First Glance

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It’s been hailed as a long-lost gospel, a purported collection of Jesus’ sayings that served as a primary source for Matthew and Luke. Named simply Q, from the German term quelle (source), this new gospel has not, however, been actually found—its champions piece it together from material common to Matthew and Luke. Nor does Q contain some of the most-cherished elements of the canonical Gospels, particularly Christ’s passion, crucifixion and resurrection. Those missing fixtures of Christian faith, say the predominantly liberal advocates of Q, prove that not all early believers in Jesus had such views as part of their faith. “Hooey!” responds conservative scholar Eta Linnemann, who asks, “Is There a Gospel of Q?” and answers clearly no. Linnemann examines the material common to Matthew and Luke—the very heart of Q—and discovers that there is not nearly as much overlap as usually assumed.

Professor Dr. Linnemann studied under famed scholar Rudolf Bultmann and served as a university professor in Germany for two decades. Her books include Jesus of the Parables, Historical Criticism of the Bible and Is There a Synoptic Problem?

3:00 a.m. A smoke-filled room. Two guys at a table, each staring intently at his hand of 5 cards. Between them, empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, an extra deck, a pile of crumpled bills. The shrewd younger player is about to call his opponent’s bluff: He’ll show his cards and claim the pot. But neither will walk away rich—or without his shirt. They play less for the stakes than for the challenge. These, however, are no ordinary card sharks. The winner of this round is named Abraham, his opponent, Yahweh. Surprised? As described in Genesis, their relationship—God promises, Abraham raises the stakes, God changes his terms—has much in common with male rituals like the poker game, writes Philip Davies in “Abraham and Yahweh—A Case of Male Bonding.” Many will find Davies’s article unsettling, or even offensive. But it is based on a close reading of the text. In the next issue we will feature a very different take on Abraham and Yahweh’s story, written by a Baptist minister. And, no doubt, this lively debate will continue in Readers Reply.

Davies, a professor of biblical studies at the University of Sheffield, in England, specializes in studying the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is the author of In Search of Ancient Israel (JSOT, 1992), The Damascus Covenant (JSOT, 1992) and Qumran (Eerdmans, 1982). His article “‘House of David’ Built on Sand” appeared in the July/August 1994 Biblical Archaeology Review.

What’s a Bible editor to do? Putting together a definitive New Testament text, she is faced with several versions of certain passages—all slightly different and of equal authenticity. No original biblical text has survived; and the earliest New Testament manuscripts (other than a few fragments, perhaps) are from about 200 C.E. What we have are copies of copies of copies…with ample room for deletions, additions, errors and corrections not included in the original. Add to this the problems of translation, and you have an editor’s nightmare. In “Lost in Translation,” Daniel N. Schowalter points out that editors are forced to put important information about biblical passages in the “fine print”—in footnotes that we must read if we are to understand the nuances of the text.

A professor at Carthage College, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Schowalter has published various articles on the archaeology of Athens, the New Testament and the early church. He is currently writing an entry on the Roman period for The Oxford History of the Biblical World.

What one person is always present at a birth? The mother, of course, often assisted by a midwife. In the Bible, the mother, in giving birth to her child, immediately names it in one continuous act of creation. Esau (possibly from se’ar, the Hebrew word for hair), for example, is given a name describing his looks as he emerges from the womb. The act of giving birth is 005inseparably linked to the act of naming, and thus “Naming Is Creating,” according to Savina J. Teubal. The power mothers exert over their family lines is analagous, Teubal notes, to the power of another creator: In Genesis 1:1–10, God, too, creates and then names in a single, extended motion.

Teubal has written extensively on Jewish life and women’s issues both in the modern and biblical worlds, including Hagar the Egyptian: The Lost Tradition of the Matriarchs (HarperCollins, 1990) and Sarah the Priestess: The First Matriarch of Genesis (Swallow Press, 1984).

A Note on Style

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), used by some of our authors and often used in scholarly literature, are the alternative designations corresponding to B.C. and A.D.

It’s been hailed as a long-lost gospel, a purported collection of Jesus’ sayings that served as a primary source for Matthew and Luke. Named simply Q, from the German term quelle (source), this new gospel has not, however, been actually found—its champions piece it together from material common to Matthew and Luke. Nor does Q contain some of the most-cherished elements of the canonical Gospels, particularly Christ’s passion, crucifixion and resurrection. Those missing fixtures of Christian faith, say the predominantly liberal advocates of Q, prove that not all early believers in Jesus had such views as part of their […]