Three borrows in two months: it’s nice to have new readers for this oldie.
When I first started self-publishing, back in 2011, two organizations competed for authors: Amazon, which distributed e-books and print books to its own store; and Smashwords, which distributed e-books to a lot of retailers. I began by uploading my books to Amazon, but before many months passed I also uploaded to Smashwords.
Over the years, other services popped up. Barnes & Noble made it possible to uploads your books directly to them, bypassing the middle men. Another service distributing to retailers was Draft 2 Digital. I made the decision that it was hard enough keeping up with Amazon and Smashwords that I wouldn’t mess with D2D too.
In fact, I had very few sales through Smashwords, and didn’t bother to upload most of my latest books.
Then, a year or two ago, D2D bought out Smashwords. I waited a long time to transfer my books, but finally did early this year. I spent almost no time learning the D2D system. I had too much on my plate, between writing and household and health, to read up on how D2D did things.
In September, I received an e-mail from D2D saying my August sales report was available. That surprised me. I opened the report and found I found I’d sold 1 copy of Dr. Luke’s Assistant and one of my short story “Charlie Delta Delta”. The royalty for each was 32¢! That couldn’t be. I contacted D2D and learned that Hoopla was a different type of retailer. It’s more of a library service, and a “sale” is really a borrow.
Then, Wednesday I received an email from D2D saying my September sales report was available. I downloaded it, and learned I had five sales, all through Hoopla (so really five borrows. One of Documenting America Vol 1, two of Documenting America Home School edition, and two more of Doctor Luke’s Assistant. The problem is: how do I account for these borrows in terms or recording sales. Is a borrow a sale? or something less than a sale?
A borrow means a reader. A sale means a reader—or so you hope. So in terms of readership, a borrow is the same as a sale, maybe even more likely to result in a reader. So, at least for now, I’m counting each borrow as a sale. If that skews my sales number, I may have to rethink that.
Of course, with the delay in D2D reporting, I won’t know each month’s sales until almost a month after the last day of the month. But that’s okay. I’m glad for the additional readers.
It’s been a long time since I posted my book sales. 2021 was my best year for sales. I guess you would call it a record year, though, with the numbers still as low as they are, record somehow seems inappropriate.
I sold 223 books, almost all sales coming from on-line sources. That beat my previous best year which was 156 way back in 2012. Also, in 2021, I passed the 1,000 lifetime sales mark, ending up with 1034.
Why the increase? Amazon ads. I began running some ads on Amazon in July 2020, added to them in 2021, and sales finally happened. Unfortunately, to this point I’ve spent more in ads than I’ve received in royalties from all sources. It’s not a big number, and the deficit is shrinking. At the end of the year, I was down only $4.52, though at worst I was behind $73.80. If the trend continues into 2022, I’ll be money ahead in a month or two. Just on ad spend, not overall. The cost to maintain this website puts me way in the red each year.
Had 19 sales of this, pulled along by the ads for the first book in the series.
I had sales of 22 different books, out of 35 books listed for sale at year end. Highest of those was the first Documenting America book, which I advertised. Second was Doctor Luke’s Assistant, which I also advertised. The other two books in the Documenting America series also had double-digit sales, as did Acts OfFaith, which I advertised.
Several of these “sales” were actually through Kindle Unlimited, the first that I had from that Amazon sales channel. I think royalties work out to less, but I’ve had a hard time rigorously tracking them.
So, here comes 2022. My ads are still running. They don’t seem to be working quite as well as early in the year. I will probably add another book to those I advertise, though I’m not in any hurry to do that.
Here’s hoping 2022 will be another best year for book sales.
The e-book cover for this was easy. At present I’m not planning on issuing a print book.
Well, I missed another blogging day. Yes, I missed last Friday. That’s two Fridays in a row. I tell you, miss it once and it can become a habit. I’ll break that habit this coming Friday.
For now, I’ll just tell a little of my current activities.
Today is the day to publish the Leader’s Guide for Acts Of Faith. I made the cover on Friday, finished the editing on Saturday, made one minor tweak yesterday, and let it sit for the night. As soon as I finish this I’ll go to Amazon KDP and do the publishing tasks. Hopefully it will be available for sale before the end of the day, though perhaps tomorrow.
