Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony

by Richard Bauckham

This fresh 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” instead asserting that they were transmitted in the name of the original eyewitness. 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 the “Jesus of testimony” that is actually presented by Gospels. 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.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Christian, Christianity, History, Biblical Studies, New Testament

552 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 2006

About the author

Richard Bauckham (PhD, University of Cambridge) is senior scholar at Ridley Hall, Cambridge University, in Cambridge, England, where he teaches for the Cambridge Federation of Theological Colleges. He is also a visiting professor at St. Mellitus College, London, and emeritus professor of New Testament at the University of St. Andrews. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the author of numerous books.

Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have thumbed through this book many times before, skimmed chapters, and recommended it to many people. It's about time I finally dove in and worked through this masterpiece. And it really is a masterpiece. Bauckham's book is jaw-dropping in its scope and the force of the argument Bauckham puts forward.

Bauckham's thesis is fairly simple: the four gospels represent a compilation of eyewitness testimony of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and as such need to be taken seriously as we consider the Jesus of history. To the conservative such a thesis might seem rudimentary while to a liberal such a thesis might seem untenable. Both audiences shouldn't dismiss Bauckham quickly, though.

What is perhaps most impressive is the way Bauckham wields both a fine-toothed comb and a road sweeper in his argument. Bauckham carefully and thoughtfully engages his critics, taking dissenters seriously as he works through their arguments.

With the fine-toothed comb he deals with the development of the Jesus of history studies, the dating of the manuscripts, the names in the gospel traditions vs. the historical data of Judeo-Palestinian names in the first century, the authorship of the gospels (including a very lengthy treatment of John where he meticulously argues for John the Elder based on the ancient sources), anonymous vs. named persons in the accounts, the trustworthiness of oral traditions, and much more.

With his road sweeper, he also deals with scientific studies of eyewitness testimony, historiographic methodology, and philosophical arguments regarding testimony and memory.

Bauckham's book is not for the feint of heart, but the stakes of his argument cannot be overstated. For Christians wrestling with the development of the canon and the reliability of scripture, this is a book that is well worth reading (although I would steer certain readers away from chapters that aren't as critical to his thesis). To the skeptic, this is a book he or she must wrestle with. If you have picked up Bart Ehrman or Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens and been shaken by what they have to say about the Bible, you owe it to yourself to read Bauckham. I have no doubt that in the pages of Bauckham you will find that you cannot dismiss Jesus of Nazareth as quickly as the skeptics would want you to or accept him as thoughtlessly as some evangelicals would have you.

Bauckham has done a great service to the church, to Jesus himself, and to you and me. Please read this book.

[Jeff Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book likely I would never had come in contact with if not given as a Christmas gift.

In the last hundred years and more there has been multiple attacks on the reliability of the New Testament. Much of this has come from trying to apply new scholarly critical methods and some from skeptics simply trying to undermine the texts. There are also many common sense approaches that seem to bear out reasons to be distrustful. Some of these approaches became very useful in approaching these texts while others were built on incorrect assumptions such as aspects of form criticism.

So I was delighted to find that this book takes the current research in multiple fields and looks at some of the assumptions made in the past and see how they hold up. One of the areas regarding reliability of the Gospels has assumed facts such as communities changing texts and the unreliability of testimony of eyewitnesses.

This book is quite amazing in scope and quite an amazing undertaking. I leaned so much along the way regarding memory and what the latest research found in modern communities with a primary oral tradition. Memory can and does fail due to false memories, blending, and trying to pull together forgotten details is spelled out. Yet there are areas where memory are much more reliable in the main events. This provides some of the background. But there is also intense study regarding the structure and narratives involved in the Gospels along with all the clues that can be found. This is combined with what was known historically regarding the authors and composition of the Gospels. The Gospels of Mark and John are especially studied. There is even study of personal names and historical statistical usage to show evidence regarding testimony.

This book is quite scholarly with tons of footnotes. Yet as a non-scholar I was absorbed by the details and the forensic examination of the Gospels. Strangely it also makes the Gospels come more alive for me as it erases some of the modern assumptions I had.

I enjoyed this book immensely.

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wonder if, one day, "historical Jesus" theology will be seen as something akin to Freudianism or Neo-Kantianism, i.e., a short-lived intellectual movement that is so clearly an unconvincing fad that no serious person could possibly agree with it, but which nonetheless led to a resounding critical response -- the quality and depth of which is far out of proportion to the errors of the original position -- such that the responses end up becoming classics.

Everyone has heard of Heidegger's Being and Time, but it is likely very little known that this book was meant (in large part) as a refutation of the Neo-Kantian approach to metaphysics. Back in 1927, Heidegger was popular among some younger students in southwestern Germany but his Neo-Kantian teachers (Rickert et al.) were far more well-known; and so too, John Dominic Crossan and his fellow travelers in historical Jesus 'form criticism' (Ehrman et al.) might be temporarily in vogue, albeit less so in the past decade, but it's Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses that will be read a century from now. Bauckham's argument is so devastatingly effective that the entire book is essentially just that "Stop, stop, he's already dead!" Simpsons gif playing on a loop.

(I also highly recommend Paul Barnett's After Jesus trilogy, which builds on Bauckham's work and is written in a more straightforward style.)

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an amazing book--amazing in Bauckham's detective work, and amazing in his careful academic spade-work. Because Bauckham is challenging the reigning paradigms of form criticism, he has to build his case step by step, which made for tedious reading at times. But, if you are willing to tough it out, the overall argument is thrilling and makes a credible case for reading the Gospels for what they are--reliable eyewitness testimony.

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thesis of this remarkable book is fairly straightforward—it’s more appropriate and accurate to regard the gospels as eyewitness testimony rather than the result of oral tradition or layers of literary accretions. Bauckham then lays out his evidence which overall provides a devastating critique of the methods used by the form criticism theorists. These have been in vogue for the past several decades and have been promoted to the public, giving the impression that the gospel accounts are generally unreliable and were essentially rewritten by certain church insiders hundreds of years after the fact. Bauckham shows that this view is unwarranted and erroneous.

Bauckham explores what the earliest surviving church and historical writings tell us about the origins of the gospel accounts, taking a deep dive into the writings of Papias, Polycarp, and Eusebius. He discusses models of oral tradition in the Levant in this era, and the reliability of memories reflected in eyewitness testimony. Now some may consider parts of this work arcane inside-baseball stuff, but many of the details are kind of important if you’re going to follow his arguments, and it’s well worth the effort. I will just note a few interesting points.

A mathematical analysis of the relative frequency of the names of the characters in the four gospel accounts very nearly matches the relative frequency of proper names used in Palestine during this time period. This fascinating topic is covered even better in Can We Trust the Gospels? by Peter J Williams.

In a number of gospel stories certain participants are unnamed in Mark but are given names in John. Some scholars have regarded this as evidence that the names must be later inventions and are therefore unreliable. Bauckham argues that the identity of certain witnesses were concealed for their own protection in the earlier compiled accounts to provide “protective anonymity.” Once the danger of punishment from the authorities had passed their names were able to be safely returned to the narrative by John:
In Mark, the woman who anoints is revealed to be Mary, sister of Martha (John 12:3)
The man who wields sword—Simon Peter (John 18:10)
The servant of the high priest —Malchus (John 18:10).
And the story of Lazarus had to be completely left out for his own protection when Mark wrote his gospel account.

