Category: Biblical Studies

Speculative digressions

Bauckham follows with a speculative set of digressions suggesting possible reasons why some names were more popular than others. Some, he suggests, were popular because they recalled names with anti-Hellenistic associations of liberation or conquest (e.g. Hasmonean names); others were popular for the opposite reason — because they jelled so easily with similar sounding Hellenistic names (e.g. Simon/Simeon)! Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 4b”

4. Palestinian Jewish Names

This chapter “temporarily steps aside from our investigation of the eyewitnesses” to explore a topic that “will usefully inform” that study when resumed (p.67). Unfortunately Bauckham does not clarify with any precision his terms here or offer cogently supported rationales for accepting some names and rejecting others from the lists he works with. I was left wondering if he was trying to establish a point about the gospels with tools that were simply not designed for the job. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 4a”

Have updated my collected after-thoughts on my chapter 1 /WIFTA In brief, I remark that there is simply no such “phenomenon” as “named and unnamed characters” in the bulk of literary fiction and nonfiction stories that “cries out for explanation”. That an author does not name every single character making an appearance is simply to avoid the clutter of overburdening an audience with too much pointless detail. In the case of the first written of our gospels, Mark, it is clear that when the author does decide to employ a name for a character it is for the mnemonic/theological/message point of aligning an event with a name representative of that event. Thus in a healing of raising a girl “from sleep” we have the name “enlightened/awakened”, Jairus; in the restoring of a man from the shame of begging to following the royal “son of David”, we have the Son of Honour, Bartimaeus; and others I have also mentioned in earlier posts.

Meanwhile, another thought here: Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Other, 1”

Have now completed reading Chapter 4, Palestinian Jewish Names. Had feared it would be more technical and complex than the effort was worth but as questions arose I got drawn into far more than I ever expected. There is much more of interest in this chapter than I anticipated and look forward to writing up my notes on it.

With magical electronic spreadsheet technology and open source conversion software I have been able to prepare my own tables extracted from Bauckham’s — which on first glance look to me like they invite a different hypothesis from B’s for the selections of names. The hypothesis I am thinking of has been suggested several times by others already although I understand it has not found ready widespread support in mainstream scholarship. In a few days I hope to re-emerge from real life work and get my commentary on chapter 4 up here. Meanwhile, for those who like tables here is what I will be basing some of my commentary on….. (They are all pdf files.)

Names in Mark

Download (PDF, 41KB)

Names in Matthew

Download (PDF, 41KB)

Names in Luke

Download (PDF, 42KB)

Names in John

Download (PDF, 40KB)

Names in Acts

Download (PDF, 42KB)

There appear to be some errors in the tables in B’s book which I have not always corrected, and no doubt there will be some errors in my own. I also am aware that I have not been consistent in listing only those names B selects according to his criteria. And I also realize I have listed Simon Peter as both Simon and Peter. But feel free to point out any obvious errors and oversights.

8 pm 27th Jan 07

Forgot to add another theological (not eyewitness verification) reason for the naming of Mary mother of James and Joses at the end of Mark’s gospel. Early in the gospel the author has Jesus ask who is his true mother. He employs a scene of his physical mother not being able to reach her son for the crowd (again– as in similar stories in this gospel — foreshadowing the time Jesus will be unreachable behind the door of the tomb) to draw the distinction between his spiritual family and his physical family. At the end of the gospel the author pointedly refers to Jesus’ mother as the mother of James and Joses, — Jesus is omitted (unlike earlier and 6.3). Following Weeden, Tolbert, et al, …. The author is telling the reader that his earthly mother, like the twelve, have no part in him. (Other gospel authors would later correct Mark.) His readers, rather, are his true spiritual family. So his mother is looking in the wrong place for him. (The Christ is not here — as was already alluded to in Mark 13. But there is so much more to this that it is really another topic.) The point is, this is enough to suggest that the mention of the Mary mother of James and Joses here is for theological reasons first and last.

10 pm. 26th Jan 07

Forgot to add that Schmidt does not himself single out the country origin of the bearer of the weapon of execution in the Roman triumphal procession. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 3/WIFTA”

Chapter 2 WIFTA (What I Forgot To Add — to be regularly updated I am sure) Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 2/WIFTA”

To those who might wonder if Papias’s reference to “living and abiding voice” is one of the multiple Johannine resonances in his Prologue (c.f. the final chapter of John’s discussion of whether and how long the beloved disciple would “remain” with them; and further note other Johannine touches such as both the names and the order of the disciples, the preference for the word “disciples” over “apostles” and the apparent reference to Jesus as “the truth”) Bauckham argues No. Papias’s preference for “a living and abiding voice” over information from books is further evidence that Papias was embracing the best conventional historical practice. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 2c”

Bauckham argues that Papias, towards the end of the first century, seized opportunities to question disciples of “elders” who knew personally two eyewitness disciples of Jesus — Aristion and John the Elder — who were at that time still alive in Asia. Other eyewitness disciples of Jesus, specifically Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John and Matthew, were by that time dead. The best Papias could do to learn what particular Jesus stories each of these names was a custodian to was to question itinerant disciples of other elders who traced some word-of-mouth trail back to those disciples. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 2b”

Chapter 2: Papias on the Eyewitnesses

Bauckham begins with a discussion of Papias apparently to verify the historicity of his eyewitness model: — That eyewitnesses of Jesus provided a living source and confirmation of the oral reports circulating about Jesus; and that the earliest written accounts of Jesus (Papias’s book, and therefore plausibly the gospels, too) were composed by drawing from among the last surviving of these eyewitnesses. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 2a”

WIFTA — What I Forgot to Add to my previous post (updated 27th Jan 07)

10.15 am 3rd Feb 07

This is about the craziest “problem” facing a modern scholar that I have ever heard: That the fact that some characters in the gospels are named while others are not is a “phenomenon” that cries out for explanation??? Come on, how many works of literature of any length, whether historical or nonhistorical, fictional or nonfictional, that do NOT feature such a “phenomenon”. It is plainly a simple matter of common literary competence not to name every person in a story featuring many persons — speaking generally — since it obviously would be simply too much clutter to have names for everyone. And in the case of the gospel of Mark, the first written of the gospels, then it is surely as clear as the nose on one’s face that the author has chosen to bring in names as often as not when they have symbolic value by way of mnemonic illustration of the story: e.g. Jairus, enlightened, for a miracle of raising back from ‘sleep’; Bartimaeus, a son of honour, for one raised from the status of beggar to a follower of the “royal son of David”. That such a phenomena should be considered something crying out for explanation is to dismiss the basics of western (and possibly broader than that, too) literary cultures.

Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 1/WIFTA”

This is the first part of a detailed review of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham (2006). It is in response to the discussion begun by Chris Tilling on his Chrisendom blog, and remarks I have seen from a variety of quarters indicating that this work is having quite an impact in some quarters. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 1”