I’ll make the cover for the print edition of the prequel of this look much the same. Delete “Again” and change the photo.
Then, tomorrow I’ll work on my friend Bessie’s book. I did her second book for her earlier this year. Her first book, however, is available from the publisher only as an e-book. She has people in the church who want a copy. At my prompting, she obtained a license from the publisher to make do a print book edition of her own. I have already gone through the text for errors. I think I built the Table of Content, but will check on that. The cover will follow the lines of the last book and should be simple—except print book covers are never simple for me. Publishing it may not be doable on one day.
Salzburg and environs are so nice, with quaint things to see and do—but not when you’re following Sharon Williams Fonseca.
After that, I shift to writing tasks. My short story, “Tango Delta Foxtrot”. It’s now at 5,300 words and is well along with the story. I don’t have a specific word goal, and I didn’t plan out the plot. To keep it from getting boring I need to wrap it up. I may work on that some in the evenings. I did so yesterday evening, incorporating comments from my critique group. I’m not finished yet with that, so may make working through those comments my evening task for a few days. Wednesday or Thursday I hope to be adding words to the story.
Meanwhile, I sold a couple of copies of Acts Of Faith at church yesterday, and last Friday a paperback copy of Doctor Luke’s Assistant sold at Amazon. That bring my sales for the year up to 131, my second-best year so far. About 75 of those are self-sales of books from inventory, and 69 are of books I published this year. That’s good news. I hope to continue the up-trend next year.
The Kindle e-book was published on May 6, 2019. Other versions also available.
So far this year I’ve published three books. I’m midway through a fourth, the Leader’s Guide for my recently published Bible study, Acts Of Faith. I anticipate having that written in about ten days and published in about three weeks. That may be a little optimistic.
The only piece I’m working on at present is a short story, “Tango Delta Foxtrot”. I’m about a third done with that. I should be able to finish, edit, and publish that by sometime in November. Thoughts for another short story are rolling around; not sure if I’ll go to that next or not.
Written 2000-2003, I didn’t publish this until 2012.
So, it’s time to begin research for my next full-length book. I’m not quite sure, however, what it will be. It will almost certainly be either the next in my church novels series or the next in my Documenting America series. Most likely it will be the former.
I’ve published books 1, 2, and 4 in that series. They are:
Adam Of Jerusalem, about Quelle, the gospel source document
Doctor Luke’s Assistant, about writing the gospel of Luke
Preserve The Revelation, about writing the gospel of John and the Revelation
Though first in the series chronologically, it is the third published, in May 2019.
Sandwiched between those two is a book I’ve tentatively called The Teachings. It will be about the writing of The Didache, which is a book usually titled The Teachings, or, as a longer title, The Teachings of the Apostles. Scholars are divided on when it was written. It is mentioned in church documents of the early 4th Century, though it was lost until discovered in an Istanbul monastery in 1887.
But as to the writing, some say it could have been as early as 50 A.D.; some say as late as 200 A.D. From what I’ve read, while no consensus has been reached, an earlier date seems to be more favored at present. That would put it between the writing of Luke’s and John’s gospels. That allows me to have both Adam and Augustus as main characters in the book, a father and son collaborating. Here’s how I see the series at present.
Adam Of Jerusalem, Adam ben Zachariah researches the teachings of Jesus, prepares a document that becomes the source for Matthew’s gospel. Dates approximately 33-39 A.D.
Doctor Luke’s Assistant, Augustus ben Adam assists Luke in writing his gospel. Adam plays a bit part in this by reference only. Dates 64-66 A.D.
The Teachings, Adam and Augustus both work on preparing a document that summarizes what the apostles teach about the Christian life. Dates 66-75 (approximately) A.D.
Preserve The Revelation, Augustus and his sons assist John writing the gospel of John and then the Revelation. 95-96 A.D.
I started a plot thread in Adam Of Jerusalem that wasn’t in Doctor Luke’s Assistant, that I need to pick up in The Teachings. I’ve figured out how I’ll do this, though not all the details. I think it will all tie-in well, even though the books were written out of chronological order. In fact, I see a way for the plot thread to jump over Preserve The Revelation and be finally resolved in a future book that will deal with documents after the Revelation.
