The New Q

by Richard Valantasis

The American and European public has a voracious appetite for more information about Jesus and the formation of early Christianity. The best-selling books on the subject by Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, John Meyer, and Luke Timothy Johnson, among many others, attest to this hunger. But each of these scholars presents his own reading of the historical information, usually beginning with the earliest known Jesus-related material, Jesus' sayings, and leads the public into a particular understanding of Jesus and the early Jesus movements. The New Q will provide the general public with the original source through a fresh translation of the early Sayings Gospel known as Q. This book will guide people through their reading of the texts themselves so that readers will be able to judge the validity of other scholars' reconstructions. The New Q is the companion volume necessary to understand the current writing on the historical Jesus and the history of earliest Christianity. Valantasis provides a new translation of the Synoptic Sayings Source, Q. He translates each section from the Greek of the critical edition of Robinson and Kloppenborg, and he gathers the translation of the full text as a coherent collection of sayings at the end of the book. Avoiding the scholarly arguments that make Q inaccessible, as well as the constant comparison of Matthew and Luke, this commentary will straightforwardly present the text based on the work of those scholars who have provided a critical edition. It provides an initial reading in a language appropriate to religious seekers. The translation itself will be fresh and provocative, since its meaning and interpretation are not linked to its later use in the narrative gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. In fact, readers of this translation will be able to hear the sayings of Jesus as Matthew and Luke heard them before the writing of their gospels. The goal is to recreate the kind of challenging and intellectually stimulating engagement with the sayings that probably put Christianity on the Roman map. Readers will be able to encounter Jesus' voice and the voices of early Christians directly, without the intrusion of the later use of these sayings by the gospel writers. Valantasis also provides a commentary on each of the sayings. The commentary will focus on three facets: what the saying says, what it could have meant at the time, and how is was used by early Christians. The first two questions provide the basic information by developing a literary analysis of the sayings (a reading of Jesus' words) and by positing a significance for the saying in the context of earliest Christianity (what the saying could have meant). The final question directs the reading of the saying toward its use by religious people then and now as a means of forging an alternative subjectivity, defining new religious and social relationships, and constructing an alternative understanding of the nature of the spiritual and physical world. In other words, this commentary will provide an ascetical reading of the sayings to explore the manner in which the sayings source might have been read by individuals and communities in antiquity, and it will provide an alternative to the currently established reading of the sayings in modern scholarship primarily as a window on the historical Jesus' doctrines and teaching.

Paperback

First published November 11, 2005

Reviews

[Eggtown · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is this Q?

It concerns the synoptic gospels, the earliest gospel we have is Mark and it is clear that Matthew and Luke have used Mark as a model outline (and source) when they composed their own gospels. However, there are source material so similar between Matthew and Luke, material that Mark doesn't have at all. This has made scholars since the 19th century theorize that Matthew and Luke both used a lost common source, called Q (Q from the German Quelle, meaning source).

This lost Sayings Gospel Q has been painstakingly reconstructed in The Critical Edition of Q published in 2000 by Robinson, Hoffmann, and Kloppenborg (with a more accessible study guide published 2002). It reveals sayings of Jesus without the gospel authors' biographical narrative and charged theological interpretations superimposed on it. As each gospel author wrote for a specific audience (Matthew: Jews, Luke: Gentiles) with an agenda in mind, we get in Q a strong contender for the earliest tradition of Jesus in this collection of his spoken words. An amazing window in time to hear the real voice of Jesus and his teachings of the empire of God.

It has to be said that many biblical scholars have voiced their opinion against Q, called the search for the historical Jesus (Jesus Seminar, 1985-2006) futile, and the possibility of hearing the "authentic voice" and teachings of Jesus outside the tradition of the canonical gospels as misguided.

For me personally, I find the search for the historical Jesus very exciting and thrilling. Especially, as we in this Sayings Gospel get a grittier, more demanding, even more angry, and radical Jesus, captivating the crowd and his followers with dazzling and puzzling sayings filled with awesome force. Far away from rosy Sunday school. And as always it opens up so many new avenues of interpretation to explore about Jesus, not only as a divine presence on earth, but even more so as a human being.

Scholar Richard Valantasis' new translation and commentaries of Q is a treat. He is a great guide and teacher explaining these sayings in a balanced and coherent way. Getting to the core of the messages encapsulated by scrutinizing the religious, social, and historical context, and discussing multiple levels of interpretation in a straightforward way that makes sense.

Like this excerpt from the commentary of Saying 67:

Everyone who exalts himself will be humiliated, and everyone who is humiliated will exalt himself. (Q 14:[11] / Matthew 23:12 and Luke 14:11)

"Jesus' wisdom subverts the moral structures of society and encourages a countercultural engagement with it, a countercultural engagement that defines the new society and the new empire of God. That divine empire not only subverts the empires of the world - Roman, Jewish, and all others - is also redefines the meaning of imperial authority from a divine perspective."

Valantasis has taken the text at face value (much the same way he did with The Gospel of Thomas) seriously looking at it as a coherent work where multiple sayings elucidate and reinforce meanings across the whole text. The Letters of Paul, is often referenced, Paul dealing with the early Jesus movement(s) to give a broader social background that is very helpful.

The purpose of a sayings collection, like this, is not to preserve the words and deeds of the historical Jesus. Valantasis states in his introduction that the function is not to preserve historical memory or biographical information about him. The function is to present in written form "... the original speaker's presence in different circumstances and at different times. So in hearing a saying, each hearer or each reader enacts the saying in his or her own context and in his or her own times so that the voice of the teacher transcends the original oral performance and interjects itself into new times... [...]"

Ultimately, the purpose is to engage in a process of formation:

"Those engaged in hearing Jesus' sayings and reading his words and deeds sought to transform themselves, their society, and the world in which they lived. [...] ... in such a way that they were empowered to interpret, to understand, to confront the meaning for their own lives, and to enact the empire of God that Jesus proclaimed."

These wisdom sayings are sharply direct, feel more authentic, and are immensely countercultural as it was both then and still is today.