The 'Quelle' gospel is described as which of the following?

• A. A fictional gospel
• B. A gospel solely in Matthew
• C. A sayings gospel used by Matthew and Luke that is no longer extant
• D. A collection of parables

Answer: (C)

The main idea here is that the Quelle (Q) is a hypothetical collection of Jesus’s sayings that Matthew and Luke used in common. In the commonly discussed two-source view of the Synoptic Gospels, Mark provides a narrative backbone that Matthew and Luke also used, but there’s an additional shared layer of material that isn’t found in Mark. That shared material consists mainly of sayings of Jesus—short, teaching-type fragments—rather than full stories, which is why it’s described as a sayings gospel. Since no surviving copy of Q has ever been found, scholars speak of it as no longer extant, inferred only from the double tradition seen in Matthew and Luke. So the best description is that it’s a sayings gospel used by Matthew and Luke that is no longer extant. This isn’t a fictional gospel, nor is it confined to Matthew alone, nor simply a collection of parables; its distinctive feature is the shared sayings material that Matthew and Luke appear to have drawn on separately from Mark.