Richard Bauckham’s
“Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”

Page Contents:

Summary
Full Review
Table of Contents
Our Rating of this book

Summary
Full Review Below

Book Reviewed

Our Rating

Title:	Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
Author:	Richard Bauckham
Binding:	Hardback, 538 pages
Publisher:	Eerdmans: December, 2006
ISBN:	0802831621
List Price:	$32.00
Buy Now For:	$21.12 (34%)	Buy This Book Now From Amazon.com
Review Date:	22 February, 2007
Reviewer:	"J. B."

Highly Recommended

Publisher’ Commentary:

"This new book argues that the four Gospels are closely based on eyewitness testimony of those who knew Jesus. Noted New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham challenges the prevailing assumption that the accounts of Jesus circulated as "anonymous community traditions," asserting instead that they were transmitted in the name of the original eyewitnesses. To drive home this controversial point, Bauckham draws on internal literary evidence, study of personal names in the first century, and recent developments in the understanding of oral traditions...Jesus and the Eyewitnesses also taps into the rich resources of modern study of memory and cognitive psychology, refuting the conclusions of the form critics and calling New Testament scholarship to make a clean break with this long-dominant tradition. Finally, Bauckham challenges readers to end the classic division between the "historical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith," proposing instead the "Jesus of testimony." Sure to ignite heated debate on the precise character of the testimony about Jesus, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses will be valued by scholars, students, and all who seek to understand the origins of the Gospels..."

Bookshop Summary: Bauckham beats the form critics into the ground. Sometimes ponderous but never without value.

Eyewitness Beats the Witless

A review of Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

by
"J. B."

Bauckham's done it again with another excellent book. This serves as a nice refresher from the countless works out there that adamantly deny that eyewitnesses of Jesus' ministry had anything more than a distant and tangential connection to the Gospels. Along with explaining ancient views on historiography and clearing the field of the faulty assumptions of form criticism, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses takes a number of fascinating avenues to the destination, not the least of which is a study of Gospel onomastics (names as found in the Gospels). Bauckham also highlights a feature used in the Gospels, the inclusio, that serves to highlight eyewitness sources, such as Peter, the women disciples (see this review of Bauckham's Gospel Women, another recommended book), and John. The cases he makes for both the reliability of Papias and the identification of the author of the Johannine literature with a disciple of Jesus named John the Elder are quite powerful. Questioning the reliability of eyewitness testimony, even if the Gospels have it? Bauckham covers that ably as well, drawing on discipleship in the ancient world and psychological studies of memory. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses finishes up by highlighting the strength and value of eyewitness testimony before wrapping up a strong work with a proposal to tear down the dichotomy between the "historical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith" in favor of the "Jesus of testimony", a category appropriate for both realms.

I (JPH, my own note here) did have reservations about a couple of Bauckham's views. For example, I think he gives away too easily the idea that Matthew is not equal to Levi. His take on John as being by an eyewitness, but not the son of Zebedee, may raise some hackles, but is just as good in my view as an attribution to Zebedee's son in terms of value of testimony. That said, (back to J. B. here) every serious student of the Gospels should have this book. It's simply an invaluable resource. We can only hope that the effect it has on future scholarship is even more massive than the book itself.

Read J. B.'s more detailed review here.