Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel

Abstract

Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel, by John S. Kloppenborg Verbin. Minneapolis: Fortress: London: T. & T. Clark 2000. Pp. xii + 546. $32.00. Excavating began as an introduction to Q but got out of hand, as Kloppenborg Verbin admits (p. 9). It evolved into a book "about Q ... and the difference its existence makes" (p. 1), or, as the subtitle indicates, about the history and setting of Q. The book caps several decades of Q research, launched mainly in Germany in the 1960s by three students of Ganther Bornkamm, namely, Heinz Eduard Todt (Der Menschensohn in der synoptischen Tradition [Gerd Mohn, 1959; ET 1965]), Odil Hannes Steck (Israel and das gewaltsame Geschick der Propheten [Neukirchener, 1967]), and Dieter Liihrmann (Die Redaktion der Logienquelle [Neukirchener, 1969]). The proliferation of Q studies from that point on is quite dramatic (measured simply on the basis of published books): eleven in the 1970s, twenty in the 1980s, and thirty-nine in the 1990s. The pace shows no sign of slackening: five more books in 2000, three already announced by early 2001. Kloppenborg Verbin's insightful and incisive review of this literature is itself a valuable contribution. Though the book incorporates the results of studies Kloppenborg Verbin has published separately since The Formation of Q (Fortress, 1987), it does not set forth a new proposal regarding Q. There are, however, some new features, especially an effort to situate Q in first-century lower Galilee (chs. 4, 5). The Synoptic Problem also receives a thorough and balanced analysis, including Roman Catholic contributions (chs. 1 and 6). Some observations by Kloppenborg Verbin are also new, or at least more cogently argued than in Formation. For example, on the question of multiple recensions of Q, he concludes: "that Q ... could have been preserved in identical forms in two or more copies simply strains credulity" (p. 109). In ch. 3 (pp. 118-28), he has added new arguments to those I advanced concerning "The Literary Unity of Q"(JBL 101 [1982]: 365-89). Kloppenborg Verbin's discussion of the stratigraphy of Q (method: pp. 114-18; stratigraphic analysis: pp. 143-53) had already been worked out in Formation and is treated only briefly here. He seeks, however, to correct the popular misuse of his analysis by those who have passed lightly over the literary arguments and have characterized Ql as "sapiential" and Q2 as "prophetic or apocalyptic" (pp. 379-98; cf. pp. 150-51), reserving special criticism for N. T. Wright and Richard Horsley (p. 385 n. 45). He insists on a preference for formal rather than material criteria for discussing the composition and genre of Q (p. 382). In Formation, Kloppenborg Verbin had already argued that Q3 was moving in the direction of the genre bios. I would suggest that it may be worth exploring whether Q3, with its interest in Torah and temple, had already come within the Matthean orbit. The fact that Matthew reworked Q much more thoroughly than Luke suggests that his community had made extensive use of Q prior to its incorporation into the First Gospel, which would comport with my suggestion. Many of Kloppenborg Verbin's claims regarding Q are standard: e.g., it was a single document written in Greek, probably in the late 50s or early 60s of the first century in lower Galilee. However, his efforts to situate Q in first-century lower Galilee are especially noteworthy. The village scribes who produced Q were, he concludes, of relatively low social standing, suspicious of local administrative institutions, probably stable rather than itinerant, and Israelites who observed at least common practices such as Shabbat and kashrut. They perhaps encountered a few Pharisees, but rarely, and followed the "little tradition" of the Torah as known in Galilee. In spite of some criticism of Horsley's proposals (see, e.g., Whoever Hears You Hears Me, by Horsley and Jonathan Draper, [Trinity International, 1999]), Kloppenborg Verbin agrees with him in seeing the Q people as a renewal movement, offering "hope in God's renewal of society, a renewal in which the poor would acquire honor and dignity" (p. …