Introduction
There are many who think that the quest for a Q community,Footnote 1 not unlike the quest for Q itself,Footnote 2 might be little more than a fool's errand. It is one thing, after all, to study a text like the Gospel of Matthew. It is quite another to identify the community responsible for or “behind” the Gospel of Matthew. It is still yet another to posit a hypothetical community from a hypothetical text like Q. Named after the German Quelle for “source,” Q is a hypothetical collection of approximately two hundred and thirty-five verses found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark. Are we really justified, then, in positing, extracting, or identifying a distinctive community or group-formation from this hypothetical text? Is it even possible to deduce a community from a text (let alone a hypothetical text) when such communities must often be inferred from internal textual evidence and might be fallaciously reified into communities existing in isolation from (or even hostile to) others?Footnote 3
This article investigates the concept of “community” in the study of Christian origins, particularly its use in discussions focused on the Early Jewish scribal origin(s), audience, and geographical provenance of the Sayings Source/Gospel Q. I suggest here that the quest for a Q community or, more circumspectly, the Q group, or Q people, remains problematic insofar as Q's alleged geographical distance from Jerusalem is confused and/or conflated with Q's theological difference from the Judean Jesus movement. More constructively, my goal is to make a modest methodological contribution by introducing new comparable data in the form of several specific textual case-studies in an attempt to re-locate Q within Early Judaism and, by doing so, illustrate more complex intersections of identity, difference, and diversity in the study of Christian origins.
There is no good reason to doubt the existence of Judean followers of Jesus in the 40s and 50s CE.Footnote 4 One might question whether these followers formed a cohesive “community” or a network of loose alliances and/or associations, but Paul's letters provide us with a prima facie case for positing some kind of new social formation, although Paul also constructs the idea of a cohesive “community” for his own rhetorical purposes. To posit a “Q community,” however, is to infer a social formation from fragmentary data extrapolated from the double tradition. Caution, therefore, is in order, especially in light of recent critiques leveled against the “community” concept in the study of Christian origins.Footnote 5 The idea that early Christianity was primarily comprised of “communities” not only naively reifies such “communities,” but also serves as an “explanatory assumption,”Footnote 6 a “normative theological concept parading as descriptive and explanatory social concepts.”Footnote 7 In short, hypothesizing a “Q group” or “Q community” behind the inchoate textual data of the double tradition is not only a perilous venture but risks obscuring “the possibility of finding other social formations” behind the emergence of the early Jesus tradition.Footnote 8
Nonetheless, if texts do contain literary clues that represent, reflect, and reveal their authors’ social location(s), and one can posit discrete social contexts for particular texts, then it seems reasonable to ask whether traces of social memberships may be embedded in texts, allowing the critic to retrieve this data.Footnote 9 Our problem, however, will not be solved simply by re-naming “communities” “groups” or “people” nor by (re)describing Q as a “Galilean” text. Rather, we must attend to Q's textual data and the rhetorical and theological work that “community” constructs perform, especially when there are indications that “community” discourse functions as a cipher for Christianity's emergence in contradistinction to (as opposed to within) Judaism. Accordingly, Stowers advocates “unbuilding” this discursive concept and exploring other forms of social formation,Footnote 10 “fields or networks of literate and specialized cultural producers”: authors, interpreters, and readers’ networks. Any quest for a text's community should begin by acknowledging its author(s) and scribe(s).Footnote 11
Unfortunately, we simply do not know very much about literary culture—whether Early Jewish or early “Jewish Christian”—in Second Temple Judaism.Footnote 12 Alongside the widespread illiteracy (approximately ninety percent of the general population), there was a wide-ranging spectrum of literacy.Footnote 13 Christine Schams has proposed a working model that provides “a comprehensive, plausible multifaceted description of the range of functions and expertise of Jewish scribes,” designated with various terms such as γραµµατεύς, רפוס, ארפס, and רלבל.Footnote 14 They were officials and professional writers who could also come to be known as “scholars, intellectuals, sages, and expert interpreters of the Scriptures and the law.”Footnote 15 Scribes functioned as “officials and independent professional writers.”Footnote 16 The Mishnah describes independent scribes in the marketplace and an expansion of the status of scribes. These scribes co-existed with the traditional scribal elite centered in and around Jerusalem. The high regard for scribes and text, illustrated in 1 Enoch/4QEnGiants’ designation of Enoch as a scribe,Footnote 17 increased the use of written documents by common people, the number of independent working scribes,Footnote 18 and public readings of the Torah in synagogues. In larger towns, scribes would come to be considered “experts in the Scriptures.”Footnote 19 A new “rural elite” included scribes in villages and towns outside of Jerusalem. These “village scribes” fulfilled a variety of functions including writing and storing documents, archives, and tax records.Footnote 20 They also served the needs of villagers as mediators between them and higher authorities of the state, becoming an integral part of people's lives while deriving their “prestige and status” as government officials.Footnote 21 It is along this spectrum of scribal authority that we must locate the author(s) responsible for the composition of Q.
Q is the work of Greek-literate Jews familiar with wisdom literature, the instructional genre, prophetic texts, apocalyptic eschatology, and Deuteronomistic theology. Q is at home in the thought-world of Early Jewish apocalypticism.Footnote 22 Despite notable exceptions (Q 7:1–10), Gentiles are either ignored or criticized (Q 6:34; Q 12:22–31). There is no (Pauline) Gentile “mission.” Q presupposes the validity of the Torah. There are no Sabbath controversies,Footnote 23 nor have the Torah's food laws been “abrogated” (cf. Mark 7:19). There is no polemic against circumcision. Q criticizes Pharisees, the Temple's religious leaders, and “this generation,” but this is intra-Jewish polemic. Q's subversion of traditional Jewish family loyalties,Footnote 24 its adoption of fictive kinship language, and its call to adopt loyalty to Jesus as the focal point of a new, distinctive, multi-regional sectarian social body—that is, a new religious movement—allow us to map Q within Second Temple Judaism.
