Chapter 16 Critiqued:

• Doherty discusses how the contents of “Q” show no sign of a historical Jesus in the earliest layers of “Q” in this chapter.
• The majority of Chapter 16 of The Jesus Puzzle is Doherty’s speculation about how the contents of “Q” relate to the concept of a historical Jesus.
• Oddly, Doherty tells the reader the following brief interesting story:
• “The Q2 (a layer of the “Q” tradition) community probably existed in the mid-first century, in the decade or two before the Jewish War, preaching its counter-cultural and apocalyptic message on the Galilean scene at the same time that Paul was tramping the byways of the empire bringing a Hellenistic-Jewish savior god to the gentiles. If the two had sat down together one evening to compare notes, they would have found they had almost nothing in common” (TJP:168).

 

• However, there is no manuscript evidence that “Q” ever existed, no church father ever mentioned “Q,” and there is no historical, nor archaeological evidence of a “Q Community.”

• In other words, Q's existence does not meet Doherty's own criteria for establishing existence of something/someone.