RBL 07/2010

Dettwiler, Andreas, and Daniel Marguerat, eds.

La source des paroles de Jésus (Q): Aux origines du

christianisme

Le Monde de la Bible 62

Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2008. Pp. 399. Paper. €27.00.

ISBN 9782830913415.

Daniel A. Smith
Huron University College
London, Ontario, Canada

This volume publishes papers on the Sayings Gospel Q presented at a postgraduate

seminar in New Testament at the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva, April–May 2006.
According to the editors, the proliferation of Q research in North American, British, and
German scholarship of the past several decades has made practically no impact on
francophone exegesis of the Gospels, and the present work intends to fill that lacuna by
publishing these papers in French translation (9). The volume is therefore an important
contribution not only to francophone biblical studies but also to Q research more
generally, since many of the essays feature seasoned Q scholars reflecting on and
extending the arguments of earlier published work, and since it presents a wide variety of
approaches to Q. It is certainly not to be ignored by nonfrancophone students and
scholars of the Synoptic Gospels.

Following an introductory essay by Andreas Dettwiler and Daniel Marguerat, which

summarizes the individual essays, the volume contains: Daniel Marguerat, “Pourquoi
s’intéresser à la Source? Histoire de la recherche et questions ouvertes” (19–49); Frédéric
Amsler, “Comment le texte de la Source a-t-il été reconstruit? Notes sur l’histoire des
éditions de Q” (51–72); John S. Kloppenborg, “Sagesse et prophétie dans l’évangile des
paroles Q” (73–98); Migaku Sato, “Le document Q à la croisée de la prophétie et de la

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sagesse” (99–122); Jacques Schlosser, “La composition du document Q” (123–47);
Thomas Schmeller, “Réflexions socio-historiques sur les porteurs de la tradition et les
destinataires de Q” (149–71); Amy-Jill Levine, “Les femmes dans la (les) communauté(s)
et traditions de Q” (173–90); Joseph Verheyden, “Le jugement d’Israël dans la source Q”
(191–219); Andreas Dettwiler, “La source Q et la Torah” (221–54); Ulrich Luz, “Le regard
de Matthieu sur la source Q” (255–73); Christoph Heil, “La réception de la Source dans
l’évangile de Luc” (275–94); Jens Schröter, “Les toutes premières interprétations de la vie
et de l’œuvre de Jésus dans le christianisme primitif: la source des paroles de Jésus (Q)”
(295–320).

Daniel Marguerat’s essay covers the history of Q scholarship (20–34), detailing its
beginnings in Gospel source criticism and the subsequent interest in the sayings source
itself, whether as the “pure gospel” (Harnack), a complement to the kerygma
(Wellhausen), a source of theological interest in its own right (Tödt, Hoffmann), or a text
to be analyzed compositionally (Jacobson, Kloppenborg) or sociohistorically (Hoffmann,
Mack, Vaage). Marguerat also outlines questions still open in Q scholarship: the
reconstruction of Q, its composition and literary genre, its original readers, and its value
for historical Jesus research (34–49). Frédéric Amsler surveys reconstructions of Q
(Harnack, Weiss, Polag, the International Q Project’s Critical Edition), assessing both
methodology and results. This survey does not discuss Harry Fleddermann’s important
contribution, Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), which
perhaps appeared too late to be included.

John Kloppenborg and Migako Sato both revisit the question of Q’s genre in relation to
the categories of wisdom and prophecy/apocalyptic. Kloppenborg reviews the terms and
scope of the debate since he and Sato made their original contributions to the question,
noting that neither “wisdom” nor “apocalyptic” usefully designates a discrete literary
genre. He finds the Qumran text 4QInstructiona–f (4Q415–418) to be a helpful analogue
to Q, in that “sans sortir du genre d’une instruction, 4QInstruction présuppose un
locuteur qui est au bénéfice d’une sagesse spéciale, de la même manière que le Jésus de Q
est aussi au bénéfice d’une vision spéciale” (97–98). Sato for his part discusses various
ways that prophetic/apocalyptic and sapiential modes of discourse were mutually
influential in the Second Temple period and identifies a new style of prophetic discourse
that he calls “prophétie sapientiale” (116–20). Sato still argues, in the end, that Q is best
understood as “une sorte de livre prophétique” (120) and that “une des intentions
majeures du rédacteur final fut vraisemblablement de s’assurer de l’analogie avec le livre
prophétique traditionnel” (122).

Jacques Schlosser traces the evolution of scholarly work on “la composition du document
Q” from the early work of Lührmann and Schürmann to the more recent approaches

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proposing models of subsequent macro-redactions (Jacobson, Sato, Allison, Kloppenborg,
and Hoffmann) or of a single redaction (Schröter, Kirk). Given these disparate results,
Schlosser suggests that the way forward to consensus is blocked and expresses his own
interest in seeing Q scholarship attend as much to the theological and christological
dimensions of Q as to its literary history and social setting (147).

Thomas Schmeller’s essay on the sociohistorical location of the tradents and audience of
Q begins from a consideration of Gerd Theissen’s recently refined thesis on the roles
itinerant radicals and settled communities played in the formation of Q (150–60).
Schmeller examines in particular Q 12:22–31 and 10:2–16 (160–69). He concludes that
the Q community was actually involved in mission but that the itinerant messengers did
not hold any permanent charismatic authority over other members of the group or
exercise any definitive control over the transmission of the logia; he also concludes that
the central message was a religious one, in which Jesus occupied the central position
(170–71). Amy-Jill Levine’s contribution, originally published in Ross S. Kraemer and
Mary-Rose D’Angelo, eds., Women and Christian Origins (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001), attempts to locate women in the Q group(s) through “la combinaison d’une
archéologique textuelle, d’une imagination herméneutique et d’une attention aux paroles
qui ont des implications sur les vies des femmes, à défaut de s’y référer” (175–76). The
discussion ranges from a postulated masculinization of Sophia (when Jesus is presented
in her role), to the gendered pairs in sayings such as Q 17:35, to the possibility of an
egalitarian ethos at the origins of the Q group. In the end, actual roles and self-
understandings of women in the group of the Jesus movements can only be established
through the triangulating “du contenu interne, des parallèles extratextuels et des
comparaisons théoriques” (189).

