Does it matter if one adopts a belief in “Q” and rejects the historic belief that the synoptic gospels–Matthew, Mark, and Luke–are independent accounts? What happens if one rejects this historic belief for the theory, invented by theological liberalism and modernism but adopted by many modern evangelicals, that Mark was the first gospel (instead of Matthew), and Matthew and Luke depended on and altered Mark, using a (lost) source called “Q” that just happens to have left no archaeological or historical evidence for its existence? What happens if we adopt source, tradition, and redaction criticism? Let me illustrate with the comment on Matthew 25:46 in John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 1034–1037.  Nolland is discussing how to go behind the text of Matthew’s Gospel to what the historical Jesus said (which he assumes is different); he is discussing what Matthew added and changed from what Christ originally said, which, supposedly, was handed down in little bits of tradition here and there, and which Matthew used, along with his dependence upon Mark and Q. I have added a few comments in brackets within Nolland’s commentary.

While the account has a totally comprehensible sense in its Matthean use, various unevennesses and tensions suggest a complicated history. At various points there seem to be Matthean accents and even quite Matthean features. [In other words, Matthew added and changed what the Son of God said.] … On the basis of the tensions and difficulties [which are not really there] in the account many scholars have held that Matthew has cobbled this account together [what a nice description] out of traditional fragments and OT resources. Others would be prepared to identify a remnant of a parable in vv. 32c–33 and a significant fragment of tradition in vv. 35–36. But perhaps even this is too pessimistic. [Perhaps? We aren’t sure?]

We have had cause to notice that the king in various of Jesus’ parables was originally God, but he has become Jesus himself in secondary use of the parable. [The Watchtower Society and the Unitarians would be delighted.] This is likely to be true of all three of the immediately preceding parables. In the other cases the adjustment is likely to be pre-Matthean, but this time it may be Matthew himself who is responsible for the change.

Without vv. 31–32a, ‘by my Father’ in v. 34, and ‘my brothers and sisters’ in v. 40, the account could be focussed on God and not on Jesus. [Note how he is willing to cut out portions of the Word.] With some brief, now-lost beginning to introduce the king, the restored parable is free of the tensions and difficulties that have been identified in the Matthean account. With the loss of vv. 31–32a the account will be of the eschatological judgment of Israel rather than of all nations. So we can now make sense of the unquestioning recognition of the status of the king by those on the left and the assumption that they would have served him if it had been visible to them that that was what was involved. Both those on the left and the right are Israelites who in principle recognised God as their ultimate king. … Various other Matthean features noted above may also betray his intervention, [of course, all of what he is saying is speculative.] but these do not disturb the basic functioning of the narrative. … Matthew has bundled a lot of cross referencing into his account [in other words, he assumes Christ did not refer back to His earlier teaching, but Matthew changed it so that it referenced back to earlier passages] in a manner reminiscent of his development of 9:27–31. It remains an open question whether the fourfold repetition of the list is a pre-Matthean feature. It is reminiscent of the repetition involved in the inclusion of 25:16–18, which was judged above to be pre-Matthean but not original. [“Not original” means Christ did not actually say it.]

The pre-Matthean account that emerges is still not a parable, only an account of the judgment that makes use of a comparison (if this is not Matthean) and speaks of God as ‘the king’. But could there be a genuine parable further behind this? A lot depends on the missing beginning. But the other places where the narrative world of a parable about a king is broken are vv. 34, 41, and 46, and we would have to give up ‘your brothers and sisters’ suggested above for the pre-Matthean account. A possible beginning sentence for a parable might be something like ‘There was a king who entered into judgment with his people’ (all the future tenses of the account would need then to become past tenses). If in v. 34 ‘Come, you blessed ones’ was followed by something more appropriate to the narrative world, and similar adjustments were made to v. 41, then the narrative world of a parable would be complete (while v. 46 completes the narrative logic, it is not strictly necessary, but it could be adjusted in a corresponding manner).

There is one important proviso here to describing both the Matthean and, behind that, the immediately pre-Matthean account as ‘an account of the judgment’. We have already noted the tension between 24:31 and 13:41, where the angels respectively gather the elect and take off the wicked to punishment. Mt. 25:31–46 offers a different picture again. Not the angels, but Jesus/God acting like a shepherd makes the division himself (perhaps the angels might be used for the initial gathering), and the two groups are arranged on either side of him. … The further along this track behind the Matthean material we go, the more our account of it becomes necessarily speculative. [My note:  No kidding!] But there appears to be no insurmountable barrier to tracing the origins of the Matthean account back to the historical Jesus. And the original that we might attribute to the historical Jesus offers the same challenge about the importance for judgment day of God’s profound self-identification with his people.

Nolland-who is considered “conservative,” not a liberal, by many, and his commentary in the NIGTC series representative of a broadly “evangelical” commentary series–makes the common and unreasonable assumptions that Matthew, who would have been there to here Christ teach and who was controlled by the Holy Spirit, needed to depend upon tiny fragments of tradition passed down here and passed down there by who knows who, and also borrow from Mark (who was not there, like Matthew was). Through this whole process what Christ actually said got changed, and so we need to attempt to reconstruct what Jesus Christ actually said by going behind Matthew’s Gospel to the hypothetical, reconstructed words of the historical Jesus.

This anti-inspiration nonsense affects evangelical apologetics. When I debated Shabir Ally he could not believe that I denied that there was a “Q” document and that the gospels were dependent on each other. Other Christians that Shabir debated accepted that these lies were true.

This sort of anti-inspiration and anti-historical nonsense about Q, sources, and redaction is all over evangelicalism and just about completely controls theological liberalism.  It even infects portions of those who call themselves fundamentalist, chiefly among those who deny the perfect preservation of Scripture and so are not King James Only. Beware of “evangelical” commentaries on the Gospels and “evangelical” leaders who adopt critical methods and deny the Biblically faithful and historically accurate view that the synoptic gospels are independent accounts and give us eyewitness testimony.

–TDR