Comments on Chrisendom: Richard Bauckham on Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

Chris~ Thanks my brother, I should have it in a fe...

2008-03-13T04:09:34.939+01:00

Chris~ Thanks my brother, I should have it in a few days. I'll let you know what I think. I do look forward to it though.

Blessed!

Hi Harvey, thanks for your intelligent comments.
2008-03-12T21:40:13.338+01:00
Hi Harvey, thanks for your intelligent comments.

Yes, he assumes Markan priority , if I remember rightly.

I hope the final chapter will help make sense of some of your concerns.

I have some reservations about the book based on m...

2008-03-08T00:32:57.387+01:00

I have some reservations about the book based on my personal study to this point. Dr. Buckham seems to reinvent the synoptic validity and claims no direct eyewitness for Matthew, Mark or Luke. Then as another writer noted goes on to say that the strongest evidence comes from a writer who according to him DIDN'T travel with Jesus or wasn't personally intimate on his journeys...This is a little too far out there for me.

Another serious issue I have is that he suggests Markan priority. Can anyone verify this from his book?

Anyway, he seems to strip more of the actual witness from the Gospel accounts therby making them more mystical in nature. NOW in all fairness, that's what I've picked up from every review including the review on this sight.

If I'm wrong, I'll come back and say so after I've read it myself, but these are my concerns and thoughts right off the cuff.

Thanks...great Site!

I obtained Richard Bauckham's "Jesus and ...

2007-03-27T13:07:26.664+02:00

I obtained Richard Bauckham's "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" only a week ago and haven't been able to put it down. It is the most interesting and encouraging book I have read for a very long time. More than anything else it has confirmed my faith in the truth of the Gospels.

i want to be given the bibles to read and who my l...

2007-01-03T13:51:57.096+01:00

i want to be given the bibles to read and who my lord god is

i want to be given the bibles to read and who my l...

2007-01-03T13:49:57.250+01:00

i want to be given the bibles to read and who my lord god is

A couple of responses to interesting posts above.<...

2006-12-20T00:41:43.300+01:00

A couple of responses to interesting posts above.

"What does Paul say Jesus ever *did*?"

Not sure what point was being made here. Here is my tuppence-worth. Paul's letters are pastoral (not needing to be biography) and attuned to the pastoral need of the moment. They presuppose a common understanding and knowledge of Jesus, but Paul also cites Jesus' teaching and story quite enough to establish that Paul received the same traditions that found their way into the biblical gospels. See Paul Barnett "The Birth of Christianity: The first twenty years" especially (but not only) chapter 11.

I won't take each controversial post in turn (so as not to be tedious), but for example there is this one: "So Luke would have regarded the Gospel of Mark as being not the sort of thing he valued - being an anonymous written account?" I don't understand this assertion that it would have been anonymous to Luke. Since Luke received a copy as a contemporary, he probably knew exactly who wrote it, and probably knew Mark as being the author, just as Papias did. Have I missed the point you were making?

cheers

Colin

Bauckham says 'Like most historical evidence, ...

2006-11-21T08:17:49.163+01:00

Bauckham says 'Like most historical evidence, what we have is testimony, and it is the kind of testimony ancient historians most valued: the testimony of involved participants who spoke of the meaning of events they experienced from the inside.'

So Luke would have regarded the Gospel of Mark as being not the sort of thing he valued - being an anonymous written account?

Why then did Matthew and Luke use so much of Mark's Gospel, with Luke possibly using Matthew's Gospel as well, when written, second-hand accounts were considered second-rate by ancient historians?

'Of course the resurrection was crucial for th...

2006-11-16T22:30:33.160+01:00

'Of course the resurrection was crucial for the earliest Christians, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't care less what happened before it.'

What does Paul say Jesus ever *did*? (Apart from being present during the Exodus)

And early Christians denied the idea that God would choose to raise a corpse from the grave.

See 1 Corinthians 15 where converts to Christianity scoffed at the idea of a resurrection.

Hadn't they heard the words of their Lord and Saviour in Matthew 22?