As to the research, I read the Didache again yesterday, and a ten page document that evaluates it. I also read in a book that discusses the theology of the Didache. I’m not sure how far I’ll go in that. It’s probably not necessary for me to fully understand its theology for me to write about it and work in some intrigue and relationships.
October will likely be a research month, as I finish up my two small works-in-progress. Writing may commence in November, though possibly I’ll wait until December, based on many things I have going on.
So, I think it was last Thursday that I started the second round of edits on my novel Adam Of Jerusalem. I completed the first round in mid-December, but had to put it aside as family and Christmas was upon me. I printed it again and put it in the notebook. There were two places where I wanted to work in some backstory. I actually did that around Jan 2-3, but didn’t re-print.
“Adam Of Jerusalem” is a prequel to “Doctor Luke’s Assistant”, and is the first in my church history novel series.
When I read it for the first round of edits, I wasn’t happy with it. Too many places with clunky phrasing. Too many places where my meaning wasn’t clear. And something about the plot that wasn’t quite right. I had begun reading it aloud to my wife, but somewhere, maybe about 95 pages in, I quit that due to my unhappiness with it and went to another part of the house to read it to myself.
Saturday was a rain day, so I didn’t walk. I took two or three hours out in our sun room, in the nice cool temperature, to read around seventy pages. I had a lot of editing marks, but in general I was much more pleased with it than I was a month ago.
Sunday, after church and lunch, and with the weather not particularly conducive to walking, I again went to the sun room and began reading/editing. I got up to page 105 (of a 210 page manuscript, and felt like I was re-reading something I had read the day before. I flipped back fifty pages and, sure enough, I had covered the same Bible story earlier in the book, the one from Acts Chapter 5, where the apostles are imprisoned but miraculously released over-night.
How had I possibly done that? It’s a good story, sure, but to use it in two different places as if it were two different events? Looking back, I figure I must have had a time-gap in my writing. I had put the story in, written some more stuff, taken time away from the book (for whatever reason), then gotten back to it and, forgetting the story was already in there, written it again.
The treatment of the two stories is similar. My protagonist, Adam, is involved in the arrest of the apostles. The first time he was a simple bystander, then sent to check on the condition of the apostles after they were flogged. The second time he was sent by the high priest to facilitate the arrest, to try to convince the apostles not to make a scene when they were arrested.
I stopped my editing and tried to figure out what to do. One of the stories had to go. Which place did it fit in naturally with the rest of the narrative, and which was better written? I’ve found in the past that, normally when you write something twice (such as happened to me three decades ago when I began writing by had a professional paper, lost it, started again, then found the original pages), the first time is better. Would that be the case here? And what to do with the “space vacated” by deleting one of the two?
As I looked at the book, I decided either place would work. To make it consistent with the order in the book if Acts, I would have to either use the first instance or make a slight change in another place to make the chronology work. As to which of the two versions of the repeated story are better, I’ll have to read them both carefully and make that decision.
As to the words lost, I hate to make the book shorter. It’s only a little over 70,000 words, which is shorter than I wanted. I stopped there because the it seemed the story was complete. Why pad it with extra words? But now, to lose words? That’s not what I prefer.
So, last night was a brainstorming night. It didn’t take long for an idea to come to me. Not all my scenes come out of Acts, naturally. I could add an extra-biblical scene where the apostles are confronted in the temple by Jewish leaders, much the same way they confronted Jesus. It gives me some chance to work in some more teaching of Jesus as the apostles debate the Pharisees, Sadducees, chief priests, and teachers of the law.
I went to the place in the manuscript where the first story was, and began typing the new scene. I was only a couple of hundred words into it when I quit for the night. But I finished pleased. Pleased that I had a plan that seems good to me; pleased that I made a start on implementing that plan; and pleased that I’m well into editing.
Oh, and, I found two potential beta readers for my novel, both in my target audience. I won’t give it to them until I have this round of edits done, hopefully in about two weeks.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that writers live and die based on reviews. I think this applies equally to trade-published and self-published authors. Although, the trade publisher has channels to solicit reviews from professional reviewers, whereas the self-publisher is unlikely to have such a network and must rely on the reviews posted by readers on Amazon and similar sites.
