Q Gospel
The Q Gospel (or "Q Source") is a never-discovered document that some feel was the source for material included in both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, but is absent from the Gospel of Mark. The first suggestion of this was not until 1801,[1] and no early church writers indicate the existence of a Q Gospel.
Luke said he used eyewitness accounts to prepare the Gospel of Luke, at Luke 1:1-2 , and the most plausible implication is that he used the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew. An additional Q Gospel becomes unnecessary and would add nothing.
Advocates for an existence of a Q Gospel tend to be deniers of the inspired nature of the Gospels, and tend to argue that the Gospels were written later (after A.D. 70) rather than earlier (before A.D. 65).[2] Germans proposed this hypothesis, giving it the name "Q" as an abbreviation for "Quelle," which means "source" in German.
Two Document Hypothesis
In "The Trouble with Q," Huron University College theology faculty member Daniel A. Smith explained that the "Two Document Hypothesis" is a more descriptive name for this theory:
| “ | This theory states that Matthew and Luke used Mark, the earliest gospel, independently of one another, and also a collection of Jesus’ sayings (which scholars have designated Q, which is short for the German word Quelle, meaning “source”). Though traditionally called the Two Source Theory (or Hypothesis), I prefer “Two Document Hypothesis,” because this wording implies that the Q material (the sayings material common to Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark) comes not from oral traditions but from an actual Greek text that can be reconstructed with some measure of confidence.[3] | ” |
