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.

An accessible translation of this important lost gospel of the Bible, with an account if its reconstruction and analysis of its far-reaching implications. This is the first full account of the lost gospel of Jesus’ original followers, revealing him to be a Jewish Socrates who was mythologized into the New Testament Christ. Compiled by his followers during his lifetime, the Book of Q (from Quelle, German for source) became the prime foundation for the New Testament gospels. Once lost, it has now been reconstructed through a century of scholarship. Instead of telling a dramatic story about Jesus’ life as the Christian gospels do, the Book of Q contained only his sayings. The first followers of Jesus focused not upon his life and destiny, but on the social experiment called for by his teachings. Their book collected his proverbs, aphorisms, and parables to offer instruction in living authentically in the midst of a most confusing time. In presenting his own translation, Burton Mack explains how the text of Q was determined and explores the implications of the discovery that Jesus was transformed into the dying and rising messianic savior of Christianity by the New Testament gospels.

In this groundbreaking study, John Kloppenborg traces the literary evolution of Q as a document of primitive Christianity by considering it within the context of ancient literary genres. He argues that Q is composed of three compositional layers, or strata, each of which reflects certain stages of development in the Q community. The earliest formative layer reflects the influence of ancient sapiential sayings: the second layer suggests the influence of the prophetic literature of judgment and contains prophetic oracles and many Son-of-Man sayings. The third layer contains a temptation story, moving the document from a chriae collection in the direction of a biography.

The Gospel Behind the Gospels portrays all the major areas of current discussion and debate regarding the early source of Jesus' sayings known as Q. Sixteen gospel scholars have advanced the debate about this source's nature, history and significance. Contributors discuss Q's existence, its relationship to Mark's gospel and to the Gospel of Thomas, its genre, its redactional history with special reference to the Son of Man and to wisdom and prophetic traditions, its social history with respect to family structures and the Cynics, a feminist analysis of Q, its significance for the historical Jesus and for Jesus' parables. The volume sheds important light on Jesus and Christian origins as well as upon Q itself, and it is significant for the diversity of major North American, European and Japanese scholarship which is represented.

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 the earliest churches has further been developed since then by numerous scholars, including the two Fortress Press books by John S. Kloppenborg Verbin: 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. This critical text edition includes 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. --From publisher's description.