2007-08-22

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18d

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by Neil Godfrey

By now it ought to be obvious I can only handle Bauckham in very small doses. Maybe it’s age. I used to love downing a whole bottle of whisky straight in very short shrift but have learned to cut it back to occasional nips if I want my brain and body to survive a bit longer. Maybe that’s a metaphor for my misspent youth in the coffin of religion, leaving me nowadays only ever able to spend occasional minutes at best engaging in silly (ir)rationalizations that pass as scholarly arguments for belief in miracles and semi-human miracle performers. Anyway, if sticking at something one has promised oneself to do is a virtue then my ongoing sticking with this review bit by bit proves I am at least not totally bereft of virtue whatever my other faults. And addressing these final parts of B’s argument calls for every ounce of virtue I can muster. Must reward myself with another whisky when finished.

Testimony and its reception contd. (pp 492-493) Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18d”


2007-07-09

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18c

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by Neil Godfrey

Testimony and Its Reception (pp 490-493) Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18c”


2007-07-08

Rationalist Hitchens vs Eyewitness Bauckham

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by Neil Godfrey

Any encounter with Christopher Hitchens’ talent with words is always a richly rewarding experience. And while reading his newly published “God is Not Great” I was at times painfully reminded of my failure at this point to have completed my review of the last chapter of Bauckham’s Eyewitness book on this blog. (I really will complete that soon, promise.) Not that I have any reason to think Hitchens has read Bauckham, but some of Hitchens’ plainest observations about religion and reason reminded me by contrast of the convoluted nonsense twisted through the keyboard of Bauckham as he attempts to justify branches of medieval and ancient scholarship against post-Enlightenment rationalism.

Eyewitnesses of a Medieval Miracle! Continue reading “Rationalist Hitchens vs Eyewitness Bauckham”


2007-06-01

bauckham vs enlightenment (rev)

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by Neil Godfrey

(i have wondered if the more grammatically correct heading should be “bauckham vs the enlightenment” — but the more i think about it the more i realize that “bauckham vs enlightenment” is the more accurate.)

For those who are not history buffs, by Enlightenment I mean the rise of a rational/naturalist/’humanitarianist’ approach to knowledge, science, and religion that marked especially the 18th century. Think Newton, Franklin, Voltaire, Boyle, Hutton, Harvey, Linnaeus (300 years old this month– big celebrations in Sweden!), Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, Frederick ditto — not eastern mysticism.

When I first began reading Bauckham’s Eyewitnesses I simply assumed I would be engaging with a work by someone with a normal academic acceptance of normal scholarly standards. Continue reading “bauckham vs enlightenment (rev)”


2007-05-25

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18b

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by Neil Godfrey

Bauckham’s use of Paul Ricoeur

Bauckham pursues the fundamental role of testimony for history through reference to internationally renowned French philosopher Paul Ricoeur‘s “Memory, History, Forgetting” (2004). Before discussing this section of B’s final chapter I want to address a sentence of Ricoeur’s on which Bauckham places particularly heavy and repeated emphasis:

First, trust the word of others, then doubt if there are good reasons for doing so. (p.165, Memory) Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18b”


2007-05-06

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18a

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by Neil Godfrey

Check my book review list for complete set of chapter by chapter comments

What is Testimony and Can We Rely on It?

This concluding chapter does not sum up Bauckham’s reasons for thinking the gospels may be the testimony of eyewitnesses. It argues, rather, that eyewitness testimony should be more highly regarded by modern historians as a valid historical source. Of course the argument misses its point in this instance if one has failed to be convinced that the gospels are indeed records of eyewitness testimonies.

Bauckham’s discussion relies heavily on Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18a”


2007-04-03

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18a . . .

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by Neil Godfrey

This chapter is still coming . . . . not forgotten — main reason for the delay is that Bauckham relies most heavily on C. A. J. Coady’s book, Testimony: A Philosophical Study (1992), so I am enjoying reading Coady (along with some of the scholarly discussion circulating about his book) at the moment — hopefully to better position me to discuss Bauckham’s argument.


2007-03-22

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18a

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by Neil Godfrey

This is going to be a multi-part reply to a most extraordinary chapter. In a bizarre way that Bauckham would not appreciate, B will find himself in league with his post-modernist devil against the intellectual values of the Enlightenment. The main differences between the two are firstly that B will often be arguing against a straw-man Enlightenment, and secondly that he will subtly shift definitions and contextual meanings of his terms as he proceeds. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18a”


2007-03-18

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 17

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by Neil Godfrey

17. Polycrates and Irenaeus on John

Polycrates on John

Bauckham proceeds to show that Polycrates knew that John the author of the Gospel was not the Son of Zebedee, member of the Twelve, John. He begins with his letter to the bishop of Rome over the ‘correct’ date on which to observe ‘Easter’ (or the ‘Passover/Last Supper’). The extract is from the ccel site (Eusebius, H.E. 5.24.2-7): Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 17”


Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 16:Appendix

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by Neil Godfrey

Appendix: Papias as Eusebius’s Source in Hist. Eccl. 3.24.5-13?

At the end of chapter 16 Bauckham addresses the argument of Charles Hill that Eusebius paraphrased a section of Papias that discussed the gospels of John and Luke.

Hill’s argument contradicts Bauckham’s by implication: Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 16:Appendix”


2007-03-17

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 16

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by Neil Godfrey

16. Papias on John

A second (hitherto unknown) inner circle
In this chapter Bauckham argues that the author of the Gospel of John was John the Elder, and that it was this John who was the Beloved Disciple (BD). He begins by comparing the Synoptic “sources” with John’s. He reminds us that it was Peter, James and John (the Sons of Zebedee) who were the inner circle in the Synoptic Gospels, and that it was the Twelve who were the eyewitness authorities behind Mark’s gospel, first of the Synoptics. In the Gospel of John, on the other hand, we find that the synoptic trio of Peter, James and John, no longer occupy such a privileged place. They have been replaced, argues B, by the BD. But the BD is not alone. He is part of another circle, Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 16”


2007-03-10

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 15b

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by Neil Godfrey

(forgive tardy responses to some comments on earlier entries — will get there soon)

A Comparison with Luke-Acts
Bauckham continues to search for ways to treat the Gospel of John’s witness motif as something other than a metaphor:

  1. He interprets the reference to “from the beginning” in Luke’s Prologue to eyewitnesses being “with Jesus” from the beginning of his ministry, and relates this to the first speech of Peter in Acts that announced a replacement for Judas had to have been with Jesus from the time of the baptism of John. Both Luke and Acts clearly speak historically. Bauckham concludes that it follows that the author of the Gospel of John must therefore have had a similar historiographic intent with reference to “from the beginning”. Of course there is no logical reason why one author’s historiography should be vicariously implanted into another author’s metaphor. Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 15b”

2007-03-04

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 15a

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by Neil Godfrey

15. The Witness of the Beloved Disciple

Bauckham opens this chapter with:

In the last chapter we demonstrated that, according to John 21:24, the Beloved Disciple was both the primary witness on whose testimony the Gospel is based and also himself the author of the Gospel. (p.384) Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 15a”


Papias: theologian or historian?

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by Neil Godfrey

Richard Bauckham places critical importance on the way Papias expresses his preference for a “living voice” over “books”, and argues that here Papias is informing readers that he follows “best historical practice” according to standards of antiquity.

Thanks to my life-long habit of frequenting second hand bookstores I have just come across my old 1965 Penguin paperback of G. A. Williamson translation of Eusebius and notice a small print footnote on these words of Papias: Continue reading “Papias: theologian or historian?”