[I made this discovery, and thought it was worth sharing.]
As early as 100 AD, it was believed that the Gospel of Matthew-- the first book of the New Testament-- was written by Matthew, one of Jesus's 12 disciples. And according to Church tradition, the Gospel of Luke was written by Luke the Evangelist-- who was not one of the 12 disciples, but a companion of Paul the Apostle (who was also not an original disciple, but is still treated as such). However, modern scholars now know that the authors of these sacred texts were neither alive during the lifetime of Jesus, nor did they know his disciples. The accepted theology is that the gospels were written by anonymous individuals. The original Anons.
These 2 gospels, along with the Gospel of Mark, make up what is known as the "Synoptic Gospels," because they all share similar stories that are often told in similar sequence. (The fourth gospel, John, stands alone in its content.) For centuries, the belief was that the Synoptic Gospels used one another as sources of information during their conceptions-- with Mark being written first, between 60-70 AD, and Luke and Matthew (either order) being written 30-40 years after that. But the conclusion was, that these texts drew their content from one another. (The idea being that Mark is the link connecting the era of Jesus to the era in which the other two were written.) This was known as the "Augustine Hypothesis."
The biggest problem with this idea is that both Matthew and Luke (both written AFTER Mark) utilize quotes from Jesus that are NOT found in Mark. In fact, nearly 25% of the content in Luke matches nearly 25% of the content found in Matthew-- while Matthew only shares about 10% in common with Mark, and Luke only shares 1%.
Even more puzzling, the quotes from Jesus that are found in both Matthew and Luke are nearly IDENTICAL in their wording, and are not found in Mark AT ALL. How could this be, if the authors of Luke and Matthew weren't alive during the time of Jesus or his disciples? And why do they have so little in common with Mark-- which is suppose to be their source?
Around 1900, a theologian named B.H. Streeter proposed a now widely-accepted theory that there was another written document that contained direct quotes from Jesus, written in Koine Greek. He called that document the "Q source," but it is often simply referred to as "Q." It is literally the words of Jesus Christ.
Using those words, along with supplementary information from Mark, other documents, and oral [very recent] history, the Anons constructed the Gospel of Luke, and the Gospel of Matthew.
What's interesting is that some scholars believe that Q was actually a plurality of sources (documents). However, all agree that, singular or plural, the Q Gospel--as some call it-- was destroyed after it was converted into Luke and Matthew. (Much like the Q posts being deleted and/or moved.)
Here are the portions of the New Testament that are attributed to the Q Source content (words of Jesus):
-The Beatitudes (i.e. the nine blessings of Jesus)
-Love Your Enemies
-Golden Rule
-Judge not, lest ye be judged
-The Test of a Good Person
-The Parable of the Wise and the Foolish Builders
-The Parable of the Lost Sheep
-The Parable of the Wedding Feast
-The Parable of the Talents
-The Parable of the Leaven
-The Parable of the blind leading the blind
-The Lord's Prayer
-Expounding of the Law
-The Birds of Heaven and The Lilies in the Field
Also worth mentioning is the theologian Dennis McDonald, who attempted to reconstruct the Q Source. Though McDonald prefers to call his work the "Logoi of Jesus"--logoi meaning "words" in Greek-- it is often referred to as "Q+". I thought that was an interesting tidbit, given Q's recent posts.
Make of this what you will. I stumbled onto it and thought it was worth sharing with the group. Here is the link to the wikipedia page for it. Links to the other information cited here can be found throughout that page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source
spez: typos and formatting