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

In his 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.