Estimated to date back to the very early Jesus movement, the lost Gospel known as Q offers a distinct and remarkable picture of Jesus and his significance--and one that differs markedly from that offered by its contemporary, the apostle Paul. Q presents Jesus as a prophetic critic of unbelief and a sage with the wisdom that can transform. In Q, the true meaning of the "kingdom of God" is the fulfillment of a just society through the transformation of the human relationships within it. Though this document has never been found, John Kloppenborg offers a succinct account of why scholars maintain it existed in the first place and demonstrates how they have been able to reconstruct its contents and wording from the two later Gospels that used it as a source: Matthew and Luke. Presented here in its entirety, as developed by the International Q Project, this Gospel reveals a very different portrait of Jesus than in much of the later canonical writings, challenging the way we think of Christian origins and the very nature and mission of Jesus Christ.

Presents the original teachings of Jesus written by his contemporaries and early followers

The first gospel was not one of the four canonical gospels. It was probably Q, an early collection of Jesus' sayings used by Matthew and Luke to create their gospels. Q does not mention Jesus' death and resurrection, and it contains no birth or childhood stories. In Q, Jesus is pictured as a prophetic sage. The First Gospel provides a comprehensive introduction to the Q hypothesis. The author reviews and augments the arguments for the existence of Q. He concludes that the Q document was not merely a miscellaneous collection of sayings of Jesus that served as a source for Matthew and Luke. He sees it as a gospel in its own right, with its own history and own quite distinctive theology.

From the Earliest Gospel (Q+) to the Gospel of Mark focuses on the remarkable overlaps between Jesus’s teachings in the lost Gospel Q and Mark. Dennis R. MacDonald argues Synoptic intertextuality is best explained not as the redaction of sources but more flexibly as the imitation of literary models. Part One applies the criteria of mimesis criticism in a running commentary on Q+ to demonstrate that it polemically imitated Deuteronomy. Part Two argues that Mark in turn tendentiously imitated Logoi. The Conclusion proposes that Matthew and Luke in turn brilliantly and freely imitated both Logoi and Mark and by doing so created scores of duplicate sayings and episodes (doublets).

This book studies comparisons and possible trajectories between three 'catholic' epistles, and traditions associated with Jesus. Part A analyzes why James would recall the teachings of Jesus, how he alters these teachings, and what such adaptation suggests about his audience. Part B turns to the Jesus tradition and 1 and 2 Peter. What can 1 Peter's use of Isaiah 53 tell us about the historical Jesus? How has 1 Peter conflated early Jesus traditions with those of ancient Judaism in order to develop certain ideas? How does 2 Peter allude to Gospel traditions? Moreover, how does the author of 2 Peter use early Jesus traditions as a sort of testimony? The book is an important contribution to scholarship on source criticism, ancient rhetoric, and the influence of Hellenistic, Judean and Roman traditions on early Christianity.

This book shows readers the formation of Q by exploring how the texts were subjected to redaction four times. As author Yoseop Ra demonstrates, the first redaction of Q conveys the words and deeds of the historical Jesus and then the rest of redactors imposed their own theological interpretation to the words and deeds of Jesus. His argument will provide readers with a fresh look on how the earliest "Jesus movement" was formed in the thirties of the first century CE. Q is a hypothetical document extracted from the common source between Matthew and Luke. Thus, it is not easy to distinguish the different layers of redaction embedded in Q. However, form critical, redaction critical, composition critical, and socio-historical approaches to it makes readers separate the four layers of redaction from Q. Each layer will show how the disciples of Jesus moved from the countryside to Jerusalem via some rural cities expanding their boundary.

"But the Bible says" is a common enough refrain in many conversations about Christianity. The written verses of the four canonical Gospels are sometimes volleyed back and forth and taken as fact while the apocryphal and oral accounts of the life of Jesus are taken as mere oddities. Early thinkers inside and outside the community of Jesus-followers similarly described a contentious relationship between the oral and the written, though they often focused on the challenges of trusting the written word over the spoken-Socrates described the written word an illegitimate "bastard" compared to the spoken word of a teacher. Nevertheless, the written accounts of the Jesus tradition in the Gospels have taken a far superior position in the Christian faith to any oral tradition. In The Gospel as Manuscript, Chris Keith offers a new material history of the Jesus tradition's journey from voice to page, showing that the introduction of manuscripts played an underappreciated, but crucial, role in the reception history of the gospel. From the textualization of Mark in the first century CE until the eventual usage of liturgical readings as a marker of authoritative status in the second and third centuries, early followers of Jesus placed the gospel-as-manuscript on display by drawing attention to the written nature of their tradition. Many authors of Gospels saw themselves in competition with other evangelists, working to establish their texts as the quintessential Gospel. Reading the texts aloud in liturgical settings and further establishedthe literary tradition in material culture. Revealing a vibrant period of competitive development of the Jesus tradition, wherein the material status of the tradition frequently played as important a role as the ideas that it contained, Keith offers a thorough consideratios of the competitive textualization and public reading of the Gospels.