According to Papias and internal evidence the Gospel of Mark was written first and represents the eyewitness testimony of Peter as translated into Greek. Mark himself was not an eyewitness but would have heard the stories repeatedly from Peter. Although Peter likely spoke Greek, he may have felt less proficient in the Greek writing style. Matthew was written in Hebrew or Aramaic by the disciple (and eyewitness) but was translated to Greek by others. John was written later in Greek by John the Elder, an eyewitness and disciple (although not one of the Twelve). This was the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” and was known to have lived to an advanced age in Ephesus. His identity was later confused with John the son of Zebedee. This last point about the authorship of John cannot be determined with 100 percent confidence, but it does seem to be the most reasonable conclusion.

[Joseph Sverker]

I will never read the Gospels in the same way again after reading this book. Bauckham argues, with the help of Samuel Byrskog, convincingly for the Gospels as eyewitness testimonies. He does so with brilliant scholarship and convincing references to contemporary historiographical views. I also like his dialogue with Ricoeur and the underlying philosophical voice. The book also completely debunks the form criticism project and I cannot understand how anyone will be able to argue with an "Sitz in leben" type argument from now on. It is so clear that form criticism was begging their own question, creating the context for the pericopes that they thought the pericopes were written for. Particularly eye opening was his treatment of the Gospel of John. It has been treated almost with shame by biblical scholars and now it has been lifted from that shadow as a work of an eyewitness, even a disciple. Having said this, it is not an easy read. I hope that there will be a more accessible book in the future so that this illusion of the Gospels as not reliable sources to the person of Jesus soon disperses.

[Frans Vermeiren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great hypothesis, even greater drawbacks

With its more than 500 pages this book is an example of thorough biblical scholarship. Bauckham extensively elaborates his hypothesis that the Gospels are much more based on eyewitness testimony than is generally accepted, and I think this conclusion is right. This is an important achievement, as the Gospels have supposedly been written between 40 and 60 years after the facts. Below, however, I will try to show that the eyewitness case is much more straightforward than Bauckham expounds in this book.

Let me be clear from the beginning: I have a lot of objections against this book. I set aside the most fundamental ones for the second part of my review. Let’s start with two ‘minor’ objections that question Bauckham’s intellectual honesty.
The first one is that Bauckham is discrediting two early Christian writers, Quadratus and Philip of Side (and Papias of Hierapolis together with the latter one). The information these authors provide is quite embarrassing for anyone accepting the traditional chronology of the origins of Christianity, so Bauckham tries to get rid of them.
Quadratus reports that some of those who were healed or raised by Jesus (who, according to the Gospels, was crucified around 30 CE) were still alive in 125 CE, the year to which Quadratus’s work can be dated with certainty.
Philip of Side, a 4th century Christian writer, mentions Papias of Hierapolis, a contemporary of Quadratus, and according to the former Papias gives exactly the same information: ‘about those who were raised from the dead by Christ, he says they survived until Hadrian’. (Hadrian was the Roman emperor from 117 to 138 CE).
Bauckham postulates that Philip of Side has mistaken Papias for Quadratus, and ‘one source, no source’, he deceitfully disposes of these two important witnesses. However, in the Papias fragment he provides, Philip of Side shows that he is well-informed about Papias, so I think these two fragments independently inform us about a chronology problem in the origins of Christianity as presented in the Gospels.
My second ‘intellectual honesty’ objection is the way Bauckham discusses three of the apostle names: Iskarioth, Zealot and Bariona. For Judas Iskarioth he only gives the explanation ‘from (the village of) Kerioth’, not even mentioning the ‘Iskarioth = sicarios’ hypothesis, which shows Judas as a possible ‘dagger fighter’, a member of the guerilla fighters faction which was active in the 50’s and 60’s of the first century CE (the decades preceding the war against the Romans). The same for Simon the Zealot, about whom Bauckham develops a strange argument: because in the relevant sources the name Zealot does not appear before the outbreak of the Jewish war in 66 CE, Simon is not a real (military and insurrectionist) zealot, but a zealot in a broader sense, to be interpreted as ‘zealous for the law’. For Bariona (Simon Bariona), Bauckham uses the same method of silence as for Iskarioth: he doesn’t mention the possibility that Bariona is not ‘bar Jonah’ meaning ‘son of Jonah’, but may refer to Simon as a member of the biryonim (singular biryona), the ‘outlaws’ or ‘brigands’ who are also associated with the rebellion against the Romans. Bauckham purposefully writes these apostles away from the war period.

Let’s now turn to the major objections.
A first major objection is to be found in Bauckham’s discussion of the Gospel of John. Bauckham extensively discusses this Gospel, and brilliantly shows that the fourth Gospel is not just ‘the last and the least trustworthy’, but that it is much more important and trustworthy than is generally accepted because it has been written by one of Jesus’ disciples, and not by just one of them, but by Jesus’ beloved disciple. But Bauckham doesn’t tell the other part of the story. How did this authorship happen chronologically, accepting that Jesus was crucified around 30 CE and the Gospel of John was written around 90 CE? Let’s suppose that John was a young man, in his twenties, when Jesus was crucified. Then he wrote his Gospel when he was about 85 years old. Although this is not impossible biologically, it is highly improbable for several reasons.
A first reason is that the circumstances of life were much more uncertain during that era than nowadays. Bauckham himself gives a nice quote from the Church Father Irenaeus (second half of the second century): ‘For everyone will admit that the age of thirty is that of someone still young and this period of youth extends to the fortieth year. It is only from the fortieth and fiftieth year that a person begins to decline towards old age.’ How then do we have to imagine John waiting until his very old age to write down the exceptional events he experienced 60 years ago?
A second reason is comparison. As far as I know no other author in world history has ever waited so long to commit his story to paper, and as far as I can see there is no reason to accept John as an exception. This huge delay just doesn’t make sense, the more because what Jesus and his companions experienced was so spectacular that the motivation to write it down quickly was greater than for any other author experiencing less important things.
One could also imagine that writing practice in Antiquity was quite different from our days. But as far as I know there are no examples of first reports following four decades after the events. In the same years as the first Gospel (shortly after 70 CE) Josephus wrote his account of the war of the Jews against the Romans (66-70 CE). Also Paul wrote his letters to the communities he founded shortly after he founded or visited them, without any significant delay.
The argument in the Gospel of John also extends to the canonical Gospels in general. Bauckam emphasizes several times that the Gospels are biographies (‘bioi’), and he also asserts that ‘in their close relationship to eyewitness testimony the Gospels conform to the best practice of ancient historiography’ (p. 310). But this ‘best practice’ implies that the accounts, stemming from the authors themselves or from the eyewitnesses they interrogated, were recorded soon after the events.
Because when taking the traditional chronology for granted this huge time gap between the events and their report has to be filled, an enormous literature on the subject has seen the light. Bauckham also sets himself the task to do so. ‘Oral history’, ‘tradition’ and ‘recollecting memory’ are the main concepts of this section of the book. Although the ‘recollecting memory’ theory is interesting in itself, this section of the book is not at all convincing. The whole ‘tradition’ concept is an empty vessel which doesn’t provide any sound argument of how information was stored and passed during these ‘tradition’ decades. Bauckham extensively fights the form criticism school of biblical scholarship and he is right to do so, but I believe the disease of his theory if only slightly different. These three concepts are only rationalizations of something which doesn’t make any sense.
In the same spirit Bauckham postulates that the Gospels were written when and because the eyewitnesses were old and on the brink of death. How should we imagine this concretely? As already said before, life was fragile then. How did the Gospel writers cope with the uncertain life conditions of the eyewitnesses and themselves? Did Mark think in 60 CE: Peter is 55 years old now, he seems to be in good health, I shall wait some more years to write down his story which I already know for (many/some) years? Did he continue thinking so year after year without taking his pen and a scroll of papyrus?

