The Lost Gospel Q: The Original Sayings of Jesus

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Summary: reveals the historical Jesus in a completely new light
Review: Having turned away from the Bible, I discovered the Lost Gospel of Q to be a wonderful way to experience Jesus as the humane, powerful, and mystical teacher. This is a perfect companion to Jesus books by Marcus Borg and Crossan. Beautifully presented and published! Stripping away the centuries of church interpretations makes Jesus much more compelling and alive.

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Summary: The Correlation With the New Testament is High
Review: I conclude that the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament are divine. I came to this conclusion by intepreting Jesus' scientific teachings metaphorically. This method of interpretation proves that Jesus was the Son of God as Christians express in the Trinity. When I use metaphorical interpretations, I also conclude that Jesus is speaking to all people throughout the world as well as His audiences.

The authors of this book seem to interpret Jesus literally. Thus, I do not use many of the statements made by them at the bottom of each Q statement. But, the authors work to align Jesus' sayings with our modern languages is excellent and consistent with the sayings of Jesus in the New Testament.

By interpreting Jesus' sayings in this book metaphorically, I again recognize the divinity of Jesus. For instance, look at Q59. In this example, Jesus knows that the people of His audience already know the "causes" of rain and scorching weather but don't know that the "present" (the here and now) is also a cause. Thus, Jesus asks, "Why can't you interpret the here and now." Here, Jesus is telling the audience that the "here and now" is also a cause -- the cause of the future. Here Jesus is teaching a very advanced scientific concept known as causation. One truth about Jesus is that many of His ideas are appearing in our thoughts only recently.

This is a good book for interpreting the sayings of Jesus metaphorically. But, forget the author's literal interpretations and the author's belief that jesus is just another Jewish prophet.

Rating:
Summary: The Correlation With the New Testament is High
Review: I conclude that the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament are divine. I came to this conclusion by intepreting Jesus' scientific teachings metaphorically. This method of interpretation proves that Jesus was the Son of God as Christians express in the Trinity. When I use metaphorical interpretations, I also conclude that Jesus is speaking to all people throughout the world as well as His audiences.

The authors of this book seem to interpret Jesus literally. Thus, I do not use many of the statements made by them at the bottom of each Q statement. But, the authors work to align Jesus' sayings with our modern languages is excellent and consistent with the sayings of Jesus in the New Testament.

By interpreting Jesus' sayings in this book metaphorically, I again recognize the divinity of Jesus. For instance, look at Q59. In this example, Jesus knows that the people of His audience already know the "causes" of rain and scorching weather but don't know that the "present" (the here and now) is also a cause. Thus, Jesus asks, "Why can't you interpret the here and now." Here, Jesus is telling the audience that the "here and now" is also a cause -- the cause of the future. Here Jesus is teaching a very advanced scientific concept known as causation. One truth about Jesus is that many of His ideas are appearing in our thoughts only recently.

This is a good book for interpreting the sayings of Jesus metaphorically. But, forget the author's literal interpretations and the author's belief that jesus is just another Jewish prophet.

Rating:
Summary: If you know the Bible Gospels then you know this "Gospel".
Review: I was hoping for something new and enlightening. instead it is simply a compilation of sayings that are common to Matthew and Luke. Nothing new, nothing enlightening and only 20 minutes of reading. There's nothing "lost" about it either because it already all exists in the Bible and in context. If you want to know Jesus, I recommend you buy a Bible instead.

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Summary: A Serious Book
Review: The arguments for the existence of THE LOST GOSPEL Q put forth by Marcus Borg in the Preface are the most interesting and provocative part of this book. It is easy to understand why the work of the Jesus Seminar is challenged by skeptics. However, I do think it is important not to dismiss it too quickly before it receives the attention and scrutiny it deserves. THE LOST GOSPEL Q is a serious attempt to shed light on the historical Jesus.

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Summary: Scholars May Not Be Impressed
Review: The editors of this book add an interesting note at the end on the subject of the translation of the text. They point out that the sayings of Jesus contained in the book represent a 'paraphrase' since the principal of 'dynamic equivalence' was followed in producing their work. They do not seek a word-for-word translation but rather an overall meaning. Many scholars may be turned off by this approach.

