There has been a significant amount of controversy among bible scholars about the sequence in which the canonical gospels were written. A growing group believe that Mark was the first written gospel and that Matthew and Luke were written using material borrowed from Mark and another unknown source. That is to say that both Matthew and Luke have material in their gospels that is common to the gospel of Mark. There is common material found in Luke and in Matthew that is not found in Mark.
While the work of these scholars was originally directed toward the sequence in which the gospels were produced, more than mere timing has resulted from their studies. The search is now on for the source of the information found Mathew and Luke that is absent from Mark’s gospel. This ‘absent’ gospel is titled the Q gospel or Q Source because the original searcher/researcher was German and he was searching for the ‘quelle’, the German word for ‘source’. The Q Source is clearly not the Gospel of Thomas.
Scholars differ as to whether the alleged Q-source was a written source shared by Matthew and Luke, or simply an oral tradition they both had access to. Wherever we land in our conclusions about the method by which the gospel writers compiled their texts, the analysis gives us one clear benefit; because it isolates material that is found in Matthew and only in Matthew, or isolating material that is found in Luke and only in Luke, or isolating material found in Mark and only in Mark, we get clues as to the audience to which the author of these respective gospels was directing his information and also the major theme(s) in each gospel.
It seams that nothing is ever as it first appears.