Studying the judgement sayings in Q

Abstract

Eschatology, the Sayings Gospel Q and the historical Jesus have made for a confusing mixture. Most of the recent specialist studies of the composition and thought of the Sayings Gospel, regardless of what they conclude about Q’s eschatology, have quite self-consciously been about Q and not the historical Jesus. Yet for reasons that remain obscure, many of those who use Q studies or wish to detract from Q studies conclude that they really are about Jesus, thus concluding, rather bizarrely, that the stratigraphic studies of Q that stress the sapiential genre of its formative elements are in fact covert claims that the historical Jesus is ‘merely’ a sage. I say ‘bizarre’, as they would not, presumably, confuse Mark’s portrait of Jesus with the historical Jesus.