Post by unkleE on Jan 16, 2010 22:25:33 GMT
Among Santa's many gifts for me this year was "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" by Richard Bauckham. It "weighs in" at more than 500 pages, but I'm finding it an enjoyable read and I'm more than halfway through it. So I thought I'd see if others have read it, and what they thought.
I've not read anything by Bauckham before, but he is clearly a respected, competent scholar who reads very widely. He also is clearly wiling to challenge well-entrenched ideas.
When I was a young christian and interested in Jesus and history, the standard book in my "evangelical" circles was "The New Testament Documents: are they reliable?" by FF Bruce. He too was clearly a competent scholar, but I didn't know then how far removed he was from the mainstream of the then concluding "Second Quest". So I happily gobbled up his ideas about reliablility, based on the vast documentary evidence and with references to Papias and others on how the Gospels came to be written. I concluded that Peter was indeed the source behind Mark, that Q was probably the logia compiled by Matthew that Papias referred to, and (with some help from CH Dodd) that John's Gospel was based on good eyewitness testimony by one or other of the Johns.
I quietly cherished many of these ideas while I read more widely in recent years, and found that historical scholarship and form criticism had more or less rejected Papias, and had fairly fixed views about oral transmission that threw considerable doubt about the eyewitness basis of the Gospels. I accepted the findings of the "Third Quest" as the best secular historical study could do, but I could readily continue to believe a "stronger" view by faith and reason.
But now Bauckham challenges form criticism and the Second and Third Quests, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if he will be instrumental in starting a "Fourth Quest". The book is that impressive, certainly to my inexpert mind, but has also garnered effusive praise from such luminaries as Tom Wright, James Dunn, Graham Stanton, Martin Hengel and Ben Witherington. (I guess those are the sorts of people you might expect would appreciate it, and of course there are also reviews that find much of it underwhelming, but I'll go with the positives.)
Bauckham re-visits Papias and finds his statements much more credible in the light of recent studies. Two of the major sources of Bauckham's analysis are studies of cultures that are based on orally transmitted stories (he indicates that Bultmann and all the form critics made all their pronouncements about oral tradition without any data on actual oral-based societies!) and psychological and neuroscience based studies of memory. Another source is a study of the usage and frequency of names (Jewish and Greek) in Israel in the NT period, and in the NT, which leads to conclusions on which eyewitnesses were the source of various NT stories. He argues that these sources show that it is much more likely that the Gospels were based on accurate eyewitness testimony, transmitted not through anonymous and gradually modified traditions, but rather accurately transmitted under the oversight of the actual eyewitnesses, predominantly the Twelve.
I have yet to read his conclusions on John's Gospel, so more on that later. But I think the cover blurb describing it as a "tour de force" is not wide of the mark.
Has anyone else read this book, or reviews of it by others?
I've not read anything by Bauckham before, but he is clearly a respected, competent scholar who reads very widely. He also is clearly wiling to challenge well-entrenched ideas.
When I was a young christian and interested in Jesus and history, the standard book in my "evangelical" circles was "The New Testament Documents: are they reliable?" by FF Bruce. He too was clearly a competent scholar, but I didn't know then how far removed he was from the mainstream of the then concluding "Second Quest". So I happily gobbled up his ideas about reliablility, based on the vast documentary evidence and with references to Papias and others on how the Gospels came to be written. I concluded that Peter was indeed the source behind Mark, that Q was probably the logia compiled by Matthew that Papias referred to, and (with some help from CH Dodd) that John's Gospel was based on good eyewitness testimony by one or other of the Johns.
I quietly cherished many of these ideas while I read more widely in recent years, and found that historical scholarship and form criticism had more or less rejected Papias, and had fairly fixed views about oral transmission that threw considerable doubt about the eyewitness basis of the Gospels. I accepted the findings of the "Third Quest" as the best secular historical study could do, but I could readily continue to believe a "stronger" view by faith and reason.
But now Bauckham challenges form criticism and the Second and Third Quests, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if he will be instrumental in starting a "Fourth Quest". The book is that impressive, certainly to my inexpert mind, but has also garnered effusive praise from such luminaries as Tom Wright, James Dunn, Graham Stanton, Martin Hengel and Ben Witherington. (I guess those are the sorts of people you might expect would appreciate it, and of course there are also reviews that find much of it underwhelming, but I'll go with the positives.)
Bauckham re-visits Papias and finds his statements much more credible in the light of recent studies. Two of the major sources of Bauckham's analysis are studies of cultures that are based on orally transmitted stories (he indicates that Bultmann and all the form critics made all their pronouncements about oral tradition without any data on actual oral-based societies!) and psychological and neuroscience based studies of memory. Another source is a study of the usage and frequency of names (Jewish and Greek) in Israel in the NT period, and in the NT, which leads to conclusions on which eyewitnesses were the source of various NT stories. He argues that these sources show that it is much more likely that the Gospels were based on accurate eyewitness testimony, transmitted not through anonymous and gradually modified traditions, but rather accurately transmitted under the oversight of the actual eyewitnesses, predominantly the Twelve.
I have yet to read his conclusions on John's Gospel, so more on that later. But I think the cover blurb describing it as a "tour de force" is not wide of the mark.
Has anyone else read this book, or reviews of it by others?
