But now a new approach altogether has been proposed by Richard Bauckham, a scholar who already has an impressive record of research into Christian origins. In a previous book – Gospel Women (2002) – he was able to show, by a close study of personal names both in our texts and in the records of Palestinian culture, that a particular group of individuals in the New Testament, and their relationships with one another, have a striking internal consistency with regard to names and provenance and also reflect accurately the naming and family connections that were customary in their culture. In the face of such evidence, it is hard to believe either that these names could have been fabricated or that there was any serious loss of accuracy in remembering and recording them by the time the Gospels came to be written. In Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Bauckham continues his investigation into named individuals, and shows that the same conclusion holds for all. We have every reason, therefore, to assume a faithful and unbroken link between the original witnesses of Jesus’ life and death and the record of these things in the Gospels.
Following this clue, Bauckham then suggests we should take seriously the testimony of two second-century churchmen, Papias and Irenaeus – the first of whom has usually been dismissed by scholars as unreliable. Carefully examining the relevant texts – including the famous statement of Papias that Mark’s Gospel is derived from anecdotes heard from St Peter – Bauckham concludes that these writers gave absolute priority to eyewitness accounts of Jesus, many of which are likely to have been given by his closest followers; indeed, he argues that the fact that some minor characters in the Gospels are named, while others remain anonymous, strongly suggests that it was the named ones who were consulted for their personal recollections and that the Gospel writers, or those whom they consulted, were drawing on first-hand evidence that was inherently reliable and consistent, though with the inevitable variations and slight lapses which attend the exercise of memory in any age or culture – hence both the close similarities and the sporadic divergences exhibited by the Synoptic Gospels.
None of these propositions is advanced as if it were merely a matter of common sense and informed intuition applied to the age-old enigma of the Gospels – though it is the sheer lack of plausibility of some modern reconstructions which leads Bauckham to say that “scholars rather easily lose touch with common experience”. He calls in aid the findings of students of primarily oral cultures, the research that has been done in ancient historiography, and the value placed by ancient historians on eyewitness testimony (along with clear and elegant arrangement), psychological studies of memory and its relation to the facts remembered, the various occasions for anonymity which were recognized by ancient writers, and much more; and shows that his conclusions, radically different as they are from those of virtually all mainstream scholars, can be supported both by the testimony of early Christian writers (seldom given due weight in recent scholarship) and by comparative material offered by other disciplines. The book is indeed a serious challenge to the paradigm that has commanded almost universal assent for many years.
The challenge, of course, will be vigorously met; and critics will be tempted to home in on the points where Bauckham is least persuasive. Does the notion of “protective anonymity” – keeping a person out of trouble by omitting his name – really explain why the naked youth who left his garment in Gethsemane is not further identified in Mark’s Gospel, or why the raising of Lazarus is not mentioned in any Gospel except that of John? Does the statement in Hebrews (2: 3) that “those who heard him [Jesus] confirmed it to us” necessarily mean that “the community addressed in Hebrews had evidently received the Gospel traditions directly from eyewitnesses”? Or – still more controversially – is it plausible that a disciple who is unmentioned in the other three Gospels and who lurks in the background in most of John’s narrative – the “beloved disciple” – is not merely the principal eyewitness behind the narrative from beginning to end but actually wrote the Gospel himself late in life (would someone who accompanied Jesus in Galilee really have been capable of such a highly wrought literary work – and yet, perhaps we should ask, why not?).
But the critics’ real reason for disputing Bauckham’s theory will be that to accept it would demand a profound paradigm shift in New Testament studies. All the form-critical assumptions to do with the role of the early Christian communities in the formation of the synoptic tradition would have to be abandoned in favour of decisive personal contributions by recognized and authoritative eyewitnesses. Indeed, the foundations are shaken even more rudely. Bauckham seems to accept without question the conventional assignment of Matthew and Luke to the later decades of the first century; but this dating is itself a construction based on the supposed literary relationship between them, leaving time for Mark to be circulated and digested before another evangelist took up his pen. On the eyewitness model, none of this need be the case. Again, Bauckham still seems to assume that the later Gospels used Mark (he is more reserved about Q), though this assumption seems no longer required in his reconstruction. It is difficult, even for the inventor of a new paradigm, to envisage its full consequences for teaching and research.
http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 034,00.htm