Reexamining Q2: Son of God Christology in Q’s Redactional Layer As is well known, the synoptic sayings source Q is a document of which we possess no physical copy, but which has nonetheless been tentatively reconstructed from the material shared by the New Testa- ment Gospels of Matthew and Luke according to the two-source hy- pothesis. While it seems hardly necessary to present a detailed analy- sis of the synoptic problem here, due to the highly technical nature of my inquiry into Q’s text, its hypothetical status must be briefly ad- dressed. It would be quite unreasonable to deny that status in the ab- sence of physical evidence. At the same time, the mere absence of a physical copy should hardly undermine the validity of the hypothesis unless significant faults should be exhibited and alternate solutions proven to be superior. The debate concerning Q’s existence therefore hinges on the solution to the synoptic problem which demands an ex- planation for the obvious literary interdependence of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Here Q competes with fellow hypotheses, viz. alternate solutions attempting to account for the synoptic problem by avoiding Q yet similarly relying on synoptic literary clues not cor- roborated by external evidence. Q’s main challenge stems in particular from those solutions which attempt to explain the synoptic interde- pendence by appealing to Matthew’s or Luke’s direct use of the other. These theories, as well as the Griesbach hypothesis which proposes that Matthew and Luke were used by Mark, are inevitably fraught with considerable problems well documented in contemporary New Testa- ment scholarship 1. Because of those problems and despite the chal- lenge presented by the so-called minor agreements, the two-source hy- pothesis whereby Matthew and Luke each employed the Gospel of Mark and Q as their main documentary sources has become the consensus of New Testament studies. While that consensus remains not unanimous, it has been adopted far beyond the field of specifically Q studies, has received wide acceptance among the leading Matthean 1 For a comprehensive analysis of the weaknesses of the Griesbach and Farrer- Goulder hypotheses, as well as of the more complex solutions proposed by Léon Vaganay and Marie-Émile Boismard, see J.S. KLoppeNBorG VerBIN, Excavating Q. The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (edinburgh 2000) 38-50. BiBlica 97.1 (2016) 62-78