The most recent "nondenominational" scholarship equates the earliest textual traditions for the Gospel of Mark and the so-called Q passages in Luke as approximately the same chronological stratum -- a stratum presumed to be earlier than any of the other known Gospel materials. Yet that still entails -- even when taking only the earliest apparent stratum for Mark -- our deliberate inclusion -- anyway -- of a restricted assortment of fairly remarkable incidents, generally regarded as miracles. Clearly, this is in strong contrast with Jefferson's redaction that admits practically none, and we appreciate that.

The "Q passages" in Luke do not include most of these miracles either, but even "Q" still has the occasional miracle such as that involving the centurion's servant, duly included in Chapter Four of this provisional sequence.

At the same time, some readers might be sincerely troubled at the omission of certain other miracles long viewed as inseparable from the Jesus story.

I am sincerely dedicated to maintaining an openminded view, both on my own part and on the part of any readers, concerning all aspects of any religious creeds that have helped generate ethical standards of any type whatsoever in the past.

In this particular case, I should like to maintain an open mind when it comes to passages -- however startling -- that still appear to stem, according to recent scholarship, from the very earliest traditions of a creed before the stage at which one might need apply a scholarly concern for possible axe-grinding.

Of course, I am aware of the peril that even "nondenominational" scholarship today, even by multidenominational consensus such as here, may yet have its occasional axe to grind in determining which passages come from the "earliest traditions" in the first place. So even this sixteen-chapter sequence of ours may be partly guilty of a degree of (left-handed) special pleading, of which I, as a -- naively(?) -- committed synthesist, may be sadly ignorant. Nevertheless, I, being admittedly guilty of greater trust in modern 20th-century scholarship than in any other yardstick out there at present, am ready to take the risk of presenting this synthesis without comment and of letting others draw whatever conclusions from it they may.

A few potential users may choose to react with all sorts of salient points regarding this sequence and regarding a possibly jaundiced attitude behind it, of which I am currently unaware. Frankly, that's fine by me. I welcome that.

As an alternative, some of our readers who find themselves in general sympathy with this effort, but who look askance at some of the possibly speculative nature of the most recent work on "Q," may find it more worthwhile and more straightforward to simply base a conscientious redaction on the earliest known gospel, Mark, taking care to exclude those passages extant only in later mss., along with removing all details not parallelled in either Matthew or Luke. This would simply entail a modified redaction of Mark--and that would be it. Fifteen specific passages would be removed:

1: 1b;
3: 20-21;
4: 26-29;
7: 16;
8: 22-26;
9: 44;
9: 46;
9: 49b;
11: 26;
14: 51-52;
14: 68d;
15: 28;
15: 40c;
16: 1b;
16: 9-20

This would put all considerations surrounding "Q" aside. Such a redaction might be eminently worthwhile. But one would have to regret the attendant omission of inspired enlightened sentiments such as "Love your enemies" and so on from the Sermon on the Plain/Mount, duly included here in our Chapter Three, even though absent in Mark and present only in so-called "Q" passages out of Luke and Matthew.

For altruism this startling, it remains unlikely, though not impossible, that a mere transcribing disciple -- however dedicated to the spirit of Jesus' sayings -- would bother to offer caveats admonishing a general love of one's opponents when his primary concern would be to promote an acceptance of Christians and Christianity above all.

Again, it remains barely possible that someone else sincerely extrapolated the fundamentals of Jesus' message through proselytizing with admonishments so profoundly selfless and specific as these, admonishments not strictly reflecting the letter of Jesus' own formulations at all, merely their spirit. Nevertheless, that still seems unlikely.

Caveats of such specific selflessness just come more plausibly from an independent pioneer, not from later followers who might sometimes be "plus royaliste que le roi." In the end then, who else but Jesus himself could most plausibly have voiced such a warning against knee-jerk vindictiveness? That consideration alone would seem to confirm the general authenticity of the so-called "Q" passages.

--GRiggs