03_Biblica_Foster_Layout 1 08/07/13 12:56 Pagina 391 391 IS Q A “JEWISH CHRISTIAN” DOCUMENT? The people responsible for Q appear to have considered themselves ethnically Jewish at every stage of the document’s development. In- terestingly, however, Q became more ideologically Jewish over time; that is, it appears to have developed more and more “typical fea- tures” of Jewish religious belief at each stage of its development. At the earliest stage, it lacks a great many of these features. With each new redaction, however, the ideological features of the document increase, so that by its third stage of development, Q belongs firmly and quite “typically” within the Jewish religious tradition 69. Not only does this assessment depend on the need to assent to the theory of the stratified formation of Q ― especially the most speculative aspect, the existence of a minimal but highly significant Q3 layer — but it is based on a number of assessments concerning which there is little consensus. First, as has been discussed, the de- tection of features that reveal a Jewish ideology is extremely slight. There are no explicit statements that affirm observance of typical Jewish boundary marking practices such as the practice of circum- cision, Sabbath observance and maintenance of food laws. The re- lationship with the synagogue is also ambiguous in Q. While Arnal argues that a practice such as circumcision is not “a sufficient index of Jewish identity, since non-Jews may be circumcised for a variety of reasons”, it would almost certainly be a necessary index. This would be the case especially if Q believers were in the process of increasing their ideological commitment to Jewish religious tradi- tion. Moreover, it appears strange that they did not articulate their position in relation to what was such a divisive issue in the early church if they were consciously seeking to self-identify as Jewish. Furthermore, Arnal’s handling of passages in Q that are often seen as pro-Gentile is based on his underlying assumptions about the ethnic composition of the Q community. Thus he states that based on Q 12.30 and (perhaps) 6.33-34 one can make “the unproblema- tized assumption that the Q people are themselves Jewish and live in a Jewish environment”. However, this assumption is far from “unproblematized”, and the overall difficulty with Arnal’s assess- ment is the need, as a prior step, to accept certain theories concern- ing the stratified formation of Q in three discrete and discernible stages as well as accepting his theory that Q was the product of a ARNAL, “The Q Document”, 137-138. 69 © Gregorian Biblical Press 2013 - Tutti i diritti riservati