Review of Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Eerdmans 2006

This is a rather academic book so read no further if that's not for you. It's also an old review, I read it back in 2013, but it's message is revolutionary from a biblical studies point of view. We've all read those Da Vinci Code inspired headlines that say the Gospels have been fixed up by the church authorities, we should read the apocryphal gospels instead. Even serious journals like National Geographic have carried them. I'm sure with Easter coming up we'll get these same old stories coming out of the secular press yet again...

Bauckham does away with all that by firmly establishing the links of the Gospels with eyewitnesses from Jesus' own days. The apocryphal gospels, like the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Peter, date from 200 AD or so and clearly don't belong in the same league.

This is the first scholarly book I've read in a while that seems to genuinely want to engage with the Scriptures and find out what kind of writing they are intended to be rather than engage in a polemic for or against them (thought there is plenty of polemic against form criticism in particular as we shall see.) He has made a strong case for the use of research, especially on contemporary naming patterns, to provide worthwhile objective information about the text.

His starting point with a scholar called Papias writing as an old man in the early second century is that there is no reason why he should not have had dealings with Jesus’ younger contemporaries when they had grown older and he himself was still a young man. The assertion that Papias, in writing about his encounters with these eyewitnesses, is referring back to an earlier time in his life seems obvious, leaving one wondering why no-one has picked up on it before – perhaps they didn’t want to?

He has a great quote somewhere here – I wish I could find it, I think it was from Dodd in the 1930s – to the effect that a great deal of gospel scholarship seems predicated upon the ludicrous idea that the various people who were the sources of the gospels gave their testimony verbally and then vanished completely, leaving no check on the validity of what eventually came to be written down. The real life situation must have been that the authors of the traditions continued to be available to the early Christian community as resources to substantiate what was written and its interpretation, though in gradually dwindling numbers as death took its toll through old age, disease or persecution. This state of affairs should have persisted at least up to the time of Papias’ young adulthood. It is also an entirely plausible background to Luke’s researches in the prologues to Luke and Acts.

Bauckham’s general picture then is that there were eyewitnesses to the events described in the Gospels: that of course many of them survived for decades after those events: that they were available as a resource to the early church to recount as well as to interpret the events: and that there can be little doubt that the first Christians made use of them as sources to access stories and teachings of Jesus, including the corroboration of written accounts when they came to be produced. The presence of several sayings of Jesus in the New Testament but outside the Gospels underpins this – eg Acts 20:35, 1 Corinthians 7:10, and possibly 1 Thessalonians 4:15 – and Bauckham has some comment on this in later chapters.

His chapter on Gospel names draws heavily on the research of an Israeli scholar named Ilan who has established which names were the most commonly used in first century Palestine. The origins of the Gospels in a first century Palestinian context are clearly established by this research. Theories that the Gospels are the later creations of Hellenistic communities elsewhere in the Roman Empire, where research shows very different distributions of personal names, are no longer tenable after this: at the very least those communities will have shown a significant commitment to transmitting material from Palestinian sources with great care for accuracy.

I had in fact thought of Alexander and Rufus independently, before reading Bauckham: the only explanation for their appearance in Mark’s narrative as the sons of Simon of Cyrene is that they were familiar by name to Mark’s readers. This of course supports an early date for Mark: he describes Simon, a contemporary of Jesus, to people who know his sons. It doesn’t argue for a super-early date – where is Simon? Why aren’t Mark’s readers as familiar with him? Has he died? – but it would be reasonable to expect that perhaps two or three decades may have elapsed between the events and Mark’s record.

What did surprise me is the extent to which Bauckham attributes so many other Gospel names to eyewitnesses. Is Bartimaeus named, for example, because he became an active member of the early Christian community and a valued eyewitness? Or Jairus? Or is it simply that someone at the time took the trouble to note and remember their names? It is hard to imagine that they, or others named in the record, had no after-life, and if the impact of Jesus on them was as dramatic as is stated in the Gospels one would have to suppose that was likely to include participation in the community of his post-resurrection followers. I buy that but I can see it is difficult for people whose world view makes raising from the dead and restoring of sight problematic – more later.

The contrasting issue is that of people whose names are deliberately withheld, for example the young man who flees naked from the garden of Gethsemane, or the person who smites the ear of the high priest’s servant. Here Bauckham’s case is that these events were too dangerous for names to be put in writing. The authorities still perhaps viewed the events as a conspiracy and there may have been marked men whom they wanted to help them with their inquiries.

I have always had a soft spot though for the view that the naked youth was Mark himself, who is said in Acts 12:12 to have lived in Jerusalem and appears there as a member of the inner circle of the Way. I don’t think there is any incompatibility between this view and Bauckham’s that he might need to make sure his name does not come to the attention of the authorities – in fact all the more so as he and his family lived in easy reach of the authorities and in view of the general climate of fear in Acts 12. Nor do I see an incompatibility with Mark’s role, strongly supported by Bauckham, as Peter’s amanuensis, receiving Peter’s memoirs by dictation. This may well account for the greater focus in the narrative from Mark 11 onwards: Mark may have had some personal recollections to draw on to help him in his arrangement of Peter’s material. However I accept this is speculative.

