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The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus
In this book Michael Bird describes how the canonical Gospels originated from a process of oral tradition, literary composition, textual development, and reception in the early church with a view to showing what makes them among the most important writings in the New Testament.Bird explores how the Christian movement shaped the Gospels and, conversely, how these writings shaped the early church. He develops a distinctive evangelical-and-critical approach to the Gospels, deals with the Synoptic problem head-on, and explains the significance of the fourfold Gospel canon. The book includes a number of helpful excursuses on related topics.All in all, Bird's Gospel of the Lord clarifies the often-confusing debates over the origins of the Gospels and offers informed and soundly argued explanations that account for the content of the Gospels in the context of the wider Graeco-Roman world.
408 pages, Paperback
First published March 31, 2014
71 people are currently reading
256 people want to read
About the author
Michael F. Bird
87 books159 followersDr. Michael Bird (Ph.D University of Queensland) is Lecturer in Theology at Ridley Melbourne College of Mission and Ministry. He is the author of several books including Jesus and the Origins of the Gentile Mission (2006), The Saving Righteousness of God (2007), A Bird’s-Eye View of Paul (2008), Colossians and Philemon (2009), Crossing Over Sea and Land: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (2009), and Are You the One Who is to Come? The Historical Jesus and the Messianic Question (2009).
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
September 25, 2019
Well written and informative
A solid introduction to the Gospels, their histories as far as scholars know them, their interrelationships, and their selection for the canon.
A solid introduction to the Gospels, their histories as far as scholars know them, their interrelationships, and their selection for the canon.
March 15, 2023
2023 reads: 06
Rating: 4 stars
Michael F. Bird is emphatically clear in his aims. His goal centers on how the Gospels came to be, what kind of literature they are, and how they relate to Christian discource about God. (7) Connected to this is the interplay between how the communities of early Christianity shaped the Gospels, and how they in turn were shaped by the Gospels. (7) In short, 'The Gospel of the Lord' focuses on the origins and development of the Gospels in the context of the early church. (7) How did these Gospels emerge? Why did they take on the shape and character that they did? These questions are explored with attention given to the Gospels’ purpose, formation, literary genetics, genre, goal, and why we have four. Bird’s conclusion is that the “Gospels reflect the literary crystallization of the Jesus tradition, supplement Christian preaching about Jesus with didactic content, and exemplify early Christian interpretation of the Old Testament.”(20).
Bird’s enterprise mirrors the efforts of N. T. Wright who’s method of historical realism has wrested biblical studies, and Jesus research in particular, from ideal pietism and cynical historicism. Bird is very much concerned about history but does not neglect theology in his quest for the origins and development of the Gospels. Overall the contribution is well reasoned, reasonable, witty, and largely convincing. I find the synoptic question largely vexing, as discussions of hypothetical situations encircle like preying vultures on unsuspecting would-be confident opinions. But Bird steadies a measured path.
In terms of new ideas and questions for further inquiry, two stand out: first, the reality of the “community possession” and “social memory” were new categories for me. I thought they were reasonably argued and historically viable. I was reminded of Gal 1.8-9 which assumes a communal, ecclesial interest in the ‘Gospel’. Conceiving of memory as the “the constant renegotiation of past and present in social and cultural frameworks,” (135) opens up a new paradigm for me to think through, especially as it relates to the Gospels. What was especially helpful was Bird’s subsumming of source and tradition criticism under the rubric of social memory (142). Given that memory takes on a dramatized element, I could not help but think of Kevin Vanhoozer’s work along similar lines. A dramatic inquiry into the Gospel tradition is worth developing, especially for discipleship/catechesis. Second, and related to my own research interests more acutely, I was intrigued by Bird’s insistence that a “paradigm shift is required in seeing the Jesus tradition not exclusively in terms of verbal transmission but also of praxis, deed, and behavior delivered on to others.” (83) More to the point, the intersection of the Jesus tradition, memory, and Torah reception are ideas I’d like to explore further. This dovetails with Wright’s focus of ‘praxis’ as determinative for aims and beliefs.
[Read for the Gospels & Acts Doctoral Seminar with Dr Pennington]
Rating: 4 stars
Michael F. Bird is emphatically clear in his aims. His goal centers on how the Gospels came to be, what kind of literature they are, and how they relate to Christian discource about God. (7) Connected to this is the interplay between how the communities of early Christianity shaped the Gospels, and how they in turn were shaped by the Gospels. (7) In short, 'The Gospel of the Lord' focuses on the origins and development of the Gospels in the context of the early church. (7) How did these Gospels emerge? Why did they take on the shape and character that they did? These questions are explored with attention given to the Gospels’ purpose, formation, literary genetics, genre, goal, and why we have four. Bird’s conclusion is that the “Gospels reflect the literary crystallization of the Jesus tradition, supplement Christian preaching about Jesus with didactic content, and exemplify early Christian interpretation of the Old Testament.”(20).
Bird’s enterprise mirrors the efforts of N. T. Wright who’s method of historical realism has wrested biblical studies, and Jesus research in particular, from ideal pietism and cynical historicism. Bird is very much concerned about history but does not neglect theology in his quest for the origins and development of the Gospels. Overall the contribution is well reasoned, reasonable, witty, and largely convincing. I find the synoptic question largely vexing, as discussions of hypothetical situations encircle like preying vultures on unsuspecting would-be confident opinions. But Bird steadies a measured path.
In terms of new ideas and questions for further inquiry, two stand out: first, the reality of the “community possession” and “social memory” were new categories for me. I thought they were reasonably argued and historically viable. I was reminded of Gal 1.8-9 which assumes a communal, ecclesial interest in the ‘Gospel’. Conceiving of memory as the “the constant renegotiation of past and present in social and cultural frameworks,” (135) opens up a new paradigm for me to think through, especially as it relates to the Gospels. What was especially helpful was Bird’s subsumming of source and tradition criticism under the rubric of social memory (142). Given that memory takes on a dramatized element, I could not help but think of Kevin Vanhoozer’s work along similar lines. A dramatic inquiry into the Gospel tradition is worth developing, especially for discipleship/catechesis. Second, and related to my own research interests more acutely, I was intrigued by Bird’s insistence that a “paradigm shift is required in seeing the Jesus tradition not exclusively in terms of verbal transmission but also of praxis, deed, and behavior delivered on to others.” (83) More to the point, the intersection of the Jesus tradition, memory, and Torah reception are ideas I’d like to explore further. This dovetails with Wright’s focus of ‘praxis’ as determinative for aims and beliefs.
[Read for the Gospels & Acts Doctoral Seminar with Dr Pennington]
May 26, 2015
Michael Bird’s The Gospel of the Lord is a critical investigation into the origins of the New Testament Gospels. Unlike Gospels surveys, Bird does not treat the typical issues of prolegomena but focuses on the “the origins and development of the books we call ‘Gospels’ in the context of the early church” (Gospel, ix). The first three chapters focus on the Jesus tradition—the pre-literary forms of the gospels, their purpose, preservation, and formation. The fourth and fifth chapters are dedicated to the Synoptic problem (and its relationship to the Gospel of John) and the genre of the Gospels. The sixth and final chapter addresses the fourfold Gospel: Why four Gospels and why these four Gospels? Each chapter ends with a relevant excursus, some of which could be chapters in their own right.
Bird approaches his task of historical reconstruction with humility: “At the end of the day most of what is said about the formation of the Jesus tradition is based on a priori assumptions, circumstantial evidence, inference, hypothesis, analogy, conjecture, and sheer guesswork. We will never arrive at a foolproof theory of how the Jesus tradition was handled and developed into the canonical Gospels, but the exercise remains necessary as a prolegomena to historical Jesus research” (Gospel, 66-67).
Chapter one is the introduction, “From Jesus to Gospels,” which defines and lays the foundation for the rest of the book. The chapter itself is only five pages long but its 15-page long excursus, “From Oral Gospel to Written Gospel,” does the heavy lifting for the chapter. Arguing against the consensus, Bird believes the the origin of the New Testament use of euangelion is not the imperial cult but is located instead in the Old Testament book of Psalms and especially Isaiah. He concedes that the New Testament may parody or even critique the imperial cult but its roots lay in Isaiah’s prophetic vision of the “glad tidings” of the Lord’s reign and the end of exile. It is worth noting here that Bird dedicates this book to N.T. Wright, saying that reading Jesus and the Victory of God was when he left the Matrix and felt like he was “being slapped in the face with a very soggy fish” (Gospel, x). Chapter one concludes that “the Gospels are biographical expansions of the preached gospels, developed into a known literary form, for a wide array of purposes, including evangelistic, didactic, and formative” (Gospels, 20).
