(^36) EARLY WISDOM GOSPELS
this is due to an additional written source, besides Mark, that Matthew and
Luke both used. In order to make the strong, relatively silent Jesus of Mark's
gospel more loquacious, most scholars deduce, Matthew and Luke must have
added a collection of Jesus' sayings, now called Q (from Quelle, German for
"source"), to the story of Jesus.^6 If this is so, then Q must antedate the Gospels
of Matthew and Luke as a gospel of the wisdom of Jesus, and thus it may have
originated in the middle of the first century, only a couple of decades after
Jesus' death. A good case can be made that a version of another early wisdom
gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, was also composed in the middle of the first
century, around the time of Q, or maybe a little later. This evidence leads to the
conclusion that some of the earliest Christian gospels were gospels of wisdom,
presenting Jesus as a teacher of wisdom. The sayings gospel Q and the Gospel
of Thomas present Jesus of Nazareth as a Jewish sage, and they may well have
gotten it, in large part, historically right.
As a Jewish teacher, Jesus announces the presence of the reign or kingdom
of god, and he does so with aphorisms and stories (usually termed parables).
Q 6:20-31 (from Luke's sermon on the plain and Matthew's sermon on the
mount) illustrates how Jesus speaks in this sayings gospel:
Blessings on you the poor,
for the kingdom of god is yours.
Blessings on you who are hungry,
for you will eat well.
Blessings on you who grieve,
for you will be comforted.
Blessings on you
when they insult you
and oppress you
and tell all kinds of evil about you
because of the human child.
Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward is great in heaven.
- On Q, see Mack, The Lost Gospel, and Robinson, Hoffman, and Kloppenborg, The Critical
Edition ofQ. Since Q material is preserved in Matthew and Luke, with variations, we some-
times refer to the Matthean and Lukan versions of Q. The usual means of referencing Q, also
used here, employs the chapter and verse designations of Luke.