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IAmZamzam
02-11-2013, 10:13 PM
This article presents an interesting question. I found it in the first place because the matter was already on my mind. Could al-Injil have been the Q document? Looking at the footnotes of Maulana Muhammad Ali’s translation of The Qur’an I see that the theory is an old one: “[The Qur’an] does not even recognize the Gospels according to Matthew, etc., as the Injil…This view of the Gospel…is now admitted to be the correct one, as all criticism points to some original of the synoptics which is now entirely lost.” (Page 135) For those who don’t know what I’m talking about the “Q document” (short for quelle, the German word for “source”) is a hypothetical original Gospel whose author is unknown. Biblical scholars now generally agree that it existed and posit it along with the book of Mark as one of the sources of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The theory explains how so many lengthy passages in the latter two books can be virtually identical. Q is always depicted as a “sayings Gospel” like The Gospel of Thomas, a collection of proverbs.

I’ve been reading a lot about Q. You’d be surprised just how irritatingly difficult it is to type “Q document” into Google and find anything that isn’t an apologetic tract by biblical conservatives. This discussion topic is addressed to my fellow Muslims, though, and I can only hope that we get at least a little back-and-forth from them before the Christians here hijack the thread. I don’t have much hope, mind you, but a guy can dream, can’t he? Let me also note that this is not supposed to be a debate about whether the Q document exists in the first place.

But as long as we’re on the subject certain scholars do regard the concept of the Q document as nothing more than scotch tape made up for convenience and with only purely circumstantial evidence for it. They ask why no manuscript remains. They point to a few minor coincidences in wording which they allege proves that Luke used Matthew. I see their point but lost manuscripts are a natural part of history. It happens all the time. Furthermore Luke made it sound in the opening like he consulted a number of different sources. On the whole I find these arguments a bit more compelling. In the end history often consists of so much guesswork—but until recently the Higgs-Boson was purely hypothetical too.

Lots of people have tried to reconstruct the Q document over the years but this is just that burning desire human beings have to uncover the past. It’s the very same desire, I suppose, which prompted me to start this thread in the first place so I’m not going to criticize, but I must mention all the same that there is one HUGE gaping hole in these people’s logic, and in the premise of everyone’s conception of Q, and it is so very blatant that it makes me want to bury my face in my hands. No one, you see, can ever explain how it is that the stories of the centurion’s son being healed and the temptation in the desert could have just mysteriously popped up in the midst of a mere “sayings Gospel”. Because those are very much amongst the verbatim contents of both Luke and Matthew. No, it must be out of sheer wishful thinking that anyone could possibly regard this lost source as anything less than a full Gospel, life narrative and all, which the authors of Matthew and Luke selectively drew from according to their own beliefs. (The odds are also nil that they used Q in all the same places.) This skeptical article says, “The possibility must…be allowed that if the Q document had actual existence, perhaps all of it was not used by the Gospel writers and its extent is not known because all of its passages are not preserved.” “Possibility”?! Well good luck getting someone who does believe in Q to admit to that.

There is yet another hugely obvious problem which I haven’t brought up until now: there could always be more than just one quelle involved. In fact I would almost say that it’s altogether implausible to think of a researcher drawing from a mere two texts in his work, both of them guessable to modern scholars, although that does seems to be the general assumption (more wishful thinking I suppose). For all we know the authors of Matthew and Luke used twenty different sources each and five of them were the same. If al-Injil really is one of multiple sources then our chances of knowing much about it decrease all the more. Indeed some scholars have gone so far as to posit an L, and M and a Q, the former two referring to sources for Luke and Matthew. Don’t get me wrong, though: not all of the sources had to be other Gospels.

