Chapter Five: The Twelve

In Chapter Five Bauckham turns his attention to the twelve disciples of Jesus. Why should we care about the Disciples? Bauckham gives us two reasons. One is related to his contention about Oral history (see chapter two) and the other is also related to his general argument that the gospels are indeed eyewitness testimony.

His first contention is that the twelve were responsible for the general shape in which the oral history of the gospels was passed on from them and the other eyewitnesses too. They therefore get bestowed with the title of "An Authoritative Collegium" in Jerusalem during the formative years of the early church up till the writing of the gospels and the destruction of Jerusalem. Once again Bauckham engages the form critics who have proposed that the twelve are actually a later invention. This idea however has been discredited according to Bauckham, especially by the recent development (recent in historiography terms is usually floating in the 2 to 3 decades realm) of the attempts to place Jesus in a fairly Jewish context. In this Context it makes the most sense to have a following twelve disciples since that would be a part of how Jesus would communicate his idea that the Old Testament was coming to fulfillment in him. So the twelve would have been seen as the authoritative body of believers in charge of the traditions after Jesus' ascension.

Bauckham sees confirmation of this in the lists of the disciples that are contained with the gospels. In particular he looks to the book of Matthew and informs us of two different lists, one is of Jesus' descendants and the other is of the twelve. Here he quotes another scholar:

Unlike a genealogy in which the names outline a pre-history , a list of students indicates a post-history. In our gospel the genealogy in 1:2-17 shows Jesus' pre-history to lie in Israel, in Abraham's descendants, while the list of disciples in chapter 10 shows his post-history to be in the church which has Peter as its head.   -W.D. Davies & Dale C. Allison, A Critical and exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, vol.  2 p.150 

The point here is to show that the gospels themselves present the twelve as the authoritative group in the early church environment in which Matthew's Gospel was written.

However now Bauckham encounters a problem. What of the other gospels lists of the twelve? How do they remember them (especially Mark, since his is the earliest) and are they conflicting in their recollection of who the twelve were? Obviously these questions could put a large hole in Bauckhams overall thesis were he to not answer them satisfactorily.

Peter is always first and Judas Iscariot is always last, so the first part (regarding the ordering) seems to be fine. However, there is one interesting difference in the names. Mark and Matthew have a certain Thaddaeus and Luke and Acts have Judas son of James (note, not 'Iscariot'). How does he sort this out? Well thanks to the last two chapters in which he analyzed multiple different ways in which peoples names were remembered and recorded. Here he says that Thaddaeus is Judas' Greek name, in order to help distinguish him from the more well known Judas Iscariot. He then goes through all the other methods and talks about each of the disciples various names.

Finally he has a discussion of Levi and Matthew and whether or not they are the same disciple, he argues that they are not and has a small and interesting discussion of the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew.

Chapter Two: Papias on the eyewitnesses

Now that we understand where Richard Bauckham is coming from, we delve into his argument.


His first and most vital person (he comes up in most chapters of this book) to his argument is the early church priest of Hierapolis. Papias. He wrote a book, which we don't have in any full sense anymore. However, he is quoted by another church father named Eusebius (and by others too, we will get there a bit later).


Richard tells us that in the past Papias' testimony was heavily discussed but is now almost universally dismissed by biblical scholars. He sketches out two reasons why they have done this.
1) Eusebius treats Papias with scorn and disagrees with him on the writing of various gospels.
2) If scholars were to take him seriously he would challenge the form critics view of the formation of the gospels.
Now we can see Richard going against the grain. He argues we should not adopt Eusebius' attitude, and obviously point no. 2 is just prejudice as Richard sees it, and needs no argument put against it.


Why should we not adopt Eusebius' attitude? Because, he argues, Papias is in a better situation to know what is happening, this is because his city lies on the road between Ephesus and Antioch and he therefore hears a lot of the testimonies of people as they pass through.


Now he builds on this argument by showing us the opening quote to Papias' book that Eusebius quotes. Here it is:

"I shall not hesitate also to put into properly ordered form for you [singular 'you'] everything I learned carefully in the past from elders and noted down well, for the truth of which i vouch. For unlike most people I did not enjoy those who have a great deal to say, but those who teach the truth. Nor did I enjoy those who recall someone else's commandments, but those who remember the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on (παρηκολουθηκως τισ) the elders should come my way, I enquired about the words of the elders - [that is,] what [according to the elders ] Andrew or Peter said (ειπεν), or Philip, or Thomas or James, or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples, and whatever Aristion and the elder John, the Lord's disciples, were saying (λεγουσιν). For I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice. "

   -( Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.3-4)