I wonder why Paul didn't rub their noses in the fact that the very person they worshipped had said 'I am the way , the resurrection and the life'

Perhaps that hadn't been written yet.

>>>They gave testimony to the 'event&...

2006-11-15T14:51:39.316+01:00

>>>They gave testimony to the 'event' of the risen Christ or Spirit, not to the historical Jesus. That is what they experienced and wanted to communicate, not biography. Bauckham appears to still be talking about a 'testimony of a biography'.<<<

Oh, please. So Jesus' followers magically forgot everything he did and said before the resurrection? This false dichotomy is nonsense. Of course the resurrection was crucial for the earliest Christians, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't care less what happened before it.

Chris,

I miss you, man.

Antonio

2006-11-15T07:36:48.400+01:00

Chris,

I miss you, man.

Antonio

I have been waiting for this book to come out. Ama...

2006-11-15T06:25:25.180+01:00

I have been waiting for this book to come out. Amazon does not have it in stock but the publisher does. Is the book out?

No one will ever persuade me that the Gospel of Jo...

2006-11-14T22:06:15.336+01:00

No one will ever persuade me that the Gospel of John can be reconciled with the synoptics.

Bauckham hypothesizes that John the elder (1) lived in Jerusalem, (2) didn't travel with Jesus, (3) hung with a different crowd of disciples, and (4) felt at liberty to rewrite Jesus' message on the basis of his personal authority.

• How does that speak to the lack of any reference to the kingdom of God (except in dialogue with Nicodemus) in John's Gospel when it is the dominant theme in the synoptics?

• How does it speak to the bald claims of divinity in John (e.g., "Before Abraham was, I am") which have no parallel in the synoptics?

• Does Bauckham's reconstruction really dispense with the lack of parables and short, pithy sayings in John? In other words, the complete loss of contact with the actual voice of Jesus?

• On the other hand, are we to assume that the sources of the synoptic tradition (i.e., the Twelve) were unaware of the raising of Lazarus, or didn't see it as significant enough to bother reporting it?

I accept that the synoptic Gospels are rooted in eyewitness tradition. (I have always thought Bultmann and the form critics were unnecessarily sceptical on this point.)

But John tells a radically different story. Insofar as one demonstrates that the synoptics are grounded in reliable tradition, one also demonstrates that John has lost all contact with that tradition.

In other words, Bauckham's book may be able to reframe the debate about the synoptics, but his argument would have been more persuasive if he hadn't attempted to extend it to John. He would have done well to imitate Wright's example of virtual silence on John. (Or left the fourth Gospel for a later book, after critics had had time to digest this one.)

>>>>It is a mistake to suppose that we...

2006-11-14T21:30:31.676+01:00

>>>>It is a mistake to suppose that we can dig behind the Gospels historically and reconstruct a purely historical Jesus who could be of any significance or interest for faith.<<<<

He should have stopped there. But I fear he sneaks 'faith in a basically historical Jesus' back in what follows....

>>>> Like most historical evidence, what we have is testimony, .......the testimony of involved participants who spoke of the meaning of events they experienced from the inside.<<<

They gave testimony to the 'event' of the risen Christ or Spirit, not to the historical Jesus. That is what they experienced and wanted to communicate, not biography. Bauckham appears to still be talking about a 'testimony of a biography'.

>>> Dispassionate observers are not the best sources for much of what we want to know about history.<<<<

This seems like an unsupported assertion. How are they historically limited? The example of the Holocaust doesn't prove this does it? We could have a fine history written by outside observers collecting data from various sources. This has nothing to do with issues of uniformity, objectivity, subjectivity and the like.
Of course survivors could enlighten us about the minute detail or the feelings of the violence. If that is the analogy then Bauckham is simply claiming that the gospel writers are indeed giving us historically accurate details of the events and their meaning. But Holocaust survivors are not believed, in a historical sense, if they start claiming their camps were transformed into hell and Hitler appeared as Satan. But that is precisely the issue in the gospels. Not insider testimony or outsider objective history, but what is being testified to and does it contain even a small historical kernel.

