According to Robinson, the only thing the apostles gave us is the Sayings Gospel Q. This contained sayings of Jesus without any narrative. There are no document copies of this Gospel, not even a single scrap. The only evidence for it is that Matthew and Luke both contain sayings that are not in Mark. They had to get those sayings from somewhere. Scholars call that "somewhere" Q. I call it "Jesus"
Maybe some background is needed. Robinson claims that both Matthew and Luke took Mark (the first written gospel in his theory) and Q and combined them with their own ideas to write their two Gospels. He denies that either of them were eyewitnesses of Jesus and even that they were honest in their accounts. However, he was interested in discovering the Q document which they used. In 2000 he and others published The Critical Edition of Q. How do they know what Q contained? Anything that Matthew and Luke agree on, that they did not get from Mark, came from Q.
But listen to these quotes.
Since Q itself does not have chapter and verse numbers, we make use of Luke's chapter and verse numbers when quoting Q. This is because Luke follows Q's sequence more faithfully than does Matthew. Since there is no birth narrative in Q....How do we know Luke followed Q "faithfully" if we are making up Q from Matthew and Luke?! I think Matthew was more faithful. (No, I think they were both divinely inspired. Just making a point.) How do we know Q didn't have a birth narrative? Maybe Matthew like the one in Q and Luke thought he could make up a better one.
My point is if the Gospels are not inspired, anyone can make up any theory about why this story or quote is here but not there. We can make an undiscovered, theoretical document say anything we want. It proves nothing.
Steve aka Jubal
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