Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2nd ed.: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony Hardcover – April 28, 2017

I just finished the Kindle of Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. That is, I just finished the last three chapters which were added on to the second edition. I had read the first edition as a paperback a few years ago and I was very impressed at the time. I’d encourage anyone to get the second edition and go through the whole book but especially the added chapters. (The added chapter on the authorship of John’s Gospel has less to do with form criticism than the others but it is a very interesting and important topic in its own right.) Building on the work of others but also contributing new material and powerful arguments, Bauckham has delivered the final fatal blow to form criticism. Yes, there will be more details to cover and more studies to flush out the remaining resistance. Kuhn demonstrated half a century ago that a true scientific paradigm shift will often never occur until the old generation of scholars passes away and a new one free of their old prejudices emerges. Since biblical scholars are not always as open to solid arguments as scientists, it may take that long or longer before they admit the death of form criticism. They will no longer be able to describe the origins of the NT as a game of telephone with one child whispering into the ear of another in a long line until the final message comes out totally different from the original. The Gospel of Mark, say, likely went directly from Peter to Mark.Even Ehrman’s assault on testimonial evidence from human memory--as thoroughly as he submitted his case in Jesus Before the Gospels—can no longer stand. None of his examples of mistaken memories applies to people who were constantly repeating the stories and teachings of Jesus just days after Pentecost (probably even days after the resurrection). These were people who were not only strongly motivated to accurately recall and repeat what they remembered but they were constantly repeating it within the hearing of others who could correct any minor misstatements. Peter and others would be constantly giving Jesus’ teachings to new converts who had heard very little of Jesus’ words or none at all. At first any errors would be corrected, though these would usually be minor, but then with more repetition the accounts would be deeply engrained in the teachers’ memories. It needn’t have been a verbatim copy of Jesus’ teachings or follow a precise video-like recording of his deeds. Just an accurate paraphrase was sometimes enough (though there is reason to think that sometimes much greater accuracy was maintained).Now if this is just a feasible guess as to how the Gospels came to us, we should recognize that the form critical scenario isn’t even feasible. Should we really think that the first Christians molded and reshaped Jesus’ teachings to their liking or life situation, that they actually thought so little of his original words? Certainly some churches could have been somewhat isolated from other churches and their own memory of the stories and teachings of Jesus they originally received could have become distorted with time. But all that would have changed for them with the writing and dispersal of the Gospels and possibly even with the writing of Q (mostly the teachings of Jesus) some years earlier. Any meager development of oral tradition would not have affected the strong eyewitness basis for the historicity of the Gospels.But that the Gospels came to us primarily directly through eyewitnesses isn’t just a very feasible guess. The external evidence for this scenario is very strong. We have Papias’ word (about 120 CE) that Mark wrote Peter’s teachings as Peter recalled Jesus’ words and deeds . (Just because Papias had some other strange ideas gives us no reason to distrust his testimony here, as Ehrman suggests.) Then around 150 Justin said that the churches read from and accepted as authoritative the Memoirs of the Apostles (including one he called the Memoirs of Peter). (These were “composed by the apostles and those who accompanies them,” he said.) These are likely the four Gospels in that Justin’s disciple, Tatian, later wrote the Diatessaron, which was almost entirely a harmony of the four Gospels. Only the four canonical Gospels, the Gospels we have today in the NT, were unquestionably authoritative as Tatian’s sources. This supports the belief that the Gospel Papias had in mind was the Gospel we know as Mark. External evidences like these (and there are more) should be sufficient to establish the eyewitness foundation for the Gospels, including Peter as Mark’s source. Bauckham’s rigorous study of both internal and external evidence, much very new to the field, is a godsend.In Bauckham’s last added chapter, “The End of Form Criticism,” he says he reached his conclusion “as I allowed the the evidence and arguments to take me the way they did.” (590). Anyone involved in biblical studies should be aware of these arguments. The second edition is available on Amazon for less than $10.

