The Q Hypothesis Unveiled

The essays collected in this volume are the proceedings of an international conference on the Sayings Source Q held in Essen, Germany in August 2019. The scholars contributing to this volume generally support the Q hypothesis. Nevertheless, they want to submit their own conceptions to scrutiny. Especially the question as to whether Q scholars are driven by unscholarly projections or prejudices was the subject of debate. Sometimes also exegetes follow trends and fashion. Therefore, the central topic of this volume is a critical self-reflection on the hermeneutical options (and perhaps also biases) in Q Research.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th Conference on Computability in Europe, CiE 2017, held in Turku, Finland, in June 2017. The 24 revised full papers and 12 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. The conference CiE 2016 has six special sessions, namly: algorithmics for biology; combinatorics and algorithmics on words; computability in analysis, algebra, and geometry; cryptography and information theory; formal languages and automata theory; and history and philosophy of computing.

The annual Review of Biblical Literature presents a selection of reviews of the most recent books in biblical studies and related fields, including topical monographs, multi-author volumes, reference works, commentaries, and dictionaries. RBL reviews German, French, Italian, and English books and offers reviews in those languages.

Breaking a 200-year impasse on the origins of the gospels Biblical scholars want to get to the roots of the gospels—the very earliest memories of Jesus and his world. Though scholars know about all the major concepts at work—Q, the Urgospel, priority—it seems like a definitive solution to the Synoptic problem is hopelessly unattainable. Why the impasse? And where do we go from here? In Jesus Tradition, Early Christian Memory, and Gospel Writing, Alan Kirk guides us through the history of biblical scholars’ quest for the authentic source. Kirk reveals that outdated assumptions about ancient media realities have caused the past two centuries of academic deadlock. Using cutting-edge scholarship on orality, memory, and tradition formation, he shows how the origins of the gospels may be found in the memory practices of the earliest Jesus communities. Jesus Tradition, Early Christian Memory, and Gospel Writing is an essential resource for scholars and students looking to better understand this complex and rapidly changing field.

The study analyses the current state of research on the synoptic problem and proves that the Synoptic Gospels were written in the Mark, Luke, Matthew order of direct literary dependence. Moreover, the work demonstrates that the Synoptic Gospels are results of systematic, sequential, hypertextual reworking of the contents of the Pauline letters. Accordingly, the so-called 'Q source' turns out to be an invention of nineteenth-century scholars with their Romantic hermeneutic presuppositions. Demonstration of the fact that the Gospels are not records of the activity of the historical Jesus but that they narratively illustrate the identity of Christ as it has been revealed in the person and life of Paul the Apostle will certainly have major consequences for the whole Christian theology.

The Q-Hypothesis has functioned as a mainstay of study of the synoptic gospels for many years. Increasingly it comes under fire. In this volume leading proponents of Q, as well as of the case against Q, offer the latest arguments based on the latest research into this literary conundrum. The contributors to the volume include John Kloppenborg, Christopher Tuckett, Clare Rothschild, Mark Goodacre, and Francis Watson. The Q-Hypothesis is examined in depth and the discussion moves back and forth over Q's strengths and weaknesses. As such the volume sheds light on how the gospels were composed, and how we can view them in their final literary forms.

A Social History of Christian Origins explores how the theme of the Jewish rejection of Jesus – embedded in Paul’s letters and the New Testament Gospels – represents the ethnic, social, cultural, and theological conflicts that facilitated the construction of Christian identity. Readers of this book will gain a thorough understanding of how a central theme of early Christianity – the Jewish rejection of Jesus – facilitated the emergence of Christian anti-Judaism as well as the complex and multi-faceted representations of Jesus in the Gospels of the New Testament. This study systematically analyses the theme of social rejection in the Jesus tradition by surveying its historical and chronological development. Employing the social-psychological study of social rejection, social identity theory, and social memory theory, Joseph sheds new light on the inter-relationships between myth, history, and memory in the study of Christian origins and the contemporary (re)construction of the historical Jesus. A Social History of Christian Origins is primarily intended for academic specialists and students in ancient history, biblical studies, New Testament studies, Religious Studies, Classics, as well as the general reader interested in the beginnings of Christianity.

Multilingualism remains a thorny issue in many contexts, be it cultural, political, or educational. Debates and discourses on this issue in contexts of diversity (particularly in multicultural societies, but also in immigration situations) are often conducted with present-day communicational and educational needs in mind, or with political and identity agendas. This is nothing new. There are a vast number of witnesses from the ancient West-Asian and Mediterranean world attesting to the same debates in long past societies. Could an investigation into the linguistic landscapes of ancient societies shed any light on our present-day debates and discourses? This volume suggests that this is indeed the case. In fourteen chapters, written and visual sources of the ancient world are investigated and explored by scholars, specialising in those fields of study, to engage in an interdisciplinary discourse with modern-day debates about multilingualism. A final chapter – by an expert in language in education – responds critically to the contributions in the book to open avenues for further interdisciplinary engagement – together with contemporary linguists and educationists – on the matter of multilingualism.