John S. Kloppenborg - Critical Edition of Q

Critical Edition of Q

Published in 2000, by James M. Robinson, Paul Hoffmann, and John S. Kloppenborg, The Critical Edition of Q: Synopsis including the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark and Thomas with English, German, and French Translations of Q and Thomas is a groundbreaking, though still controversial, work of scholarship.

Containing a lengthy introduction by bible scholar James M. Robinson and a foreword by the three editor scholars: Robinson, John S. Kloppenborg and Paul Hoffmann, this hefty volume provides a redactionary version of what the original Q document might have looked like whether it was written in Greek or Aramaic. The Critical Edition of Q is the product of the International Q Project (IQP), a program inaugurated at the Society of Biblical Literature in 1985 that has sought to establish an accessible critical edition of the source shared by Matthew and Luke.

Their work also seeks to "document the major turning points in the history of Q research, with particular attention to the problem of establishing a critical text of Q" (xix). Putting aside "a purely hypothetical Aramaic source" of Matthew and Luke, which would mean that "Q would never be more than a hypothesis," Robinson claims, in the introduction, that such approaches have been "completely replaced by objective criteria, based on empirical observation of Matthean and Lukan redactional traits" (xix). The bulk of the text is the critical text of Q (1-561), which concludes with a concordance of Q (Greek words ). The volume also contains a discussion of divergences from the Lukan sequence (lxxxix), text-critical notes (xc-cvi), and end-pages (cvii). The critical text itself is formatted with eight columns on facing pages presenting by column: 1) any Markan parallel to Matthew, 2) any doublets found in Matthew, 3) the text in Matthew that is deemed to be derived from Q, 4) the critical text of Q, 5) the text in Luke that is deemed to be derived from Q, 6) Luke's doublets, 7) any Markan parallel to Luke, and 8) any parallel from the Gospel of Thomas, the Coptic of which is provided but also retroverted into Greek. As footnotes, the Thomas and Q texts are translated into English, French and German.

The editors intend this volume to be functional as a standard research tool for the study of Q despite the continuing controversy over the validity of the text actually existing. This is the most comprehensive effort to provide such a tool nonetheless.