I have researched the origins of Christianity extensively, and I think the case is much simpler than the far-fetched ‘oral history’ and ‘tradition’ theory set forth in this book (and in countless books before). The main result of my investigation is that the Gospels contain the most spectacular case of chronological fraud ever committed in historiography. The Gospels have not been written after 70 CE after a waiting period of 40 years, but they were written then because the crucial events of these works took place in 70 CE and the preceding years. So the Gospels have been written by eyewitnesses – of course they have – in the years following the events. Why would their writers have waited 40 to 60 years to tell the world about the great and extraordinary things which had befallen them, the events that constituted God’s acts for the salvation of the world? But after the terrible defeat against the Romans it was far too dangerous to tell the real story, it was safer to antedate the events by some decades, and to introduce a ‘good Roman’ (Pilate) and the ‘bad Jews’ to give this story a chance in the hostile Roman empire. Bauckham is an expert in the Jewish/Christian pseudepigraphical literature, he can affirm that antedating was a common literary technique in that era to conceal subversive liberation stories from the enemy.

At the end of his book Bauckham says that the trustworthiness of testimony as form of historiography should be tested, its internal consistency and coherence as well as its consistency and coherence with other historical evidence we have and that it should be confronted with whatever we know about the historical context. This way the Gospels could tell things in spite of themselves.
I have tested the historiographical value of the Gospel stories in a combined reading of the New Testament, the works of Josephus, the Apostolic Fathers, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Numerous connections, generally subtle and veiled, between these writings have come to the surface and the discovery of the real chronology of the origins of Christianity is the main result of my investigation.
In his Life (‘Bios’ in Greek) the Jewish historian Josephus reports a case of three prisoners of war executed by crucifixion. ‘Two of them died in the physicians’ hands; the third survived.’ Quite some imaginative powers are needed to see that this event, which took place end of August 70 CE, is the core event of the Gospels. And there is more, much more.

[Zach Hollifield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure about his view on the author of John’s Gospel and some chapters were far too in the weeds for me personally. But overall, this is an EXCELLENT resource and should be read by those engaged in any apologetic type ministry (from evangelism to young adult ministry).

[Samuel Kassing · Rating 5 out of 5]

The eyewitnesses of Jesus are trustworthy. The Jesus of the eyewitnesses is the Jesus of history and theology.

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this during a recent holiday and I think I needed to be on holidays to get through it quickly enough to appreciate the whole complex argument. Bauckham put together a serious case in favour of reading the gospels as eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus. Utlising Papias' testimony, insights from the gospels and similar literature, and historical background, he turns the intellectual assumptions of form criticism, etc. on their head.

A couple of points of stood out for me:
1) It makes a lot of sense that the impetus for writing the gospel down was the passing of the eyewitnesses. We see that happen even today as elderly people are interviewed for their perspectives on significant historical events before their first-hand experience is lost forever. (See a contemporary example at: http://www.timbowden.com.au/2012/09/3...)

2) There are some "uniquely unique" events that can only be understood by hearing first hand accounts from eyewitnesses. Bauckham uses one philsoopher's illustration to talk about the Holocaust to highlight how this event was worse (horror-producing) than anyone could imagine. Having walked through the Holocaust museum in Israel, I would concur that the video testimonies were compelling. (See Tim Bowden's book referred to above for another example). Similarly, experiencing the incarnation of God was a uniquely unique (wonder-producing) event we only have true access to through eyewitness testimony.

There's enough idiosyncratic opinions in the book to keep you on your toes, but its definitely a landmark work not readily dismissed.

