Richard Bauckham ItunesU Lectures 2 and 3– The Gospels as History from Below

I admit that I am new to the world of ItunesU, and there are probably plenty of interesting audio lectures and courses out there, but this four part lecture series by Richard Bauckham is probably not the best introduction to Audio Lectures that I could have had. I have listened to all the audio lectures, and have really struggled on how to write this review or response. It is not necessarily a matter of whether or not I agree with Bauckham's historical analysis and methodology, it is not even that his presentation style is unengaging (heck – some of my favorite professors were terrible speakers), it is rather the whole thesis, or lack thereof, of his presentation.

Simply put, I don’t know what point the man is presenting. Is he arguing a case? Is he stating mere facts? Is he trying to convince us of some new way to view things? I can find no central theme, no focal point, to this series of lectures. Maybe I am too dense to see it – I grant that. This is a series for graduate studies at Reformed Theological Seminary – Orlando, to an audience who has studied this sort of thing, I assume, full-time for at least a few years. Me? I am a mere layman in the area of historical methodology. So I grant that he may be just talking over my head. But with that said, since I could find no central theme to his lectures, this article, which I am writing in response, is as random and disjointed as I found Bauckham’s lectures to be.

Lectures 2 and 3 were on the same theme, so I shall review them together. Bauckham’s stated purpose to the lectures was “reconstructing the social world of the Gospels” by using the Gospels. Bauckham feels confident in doing this, since he considers the Gospels to be “A people’s history” or what he calls “A History from Below”, that is, one viewed from the perspective of the common person. He believes that the Gospels contain characters of all social strata and in a representative distribution to that actually in place in Palestine at that time, so he is able to derive a history of the social strata represented by the Gospels - of the person who lived off the land, e.g. a fisherman or a farmer.

How is Bauckham able to do this? He has written down a list of all the persons who appear in the Gospels along with their assumed social position. Sometimes Bauckham has to infer this, as in the case of Simon the Leper (Mark 14:3-9). Simon may have been of the wealthy class, Bauckham argues, since he was able to host a meal for Jesus. The woman who anointed Jesus may have been using very expensive ointment, and Bauckham uses this as further evidence to place Simon the Leper in the elite category. If I remember correctly, these or similar arguments are made in his Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

The social classifications of some of the other characters in the Gospels are derived less rigorously. Consider Jesus’ family. According to Bauckham, Eusebius (early 4th century) records traditions from one Hegesippus (c 2nd century) regarding the grandsons of Jesus’ brothers. The beauty of the Internet means that all these citations of the “early church fathers”, references which only a few short years ago could only be found in reference libraries and seminaries, are now readily available to us commoners at the click of a mouse. Here is what Hegesippus, cited by Eusebius, has to say on the matter:

There still survived of the kindred of the Lord the grandsons of Judas, who according to the flesh was called his brother. These were informed against, as belonging to the family of David, and Evocatus brought them before Domitian Caesar: for that emperor dreaded the advent of Christ, as Herod had done.
So he asked them whether they were of the family of David; and they confessed they were. Next he asked them what property they had, or how much money they possessed. They both replied that they had only 9000 denaria between them, each of them owning half that sum; but even this they said they did not possess in cash, but as the estimated value of some land, consisting of thirty-nine plethra only, out of which they had to pay the dues, and that they supported themselves by their own labour. And then they began to hold out their hands, exhibiting, as proof of their manual labour, the roughness of their skin, and the corns raised on their hands by constant work.

I don’t find anything particularly implausible in this story, but Bauckham uses this citation to infer that Jesus himself was also a farmer, but that he was called a tekton (Matt 13:55, Mark 6:3) because this was a supplemental occupation that also gave uniqueness to his name. Bauckham also states that the citation of Hegesippus may imply that the family farm of Jesus may have been one of some distinction. I don’t see that at all – the addition of “they did not possess cash”, “thirty-nine plethora only” and the fact that Domitian later releases them as being of little consequence, as “too mean for notice”, seems to me to imply that the family of Jesus was in debt, owned only a small plot of land with no cash, and were of no distinction.

