Customer Reviews
Profoundly disappointing! - By: Martin Johnson, 24 Jan 2008 
This book will primarily be of interest to readers who are happy with the basic principles of the form critical approach. Bauckham's assumption that the dates of writing of the Gospels can be set around 50 years after the events they narrate has been robustly challenged by many scholarsin recent years: if so, why no reference anywhere to the fall of Jerusalemin AD 70 & the destruction of the temple? Surely any "redactor" would be keen to introduce this? And as to "eyewitness testimony", what we have is a lengthy study of eyewitness tradition, but not linked to live examples - I would have thought it reasonable, considering Mark's Gospel, to see an analysis of the shift through Greek usage to underlying Hebrew/Aramaic language & culturein 6:39-40 (the "symposia symposia" & "prasiai prasiai" statements) - these were being exploredin 1965 by Lord Elton of Queen's College Oxford, &in Cranfield's commentary on Mark (1959).
It is also hard to understand how a book on this subject, publishedin 2006, could contain only one reference to the work of Carsten Thiede (mis-spelled "Tiede"!!), & that to his discussion of the identity of the companion of Cleopas on the road to Emmaus. Shall we pretend the controversial issues he raised about the possible very early dates of writing of the Gospels don't exist? Shall we cling to the form critical assumptions with blind prejudice?
No, the title & publishers blurb promise a far more interesting narrative than Bauckham has written. Rarely have I felt so misled & money so ill-spent as with this book.
Fascinating but deserves to be treated with caution. - By: Charles Freeman, 03 Sep 2007 
This is an important, scholarly & absorbing book. It should be read by anyone involvedin New Testament studies. Yet its central thesis deserves to be treated with caution. The thesis might be summed upin Bauckham's own words.
The "period between the `historical' Jesus & the Gospels was actually spanned, not by anonymous community transmission, but by the continuing presence [sic] & testimony of eyewitnesses, who remained the authoritative [sic] sources of their traditions until their deaths" .
As a historian I have many reservations about the wayin which Bauckham deals with evidence especially eyewitness evidence which is traditionally treated by historians with caution especially when it is first recorded many years after the event. It is a sad fact that eyewitnesses seldom remember what historians want them to have remembered! His concept of `testimony' is also difficult to deal with as it seems to imply than the evidence of anyone who heard Jesus is somehow more reliable than eyewitness accounts of other events. Yet the emotional drama surrounding many of Jesus' reported activities, large crowds, open disputes, apparent miracles & the trauma of the crucifixion are precisely the kinds of events which do not get reported accurately. Participants are hardly likely to maintain the level headed approach needed for accurate reporting. One sees this everydayin the press!
Bauckham talks of the `continuing presence' of eyewitnesses. Excavations of burials at the Qumran community suggest that few men lived beyond fortyin this period. Someone who was the same age as Jesus was more than likely to have been dead by AD 40, someone ten years younger by AD 50. The likelihood of any eyewitness surviving into the 70s, let alone the 80s & 90s, is certainly remote. Those close to Jesus appear to have suffered a high rate of martyrdom & others alive must have perishedin the sack of Jerusalemin AD 70. Even if there had been a few survivors they would not necessarily have been the best eyewitnesses & their memories would have become distorted with time. Two useful books here: D. Draaisma, Why Life Speeds Up as You Get Older: How Memory Shapes the Past, 2006, David Patterson, Sun Turned to Darkness, Memory & Recoveryin the Holocaust Memoir, Syracuse, 1998. (This last book is importantin view of Bauckham's attempts to link Holocaust memories with those of the gospel eyewitnesses. Holocaust testimony is not as accurate as he would suggest.) There is a mass of evidence relating to the waysin which memory distorts with time. A lot of it comes from diaries which have not been read for many years. There is often an enormous discrepancy between how an event was recorded at the time & how it is remembered many years later. Rather too much of Bauckham's thesis appears to rest on the maintenance of accurate memories over long periods of time.
Other points 1) Bauckham assumes the gospel writers were more immersedin Greek culture, specifically that of history writing , than any evidence from their own writing suggests. Where can one findin Mark, Matthew & even Luke much evidence that they had read widelyin Greek literature or know of any Greek historians? Read, for instance, Plutarch's Lives (early second century, a few years after the gospels) which show just how sophisticated a leading Greek scholar of the day wasin dealing with his sourcesin comparison to the gospel writers. Readers should make their own comparison but if they do I think few would be convinced by the argument that the gospel writers compare favourably with the more highly educated Greek historians. Plutarch, & his predecessors, Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius (The Rise of Rome), all reflect on their sources, point out their strengths & weaknesses, & then explain their own conclusions. The only example I know of a gospel writer doing this is to be found at John 19:35 where the writer vouches for the testimony of an eyewitness.The evidence suggests that the gospel writers were writing within the traditions of Greek-speaking Jews, not highly educated upperclass Greek speaking pagans. The Greco-Roman empire was culturally very diverse, different schools, followers of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicurus , tended to develop their own traditions. I felt that Bauckham had rather too rigid a definition of Greek culture. It was also difficult for anyone without considerable resources to accumulate more than a few literary sources as each would have had to be copied out by hand. The vast majority of literate Greek speakers would have had no access to the long, & therefore very expensive classic texts,although they may have heard some of them recited at fesitvals if they attended them.