All this argues for a fairly early date for Mark, during the period while the heat was still on. I do have a concern though, when the presence of eyewitnesses is established both by naming them and by not naming them... However I accept that I am setting up a false dichotomy here; there is no reason why both cannot be the case, provided each instance is well argued.

I was not sure what to make of Professor Bauckham’s research in to oral transmission in other non-literate cultures. He argues that research demonstrates a high level of accuracy in transmission in such cultures, provided the material is of an appropriate genre. Several genres were identified, including fable, where the gist of the story might stay the same and the art was in retelling and re-appropriating the material, through to community history where there would be dedicated practitioners whose job was to ensure that the material was passed on without loss or blemish and who would be rebuked by the whole community if they made a mistake. Verbal patterns might be used as mnemonics to assist with the process  - evidence that there are some of these in the Gospels?

The analogy with eye-witnesses to Gospel events acting as guarantors of the foundational stories of Jesus is obvious – but it is no more than an analogy. We can’t actually demonstrate that elements in the transmission of oral records in the cultures under research were identical to those in New Testament era societies – they may have differed in significant ways not accessible to us. So I think Bauckham over-claims for this. What surely can be said though, in a more minimalistic way, is that can no longer be asserted that a tradition must be inaccurately transmitted purely on the grounds that the transmission process was oral, because some oral cultures are clearly capable of maintaining a very high degree of accuracy.

Bauckham’s work on the psychology of memory I found unhelpful and unengaging. I think the aim was to show that certain kinds of event impact the memory so profoundly that they are retained very vividly for a long period of time. Details may be lost (eg it was a Wednesday, it was raining...) but other details may form an association and become very much a part of the recollection (someone ran up with a sponge, his head was on a little cushion...) But the basics of the memory, who did what, will remain powerfully present. This doesn’t guarantee though that any particular account is an accurate recollection. All it does is tell us that there is no reason why the basic elements of a story about a vivid event (“They were all astonished,” as Mark put it so often) should not be accurately retained in the memory of an eyewitness for the rest of their lifetime.

The really striking thing about Bauckham though is that he makes no mention at all of the issue that provoked the whole liberal crisis of 19^th and 20^th century scholarship. It was the enlightenment world view that led to wholesale rejection of any account of the miraculous. They followed Hume's dictum that, since miracles are contrary to the laws of nature, they cannot happen. Therefore when given an account of a miracle, we should disbelieve the narrator.

Today this dictum seems stupid: the laws of nature have turned out to be stranger and more beautiful than we thought, and we know that they are only summaries of what happens while under our observation. We therefore don't know what the laws of nature are until we have considered all available observations. It is therefore not logical or compatible with scientific method to reject observations on a priori grounds, whether those grounds are religious or philosophical. Observations belong to the category of data, laws of nature to the category of conclusions.

For nineteenth and twentieth century scholars their enlightenment background meant that Gospel studies had to start by rejecting most of the content of the Gospel – any account of miracles, prophecies etc must perforce be fiction, and must also be a late fiction, written long enough after the event for nobody to be in a position to contradict it. This led to the absolute absurdities of the Christian movement having been started by someone who never said or did anything unusual. Moreover their late dates were constantly being undercut as scholarship found earlier and earlier pieces of Gospel manuscript and were forced to accept earlier dates for other New Testament writings.

Be all that as it may, it shows how far and how suddenly the enlightenment position has collapsed that Bauckham doesn't even feel the need to mention it, let alone oppose it.

One thing I would have liked more comment on from Bauckham is the one or two NT passages that seem to give us a brief glimpse of the transmission process actually in operation. I suppose both the passages I'm thinking of are in books of disputed authorship and date and this may be a factor.

2 Thessalonians 4:15 says, "¹⁵ So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings^[a] we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. ^[a] or traditions." Bauckham certainly does mention this verse in more than one place but I would have liked to have seen some interaction with the debate about its date and authorship, especially as the letter as a whole to my mind shows evidence of dating prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 2:4 and also shows connections with Gospel eschatological material.

2 Timothy also clearly indicates an onward transmission process in action, for example 1:13-14: "What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. ¹⁴ Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." Surely Paul or pseudo-Paul is ensuring that transmission of this oral deposit takes place with continuity and integrity here.

The same seems to be true of 3:10 and especially 3:14: "¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it." This is further complemented by the constant use in the letter of memorable or trustworthy sayings, encapsulations of doctrine, warnings of the dangers of departing from the inheritance of faith, and encouragements to further remind others.

A key verse in this matter is 2:2: "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others." The logic is clear: I passed on oral material to you, now you pass it on to others, and see that they in their turn pass it on to still others. A discussion of this could have been doubly illuminating, not only for Bauckham's own thesis on the mechanics of transmission but also reflecting back on the issues of dating 2 Timothy – how does this concern for ensuring the transmission of authentic oral traditions illuminate and fit into the overall picture of the development of the New Testament canon?

These are minor dissatisfactions with a very important and impressive book. Thank you Professor Bauckham! You have established a firm foundation for reading the Gospels as reliable historical testimony. Because of you Gospel studies have a new starting point - in the text and not in the enlightenment preconceptions of their nineteenth century detractors.