>>> One can try to test the reliability of witnesses, but then they have to be trusted. We cannot independently verify everything they say and that’s the point of testimony.<<<<

One can easily falsify testimony or expose a witness a false, historically speaking. I think I am hearing this too "fundamentalistically". Perhaps Bauckham simply means the gospel writers in a general sense understand that Jesus is God incarnate in a way outsiders don't or can't. And consequently their way of communicating it may be completely unconcerned with historical accuracy. Of course this leaves the dispute over what the writers are saying exactly about Jesus and then how to reconcile them.

>>>> So while I’m not trying to remove faith in the special sense [of] faith [as the] response to the disclosure of God in the Gospel history<<<

As with Wright, one wonders.

'I think the Beloved Disciple, the author of t...

2006-11-14T18:59:30.363+01:00

'I think the Beloved Disciple, the author of the Gospel, was the man Papias called John the Elder, who had been a personal disciple of Jesus (the older tradition of attributing the Gospel to John the Elder did not reckon with this) and one of the last of such disciples to survive. I take the view that he was a Jerusalem resident who, although committed to Jesus from early on, probably did not travel with Jesus like the Twelve.'

The Beloved Disciple wasn't a disciple?

Bravo, Chris, and bravissimo Richard!

I hav...

2006-11-14T17:53:06.763+01:00

Bravo, Chris, and bravissimo Richard!

I have argued that 'testimony' is always at the nexus of history and theology, and further, that 'real history' is always interested, never disinterested. I am grateful that a scholar of Bauchman's stature has stated so eloquently that the testimony of the witness is the heart of history and theology, and that we can now formally dispense with the false dichotomy of faith and history.

Thanks for the heads-up. i look forward to reading...

2006-11-14T13:05:31.406+01:00

Thanks for the heads-up. i look forward to reading the book, which should be just the sort of thing that we ords suspected to be true of the gospels and were wondering why the scholars couldn't see it!

- referred by OST

Chris, Great job! This was definitely worth the wa...

2006-11-14T06:28:44.160+01:00

Chris, Great job! This was definitely worth the wait!

Thanks again Chris!

RB on the Gospel of J...

2006-11-14T05:25:55.710+01:00

Thanks again Chris!

RB on the Gospel of John: "Precisely because he had been close to Jesus he felt qualified to interpret Jesus."

Way to turn the traditional argument on its head!

This was fantastic. Thanks so much, man.

2006-11-14T00:54:33.903+01:00

This was fantastic. Thanks so much, man.

Comments on Chrisendom: Richard Bauckham on Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

Chris~ Thanks my brother, I should have it in a fe...

Hi Harvey, thanks for your intelligent comments. 2008-03-12T21:40:13.338+01:00 Hi Harvey, thanks for your intelligent comments.Yes, he assumes Markan priority , if I remember rightly.I hope the final chapter will help make sense of some of your concerns.

I have some reservations about the book based on m...

I obtained Richard Bauckham's "Jesus and ...

i want to be given the bibles to read and who my l...

i want to be given the bibles to read and who my l...

A couple of responses to interesting posts above.<...

Bauckham says 'Like most historical evidence, ...

'Of course the resurrection was crucial for th...

>>>They gave testimony to the 'event&...

Chris,I miss you, man.Antonio

I have been waiting for this book to come out. Ama...

No one will ever persuade me that the Gospel of Jo...

>>>>It is a mistake to suppose that we...

'I think the Beloved Disciple, the author of t...

Bravo, Chris, and bravissimo Richard!I hav...

Thanks for the heads-up. i look forward to reading...

Chris, Great job! This was definitely worth the wa...

Thanks again Chris! RB on the Gospel of J...

This was fantastic. Thanks so much, man.

Hi Harvey, thanks for your intelligent comments.
2008-03-12T21:40:13.338+01:00
Hi Harvey, thanks for your intelligent comments.

Yes, he assumes Markan priority , if I remember rightly.

I hope the final chapter will help make sense of some of your concerns.

Chris,

I miss you, man.

Antonio

Bravo, Chris, and bravissimo Richard!

I hav...

Thanks again Chris!

RB on the Gospel of J...