Let me say first that I really enjoy and appreciate all of the work that you do on your articles, MP3 series, and website. It has all been a wonderful asset for me to find and utilize in my studies.
Your article on the JEPD was ultra-timely for me, as right after I read the piece, I was hit with this JEPD thing in a Bible Study and it has been peppered throughout the course. The material is presented as though this hypothesis is, forgive the pun, the gospel truth.
What I would like to know from your standpoint, is the discussion of the Q Document with regards to the Gospels much the same type of thing, or is there more to this Q Document than meets the eye?
Thanks again for all your work. May God continue to bless you and all of your efforts.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are so similar that liberal scholars have speculated that Matthew and Luke had their origins, not only in Mark which they claim was written first, but also in another document which they call Q (for Quelle), now lost. Quelle means source in German, and is hypothesized to be the source for the added material that make both Matthew and Luke longer than Mark.
This idea, called the two source hypothesis or 2SH was originally conceived in Germany by Ch. H. Weisse in 1838. There’s absolutely no hard evidence that I know of to support it, but liberal scholarship has clung to this view for over 150 years, having rejected the possibility of supernatural origin for the Gospels.
In 1899 a Russian born Harvard graduate named Ivan Panin discovered numerical and linguistic patterns in the gospels showing that either each of the four gospels had to be written before the others, an impossibility, or else the single author of all had to have come from outside the time domain. The 43,000 hand written pages of calculations he painstakingly accumulated are still being published.
In John 14:25-26 Jesus told the Disciples, “All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” I think He was referring to the Gospels. If you’re looking for the Quelle – the source – His name is Jesus.