The Lost Gospel
The Book of Q and Christian Origins
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The first book to give the full account of the lost gospel of Jesus' original followers, revealing him to be a Jewish Socrates who was mythologized into the New Testament Christ.
How does this rediscovered text—the Book of Q—radically reshape our understanding of Christian origins?
The Lost Gospel: Explore the discovery and reconstruction of Q, a collection of Jesus’s teachings used by Matthew and Luke but lost to history for nearly two millennia.A Jewish Socrates: Uncover a portrait of Jesus not as a divine savior, but as a Cynic-like teacher of wisdom who challenged the social conventions of first-century Galilee.The First Followers: Meet the "Jesus people" of Q—a movement that followed a teacher’s social program and did not worship a Christ, regard his death as a saving event, or believe in the resurrection.Christian Mythmaking: See how the narrative gospels mythologized a wisdom teacher into the New Testament Christ, and what this process reveals about the true origins of Christianity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If its premise is accepted by a preponderance of theologians, this debatable study could bring about a rethinking of the origins of Christianity. Mack presents an analysis of the so-called Book of Q , a supposed collection of Jesus's sayings that was compiled by his followers during his lifetime. Certain scholars, deducing the existence of the book, have reconstructed the putative text of this ``lost gospel'' during the last 20 years through a comparison of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, who, it is contended, used Q as a common basis (Q stands for Quelle , German for ``source''). Mack, a professor of New Testament at the School of Theology at Claremont College in Los Angeles, concludes that ``the people of Q''--Jesus's contemporaries--thought of him as a teacher, not as a messiah, and that they did not regard his death as a divine or saving event. Mack offers an earthy, colloquial translation of the Book of Q with its wisdom sayings, exhortations, parables and apocalyptic pronouncements. His portrayal of the early Jesus movement reveals a community based on fictive kinship without regard to class, gender or ethnicity. The discovery of Q , Mack argues, compels us to see the New Testament gospels as imaginative creations rather than historical accounts. $25,000 ad/promo; BOMC and QPB selections.