Chapter two asks why the early church would have preserved the Jesus tradition and how would they have been able to do so. Why was the Jesus tradition preserved? Bird postulates four reasons: (1) it provided content to the faith of the church; (2) it was the foundation for the praxis of faith; (3) it provided the church with a self-definition as it emerged from Judaism; and (4) Jesus was the movement’s founder, which itself would generate interest. So if the early church had motivation to preserve the Jesus tradition did they have the ability to preserve that memory? Bird offers several examples of how the early church could have done this, such as interest in Jesus, pedagogical and rhetorical devices, Aramaic sources, even suggesting that the disciples could have had notebooks (if Arrian could publish his recording of Epictetus’ teaching, could not Jesus disciples at least recorded some of his sayings?). Bird gives the most attention in this chapter to his suggestion that eyewitnesses served as authenticators of the Jesus tradition. If eyewitnesses lived for several decades after the cross then they could, “inform, shape, and even to some extent ‘police’ the developing oral and written traditions about him” (Gospel, 49). Bird anticipates objections to this suggestion and argues well that the teachers in the early church served as “custodians of the Jesus tradition” (Gospel, 63), instead of creators of the Jesus tradition. He finally argues that the Jesus tradition was a community possession and not the possession of an exclusive group within the community.
The excursus following chapter two, “An Evangelical and Critical Approach to the Gospels,” is worth the book. Bird searches for the harmony between faith and critical scholarship, which itself is false dichotomy influenced by those who, as Bird describes, have their knowledge of Jesus more influenced by The Simpsons than with sound historical investigation and those, on the other hand, who find research in John’s chronology “as religiously affronting as worshipping a life-size golden statue of Barack Obama” (Gospel, 67-68). Instead, Bird proposes what he calls “believing criticism.” “To understand the substance of Scripture means wrestling with its humanity, the human face of God’s speech to us in his Word” (Gospel, 68). The Gospels are not timeless myths nor are they brute facts stripped of theological meaning. “While I think the overall historical reliability of the Gospels is vitally important, lest we treat them as religiously laden fiction, we should not import anachronistic and modernist criteria of historical reality into our treatment of the Gospels and make it a condition for theological validity” (Gospel, 71). Bird, then, suggests that we practice “believing criticism” with a “hermeneutic of trust” in the Scriptures as well as courage to do the hard work of historical investigation.
Chapter three examines the formation of the Jesus tradition. Bird overviews several models of oral tradition, from “irretrievably lost,” “fluid, flexible, free” (the Jesus Seminar), to “informally controlled” (Kenneth Bailey), finding fault with all. Following James Dunn, Bird proposes a social memory model of oral tradition. He explains, “In social memory theory, the past is not something that is purely a matter of cognitive store-and-retrieve function; rather, past memories are mounted on mental artifacts that are reconstructed in light of the needs of the present” (Gospel, 99). Bird argues that social memory is reliable because, (1) Jesus was a life-changing figure, (2) the memory was controlled by the community, and that (3) the memory was repeated in the ministry of Jesus itself as well as in the life of the church. The apostles and early disciples were not isolated communities who occasionally recalled something Jesus said. Instead, they were highly networked communities and were constantly teaching and, thus, constantly retrieving these memories, making it unlikely the early church forgot the sayings and stories of Jesus a couple of decades after he died and then created then from nothing. “The Gospels intend to narrate a back-then story and to evoke the right-now significance of one called Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, and the world’s rightful Lord” (Gospel, 113).
The excursus for chapter three is “The Failure of Form Criticism.” Why do we still need to address form-critical theories? As Bird puts it, like Rome salting Carthage, “it is still necessary…to salt the earth to make sure that nothing ever grows from it again” (Gospel,114). The major weaknesses of form criticism were mirror-reading the community’s situation into the Gospels, assuming that there was a “pure form” of oral tradition that was corrupted (instead of a messy oral tradition that was refined as it was documented), the absence of eyewitnesses to authenticate the development of the tradition, and the assumption that oral tradition would develop in the same way as written documents.
Chapter four is “The Literary Genetics of the Gospels” which summarizes the Synoptic Problem and its relationship to the Gospel of John, and, not surprisingly, is the longest chapter in the book. This chapter includes synopses in Greek and English to illustrate the odd relationship between the Synoptics. Bird summarizes each major theory (Augustinian, Griesbach, Aramiac Ur-Gospel, Two- (Four-) Source Theory, Farrer Theory), their main proponents, their strengths, and their problems. Bird himself accepts the priority of Mark and some kind of Q document, though he is skeptical of the elaborate reconstructions of Q’s tradition history. After admitting that none of this is a closed case and the whole endeavor is subjective, Bird argues for the Holtzmann-Gundry Hypothesis (Three-Source Theory), which is essentially a mediating position between the Four-Source Hypothesis and the Farrer Hypothesis. He strangely argues for Marcan Priority, Matthew and Luke’s use of Q, and Luke’s use of Matthew because the Double Tradition cannot accounted for just with Q nor just with Luke’s use of Matthew. Thus, the Three-Source Hypothesis is essentially the Four-Source Hypothesis with a toned-down Q theory, plus Luke’s use of Matthew. “It is entirely plausible, if not likely, that some other written and oral sources may have been jointly shared by Luke and Matthew. The result may be a Q-lite” (Gospel, 171).
While Bird’s proposal is just as subjective as its predecessors, it may help advance Synoptic research. Following E. P. Sanders, Bird believes the next Synoptic theory accepted will be more flexible and complicated than the simple and tidy Two-Source Hypothesis. One weakness of this chapter is that while Bird cites Mark Goodacre, he does not engage him in detail. This, however, reflects the main weakness of the book: what Bird achieves in breadth he sometimes must sacrifice in depth. Regarding John’s relationship to the Synoptics, Bird engages with a range of scholarship but ends simply affirms that the Fourth Evangelist had some kind of exposure to the Synoptic tradition and that the Fourth Gospel stems from “the testimony of a Judean disciple of Jesus, the Beloved Disciple, who wrote a Gospel in Ephesus, which was later appended with an appendix by his followers” (Gospel, 213). The excursus to this chapter is a collection of patristic quotations on the order of the Gospels, from Papias to the Muratorian Fragment.
Chapter five asks to what literary genre do the Gospels belong and what purpose did they serve? On genre, Bird follows the work of Richard Burridge, arguing that the Gospels are more like Greco-Roman biography than anything else we know. “The content of the Gospels is singularly determined by Jewish Christian content, while the literary form of the Gospels is a clear subtype of Greco-Roman biography” (Gospel, 270). Bird prefers to call the Gospels “biographical kerygma” (Gospel, 271) because they were derived presumably from Christian preaching about Jesus and because they are an extension of the Old Testament story of God’s salvation of his people. This implies that the Gospels should be studied in light of both orality and textuality, they should be historically referential, and they are all about Jesus, not his post-resurrection sayings. On the purpose of the Gospels, Bird follows the work of Richard Bauckham, arguing that the Gospels were not written for isolated communities settling internal debates but that they “are purposed for a mixture of apologetics, instruction, social legitimation, worship, and evangelism. Their audiences were most likely an immediate network of co-believers and benefactors, but they were also written with a view to widespread dissemination among wider circles who shared similar beliefs” (Gospel, 280).
The excursus for chapter five asks what should we do with the “other” gospels? Bird proposes that “all books and writings pertaining to Jesus should go under the heading ‘Ancient Jesus Literature’” and that the title “Gospel” should be restricted for those books and writings that are based on the “gospel.” This would then exclude works like the Gospel of Thomas but include the canonical Gospels, perhaps some Jewish Christian Gospels and Gospel harmonies, and maybe even the Gospel of Peter (Gospel, 289). The excursus includes some reasons the “other” gospels did not make it into the canon.
Chapter six explores the reasons why there are only four Gospels in the canon, as well as why these four Gospels are in the canon. He believes that “the formation of the fourfold Gospel collection was not due to a top-down episcopal imposition, but emerged out of the networking of literature among proto-orthodox believers in the late first and early second centuries” (Gospel, 321). While Marcion may have been a factor, he was only a minor factor. The four Gospels were the most popular and persuasive and had the best apostolic connections. The second century was the “womb for canonical development” and what the councils said in the fourth century “was a natural outcome from what was said about Christian literature in the second century,” which gives us “not a formal canon, but rather a canonical trajectory” (Gospel, 322-23). Regarding why these four Gospels are in the canon, Bird argues that the four Gospels “exhibit a plurality and unity that both encourages and restricts christological reflection” and, like the Pentateuch, the four Gospels “provide a strong impetus to make sure that Christian faith is shaped around Jesus and around his teaching, his death, and his resurrection” (Gospel, 326-27). As such, the Gospels “should rightly be considered the canon within the canon because Jesus himself is the epicenter of Christian faith” (Gospel, 328). The final excursus explains how the texts of the Gospels in the second century reveal that no significant changes took place in the textual base but that it was a stable text that was faithfully transmitted.
I recommend The Gospel of the Lord for students and other interested readers. While his book is not groundbreaking in Gospels research, it is a fine, accessible synopsis of Gospels literature. Bird says a lot in a little space and engages an impressive breadth of scholarship. He is concise and consistent in his treatment of the literature and his focused yet humorous writing style makes the work all the more engaging. The wide scope of the book makes it suitable for a Gospels survey class or a critical introduction class. Detailed footnotes and a 33-page bibliography also make this a great resource for graduate students interested in the critical issues of the New Testament Gospels.