For many, Q also represents the “earliest Gospel” composed by some of Jesus's first followers who held very different beliefs from other Jesus groups.Footnote 25 Q's “difference” would therefore seem to represent a different kind of “Jewish Christianity” isolated from and independent of the Jerusalem community we find described in Paul's letters, with the Galilean countryside representing a geographical and sociological landscape that could account for this difference.Footnote 26
There is no reason to doubt that the historical Jesus taught in Galilee.Footnote 27 There is also no denying that Q deploys rural “Galilean” imagery and agricultural motifs in order to construct a “Galilean” literary setting. Q is in fact generally regarded as a Galilean composition.Footnote 28 Yet the literary setting of Q should not be equated with its geographical location.Footnote 29 Q's geographical references range from Judea and Jerusalem to Tyre and Sidon. The literary setting of some Q-sayings may be Galilean, but the evidence does not compel a Galilean provenance.Footnote 30 Q could have been written in Palestine,Footnote 31 Judea, Jerusalem,Footnote 32 along the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee,Footnote 33 Capernaum,Footnote 34 Tiberias,Footnote 35 the Transjordan,Footnote 36 Antioch, or Syria. Q does refer to several Galilean villages,Footnote 37 but Jesus's message was rejected there. Moreover, these references are widely held to be redactional additions.Footnote 38 The Galilean provenance of Q is only one plausible explanation among many.
The Discursive Origin, Development, and Redescription of the Q “Community” Concept
The idea of a Q community seems to have originated, in part, with the observation that Q lacks a passion kerygma. James M. Robinson traces this development to H. E. Tödt's 1956 Heidelberg dissertation, which developed Rudolf Bultmann's inference that the “sayings source” (Spruchquelle) implied a “primitive community.”Footnote 39 Tödt posited that there were “two spheres of tradition,” with the passion kerygma remaining “outside this sphere” of the Q community.Footnote 40 Q did not originate from the kerygma. Subsequently, Q studies have had “a sociological concomitant, the Q group, the previously overlooked outcome of the impact of Jesus on his hearers and beneficiaries in Galilee.”Footnote 41 The quest for the Galilean Q community was not based solely on the absence of a passion narrative in Q but was also influenced by the idea that the Q movement did not participate in the Jewish War of 66–73 CE.Footnote 42 The Q community concept was derived from the form-critical approach, where collections like Q were given a certain Sitz im Leben within a community. Paul Hoffmann, however, argued that Q represented a Jewish Christian “group” (Gruppe), not a “community” (Gemeinde).Footnote 43 Yet the fact that Jesus is known to have taught in Galilee made the Galilean Q hypothesis a plausible model. We may no longer envision Q as a “compilation of discourses and sayings . . . with an horizon which is as good as absolutely bounded by Galilee,”Footnote 44 but the idea that Q represents Jesus's Galilean speeches as “Sayings of the Lord Jesus” (Λόγοι τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ)Footnote 45 has certainly not been lost on those who advocate for the idea of a Galilean Q or Q-group.
In 1991, John Kloppenborg suggested that the author of Q fit the profile of “a middling figure of ambiguous class affiliation” with marginal social status.Footnote 46 Q was the work of “village scribes” (κοµογραµµατεῖς) from the lower ranks of the scribal profession whose main duties were carrying out various administrative tasks in rural villages and towns.Footnote 47 In this early formulation, the Q “community” or “group” concept was “mapped” onto the concept of a scribal “group.” Reversing his earlier methodological procedure of analyzing the formation of Q by first focusing on its redactional stratum, Kloppenborg's point of departure was to identify a “series of literary features” in his proposed instructional stratum of Q1’s social boundaries, authority, status, ritual, and literary genre.Footnote 48 He refers to three “clues” that help us identify the earliest stratum as reflecting the interests of “those who were geographically or socially distant from the redemptive media of the Temple or Torah, or those who had come to perceive those media as inefficacious.”Footnote 49 Q1 shows “signs of deliberate stylization” reflecting “some of the techniques fostered in rhetorical schools” where “the instructional genre was cultivated.”Footnote 50 The sociological formation of Q is characterized by fictive kinship (Q 6:41–42; Q 17:3) and the renunciation of family ties (Q 14:26): “At this stage, an alternate community has coalesced.”Footnote 51 It is not until the redaction of Q2 and Q3, with the introduction of prophetic forms, a polemical appeal to “a mythic Israel,” and the affirmation of the Torah (Q 16:17) and Temple (Q 4:9–12), that we begin to see the more distinctive community identity-boundaries.Footnote 52 Since Q now seems to affirm both the “enduring validity of the Torah” and the Temple as “a sacred space,”Footnote 53 this may be an indication that the Q group has “succeeded in attracting scholars, perhaps only a handful, for whom the institutions of Torah and Temple had essential and positive meaning.”Footnote 54
Developing Kloppenborg's earlier proposal, Willam E. Arnal further advanced the Galilean village scribe hypothesis, challenging the “itinerancy” hypothesis based on a careful socio-economic reconstruction of mid-first-century Galilee.Footnote 55 More recently, Giovanni Bazzana has suggested that “Q is the product of . . . village sub-elites variously employed by or connected to the imperial administrative structure” by identifying a number of philological and analogical parallels to the administrative training and vocabulary of Q's hypothetical Galilean scribe(s) in Egyptian documentary papyri.Footnote 56
There are lingering methodological questions involved, however, with extrapolating analogical Galilean village scribal activity from Egyptian papyrological data. While imperial administrative structures and offices may have remained relatively stable—and thus comparable—throughout the Ptolemaic, Seleucid, and early Roman periods, we must still recognize the different, particular, and specific local cultural contexts of lower Galilee and not confuse Roman-Egyptian literary practices, educational opportunities, and cultural matrices with Roman-Galilean literary culture. Bazzana suggests that the “social group” of village scribe(s) “is well attested in the ancient record” but concedes that this attestation is “mostly of Egyptian origin” and that the historical record betrays a “complete absence of documentary evidence of direct Galilean origin” for the administrative formulae he seeks to identify.Footnote 57 Nonetheless, Bazzana claims that “the employment of the phrase βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ in Q likely originated within the groups of sub-elite administrators and bureaucrats who first circulated the Sayings Gospel.”Footnote 58 Bazzana's apparent appeal to the language of origins here may be inadvertent. Few scholars would be inclined to accept the idea that Q's βασιλεία-discourse, with its rhetorical appeal to the providential sovereignty of God, “originated” among sub-elite “bureaucrats”—as opposed to being the Greek translation equivalent of תוכלמ—that is, a central feature of the historical Jesus's “remembered” Aramaic speech-pattern. Nonetheless, this appeal to the language of origins is pertinent to our discussion as it illustrates the stakes involved in discussing Q's sociological, geographical, or ideological provenance. Given the range of possible options for Q's provenance, the paucity of evidence, and that some scholars bracket the problem altogether, it is instructive to review the ideological factors informing the discursive appeal to Galilee in Q Research—factors that include, but are not necessarily limited to, Q's dominical authority, theological difference, and sociological re-description.