He then describes the four different groups of people who Papias is referring to.
1)Those who had 'been in attendance' to the elders. This group's placing in history hinges on the translation of the words 'παρηκολουθηκως τισ' which Richard thinks mean an active kind of following, and not 'to have followed while alive and now to be the followers'. This means, that when Papias heard these followers, they were telling him words that the elders, who were still alive, were saying.
2)The elders. These elders are the various Asiatic wise teachers who are leaders of the churches in their various Asiatic cities. (note: Asia in the ancient world refers to what would today be called Asia minor and the middle east). Papias, being in Heiropolis did not get the opportunity to learn from them, but being on the crossroads between two major Asian cities, he would often have met the followers in category (1)
3)the twelve disciples (he only lists 7, this is because 7 is 'completeness' and therefore stand in for the 12) we understand them to be dead at this exact point when Papias is writing. Why? 'ειπεν' is the strong aorist of λεγω meaning 'I say'. Strong aorist is a completed action that is no longer happening. So they are no longer speaking.
4)Aristion and John the elder. These are also the Lord's disciples but they are not part of the 12. They were also still alive when Papias was doing this info gathering work (note: not necessarily when he was writing it down). Why do we think they were alive at this time? 'λεγουσιν' this the 3rd person plural (i.e. 'they') form of 'λεγω' which is a present verb. So they are still speaking at this time, unlike the 12.


This is all very significant for how we view the way on which the gospels were compiled, if Richard's ideas are right, then they are the witness of disciples and their followers (the elders) who would have made sure that they were kept pure. (Insert here a complicated argument that the gospels are written by Jews with the exception of Luke's who is regarded as a 'God-fearer' like the Roman centurion in Acts chapter 10, and how they have a strong historic tradition, and would not feel the need to 'mythologize' their saviour).


Also, we start to see shadows of Richard's thesis that John is written by an eyewitness of Jesus. (this John the elder).


Richard then moves on to discuss another part of the above quote, in particular this part:

"For I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice. "

Here he discusses what Papias actually meant by this phrase that seems so odd to us modern people who use library's and almost exclusively rely on books for reliable information.


First he reminds us of Samuel Byrskog's book that gave the thesis that all history in the ancient world was done under the presupposition that good history was only done within living memory. He then had applied this to the gospel's. However, a criticism of this was that Byrskog gave no reason to suppose that this could be the case in Palestine too. 


Here, however, Richard provides that argument in the form of Papias' testimony. He was obviously aware of what 'good' historical practice was, and here Richard gives a number or arguments that draw on many Roman authors who use the same Greek words to describe good historical practice.


He mentions in particular a certain man named 'Polybius'. Polybius was a Greek historian writing in the 1st C. BC, he wrote a scathing critique of a certain historian named Timaeus who had exclusively used written records to write his own book of history. He makes much mention of eyewitnesses (αυτοπτης) as the ideal standard for historical research, and not trusting written scripts because they are not eyewitnesses. I will now draw attention to the fact that this is also how Luke opens his gospel:

"...ἡμῖν οἱ ἀπ' αὐτὸπται καὶ ὑπηέται γενόμενοι τοῦ λόγου..."

-Luke 1:2b

So, one can see that it was taken seriously by whoever compiled Luke and also by Papias, which adds credibility to Luke's account, which was written prior to Papias' book. There are also many other arguments that Richard poses, which I will allow you to read for yourself... but some of them are amazingly persuasive. This therefore builds quite a successful case so far for the idea that this idea of good history was seen as the ideal in 1st Century Palestine, and that history was only to be written within living memory of eyewitnesses of these events.

Finally, Richard turns his guns once again on the form critics and charging them with grossly misunderstanding Papias. First he notes that many of the form critics take the above quote of Papias to mean that he preferred Oral tradition to writing... so therefore would not have been immediately keen on the gospels, but this misses the point. Bauckham quickly notes that the only reason we know this is because Papias wrote this information down also. Also, he points out that Papias is talking about collecting his own information at an earlier time than when this was written, so this could be as early as 90 AD, when the gospels were still starting to get out and the gospel of John was not yet written.

Then he draws a distinction between oral tradition and oral history.

1) Oral tradition:
A collective process that takes place within a community as they do traditions (like the last supper) and continually reenact them and tell the stories etc. Richard stresses that in Oral tradition nobody is the primary 'owner' of the information.
2) Oral history:
Where people pass on information in highly specified lines, where one person has 'ownership' (usually an eyewitness) of said information, and when he dies it probably will become Oral tradition fairly soon after.

Richard then makes the claim that the people compiling the gospels would have preferred to go to the eye witnesses (or the owners of the information) over the oral traditions (Which were definitely happening at the same time, but were being guided by specific eye witnesses). He then notes that this hypothesis has some strong explanatory power... this being the names mentioned in the gospels, therefore it makes a prediction that we can use to help test this hypothesis.

Finally he draws our attention to the fact that the greek word for tradition (παραδοσις) is used by various 1st century authors as identical to eyewitness accounts and first hand evidence. He sites Josephus' use of the word, who uses it when he describes his experience with the Roman generals during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Bauckham does this so that when we see the word 'tradition' in say Paul's letters, we will not jump to the conclusion that this is oral tradition, when it could very well be oral history.


Some criticisms:


I wish Richard would interact with other scholar's opinions more. Often he makes a quick statement and does not give much in the way of argument to back it up, nor tells us why other scholars disagree with him. For example he asserts, when discussing how the 2nd Century church fathers discuss methods of retaining history, that there is "...no reason simply to assume that second-century writers got it wrong." And then continues on to accuse the form critics of being to ideological (which may well be true, but as of yet he has not shown us why.) He does not give us any real reasons why people think Irenaeus got the method of Oral history confused with Oral tradition... and why they prefer to think of it as oral tradition. He does interact a little bit with J.D. Dunn in his footnotes, but it is not very substantial.


