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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > October 1993

Q

The lost gospel

By Stephen J. Patterson

The Lost Gospel. The very concept provokes a flood of questions. If it is lost, how do we know it ever existed? How do we know what was in it? Who lost it? And how was it lost? Perhaps most intriguing of all: Will it ever be found?

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Footnotes

1.

(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993).

2.

See Helmut Koester and Stephen J. Patterson, “The Gospel of Thomas—Does it Contain Authentic Sayings of Jesus?” BR 06:02.

3.

In Jewish tradition, Wisdom is frequently personified as a feminine figure who dwells with God in heaven. In Wisdom literature, she is sometimes depicted as descending to earth to speak her words of wisdom; sometimes she simply sends her spirit into prophets deemed worthy. So, for example, in the Wisdom of Solomon 7:27 we read: “in every generation [Wisdom] passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets.”

4.

Q passages are conventionally cited using Luke’s chapter and verse notations, thus Q 4:4 = Luke 4:4.