Quite apart from my sympathies with the 'Mark without Q' hypothesis as a
solution to the Synoptic Problem, I have some serious worries about the use
of a reconstructed Q as a source for research into Christian origins.
Perhaps members of this discussion list will indulge me in a thought
experiment and then point out where my reasoning has gone astray.

Let us imagine, for the sake of argument, that copies of the Gospel of Mark
had not survived down the present day but that copies of Q had. Let us then
suppose that scholars hypothesised the existence of a source (let us call it
'P' for Proto-Gospel) that Matthew and Luke had both used alongside Q, and
that these scholars subsequently went about reconstructing P, its
redactional layers, its characteristic theology, the history of the
P-community and so forth. How close would the reconstructed P be to Mark's
Gospel as we know it? Would P contain any of the stories (e.g. the brief
temptation narrative) in which scholars now see a Mark-Q overlap? Would we
know of the Messianic Secret in P or the repeated theme of the disciples'
failure to understand? Would we puzzle over the truncated ending at P16.8? I
could go on, but I think I've made my point: a reconstructed P would
probably be a rough approximation to Mark as we know it, but it might be
missing a great deal of what we have come to regard as distinctively
characteristic of Mark.

That being so, how much confidence can we have that a reconstructed Q
represents what was really characteristic and distinctive of the original Q
(if there ever was such a thing)? Am I missing something?

---------------------------
Eric Eve
Harris Manchester College, Oxford
email: mailto:eric.eve@...
Home page: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~manc0049