In the nineteenth century, Ernest Renan portrayed Jesus as roaming the Galilean countryside,Footnote 59 but he also detached Galilee from Judea, arguing that it was mostly inhabited by non-Jews. A distorted emphasis on the Galilean context of Jesus's activity was also promoted by anti-Semites in pre-war Germany.Footnote 60 “Galilee” was used as a symbolic way of distancing Jesus from Judaism.Footnote 61 Ernst Lohmeyer, for example, argued that Galilee was the first home of Christianity and rivalled other early Christian communities.Footnote 62 Galilee was also (mis)interpreted by the phrase “Galilee of the Gentiles” (םיוגה לילג),Footnote 63 an expression that referred to Israel being “encircled” by foreign nations (Isa 8:23). While no one today advocates a non-Jewish Galilee,Footnote 64 the “Galilean Jesus,” and, by extension, the “Galilean Q,” remains a construct remarkably resistant to critical analysis and continues to inform discursive presuppositions about the early Jesus movement. Indeed, Halvor Moxnes notes how the “Galilean Jesus” narrative in the Synoptic Gospels represents “an interesting example of how a pre-critical historical model has prevailed in Jesus scholarship,” pointing out that “the meaning of Galilee, and of Jesus as a Galilean, is not a simple, historical question” but rather implicated in various contemporary social, political, and theological matrices.Footnote 65
A second major site of discursive conflict centers on Galilee's role as the geographically isolated context for a theologically different Jesus movement.Footnote 66 Since the term “provenance” is semantically related to the language of origins, Q's “Galilean” origin is rhetorically and ideologically useful in framing discussions of Q's literary and ideological “difference.” As an instruction, Q is generically and literarily different from the more kerygmatically-determined biographical narratives of the Gospels. As a Galilean instruction, Q is sociologically and historically different from the Jerusalem-based “pillars” and Paul's communities. Q is also theologically different in registering alternative views of Jesus, his death, significance, and teachings. In each instance, Q's Galilean provenance serves to support arguments for Q's “difference” as a short-lived textual experiment conducted in a geographically isolated environment. The idea of an isolated “Galilean Q” may have once represented a “pure” form of Christianity in liberal Protestantism, but it now functions more as a guarantor of a historically, rhetorically, and ideologically different “Jesus movement” that can effectively destabilize the Acts-centered paradigm of Christian origins.
It would seem that the inclination to identify Q as an early, “pure” source of Jesus's Galilean teachings has informed the construction of the Galilean Q research paradigm. The symbiotic association of a Galilean Q with a Galilean historical Jesus and his Galilean movement is a point of agreement between both those who regard Q as a source of dominical Jesus tradition and those who emphasize Q's difference from the Pauline kerygma. The fact that the discursive origin of Q and the Q community-concept was accompanied by such considerations, however, invalidates neither the results of literary-critical analysis of Q nor the fact that very different sociological models of the Q group can be mapped onto the socio-textual landscapes of first-century Judaism.Footnote 67
The criteria used to identify a Galilean provenance and group, however, are more suggestive and conjectural than compelling.Footnote 68 The argument from Galilean place-names is “extraordinarily weak.”Footnote 69 Q also includes a number of Judean place-names (Q 3:3a; 4:9; 11:51; 13:34–35). The fact that Jesus came from Galilee or taught in Galilee did not limit his movements to Galilee. Q's ideological tension with Torah and Temple traditions does not require positing geographical isolation from those institutions. One might be wary of any sociological construct in Second Temple Judaism in which neither the Torah nor the Temple play a role,Footnote 70 especially since Q's instruction (not to mention Jesus's saying on divorce) is an interpretation of Torah.Footnote 71 Similarly, Q's “indifference” or hostility toward the Temple's administration is part of a wider Jewish milieu in which cultural criticism reflects a discursive participation in its significance. Ideological criticism of the Temple cannot be equated with geographical distance from Jerusalem. At the same time, Q's most pronounced scribal/collective self-identification as Israel may have been rhetorically deployed at secondary stages, but it may also have been presupposed at earlier stages. The fact that Pharisees are not well-attested in pre-70 CE Galilee also renders problematic the idea that the “Q people” can be isolated in Galilee.Footnote 72 The instructional wisdom genre is as plausible within rural and urban Judea as in rural and urban Galilee. Moreover, Q 4:9–12’s view of the Temple does not need to be contrasted with Q 11:49–51 and Q 13:34–35’s negative view of Jerusalem's administration and religious leadership.Footnote 73 The Temple's administration is being criticized because the Temple was a contested institution within Judaism. Similarly, Q's emphasis on poverty and the simple life are just as much at home in the Judean countryside as in rural Galilee. The formation of Q as literary instructional wisdom discourse is just as much at home among Judean scribal social networks as Galilean.
