Q, The Earliest Gospel

Estimated to date back to the very early Jesus movement, the lost Gospel known as Q offers a distinct and remarkable picture of Jesus and his significanceand one that differs markedly from that offered by its contemporary, the apostle Paul. Rather than privileging Jesus' death and resurrection as the salvific events, highlighting his battles with demons, or concentrating on his messianic program of healing, this Sayings Gospel presents Jesus as a prophetic critic of unbelief and a sage with the wisdom that can transform. In Q, the true meaning of the kingdom of God is the fulfillment of a just society through the transformation of the human relationships within it: debt relief, mutuality and reciprocity, nonretaliation, and the total rejection of the long-standing Mediterranean honor and shame codes. Though this document has never been found, Kloppenborg offers a succinct account of why scholars maintain it existed in the first place and demonstrates how they have been able to reconstruct its contents and wording from the two later Gospels that used it as a source: Matthew and Luke. Presented here in its entirety, as developed by the International Q Project, this Gospel reveals a very different portrait of Jesus than in much of the later canonical writings, challenging the way we think of Christian origins and the very nature and mission of Jesus Christ.