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Summary: The Book That Does Not Exist
Review: The farce that is the Gospel of Q begins with unbelieving scholars who intend to prove that Jesus did not say 70% of what is recorded in the gospels and Christianity is not about Christ but only about a few selected teachings.

Only after reading deep into this book does one find the carefully worded disclaimer that "Lost Gospel" does not even really exist. It is the imagined set of teachings found in the Gospel of Mark, which are not found in the other synoptic Gospels (Matthew and Luke).

From this comparison (Mark to Matthew & Luke) there are found sayings which are supposed by this author to have been the "original" teachings of Christ. From there it gets ugly. The author falls off the edge of the earth to say that the early community of believers was only interested in Christ's teachings and not in him as the Messiah. This type of unbelief is of the worst type because it uses a comparison of the gospels (a valid scholarly endeavor) to prove a point that is patently unbiblical. For seeker who is pure of heart, the Gospel of Barnabas found in the "Lost Books of the Bible" is a fair more enlightening read.

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Summary: The first Gospel! Here are the original words of Jesus.
Review: The search for the historical Jesus is one of the most important quests in religion today. The Lost Gospel Q--written by Jesus' contemporaries and preserving his original words--brings you closer to the historical figure of Jesus than ever before.

A sacred handbook for his earliest followers, The Lost Gospel Q is older than the four traditional Gospels, older than the Christian church itself. Based on saying in Aramaic, Jesus' own language, it was eventually incorporated into the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. And then it disappeared.

Lost for two thousand years, no copy of this Gospel has ever been found. But for the past one hundred and fifty years, historians and theologians around the world have been rediscovering the fragments.

Working like archaeologists, they have dug through the many layers of the New Testament to finally uncover the original Gospel upon which key elements of the Bible are based. Now, for the first time, this historic Gospel is available in an easily accessible form designed to let all who are interested in the original teachings of Jesus read them. After two thousand years, The Lost Gospel Q belongs to all of us.

"Read carefully this manifesto of the Kingdom of God." --John Dominic Crossan, author of Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

"I will place this beautiful, well presented book among my few primary resources from the world's religious and spiritual literature. I will treat it as one of the primary revelations of life's sacredness. It gives me a Jesus who is less shielded and packaged by later tradition, and therefore more poetic and more sublimely relevant to my own desire for a truly intelligent, deeply felt and socially responsive life of spirit." --Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul, from the introduction

"The Lost Gospel Q is of great interest and importance because it is the first Christian Gospel. Written in the 50s of the first century, only a couple of decades after the death of Jesus, it is significantly earlier than th! e four Gospels of the New Testament. I invite you to explore for yourself the earliest layers of the Jesus tradition." --Marcus Borg, author of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, from the Preface

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Summary: QUELLE: source
Review: The whole concept behind "Q" was to reconstruct the original sayings of Jesus. Many quotes of Jesus found in scripture might very well have been embellished or outright forged. And so it is of interest to some to endeavor to find the original or "lost" sayings of Jesus. This can be achieved by digging through the gospels and comparing/contrasting their contents until a common thread is found which might better reveal Jesus' true words. Thus, the quelle or source of Jesus' sayings is found. This little book is a fine work and effort. It certainly lives up to its concept.

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Summary: The Unknown Source
Review: This book is based on the theory that the Gospel of Mark was written before any of the other synoptic Gospels. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke were then written with the help of those from Mark and another unknown source which is called the Gospel Q. In 1838 a German noticed that there were many sayings of Jesus which were common to Matthew and Luke but not included in Mark. The Lost Gospel Q is comprised of these sayings. Adding fuel to the argument was the discovery in 1945 near the Upper Nile River in Egypt of a codex called the Gospel of Thomas. It contained 114 sayings of Jesus. Over one-third of these sayings were similar to those found in the Lost Gospel Q.

If you accept the idea of the probable existence of Q, then you can look forward to reading sayings of Jesus which were recorded and used by some of His earliest followers less than two decades after His death and resurrection.