While Q's theological difference can indeed be affirmed, Q's emphasis on Jesus's instruction and its alternative conceptualization of Jesus's death does not depend on Galilean isolation from Jerusalem. Q's hostility toward the Temple is certainly compatible with a Galilean hypothesis, but this hostility is not based on geographical distance but rather on a polemical reaction to Jesus's death at the hands of Jerusalem's religious leaders. It is hardly surprising that Q would express hostility toward the leaders of the institution that orchestrated his execution, a hostility that in turn alienated Q's author (and audience) from further participation in the Temple cult. Q's hostility toward the Temple and non-salvific view of Jesus's death casts doubt on any assumption that Q can be conflated with kerygmatic emphases that lend the cult's efficacy to Jesus's death. It cannot be assumed that hostility toward the Temple's administration would necessarily translate to identifying Jesus's death as an atoning sacrifice. A different understanding and representation of Jesus's death, therefore, not only challenges the theological unity of the earliest Jesus movement—casting doubt on the reliability of the early Jesus tradition's “remembered” Jesus—but also raises disturbing questions about the historical Jesus's own self-understanding.
The real issue, in other words, is not so much whether Q contained a passion narrative or passion-material but rather the absence of a sacrificial, salvific, or soteriological interpretation of Jesus's death.Footnote 74 While few today would argue for complete theological uniformity in early Christianity, it is highly unlikely that early Jewish and Gentile Christians were not aware of and responding to the historical facts of Jesus's death in Jerusalem. The point is that not all early Christians agreed on the soteriological meaning of Jesus's death. The “trouble with Q,” then, is that it raises the question of whether the Jewish Christian Jerusalem “community” maintained a unified, that is, a Pauline kerygma.
The popularity of the Galilean hypothesis, and the relative unpopularity of Judea or Jerusalem as an alternative, may have as much (if not more) to do with theological considerations as geographical plausibility. To put it another way, geographical distance has been conflated with theological difference. Positing an isolated Q group (whether in Galilee or elsewhere) may support its non-kerygmatic profile, but it also makes it all the more difficult to explain how different versions of Q found their way into the hands of Matthew and Luke. Moreover, it is not altogether clear that the faith claims of the “Jewish Christian” Jerusalem community are not reflected in Q.Footnote 75 After all, despite the difficulties involved with determining precisely how the Jerusalem community envisioned Jesus's death, many exegetes would infer that the community affirmed the passion kerygma as described by Paul (1 Cor 15). This would seem to preclude Jerusalem from being a likely setting for Q. Yet it is not clear that Jesus's first Jewish followers in Jerusalem shared all aspects of Paul's interpretation of “the Gospel,” and it is much less certain that subsequent “Jewish Christians” did so.Footnote 76 We may presume that most if not all of Jesus's followers knew he had been crucified (Q 14:27) and were familiar with post-mortem vindication traditions,Footnote 77 but that does not mean that they all agreed on the soteriological significance of those events.Footnote 78 The identification of Jesus's death as one of the rejected prophets of Israel (Q 11:51), an inspiring example for disciples to follow, or as a martyrological “witness” to the kingdom of God opposed by the religious leaders of Jerusalem all seem to represent early Judean strata of theological reflection parallel to vicarious and substitutionary atoning martyrological theologies.Footnote 79
A Galilean Q as Gospel?
The idea that Q represents “a network of villages sympathetic to Jesus's kingdom message” is a reasonable hypothesis.Footnote 80 The Galilean village scribe hypothesis, however, has not persuaded everyone.Footnote 81 Questions remain about the degree of literacy in rural Galilee.Footnote 82 It is unclear whether the Galilean village scribe model adequately addresses Q's scribal relationship(s) to the identity-markers associated with Judaism, namely the Torah, the Temple cult, Davidic messianism, Wisdom literature, and Early Jewish apocalypticism. It is also questionable whether the “Galilean village scribe” hypothesis adequately explains or accounts for the sophisticated scribal traditions that we find in Q. In other words, any hypothetical identification of Q's provenance must account for and explain the contents of Q.
The idea that village communities played a significant role in the socio-economic support of the Jesus movementFootnote 83 and saw themselves engaged in the “revitalization of local community life”Footnote 84 is a reasonable conclusion.Footnote 85 However, whether we should envision Q as representing a prophetic renewal movement or a relatively small isolated scribal group re-presenting peasant concerns continues to be a point of contention. Q seems to be the product of relatively high level scribal activity.Footnote 86 Yet the social level of the scribes might need to “be estimated a few notches higher than that of . . . village functionaries.”Footnote 87 The social status of the Q scribe may now be confirmed and structurally identifiable as in-between that of rural peasantry and the urban elite, but it remains to be seen whether we can further clarify the social location of Q, its scribe, and projected audience.
Criticizing “the majority of Q scholars” who “appear to regard Q as a window into the community that produced it or used it,” Sarah Rollens suggests that Q studies have been detrimentally affected by problematic modern “assumptions” about religion.Footnote 88 Rollens finds (Geertzian) assumptions about religion as a “symbolic” system implicated in the idea that communities follow “a distinct set of beliefs and practices.”Footnote 89 As a result, Q is interpreted as part of “a larger symbolic and ideological system that reflects the religious and cultural lives of the Q people,”Footnote 90 an approach that presumes that “religious beliefs” in Q are similar to “religious beliefs” in a modern context.Footnote 91 For Rollens, it is Q itself—as an ancient discourse—that would more profitably be “the object of study.”Footnote 92
Q, however, is inscribed with “values and beliefs” derived not from a modern concept of “religion” but from ancient and ethnically Judean practices like Torah interpretation, prayer, tithing, and synagogue attendance. Q also contains “symbols” of social identity (“Jesus,” “Son of Man,” “Kingdom”) deployed for particular rhetorical and discursive purposes by an author in conversation with wider socio-cultural location(s).Footnote 93 It is not clear whether a dichotomous approach to Q studies is a fair representation of the field.Footnote 94 That is, it is not clear whether “the majority of Q scholars” assume that Q contains “a coherent religious ideology” or a “unified theology of a distinct group of people.”Footnote 95 Rollens recognizes that reconstructing the people responsible for Q is a “precarious” undertaking, “given the paucity of evidence and the danger of importing modern assumptions,”Footnote 96 but those positing a Galilean village-scribal collective also work with implicit assumptions.Footnote 97 This is problematic insofar as the identifications of “Galilee” and “Galilean village-scribes” are both based on extrapolation from a fragmentary text, and literarily symbolic place-names are not convertible with actual geographic locations of composition. Rollens's conclusions thus neglect her own methodological caution in attributing a very specific socio-geographic location to Q as the textual product of a group of rural Galilean village-scribes.