It’s time to hear what you brothers and sisters think. What do you reckon? Is it possible that al-Injil could be the Q document?
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IAmZamzam
02-13-2013, 08:30 PM
I just noticed something very interesting. Here is what the preface to one of those reconstruction attempts I mentioned said (specifically, The International Q Project, Fortress Press, 2001):

The Sayings Gospel Q is an archaic collection of sayings ascribed to Jesus, even older than the Gospels in the New Testament. In fact, it is the oldest Gospel of Christianity. Yet it is not in the New Testament itself. Rather, it was known to, and used by, the Evangelists of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and then lost from sight. After all, Q is the Gospel of Jewish Christianity, which continued in Galilee to proclaim Jesus’ sayings, but the New Testament is the book preserving the ancient sources of Gentile Christianity, the oldest being the letters of Paul, for whom Jesus’ cross and resurrection, not his sayings, were central to the Christian message. This is clearest in the case of Matthew. For this Gospel is oriented in Matt 3-11 primarily to vindicating the Jesus of Q, but then in Matt 12-28 simply copies out Mark, the Gentile Gospel. For the Q movement, limited to a mission to Jews, gradually died out, and its Sayings Gospel survived only as incorporated into the Gospel culminating in the Great Commission to evangelize of Gentiles.

During the second century, when the canonizing process was taking place, scribes did not make new copies of Q, since the canonizing process involved choosing what should and what should not be used in the church service. Hence they preferred to make copies of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, where the sayings of Jesus from Q were rephrased to avoid misunderstandings, and to fit their own situations and their understanding of what Jesus had really meant. This validated the Narrative Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but not Sayings Gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas and Q. Indeed the Apostles’ Creed, which had been formulated in Rome during the second century as a baptismal confession, bypassed completely the sayings of Jesus, and hence provided no basis for canonizing Sayings Gospels, such as Q and the Gospel of Thomas....

The Sayings Gospel Q, though on the surface only reporting about Jesus, also reveals almost all we know about the Jewish Christianity of the first generation. For the New Testament, as we have it, is a collection of primary texts from Gentile Christianity, in which there are occasional passing references to Jewish Christianity. Paul gained acceptance for his non-Jewish mission from the “pillars” of the Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem (James, Cephas/Peter and John, Gal 2:1-10), though this amicable division of labor soon broke down (Gal 2:11-21), when the Jewish Christians sought to “judaize” Gentile Christians (Gal 2:14) . Paul withstood the claims of any other “Gospel” than his own (Gal 1:6-12), meaning no doubt the Jewish Christian preference for proclaiming sayings of Jesus.

Actually, the Jewish Christians of the Q movement do not seem to have been these Jewish Christian leaders stationed in Jerusalem, since they are not mentioned in Q, nor does Q make any reference to the problem of circumcision, which was the touchstone of that debate with Paul. The followers of Jesus who transmitted his sayings that were brought together into the Sayings Gospel Q would seem to be composed of those left behind in Galilee. They were largely overlooked in the Acts of the Apostles. For the description of the mission “from Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8), simply bypasses Galilee, with only one passing reference later in Acts (9:31) to a church in Galilee being built up. Nor can one find in Acts any attestation for a variety of religious experience consisting primarily of re-proclaiming Jesus’ sayings. The Sayings Gospel Q thus supplements in a very important way what we know of the first generation of Christianity from the book of Acts....
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IAmZamzam
02-14-2013, 01:37 AM
One final thought, and then I'm probably done with the subject: it's easy enough to assume it was a "sayings Gospel", and therefore still something "revealed unto Jesus" no matter who wrote it, if the stories of the temptation in the desert and the healing of the centurion's son matched up only because they came from another source. I have no idea why that never occurred to me until just now.
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YusufNoor
02-14-2013, 03:21 AM
:sl:

scholarship around "Q" is varied. some even doubt that the particular item, known as "Q" existed. the Injil was the Message of Jesus, pbuh, period. keeping up with theories on "Q" is getting pointless. you have to be current, and by that i mean books in the last 2 or 3 years. it's a never ending "Q"uest! :p

i'm currently reading The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries along with various other histories of Christianity.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006...ls_o03_s00_i02

it is beginning to suggest a rationale for Pauline Christianity. Paul was a Diasporan Jew. Jews, in the Diaspora, tended to dilute their Judaism in order better assimilate into society; especially the more financially successful ones. they still wanted to be Jews, but they needed to be accepted the by the Pagans in order to compete for favor and business opportunities.

