Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

Aleks Clark

New Testament Survey I - Gospels

Instructor: Stein

December 17, 2019

 1

Introduction

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2nd edition, Eerdmans, 2017) is written by Richard J.

Bauckham, an Anglican scholar specializing in New Testament studies. This paradigm-

shifting work has been described as “a remarkable achievement which rightly places the role

of eyewitnesses in early Christianity on the international scholarly agenda and points to its

historical and theological significance.1 ” While the book is rigorous enough to appeal to a

scholarly audience, Bauckham writes in an engaging style that draws the reader in without

drowning them in endless detail.

It is ironic that Papias would probably not have considered Bauckham to have pro-

vided an “ordered account,” as his arguments do not proceed nicely from A to B to C, but

instead weave a narrative that touches on everything from ancient historiography to modern

epistemology. It is in this latter that Bauckham’s greatest weakness emerges: by latching on

to Coady’s attack on the Humean account of knowledge,2 he is so eager to argue for testi-

mony that he exposes himself to attack from the his flank. Welbourne’s counter to Coady’s

argument3 doesn’t repudiate the usage of testimony in epistemology, and thus Bauckham’s

argument. It does, however, serve to diminish Bauckham’s efforts, even though epistemology

is not Bauckham’s central concern.

1. Samuel Byrskog, “The Eyewitnesses as Interpreters of the Past: Reflections on Richard Bauck-
ham’s, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2008,

2. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, 2nd edi-
tion (Eerdmans, 2017), pp 521-523.

3. Michael Welbourne, Knowledge (Acumen Publishing, 2001), pp 85-91.

 2

Form Criticism

The primary concern of Bauckham in writing Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is to argue

for the Gospels as literary, creative works, composed on the evidence of eyewitness testimony

(even, in the case of John, composed by an actual eyewitness). This argument by Bauckham

is directly opposed to the tenants of form criticism, which attempt to analyze the Gospel

materials as deriving from oral tradition in order to uncover the “Historical Jesus.”

Throughout the book, Bauckham explains and analyzes the basic assumption of form

criticism:

...whatever the form in which the eyewitnesses of the history of Jesus

first told their stories or repeated Jesus’ teachings, a long process of anonymous
transmission in the communities intervened between their testimony and the
writing of the Gospels.4

It is this assumption that provides the justification for the idea of form criticism itself:

once it is held, then the process of discovery can begin. Much like the tendency to allegorize

Scripture found in the Middle Ages, the form critic is invested in the discovery of truths

hidden between the lines, obscured from the plain meaning of the text. No longer do the

Gospels represent historical reality, but instead become a source of hidden knowledge5 about

the communities who transmitted the Jesus traditions from the time of Easter, until these

traditions were committed to text by the evangelists.

While critical of these assumptions, Bauckham is careful to point out the wide range

of importance that form critics attribute to the transmission process. While some scholars,

such as Rudolf Bultmann, believed the transmission process to be highly creative and thus

4. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p 26.

5. Ibid., p 273.
 3

viewed the Gospels as having very little value with regards to the “Historical Jesus,” Bauck-

ham is careful to acknowledge that many practitioners of form criticism are not so radical,

acknowledging some degree of historical value in the traditions put down by the Evangelists.6

The Claims of the Evangelists

In testing the claims of the form critics, Bauckham invests significant space in ex-

ploring the claims of authenticity present in the Gospels themselves. As he notes repeatedly,

these claims should not be accepted uncritically – many historians have made many claims

that were later proven to be false – but these claims become relevant if one considers the

fact that the Gospels were accepted as authentic for the early Christian communities. Since

Bauckham sets the latest date for the composition and distribution of the Gospel of John

(the last to be written) no later than the first century, these claims of authenticity and eye-

witness testimony would have been easily verifiable for the communities who received and

accepted the Gospel texts. Named characters would have been identifiable, and in many

cases still living, able to authenticate the content and authenticity of the Jesus traditions

which had been put to page.

Even once we accept the importance of a claim of eyewitness testimony, the modern

reader may wonder why Bauckham invests significant effort in the topic. After all, the only

Evangelist to make a clear claim to base their work on eyewitness testimony is Luke.7 It is

6. However, it should be said that the more moderate scholars, especially English-speaking scholars,
who adopted German form criticism critically, often argued that understanding the way a tradition functioned
in the life of the church by no means entailed that it originated in that context and could not also go back to
a Sitz im Leben Jesu. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p 276

7. The Holy Bible, ESV (Crossway Bibles, 2001), Luke 1:1-4.

 4

this perception that Jesus and the Eyewitnesses spends a great deal of time deconstructing.

By analysis of the Gospel texts, and comparisons with ancient historiography, Bauckham

demonstrates that the Evangelists made use of literary forms to establish their accounts as

the result of eyewitness testimony.

The use of inclusios 8 by the Evangelists is the literary device most often overlooked by

the modern reader, and thus Bauckham is at pains to explore the topic thoroughly. Having

established the importance of eyewitness testimony in the eyes of ancient historiographers,9

he argues that three of the Gospel authors use inclusios to claim a basis in eyewitness

testimony.

The Gospel of Mark is treated first, and has become a subject of lively debate in the

time between the first edition of this book and the second, giving Bauckham ample scope

to develop his argument. The inclusio of Mark, he argues, is formed by bracketing the

entire Gospel with references to Peter (Simon). At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, special

emphasis is placed on mention of Peter, to such an extent that even the naming of Andrew,

his brother, is secondary to a repeated mention of Peter:

Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the
brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.10

8. An inclusio is a literary device where a story bracketed or framed by placing similar material
before and after. Bauckham is most concerned with eyewitness inclusios.

9. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p 30, pp 40-45, pp 140-141.