Bird approaches his task of historical reconstruction with humility: “At the end of the day most of what is said about the formation of the Jesus tradition is based on a priori assumptions, circumstantial evidence, inference, hypothesis, analogy, conjecture, and sheer guesswork. We will never arrive at a foolproof theory of how the Jesus tradition was handled and developed into the canonical Gospels, but the exercise remains necessary as a prolegomena to historical Jesus research” (Gospel, 66-67).
Chapter one is the introduction, “From Jesus to Gospels,” which defines and lays the foundation for the rest of the book. The chapter itself is only five pages long but its 15-page long excursus, “From Oral Gospel to Written Gospel,” does the heavy lifting for the chapter. Arguing against the consensus, Bird believes the the origin of the New Testament use of euangelion is not the imperial cult but is located instead in the Old Testament book of Psalms and especially Isaiah. He concedes that the New Testament may parody or even critique the imperial cult but its roots lay in Isaiah’s prophetic vision of the “glad tidings” of the Lord’s reign and the end of exile. It is worth noting here that Bird dedicates this book to N.T. Wright, saying that reading Jesus and the Victory of God was when he left the Matrix and felt like he was “being slapped in the face with a very soggy fish” (Gospel, x). Chapter one concludes that “the Gospels are biographical expansions of the preached gospels, developed into a known literary form, for a wide array of purposes, including evangelistic, didactic, and formative” (Gospels, 20).
Chapter two asks why the early church would have preserved the Jesus tradition and how would they have been able to do so. Why was the Jesus tradition preserved? Bird postulates four reasons: (1) it provided content to the faith of the church; (2) it was the foundation for the praxis of faith; (3) it provided the church with a self-definition as it emerged from Judaism; and (4) Jesus was the movement’s founder, which itself would generate interest. So if the early church had motivation to preserve the Jesus tradition did they have the ability to preserve that memory? Bird offers several examples of how the early church could have done this, such as interest in Jesus, pedagogical and rhetorical devices, Aramaic sources, even suggesting that the disciples could have had notebooks (if Arrian could publish his recording of Epictetus’ teaching, could not Jesus disciples at least recorded some of his sayings?). Bird gives the most attention in this chapter to his suggestion that eyewitnesses served as authenticators of the Jesus tradition. If eyewitnesses lived for several decades after the cross then they could, “inform, shape, and even to some extent ‘police’ the developing oral and written traditions about him” (Gospel, 49). Bird anticipates objections to this suggestion and argues well that the teachers in the early church served as “custodians of the Jesus tradition” (Gospel, 63), instead of creators of the Jesus tradition. He finally argues that the Jesus tradition was a community possession and not the possession of an exclusive group within the community.
The excursus following chapter two, “An Evangelical and Critical Approach to the Gospels,” is worth the book. Bird searches for the harmony between faith and critical scholarship, which itself is false dichotomy influenced by those who, as Bird describes, have their knowledge of Jesus more influenced by The Simpsons than with sound historical investigation and those, on the other hand, who find research in John’s chronology “as religiously affronting as worshipping a life-size golden statue of Barack Obama” (Gospel, 67-68). Instead, Bird proposes what he calls “believing criticism.” “To understand the substance of Scripture means wrestling with its humanity, the human face of God’s speech to us in his Word” (Gospel, 68). The Gospels are not timeless myths nor are they brute facts stripped of theological meaning. “While I think the overall historical reliability of the Gospels is vitally important, lest we treat them as religiously laden fiction, we should not import anachronistic and modernist criteria of historical reality into our treatment of the Gospels and make it a condition for theological validity” (Gospel, 71). Bird, then, suggests that we practice “believing criticism” with a “hermeneutic of trust” in the Scriptures as well as courage to do the hard work of historical investigation.
Chapter three examines the formation of the Jesus tradition. Bird overviews several models of oral tradition, from “irretrievably lost,” “fluid, flexible, free” (the Jesus Seminar), to “informally controlled” (Kenneth Bailey), finding fault with all. Following James Dunn, Bird proposes a social memory model of oral tradition. He explains, “In social memory theory, the past is not something that is purely a matter of cognitive store-and-retrieve function; rather, past memories are mounted on mental artifacts that are reconstructed in light of the needs of the present” (Gospel, 99). Bird argues that social memory is reliable because, (1) Jesus was a life-changing figure, (2) the memory was controlled by the community, and that (3) the memory was repeated in the ministry of Jesus itself as well as in the life of the church. The apostles and early disciples were not isolated communities who occasionally recalled something Jesus said. Instead, they were highly networked communities and were constantly teaching and, thus, constantly retrieving these memories, making it unlikely the early church forgot the sayings and stories of Jesus a couple of decades after he died and then created then from nothing. “The Gospels intend to narrate a back-then story and to evoke the right-now significance of one called Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, and the world’s rightful Lord” (Gospel, 113).
The excursus for chapter three is “The Failure of Form Criticism.” Why do we still need to address form-critical theories? As Bird puts it, like Rome salting Carthage, “it is still necessary…to salt the earth to make sure that nothing ever grows from it again” (Gospel,114). The major weaknesses of form criticism were mirror-reading the community’s situation into the Gospels, assuming that there was a “pure form” of oral tradition that was corrupted (instead of a messy oral tradition that was refined as it was documented), the absence of eyewitnesses to authenticate the development of the tradition, and the assumption that oral tradition would develop in the same way as written documents.
Chapter four is “The Literary Genetics of the Gospels” which summarizes the Synoptic Problem and its relationship to the Gospel of John, and, not surprisingly, is the longest chapter in the book. This chapter includes synopses in Greek and English to illustrate the odd relationship between the Synoptics. Bird summarizes each major theory (Augustinian, Griesbach, Aramiac Ur-Gospel, Two- (Four-) Source Theory, Farrer Theory), their main proponents, their strengths, and their problems. Bird himself accepts the priority of Mark and some kind of Q document, though he is skeptical of the elaborate reconstructions of Q’s tradition history. After admitting that none of this is a closed case and the whole endeavor is subjective, Bird argues for the Holtzmann-Gundry Hypothesis (Three-Source Theory), which is essentially a mediating position between the Four-Source Hypothesis and the Farrer Hypothesis. He strangely argues for Marcan Priority, Matthew and Luke’s use of Q, and Luke’s use of Matthew because the Double Tradition cannot accounted for just with Q nor just with Luke’s use of Matthew. Thus, the Three-Source Hypothesis is essentially the Four-Source Hypothesis with a toned-down Q theory, plus Luke’s use of Matthew. “It is entirely plausible, if not likely, that some other written and oral sources may have been jointly shared by Luke and Matthew. The result may be a Q-lite” (Gospel, 171).
While Bird’s proposal is just as subjective as its predecessors, it may help advance Synoptic research. Following E. P. Sanders, Bird believes the next Synoptic theory accepted will be more flexible and complicated than the simple and tidy Two-Source Hypothesis. One weakness of this chapter is that while Bird cites Mark Goodacre, he does not engage him in detail. This, however, reflects the main weakness of the book: what Bird achieves in breadth he sometimes must sacrifice in depth. Regarding John’s relationship to the Synoptics, Bird engages with a range of scholarship but ends simply affirms that the Fourth Evangelist had some kind of exposure to the Synoptic tradition and that the Fourth Gospel stems from “the testimony of a Judean disciple of Jesus, the Beloved Disciple, who wrote a Gospel in Ephesus, which was later appended with an appendix by his followers” (Gospel, 213). The excursus to this chapter is a collection of patristic quotations on the order of the Gospels, from Papias to the Muratorian Fragment.
Chapter five asks to what literary genre do the Gospels belong and what purpose did they serve? On genre, Bird follows the work of Richard Burridge, arguing that the Gospels are more like Greco-Roman biography than anything else we know. “The content of the Gospels is singularly determined by Jewish Christian content, while the literary form of the Gospels is a clear subtype of Greco-Roman biography” (Gospel, 270). Bird prefers to call the Gospels “biographical kerygma” (Gospel, 271) because they were derived presumably from Christian preaching about Jesus and because they are an extension of the Old Testament story of God’s salvation of his people. This implies that the Gospels should be studied in light of both orality and textuality, they should be historically referential, and they are all about Jesus, not his post-resurrection sayings. On the purpose of the Gospels, Bird follows the work of Richard Bauckham, arguing that the Gospels were not written for isolated communities settling internal debates but that they “are purposed for a mixture of apologetics, instruction, social legitimation, worship, and evangelism. Their audiences were most likely an immediate network of co-believers and benefactors, but they were also written with a view to widespread dissemination among wider circles who shared similar beliefs” (Gospel, 280).