viewing Paul in this respect, it makes perfect sense that weakening adherence to ancient ritualistic practices, is a great way to "open up" Christianity for the Jews in the Diaspora. we also see in Philo that Jewish "wisdom" has been taking "Platonian" detours. Christianity would do the same thing. it makes sense because in order to reason with the Pagans, Plato would be the benchmark that they understood.

only Jews in Palestine would be candidates for "keeping their religion kosher." no book in the NT predates Paul (excepting maybe James, depending on which James you might favor as the author). no one ever claimed that Jesus, pbuh, ever wrote anything, except maybe in the sand. :D

putting those viewpoints together, even if there was a "Q", it would be something familiar to Diasporan Jews and not necessarily Palestinian Jews. an "Injil" document would be straight Palestinian, and nothing but. as we cannot determine Diasporan Jewish document roots, finding Palestinian Jewish ones would be much harder.

this is totally an opinion, not a scholarly, but not an uninformed one either. it is written as to historical concepts, but not in a manner that should be offensive to Christians. it is simply trying to "weigh the facts" about early Christianity, and offering plausible conclusions.

and Allahu Alam.

sa salaama
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IAmZamzam
02-14-2013, 04:13 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by YusufNoor
the Injil was the Message of Jesus, pbuh, period.
Well if it was, and if this message was written down in a sayings Gospel, then you could still call that book al-Injil, as it's just a transcription of the same.
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YusufNoor
02-14-2013, 04:24 AM
if....

actually, if and if and if...

a "sayings gospel" would be required to contain ALL RELEVANT SAYINGS, TEACHINGS AND INSTRUCTIONS as per Jesus, pbuh, in order to be considered the Injil. a transcript of "some" sayings might not be enough to be the Injil. a "sayings gospel" could have errors, omissions, additions, etc.

claiming a "sayings gospel" does NOT warrant being it called Injil, unless it meets specific criteria.

and Allahu Alam
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IAmZamzam
02-14-2013, 05:19 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by YusufNoor
a "sayings gospel" would be required to contain ALL RELEVANT SAYINGS, TEACHINGS AND INSTRUCTIONS as per Jesus, pbuh, in order to be considered the Injil. a transcript of "some" sayings might not be enough to be the Injil. a "sayings gospel" could have errors, omissions, additions, etc. claiming a "sayings gospel" does NOT warrant being it called Injil, unless it meets specific criteria
Well it’s not like we were talking about a non-inspired book. Isn’t that the way it goes? God sends down the Pentateuch; humans corrupt it. God sends down the Davidic Psalms; humans corrupt it. God sends down the Scroll of Abraham…and, well, we don’t even know what happened to that one but I’ll still bet you anything anyway that humans corrupted it somehow. So why should this not fit the pattern? Remember the notes. They said that Q was not only used selectively but also “rephrased to avoid misunderstandings, and to fit their own situations and their understanding of what Jesus had really meant. This validated the Narrative Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but not Sayings Gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas and Q.”

Of course, it's still a lost book anyway whose contents we can only guess at. But I think it's a cool idea.
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Tyrion
02-14-2013, 05:41 AM
From what I understand, it's certainly a possibility that seems to be in line with what we know through Islamic sources. I'm more inclined to think, however, that the Injil given to Jesus was more like a basic message and reiteration of old laws, similar to how the Quran was revealed as an oral "book" of sorts, as opposed to a physical text. If people ended up writing this though, then I suppose it still makes sense to say that this "Q" source was the Injil.
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Muhaba
02-17-2013, 10:33 AM
This is very interesting.
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