10. The Holy Bible, Mark 1:16.

 5

Mark’s inclusio around the entire narrative of the Gospel is completed in chapter 16,

with Peter being the last personal name to be used in the Gospel11 :

And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth,
who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid
him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee.
There you will see him, just as he told you.”12

This argument for a Petrine inclusio does not go unchallenged, however13 : one of the

final chapters of the second edition of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is devoted to expanding

on Bauckham’s previous argument. In this chapter, Bauckham reinforces his argument by

seeking out and demonstrating parallel usages of inclusio in other ancient historiographers,

such as Polybius,14 Plutarch,15 and Josephus.16

In addition to establishing Peter as the eyewitness source for the Gospel of Mark,

Bauckham exerts a similar effort in the Gospels of Luke and John. While some scholars17

have claimed that John does not have an explicit claim to eyewitness testimony, Bauckham

traces the origins of this claim through the scholastic community, and finds no basis for this

11. This assumes, of course, that the long ending of Mark is a later addition. Even so, the argument
for Mark’s use of a Petrine inclusio would remain relevant, given the emphasis placed on the usage of Peter’s
name – Peter is the only disciple singled out for mention.

12. The Holy Bible, Mark 16:6-7.

13. In a review of my book, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (now, sadly, deceased) rejected my identifica-
tion of an “ inclusio of eyewitness testimony” in Mark for two main reasons. In the first place, he argued that
I do not know what an inclusio is and that the phenomenon in Mark does not conform to what is classically
defined as an inclusio. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p 562

14. Ibid., p 564.

15. Ibid., p 572.

16. Ibid., p 576.

17. Ibid., p 398.

 6

“staggeringly faulty piece of argument.”18 Instead, he is at pains to demonstrate that the

Gospel of John is actually written by an eyewitness, a claim that goes contrary to the trends

of modern Gospel scholarship.

Luke, having claimed at the outset to be based on a collection of eyewitness material,

is relatively uncontroversial, but the outline of eyewitnesses surrounding various portions of

the Gospel becomes a vital part of Bauckham’s ultimate point: that the Gospels not only

claim to be composed from eyewitness sources, but indeed must be accepted as eyewitness

testimony.

Evidence for the Evangelists’ Claims

While establishing the Evangelists’ claims to eyewitness testimony occupies a promi-

nent place in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, this alone would be insufficient to counter the

arguments of the form critics. After all, if the usage of eyewitness testimony were such a

central component of ancient historiography, any historian, even a fraudulent one, would

attempt to claim this sort of testimony.

The first method Bauckham deploys in defense of the Evangelists is rather surprising:

an argument from statistics.19 Building on the work of Israeli Tal Ilan20 , he is able to establish

the relative frequencies of names of Palestinian Jews. This data is significant because not

only does it tell us which were the most popular names, but also how popular they were

18. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p 400.

19. Ibid., ch 4.

20. Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity: Part I: Palestine 330 BCE–200 CE. TSAJ 91;
Tübingen: Mohr, 2002
 7

in relation to one another. While it can be easy to determine that say Simon and Joseph

were pretty popular, this statistical work allows us to see that Simon is more popular than

Joseph, and Joseph a more popular name than Eleazar.

Bauckham then constructs a similar data set, this time sourced in the Gospels and

Acts. While individually these books do not provide a statistically significant sample, taken

together they provide enough individuals to make a comparison between the known frequen-

cies of names in Palestinian Jews, and the Palestinian Jews mentioned in the New Testament.

The results are convincing: not only are popular Palestinian names used more frequently in

the Gospels and Acts, but the relative frequency of the names is startlingly similar. This de-

gree of verisimilitude has the statistical force to undermine the notion that the Gospels were

composed at a far remove from eyewitness accounts, or the product of creative community

development. While it may be plausible that popular names of the period may be present,

it would be impossible for, say, a Christian community in Alexandria to catalog the relative

frequency of Palestinian names, and then use this as a source to influence the names present

in their community’s Jesus traditions. Furthermore, given the disparate authorship of the

Gospels, it is equally unlikely that the authors were able to collude in order to preserve these

relative frequencies.21 In this way Bauckham conclusively demonstrates that the sources of

the names in the Gospels must be the true accounts of eyewitnesses – there is simply no

other way to explain the correlation.

Having established a positive basis for his argument, Bauckham proceeds to analyze

the form critical view of transmission: that the Jesus traditions were passed through commu-

21. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p 588.

 8

nities who developed and expanded them based on the needs of the community in question.

After establishing that form criticism is more in debt to studies of German folklore22 than

to studies of ancient literary forms, Bauckham engages the assertions of “oral tradition” as

opposed to eyewitness testimony with a vengeance. Not only are formal oral traditions23

present in ancient times, but there exists abundant evidence for the co-existence of written

and oral tradition, with the written tradition underpinning and reinforcing the oral. Thus

the edifice of form criticism crumbles: the very methods of transmission that supposedly pro-

vided insight into early Christian communities are as snipes, vainly sought for their hidden

knowledge.

Conclusion

While much can be said of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, its most notable aspect is

its assault on the modern trends of Gospel scholarship and history in general. While the

modern reader is innately biased towards the supposedly unbiased history of “plain cold

facts,” Bauckham illuminates the ancient priority based on eyewitness testimony, and is not

even content with that, but goes further to dig at the very roots of modern epistemology.

The reader who engages this work seriously must question why they so easily discard “sub-

jective” accounts – both in the Gospels specifically, and in history generally. The Gospels

are interpretive accounts to be sure – but who better to interpret the events than those who

were embedded in the events themselves, as the ancient historiographers preferred?

22. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, pp 279-280.

23. Formal oral traditions here are those which preserve the tradition in word-for-word fashion.