The excursus for chapter five asks what should we do with the “other” gospels? Bird proposes that “all books and writings pertaining to Jesus should go under the heading ‘Ancient Jesus Literature’” and that the title “Gospel” should be restricted for those books and writings that are based on the “gospel.” This would then exclude works like the Gospel of Thomas but include the canonical Gospels, perhaps some Jewish Christian Gospels and Gospel harmonies, and maybe even the Gospel of Peter (Gospel, 289). The excursus includes some reasons the “other” gospels did not make it into the canon.
Chapter six explores the reasons why there are only four Gospels in the canon, as well as why these four Gospels are in the canon. He believes that “the formation of the fourfold Gospel collection was not due to a top-down episcopal imposition, but emerged out of the networking of literature among proto-orthodox believers in the late first and early second centuries” (Gospel, 321). While Marcion may have been a factor, he was only a minor factor. The four Gospels were the most popular and persuasive and had the best apostolic connections. The second century was the “womb for canonical development” and what the councils said in the fourth century “was a natural outcome from what was said about Christian literature in the second century,” which gives us “not a formal canon, but rather a canonical trajectory” (Gospel, 322-23). Regarding why these four Gospels are in the canon, Bird argues that the four Gospels “exhibit a plurality and unity that both encourages and restricts christological reflection” and, like the Pentateuch, the four Gospels “provide a strong impetus to make sure that Christian faith is shaped around Jesus and around his teaching, his death, and his resurrection” (Gospel, 326-27). As such, the Gospels “should rightly be considered the canon within the canon because Jesus himself is the epicenter of Christian faith” (Gospel, 328). The final excursus explains how the texts of the Gospels in the second century reveal that no significant changes took place in the textual base but that it was a stable text that was faithfully transmitted.
I recommend The Gospel of the Lord for students and other interested readers. While his book is not groundbreaking in Gospels research, it is a fine, accessible synopsis of Gospels literature. Bird says a lot in a little space and engages an impressive breadth of scholarship. He is concise and consistent in his treatment of the literature and his focused yet humorous writing style makes the work all the more engaging. The wide scope of the book makes it suitable for a Gospels survey class or a critical introduction class. Detailed footnotes and a 33-page bibliography also make this a great resource for graduate students interested in the critical issues of the New Testament Gospels.
September 10, 2020
I really liked this author's approach to critical issues involving the gospels. This excerpt is from Chapter 2:
"There are two approaches to the Gospels that I ardently deride. First, some über-secularists want to read the Bible as nothing more than a deposit of silly ancient magic, mischievous myths, wacky rituals, and surreal superstitions. They engage in endless comparisons of the Bible with other mythic religions to flatten out the distinctive elements of the story. Added to that is advocacy of countless conspiracy theories to explain away any historical elements in the text. This approach is coupled with an inherent distaste for anything supernatural, pre-modern, and reeking of religion. Such skeptics become positively evangelical in their zealous fervor to prove that nothing in the Bible actually happened. Second, then there are those equally ardent Bible-believers who want to treat the Bible as if it fell down from heaven in 1611, written in ye aulde English, bound in pristine leather, with words of Jesus in red, Scofield’s notes, and charts of the end times. Such persons regard exploring topics like problems in Johannine chronology just as religiously affronting as worshiping a life-size golden statue of Barack Obama. Now I have to say that both approaches bore the proverbial pants off me. They are equally as dogmatic as they are dull. They are as uninformed as they are unimaginative. There is another way!
"My own approach is what I would term “believing criticism.” This approach treats Scripture as the inspired and veracious Word of God, but contends that we do Scripture the greatest service when we commit ourselves to studying it in light of the context and processes through which God gave it to us. Scripture is trustworthy because of God’s faithfulness to his own Word and authoritative because the Holy Spirit speaks to us through it. Nonetheless, God has seen fit to use human language, human authors, and even human processes as the means by which he has given his inscripturated revelation to humanity. To understand the substance of Scripture means wrestling with its humanity, the human face of God’s speech to us in his Word. That requires that we can freely engage subjects such as how the text of the Gospels was transmitted (text criticism), sources that the Evangelists used (source criticism), when and where were the Gospels written (historical criticism), why the Gospels were written (literary criticism), what kind of literature they are (genre criticism), how the Evangelists edited and adapted their sources (redaction criticism), how the story in its current shape creates meaning (narrative criticism), how the stories of Jesus interacted with cultural values and modes of discourse (social-scientific criticism), and how the Gospels came to be accepted as the four official stories of Jesus sanctioned by the early churches (canonical criticism). These are legitimate inquiries, not in spite of but precisely in light of the faith communities who cherished the Gospels as testimonies to Jesus Christ."
(Michael F. Bird, The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 67–68.)
"There are two approaches to the Gospels that I ardently deride. First, some über-secularists want to read the Bible as nothing more than a deposit of silly ancient magic, mischievous myths, wacky rituals, and surreal superstitions. They engage in endless comparisons of the Bible with other mythic religions to flatten out the distinctive elements of the story. Added to that is advocacy of countless conspiracy theories to explain away any historical elements in the text. This approach is coupled with an inherent distaste for anything supernatural, pre-modern, and reeking of religion. Such skeptics become positively evangelical in their zealous fervor to prove that nothing in the Bible actually happened. Second, then there are those equally ardent Bible-believers who want to treat the Bible as if it fell down from heaven in 1611, written in ye aulde English, bound in pristine leather, with words of Jesus in red, Scofield’s notes, and charts of the end times. Such persons regard exploring topics like problems in Johannine chronology just as religiously affronting as worshiping a life-size golden statue of Barack Obama. Now I have to say that both approaches bore the proverbial pants off me. They are equally as dogmatic as they are dull. They are as uninformed as they are unimaginative. There is another way!
"My own approach is what I would term “believing criticism.” This approach treats Scripture as the inspired and veracious Word of God, but contends that we do Scripture the greatest service when we commit ourselves to studying it in light of the context and processes through which God gave it to us. Scripture is trustworthy because of God’s faithfulness to his own Word and authoritative because the Holy Spirit speaks to us through it. Nonetheless, God has seen fit to use human language, human authors, and even human processes as the means by which he has given his inscripturated revelation to humanity. To understand the substance of Scripture means wrestling with its humanity, the human face of God’s speech to us in his Word. That requires that we can freely engage subjects such as how the text of the Gospels was transmitted (text criticism), sources that the Evangelists used (source criticism), when and where were the Gospels written (historical criticism), why the Gospels were written (literary criticism), what kind of literature they are (genre criticism), how the Evangelists edited and adapted their sources (redaction criticism), how the story in its current shape creates meaning (narrative criticism), how the stories of Jesus interacted with cultural values and modes of discourse (social-scientific criticism), and how the Gospels came to be accepted as the four official stories of Jesus sanctioned by the early churches (canonical criticism). These are legitimate inquiries, not in spite of but precisely in light of the faith communities who cherished the Gospels as testimonies to Jesus Christ."
(Michael F. Bird, The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 67–68.)
June 28, 2019
I have been meaning to read a descent volume by Bird for some time, and I thoroughly enjoyed this book examining the Gospels and how the Story of Jesus was preserved and past on. Bird does a fine job of examining the Synoptic Problem and how John fits into everything (though personally I think John is more historical then it is given credit for) - so this area alone makes for a worthwhile read. However we also have a good coverage of oral vs written transmission that argues well for a more both/and approach to an either/or approach in the early church. He also does quite a good introduction into the "Other" Gospels - showing not only their deficiencies but also their value - this added to by a good coverage of 2nd Century Christian writers.
So I will definitely be seeking our more books by this fellow Aussie :)
So I will definitely be seeking our more books by this fellow Aussie :)
Read
February 21, 2025This book intends to introduce the study of the Gospels and discuss how they came to be. For that purpose, the book does the job. A wide array of questions and materials are surveyed in this work. Bird has a knack for taking complex issues, breaking them down, and analyzing them in terms that the reader can understand. He surveys a broad range of secondary literature. His conclusions are often very nuanced and he does not force conclusions beyond the evidence. I learned a great deal from this book and was reminded of many things that I have learned in the past. A worthwhile read.
August 26, 2023
This book review is written from the perspective of a layman, an engineer with no bible college or seminary background. If you want a theologian’s perspective, you will need to look elsewhere.
In this book, Dr. Bird discusses “the four big questions that need to be addressed in any account of the origins of the Gospels.”
1. Why did the church attribute such authority to Jesus’ words?
2. How was the Jesus tradition transmitted?
3. What were the sources behind the Gospels, what genre are the Gospels, and why would anyone even write a Gospel?
4. Why four Gospels?
When Christians think of the gospel, they often think of Paul’s formulation in 1 Cor. 15, that Jesus died for our sins, was buried and was raised on the third day. This is true, but there is much more to it. For example, Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom (Mt. 4:23; Mk. 1:14-15; Lk. 4: 18-21, 43). What was this gospel of the kingdom. As noted by Dr. Bird, the inscription evidence indicates that “gospel” was primarily associated with military victory and the benefits, whether real or perceived, conveyed by the emperor, and Old Testament usage is likewise associated with military triumph although the prophets also associate it with Yahweh’s reign, the end of the exile and Israel’s restoration. So, the “gospel” equally refers to God’s coming kingdom. In other words, God’s victory in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus was not simply the conquest of death, hell and the grave, but also a dramatic manifestation of His kingship. Why else would Jesus have said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me?” And why else would his disciples have said, “We shall obey God rather than man,” even at the risk of their lives. Herod the Great definitely recognized this, as shown by his attempt to kill Jesus, whom we saw as a threat to his authority. As Dr. Bird said, “Paul was put to death, not because of some internalized spirituality but because he was travelling around the eastern Mediterranean declaring the kingship and victory of the Lord Jesus on the turf claimed by Caesar.”
