Customer Reviews

Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel

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If there were a contest to find the top scholar on Q today (however we might configure that contest), then John S Kloppenborg Verbin might well come out the champion. His thesis on Q is often found to be the thesis of choice for many scholars (particular those of North American or Jesus Seminar hue). Here we are presented with a prodigious book split into two parts, broadly historical and broadly ideological, about Q, the hypothetical (and so far completely non-material) source behind the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. I imagine that if you aren't prepared to make that scholarly jump to believe in Q then you won't be too interested in reading this book.

I basically liked this book - but then I am a graduate student in biblical studies and so already committed to being interested in technical studies about obscure "data" which fit into the narrow specialisms of today's biblical academy. What I'm saying is that this book will not have broad appeal since its VERY technical. That said, the discussions, particularly the ones on "The Q document and the Q people" and "Reading Q in the Galilee" I found to be stimulating explorations into the possible as regards Q and the sources for the sayings of Jesus. Perhaps that's all that such discussions can hope to be. Certainly any taking of this book's contents for the final word on the subject should be shelved: tomorrow will bring newer conclusions.

One point I really liked from this book was its emphasis and concentration on the social location of both Q's interpreters and also the writers/collaters and readers of the Q document itself. This "social" criticism of the Bible has been going on for a while now and this book continues that tradition admirably in exploring the links between Q and the Greco-Roman Cynics hypothesized of Galilee. Such questions are worthy of study and essential to an understanding of Q (should the hypothesis ever become so genuinely held that such theories attain more than their current provisional status).

In his introduction to the book the author writes that his offering is to be about Q "and the difference its existence makes". I think the offering of hypotheses like the ones this book offers about Q are valuable talking points and this book is another valuable addition to debates about Q.

PoSTmodERnFoOL