Jesus isn’t only someone whose birth is widely celebrated but, few would dispute, the most-discussed person of the past 2,000 years. Yet what do we really know about him?
Widespread debate and doubt about the reliability of the four New Testament Gospels have been roused by academic theories popularized in best-selling nonfiction (“Misquoting Jesus”), novels (“The Da Vinci Code”) and media treatments.
Some thinkers promote non-biblical writings about Jesus, though ancient Christians deemed them inauthentic.
Now moderate and conservative experts are responding to such skepticism in noteworthy new works.
One item, accessible for nonacademic readers, is a blockbuster: “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony” by Richard Bauckham of Scotland’s University of St. Andrews.
Bauckham asserts that the Gospels stemmed from colleagues who walked alongside Jesus and from those with whom they shared their recollections. All history relies upon insiders’ testimony, he reminds us. He acknowledges this outlook is “very unfashionable” in elite circles.
Graham Stanton of the University of Cambridge thinks the new book “shakes the foundations of a century of scholarly study of the Gospels.”
Bauckham’s special angle is analysis of the people named in various passages. As he proposed to fellow scholars during a convention of North America’s Society of Biblical Literature, “the named characters were members of the early Christian communities and themselves told the stories of the events in which they had been participants.”
He sees the 12 apostles as an official body that guaranteed the oral and written accounts of Jesus.
For instance, Judas’ replacement was required to be a witness to Jesus’ life “from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us” (Acts 1:22).
Also, Luke 1:2 reports that Gospel materials were “delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses.” And John 21:24 asserts, “This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things.”
All that may sound commonsensical. But many professors in universities and liberal seminaries think the Gospels were so heavily larded with interpretation and fiction that the real Jesus of history was enshrouded in fog.
Skeptics suggest a big time gap between Jesus’ life and the written versions. But Bauckham says “the Gospels were written within living memory of the events they recount,” much closer to Jesus’ time than other writings. They aren’t folklore, he asserts.
He sees Jesus as the sort of figure who purposely fashioned his teachings to be memorized easily. Along the way, Bauckham examines psychological studies on the reliability of memory.
The Gospel of John, which has a different flavor than those of Matthew, Mark and Luke, is often dismissed as the least historical of the four. But Bauckham thinks John contains the recollections from a special circle of insiders.
Other speakers at the scholars’ convention have produced related new works whose titles broadcast their contents:
Witherington agrees with Bauckham on eyewitness testimony and adds the exotic theory that the Gospel of John was written by Lazarus, the man who was resuscitated by Jesus.
Similar and also notable:
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