Given such a high view of God’s kingship as manifested by Christ, it was inevitable that the early church would place a priority on the preservation of the Jesus tradition, and this would necessarily include not just Jesus’ teaching, but His deeds, as well. While it is not clear how much of the tradition was written down in notes or maintained as oral tradition prior to the completion of the four Gospels, the potential for oral tradition to maintain the integrity of the tradition must not be underestimated. Much of the material attributed to Jesus contains Hebrew poetic features such as parallelism and chiasmus that could serve as mnemonic devices. In addition, Dr. Bird documents evidence for the use of notebooks among the elites of the Greco-Roman world as well as for their use in contemporary rabbinic education. For this reason, while no such first-century notebooks of the Jesus tradition are extant today, there is no reason to discount the potential for their usage in preserving it. The Gospels also feature evidence of eyewitness testimony. For example, in the Lukan prologue (Lk. 1:1-4), there is mention of both eyewitnesses and servants of the word, and the structure of the Greek (one article modifying both nouns) suggests that they represent the same group of people, eyewitnesses who went on serve as leaders in the church and maintain a controlling force on the tradition. As long as they lived, they could correct errors and would have been motivated to do so. Furthermore, as the Christian community itself became increasingly familiar with the tradition, it could also transmit and preserve it. If someone tried to invent something new out of whole cloth, why wouldn’t Christians speak up when something didn’t seem right?
One area of scholarly discord is the role of oral tradition in the formation and maintenance of the Jesus tradition that culminated in the Gospels, with positions including:
• Complete inability to recover any vestige of oral tradition from the written evidence. Dr. Bird rejects this because the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament are the textual product of the oral activities of the early church.
• The form critical position that the early church altered and contaminated the Jesus tradition as necessary to meet its needs. Not surprisingly enough, Dr. Bird rejects this because taking flagrant liberties with the Jesus tradition should have raised objections, a point noted above. Related to this, he also argues that the church interpreted the tradition using the Old Testament as a framework rather than manufacturing traditions to conform with Old Testament types. I couldn’t agree more.
• A rabbinical model of students memorizing the teachings of their instructors. There is some merit to this position given the mnemonic devices in Jesus’ saying although insufficient evidence to declare victory.
• Informal transmittal of the tradition in which anyone in the community can participate in the retelling of stories and sayings with the collective memory of the community providing quality control. Dr. Bird sees a lot of merit to this concept in part because it is consistent with sociological studies and proceeds to develop his own theory building off it.
Inspired by James Dunn’s book Jesus Remembered, which I haven’t yet read, Dr. Bird postulates a theory of social memory, in which “past memories are mounted on mental artifacts that are reconstructed in light of the needs of the present,” in which the early church appropriated “the past in light of and with respect to their present contexts.” Consider the instances in which Jesus’ disciples didn’t understand something Jesus said or did but later remembered what he said, understanding and/or interpreting it in the light of intervening events such as His death and resurrection. These words and deeds of Jesus would become the highest authority for instruction within the early church. For this reason, it was of paramount importance for the church to faithfully recall Jesus’ words and deeds. While the above discussion regarding oral tradition is somewhat tedious both in the book and here in my review, I recognize its importance because a number of skeptics discount the reliability of oral tradition. Church leaders and laymen must be able to defend the scriptures, and this is one of the battle grounds.
One consequence of the four Gospels, as written, is the synoptic problem, why Matthew, Mark and Luke are so similar to each other yet diverge in various ways, and the Johanine problem, the sources of the Gospel of John and its relationship to the Synoptic Gospels. Similarities in the Synoptic Gospels include widespread verbal agreement (The Greek text comparisons included in the book are truly impressive, often with identical wording.), the use of the same outlines of pericopes, the same parenthetical remarks and the same unique Greek translations of Old Testament texts. All of this suggests an interrelationship between the Synoptic Gospels. In his Harmony of the Gospels, Augustine contended that the Gospels were written in the order of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Even so, a close look at the Gospels calls this into question, and theories of interrelationship have proliferated like Tribbles. Before defining and defending his own theory, he addresses the following:
• Griesback hypothesis. Luke used Matthew as a source, and Mark used both Matthew and Luke as sources. The major objection pertains to why Mark would write a shorter version Matthew and Luke and leave out what he did.
• There was a common Hebrew or Aramaic written source used independently by all three of the Synoptic Gospels. Given that no two people translate alike, why is there such extensive verbal agreement?
• There was a common pool of oral and/or written sources used independently by all three of the Synoptic Gospels. This theory is also undermined by the extensive verbal agreement between the Synoptic Gospels. Furthermore, it fails to explain how three authors independently settled on the same order and the same sentence constructions.
• Two- (four-) source theory. Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. Material shared by Matthew and Luke but not Mark comes from a hypothetical document called “Q.” Material unique to Matthew comes from source “M,” and material unique to Luke comes from source “L.”
• Farrer theory. Matthew used Mark as a source, and Luke used both Mark and Matthew as sources. Dr. Bird favors this theory because it eliminates the need for the hypothetical “Q” document.
In his own formulation, Dr. Bird advocates for Markan priority, that Mark was a source for both Matthew and Luke. Aside from the material common to Matthew and Mark and common to Luke and Mark, he notes that (1) the order of the units and sections in Mark is generally supported by Matthew and Luke, (2) that Matthew and Luke tend to improve Mark’s grammar, (3) that Matthew has a large number of singular and unparalleled rendering of Old Testament texts, and (4) that Matthew and Luke have a more highly developed Christology than does Mark. While he is skeptical of Q research on account of its history of speculation that he calls “building castles in the air,” he does believe in the existence of a shared written source used by both Matthew and Luke. However, he still believes that Luke used Matthew as a source, primarily because of minor Matthew-Luke agreements against Mark in non-Q material such as the passion narrative. That said, I didn’t find the examples he provided to be persuasive. Yes, there was some verbal agreement, but not enough to make a solid case.
Regarding Johanine authorship, there are two possibilities, the Apostle John or a Judean disciple of Jesus named Johnn who went on to lead the Christian community in Ephesus. Dr. Bird acknowledges the lack of certainty here and leaves it at that. He prefers to focus on questions about the differences between the Gospel of John and the Synoptic Gospels. For example, there are narrative differences that include a different geographical focus (e.g. multiple trips to Jerusalem prior to the passion week) and different sequences of events (e.g. the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry). The Synoptic Gospels hint at Jesus’ divine authority while John is very explicit. The themes of John are substantially different from those of the Synoptic Gospels. For these reasons, much ink has been spilled over John’s sources. Different theories of literary relationship between John and the Synoptic tradition include:
• The Gospel of John was written as a supplement to the other Gospels, adding details they omitted and emphasizing the spirituality of Jesus’ message.
• John was written with readers of Mark in mind, a theory postulated by Richard Bauckham.
• John was written to displace the Synoptic Gospels, a position undermined by the fact that it never criticizes other examples of the Jesus Tradition.
• There is a literary dependence of Johnn on Mark, yet only 8% of the Synoptic tradition parallels John.
• John was influenced by the Synoptic Gospels by performance or secondary orality. While Dr. Bird finds this credible, he acknowledges that it is unprovable.
• The Gospel of John is textually independent of the Synoptic Gospels, but their underlying traditions mutually influenced each other.
• There are several interlocking traditions between John and the Synoptic Gospels with partial parallels that are insufficient to imply a strict literary dependence. Dr. Bird sees merit here while also acknowledging that apparent Johanine clarifications could easily be explained by Johanine harmonizations of Synoptic material.
• John is completely independent of the Synoptic tradition. Dr. Bird questions how the author of John could have been ignorant of Mark given how widely it circulated.
Dr. Bird’s own position is that the author of John was familiar with the Synoptic tradition and some of the Synoptic Gospels (Mark and possibly Luke), as indicated by his frequent parenthetical remarks as well as some verbal connections with Synoptic material in John 6 and 18-20. However, the author drew on different traditions and had his own unique goals and purposes.
Given the authoritative nature of the Gospels, it is imperative to understand their genre, as this impacts one’s choice of hermeneutical principles. In the modern era, the Gospels have been viewed as a unique genre in the Greco-Roman world, but this consensus has been eroded in recent years as scholars have been comparing them to various ancient literary forms:
• As noted above, the Gospels have been seen as a unique type of Christian literature, but they contain too many affinities with Greco-Roman literature for this to be credible.