It is not that I necessarily agree or disagree with Bauckham concerning the family of Jesus, nor do I really care. But the historical methodology which he employs, to derive the conclusions that he does, seem to me to be really slipshod. It seems to me like deriving history from these sources is using a methodology that can be better described as “anybody’s guess”. Especially ironic is when Bauckham leans on such methodology, yet considers using this derived social status to infer the audience of Mark’s Gospel as “a move frought with such methodological hazards, it should simply not be attempted, I think. I think we are on much firmer ground by supposing Mark’s narrative represents with some accuracy the social world from which these traditions come, that is, the world of Jesus himself and his disciples.”

WHAT? How I wish Dr Bauckham would, at this point, distinguish between the methodology which he is using, that is, of using 4th century citations from an historian of dubious reputation, of a 2nd century writer who’s works are lost to us, to determine the social stratification and main occupation of Jesus and his family, and a methodology “fraught with … hazards”. In addition, when Bauckham compares the results of the social make-up of 1st century Palestine which he derives from the Gospels, to that which actually existed at that time, I assume he is doing this, not to add additional data to what we know of 1st century Palestine, but to vindicate what he considers the historical accuracy of the Gospels. Perhaps I am wrong in this, I admit, but his point of comparison is against a model of an “advanced agrarian society” Which is? Bauckham never explains this model, or even what it is (other than that it supposes 70-80% of common people lived directly off the land) or how it was derived. But wouldn’t you know it, the social world he derives from the Gospels matches up very well with his “advanced agrarian society” model. Whatever that is.

Bauckham moves on to compare the Gospels with three other works of the ancient world which can be compared to the Gospels, Philostratus’ Apollonius of Tyana, and the biographies of Homer and Aesop. I was most excited to listen to his analysis of Apollonius, since I am more familiar with that work than I am with Homer or Aesop. While I think Bauckham was correct in his description of Apollonius, I think he was incomplete. But I also, again, am at a loss for how to respond, since he never states his purpose in the comparison. Is he comparing Apollonius to the Gospels to show how the differences make Apollonius unhistorical? Is he just showing that Apollonius, with its huge cast of philosophers, sages and royalty, does not accurately represent the social strata of the ancient world, and thus cannot be used for the type of analysis? I can list off a number of attributes which Apollonius has that might give it a more historical basis than the Gospels, such as that it includes dozens of letters attributed to the hand of Apollonius himself, but I don’t even know if that is Bauckham’s point in comparison! I honestly have no idea, and that is why I have struggled with this response.

That is my review of Lectures 2 and 3. At this point, I feel like bailing on this listening project. I did listen to Lecture 4, but I found it to be the most disjointed of all the four lectures, and despite listening intently, I honestly cannot remember a thing about it. Perhaps that is more a comment on my listening than on Dr Bauckham’s lecture, but it just seemed to me so random, so pointless, without any central theme, unity, or focal point that I just drifted.

But with that, let me at least give my general impression of the entire lecture series. I do not necessarily agree nor disagree with anything Dr Bauckham has said. I found this series so unfocused that I do not know if there is anything to agree or disagree with! To me, it is more a matter of his completeness and methodology. If the methodology that Dr Bauckham employed in this lecture is an example of how history is derived from the Gospels, well, forgive me if I am unimpressed. I believe history, or something close to it, can be derived, but it must come from a variety of sources – Religious and secular writings of the period and archeology. Having derived this history, can one special group of writings be held separate and compared against the bulk of the rest? I think so, but only if the comparison is complete. For example, how I wish Dr Bauckham would have extracted other kinds of history from the Gospels for comparison. Perhaps the Slaughter of the Innocents, inflicted on the infants of the town of Bethlehem at the hands of Herod the Great (Matt 2:16-18). If history can be derived from the Gospel, this is surely one example to be used in comparison – but since there is no outside verification of this story in any ancient source, and it is only found in the Gospel of Matthew, is Dr Bauckham willing to discard it as unhistorical? Will he do the same for the census of Ceasar Agustus imposed on the “entire Roman World” (Luke 2:1), even though there is no record in the entire Roman World of any such census taking place? I seriously doubt it. So, again I ask, what is the point of comparing a social world, derived from the Gospels with dubious methodology, to that of an undescribed “advanced agrarian model”, if more emphatic historical claims from the Gospels are not given similar comparison?