[David Graieg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since its release in 2006, the first edition of Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses has impacted both academia and (despite its scholarly nature) our culture at large. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses was the winner of the 2007 Christianity Today Book Award in Biblical Studies and has been translated into five other languages. The second edition was released in April 2017, containing three new chapters (the original eighteen chapters remaining untouched).
The thesis of the first edition was that the “Gospel traditions did not, for the most part, circulate anonymously but in the name of the eyewitnesses to whom they were due” (p. 8). Chapter 2 goes on to support this thesis through Papias’ testimony from the early second century (as primarily preserved by Eusebius in the fourth century). In chapter 3, Bauckham explores the many named and unnamed characters in the gospels and suggests “the possibility that many of these named characters were eyewitnesses who not only originated the traditions to which their names are attached but also continued to tell these stories as authoritative guarantors of their traditions” (p. 39). Chapter 4 utilizes Tal Ilan's Lexicon of Jewish Names in Antiquity published in 2002. Bauckham shows that we can now know that the relative frequency of the names in the gospels corresponds to the relative frequency of Palestinian Jewish names from the same period – a statistically improbable feature, which is best explained by the fact that the gospels get the relative name frequency correct because they are eyewitness testimony. Chapter 5 suggests that “[i]f any group in the earliest community was responsible for some kind of formulation and authorization of a body of Jesus traditions, the Twelve are much the most obviously likely to have been that group” (p. 96). Chapter 6 argues “that three of the Gospels — those of Mark, Luke, and John — make use of the historiographic principle that the most authoritative eyewitness is one who was present at the events narrated from their beginning to their end and can therefore vouch for the overall shape of the story as well as for specific key events” (p. 146). Chapter 7 contains a nuanced argument that “Mark’s Gospel not only, by its use of the inclusio of eyewitness testimony, claims Peter as its main eyewitness source; it also tells the story predominantly (though by no means exclusively) from Peter’s perspective” (p. 179; italics original). Chapter 8 argues that some of the anonymous persons in Mark’s passion narrative such as the woman who anointed Jesus (Mark 14:3-9), or the one who cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest with a sword (Mark 14:47), or the young man who fled naked (Mark 14:51-52), were kept anonymous because the “need for ‘protective anonymity’ may have overridden the convention of naming the eyewitnesses” (p. 201). Chapter 9 critically examines what Papias probably meant by “[t]he Elder used to say: Mark, in his capacity as Peter’s interpreter [hermēneutēs], wrote down accurately as many things as he [Peter?] recalled from memory — though not in an ordered form” (p. 203; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.14; italics original); and Papias’ comments on Matthew. Chapter 10 looks at three models of oral tradition: informal uncontrolled tradition (the form critical model), formal controlled tradition (Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Transmission and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity (Lund: Gleerup, 1961), and informal controlled tradition (Kenneth E. Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,” Asia Journal of Theology 5 (1991) 34-51). In chapter 11, Bauckham looks at how the Jesus traditions were transmitted and chapter 12 furthers the case for eyewitness testimony over anonymous traditions. Chapter 13 examines the strengths and weakness of eyewitness memory. Chapter 14 argues that the Gospel of John is eyewitness testimony. Chapters 15 through to 17 contends that the witness of the beloved disciple is that of John the elder – evidenced internally in the gospel itself and how this fits externally with Papias, Polycrates and Irenaeus. Chapter 18, the last of the first edition, having argued that the Gospels are eyewitness testimony, argues that testimony “is both the historically appropriate category for understanding what kind of history the Gospels are and the theologically appropriate category for understanding what kind of access Christian readers of the Gospels thereby have to Jesus and his history” (p. 473).
The second edition adds three new chapters, which extend his argument and responds to criticisms of the first edition. Chapter 19 revisits the eyewitnesses in Mark and responds to criticisms such as Jerome Murphy-O'Connor's RB 114 (2007), who thought Bauckham had not adequately shown the use of inclusio in relevant ancient literature. Bauckham now demonstrates this in the works of Polybius and Plutarch. Bauckham also presents evidence from Josephus’s Jewish War, Plutarch’s Life of Pompey and Life of Antony, and Concrnelius Nepos’s Life of Atticus, that “a literary device of ‘implicit eyewitnesses’ that was employed by historians and biographers of the Greco-Roman world. It was a way of indicating the eyewitness sources of important events that the authors themselves could not claim to have witnessed, in a manner that did not disrupt the narrative flow of their stories” (Kindle locations 12475-12477).
One telling admission by Bauckham is that he states: “I know of no comprehensive study of the ways in which ancient historians indicated their eyewitness sources” (Kindle location 12126). So, while the evidence he has presented is suggestive, a final verdict will await such a comprehensive study.
In an additional note Bauckham corrects some misunderstanding of his argument on onomastic analysis by Jens Schröter (“The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony? A Critical Examination of Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses,” JSNT 31 (2008) 195-209) and Christopher M. Tuckett (Review of Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, in RBL [online at http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/5650_6...]) stating that his argument was not based on the mere occurrence of common names but on their relative frequency. Consequently, the notion that “the names were added in oral tradition, as the form critics tended to suppose” (Kindle location 12636) is statistically unlikely.
Chapter 20 continues the discussion on who was the Beloved Disciple? Responding to Andreas Köstenberger (Review of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, http://www.biblicalfoundations.org/je...) Bauckham argues that “the internal evidence of the Gospel itself does not support the identification of the Beloved Disciple as John the son of Zebedee” (Kindle locations 13055-13056). The internal evidence was something Bauckham felt was already sufficiently demonstrated by others and hence not detailed in the first edition. Bauckham’s internal reasons for thinking why the Beloved Disciple is not John the Son of Zebedee are: (1) the focus on Jerusalem and Judea rather than Galilee suggests “[t]hat the Beloved Disciple was a Jerusalem resident who did not usually travel with Jesus in Galilee” (Kindle location 13269); (2) Different disciples are prominent suggesting a different “circle in which the Beloved Disciple moved” (Kindle location 13283); (3) The twelve are not prominent; (4) John’s brother, James the son of Zebedee is only indirectly mentioned (John 21:2); (5) The Beloved Disciple is an eyewitness at the cross and “[w]hy should Mark resort to the women for testimony if one of the Twelve could have supplied it?” (Kindle location 13391); (6) Jesus’ preferential love for the Beloved Disciple -“despite the prominence of John the son of Zebedee in the Synoptics, there is no hint that he, unlike Peter or his brother James, was the disciple for whom Jesus had special affection. Yet precisely this is what characterizes the Beloved Disciple in the Fourth Gospel” (Kindle locations 13401-13402); and (7) The distinctiveness of the Gospel of John is better explained “if one of them is written from a perspective outside the circle of the Twelve” (Kindle location 13408). Furthermore, Bauckham counters three alleged evidences for thinking the Beloved Disciple is John the Son of Zebedee. Bauckham argues that the gospel of John is still broadly of apostolic authority, and gives an interpretation of Polycrates that fits with his view. Finally, with respect to the death of John son of Zebedee Bauckham argues that “it may be that in Papias and the martyrologies we have the surviving evidence that John the son of Zebedee suffered a violent death in Jerusalem long before his namesake wrote a Gospel” (Kindle location: 13957).
Chapter 21 confirms the end of form criticism. Responding to David Catchpole (“On Proving Too Much: Critical Hesitations about Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses,” JSHJ 6 (2008) 169-81) Bauckham states that one does not need form criticism to explain the differences between the gospels.
While the second edition is a useful addition it is perhaps a little disappointing that one has to pay full price for only three additional chapters, especially when parts of those chapters have already appeared in some of Bauckham’s published works since the first edition (such as: “The Eyewitnesses in the Gospel of Mark,” Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok 74 (2009) 19-39; and “The Gospel of Mark: Origins and Eyewitnesses,” in Earliest Christian History: Essays from the Tyndale Fellowship in Honor of Martin Hengel, ed. M. F. Bird and J. Maston (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012) 145-69). In addition, some of Bauckham’s existing responses to his critics goes into more detail than the new chapters, and as such one will still need to consult these (such as: “In Response to My Respondents: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses in Review,” JSHJ 6 (2008) 225-253). In respond to the accusation that eyewitness memory is unreliability from Judith. C. S. Redman (“How Accurate Are Eyewitnesses? Bauckham and the Eyewitnesses in the Light of Psychological Research,” JBL 129 (2010) 177-97); and Dale C. Allison (Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (London: SPCK, 2010), chapter 1); Bauckham defers to his article “The General and the Particular in Memory: A Critique of Dale Allison’s Approach to the Historical Jesus,” JSHJ 14 (2016) 28–51; and states more is forthcoming. Finally, in the preface to the second edition Bauckham states, “I have not been able to put all my further thinking about the Gospels and the eyewitnesses into the additional chapters of this edition. Other work is in progress and will, I hope, be published in due course” (Kindle location 222-223). So, while I am both glad for the new edition and that more work is coming, it isn’t obvious why the three present chapters were published at this stage.

An edited version of this review appeared in: “Book Review of Bauckham's second edition of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.” JGAR 1 (2017), 88-90. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/35770739/Gra....

[Henrik van de Ruitenbeek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stevige boek waarin Bauckham pleit voor het serieus nemen dat de evangeliën, en dan met name Markus en Johannes, teruggaan op ooggetuigenverslagen en niet, zoals door vorm critici bepleit, op een lange, orale en flexibele traditie van Jezusverhalen.

Met name zijn eerste hoogstukken hebben een orginele insteek. Wanneer de evangeliën pas veel later de vorm zouden hebben gekregen die wij nu kennen, zouden de namen die erin genoemd worden niet zozeer overeenkomen met die van het eerste eeuwse Palestina, maar van de tijd en context van de christengemeenschap waarin zij ontstond. Het eerste blijkt echter het geval.

Voor de rest van het betoog: vooral lezen!

[Matthew Richey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating read. Bauckham's argument for the gospels' origins in eyewitness testimony is convincing and, simultaneously, provides fascinating insight into the world of first-century historiography. Highly recommended to anyone interested in New Testament studies or in first-century history.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cogently written and elegantly argued, this monograph was not only a breeze to read but a joy. I took it on because the subject seemed interesting, but I wasn't expecting to enjoy reading it so much as I did.

Bauckham essentially makes the argument that many contemporary scholars have it wrong. The Gospel accounts of Jesus's ministry are not oral traditions passed along for generations, many of them mythologized in the telling. They are actually written accounts based on eyewitness accounts of the happenings, from the lives of people who actually had interactions with Jesus. And he says there is evidence in the Gospels of this. In other words, those like third-generation-from Jesus Papias who say that the Gospels were written by people they knew, who themselves got their information directly from people who had interaction with Jesus aren't fibbing. Papias, in fact, says he preferred to get information from these eyewitnesses, who by his time were few in number, than from written accounts--such was the preference of historians at the time. That is, Roman writers only wrote about the distant past as needed to set the context for events that they themselves had firsthand knowledge of. It was no different for Papias, whose work largely no longer exists except in these passages where he explains his objectives. Putting such words into writing would have been especially important as the generation with firsthand knowledge of Jesus would have been passing away, the opportunity thus lost to capture these reminiscences.