• Some see a resemblance to literary forms found in the Old Testament, second temple literature or rabbinic biography, and it is true that there is a deliberate intertextual relationship between the Old Testament and the Gospels.
• Aretology is a Greek biography of a “divine man” who was an impressive teacher, performed miraculous deeds and died a heroic death. Dr. Bird notes that the features of the “divine man” in later antiquity cannot be confidently traced back to an earlier era and may have been intended as a pagan rival to the Gospels. I remember similar issues addressed in Ronald Nash’s The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought?
• Some have seen parallels with Greek tragedy and ancient novels, but the presence of dramatic, comic and tragic elements in the Gospels constitute a mode of presentation of the narrative, not necessarily a genre.
• The form that best matches the Gospels is Greco-Roman biography, which often feature the hero’s ancestry and birth, anecdotes about his upbringing and debut into public life, accounts of his sayings and deeds, his death, and his legacy.
As biographies of Jesus, the gospels were viewed as authoritative, as sacred scripture analogous to the Old Testament scripture, by the early church because they contained the words of Jesus and the living memory of His apostles. For example, Mark constituted a written statement of the teachings received orally from Peter, who had been Mark’s mentor. Even so, the Gospels were a distinct adaptation of the biographical genre. Consider their theology, in which Jesus is the main character, but God is the subject and source of Jesus’ work, their Christology as presented in their story of Jesus and their intertextuality with the Old Testament as a continuation of the narrative of the great acts of God toward His people throughout history. For this reason, Dr. Bird classifies the Gospels as biographical kerygma. Some scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann, have emphasized the kerygma at the expense of history, but it cannot be disentangled from the Jesus of history as described in the Gospels’ biographical accounts that were most likely written to provide the early church with a record of Jesus’ words and deeds to enable them to imitate Him.
Why four Gospels, especially the four Gospels in the New Testament? Why not just one? Marcion chose a single Gospel, a version of Luke with all hints of anything Jewish surgically removed, and I think I remember reading that the Ebionites tended to prefer Matthew. Furthermore, several Christian authors drafted Gospel harmonies based primarily on the four Gospels along with some contribution from other Jesus traditions. Another option was to write another Gospel to rival the four Gospels. For example, the Gospel of Thomas appears to have been a deliberate attempt to compete with proto-orthodox Christians and supplant their writings. So, settling on one Gospel or a harmony or even writing another Jesus account were all potentially viable options. Yet, over the course of the second century, the four Gospels proceeded on a trajectory from being treated as scripture by Christians to serving as part of an open canon and finally moving toward a closed canon. In other words, there was no concern with the parallel existence of four Gospels. They exhibit a plurality demonstrating that no single Gospel possesses a monopoly on describing Jesus as He was, and they also exhibit a unity, setting the boundaries for Christological discourse.
As noted at the beginning of the review, Dr. Bird set out to answer four questions. Mission accomplished. I don’t doubt that the typical layman would be put off by the level of detail in this book and might not even grasp why it is important. For at least two centuries, tendentious scholars have challenged the integrity and authority of the scriptures, and every time their objections are addressed, they come up with more objections. Reasonable level of questioning attitude or a desperate search for an excuse to disbelieve? Regardless of the answer, there have been several effects, some positive and some negative. On the one hand, addressing such objections have kept faithful Christian scholars such as Dr. Bird on their toes. On the other hand, such objections have wrecked the faith of Christians and have discouraged non-Christians from even critically examining the reasons to believe. That said, although I don’t agree with all of Dr. Bird’s conclusions, I appreciate his efforts to defend the integrity of the scriptures.
In this book, Dr. Bird discusses “the four big questions that need to be addressed in any account of the origins of the Gospels.”
1. Why did the church attribute such authority to Jesus’ words?
2. How was the Jesus tradition transmitted?
3. What were the sources behind the Gospels, what genre are the Gospels, and why would anyone even write a Gospel?
4. Why four Gospels?
When Christians think of the gospel, they often think of Paul’s formulation in 1 Cor. 15, that Jesus died for our sins, was buried and was raised on the third day. This is true, but there is much more to it. For example, Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom (Mt. 4:23; Mk. 1:14-15; Lk. 4: 18-21, 43). What was this gospel of the kingdom. As noted by Dr. Bird, the inscription evidence indicates that “gospel” was primarily associated with military victory and the benefits, whether real or perceived, conveyed by the emperor, and Old Testament usage is likewise associated with military triumph although the prophets also associate it with Yahweh’s reign, the end of the exile and Israel’s restoration. So, the “gospel” equally refers to God’s coming kingdom. In other words, God’s victory in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus was not simply the conquest of death, hell and the grave, but also a dramatic manifestation of His kingship. Why else would Jesus have said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me?” And why else would his disciples have said, “We shall obey God rather than man,” even at the risk of their lives. Herod the Great definitely recognized this, as shown by his attempt to kill Jesus, whom we saw as a threat to his authority. As Dr. Bird said, “Paul was put to death, not because of some internalized spirituality but because he was travelling around the eastern Mediterranean declaring the kingship and victory of the Lord Jesus on the turf claimed by Caesar.”
Given such a high view of God’s kingship as manifested by Christ, it was inevitable that the early church would place a priority on the preservation of the Jesus tradition, and this would necessarily include not just Jesus’ teaching, but His deeds, as well. While it is not clear how much of the tradition was written down in notes or maintained as oral tradition prior to the completion of the four Gospels, the potential for oral tradition to maintain the integrity of the tradition must not be underestimated. Much of the material attributed to Jesus contains Hebrew poetic features such as parallelism and chiasmus that could serve as mnemonic devices. In addition, Dr. Bird documents evidence for the use of notebooks among the elites of the Greco-Roman world as well as for their use in contemporary rabbinic education. For this reason, while no such first-century notebooks of the Jesus tradition are extant today, there is no reason to discount the potential for their usage in preserving it. The Gospels also feature evidence of eyewitness testimony. For example, in the Lukan prologue (Lk. 1:1-4), there is mention of both eyewitnesses and servants of the word, and the structure of the Greek (one article modifying both nouns) suggests that they represent the same group of people, eyewitnesses who went on serve as leaders in the church and maintain a controlling force on the tradition. As long as they lived, they could correct errors and would have been motivated to do so. Furthermore, as the Christian community itself became increasingly familiar with the tradition, it could also transmit and preserve it. If someone tried to invent something new out of whole cloth, why wouldn’t Christians speak up when something didn’t seem right?
One area of scholarly discord is the role of oral tradition in the formation and maintenance of the Jesus tradition that culminated in the Gospels, with positions including:
• Complete inability to recover any vestige of oral tradition from the written evidence. Dr. Bird rejects this because the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament are the textual product of the oral activities of the early church.
• The form critical position that the early church altered and contaminated the Jesus tradition as necessary to meet its needs. Not surprisingly enough, Dr. Bird rejects this because taking flagrant liberties with the Jesus tradition should have raised objections, a point noted above. Related to this, he also argues that the church interpreted the tradition using the Old Testament as a framework rather than manufacturing traditions to conform with Old Testament types. I couldn’t agree more.
• A rabbinical model of students memorizing the teachings of their instructors. There is some merit to this position given the mnemonic devices in Jesus’ saying although insufficient evidence to declare victory.
• Informal transmittal of the tradition in which anyone in the community can participate in the retelling of stories and sayings with the collective memory of the community providing quality control. Dr. Bird sees a lot of merit to this concept in part because it is consistent with sociological studies and proceeds to develop his own theory building off it.
Inspired by James Dunn’s book Jesus Remembered, which I haven’t yet read, Dr. Bird postulates a theory of social memory, in which “past memories are mounted on mental artifacts that are reconstructed in light of the needs of the present,” in which the early church appropriated “the past in light of and with respect to their present contexts.” Consider the instances in which Jesus’ disciples didn’t understand something Jesus said or did but later remembered what he said, understanding and/or interpreting it in the light of intervening events such as His death and resurrection. These words and deeds of Jesus would become the highest authority for instruction within the early church. For this reason, it was of paramount importance for the church to faithfully recall Jesus’ words and deeds. While the above discussion regarding oral tradition is somewhat tedious both in the book and here in my review, I recognize its importance because a number of skeptics discount the reliability of oral tradition. Church leaders and laymen must be able to defend the scriptures, and this is one of the battle grounds.
One consequence of the four Gospels, as written, is the synoptic problem, why Matthew, Mark and Luke are so similar to each other yet diverge in various ways, and the Johanine problem, the sources of the Gospel of John and its relationship to the Synoptic Gospels. Similarities in the Synoptic Gospels include widespread verbal agreement (The Greek text comparisons included in the book are truly impressive, often with identical wording.), the use of the same outlines of pericopes, the same parenthetical remarks and the same unique Greek translations of Old Testament texts. All of this suggests an interrelationship between the Synoptic Gospels. In his Harmony of the Gospels, Augustine contended that the Gospels were written in the order of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Even so, a close look at the Gospels calls this into question, and theories of interrelationship have proliferated like Tribbles. Before defining and defending his own theory, he addresses the following:
• Griesback hypothesis. Luke used Matthew as a source, and Mark used both Matthew and Luke as sources. The major objection pertains to why Mark would write a shorter version Matthew and Luke and leave out what he did.
