The Sayings Gospel Q and the Quest of the Historical Jesus

Since the earlyliterature on the1980s we have witnessed an extraordinary resurgence of historical Jesus. It is not entirely clear why Jesus scholarship has again become so important following the collapse of the first quest and the relatively meager results of the New Quest; the differences between this most recent quest and its two predecessors, however, are immediately evident. Key among the differences is the role played by scholarship on the Sayings Gospel Q. This essay offers some reflections on the ways in which Q has figured (or not figured) in reconstructions of the historical Jesus and offers some cautions in light of the achievements of a quarter century of composition-criticism on Q.