The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins [ペーパーバック]

The great structure of Christianity rests on four books. Four men, living at different times and in different places, each implying they were present during Jesus' travels and travails, penned their accounts of his life. From these narratives, dogmas were set and an orthodoxy established that has lasted for two millennia. When closely examined, these stories proved to have been written long after Jesus had died. What happened in the ensuing years?

According to Mack, after Jesus died [or disappeared], followers of this teacher formed "study groups" centred in Galilee and southern Syria. They devised sayings attributed to the teacher, exchanged texts, debated meanings, and discussed what they felt significant about his pronouncements. Analysis of the four books revealed some of these writings buried within the larger story. Excavated from the Gospels, these "Q" writings have marginalised the "historical" role of the four books. There must have been many versions of "Q" composed by the members of what Mack calls the "Jesus groups". Whether they were ever collated into a single document will likely never be known, but it's clear the "gospel" writers were aware of them and utilised them.

Resting much of his presentation on the work of John Kloppenborg, Mack shows the likely development of the Q writings in a solid historical setting. With Hellenistic scholars setting the norms for education and intellectual discourse, it's easy to see how the "Q" sayings were formulated. A glance at the social upheavals of the period reveals the environment that caused them to be written. Mack weaves these threads together effectively to produce a vivid picture of the times and the course the writings followed as events unfolded. It's arguable that the existence of Jesus was of less importance than the destruction of the temple. Yet, both events would lead to revised views of the world. The later Q documents lay the foundations for an apocalyptic view enlarged by the quartette that followed.

Mack is an effective and concerned writer. He's disdainful of fallacies, particularly transparent ones. The "Gospels", he shows, are largely fabrications. If there was a virgin birth, why did that notion not appear until nearly a century had passed? Why are there differing accounts of those pivotal events, the crucifixion and "resurrection"? According to Mack, these are the building blocks of Christian mythology. He insists this myth be examined on the same basis as any other myth. He contends if Christians wish to know their founder, a study of the "Q" writings is the starting point. The role played by the gospels as history must be abandoned and a more realistic approach taken. Perhaps, he stresses, returning to these "beginnings" might help alleviate the dogmas and intolerances the long, sordid history of Christianity has exhibited. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Written in the early 1990s, Burton Mack's The Lost Gospel the Book of Q is one of the first popular discussions of the hypothetical Q document. For those unfamiliar with the author, Mack is a well-known liberal New Testament scholar and writer.

Mack's main thesis is that the existence of a Q document supports the view that the early followers of Jesus were not Christians. These early followers (or the Q community), he argues, saw Jesus, as an itinerant cynic-like sage rather than a religious figure. Consequently Mack proposes that the faith tradition we now know as Christianity was a later mythical development. I offer the following comments for potential readers.

 Mack's writing is clear, concise and entertaining (he tells a good story). Within contemporary New Testament scholarsip he is as readable as anyone.

 The existence of a Q source used by Matthew and Luke has some support amongst scholars. Beyond this minimal existential point, however, there is much disagreement. The author's musings with respect to the existence of a Q community and various identifiable layers of Q development are highly speculative.

 To make his thesis somewhat plausible Mack needs time and space - it is unlikely that a clearly false Christian myth could have developed in close proximity to the historic Jesus (i.e. his followers, and others who knew him, would likely have challenged this development). To accomplish this, Mack assumes a late dating for the canonical gospels and an early composition of other sources such as the Gospel of Thomas. Many of his assumptions are not supported by research nor widely accepted. For example, he suggests that Luke-Acts was composed in the early second century (120 C.E.) as opposed to a more traditional dating of approx 70-75 C.E. Although a late dating would help Mack's thesis he does not offer any sound support for this assumption. Indeed, if one were to reassess the dating of Luke-Acts an earlier date (60s) would seem to be better warranted than Mack's proposed latter date, Paul's death (earlier 60s) and the Temple destruction (70) are curiously absent in a second century construct.

 A Hellenized Galilean backdrop would also be advantageous to Mack's thesis. His arguments in this regard and his interpretation of Q to establish a setting conducive to a cynic Jesus appear somewhat contrived and circular. There is little historic evidence that Galilee, and particularly the countryside and small villages that Jesus frequented, was heavily influenced by Greek culture. For a contrasting view to Mack's, readers can see Boyd's Cynic Sage or Son of God.

 Mack appears to be a sincere individual with laudable goals - the plurality of the modern world needs a more flexible and inclusive myth. For someone with his naturalistic worldview it seems evident that Christianity is a mythical formulation. Others who do not share this perspective, however, his arguments may be unconvincing. To make a poor analogy, if you use a net with big holes you are not likely going to catch to many small fish. If you look for the Christ of faith with rigid naturalistic assumptions you probably won't find him.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. I think it would make a worthwhile read for any student of the historic Jesus. It is not, however, a good starting point to enter this area of research - Mack's thesis though interesting is highly speculative and on the fringe of New Testament scholarship. There are, however, many good starting points -Witherington's The Jesus Quest comes to mind. It provides a wide survey of contemporary Jesus research including Mack's.

I notice other reviews on this site that are critical of Burton L. Mack for daring to think outside the box, but such criticism won't make the argument go away. Admittedly, the existence of the Q gospel can neither be proved nor disproved, but Mack didn't dream up the Q gospel by himself. Nineteenth-century scholars had considered the concept of a so-called "sayings" gospel that was used as a source for the synoptic gospels. Mack expanded on prior research and did a more conclusive job of culling the Q material from the New Testament. Like a lawyer trying a case solely on circumstantial evidence, he does a good job presenting his argument and supporting it with logical assumptions about the historical Jesus and the people of the early Jesus movement. (Readers interested in the early Jesus movement should also read "Who Wrote the New Testament" by the same author.)

The chapter on Galilean history before the Roman-Jewish War is important to recalibrate modern thinking about the homeland of Jesus and his followers. The images we have today are mostly drawn from cinema and well-told Bible stories where Jesus wanders around a Jewish province controlled by Rome. Galilee was more cosmopolitan than Judea, which means that Jesus' teachings and sayings were not necessarily tied only to Jewish law but could have been heavily influenced by Greek philosophy as well. It is quite probable that the early followers never thought of their leader as "the Messiah." Mack develops three stages of Q, and you can see how the Jesus legend changed from a wisdom teacher to the Christ.

Mack's cumbersome writing style can be a struggle in the early chapters where he writes with the tortured prose of a college professor. The last four chapters, however, comprise a very provocative and well-written essay on the challenge that Q poses to Christianity, a religion that is facing enormous competition from secular and cynical forces that are doing a much better job of influencing the culture. People today, even Christians, tend to believe what is probably true and disbelieve what is probably not true. The Christian denominations have to answer that challenge, and continual recycling of the same old dogma and mythology from nineteen hundred years ago isn't good enough anymore. Too many people aren't buying it and they're not all heretics and devil worshippers just because they want to separate fact from fiction.