Steven Carr

'I do not think the Gospels were originally anonymous in more than the technical sense that the author’s name was not part of the opening text.'

http://www.christilling.de/blog/ctblog.html

Well, I imagine that the author did know who had wrote it.

But having no name in the document is only technically anonymous , is it?

Richard Bauchkam points out the 'carefully preserved list of the Twelve'

In fact there are contradictory 'carefully preserved' lists of the Twelve.

Has anybody read 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (or via: amazon.co.uk)' to see of Bauckham comes up with any arguments more cogent than those on the blog?

Toto

The book is quite new. There is an article here in pdf format by Bauckham that contains the thesis of the book, or an excerpt.

Stephen Carlson blogged about it here, although he and others have not yet read it.

Ben C Smith

I have not read this book, but Bauckham may merely mean that the gospels are no different than many other texts from antiquity in that the name of the author is not embedded in the text itself, but rather in the superscript or subscript. This is the case with the Annals of Tacitus, for instance, as well as with many modern books.

Ben.

mountainman

What does the author have to say
about the anti-marcionite prologues?




Pete Brown

Malachi151

I think that "Luke" was signed... by someone who had no ties to the apostles according to tradition, hence the scrapped the signature and made it anonymous and called it "Luke" so that it could be part of the canon.

Vorkosigan

Well, I just read the .pdf of Bauckham that Toto linked to. All I have to say is that if this is NT historical methodology, than mythicism has nothing to fear. Slanted language, circular logic, assuming its conclusions.... *sigh*

If I have time next week (three days off!) I'll ring up a full critique of the text.

Vorkosigan

Steven Carr

as a scientist, I am just apalled at the readiness with which Bauckam calls his wild speculations 'doubtless'. Is all NT study so bad? Speculation passed off as fact?

Is Bauckham really claiming that the variations in names of the women who visited the tombs is because the Gospellers were better acquainted with the women that they name? Just where did Bauckham pull that one from?

Bauckham claims that Mark names Bartimaeus because Bartimaeus was a well known person to his readers (you know, the ones who had to have explained to them what Bar-Timaeus means!)


Bauckham says Mark expected his readers to know of Bartimaeus as a living miracle, but Bartimaeus died in between Mark writing and Luke writing, so Luke dropped the name.

Amazing! These people can actually tell you when characters from the Bible died! Bauckham actually thinks he can do that. He just pulls it out of his ..... And the astonishing thing is that nobody laughs at him!

Compare Doherty's inductive treatment of 1st-century writings, and see why his scholarship is to be preferred to people who claim they can explain silence by confidently stating when a minor character in the Bible died.

Bauckham likes the recollections of the 'well-educated' Papias, and the way he spoke to disciples of Jesus.

Is this the same Papias who said about Judas :- 'Judas walked about in this world a sad example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out.'

Bauckham says the Gospels were written by the time Papias spoke, and Papias is evidence that the Gospellers used eyewitnesses.

Is this the same Papias who said 'For I imagined that what was to be got from books was not so profitable to me as what came from the living and abiding voice.'

If Papias had read the Gospels, then he did not think them as useful as the stories people were telling him. But surely Bauckham is trying to argue that the Gospels contained the same stories that Papias was hearing?

It is all just awful.

Vorkosigan

Exactly, Steve. Same vein: Bauckham thinks that Matt dropped Salome as a witness because she wasn't well known enough. Then he notes that Matt adds a character to the witness list of the crucifixion, but is "scrupulously content" to keep the other two women. From Bauckham's point of view, Matt is "scrupulous" when he is not switching characters back and forth. That Matt is writing fiction is a stance whose possibility Bauckham does not even acknowledge, let alone explore. I wonder if Bauckham would describe Matthew's addition of the saints rising from their graves in Jerusalem as "scrupulous." Not to mention his "scrupulous" use of the Old Testament in constructing his gospel, and his numerous "scrupulous" corrections of Mark.


LOL. Not only that, but he doesn't make the same analysis in the case of the women at the cross. If Bar-Timaeus faded because he died and because of the loss of Jerusalem in 70, why didn't the women?

I also love the way he manages to claim that he is opening up a little-discussed subject, the discussion of personal names, without ever mentioning what the frickin' names signify and how they relate to the stories that are told about them!

Aaaaaarrgh!

Vorkosigan

Steven Carr

OK, that is a hypothesis. Nothing wrong with putting forward an hypothesis, even if it seems strange at first sight.

As a scholar , how does Bauckham set about testing an hypothesis?

Does he set about measuring the famousness of New Testament characters in the first-century AD?

That is one way of testing such an hypothesis. Bauckam would need other tests, of course.

Instead, he just claims as fact that Mary's sons were well known in the Christian movement.

And he just claims that Simon of Cyrene's sons were well known figures when Mark wrote, but not well known when Matthew and Luke wrote.

And Bauckham says Jairus '*must* have been named by Mark because he was well known.

But no evidence is produced to back up that must.

So his hypothesis is not tested at all.

There is no methodology, no testing of data, and no way of falsifying the claim that Biblical characters were named when they were well known , and not named when they became more obscure. Bauckham presents no evidence for or against such a claim. There is nothing presented to either falsify or justify it.

Was the book peer-reviewed?

It is just a waste of paper, because the theories are not tested against any data.

Vorkosigan

The paper in question is from the Journal of the Historical Jesus, 2003. 1.1 pp28-60.

Apparently you can say almost anything you want, as long as you affirm the historicity of Jesus.

*sigh*

Vorkosigan