Q: Not just from James Bond or Star Trek

I must begin with a confession: everything I learned about Q, I learned outside of the classroom. My venerable Intro. to the New Testament and Synoptics professor, Fr. Sam Parsons, made no more than passing references to the hypothetical common source of Matthaean & Lukan material not found in Mark. I am much more familiar with the Q's of fiction. So this and the next entry are much more a reporting (as opposed to commenting) on what I have read.

In chapter 5, Goodacre summarizes the arguments in favor of the existence of Q, the now-lost source of the Double Tradition material, that is the roughly 200-250 verses that appear in both Matthew's and Luke's Gospel but not in Mark's. There are three possibilities to explain the material:

1. Matthew used Luke
2. Luke used Matthew
3. Matthew & Luke used Q

He states that the case for Q rests on the assumption that Matthew and Luke both drew on Mark, but did so independently, therefore most of the traditional arguments for the existence of Q are arguments against #2, with no one seriously arguing for #1. He summarizes six arguments:

• Negative arguments

1. Luke's use of Double Tradition material is inexplicable if one assumes Luke used Matthew (Matthew's use is in neatly structured blocks; in Luke it is disparate. Matthew places the material within a Markan context, while Luke does not [e.g., Matthew's Sermon on the Mount versus Luke's Sermon on the Plain.])
2. Luke seems unaware of Matthew's additions to Mark.
   
3. Luke does not use any of the unique material from Matthew. (Why did this happen if Luke knew Matthew?)
4. Both Matthew & Luke seem to have alternatively older material. (Easily explained if one assumes a common source from which they drew independently.)

• Positive arguments
  

1. Some independent source, with a distinct theology, history, genre and character, makes its presence felt in the Synoptics.
2. Redaction criticism: the study of how the author (Luke and Matthew) used and edited source material with a eye toward explaining the author's theology, which many scholars have done successfully by assuming the existence of Q.

While all of this was interesting since I had not previously come across such a succinct sets of arguments for Q, I found his discussion of the linguistic style Q proponents more interesting. Goodacre points out that there is a great deal of "over the top" rhetoric in the discussion of Q. He sees reasons for it:

• Arguments of the Q's existence tend to be material where there are serious word limitations (e.g., book introductions and biblical dictionaries) so "rhetorical questions and overstatements stand in for patient argumentation." (p. 119)
• Conscious or unconscious imitation of B.H. Streeter who famously (famous to New Testament scholars, perhaps, but not to this friar!) argued against Luke's use of Matthew in 1924 and who is much quoted in the field.
• Frustration by a Q-positing majority (near consensus?!) of scholars (who therefore also see the Two-Source theory as the best explanation of the Synoptic Problem) at a small, persistent group of "Q skeptics." (pp. 120-121)
• It performs of the function of telling a student/reader at glance how implausible Luke's knowledge of Matthew is commonly held to be.