• There was a common Hebrew or Aramaic written source used independently by all three of the Synoptic Gospels. Given that no two people translate alike, why is there such extensive verbal agreement?
• There was a common pool of oral and/or written sources used independently by all three of the Synoptic Gospels. This theory is also undermined by the extensive verbal agreement between the Synoptic Gospels. Furthermore, it fails to explain how three authors independently settled on the same order and the same sentence constructions.
• Two- (four-) source theory. Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. Material shared by Matthew and Luke but not Mark comes from a hypothetical document called “Q.” Material unique to Matthew comes from source “M,” and material unique to Luke comes from source “L.”
• Farrer theory. Matthew used Mark as a source, and Luke used both Mark and Matthew as sources. Dr. Bird favors this theory because it eliminates the need for the hypothetical “Q” document.
In his own formulation, Dr. Bird advocates for Markan priority, that Mark was a source for both Matthew and Luke. Aside from the material common to Matthew and Mark and common to Luke and Mark, he notes that (1) the order of the units and sections in Mark is generally supported by Matthew and Luke, (2) that Matthew and Luke tend to improve Mark’s grammar, (3) that Matthew has a large number of singular and unparalleled rendering of Old Testament texts, and (4) that Matthew and Luke have a more highly developed Christology than does Mark. While he is skeptical of Q research on account of its history of speculation that he calls “building castles in the air,” he does believe in the existence of a shared written source used by both Matthew and Luke. However, he still believes that Luke used Matthew as a source, primarily because of minor Matthew-Luke agreements against Mark in non-Q material such as the passion narrative. That said, I didn’t find the examples he provided to be persuasive. Yes, there was some verbal agreement, but not enough to make a solid case.
Regarding Johanine authorship, there are two possibilities, the Apostle John or a Judean disciple of Jesus named Johnn who went on to lead the Christian community in Ephesus. Dr. Bird acknowledges the lack of certainty here and leaves it at that. He prefers to focus on questions about the differences between the Gospel of John and the Synoptic Gospels. For example, there are narrative differences that include a different geographical focus (e.g. multiple trips to Jerusalem prior to the passion week) and different sequences of events (e.g. the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry). The Synoptic Gospels hint at Jesus’ divine authority while John is very explicit. The themes of John are substantially different from those of the Synoptic Gospels. For these reasons, much ink has been spilled over John’s sources. Different theories of literary relationship between John and the Synoptic tradition include:
• The Gospel of John was written as a supplement to the other Gospels, adding details they omitted and emphasizing the spirituality of Jesus’ message.
• John was written with readers of Mark in mind, a theory postulated by Richard Bauckham.
• John was written to displace the Synoptic Gospels, a position undermined by the fact that it never criticizes other examples of the Jesus Tradition.
• There is a literary dependence of Johnn on Mark, yet only 8% of the Synoptic tradition parallels John.
• John was influenced by the Synoptic Gospels by performance or secondary orality. While Dr. Bird finds this credible, he acknowledges that it is unprovable.
• The Gospel of John is textually independent of the Synoptic Gospels, but their underlying traditions mutually influenced each other.
• There are several interlocking traditions between John and the Synoptic Gospels with partial parallels that are insufficient to imply a strict literary dependence. Dr. Bird sees merit here while also acknowledging that apparent Johanine clarifications could easily be explained by Johanine harmonizations of Synoptic material.
• John is completely independent of the Synoptic tradition. Dr. Bird questions how the author of John could have been ignorant of Mark given how widely it circulated.
Dr. Bird’s own position is that the author of John was familiar with the Synoptic tradition and some of the Synoptic Gospels (Mark and possibly Luke), as indicated by his frequent parenthetical remarks as well as some verbal connections with Synoptic material in John 6 and 18-20. However, the author drew on different traditions and had his own unique goals and purposes.
Given the authoritative nature of the Gospels, it is imperative to understand their genre, as this impacts one’s choice of hermeneutical principles. In the modern era, the Gospels have been viewed as a unique genre in the Greco-Roman world, but this consensus has been eroded in recent years as scholars have been comparing them to various ancient literary forms:
• As noted above, the Gospels have been seen as a unique type of Christian literature, but they contain too many affinities with Greco-Roman literature for this to be credible.
• Some see a resemblance to literary forms found in the Old Testament, second temple literature or rabbinic biography, and it is true that there is a deliberate intertextual relationship between the Old Testament and the Gospels.
• Aretology is a Greek biography of a “divine man” who was an impressive teacher, performed miraculous deeds and died a heroic death. Dr. Bird notes that the features of the “divine man” in later antiquity cannot be confidently traced back to an earlier era and may have been intended as a pagan rival to the Gospels. I remember similar issues addressed in Ronald Nash’s The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought?
• Some have seen parallels with Greek tragedy and ancient novels, but the presence of dramatic, comic and tragic elements in the Gospels constitute a mode of presentation of the narrative, not necessarily a genre.
• The form that best matches the Gospels is Greco-Roman biography, which often feature the hero’s ancestry and birth, anecdotes about his upbringing and debut into public life, accounts of his sayings and deeds, his death, and his legacy.
As biographies of Jesus, the gospels were viewed as authoritative, as sacred scripture analogous to the Old Testament scripture, by the early church because they contained the words of Jesus and the living memory of His apostles. For example, Mark constituted a written statement of the teachings received orally from Peter, who had been Mark’s mentor. Even so, the Gospels were a distinct adaptation of the biographical genre. Consider their theology, in which Jesus is the main character, but God is the subject and source of Jesus’ work, their Christology as presented in their story of Jesus and their intertextuality with the Old Testament as a continuation of the narrative of the great acts of God toward His people throughout history. For this reason, Dr. Bird classifies the Gospels as biographical kerygma. Some scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann, have emphasized the kerygma at the expense of history, but it cannot be disentangled from the Jesus of history as described in the Gospels’ biographical accounts that were most likely written to provide the early church with a record of Jesus’ words and deeds to enable them to imitate Him.
Why four Gospels, especially the four Gospels in the New Testament? Why not just one? Marcion chose a single Gospel, a version of Luke with all hints of anything Jewish surgically removed, and I think I remember reading that the Ebionites tended to prefer Matthew. Furthermore, several Christian authors drafted Gospel harmonies based primarily on the four Gospels along with some contribution from other Jesus traditions. Another option was to write another Gospel to rival the four Gospels. For example, the Gospel of Thomas appears to have been a deliberate attempt to compete with proto-orthodox Christians and supplant their writings. So, settling on one Gospel or a harmony or even writing another Jesus account were all potentially viable options. Yet, over the course of the second century, the four Gospels proceeded on a trajectory from being treated as scripture by Christians to serving as part of an open canon and finally moving toward a closed canon. In other words, there was no concern with the parallel existence of four Gospels. They exhibit a plurality demonstrating that no single Gospel possesses a monopoly on describing Jesus as He was, and they also exhibit a unity, setting the boundaries for Christological discourse.
As noted at the beginning of the review, Dr. Bird set out to answer four questions. Mission accomplished. I don’t doubt that the typical layman would be put off by the level of detail in this book and might not even grasp why it is important. For at least two centuries, tendentious scholars have challenged the integrity and authority of the scriptures, and every time their objections are addressed, they come up with more objections. Reasonable level of questioning attitude or a desperate search for an excuse to disbelieve? Regardless of the answer, there have been several effects, some positive and some negative. On the one hand, addressing such objections have kept faithful Christian scholars such as Dr. Bird on their toes. On the other hand, such objections have wrecked the faith of Christians and have discouraged non-Christians from even critically examining the reasons to believe. That said, although I don’t agree with all of Dr. Bird’s conclusions, I appreciate his efforts to defend the integrity of the scriptures.
January 19, 2021
Michael Bird has written one of the best books on the Gospel accounts in years. The book centers not so much on the content of the Gospels, as on the story of the Gospels themselves, as documents. Why and how were they written? How were they copied and circulated? How did the first centuries of the church receive them and use them in worship? These are incredibly important questions, and Bird provides excellent, erudite, and thorough answers to each of them. He interacts with all of the best scholarship from both the early church, and the critical era of the past 200 years. His writing style is both scholarly and fun, using pop culture references in the same breath as clean and scholarly prose, and he answers nearly every foundational question regarding this topic.
If I had a single criticism, it would be that at points I'm not sure what level Bird was looking to engage with. At points, he explains important concepts in a way that an intro level student could interact and understand, but at other points the book requires a significant level of prerequisite knowledge. However, this is a small critique. This is definitely a book I would enthusiastically use in a Gospels course or recommend to anyone wanting to know the story of the Gospel accounts.
