>That being said, even if we did find Q or something like it, would it change much about our understanding of that time in history?
I'm not a biblical scholar by any means, but I don't think Q needs to be a specific individual source (although it could be), you just need to understand that the later books all incorporate shared material that came from somewhere other than mark. It could be that all incorporate the same subset of oral histories, or the same material from multiple sources. It's just the idea that there is some larger source of material that predates mark that the others are pulling from.
I'm not a biblical scholar by any means, but I don't think Q needs to be a specific individual source (although it could be), you just need to understand that the later books all incorporate shared material that came from somewhere other than mark. It could be that all incorporate the same subset of oral histories, or the same material from multiple sources. It's just the idea that there is some larger source of material that predates mark that the others are pulling from.