Theoretically, Q could have been composed and circulated by a Judean scribe in Galilee, a Galilean disciple in Judea collaborating with a Judean scribe, and/or a Galilean scribe collaborating with a Judean follower of Jesus. Since Q represents the post-crucifixion/post-Easter expansion of the Jesus movement, when Jesus's followers would have been exposed to a wider network of Jewish (and non-Jewish) populations in both Judea and Galilee, we simply cannot assume that it must also have originated in Galilee, especially in light of its multi-regional references, critical reflections on Jerusalem, and the contemporary existence of a Jerusalem-based “Jesus group.” It is not surprising that some scholars have appealed to both lower Galilee and northern Galilee and Syria in order to explain the origin and the final redaction of Q. Yet questions remain.
Does Q represent a Galilean text geographically and ideologically isolated from Jerusalem? Did Q travel from Galilee to Syria without ever being encountered by any Judean followers of Jesus? If the Q group did not participate in the Jewish War, but moved either east toward Pella or north toward Syria, then what was their relationship to the Jerusalem “community” that did the same, at least according to the legendary account presented in Eusebius?Footnote 98 While there is no doubt that Eusebius's goal is apologetic insofar as he is trying to affirm the survival of the apostolic “church” through the Jewish War, the relationship between Q and Jerusalem is all the more pressing if we recall that Paul provides us with evidence of the early Jesus movement in Jerusalem. Moreover, despite Luke's apologetic project of constructing a unified portrait of the early “church,” both “Hebrews” (Aramaic-speakers) and “Hellenists” (Greek-speakers) appear to have been present from its earliest stages.Footnote 99 Jewish pilgrims from the Diaspora may have been among the first who heard the “good news” preached in Jerusalem.Footnote 100 The point is that we have no compelling historical, documentary, or material-archaeological evidence for the Galilean author, group, or textual production of Q. A minimalist position, therefore, need not presume to know the geographical origin of the text's production. It suffices to say that Q was composed by Jewish scribes, although not necessarily “village scribes” nor “Galilean village scribes.” As for its date, Q certainly does foresee an impending disaster befalling “this generation,” but this is not a compelling reason to conclude that Q should be dated to the time shortly before the Jewish War: Paul also envisioned Judeans subject to an imminent divine “wrath” long before intimations of the Revolt were on the horizon. Consequently, I would like to propose a different methodological thought-experiment by re-examining several Q texts within Second Temple Judaism. Giovanni Bazzana has recently argued that although “a worrying trend within biblical studies tends to seclude their subject matter from a sustained and meaningful comparison with ‘pagan’ or sometimes even Jewish texts stemming from the same or similar socio-cultural locations,” Q can indeed be “studied profitably in close interaction with other Jewish and Greco-Roman writings and discourses.”Footnote 101 Accordingly, I would like to explore a different way of identifying Q's Jewish author(s) and audience.
Re-Mapping Q within the Social, Scribal, and Textual Landscape(s) of Second Temple Judaism
One of the best illustrations of the relatively high level of scribal innovation and complexity in Q is Q 7:22, especially in comparison to 4Q521, which refers to a future time when God will “heal the wounded, revive the dead, and proclaim good news to the poor” (רשבי םיונע היחי םיתמו םיללח אפרי). Both 4Q521 12 and Q 7:22 allude to Isaiah 61 and other texts. Both refer to sight being restored to the blind, the lame walking, and the deaf hearing. Both texts also “juxtapose an allusion to Isa 61,1 with a reference to giving life to the dead.”Footnote 102 The most remarkable parallel is the pairing of resurrection and the poor having good news preached to them. John Kloppenborg notes that “neither the cleanings of lepers . . . nor raising of the dead . . . is mentioned in Psalm 146 or any of the Isaianic texts which seem otherwise to have informed both 4Q521 and Q 7:22.”Footnote 103 He describes the similarity as “an uncanny resemblance.”Footnote 104 James M. Robinson notes that the reference to resurrection “does invite speculation as to a shared source.”Footnote 105 Robinson suggests that Q 7:22 “could be a mosaic put together in some other context and just taken over (and perhaps adapted) by Q . . . one might find here in the redactional layer of Q already dependence on an erudition shared with Qumran.”Footnote 106 John J. Collins notes that it is “quite possible that the author of the Sayings source knew 4Q521.”Footnote 107 It is possible that the author of Q combed through the book of Isaiah looking for suitable miraculous deeds to ascribe to Jesus, but the author would have had to combine three different passages in order to do so,Footnote 108 whereas 4Q521 represents a scribal tradition that had already combined four of Q's six Isaianic miracles. The author of Q does not need to have had direct visual access to this text to allude to it or “borrow” from it.
Genetic relationships between texts are not limited to cases of direct literary dependence, especially within an oral context, and even less so when a number of sequential and distinctive parallels are present between two unrelated texts. These two texts share a notable density of themes, and where they share Isaianic motifs, the order is identical. The argument from order, the density of parallels, and the exegetical decisions involved with combining several passages from different texts suggests dependence. In this case, neither the argument from coincidental parallel tradition nor the argument from common tradition are explanatorily satisfying. Such appeals commit the logical fallacy of ignotum per ignotius, trying to explain the unknown in terms of the more unknown. It is better to move from what we already know to what we do not. We should keep Occam's Razor at hand and not multiply assumptions beyond necessity (Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem). In other words, there is no compelling reason to deny that Q 7:22 betrays knowledge of the scribal tradition in 4Q521.
Considering that this combination is not found anywhere else in extant Jewish literature and that our groups and traditions are contemporaneous, positing indirect relationship is an economical hypothesis. Would a Galilean village scribe have been capable and/or inclined to perform such detailed exegetical work (ex nihilo) by independently isolating several different Septuagintal passages from Isaiah?Footnote 109 Or, as seems more likely, is Q 7:22 evidence of its author working with pre-existing traditions? And, if so, what does that tell us about the geographical origin of Q, its sociological profile, and the author's social ties?