For material internal to the Gospels, Bauckham looks at different features. One is the use of names in the accounts. Names used, he argues, coincide to the actual witnesses who were still living--and were part of the church--at the time that the account was written. Thus, if someone wanted to verify a story, one need only ask the person named. Unnamed persons are generally those not bearing witness, not connected with the church, but rather being talked about. Helping to confirm this idea is the very names that show up in the Gospel accounts, which tend to match by percentage the relative popularity of the names given to people in ancient Palestine (as we find in ossuaries and other archaelogical evidence). Thus, we have many Simons and Josephs, as one would expect if the stories were originating with witnesses to Jesus's ministry in Palestine.

Much is made in the scriptures themselves about the need that those who serve as apostles be witnesses from the beginning, corraborating the importance of witnesses being those who tell the stories. Bauckham looks specifically then at Peter, who by tradition (and by Papias's account) was the source of much of Mark's Gospel. Is there evidence within Mark that this was so? Bauckham points to the way that the Gospel essentially starts and ends with Peter's witness and the way in which Peter is a major character; certainly, his importance in the early church might account for this, but it can also be accounted for by his being the source of much of the information. One of the most interesting parts of Bauckham's argument comes from his analysis of the grammer. Much of the story uses a "plural-to-singular" narrative device, a feature that is used five to ten times more often by Mark than any other Gospel writer. That is, the sentence starts off in the plural and then focuses on the singular: e.g., "They came to the place, and then Jesus said to his disciples." The language is a bit strange in third person; put it into first person plural, however, and it seems quite natural: "We came to the place, and then Jesus said to us." It's as if Mark took Peter's account (we did this, we did that; he told us) and wrote it out in the third person (they did this, they did that; he told them), given that Mark was a nonpartaker in the events.

Another interesting feature is the way certain people aren't named in some of the Gospels but are in others. Why? Bauckham argues that it had to do with legal jeopardy and persecution. Thus, Mark merely mentions that someone cut off the priest's servant's ear, but John, writing much later, tells us it was Peter against Malchus. Why the secrecy, especially if Peter was the source? Because if the Jewish leaders had written evidence as to who had done the deed, Peter might have been able to be prosecuted for it. (This also explains why Peter so adamently disavowed being a follower of Jesus, even though he followed Jesus to the place where Jesus's trial was--if he had admitted to being a follower, others might have pointed to him as Malchus's assailant [John tells us that one of those who asked about Peter was related to Malchus].) Once John was writing, much later, Peter was long since dead--no troubles could follow from revealing his identity.

Or take Mary (sister of Martha and Lazarus), who annointed Jesus but who goes unnamed until John's account. The annointing, Bauckham argues, set up Jesus as the "annointed one," the "Messiah," thus adding to Jesus's followng and posing a threat to the Jewish powers, who would likely have wanted to persecute Mary for doing so. Once she's dead, however, it doesn't matter to name her.

Or what of the man who runs away naked when the priests come to get Jesus. He likely got involved in a scuffle with the priests and then to get away loosed himself from his robe; as with Peter, protecting the identity from being known as an assailant would have been important to prevent later prosecution. Some have posited that this was Mark himself (a sort subtle signature to the book), but Papias wrote that Mark never had any direct dealings with Jesus--only with Peter--and Bauckham finds it more probable that it was another disciple (possibly not one of the twelve) or even Lazarus.

Lazarus's story isn't given in any account until John. Why is that, given that it is a major reason the Jewish leaders decide to do away with Jesus according to John? Bauckham suggests that it was to prevent the leaders from themselves killing Lazarus, something John says they sought to do. Not putting the story in print would thus keep it from being spread about as easily and thus putting Lazarus in further jeopardy of being killed. Once he had died, however, once again, the reason to keep the story and Lazarus's identity somewhat hush-hush becomes less important.

From here, Bauckham recounts different theories regarding the passing on of oral traditions, showing how the idea that the Jesus stories were largely folktales by unknown community traditions rather than stories related by specific persons is unlikely--that is, showing how the various theories don't pass muster. This section, while easily understandable in Bauckham's deft rendering, was heavy on theory.

What is interesting also is that Bauckam generally does not take the namesakes as being the authors of the various accounts. He thinks they're pseudonyms. Likewise, he accepts the generally accepted idea that the Gospel accounts were written at later dates--in his case, just as the witnesses were beginning to die out (thus, the reason for rendering such information in writing).

One of the most interesting chapters in the book applies psychological theories of memory to how they would apply in the case of eyewitness testimony--and specifically with regard to how they apply to the Gospel accounts. What do we remember in detail, why, and how likely are those memories to be accurate and stable over time? No doubt, memory is often unreliable--we conflate various events or we come to think, given the power of suggestion, that we witnessed something we actually only heard about. And yet courts rely on eyewitness testimony, as indeed virtually any account of a happening.

And yet, in one example given, of a contemporary memory compared with a newspaper account from decades earlier, the person recounting the story, who was about ten at the time of the event and was part of the community where the event occurred, was amazingly precise and accurate. How and why? Bauckham, drawing on the work of pscyhologists, lists several extenuating circumstances that make certain memories more accurate and precise than others: (1) uniqueness or unusualness of the event; (2) consequentionalness of event; (3) emotional connection to the event, and (4) frequent rehearsal. All four lend to our ability to remember the event. Other important factors that tend to be part of accurate memories were (5) vividness of the imagery--memories we remember well tend to be remembered with with more imagery than other memories; (6) inclusion of irrelevant detail--we tend remember inconsequential items that happened as part of or around the event; (7) point of view--we tend to remember an event both from our own first-person perspective and from a third-person observer perspective; (8) dates--we don't tend to remember specific dates of events but we will remember the season, the time, the locale; (9) gist and details--we are better at remembering the general idea of an event than specific details, but that does necessarily mean that the memory becomes inaccurate (it's the way we begin to "interpret" the event in our memory). No doubt, Bauckham notes, those healed by Jesus or who witnessed a spectacular event would have had good reason to have good recall about it--it was unique, often consequential, had emotional connection (if you were the one healed), and would have been retold as a story frequently. As such, many of the accounts in the Gospels include vivid imagery, seemingly irrelevant detail, shifts in point of view, and elements of time and place. Even though the gist of a memory might be all that was recalled, often some details remain important in the recounting: the number of fish and loaves of bread, for example, and the size of the audience, as well as the baskets of leftovers taken up.

