the complete early church (the non- canonical scriptures) well the presence of Howdy Doody becomes even more inescapable right from the day the churches began. So then, did Matthew require ‘Q'? Was Matthew, as much as anyone, not capable of moving Howdy's lips? Or, as I like to say, ‘well how convenient for Matthew to have found that so called ‘Q' document.' This ‘convenient' discovery (in the ideological sense of such a discovery being ‘convenient' for Matthew) seems ‘convenient' when you consider how so much of those ‘newly discovered ‘Q' parables' could be so easily worked into Matthew's particular ideological framework. And here I am speaking just of original ‘Matthew' and not that reactionary element who were the source of their own inconsistent parables, and not some ‘Q' document (or at least, if we are ‘deciding for ourselves what is right' and our moral sense is intact, we could certainly hope that they were the source of their own bigoted and reactionary defiance, and not the ‘Jesus Christ' authority figure who, in fine polemical form, is claimed to be author of such worthless nonsense. Let's just put it this way. If he was the author of such crap as we find here, then it would be better by far that you decide for yourselves what is right instead of listening to him and thus contaminating yourself with all his terrible personality flaws and bad unneeded teachings and conduct).

      It has been said that the teachings found in Matthew are not revolutionary in any sense of the word, but rather were the typical teachings of a first century Jewish Rabbi (and indeed can be found in other assorted teachers, such as for example, Confucius). It is quite plausible then to suggest that this is the case because Matthew, the author, was a first century Jewish Rabbi, and could really preach a sermon himself, as you can tell by reading that Sermon on the Mount. Now a complete listing of the variant and contradictory teachings of the ‘Jesus Christ' composite figure of the Church documents is not something I am going to bother with here (there are already other pages on this site, and there will be more as time goes by). Let's just say that ‘Q' as a source is not believable to me, not when I consider Howdy Doody and his great popularity in churches, now and then, and in particular when I consider just how ideologically convenient it was to Matthew to have unearthed that cache of ‘Q' sayings, which fit his hand like a glove (and this is supposed to be some kind of marvelous coincidence - if you are familiar with Matthew's gospel, you would understand that it is a polemic against Jewish rejection of the Messiah, incorporating the motif of shaming the Jewish community, and numbers of parables about Jews taking a beating, and suffering intense persecutions that were almost impossible to endure if they were believers, and so on). When I consider both the social situation of this Matthew gospel and the corresponding parables it seems highly unlikely that ‘Q' was the source of additional material in Matthew, rather it seems very Matthew like, and thus Matthew was the source (and considering how every church then and now can be found in possession of at least one Howdy Doody hand puppet to this very day, why should such an idea be considered at all novel or surprising. Rather it would be par for the course as far as churches go.) This material is of a later date, it came from the mind of Matthew and it addresses a certain social situation within a certain community. So the source of the new material in Matthew is Matthew himself, and then Matthew became a source for Luke.

      The second criticism I could level at that ‘Q' theory is that it emerged as the methods of historical criticism were shaking the church, and ‘Q' is cozy and comfortable and quite useful in the social sense in that it could help certain churches bridge the gap between the age of dogmatism and the new age of uncertainty (when those churches would suddenly find themselves ‘searching for the historical Jesus'). While the historical critical methodologies were in the process of exposing that hand puppet, churches could deal with the stress by falling back onto cozy ‘Q' and the belief that ‘Q' provided a direct connection to this Christ figure. They could ignore the editorial slant of the individual authors of the Gospels and just ‘pluck out parables' like strawberries and contact this ‘original Christ figure' themselves. So there are powerful emotional reasons for churches to cling to the ‘Q' document theory and the need to maintain a connection with the 'historical Jesus' helps to explain the rise of the two source hypothesis in response to the rise of the historical critical method and the revelations of source criticism. It fit the times in which it was formulated, it filled a certain psychological need in the churches, thus accounting for its popularity, but I think , myself that it is time for churches to start deciding for themselves what is right (and give up that obnoxious church habit of running to get Howdy every time churches get involved in another one of those inter-denominational internecine squabbles).

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Related Pages:

Source Criticism

The Gospel of Matthew - Commetary Index

A commentary on Mark's Gospel

The Christ Myth - a collection of links