Most of us take time (some of us a little, some a lot) to encourage people to review our books after they read them. Alas, few do. I understand that. It takes time for a person to go to Amazon, find the book’s page, and enter a review. Sometimes people don’t want to leave a review if it’s negative, remembering that Mom said, “If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything.” I get it.
Out since 2012, I’ve sold more copies of “Doctor Luke’s Assistant” than any of my books.
Thus, I was excited to find a site that reviews Christian books. Not all my books are overtly Christian, but some are. Interviews and Reviews is the site, run by a woman author who is a member of an internet writing group with me. I checked over the site, saw it was legit, and submitted Doctor Luke’s Assistantas a means of getting my toe wet. It took some time before any of their reviewers set a request for the book. I submitted on April 10, 2018, and one reviewer finally asked for a copy on April 27.
After that, I didn’t hear anything. Books are supposed to stay in the reviewing rotation for a month (plus one extra month if no one requests it). Since DLA is a large book, I knew it would take the reviewer time. Then, on June 5, I received a request for it from a second reviewer. I contacted Amazon, arranged for a copy to be sent, and felt good.
Then I checked the home page of I&R, and saw that a review of DLA had been posted! I went there right away, only to find it was…two stars. That’s two out of five stars, the same review system as Amazon uses. Needless to say, I was sad to see this. Here’s a link to the review.
I don’t fault the reviewer if she didn’t like it. All books cannot appeal to all readers. The gist of her review is this:
…instead of a compelling historical fiction novel, I found the book was mainly a comparison of some of the Gospels and an exploration of what methods might have been used in Luke’s research. What little plot there was existed mainly in the latter half of the book, and even there it was thinly scattered and not used to its full advantage.
That’s rather stinging.
I took a little time to cry over it (not literally), then got past it. I’m sharing it to a wider audience, not to seek sympathy or offsetting reviews, but rather to continue in making my works public and not glossing over anything.
It’s not like I’m the only person to ever receive a negative review. While I was going through some saved links today to see which were still valid and which weren’t, I came across Thomas Babington Macaulay’s review of Robert Southey’s Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society. The review was published in the Edinburgh Review in 1829, when Southey was poet laureate of England. Would Macaulay treat Southey with due respect because of his position? No! Here’s how the review began.
It would be scarcely possible for a man of Mr. Southey’s talents and acquirements to write two volumes so large as those before us, which should be wholly destitute of information and amusement.
Now that is hard-hitting. Yet, Macaulay is far from done.
Yet we do not remember to have read with so little satisfaction any equal quantity of matter, written by any man of real abilities.
Let’s look at one more criticism.
It is, indeed, most extraordinary, that a mind like Mr. Southey’s, a mind richly endowed in many respects by nature, and highly cultivated by study, a mind which has exercised considerable influence on the most enlightened generation of the most enlightened people that ever existed, should be utterly destitute of the power of discerning truth from falsehood. Yet such is the fact.
I could go on, but this would only become repetitive.
I guess I don’t have it so bad. My reviewer ascribed kind motives to me and didn’t question my abilities, only my outcome. And, DLA was my first novel. Hopefully I’m getting better at it.
Lots of activity going on in my household right now, considering I’m the only one there right now. My mother-in-law is now in an assisted living facility near us, and my wife is away for a couple of weeks, helping our daughter and her family move. I was there the last couple of weekends with her. Their truck loading days are today and tomorrow. I would go and help, but with my shoulder not yet fully healed, I decided not to.
So, batching it, what have I been up to?
Writing, for one thing. I’m back on Adam Of Jerusalem, first book in my church history novel series, and the prequel to Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I wrote three evenings this week, adding about 4,000 words to what I had before, and last night getting to the first plot point. While I’ve known for quite a while the story I want to tell with this book, I wasn’t sure what scenes I would have, or how I would get that story told. Despite that, my writing speed is good. Well, last night was a little slower. I added only 1,000 words, possibly because I wasn’t feeling well. Went to bed early.
Another thing occupying my time—so far in just a small way—is blog maintenance. By that I mean I want to go back to old posts and clean up the categories those posts are tagged with. Some I didn’t tag at all, while others were tagged in a way that doesn’t make sense given how my blog has progressed. This is busywork, but I think needed. I have way too many categories and would like to trim it some. Hopefully after this work, the number will be.