Bauckham then shifts his discussion to the Gospel of John, presenting several compelling arguments for why he believes the gospel to have been written not by John the apostle from among the twelve but by John the Elder, who he claims is the actual beloved disciple. (In this sense, Bauckham departs from conservative tradition but is still more conservative than others who see the Gospel as not being written by any John at all.) Some of the major reason for this belief are that two Johns (the elder and the apostle) are mentioned by Papias. Likewise, Polycrates, when writing of John denotes him as being related to the priesthood, which seems unlikely of the brothers of Zebedee; indeed, the book of John (18:15) references a disciple as being with Peter at the court during Jesus's trial--one who knew the various members of the council. The elder likely garnder his name because of the length of his life, as denoted near the end of the book of John, wherein some thought he would never die. That the apostle became associated with this John is not strange, as such mixing up of people with the same surname was typical of the period and after; as another example, Bauckham presents Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany, who are often conflated even though it's pretty clear from the Gospel accounts that they were two different people. Further, John's use of third person to reference himself, except near the start and end of the book, were not atypical of Roman biographies at the time, which tended to subsume the author except at the start and close, suggesting a John really was the main source and/or author. (Personally, I still find it difficult to think that John of the twelve is not the supposed author--he seems to take on such importance with Peter and James that it seems odd that he would have more or less disappeared into history after the few very clear references to him in the Gospels and Acts, whereas John the Elder, who appears only in second-century sources and who presence is only implied in the Gospel of John played such a huge role in the first-century church. That said, Matthias, who became one of the twelve after Judas's death, is noted as having been with them from the beginning, so it is indeed possible there were yet others who were not noted by name who witnessed a large number of Jesus-related events and who played a role in the early church, as indeed is Bauckham's whole point.)

The final chapter closes in on what the fact that eyewitness testimony can be and should be relied upon as part of historical analysis says about how historians should approach their subjects--that is, with more respect than perhaps has always been shown.

[David Clouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well the content deserves 5 stars, but this was a tough book for me to read through. It's very technical in a lot of areas, which is necessary for what it's doing. At other times, it's very readable and really interesting. I learned a lot and even some things I wasn't expecting to learn about so this was a really great read in my opinion, I just wish I tackled it more faithfully like 10 pages at a time rather than how I did read it.

[Ryan Storch · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his book Jesus & the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham provides a clear and coherent argument for why we can trust eyewitness testimony. He addresses the reality that eyewitness testimony is much different from what is spoken of as oral tradition put forward by redaction critics. These eyewitnesses were alive into the early 2nd century. He also speaks to Peter being the chief eyewitness for two of the gospels.

[James Korsmo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is a ground-breaking study by NT scholar Richard Bauckham that questions many of the assumptions current in much New Testament scholarship today, especially about the formation of the Gospels. In this seminal book, Bauckham makes a sustained case for the involvement and centrality of eyewitnesses in the formation of the Gospels as they appear in their current, written canonical form. I won't attempt to recreate his arguments here, for they are many and detailed, but he covers evidence from other ancient historiographies about method, he looks at the statistical prevalence of names in the Gospels verses their known prevalence in the ancient world, and he studies the literary cues from within the Gospels themselves. He also looks very carefully at the earliest testimonies from outside the Gospels about their origin, espeically Papias, Eusebius, Iranaeus, and Polycrates.

A second major thrust of all of this, and maybe the most essential part of the entire book, is his sustained case, summarized and carefully argued in chapter 11, "Transmitting the Jesus Traditions, but supported by work in other chapters as well, is an alternative account of the origin and transmission of the traditions about Jesus and how they came to be written down. It is essentially a sustained (and I believe devastating) critique of form criticism, with its assumption of a long history of traditions and anonymous transmission of various "forms." His critique of form criticism is many-fold, but a few of its highlights are the emphasis on the relatively short period of time between Jesus' life and the writing of the Gospels, and even more especially, as the title of the book betrays, on the involvement of guarantors of the various traditions, which remained in many or even most cases, connected with certain named and known individuals.

He then spends a significant bit of the later portion of the book focusing on issues of authorship in John's Gospel, helpfully illuminating the history of scholarship about authorship, and looking carefully at the claims made by John's author, and also by looking at the early evidence, especially in Polycrates and Papias, about who this certain John was, concluding that the author of John was John "the Elder," a different John than the son of Zebedee, and that this John is in fact the beloved disciple, who later lived in Ephesus, and whose testimony was know at second hand by Papias, and who wrote down his account in his Gospel.

I estimate Bauckham's work to be a monumental achievement of scholarship, and I am hopeful that it will make significant waves in Gospels scholarship in the coming years. It is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Now, I don't expect all of his proposals will meet immediate approval by the guild, but I do think the broad scope of his argument, espeically as to the weakness of many of the assumptions linked with form criticism and still mostly current in Gospels scholarship today, even if beneath the surface, will help bring to light the need to reevaluate the types of documents that the Gospels in fact are. While Bauckham certainly doesn't provide evidence to in some way guarantee the accuracy and validity of the Gospels, he does give a very compelling case for linking the documents with certain named eyewitnesses, including but certainly not limited to the Twelve, among others. It is a very interesting and readable offering in NT scholarship, and one that I highly recommend. I think, along with works like J. D. G. Dunn's Jesus Remembered, Bauckham's work will help continue turning the tide toward reevaluating the relationships between the Gospels themselves and the nature of their development.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are like me and have studied any New Testament scholarship at all, then you have probably felt the incredible frustration at how little support a scholar needs to make his or her argument. Any wild speculation is given credit so long as the scholar does not conclude that the gospels are based on any actual facts. Bauckham's defense of his thesis -- that individuals who were eyewitnesses to the life of the the historical Jesus were the authoritative sources of the text of the Gospels -- is refreshing in way he lays out a plausible, reasonable case that appears to be supported by common historical methods used in non-biblical contexts. His evidence was comprehensive -- writings from Papias, a church father who would have overlapped with some of the earliest disciples, on the origins of the Gospels, to comparative literary analysis of other biographic writings of the period, to modern assessments of how oral traditions and memory work, and on and on -- which he used to rebut commonly accepted arguments against an understanding of the Gospels as eyewitness testimony. Altogether a fascinating and important work. It was probably too academic for the casual reader, and perhaps too accessible for a serious scholarly work. I can only hope that Bauckham, a former professor at St. Andrew's and current researcher at Cambridge, is widely read and taken quite seriously in his field.

As an aside, this book is a testament to the value of the GoodReads "To Read" Shelf. I added this book to my shelf over seven years ago, and within a few years it held the longevity record. As it wasn't available at my library, I kept moving to the next title and the next. Finally, I coughed up some dough and tracked it down online, and it was well worth the long wait and a little bit of money.

An excerpt of Bauckham's plea to treat the Gospels the same as we do other historical/biographical texts:
"Reading the Gospels as eyewitness testimony differs therefore from attempts at historical reconstruction behind the texts. It takes the Gospels seriously as they are; it acknowledges the uniqueness of what we can know only in this testimonial form. It honors the form of historiography they are. From a historiographic perspective, radical suspicion of testimony is a kind of epistemological suicide. it is no more practicable in history than it is in ordinary life. Gospels scholarship must free itself from the grip of the skeptical paradigm that presumes the Gospels to be unreliable unless, in every particular case of story or saying, the historian succeeds in providing independent verification. For such a suspicious approach the Gospels are not believable until and unless the historian can verify each claim that they make to recount history. But this approach is seriously faulty precisely as a historical method. It can only result in a misleadingly minimal collection of uninteresting facts about a historical figure stripped of any real significance. Neither in this nor in countless other cases of historical testimony can the historian verify everything. Testimony asks to be trusted. This does not mean that historians must trust testimony uncritically, but rather that testimony is to be assessed as testimony. The question is whether it is trustworthy, and this is open to tests of internal consistency and coherence, and consistency and coherence with whatever other relevant historical evidence we have and whatever else we know about the historical context. This is one context in which it is appropriate to hear what testimony can tell us...."