In his essay, Joseph Verheyden argues that “la source Q considère Israël comme un
accusé dont la culpabilité a été reconnue ou comme un condamné victime de ses
prétentions présomptueuses” (191). His essay analyzes and comments on Q texts related
to judgment and to the exclusion of “Israel” and concludes that this judgment is definitive
and irrevocable, with no final call for repentance (219). This approach to “Israel” must be
situated not merely in a community dealing with the crisis of the rejection of its message
but in a community “qui est en train de se réorienter et de se redéfinir elle-même” (219).
Andreas Dettwiler presents a study of Q’s view of Torah, examining Q’s invective against
Pharisees (Q 11:39–42), a sayings cluster concerning the law (16:16–18), and briefly the
temptation (4:1–13) and sayings on discipleship (9:59–60). While hesitating to attribute
to Q a final “nomocentric” redaction (as Kloppenborg does), Dettwiler does affirm the
normative status of Torah in Q, given that “le cadre de pensée de la source Q est
profondément judéo-chrétien” (253). Jesus in Q is presented as aligned with the
prophetic tradition, and Q’s general silence about Torah (whether generally or in regard

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to individual texts from Torah) should not be taken as evidence of a disregard of Torah or
of the substitution of another religious paradigm (254).

Ulrich Luz carries forward his earlier work on Matthew’s use of, and views concerning, Q:
Matthew possessed a textual form of Q (designated by Luz as QMt because it can be
distinguished from the form used by Luke) whose wording he reproduced assiduously but
whose order he felt free to reshape—sometimes excerpting bits, sometimes reordering
blocks of Q material (264–67). “En bouleversant de fond en comble l’ordre de présen-
tation des textes de la Source et en procédant à des extraits, Matthieu a saisi la chance qui
lui était offerte par le genre même de ce document” (267). By this Luz means to say that
not only in Matthew’s view, but in actuality, Q was not a document in its own right with
its own shape and generic identity but “une simple collection de matériaux” (268). Luz
also takes up again his view of a sociohistorical link between Q and Matthew but is
hesitant to say anything beyond this about the Q community, especially because the
distinctives of individual texts such as Q must not be overvalued (269–73). Overall, Luz
writes, “nous serons amenés à défendre une hypothèse ‘douce’ (en opposition à une
hypothèse ‘dure’)” (255)—that is, a “soft” approach to Q that eschews propositions
concerning a singular recension of Q, a recoverable compositional history, or generic,
sociohistorical, or theological distinctiveness. Advocating a different view of Q is
Christoph Heil, who affirms a reconstructible single recension of Q used by Matthew and
Luke (275). In his essay on the reception of Q in Luke, Heil presents as a test case his
study of Luke’s redaction of the “programmatic discourse” Q 6:20–49. As to literary
redaction, Heil finds that Luke is not always as faithful to his tradition as is sometimes
assumed (289); as to sociohistorical redaction, Luke typically delocalizes the Q material to
make it more congenial to a wealthy urban context (290); as to theological redaction,
Luke tends to hellenize Q’s language about God (e.g., Q//Luke 6:35), so that Heil can
conclude, as Luz did about Matthew, that “Luc n’a eu qu’un intérêt documentaire pour
Q” (291). Heil affirms, rightly in my opinion, that the study of Q and its reception by
Luke should make one sceptical of homogenizing and unilinear reconstructions of
Christian origins; rather, one should think of “une pluralité d’interprétations
concurrentes” (294; contrast with Luz, 273).

Finally, Jens Schröter presents “la source des paroles de Jésus” as the most primitive
interpretations of the life and work of Jesus in primitive Christianity. The plural is
significant, for Schröter represents another iteration of the “soft” approach to Q
advocated by Luz in his essay. By Q Schröter designates “tous les textes dans lesquels on
reconnaît une interprétation des actes et du destin de Jésus autonome, différente de celle
de Marc, et auxquels Matthieu et Luc avaient accès,” without suggesting that these texts
were ever united in a single recoverable “Q” (300). Schröter sketches out the
interpretation Q offers of the acts and fate of Jesus by examining first the relationship

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between John and Jesus presented in Q (301–10), then Q’s presentation of Jesus’ career
(by examining Q 6:20–49 and 10:2–16) (310–15), and finally Q’s view of the fate of Jesus
the Son of Humankind (315–18).

The volume concludes with a French translation of the reconstructed Q (321–44),

prepared by Frédéric Amsler and previously published in his L’Evangile inconnu: La
source des paroles de Jésus (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2001) and in James M. Robinson, Paul
Hoffmann, and John S. Kloppenborg, eds., The Critical Edition of Q (Leuven: Peeters;
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000). The book also contains a general bibliography of works
cited (350–76) and indices of biblical and extrabiblical citations (377–94) and modern
authors (395–99). The translations were prepared by Jacques André, Simon Butticaz,
Barbara Cangemi Trolla, Claire Clivaz, Jean-Daniel Kaestli, and Jean-Pierre Zurn (17).

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