Now for some reverse criticisms. I have seen some reviews which have tried to pull the carpet out from underneath Richard's feet, so to speak. What they have done is say that we cannot trust Papias' testimony because Eusebius did not, and in fact accused him of making up things. However, I think they are missing the point of Bauckham's argument at this point, he is not arguing that Papias is reliable, but that he has captured the style of history writing that Byrskog showed was prominent in the Ancient world, and therefore lends credibility to the idea that the evangelists would have wanted to use eyewitnesses or 'Oral history' or else they would not have tried to write them.

Bauckham interview.

Here is the man himself, Richard, doing some explaining.




enjoy.

Chapter one: From the historical Jesus to the Jesus of testimony.

First. Who is Richard Bauckham? Why should we listen to him? and what does he do these days?

Richard Bauckham is a Cambridge University graduate who has spent the better part of his life teaching at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. There he held the position of Bishop Wardlaw professor and taught New Testament studies. He has published on the gospel of John and is also an expert in Jürgen Moltmann's theology.

Since then he has retired and is now the senior fellow at Ridley college, Cambridge University. There he is now focusing on publishing, focusing on the gospel of John and NT Christology.

So, obviously a fairly well educated and influential figure in NT studies. This book represents the pinnacle of his work on the gospels, and in the words of some random magazine (the 'Choice' magazine)

"It will be hard to take seriously future works on the origin of the Gospels that have not interacted with Bauckham..."

So what does he have to say to us in this first chapter?

Well first off he sets his book in the context of current work on who Jesus was. Here he draws two large distinctions, that of the Jesus of History and the Jesus of faith (or theology). He suggests that the mainstream work has polarized the two quite severely and that his book is meant to bridge this gap. To this end he invents a whole new category. The Jesus of Testimony. Testimony, he argues, demands to be trusted and taken as fact. He then argues, that using this method we can have a valuable tool with which we can discover the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith in the same method, without conflict.

Now he throws down the gauntlet. Modern Scholarship, he claims, has been dominated by what has come to be known as Form Criticism.

Form Critics have argued that the gospels were compiled by anonymous evangelists who were working within an oral tradition that had been passed down from the eyewitnesses anonymously. In the past this has been taken as the norm, and since then has had both conservative elements and more liberal elements. Oral tradition in and of itself says nothing of the reliability of the gospels. However I find that if we are to just leave Form Criticism unchallenged, then we do leave the status of the gospels as trust worthy documents about the life of Jesus in an interesting limbo between trustworthy and fabricated (note: I do not mean entirely fabricated, but less reliable than a Christian might want). For example, Form critics will look at the gospels and look for discrepancies between them (say, the number of woman at the empty tomb) and make any number of conclusions based on those dependent on various other presuppositions they may or may not have. Another important part to mention, is how reliable is the oral tradition through the lens of the Form critic?

Here is an example i conjured up in my head well playing tennis this evening:
Oral tradition will only be as reliable as the passer's on of said information allows, and if we accept the presupposition that the eyewitnesses are dead by this time, then there are few, if any, authoritative figures to correct wrong saying attributed to Jesus etc. So, a form critique might be looking for Greek influences on the oral tradition. We know that there were Greeks who called themselves believers quite early on (Paul's letters to the Corinthians/Ephesians etc.) Now, the Jews were quite historically grounded people who had a large amount of respect for concrete real history. However, the Greeks were not as picky as them, to the Greeks there was no Orthodoxy like the Jews had, they were quite okay with people fiddling with their traditions and changing them into tragedies etc. (the closes equivalent in Jewish culture I can think of is Midrash) So, maybe they felt a bit freer to play fast and loose with Jesus' words. An astute observer might, for example, notice that the last supper in Mark 14:22-24 sounds somewhat familiar to the traditions connected with Dionysius regarding Omophagia (Eating of raw flesh, done by Dionysius' initiates) He might then note Paul's quote in 1 Corinthians 11:24-25 which may make him think its more likely to be authentic, but then he remembers that Paul quotes some Greek poets in Acts 17:16-21, and then he might remember that the lords supper is never explicitly mentioned in Acts (there is 'breaking of bread' in Acts 2:42, but for the sake of argument, lets say he comes up with a clever argument that washes that away) and using that argument from silence in the early church conclude that all mentions on the last supper are in fact interpolations from a Greek person in the oral tradition source. (possible even Paul himself).

However, if we have eyewitnesses still floating around, then we have authoritative figures to check up on gospels etc.

This is 'unfashionable' (very British term) in modern scholarship. Bauckham, takes his thesis to argue that even the last of the Gospels to have been compiled (John) is actually written by an eyewitness.

Finally, he introduces us to the forerunner to this book, a book by a Samuel Byrskog, a Swedish scholar who argued for the necessity of eyewitnesses to be around because in the ancient world, good history can only be written within living memory, for that one needs eyewitnesses. This is the beginning of Richard Bauckham's argument.