[John Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bauckham has given us a gem in his meticulously researched second edition. Challenging the claims of the ‘historical Jesus’ movement, among others, he convincingly posits that the gospel accounts are indeed eyewitness accounts and backs up his claims with mountains of historical data. The sheer scope of the supporting data is enough to impress (and exhaust) any earthly intellect.

He impressively deals with many challenges, including manuscript dating, authorship of the gospels (especially John), the oral traditions, and very impressive scholarship around comparison of names found in the gospels with newly available historical data pertaining to first century Jewish names in Palestine.

Bauckham provides much more than I have listed here, but it is enough to say that the reader cannot help but be impressed by the sheer weight of supporting materials and the plausibility of his arguments.

[Matthew Colvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bauckham argues that the canonical gospels, including and especially John, are the fruit of eyewitnesses to Jesus, not products of an imaginary communal redaction process from an oral tradition. What distinguishes the book from lesser works is Bauckham's use of scholarship from outside Biblical studies: historiography, onomastics, and philosophical epistemology all change the way Bauckham approaches questions. He uses insights from these other fields to explode hidebound and incestuous assumptions of Biblical scholarship. The result, surprisingly enough, is a NT that is far earlier in time, far closer to its sources, and far more commanding of historians' respect.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thesis of this book is that the Gospels were written by people who had direct access to eyewitness testimony of the events described. The author makes a good case, and it is certainly heartening to read a work of theology that is so strongly supportive of the authenticity of the scriptures. The book is very long and dense, but it doesn't use a lot of technical terminology, so it is appropriate for the (very interested and focused) non-specialist.

[Eric Yap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Bauckham's magisterial magnum opus that dealt the final nail into the coffin that is form criticism. Well it was a roller coaster ride reading this, because Bauckham, even as he contends against higher criticism, is not "conservative" theologically in the pure sense (more on that later). Form criticism, represented most famously by the works of Rudolf Bultmann, held that the gospel traditions reached the authors of the canonical Gospels after a long period of uncontrolled and fluid transmission, and have been subjected to manipulation for the contextual purpose of the transmitting community. Hence, it is why most of the canonical Gospels do not present a tight chronological narrative, or how some of the narratives seemed “piecemeal” together in an awkward fashion, or that the Gospels presented contradictory accounts. It is against this waning tide of scholarship that Bauckham produced his magnum opus, which demonstrated that the Gospels were written as the best form of historiographical biography in the Greco-Roman literary world, with the sources of the Evangelists coming from close, reputable and reliable eyewitnesses.

The external evidence that Bauckham employed includes a fascinating study on onomatology, utilizing recent research on Jewish names during 2nd temple Judaism by the Israeli scholar Tal Ilan, demonstrating that the names in the Gospels corresponded strikingly accurate with the data of popular names during that time period. Bauckham read history and classics in Cambridge, therefore his mastery over Greco-Roman historiographies served him exceedingly well to examine the internal literary evidence of the canonical Gospels. The strength and bulk of Bauckham's material consist of how he demonstrated that the Gospel writers employed the literary device of inclusio to reveal that their sources were close eyewitnesses of the life and ministry of Jesus from the beginning to the end. Peter forms the eyewitness inclusio for Mark’s Gospel, whereas the rest of the Synoptics adopted part of Mark’s Petrine inclusio (assuming Markian priority), with additional literary inclusio of their own. Luke’s Gospel adopted the “women” on top of Peter’s eyewitness testimony (which are crucial eyewitnesses at the cross and the tomb when the disciples were absent), while John’s Gospel had the additional “beloved disciple” that formed an external inclusio on top of the Petrine inclusio. With Mark's Gospel drawing his source from Peter's eyewitness testimony, the literary observation that Mark’s constant alternation between the third person plural and third-person singular revealed an echo of Peter’s firsthand narrative. Theologically, this shows that Mark presented Peter both as a typical representative figure of the Apostles, as well as exceeding them in both positive and negative ways. That Peter was both the first disciple that confessed the true identity of Jesus as well as the disciple that got rebuked sharply by Jesus, and that he was also the one that claimed to follow Jesus but denied him extensively, demonstrated a remarkable testimony of personal growth that characterizes the rest of the Twelve, as all Twelve also "said the same" (Mark presents this consistently, note Mark 14:31). Another bulk and strength of Bauckham's work is his discussion of John’s Gospel as reliable close eyewitness testimony, as he devoted close to two hundred pages to prove that the “Beloved Disciple” was an important and reliable eyewitness, and that chapter 21 (often attributed by form critics as a later addition) as an epilogue formed a coherent inclusio with the prologue in chapter 1 by noting several theological and literary themes, as well as a lengthy discussion to contradict the view that John’s Gospel (and the other Johannine Epistles) was written by a “Johannine community" (also a view of form critics).

However, and this is where I reveal my "conservative" hand, Bauckham's view on the authorship of Matthew and John is where I find highly disagreeable, and weakens Bauckham's overall argument. For a work attempting to defend the canonical Gospels, there seems to be a lack of space or attention given to the Gospel of Luke and Matthew. There is a fair bit of attention given to both book, but only a couple of subsections for the Gospel of Luke, and even lesser space devoted to the Gospel of Matthew. Aside from assuming Markian priority and Matthew’s and Luke’s adoption of Mark’s material, it would have strengthened the overall impact of this work if more attention and space have been given to the other two Gospels. Especially for Matthew’s Gospel, Bauckham does not hold to the historical view that the Apostle Matthew was the author of this Gospel, and only posit minimal speculations based on Papias’ writings concerning Matthew’s Gospel that it is potentially pseudonymous. Also more on that in the next paragraph.

Additionally, another salient disagreement I have with Bauckham and was rather disturbed (hence a roller coaster ride) was his extensive amount of space on the discussion on the John’s Gospel (and by extension the Johannine Epistles), specifically to demonstrate that the author of John’s Gospel was, contrary to the historical position, Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, but John the Elder identified in Papias. Bauckham claimed that he did not primarily come to this conclusion from reading external evidence, like Papias and the other patristic writers, but from reading internal evidence he “came to the view that the Beloved Disciple was not John the Son of Zebedee,” but his reasonings from internal evidence and reading do not seem convincing. His additional chapter for the second edition provided most of the internal reasoning and evidence, however, most of them are not convincing, and some at worst, could sound contradictory to his earlier points. For example, he posits that John the Elder was a resident of Jerusalem and moved among the “outside group” of disciples that were apart from the twelve, but how would this John then be able to produce unique Johannine materials that were outside of Jerusalem if not an eyewitness during Jesus’ itinerary ministry (for example, John 4). Besides that, the entire argument becomes even weaker when Bauckham tries to establish this John as a “favourite disciple” of Jesus (Bauckham claims "best friend of Jesus"), yet none of the NT books attested of this obscure figure, except, of course, it is self-attested by the Johannine literature themselves, but this comes dangerously close to Gnosticism, claiming that there was such an important figure in the life and ministry of Jesus yet nowhere else does the NT records of this person! Or consider the argument that “Peter does not have to share a relationship” with this “John,” yet even among Jesus’ “outer disciples” (like the women in Luke as mentioned by Bauckham), they appear prevalently in all the Synoptics, and we must also question why this “beloved disciple” is with Simon Peter (as part of the inclusio) when they were first called by Jesus or when they were fishing by Tiberias. Bauckham contended that the exact authorship of the Gospel is not as crucial as the fact that this Gospel is a reliable eyewitness testimony, and that "apostolic flavour" did not matter. But this becomes all the more contradictory and a slippery slope: either the twelve have "apostolic authority and witness" above the rest or they do not have, and if they are without this apostolic authority and witness then it defeats Bauckham's earlier point of Petrine perspective on Mark as Peter is well known as esteemed as reliable precisely because of his apostolic status. If the other authors of the NT books (bar the author of Hebrews) are attested within the canon for the sake of apostolicity (for example, Luke is attested in Paul's epistles, James in Acts, Mark in Acts, Paul, and Peter epistles and so on, Bauckham agrees that Mark is one same single individual across the NT), we must ask how would the Johannine books be considered apostolic or canonical or reliable eyewitness if there is no attestation for this obscure figure, and if he is not the Apostle John? The same reasoning also weakens Bauckhem's view on Matthean authorship since he postulated potential pseudonymity. Most of Bauckham’s reasoning based on internal evidence for John the Elder seem decidedly weak when under scrutiny, and we'll have to his word, reading and translation on Papais, Irenaeus and Eusebius at face value as they belong to external evidence and are not necessarily easy to read or accessible.