I am left with this – perhaps the whole reason that this lecture series seemed to me to be unfocused and disjointed, is because any actual history that can be inferred from the Gospels, seems as forced out of the Gospels as water sucked out from a rock. If this is the only history that can be pulled from the Gospels, perhaps the only history that actually exists in the Gospels is too sparse to allow for a central theme or focus. I do hope that my next ItunesU listen is a better experience.

My review of Bauckham's 'The Gospels as History' Part 1

I just returned from a long walk in the desert with my dogs, and while I should have devoted my attention to watching out for rattlesnakes, my attention was instead focused on some downloaded audio lectures. Yes, it was time to join the rest of the 21st century world, shove crappy white plugs in my ears, and take my ipod out on a walk with me with part 1 of Richard Bauckham’s lecture series ‘The Gospels as History'. So why not listen along, write your own review, tell me what you learned, or comment back to my own review!

Not sure who to thank for this idea – LikeAChild, DMA, DaGoodS, but DaGoodS has written his review here. I will read what others have to say when I am finished writing my own review.

Before I begin my review, I think it is fair to give my own attitude to the whole subject and study of ‘The Historical Jesus’. The subject, no matter what theological perspective the student of the subject holds, is tainted. It carries historical, philosophical and emotional baggage. Many historians attempt to pull the “Jesus of History” from the Gospels, which portray a “Christ of Faith”, and various methods of filtration are used. The Gospels are not long. It takes a few of hours to read through the four canonical Gospels. But these sparse sources have yielded countless pages of attempted historical reconstruction. I suppose the fact that the Gospels are such a puzzle is what gives them their allure.

The only “Lives of Jesus” that I find satisfactory are those that are de-constructive. I have read my fair share of “Historical Jesus” books, including Bauckham’s own Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, and each time a book attempts to construct a historical Jesus, I come away more confused than enlightened. The only ones that I can personally make sense out of are those that show what we cannot know. My thinking is most influenced by David Friedrich Strauss’ Life of Jesus, and Charles Guignebert’s Jesus, both of which deconstruct the Gospels into historically unworkable minutia, and demonstrate that the True History of Jesus is hopelessly buried under heavy accretions of myth and legend. As frustrating as this conclusion may be to the historian, this is the only view that I find personally satisfying. I do think that the Gospels do contain history, but the history it does contain is locked away and hidden between the lines.

I want to state this upfront to place my initial view of the subject in contrast with the more conservative view of Bauckham. To my surprise Bauckham does not devote time in his lecture to arguments or evidences for considering the Gospels as History. That the Gospels are history, or at least some kind of history or historiography, is a given. Bauckham wishes, rather, to consider what kind of historiography the Gospels are. I wish to read any book on Jesus assuming the same bedrock foundation that the author lays, so I will do so with Bauckham. Let us then assume, with him, that the Gospels are indeed history of some kind, and let us see what conclusions we can come up with. He asks, under what genre of ancient history can the Gospels then be categorized?

I think Bauckham is correct to ask this interesting question, and it is something I also often think about. I also think the Gospels are a history of some sort. Perhaps historiography is a better term for what needs to be considered. Historiography, as Bauckham explains it, is ‘literature about what happened in the past’. I think Bauckham makes a great observation here, and I agree with this distinction. The problem from here is categorizing these types of historiography or ‘literature about what happened in the past’, or even defining what is meant by ‘historiography’ as opposed to strict history. ‘History’ in the sense of historiography can be gleaned from nearly anything, an extreme example perhaps being the apocalypses of the Old Testament. No, the stars did not fall, and the world did not shake on its foundations, but history can be gathered behind the veil of this fantastic language. Does this make most anything open to the genre of historiography? Perhaps so. However, as the lecture continued, Bauckham seemed to back away from this initial view of ‘historiography’ or ‘literature about what happened in the past’ to trying to justify the Gospels as strict ancient biography. The question of historiography, then, I think was not addressed. Rather, I think Bauckham was trying, in his lecture, to see how far he could move the Gospels away from mere ‘historiography’ and into the more solid ground of Biography and History.

Bauckham compares the Gospels to the various forms of histories found in ancient history and biography. In doing so, I can’t help but think that Bauckham narrows the criterion for History just enough to include the Gospels in that genre, then once included, he widens the gap again by claiming that the Gospels are biography, but of an extraordinary type. For instance, he lists the various genres of biography used in the Greek and Roman world, and compares those descriptions against the Gospels as ancient biography. In comparing the Gospels with these other ancient biographies, Bauckham notes the similiarites as justification for placing the Gospels in the genre of ancient Biography – opening prologue, narrative length, an active object of the narrative or subject of the biography, formal structure, etc. But once fitted narrowly in, Bauckham then widens the criteria by claiming that genres of history and biography are malleable, flexable, and change over time.

