"Your father knows that you need all of this": Divine fatherhood as socio-ethical impetus in Q's formative stratum

The observation that the Q people understood themselves as a new symbolic family, with God as Father, is certainly not new in Q studies. Likewise, it is not uncommon for an interpreter to mention during her analysis of an individual Q text that the instruction in question is motivated by imitatio Dei rhetoric. However, the pervasiveness of this link between Q's theology of divine fatherhood and its socio-ethical programme has not received enough attention in Q scholarship. In an attempt to address this deficiency, the current article argues that the idea of divine fatherhood is the primary paradigm that informs, determines and motivates the alternative socio-ethical programme of Q's formative stratum. More than being just an interesting observation in relation to some Q texts, divine fatherhood and imitatio Dei rhetoric are central to the radical socio-ethical programme of Q's formative stratum. After an overview of Q's self-perception as God's symbolic family, the article turns to the analysis of specific texts in Q's formative stratum, first considering the theme of divine fatherhood, and then considering its socio-ethical relevance. These discussions are finally related to the notion of "mutual-mothering," with some implications for our understanding of women in the Q movement.