However, Bauckham's research postulating literary inclusio as intentional sources of eyewitness testimony, as well as the remarkable demonstration of the Petrine perspective of Mark’s Gospel, themselves remained as outstanding exegetical work, and well worth the effort for the slow grind through the 700 pages (the second edition added 100 pages and 3 chapters). Therefore, it can be noted that his strongest argument comes from internal, not external evidence, as the heart of this magisterial work was to demonstrated that the eyewitness testimony from the canonical Gospels “transcend the dichotomy between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. They give us the Jesus of testimony. Indeed, it reminds me of what the faithful Westminster divines say of their old confessions, in chapter 1 (on the Holy Scriptures), article V:

"We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts."

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A magisterial defense of the Gospels as eyewitness testimony.

The author takes up Samuel Byrskog's thesis regarding the Gospels as representing the "gold standard" of historiology in the Greco-Roman world: narrative based on eyewitness testimony, either directly from eyewitnesses (so John), or based on the testimony of eyewitnesses (Luke).

The author suggests a reconstruction of Papias' fragment as found in Eusebius regarding the Gospels to demonstrate his preference for eyewitness testimony, that he would rather hear from those who had living memory experiences with Jesus over information from texts (not dismissing the value of texts; just honoring the greater value of actual eyewitness testimony). The author sets forth charts of names from Second Temple Judaism and from the Gospel accounts and discusses why in eyewitness testimony some names would be remembered (prominent characters or because the person's testimony was well known and associated with him and ended up in the Gospel) and others would not (either because it was dangerous for names to be associated with the event, or the name of the person was immaterial to the story) He analyzes the Gospel of Mark in detail to show how it does likely reflect the stories of Simon Peter which the latter would tell as testimony - and also to confirm why the narrative is not sufficiently "ordered" for Papias, like John's is, since it's based on a collection of stories from Peter and not all put together by someone who was there.

The author does amazingly well at deconstructing most of the claims of form criticism; hopefully modern scholarship's infatuation with the theme will soon come to a blissful end, especially in New Testament studies. He explores models of oral tradition and is able to demonstrate how it correlates well with the evidence found in the NT (main events remembered best; dates and surrounding details are much fuzzier). He goes into greater depth into Papias' comments on the Gospels, as well as what can be seen in Polycrates and Irenaeus, especially as they relate to John's gospel, for which he sets forth the evidence as written by a disciple named John who saw Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, and who later ended up in Ephesus, and not the son of Zebedee. He concludes with an analysis of what testimony is (Cready and Ricoeur feature prominently), compares it to how modern historiography considers testimony, and engages in a powerful exercise with illuminating examples from the Holocaust regarding the power of testimony, how a speaker can give an ancedotal story with great force and power, or how small details of a story could be made to align, however consciously, with prominent historical themes (and he is sensitive about it, recognizing that the only connection is the extraordinary and extreme natures of the events described).

In the end he makes a most powerful case for the importance of testimony, how historiography must first trust testimony in order to then be critical of it, and how the Gospels do represent the expected kind of historiography for the day and accomplish its purpose, setting forth what God accomplished through Jesus of Nazareth according to those who lived and experienced it.

Very much worthwhile for Bible students and scholars.

[Bruce Mcgregor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non-fiction, scholarly work, but written in a readable style and very worth reading. Professor Richard Bauckham presents his arguments for why he believes the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony not just from the authors but also from the people mentioned in the Gospels, for instance blind Bartimaeus is mentioned in the Gospel because he was handing down his testimony, he was one of the tradents. He had continued in the church after Christ had left and was telling his story. There are many other chapters on variations of the theme that the Gospels are eyewitness testimony. I have read it many times and finally decided to put it on Goodreads. I will read specific chapters until I absorb them completely. One of my favorite books. This book also has made a huge impact among scholars of the Gospels.

[Walter Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. The author is a gospel scholar who calls the field to take the Jesus of testamony seriously. He argues that there are distinctive clues in the gospels that reveal them as eyewitness testamony, befitting the practice of the historians of the day. He also makes a compelling case that the gospel of John was written by John the elder of Ephesus, as opposed to John the apostle, who was an eyewitness himself to most of the events that transpire in his gospel. The gospel of Mark, similarly, is composed mainly of the witness of Peter (and other named disciples in the various pericopes) and Luke of Peter and other Eyewitnesses, perhaps leaning heavily on the women who were at the tomb of Jesus. This is an important work on the historical Jesus as presented by the testimony of those who were closest to him on this Earth.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author's argument is that the Gospels are written based on eyewitness testimony or very close to eyewitness testimony. That has always been my impression, but there seems to be an argument otherwise that has been prevalent for many years. I am glad I have not involved myself in that. He goes to great lengths to support his thesis and there's interesting insights. Names and unnamed people are some of the eyewitnesses. Many were still alive when the Gospels were written and you could ask them, or they could tell if it were not correct. Some were unnamed because The Way was still subversive and naming them could endanger their lives. He talks a lot about the author of John's Gospel and it is interesting and different from what I thought. An interesting book, but not a quick one to read.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant piece of scholarship arguing that at their essence, the gospels are based on eyewitnesses who told and retold their stories in the years following the first Easter. Bauckham argues that form criticism's explanation of the gospels has long gone the way of the dinosaurs; it does not make sense that the original Jesus events evolved anonymously like a game of Gossip until the final result bore no resemblance to the original events. Instead, the original witnesses continued to live and be active in the years between AD 30 and 70 (when Mark's gospel was written); the New Testament itself refers to eyewitnesses who are still living. A brilliant work; this summary does not do it justice.

[Jacqueline Fish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really remarkable- I did find parts to be beyond my ability to understand because of lack of familiarity with those whom he wrote about. My first introduction to the concept is John the author being separate from John the disciple.

His understanding of John the author and peters interplay- their unique calls as the basis of the “rivalry” was brilliant.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book, but so detailed I just got swamped by it in the end and couldn't finish it.

[Rafael Sales · Rating 5 out of 5]

A amazing work for a great theologian and historian. Bauckham open our eyes to see the historiography in the Gospels and how the witness writing books so relevant.