2) Papias' memories. Doesn't Bauckham assume too easily that the reminiscences that Papias attributes to a Mark recording the sayings of Peter are the same as the gospel that Irenaeus attributed to Mark (which is the gospel we know today as Mark) ? (Irenaeus' attribution is probably c. 185 & many scholars believe that the names he gave to the gospels were somewhat arbitrary.) Papias had heard from an elderly Christian informant that a Mark took down Peter's sayings but notin order: Peter `used to adapt his instructions to the needs of the moment but not with a view of making an orderly account of the Lord's sayings.' Papias goes on to suggest that his Mark's account is rather lengthy -'he made it his aim to omit nothing he had heard'. This is just what one might expect from Peter, a man of little education but brimming, of course, with powerful memories, contributing his reminiscences to a devoted scribe, which is why Papias might well be a reliable source. If he was, his Mark seems very different from Irenaeus' Mark's taut narrative. The 'Papias Mark is 'our' Mark' thesis also assumes that Peter spoke good Greek- Mark is not a translation from Aramaic. This view is sometimes sustained by the view that Bethsaida, Peter's home' was a Greek colony. Twenty years of excavation at the supposed site of Bethsaida by the University of Nebraska have found only fragmentary remains of buildingin this period, but much evidence of fishing activities. The real importance of the site was much earlier,in the Iron Age. In fact the archaeological evidence (as it exists so far) for this New Testament period seems to support the lonely place mentionedin Luke (9:13) as a fishing village (other gospel references) . So it is unlikely that Peter would have picked up Greekin Bethsaida or anywhere else. It stretches the imagination to believe that Peter spoke good enough Greek to provide eyewitness material which Mark could usein the relatively sophisticated way he does. On balance the identification of Papias' `Mark's gospel' with that of Irenaeus Mark's gospel ('our' St Mark's gospel) seems very unlikely- they appear to be two different documents. It is, however, a central thesis of Bauckham's book that they are the same. (The tragedy is ,of course, that we have lost Papias's document. Think how much our knowledge of the 'historical' Jesus would have been enriched if the reminiscences of Peter as Papias describes them had actually survived! We all (except, I assume, some fundamentalists) livein hope that early documents such as these will be found one dayin a cave. ) The more I read the more I felt that Bauckham's thesis, although not impossible, rested on very shaky foundations . If Papias was an accurate recorder then 'his ' document does not seem to be what we call Mark's gospel, if he not an accurate reporter then why rely on him at all?
3) Bauckham's view that John the Elder was the eyewitness responsible for John's gospel is already subject to dispute in website discussion. There are too many other possible 'John" candidates even if it was a John who actually wrote the gospel ( was it simply another case of Irenaeus putting an authoritative name to an unnamed document?). Again the lateness of John's gospel, ?90 AD, perhaps ten years later, makes it very difficult to argue that a surviving eyewitness would have been able to contribute a direct oral record.
It always takes three or four years for a book of this importance to find its niche.There does seem a lot to argue about & the enthusiastic & perhaps rather uncritical reception this book has receivedin some quarters may prove premature when scholars have reflected on its claims. A historian testing the historical accuracy of the gospels would hope that as many eyewitness memories as possible were recorded as soon as possible after the events so that the recorder could have a hope of checking accuracy & resolving discrepancies while the eyewitesses were still alive. Then the results would need to be written down before they became distortedin the mind of the recorder. This is what the Greek historians hoped to do even if they did not always have access to the eyewitnesses they would have liked. If this is (contra to what Bauckham argues) had happened then one might be able to trust the historical accuracy of the gospels as Bauckham believes we should. Again as with the Papias thesis, Bauckham's view that these very later eyewitness testimonies ( if such they were) would lead to an accurate record, goes against the assumptions with which mainstream historians work.
One looks forward to seeing how the debate unfolds. I have simply set out here some obvious objections to the thesis of this book which need further discussion. Itin no way reflects my admiration for the breadth of Bauckham's scholarship -it is just that I feel that his central thesis might all too easily crumble under pressure from other biblical scholars & readers should be warned of this. I am only giving a historian's response to his thesis.
Insightful Scholarship -- Intriguing Speculation - By: George R Dekle, 03 Jul 2007 
This book sets out to establish that the Gospels compare favorably with other historical & biographical literature from the Classical period, & it makes an admirable case for that proposition. The author recounts the methods of Classical historians & biographers & posits certain literary conventions they used to warrant the accuracy of their text. He then turns to the Gospels, finding that they not only conform to good Classical historiographic methodology, they also make use of the Classical literary conventions warranting accuracy.
Basically, he finds that Classical historians highly valued eyewitness testimony as a basis for their works, & that the Gospels showed the same care to base their accounts on eyewitness testimony. He also demonstrates how, through the use of Classical literary convention, the Gospels identify the eyewitnesses to the various events they recount.
Bauckham engagesin a statistical study of the names of minor characters mentionedin the Gospels, & his findings should raise more than a few eyebrows. It is a complex study, but the bottom line is that the statistical distribution of names of minor characters validates the historical accuracy of the Gospels.
Bauckham also tackles the identity of the Beloved Disciple, drawing parallels between the Beloved Disciple's relationship to Jesus & Porphyry's relationship to Plotinus. Porphyry was a disciple of Plotinus who wrote a biography of that philosopher, & whose self-portrayalin that biography mirrors the portrayal of the Beloved Disciplein the Fourth Gospel. Bauckham identifies the Beloved Disciple as the author of the Fourth Gospel & the three letters of John, & names the Beloved Disciple as John the Elder of Ephesus, a young Jerusalem disciple of Jesus who was not a member of the Twelve.
Interesting reading, to say the least.