If I had a single criticism, it would be that at points I'm not sure what level Bird was looking to engage with. At points, he explains important concepts in a way that an intro level student could interact and understand, but at other points the book requires a significant level of prerequisite knowledge. However, this is a small critique. This is definitely a book I would enthusiastically use in a Gospels course or recommend to anyone wanting to know the story of the Gospel accounts.
May 7, 2020
Where did the gospels in our Bible come from? When were they written, and by whom? Why do we have four? What is a gospel, anyway? In this scholarly and fascinating book, Michael Bird explores these questions, tracing the early oral traditions about Jesus from their origins to their embodiment in written form. This subject matter is rife with conjecture and speculation, but I appreciate Bird’s levelheaded approach. As he engages with the myriad of theories that have been posited throughout church history, he establishes conclusions only for which we have tangible evidence. This is a serious and intensely-researched academic work. But Bird writes with enthusiasm, and it is evident that he is even having fun, as demonstrated by the humorous illustrations and pop culture references peppered throughout the book. (I never would have thought to compare the early Jesus tradition to the YouTube sensation ‘Gangnam Style’!) He seems like the kind of person I would enjoy sitting under in a classroom.
Bird argues that our four gospels emerged as biographical accounts of Jesus as a historical figure, set over the backdrop of Israel’s religious history, but with great significance for us today. He says, “When it comes to reading the Gospels as a church community, we are not just mining for nuggets of devotional wisdom. Rather, we are striving to let the story of Jesus gradually shape our lives, enrich our worship, inspire us to mission, draw our community together, and impact our ministries, so that the evangelical vision of Jesus given to us in the Gospels becomes an evangelical project to make the story of Jesus known in all the world.” Amen!
Bird argues that our four gospels emerged as biographical accounts of Jesus as a historical figure, set over the backdrop of Israel’s religious history, but with great significance for us today. He says, “When it comes to reading the Gospels as a church community, we are not just mining for nuggets of devotional wisdom. Rather, we are striving to let the story of Jesus gradually shape our lives, enrich our worship, inspire us to mission, draw our community together, and impact our ministries, so that the evangelical vision of Jesus given to us in the Gospels becomes an evangelical project to make the story of Jesus known in all the world.” Amen!
January 30, 2023
I guarantee you need to read this. Amazingly well written for a such a technical and detailed academic work.
October 31, 2014
If you haven't started following Michael Bird's scholarship (he blogs as well as writing books at an astonishing pace), you need to as soon as possible. Bird's latest book, The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus, is a tour-de-force of scholarship concerning the formation of the Gospels. His writing is engaging, witty, and incredibly thorough. The book is an explanation of the historical process which took place from the time of Jesus' Kingdom announcement to the circulation of a collection of books describing Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection. The result is a "must-read" work by all who are interested in the "what, why, how, and where of the Gospels."
Bird covers five main topics in the course of his writing: the purpose and preservation of the Jesus tradition, the formation of the Jesus tradition, the literary genetics of the Gospels (including the Synoptic Problem and the Johannine Question), the genre and goal of the Gospels, and the significance of a fourfold Gospel. For each topic, the reader should expect Bird to summarize and critique an impressive amount of historical theories and scholars and then offer his own scholarly and thoroughly evangelical conclusion. Each chapter is also followed by a helpful and interesting Excursus on a related topic (such as patristic views on the order of the Gospels or the non-canonical Gospels).
Bird occasionally goes after some "sacred cows" of scholarship, such as when he attacks the merit and purpose of the idea of positing communities behind the Gospels (such as a Markan community or a Johannine community). He interestingly notes that few historical/literary scholars do this as a way of interpreting other ancient authors. However, for the most part Bird helpfully lays out the majority opinions in the world of scholarship and then carefully crafts his own tentative conclusion. I was particularly impressed with his handling of the Synoptic problem and his explication of the historical and theological significance of the fourfold Gospel.
In the end, perhaps the highest praise I can give this book is to say that it stands in my mind as a close cousin to N.T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God. Bird mentions in the introduction that reading JVOG was a turning point in his life - it was also the moment in my life which sparked an interest in the study of the historical Jesus, an interest which has shaped my faith and theology in endless ways. I can confidently say the same about Bird's The Gospel of the Lord - this is a book sure to clear the way forward for continued and thoughtful thinking about the historical tradition, both oral and textual, which stands behind the Gospels.
Bird covers five main topics in the course of his writing: the purpose and preservation of the Jesus tradition, the formation of the Jesus tradition, the literary genetics of the Gospels (including the Synoptic Problem and the Johannine Question), the genre and goal of the Gospels, and the significance of a fourfold Gospel. For each topic, the reader should expect Bird to summarize and critique an impressive amount of historical theories and scholars and then offer his own scholarly and thoroughly evangelical conclusion. Each chapter is also followed by a helpful and interesting Excursus on a related topic (such as patristic views on the order of the Gospels or the non-canonical Gospels).
Bird occasionally goes after some "sacred cows" of scholarship, such as when he attacks the merit and purpose of the idea of positing communities behind the Gospels (such as a Markan community or a Johannine community). He interestingly notes that few historical/literary scholars do this as a way of interpreting other ancient authors. However, for the most part Bird helpfully lays out the majority opinions in the world of scholarship and then carefully crafts his own tentative conclusion. I was particularly impressed with his handling of the Synoptic problem and his explication of the historical and theological significance of the fourfold Gospel.
In the end, perhaps the highest praise I can give this book is to say that it stands in my mind as a close cousin to N.T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God. Bird mentions in the introduction that reading JVOG was a turning point in his life - it was also the moment in my life which sparked an interest in the study of the historical Jesus, an interest which has shaped my faith and theology in endless ways. I can confidently say the same about Bird's The Gospel of the Lord - this is a book sure to clear the way forward for continued and thoughtful thinking about the historical tradition, both oral and textual, which stands behind the Gospels.
May 16, 2016
This is a fantastic intermediate introduction to the Gospels. It does require some familiarity with Gospel Studies (TC, Synoptic problem, Q, patristics) but is extremely concise and reasonable. Bird is still somewhat embedded with the Q crowd but overall does a fair job of allowing for variability.
As an evangelical scholar, Bird does address matters of apologetics but mostly in regard to the origins of the Gospels. He occasionally makes jabs at Ehrman and form critics who are skeptical of the authentic origins of the books.
This book excels in that it represents the current apex in Gospel scholarship. It's a high quality work, but incredibly readable and informative. Any student of the NT familiar with critical issues will benefit from it.
As an evangelical scholar, Bird does address matters of apologetics but mostly in regard to the origins of the Gospels. He occasionally makes jabs at Ehrman and form critics who are skeptical of the authentic origins of the books.
This book excels in that it represents the current apex in Gospel scholarship. It's a high quality work, but incredibly readable and informative. Any student of the NT familiar with critical issues will benefit from it.
December 16, 2015
Found this to be first rate scholarship into the origins of the gospels and various scholarly views on the subject. It can be a bit laborious in places, but the research is thorough and it is informative at understanding the climate in the early centuries of the Christian era from which the four gospels were produced.
January 15, 2015
Thorough examination of what exactly the Gospels are, how they came to be written, and why THESE four Gospels. Can be dense and this isn't for beginners, really. But Bird is an engaging and witty writer and it comes out even in a work like this. Really enjoyed this book.
December 20, 2015
This book was a lot deeper than I thought, but it still gave me a much deeper appreciation for understanding what the Gospel accounts are, and how they came to be what they are within the scripture. Plenty to chew on, and overall helped me to trust in the message even more.
November 4, 2015
An Excellent Introduction to the Gospels
This book surveys several important areas in Gospel studies. Bird also hatches some of his own insights for further study that a scholar or student in the area may find worthy of exploring.
This book surveys several important areas in Gospel studies. Bird also hatches some of his own insights for further study that a scholar or student in the area may find worthy of exploring.
January 1, 2015
More scholarly than I thought, still a good read.
October 31, 2016
A fairly dense, workman like tome that covers the usual 'what are the gospels' ground. There is some good additional thoughts on orality and memory. The footnotes (thankfully) are suggestive.
Read
July 18, 2018Methodical. Exhaustive. Endlessly fascinating. Bird delivers on his subtitle well and truly, and at times with a turn of phrase that issues in a belly laugh: not bad for a theological text. He speaks of the gospels in terms of movies: the synoptics are 'The Bourne Identity' whereas John is 'The Matrix'. In his discussion of what kind of literature a gospel is, he comes out with this cracker - '...putting the heading 'Gospel' on a document does not really determine its genre any more than inscribing 'Recent Observations on Nocturnal and Hematophagic Humanoids' on the cover of a Twilight novel turns it into a scientific research paper.' Bird, an ex-soldier, adult convert and Aussie knows how to write with fair, yet his depth of knowledge on this subject is awesome. Anyone who has Tom Wright as an interlocutor demands consideration. In the end, I find his arguments convincing.
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