Third, I’m doing cleaning in the house. This has been the slowest of the three things in the post title. I’m getting a little done every day. I ironed some shirts that came out of the wash a month or more ago with wrinkled areas, but I haven’t yet put the iron and ironing board away. I disposed of a pile of mail, but haven’t yet filed the things that need filing. I’ve cleaned one or two things off the kitchen table each day, but it’s still a mess. I’ve made a good start on decluttering all my paper, and have tossed many, many sheets, yet still have piles of paper where there shouldn’t be.
Through all of this, I’m still trying to lose weight, and have spent a lot of time walking, most days at noon and some in the evenings at home. I’m at my lowest weight for three or four years, though still have 35 pounds to go to get to the upper end of my target weight range. Ate properly Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week, then kind of lost it last night. Back on track today, I think.
So what do I have in store for this Memorial Day weekend? Writing for sure. By the end of the day Monday I’d like to be a minimum of 7,500 words further along. I believe that’s achievable.
I have more cleaning to do. I’ll progress through that slowly, but by the end of the day Monday: the kitchen table will be clean; the kitchen floor will be mopped; the unfinished piles of decluttering remainders will be gone through and trashed or stowed. Also, all the oak pollen strings will be swept, raked, blown, or by hand put into a pile, and moved to the compost pile. A few weeds will be pulled as well.
I also hope to go through a minimum of 100 of my oldest blog posts not yet touched and clean-up the categories. I did 25 the other day. I believe 100 should be no problem.
For what it’s worth, I plan on some reading for relaxation. I’m on the last 70 pages of Mark Twain’s short stories. I hope to finish that this weekend as well. I believe that’s possible.
I’ll report back with a blog post, probably on Tuesday instead of Monday, and let you know how I did.
Yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, was a good day. It was just the three of us this year, as our large, family gathering will be a Christmas, a change from our normal routine. I fixed a turkey dinner, but without all the side dishes. We ate our full and have plenty of leftovers. Yes it was a good day.
“Mom’s Letter” was the first in the series. This is the cover my son did for it.
But, we couldn’t find much on television that was of interest to us. So Lynda wanted to see the latest episode of The Curse of Oak Island. She couldn’t get it in Oklahoma City on Tuesday night. So I fired up the Roku, had to re-set a password (since it had been a while since we’d used it), and found the show. I had seen it, but it was good to watch it again.
We decided “why not watch some back episodes?” I intended to go to last season, which was season 4, and watch some of the later ones. Somehow, though, I went back to Season 1, so I decided to just start with the very first episode. It was almost as if I hadn’t seen it before, it was so long ago.
One thing that struck me was the similarity of the rhetoric. The searchers for treasure were saying the same thing in Season 1 as they are in Season 5. The narrator’s shtick hasn’t changed at all. It’s always one more search will get us there; we’re inches from the treasure; today may be the day; this new find gives us the motivation to keep on going. That much hasn’t changed, so far into the fifth season.
Published in May, 2011, I’ve sold a whopping 54 copies of this.
It suddenly occurred to me that that’s exactly how I am with my books: hoping this next one will be the breakthrough book, the book that gets widespread attention and lots of sales. My first publication was the short story “Mom’s Letter”. I had no expectations for it to sell. It was a story I wrote for a contest (that I didn’t win), and I self-published it because I didn’t have anything else quite ready, so I published it to see what the mechanics of self-publishing were like.
This was my first book to write, fourth publication. It remains my highest selling book.
I was intending to publishing my first novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant, but I didn’t feel like it was ready. So I pulled together my newspaper columns, expanded them, added fifteen new ones, and had Documenting America: Lessons From The United States’ Historical Documents. I didn’t have high hopes for this one either. It sold 30 or so copies in it’s first year.
It wasn’t until the next year, 2012, that I finally published Doctor Luke’s Assistant. It became, and still is, my highest selling book at 128 copies, adding seven to the total so far this year. Now, you’re going to note that 128 is NOT a lot of copies, and if that’s my highest selling book, how low are the others? Good observation. I had high hopes for my next book, The Candy Store Generation, being a political book in a political season. But it sold poorly: 15 copies its first year and a few each year since.
I was very surprised when this one didn’t sell.
