Congratulations to Richard Bauckham
Phil Groom informed me this morning that Richard Bauckham has won the 2009 Michael Ramsey prize, for his brilliant book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
Our warmest congrats to Richard, who, besides getting this honour, also pockets a prize of £15,000!
It was tough competition too: David Brown, God & Grace of Body: Sacrament in Ordinary; Richard Burridge, Imitating Jesus; Sebastian Moore, The Contagion of Jesus; and Anthony Thiselton, The Hermeneutics of Doctrine.
posted by Chris Tilling @ 11:18 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
Amazing!
Any chance of me posting a gratuitous ad hominem comment on the quality of research in Bauckham's book?
It is better than the research in Michael Drosnin's book....
Huh! For all my appreciation for Bauckham, my money would've been on Thiselton.
Chris,
What exactly was Bauckham's reply to the fifth question you asked him a while back:
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
My biblical-studies colloquium questions to Bauckham
5) You write on page 3: 'Among current historical Jesuses on offer there is the Jesus of Dominic Crossan, the Jesus of Marcus Borg, the Jesus of N. T. (Tom) Wright, the Jesus of Dale Allison, the Jesus of Gerd Theissen and many others. The historian's judgment of the historical value of the Gospels may be minimal, as in some of these cases, or maximal, as in others, but in all cases the result is a Jesus reconstructed by the historian, a Jesus attained by the attempt to go back behind the Gospels and, in effect, to provide an alternative to the Gospels' constructions of Jesus'.
What would research into the historical Jesus look like in light of your thesis, then, especially as you allow for a good deal of interpretive development in the Jesus traditions and you yourself deal with various testimonies, e.g. that of Papias, in a selective manner such that you accept parts and reject other elements of the testimony (practicing what you preach in relation to the dialectic of trust and critical assessment). And why do you think Tom Wright - who doesn't practice a comprehensive mistrust of the Gospels and is perhaps only as selective as you were with, say, Papias' statements - is 'attempting to go back behind the Gospels ... to provide an alternative to the Gospels' constructions of Jesus'?
Ed, I think I posted a link to the archives here on the blog - have you looked?
Hi Ed,
I honeslty cannot remember what ws said back then. Try going through the archives.
Esteban, Thiselton's book is great too - surely they all were. But, well, you know where I stand on the Bauckham book!
Anyone who thinks Bauckhams book is impressive should broaden their horizons and read the chapter by chapter dismantling of this so-called "scholarship" on Neil Godfreys web site--vridar.wordpress.com
The fact that this apologetic drivel passes for scholarship is simply laughable.
Actually, Kilo, I read it and thought the series was mildly helpful, but it was sometimes outrageously innacurate and unreasobale, I couldn't recommend it to others. Far from "dismantling" it, your opinion that it is "apologetic drivel" needs a reality check.
nope, no time - no more examples than Kilo!
Kilo linked to a whole series of articles by Bauckham.
Bauckham has nothing but ad hoc hypotheses and totally off-the-top-of-someone's head concepts like 'protective anonymity', unevidenced , unconvincing and unworthy of the name of scholarship.
"Kilo linked to a whole series of articles by Bauckham"
Not in this blog post he didn't.
"... unworthy of the name of scholarship"
When you understand what scholarship is, you may find that claim embaracing.
Surely others would find that claim embracing?
That is a sweet metaphor to use.
I see Bauckham's book got a pretty bad review in a recent journal.
'In spite of the fact that Richard Bauckham has produced a very learned and well-stated argument, his case for the Gospels as eye-witness testimony is unconvincing. If one assumes the two-source hypothesis, as Bauckham does, there is no point in arguing over Matthew and Luke: their sources (Mark and Q) are clear, and clearly not living eye-witnesses but written sources. Bauckham's arguments that would convince one that at least Mark and John rely upon eye-witnesses ultimately succumb to strong counter indications. The pattern of naming names in the synoptics offers no peculiarities necessitating Bauckham's assertion that they are actually the names of eye-witnesses. The theory of an inclusio of eyewitness testimony falters against the fact that Bauckham's eyewitnesses (Peter for Mark and the Beloved Disciple for John) are not actually present for the crucial events they are to have witnessed. And the shift from plural to singular third person voices would be more convincing if any of our Gospels used a consistent first person voice, singular or plural. Finally, Bauckham's appeal to Gerhardsson's model of a Jerusalem school from which Paul learned to memorize Jesus traditions exposes him to all the objections raised against that earlier argument, for which Bauckham offers no remedy.'
There doesn't seem to be a single argument of Bauckham's which even gets off the ground.
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