Bauckham pulls this trick a few times. He variously states that the Gospels fit in the genre of history, yet they have unique traits, yet they are biography, yet not like the biographies of the philosophers or sages. It seems a case of fitting the argument to match the conclusion. Bauckham goes on to talk about the different criteria that the ancients used when considering the validity of their biographies. He claimed that biographers were considered more reliable when they were near their sources. I don’t really know about this, but this seems more of a modern idea of history. Do we know anything about what the ancients considered as criteria for sound historicity? Perhaps there are plenty that I am just unaware of, but I am aware that even contemporary history was not unaffected by fantastic hagiography. For instance, just off the top of my head, I can think of one of Plato’s contemporary biographers, his own nephew Pseusippos, who studded Plato’s life with the fantastic, such as that he was the son of Apollo.

When Bauckham stated that histories were generally considered more reliable if they were written by eye-witnesses or a source close to an eye-witness, I confess that I said aloud “Oh boy, here we go…” knowing that the implication was towards the traditional authors of the Gospels. Does Buackham have a statement from an ancient philosopher or historian that states these criteria, or is Bauckham extrapolating our criteria back onto the ancients? And if so, why extrapolate this particular criteria if he did not have an end in mind – that of vindicating the historicity of the Gospels?

Bauckham makes some interesting claims about the Gospels to demonstrate their uniqueness as Biographies, and Jesus as a unique biographical figure. Bauckham states that the uniqueness of Jesus should not prove difficult to consider as history, if we consider the uniqueness say, of the biography of an ancient athlete, should one be found. A biography of an athlete would surely be unique, but historical, so why not a unique biography Jesus? Do I really need to state what is obviously wrong with this analogy? The baggage that the study of Jesus brings, is the baggage of his miraculous deeds, divine birth and his claims concerning the divine. This is the problem of historicizing this figure, and mere analogies like this almost never work. Jesus is unique, because he is portrayed as unique, and the problems of historicizing such a fantastic, divine character are not the same problems of historicizing a mere athlete. This almost seems to be trivializing the whole approach – as if the history of Jesus were really that easy. Bauckham as much as admits this when he considers the type of person that, he says, the Gospels present Jesus as. Jesus was not merely a sage, not merely a wise teacher – Bauckham claims that Jesus of all the Gospels is portrayed as the unique Messiah and the Son of God. He is certainly a national Messiah, but is also portrayed as a salvific figure for the whole world. While I think there are problems in the Gospels with all these claims, I will ignore that for now and move on to where I think Bauckham really derails his own approach to the study of the Gospels as merely history.

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy which demonstrates Jesus is of the heritage of David, the national Messiah of Israel, and Abraham, the Messiah of the Gentiles – so that Jesus represents both Israel and the World. (Abraham as Messiah of the Gentiles??? Did I hear that right?) The Gospel of Luke is more interested in Ceasar Agustus, via his order of a census, while the Gospel of Matthew is more interested in the local ruler Herod, and his order to Slaughter the Innocent. This contrasting reach of Jesus between the two Gospels, Bauckham says, also demonstrates the uniqueness of the Gospels of History – and at this point I think that Bauckham has left the world of history and entered the world of Supernatural Design. Describing the irony between the two Gospels, the one focused locally, the other focused globally, as evidence that the Gospels are each individually unique biographical documents, is really a more sophisticated way of describing the four Gospels as “each true, but each miraculously designed by The Holy Spirit to focus on one particular aspect of Jesus” – an approach that I do not think anybody would claim is historical.

I think I have typed enough on this, and I have some house chores I must get to. In summary, an interesting listen, and I will listen to the remaining three lectures, but I can’t help but think that my initial categorization is correct. The Gospels are indeed unique literary creations, and were probably unprecedented when they were written. They fit in the literary genre of, not biography, not history, not sage wisdom, not philosophy, not apocalypse, not hagiography, not mythology, but a jumbled combination of each. A genre called …

Gospel.