Then came my baseball book, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I thought it was good enough to sell, and would be popular. Alas, not. I sold a few more in 2016, when the Cubs won the pennant, but it still hasn’t sell.
My point is, with each publication (now 26), I’ve thought “this will be the one, the one to breakout.” But each one disappoints. I don’t do a lot of marketing, just Facebook posts. I did one Facebook ad that resulted in no sales. I’ve interviewed authors on this blog, who have sometimes reciprocated. Each of those has resulted in no sales. I did an hour long radio interview, which resulted in no sales. I haven’t done any paid ads yet. Maybe that’s what I need to do. But I’ve thought my publishing should pay for itself, and so far haven’t seen my way clear to buy an ad. Perhaps I’ll change that in 2018.
Even dropping the e-book price to $0.99 has resulted in no sales.
So I’m much like the people searching for treasure on Oak Island. Just keep going, sinking costs—in my case the cost of time—into the endeavor a little at a time, hoping for change, for lightning to strike. My recent publication, When Death Changes Life: The Danny Tompkins Stories, is a boxed set of six related short stories, reaching all the way back to “Mom’s Letter”. I set the price of the e-book at $2.99, and the print book at $6.00. I sold zero. I do have three pre-orders of the print book, which will happen next week once my copies arrive.
I have two works-in-progress. One is a prequel to Doctor Luke’s Assistant, which is more laborious than expected. The other is the sequel to The Gutter Chronicles. I actually have people at work asking for this, so maybe I should turn my attention to it. I could sell 30 copies without difficulty, and might sell 10 to 20 of the first one to people who are new at work.
But will either of these be a breakthrough book? I can hope, I suppose, because without hope there’s no reason to go on. Hope is starting to grow thin, however.
Yes, look at the title. I created a new word: blogivated. Here’s what I propose for a dictionary definition:
blogivated (n): anxious to write a blog post; full of ideas for blog posts; willing to use valuable time to write blog posts
Today, I’m not very blogivated. Actually, I should say tonight I’m not very blogivated, because I’m writing this on Thursday evening to post Friday morning.
This is how the final print cover came out. Better than the draft, I think.
Why not, you ask? I could say busyness is distracting me, and it would be true. As I’ve written recently, I’m super busy at home, and a bit busier than normal at the office. In situations like those, it’s hard to concentrate on blogging.
And yet, to some extent the dam has broken. I feel a number of things have broken free, and I’m able to see through to a less-busy time. Some of these have been writing related. As I reported before, I was able to pull together the print cover for Headshots. It was accepted by CreateSpace on the first submittal; I ordered my proof copy, which hopefully will be here Friday. Assuming it’s good, I could authorize publication tomorrow. That would be great.
First cut at the e-book cover. It’s better than I expected for a first cut. I think I’m learning.
In trying to decide what to do next, I worked some on four different works over the last month. I wrote and typed a few pages in Adam Of Jerusalem, the prequel of Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I pulled together the Danny Tompkins stories together into one volume, edited them, and on Thursday even pulled together an e-book cover. It’s not final, but it’s actually ahead of schedule. I worked a little on a genealogy book, titled Stephen Cross of Ipswich. I’m sure I’ll publish it, and after the work I did this week on it, I have an idea of how much effort it’s going to take. I also worked a little more on Thomas Carlyle: Chronological Composition Bibliography. I have no immediate plans for this one, but will hopefully, someday, publish it, perhaps next year.
All of that is progress. I still have many things to do. Such as purchasing a newer van. Such as selling my pick-up. Such as replacing our dishwasher. Such as making trips to OKC and KC in the next month. Such as preparing to teach Life Group this week. Such as filing financial papers, on which I’m a bit behind (though checkbook and budget is up-to-date). Such as arranging for repairs in The Dungeon from the faulty dishwasher before we quit using it. Yes, plenty to do, still.
But the real answer as to why I can’t get blogivated right now is I feel like my blogging has been fragmented lately. I have had, or perhaps I should say I haven’t taken time, to plan out some posts. I try to stay three to four posts ahead in planning what to blog about. Right now, and for the last month or even longer, I’ve had no plan. The day before Monday and Friday comes, and I have to think about a blog post and write it. As you know, some days I’ve not done a real post, just a “sorry for not posting today.” I should have said, “Sorry for not being blogivated today.”