Whether or not the historical Jesus did so, as seems likely,Footnote 110 the Jesus of Q 16:18 proscribes divorce (cf. Deut 24:1-4):Footnote 111 “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and the one who marries a divorcee commits adultery.” Q 16:18 is part of a cluster of several legal sayings, one of which (Q 16:17) appears to be a redactional clarification of and correction to the possibly antinomian implications of Q 16:16 and Q 16:18. It would seem, therefore, that Q 16:18 is an early Q tradition, especially since Paul identifies the proscription of divorce as a “word of the Lord” that he presumably learned through his contact(s) with the Jerusalem community (1 Cor 7:10). Here is an early Q tradition compatible with a Judean provenance. Here “Jesus” does not necessarily contradict the Torah but is not entirely satisfied with it either.Footnote 112 Q 16:18 appears to be more rigorous, not more lenient, than the Torah.Footnote 113 Here Q shares with the Qumran community a tendency to “re-write” scripture. The similar use of scriptural references (cf. Mark 10; Gen 1–2), especially in light of the Damascus Document (CD 4–5) and the Temple Scroll (11QT 57), suggests a shared cultural tradition.Footnote 114 The author of Q seems to have regarded the teachings of Jesus as an eschatologische Tora that did not oppose the Torah but effectively replaced it.Footnote 115 Jesus's teachings represent a new interpretation of the Law.Footnote 116 Jesus's saying on divorce represents an implied criticism of Torah and illustrates a distinctive halakhic approach that cannot be assumed of most Palestinian Jewish “village scribes.” Q 16:18 may not provide us with evidence that the Torah was “central” to the author's concerns, but it reflects a relatively radical interpretive approach. Here Jesus's distinctive saying may also shed light on the exegetical decisions or hermeneutic behind this halakhic ruling, especially as the Qumran group also questioned the eschatological fixity of the Torah. In sum, Jesus's proscription of divorce is a multiply attested, early tradition preceded by analogically similar Qumranic/Essenic positions on marital law set in an eschatological context.
The author of Q seems to have held a negative view of the Temple.Footnote 117 In Q 13:34–35, Jesus declares the Temple to be “forsaken” (ἀφίεται): “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! . . . Look, your house (ὁ οἶκος ὑµῶν) is forsaken! . . . I tell you: You will not see me until you say: Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Q 13:34–35 seems to blame the city and its leaders, in particular, for Jesus's death. Jerusalem is the city that “kills the prophets.” Should we date Q 13:34–35 within a pre- or post-70 CE context? This question is central, not only because of its relevance for this particular saying, but for how we date Q itself. It should go without saying that geographical distance from Jerusalem alone should not be confused or conflated with ideological and hostile differentiation from the Temple. Ideological disaffiliation in and of itself requires a causal explanation. The fact that Q 13:34–35 declares Jerusalem's “house” to be “forsaken” is polyvalent and could reflect the author's willful withdrawal from the Temple cult, a commemorative recollection of Jesus's criticism of the Temple, its leaders’ role in his death, or a pre-70 CE saying illustrating the Q movement's complete disillusionment with the Temple shortly before the Jewish War. Whether or not the historical Jesus predicted the destruction of the Temple, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Jesus's disciples withdrew from participation in the Temple cult between 30–70 CE.Footnote 118 It is certainly not necessary to suppose that the author of Q or its audience could only have come to this position shortly before the Jewish War. It seems equally unnecessary to suppose that the saying reflects a post-70 CE vaticinium ex eventu. Jesus's death predisposed his followers to viewing the Temple's leaders with suspicion, distrust, and hostility. The Temple saying does not presuppose, let alone require, a late 60s setting. In short, Q's ideological disaffiliation from the Temple can be dated to its earliest stage(s). Again, the Qumran community represents a contemporary parallel.Footnote 119
Although many Second Temple Jews may have criticized the Temple, the extant evidence indicates that it was the Qumran group and/or the Essene movement, in particular, who withdrew from the Temple cult. By the time of Jesus, this willful withdrawal would have been an established way of sectarian life for over a century. Since the Temple was widely regarded and revered by Judeans as the house of God, any willful withdrawal from its cult or public criticism of its administration would have had very real effects—economically, socially, politically, and ritually—on those who did so. According to the Qumran texts, the Temple priesthood was illegitimate, which further rendered the sacrificial cult illegitimate and inefficacious.Footnote 120 This does not mean that the Essenes rejected the Temple per se, only its current administration.
While the author of Q does not identify Jesus's death as “sacrificial” or “atoning,” there is no evidence that they actually participated in the sacrificial cult. It is difficult to conclude that an author or group that regarded the Temple as “forsaken” would continue offering sacrifices there. Q clearly displays hostility toward the religious leaders in Jerusalem, the Temple, and the Pharisees, but this widespread hostility toward many sectors of Second Temple Jewish society limits the range of its possible social relationships and allies, especially in light of the social and religious consequences resulting from such a sharp break from the Temple system. Whether or not Q represents an “imperiled” or “lost” allegiance to the Temple, the Essene movement would have been intellectual and ideological allies and sympathetic forerunners in this opposition to the central institution of Judean religious life. Indeed, they may have been among the earliest targeted recruits in Q's rhetorical program. Since Q provides us with no evidence that Jesus's first followers participated in the Temple cult or identified his death as “atoning,” the fact that the Qumran community established a precedent of withdrawal from the Temple cult and adopted an alternative system of atonement suggests that we consider relocating the emergence of Q in conversation with this subversive challenge to the central institution of Judean politico-religious life.
