He presented his own solution to the synoptic problem, the so-called Farrer hypothesis in a short essay entitled "On Dispensing with Q". Q was the hypothetical source of those parts of Luke's and Matthew's gospel which are not in Mark but which are pretty much identical. He argued against the possibility of reconstructing Q noting that while it might have been impossible to reconstruct Mark from the other gospels had it been lost, Mark had not been lost. "I have a copy of it on my desk." His making short work of such an established hypothesis infuriated many scholars and may have contributed to his not being made Regius Professor of Divinity. Michael Goulder was both a pupil and a notable defender of his thesis.