This is a wonderfully fresh, challenging new look at the connection between eye-witness testimony and the Jesus tradition. As it argues for a fairly orthodox interpretation of the origin and transmission of the Jesus tradition, it is bound to stir up a skeptical backlash such as the lengthy (and often distorted or inaccurate) 'critical' review by Neil Godfrey. Nevertheless, it is a genuine work of scholarship, distinguishable from works by more skeptical historians and NT scholars only by the conclusions it reaches. The standard of argument and the use of primary and secondary literature are impeccable, as the knowledgeable reader will discern immediately.Bauckham's case can be (all too briefly) summarized as follows: the Jesus traditions recorded in the canonical Gospels are not two or three generations removed from the eyewitness observers of the ministry and death of Jesus, but at most at one remove. Furthermore these traditions did not pass through a long, anonymous process of modification and expansion, but rather reflect the testimony of specific named tradents who continued to be authoritative sources of the traditions they passed on until they died. He bases this case on several pieces of evidence: 1)the remarks of Papias (and other early Church fathers) on the origins of the Gospels, 2)the named persons in the Gospels most likely reflect eyewitness sources for the Gospel narratives in which they feature, 3)the evangelists use an ancient rhetorical device known as the inclusio (used, for example, by Lucian and Porphyry) to indicate their main eyewitness sources, 4)remarks by Paul indicate the presence of a formal, controlled method of transmitting the Jesus tradition, as well as an official eyewitness collegiate in the form of the Twelve who ensured that the traditions passed on reflected actual contact with Jesus, 5)the pattern of agreement and disagreement among the Synoptic traditions about Jesus is best explained by the agreements and disagreements often observed among eyewitnesses to the same event(s). He devotes several chapters to the Gospel of John as a special case of eyewitness testimony and closes with a philosophical discussion of the role of testimony in the practice of historiography.This thesis is of course open to challenge at several points. One might argue that the ancient sources (NT, Church Fathers) are simply too scanty to make definitive statements about who wrote what and when. One might examine the pattern of agreements and disagreements and conclude that the variations indicate a more informal, less controlled method of transmission of the Jesus tradition, or that the variations are best explained by theological differences among the evangelists. One might not be convinced by the presence of the inclusio in the Gospels, less still by its supposed function (to indicate eye-witness sources). The crux of the matter is that these are legitimate scholarly objections to a legitimate scholarly argument. Given the controversial nature of our sources, it is inevitable that people will disagree with Bauckham, and doubtless some of his arguments are more plausible than others (as he himself admits). But that is no reason to accuse him of producing "pro-medieval, anti-Enlightenment scholarship" (actually, Godfrey would be hard-pressed to come anywhere near the scholarly achievement of some of the medieval scholars, like Aquinas or Grotius or Scotus).Whatever one thinks of Bauckham's overall thesis (I am inclined to think that it is broadly convincing, with some qualifications), he surely points the way forward to a fresh examination of the canonical Jesus traditions. Historical-critical NT scholarship began already loaded with theological presuppositions and primitive, un-scientific understanding of how oral tradition works or how corporate memory is preserved. What is called for is a model of the origin and transmission of the Jesus traditions that account for the pattern of agreement and disagreement we actually find in the Gospels, as well as the presence of non-canonical traditions and the references we find in the Church Fathers. James Dunn in his monumental work Jesus Remembered (Christianity in the Making, Vol. 1) and in the smaller A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed (Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology) has already taken important steps in this direction, while Gregory Boyd and Paul Rhodes Eddy in The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition apply the most up-to-date anthropological and psychological data to testing the plausibility of the models of Dunn and Bauckham. One can only hope that this trend will continue, and that we will gain a much more historically plausible understanding of Jesus and the Gospels, as well as one more congenial to theological concerns (NOT illegitimate, contrary to Godfrey's rants).By all means read Neil Godfrey's review, but bear in mind that he is just as biased (if not more so) as Bauckham, and often misrepresents Bauckham's arguments and intentions, with an appalling lack of intellectual generosity and scholarly acumen. Anyone reading this book with an open mind and a nuanced understanding of what "Enlightenment" really means will greatly profit from it.