If the compositional impetus behind Q was a series of carefully crafted instructional wisdom speeches,Footnote 121 then Q also provides us with another point of comparison with the Qumran corpus.Footnote 122 Both the Community Rule (1QS) and the Damascus Document (CD) are “manuals” intended for community-instruction containing sapiential sections using vocabulary taken from wisdom literature. The most remarkable Wisdom text at Qumran is 4QInstruction. In form and content, 4QInstruction is similar to Sirach, Proverbs, Egyptian wisdom literature and, of course, Q. Like Q, 4QInstruction comes from scribal circles outside the Temple and court, presupposes family life, regular society, and traditional village-based occupations while disclosing eschatological mysteries, wisdom, and (sectarian) knowledge.Footnote 123 It would seem, then, that Q and 4QInstruction both belong to a discernible “wisdom trajectory” within Second Temple Judaism.Footnote 124
Q's discursive world is informed by and interacts with Judean Torah, Temple, Wisdom, and “messianic” traditions. I have focused here specifically on three case studies: 1) Q 7:22 as evidence of a relatively high level of scribal innovation comparable to its Judean precedent, 4Q521; 2) Q 16:18 as a multiply attested Jesus tradition compatible with a Jerusalem/Judean provenance and reminiscent of discussions reinterpreting marital law in CD and 11QT; and 3) Q 13:34–35 as illustrative of how Q's hostility toward the Temple resembles the Qumran community's polemical withdrawal from the Temple.
The Qumran community seems to have been a sub-section of a larger Essene movement representing a relatively coherent alliance of individuals who came together for a common purpose: the restoration of Israel.Footnote 125 Since the Palestinian Essene movement was chronologically and geographically proximate to the Palestinian Jesus movement, it is reasonable to suppose that “Essenic” traditions would have represented valuable intellectual resources to Jesus's followers. Positing Essene “influence,” however, has not always been welcome in the study of Christian origins. Susannah Heschel suggests that the Essene hypothesis heightens an “anxiety of influence” based on Christianity's origin and emergence within Judaism.Footnote 126 The “Essenes” complicate Christian origins as they do not represent mainstream or “common Judaism,” but rather sectarian streams, implying a kind of improper mixing in models associated with “pure” Galilean traditions (or alternative spheres of geographically isolated Jesus groups). A similar “anxiety of influence” is registered when analogical (and genealogical) parallels drawn between Q and Cynic philosophy seem to undermine its exclusively “Jewish” origin. Similar dynamics have also been posited in terms of gnostic influence on early Christianity.Footnote 127 In each case, the suggestion that heterodox Jewish, gnostic, or pagan/Cynic ideas “influenced” early Christianity can conjure up the specter of an ancient Orthodoxy/Heresy discourse. We may not have much evidence of Cynics, gnostics, or “village scribes” in first-century Galilee, but there is no reason to doubt that the “Essenes” represent an early Palestinian scribal tradition that co-existed with the early Jesus movement.
The Essene movement was comprised of a wide range of individuals with different occupations and education-levels, including sub-elite, middling-level, Greek-literate Judean scribes.Footnote 128 In addition to its intellectual resources, this multi-regional movement could also have provided economic resources and community support in and through their social networks. Since Q is a textual witness to a time when the earliest mixed groups of the Jesus movement were not Palestinian Jews and Pauline Gentiles, but rather different kinds of Palestinian Jews attracted to “Jesus,” the composition of Q represents a theoretically compelling influx of “Essenic” ideas into the Galilean Jesus movement. It would follow that Essenic ideas would be found indirectly reflected in the writings of the New Testament, especially in terms of their “community” profiles. For example, Paul refers to unknown “churches in Judea,” which is precisely where lay Essenes lived. At the same time, Paul appeals to Temple-symbolism in describing the Jerusalem “pillars” as well as to a quasi-community there (“the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem”), a city also home to Essenes, that is, a Judean “community” given to alternative Temple conceptualizations. Similarly, the author of Acts appeals to multiple Palestinian Essene-like organizational motifs in his depiction of an idealized “Jerusalem community” (e.g., with “all things in common”). It should come as no surprise to also find Essene-like motifs and traditions in the composition of Q.
The role of Jerusalem in the social history of the early Jesus movement (30–70 CE), although supported by Paul's letters (esp. Gal 2; cf. Acts 2), has played a relatively minor, and perhaps even predominantly negative role, in Q studies. The concept of a “Jerusalem community” may be over-developed in scholarship, but the idea that social and scribal networks in Jerusalem served to support and inform the earliest post-30 CE Jesus movement represents an economical and explanatorily powerful hypothesis that presupposes Jesus's Galilean disciples’ relocation in Jerusalem and accounts for the incorporation of Essenic traditions, the translation of Aramaic sayings into Greek, and the initial scribal impetus for the composition of non-translation Greek discourses. In other words, if some of Jesus's followers remained in Jerusalem after Jesus's death, the composition of Q could have intersected with Judean intellectual resources and scribal affiliations at a very early stage.Footnote 129 The Jerusalem community certainly included “scribes” (γραµµατεῖς; Matt 23:34). Jerusalem was a city where both Aramaic and Greek were used and received a constant stream of Greek-speaking Jewish pilgrims from the Diaspora. If some of Jesus's Galilean disciples travelled with him to Jerusalem and re-located there, they could have facilitated the transmission and composition of Jesus's teachings into Greek, initiating the compositional processes which produced Q. Again, I am not suggesting that Q 7:22, Q 16:18, or Q 13:34–35 were composed in Judea or Jerusalem (although that cannot be entirely ruled out), but rather that these sayings betray a more complex cultural engagement with Judean scribal practices, ideas, motifs, and traditions than a geographically isolated Galilean provenance would seem to permit.
The similarities between these Q texts and their Essenic parallels could be explained (away) by appealing to “parallelomania,”Footnote 130 coincidence, or common tradition, but a more “textually persuasive and ethically preferable” reading of these texts suggests that the Jewish scribe of Q was not working ex nihilo but interacting with Early Jewish texts and traditions in order to construct a new textual horizon and worldview, that is, a new vision of Israel.Footnote 131 The communal-language and shared sense of identity among Q's Jewish Jesus followers is therefore not simply based on their mutual allegiance to “Jesus,” or even the βασιλεία of God, but on a shared set of cultural-textual assumptions that Q itself depends on, develops, and presupposes. Q represents an attempt to hold an emerging center together by appealing to the central symbol of the βασιλεία of God as a group-oriented vision heralded by Jesus that both united the in-group of Jesus's followers as well as polarized the out-group of Jesus's opponents.
