Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
3. Names in the Gospel Traditions
In this chapter Bauckham discusses the names in the Gospels apart from those of the Twelve and of the public figures, proposing that they were eyewitnesses of the “traditions” to which their names are attached and that they continued to live as authoritative living witnesses to guarantee the veracity of their experiences. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 3”
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”
Thinking aloud re my Questions, — dialogues? post: If part of Mark’s opposition to Peter and the 12 included opposition to the legend of Peter and co going out from Jerusalem (Justin Martyr appears to have known of the latter — without addressing here why he would be a factor in a question about the canonicals….) — If Mark was challenging the Petrine/Jerusalem tradition, then he would need to somehow be able to explain why the apostles themselves were reputed to have founded the eucharist (Justin Martyr says they were given this trad by Jesus after his resurrection — again this is not making much sense to those who date the gospels early. Much of my approach is in synch with Mack’s approach, but my details and conclusions I am sure are not Mack’s — all this is for another post.)
But by placing the eucharist BEFORE the death of Jesus, Mark informs his readers why it was that those he opposes also knew of a eucharist rite, (and also why they presumably got it wrong in some ways?).
Matthew tries to outsmart Mark by having the disciples report to Jesus in Galilee anyway, while conceding a few doubted.
Luke restores the Jerusalem/Petrine foundation while still incorporating the Pauline-Mark without a Galilee appearance. (Does he redo John’s postresurrection seaside catch to a pre-passion anecdote tied up with the first call? — following Matson’s argument that Luke follows John.)
N
I have held off posting on IIDB’s thread on the search for an historical core to Christian/Jesus origins until just now when I asked how one might define “historical core” and how one might know when one has found it. The whole question seems to me to be making assumptions about the methods of historical investigation that cannot be justified. But I need time to collect my thoughts on it more thoroughly before posting on it, if I ever do. The term seems to suggest that the way historians interpret and evaluate evidence can establish something that really is beyond that evidence and the constructs of the historians.
I fail to understand how starting at a later point and working back is any more likely to arrive at such a historical core — If the root reasons for not establishing some common understanding of Christian origins has more to do with unscientific approaches to historical method in so much of what passes for biblical scholarship and the paucity of evidence, then aren’t we just going to end up reaching the same impasse only from the opposite direction?
(But I don’t want to go the way of being absurdly post-modernistic on this or sounding that way. Some constructs can be more than just theoretical. A person shot another person may be a construct but it’s also a reality beyond the construct. )
Is there any such beast as a scholarly discussion of the ‘New Testament’ gospels and epistles as possible direct continuations of the ‘Old Testament’s’ intellectual world?
I’m thinking of Thomas L. Thompson’s ‘Mythic Past‘: “Both theologically and referentially, most of the texts that were to become the Christian Bible’s Old Testament belong to an intellectual world that holds the New Testament in common….. Most of the works that belong to these ‘testaments’ reflect a single biblical tradition that has its roots in what is widely understood as early Jewish intellectual history. They relate to each other as older and younger contemporaries within a common discourse. The discussions about tradition that we find in the New Testament are not reinterpretations of a closed past. They are part of an ongoing transmission common to the whole of biblical tradition.” (p.289)
If the literature of ‘the old testament’ is essentially a metaphor (mythic creation?) of ‘a new and true remnant ‘Israel’ replacing an old and failed and vanished ‘Israel’ as part of an identification ‘program’ for an uprooted people settled beside ‘strangers’ who are sometimes godfearing and often antagonistic, then is it unreasonable to explore the possibility that the gospels are essentially an extension of this identification ‘program’ for a post 70 ce generation? And if valid, does such a perspective change or add to any ‘mythic’ portrayal of Jesus as hitherto understood?
Neil
To write the earlier essays I found it helpful to prepare a table of comparisons between the Gospel of Peter and the canonical gospels. I’ve added the link here for convenience for myself and anyone else interested.