A Home for GEbi, and a Solution for Q

ETA: In 2010, I began identifying Q with the Gospel of Peter, and both with the Gospel of the Hebrews. Later that year, I distinguished between GPet and GHeb, but continued to identify the former with Q. 

Over the years, my thinking on this evolved considerably, until late in 2013, I realized I had it wrong: Q is to be identified with GEbi and (one version of) GHeb. GPet was posterior to Q/GEbi.

This post, and several earlier posts, have been edited to reflect this realization. I have tried to note where I had made edits.

This is the post in which I first identified Q with GEbi. Some material has been removed; one bullet point has been added, as noted below.

I had once considered the relationship between Q/GEbi and GPet that you see above, but dismissed it for several reasons. I now see that all of those reasons can be dispensed with. Rest assured that we will certainly return to this topic. For now, all I can say is that yes, amazingly, it works. The key will lie in explaining the nature of the so-called "Hebrew" gospel described by patristic authors. We will then need to examine GPet in light of this explanation, and finally we will need to examine the fragments of GEbi itself to show how they served as a source for various Synoptic and hyper-Synoptic phenomena.

Once again, the HSH can still confidently agree with Q skeptics that Q is an illusion--in the sense that there was no "sayings gospel Q". Q was not a sayings gospel. It was a narrative gospel, much like the synoptics--very much like them, in fact--with a Galilean ministry and a Jerusalem ministry and a Passion Narrative and even a resurrection sequence.

Thus the HSH simultaneously disagrees with Q skeptics that there was no second source for the Matthean and Marcionite-Lukan traditions, for that second source surely existed: it was GEbi, the Ebionite gospel. That is, GEbi was Q--it contained all the Q material, plus much more: Markan parallels and a Passion Narrative (drawn from Secret Mark), perhaps a few echoes from the earlier Signs tradition, and a bit of unique material, some original, some from still other sources, that finds its way here and there into separate gospel traditions.

The HSH also continues to disagree--and this is important--with Q skeptics that, in their words, "no one has ever seen Q". We have seen the text of Q, and we have had it for a very, very long time. It's found in Epiphanius' Panarion 30, perhaps also in the Pseudo-Clementines.

A couple more comments about the above diagram:

• (moved from a previous post): Especially because I think that instead of identifying GPet with Q, we may now identify the recently discovered P.Oxy. 5072 with Q. Again, this will require some explanation at a later date. Note that this marks the first placement of an Oxyrhynchus gospel fragment into the diagram.

• The GNaz author relied primarily on GMt, but probably also on both GEbi/Q and GPet.

• The author of GLk certainly used GNaz. It's not impossible that he/she also used one or more of GEbi/Q, GPet, and even GMt, but since GNaz already used all three documents, it seems that GNaz is all we need to explain any parallels among GLk-Ac and material unique to those documents. For now, provisionally, I only suppose that the Lukan author used GNaz to revise Marcion's gospel (and that Acts is largely an adaptation of GNaz material, along with other sources that I will get to eventually).

And with all of that we are at last ready to begin our exploration of the Jewish-Christian gospels. We'll begin by analyzing the existence of, and the differences between, GEbi and GNaz, and how both came to be called the gospel "of (or according to) the Hebrews". ETA: we will also explore the possibility--increasingly likely, IMO--that GPet was indeed a gospel "of/according to the Hebrews" after all, i.e. the Alexandrian GHeb that Klijn thinks Clement, Origen, and Didymus knew. This would make so much sense.

ETA: As a final note, I originally identified Q/GPet with Cerinthus' gospel. I still maintain that Q was Cerinthus' gospel, but have removed discussion of this from previous posts, pending further investigation. I suspect that GPet was in fact Elchasai's gospel, but have not yet explored this in detail.