God´s Love and Judgment in the Sayings Source Q - Reconstruction and Interpretation

According to the widely accepted Two Source Theory, the so-called Source Q and the Gospel of Mark were used as the two sources in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. As a collection of partly biographically contextualized words of Jesus, Q is a very early, independent thread of Jewish Christian tradition. Together with Mark, Q is widely accepted as the most important source for reconstructing the words and deeds of Jesus. This explains the lively interest in Q during the last decades. Since there are no ancient manuscripts of Q, this important text has to be reconstructed from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In the context of the International Q Project (IQP) the proposed project contributes to the critical review of the history of research. On this basis, Q will be reconstructed and interpreted. At first, the research contributions regarding every Q variant between Matthew and Luke are excerpted chronologically and sorted according to the particular authors reconstruction. Then follows a detailed evaluation of the history of research and a well founded own reconstruction of each variant by members of the proposed project and the IQP. In those evaluations, the previous literarkritisch, formgeschichtlich and redaktionsgeschichtlich Q research will be summed up, evaluated and innovatively carried on. Those evaluations do not only contribute to the reconstruction, but also to the interpretation of a particular Q text. During three years the proposed project will work on the texts Q 3:2b-3a, 7-9, 16b-17, 21-22 (Incipit The Introduction of John Johns Announcement of Judgment John and the One to Come The Baptism of Jesus), Q 6:27-28, 35c-d, 29-30 (Love Your Enemies Renouncing Ones Own Rights), Q 11:9-13 (The Certainty of the Answer to Prayer) and Q 17:26-30, 34-35 (As in the Days of Noah One Taken, One Left) to promote the reconstruction and interpretation of Q and research on the historical Jesus and the early Jesus movement. The special theological focus of the project will be the work on the textual basis for Qs view of Gods love and judgment. The results of the project will be published in the series Documenta Q: Reconstructions of Q Through Two Centuries of Gospel Research Excerpted, Sorted and Evaluated (Leuven/Belgium: Peeters, 1996ff.). At the start of the project an open access strategy will be arranged with Peeters Press to make the projects results freely available. The advances in the reconstruction and interpretation of Q will also lead to a revision of the IQPs Critical Edition of Q (2000), which is widely accepted as the standard text of Q. Co-operations exist with colleagues in Germany, Belgium, U.S.A. and Canada. The project will intensify those co-operations and make them more productive through common attendance at scholarly meetings and through an international conference in Graz (Prayer in Q).

In the context of the International Q Project (IQP) the project contributed to the critical review of the history of Q research. On this basis important parts of Q were reconstructed and interpreted. According to the widely accepted Two Source Theory, the so-called Source Q and the Gospel of Mark were used as the two sources in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Since there are no ancient manuscripts of Q, this important text has to be reconstructed from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. As a collection of partly biographically contextualized words of Jesus, Q represents a very early, independent thread of Jewish Christian tradition. Together with the Gospel of Mark, Q is widely accepted as the most important source for reconstructing the words and deeds of Jesus. This explains the lively interest of Gospel and Jesus research in Q. At first, the research contributions regarding every Q variant between Matthew and Luke are excerpted chronologically and sorted according to the particular authors reconstruction. Then follows a detailed evaluation of the history of research and a well-founded own reconstruction of each variant by members of the proposed project and the IQP. In those evaluations, the previous literarkritisch, formgeschichtlich and redaktionsgeschichtlich Q research are summed up, evaluated and innovatively carried on. Those evaluations do not only contribute to the reconstruction, but also to the interpretation of a particular Q text. During three years the project worked on the texts Q 6:27-28, 35c-d (Love Your Enemies), Q 6:29, 2930/Matt 5:41, 30-32, 34, 36 (Renouncing Ones Rights The Golden Rule Impartial Love), Q 11:9-13 (The Certainty of the Answer to Prayer), Q 17:20-21, 23-24, 37 (The Kingdom of God within You The Son of Humanity like Lightning Vultures around a Corpse) and Q 17:26-30, 34-35 (As in the Days of Noah One Taken, One Left) to promote the reconstruction and interpretation of Q and research on the historical Jesus and the early Jesus movement. The special theological focus of the project was the work on the textual basis for Qs view of Gods love and judgment. The results of the project will be published in the series Documenta Q: Reconstructions of Q Through Two Centuries of Gospel Research Excerpted, Sorted and Evaluated (Leuven/Belgium: Peeters, 1996ff.). At the start of the project an open access strategy was arranged with Peeters Press to make the projects results freely available. The advances in the reconstruction and interpretation of Q will also lead to a revision of the IQPs Critical Edition of Q (2000), which is widely accepted as the standard text of Q. Co-operations exist with colleagues in Germany, Belgium, U.S.A. and Canada. The project intensified those co-operations and made them more productive through common attendance at scholarly meetings and through an international conference in Graz (Prayer in the Sayings Gospel Q, March 2017, published at Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2019).