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>Although many of the sayings in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas were shown to have Gnostic additions to them, the core of the sayings appeared to compliment the counter-cultural sayings in the Synoptic gospels, providing a more solid foundation for the Two-Source and Four-Source Hypothesis. Most modern Biblical scholars now believe that the primary sources used to create the gospels of Matthew and Luke were Mark and Q. But there were also some alternative hypotheses that did not include the use of any hypothetical documents. The Farrer Hypothesis instead posited that the author of Luke simply used Mark and Matthew as sources but decided to only copy sayings and not any narrative elements unique to Matthew. The Griesbach Hypothesis suggested that Luke copied Matthew and that Mark wrote a shorter synopsis-gospel using Matthew and Luke as sources. The Hypothesis named after St. Augustine states that Mark used Matthew as a source and Luke used Mark and Matthew as sources. But by the late twentieth century, these alternative hypotheses were mostly abandoned
>In the 1980s, a Canadian professor of religion John S. Kloppenborg divided Q into three layers of tradition: Q1) The earliest layer of counter-cultural wisdom axioms similar to the Greek Cynic philosophy of abandoning wealth, power, and social conventions; Q2) a secondary layer of apocalyptic pronouncements of End Time judgment on those outside the Jesus movement, and Q3) a final layer of miscellaneous John the Baptist sayings and the “Satan's three temptations in the desert” story. Crossan, The wisdom sayings were believed to go back to the historical Jesus while the apocalyptic metaphors were ascribed to a later editor who had grown bitter at former followers that had fallen away after waiting too long for Jesus to return
