Jesus, Q, and the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Judaic Approach to Q

In this work, Simon J. Joseph proposes a new working model for understanding the Jewish ethnicity, community, provenance, and compositional traits in Q, the earliest and most reliable source for the palestinian jewish Jesus movement. He critically compares the major literary features of Q 3-7, a section which introduces John the Baptist and includes the Beatitudes and Jesus reply to John in light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes, and first-century Jewish wisdom traditions and messianism. By conducting a critical comparative analysis of Q 6:20-23, Q 7:22, 4Q525, and 4Q521, this approach effectively challenges the prevailing assumption that Q is a Galilean text, representing a non-messianic and non-apocalyptic Galilean branch of the early Jesus movement, that was dissociated from the early Jerusalem community, and provides a new way of understanding the intimate relationship between Early Judaism and Christianity.