Tonight, when leave The Dungeon (remember, I’m writing this Thursday evening), I believe I’ll work on a blog schedule. Just knowing what I’ll be posting and when should help me to be blogivated more than I am now. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.
As I said in my last post, the weekend just passed was full of publishing tasks. I made good progress on them, but that will be a subject for a future post.
In terms of writing, one of my current tasks is research on the next book in my Church History series of novels. Tentatively titled Adam Of Jerusalem, it will be the prequel to Doctor Luke’s Assistant. All this I have mentioned before.
My plan is to have Augustus’ father, Adam, as a junior scribe in the high priest’s employ. On the night when Jesus is brought in for questioning and trial, Adam will be sent on an errand to gather members of the Sanhedrin for the illegal nighttime trial. Later, after Jesus’ death and the early growth of the Christian movement, Adam is assigned to gather information on the teachings of Jesus, with the idea that they will prove heretical, and the high priest can use them against what he sees as a threat to his authority.
In essence, Adam will be the one who pulls together the document known today as “Q”. Short for Quelle [i.e. Source], this is a document thought to have existed prior to Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. First proposed in the early 1800s, by the mid-1900s, Christian scholarship seems to have more or less accepted this as having been a true document. It’s contents, while technically unknown, are proposed to be the sayings of Jesus, that large body of teaching that appears in Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark. The supposition is Mark was written first. At the same time, “Q” was written, and was available to both Matthew and Luke as they wrote their gospels. Possibly both Matthew and Luke had other sources, which of course is the subject of Doctor Luke’s Assistant.
So, I’ve been researching “Q”. What I’m finding is its existence actually isn’t all that universally accepted by scholars as I thought. A lot of scholars seem doubtful to downright derisive. If “Q” existed, they say, where are the copies? Why haven’t we found any manuscripts? To that I would counter: We haven’t found any copies of any New Testament manuscripts from the first century. Once the contents of “Q” were incorporated into the gospels, to continue to copy it as a separate document would have been silly. You copy the later and more complete document, not the earlier notes that you used to write the later document. Doesn’t that seem logical?
The “Q” opponents don’t seem to think so. Some of them are almost vitriolic in their arguments against “Q”. Why? I read some other essays/papers on the existence/non-existence of “Q”. What I gather from that is that those who say “Q” existed—at least those who say “Q” existed widely, and was copied frequently and used in the early churches before the gospels were written—say that “Q” represents a purer form of Christian teaching than the gospels do. Why purer? Because it came before the gospels. Why widespread? Because if both Matthew and Luke had it, it must have been often copied and widely disseminated.
So what? you might ask. Why is this important. The proponents of “Q” say it consisted of only sayings/teachings of Jesus, not the virgin birth, not the miracles, not the passion, death, and resurrection. It presented Jesus as a great moral teacher, not the divine Son of God, the God-Man that we think of him as today. So say some of the proponents of “Q”.
This, I think, is the reason why some people are hitting back so hard against “Q”. If you’re going to expand “Q” from someone’s research notes into a document intended to stand alone and be used as teaching, and if you’re going to say that represents true Christianity before it was “corrupted” by all this God-Man gibberish, well, yeah, I can see why other scholars would push back so hard against it.
The amount of time spent on this question, based on the large mass of documents available on it, is mind-boggling. It seems logical to me, almost intuitively obvious, that someone, somewhere, before Matthew and Luke began to write their gospels, had written some notes on Jesus’ sayings. Someone else had probably written something about his passion, death, and resurrection; so it made sense for someone else to concentrate on his teaching. Why argue against that? Why try to make it into a proto-gospel, and claim documents subsequent to it are un-pure Christianity, i.e. corrupted Christianity? It’s this larger claim, I think, that fuels those who say they don’t believe “Q” existed.
Both sides, then, appear to be over-stating things. And so the controversy goes on. Scholars are trying to use what were someone’s simple research notes and make them more than they were, which causes others to say they probably never existed.
My take in Adam Of Jerusalem will be that they existed, but they were never widely copied or disseminated, and never formed a stand-alone teaching document. Maybe that’s a middle-of-the-road position, but I think it’s a good one, and I’m sticking to it.
