The Critical Edition of Q
in Hermeneia
Pages
581 pages
Publisher
Fortress Press
Published
2000
ISBN-13
9780800631499
A major new resource on the text and traditions of the Sayings Gospel.
The existence of Q (simply defined as the non-Markan material common to Matthew and Luke) as a document in the earliest churches was first hypothesized by C. H. Weisse in 1838. The existence, character, and significance of Q as a document from primitive Christianity has further been developed since then by numerous scholars, including the two groundbreaking Fortress Press books by John S. Kloppenborg: The Formation of Q (1987) and Excavating Q (2000).
Q remains a subject of heated debate. The Q material consists mainly of sayings of Jesus, but begins with some sayings of John the Baptist. For the most part narratives are missing; most conspicuously of all is the Passion Narrative.
The critical text edition will include an introduction; the running text of Q; new translations of Q in English, German, and French; the fully formatted Greek text of Q with parallels in Matthew, Luke, Mark, Gospel of Thomas, and other gospels wherever relevant; a concordance; and a bibliography.
This book is a cooperative venture between Fortress Press and Peeters Publishers (Leuven, Belgium). This also is the first volume of Hermeneia Supplements.
Reviews
Review of Biblical Literature (RBL) (Daniel Gurtner)
July 1, 2004
July 1, 2004
The Critical Edition of Q is the product of the International Q Project (IQP), a program inaugurated at the Society of Biblical Literature in 1985 that has sought to establish an accessible critical edition of the source shared by Matthew and Luke. Their work is documented in a series of articles in JBL ( The International Q Project Work Session... [1990 95]), the product of the Q Seminar (1985-89) at the SBL. The editors want their work to be of use to scholars of all opi nions (lxvi) and a standard tool (lxvii). However, their only presupposition is the gene ral outcome of the history of Q research that ... there was a written Greek text of Q (lxvii). This hefty volume contains a table of contents (v viii), Q Texts in Matthean Order (ix xii), a foreword on Hermeneia by Frank Moore Cross and Helmut Koester (xiii), a preface by Robinson, Hoffmann, and Kloppenborg (xv xvi), and acknowledgements (xvii xviii). Robinson provides a lengthy in troduction (xix lxxi) that serves to document the major turning points in the histor y of Q research, with particular attention to the problem of establishing a critical text of Q (xix). Putting aside a purely hypothetical Aramaic source of Matthew and Luke, which would mean that Q would never be more than a hypothesis, Robinson claims such approaches have been completely replaced by objective criteria, based on empirical observation of Matthean and Lukan redactional traits (x ix). The history itself is a wealth of information. It is thoroughly documented and carefully researched to pinpoint the origin of the questions raised by Schleiermacher regarding Papias s lo/gia through a discussion of the role of the Critical Edition of Q in the modern discussion.
[Full Review]