Q originated as a rhetorical project and evangelizing tool intended to recruit new members, fortify existing members, and threaten its critics. Q's rhetorical appeal would thus have been directed toward that sector of the Palestinian Jewish population most likely to accept its constellation of cultural codes because they were already predisposed toward doing so.Footnote 132 The fact that Q is ill-disposed toward Pharisees,Footnote 133 Jerusalem's religious leaders, several Galilean villages, and “this generation,” but does not polemicize against (or even mention) Essenes, needs to be explained. I suggest that the reason for this lost opportunity or apparent omission is that its author and projected audience were sympathetic to and influenced by “Essene” ideas. This proposal has the merit and the advantage of confirming Q's scribal status while suggesting that Q's scribe(s) have inherited “Essenic” ideas and traditions whether or not they originated in or remained in Galilee. By focusing on Q's intellectual, cultural, scribal, and scriptural resources, this proposal avoids some of the limitations imposed by positing the scribe(s’) or group's geographical and sociological isolation from other Palestinian Jewish Jesus groups.
Q's appeals to Isaianic traditions, eschatological Torah, and its disengagement with the Temple correspond to pre-30 CE analogical parallels in the Palestinian Essene movement in Jerusalem and the villages of Judea. Josephus and Philo both describe a lay Essene social network in Judea.Footnote 134 Josephus refers to an “Essene Gate” in Jerusalem and tells us of several Essenes who used their prophetic powers in a political context: Judah, Menachem, and Simon.Footnote 135 Essenes were a very real socio-political force to be reckoned with in first-century Judea, albeit a relatively non-elite, un-empowered, eschatologically expectant, and strategically nonviolent force. We might also recall that the Essene movement seems to have virtually disappeared—like our Q scribe(s) and Q itself—from the historical record after the Revolt. Simply put, the Palestinian Jesus movement seems to have been influenced by the Palestinian Essene movement.
While this proposal destabilizes any attempt to posit a pristine moment of pure or isolated Galilean origins, it effectively navigates the rhetorical and ideological “differences” registered by a critical analysis of Q's actual contents. In other words, Q is still “different” and still makes a difference, but Q's difference is not simply to be registered as an alternative kind of “Christianity” to be compared or contrasted with the kerygmatic narrative inscribed in Acts and the Gospels, although it is indeed such a witness. Rather, Q is also the first testament of the Jesus movement in its earliest Jewish context. To read Q in this way is to (re)conceptualize Christian origins within its Jewish matrix by re-cognizing the creative tensions and cultural intersections represented by this “text.”
Conclusion
The quest for a “Q community” or “Q group” seems to have originated, in part, with the observation that Q lacked a passion kerygma but embraced a Son of Man Christology. That is, Q was different. This notable absence of a passion narrative in Q seems to have led to positing (and sometimes presupposing) an isolated group unfamiliar with the Jerusalem “community” or one not interested in, and perhaps even opposed to their ideas about Jesus. This conjecture was further supported by positing the geographical isolation of Galilee as Q's most likely setting. The presupposition that Jesus came from Galilee and preached in Galilee provided historical plausibility. The formulation of the “Galilean village scribe” hypothesis is an efficient model that combines: 1) a Galilean provenance for Q in isolation from the Jerusalem “community”; 2) a Jesus-group uninterested in (or unaware of) the passion kerygma and pursuing different theological, Christological, and soteriological interests; and 3) a new sociological group-profile: the administrative “village scribe.” While there are indeed good reasons for accepting a Galilean Jewish matrix of the Jesus movement and a Galilean social setting for Jesus's ministry, and its possible continuation and commemoration throughout late antiquity, the Galilean provenance of the composition of Q has not persuaded everyone and questions remain about the degree of literacy in rural Galilee. The most challenging aspect of the hypothesis, however, is that it does not appear adequately or substantively to address Q's scribal relationship(s) to a complex constellation of identity-markers associated with Judaism, namely the Torah, the Temple cult, Davidic messianism, Wisdom literature, and Early Jewish apocalypticism, nor the sophisticated scribal traditions in Q. Q may reflect a network of village communities, but the social and geographical location of Q, its scribe(s), and projected audience remain unclear.
In light of 1) the contested existence of a Q “community,” 2) lingering questions on the utility of analogical comparisons with the extant Egyptian papyrological record, and 3) the ideological interference involved with “Galilee” being deployed as the site of an alternative kerygma, I have suggested that delimiting the precise geographical location of Q and/or its scribes is not only fraught with methodological problems, but undermines “the possibility of finding other social formations” behind the emergence of the early Jesus tradition.Footnote 136 It is not that the Galilean village scribe(s) hypothesis is illogical or implausible; rather, it is that the stakes are too high and the data too fragmentary to warrant its being any more than one among a number of hypothetical possibilities. The present exploration of Q's literary and sociological profile has not required delimiting its provenance to Galilean village scribal-life but has yielded different results. Theoretically, Q could have been composed and circulated by a Judean scribe in Galilee, a Galilean disciple in Judea collaborating with a Judean scribe, and/or a Galilean scribe collaborating with a Judean follower of Jesus. We can no longer sustain positing a Q that develops in isolation from wider currents and streams in first-century Judaism, including those that informed the ἐκκλησιῶν mentioned in Paul's letters. Q represents an Early Jewish textual experiment, the inscription of a new vision of Israel constructed with Jesus traditions, Essenic motifs, Greek vocabulary, and scripture. I have suggested that several of Q's key themes and traditions—namely, its appeal to Isaianic motifs reminiscent of 4Q521, its proscription of divorce, its implied correction of Mosaic Torah, and its willful withdrawal from the Temple cult—are particularly consistent with an Early Judean provenance of these themes and traditions, and represent literary-social intersections and analogical comparanda with Essenic motifs, indicating that the scribes responsible for Q were more familiar, conversant, and inter-related with the Palestinian Essene movement than we have previously recognized.
