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 Four: Palestinian Jewish Names.

In Chapter Four we have a fairly quick chapter about the amount of times Palestinian Jewish names appear in the NT in comparison with their general frequency in 1st Century Palestine. Here there are many more tables (and at the bottom of this post is a photo of on of the many lists of names with frequencies etc. beside them in his book).

Why do we care about this? Well, if you recall the one reservation or potential argument I posed at the end of my last post, then you will understand. Here is the question: what if the names in Mark are later additions? then that would render the arguments in chapter 3 useless.

So, we have a massive analysis of ALL the Palestinian Jewish names that were around at this time as recorded on ossuaries, in Josephus etc. (some 2953 people with names). How does this defend the authenticity of the names in the gospel? Well, his argument is basically that the amount of times certain names appear in the area is about the same percentage as they turn up in the New Testament. Here they are:

In Palestine 15.6% of the people had the most popular names for men, those being Simon and Joseph. Compare this with the amount of times those names appear in the Gospels and Acts: 18.2% Then the top nine most popular names in Palestine have a percentage of 41.5% while in the Gospels and Acts its about 40.3%. Then the least popular names (only occurring once in our sources) have a percentage of 7.9% in Palestine, while in the Gospels and Acts it's 3.9%

Now for the Woman: 28.6% of woman in Palestine had the two most popular names: Mary and Salome, while in the Gospels and Acts its 38.9%. Then the nine most popular names have a percentage of 49.7% while in the Gospels and Acts its 61.1%, finally the least popular are 9.6% and 2.5 % respectively.

So, it is very unlikely that later 2nd Century AD scribes or even the original writers could have made up names that are so close to the frequencies we see throughout the area. The larger discrepancies in the woman's numbers are to be expected given the scarcity of there names mentioned in sources (they often can be referred to simply as 'the wife of...' without their name.)

He then has a bunch or random information that does not advance his argument much, I am guessing that he waxes lyrical here because it must have been so time consuming to process this much information, and he may as well have more to show for it then just one defensive argument. As an aside, one interesting thing I learned was that one way in which the Gospel's (and other sources) tell apart people's names is to give them a patronymic substitute. What does this odd phrase mean? well it has do with the persons father (Pater = father in Greek) and then it has to do with the hebrew way of saying 'son of' which is 'bar' so you may have hear 'Yeshua ben Yoseph' i.e. Jesus son of Joseph. Well a patronymic substitute takes away the first name and amalgamates 'ben' and the fathers name, which gets turned in greek into 'bar' so Bartimaeus means Bar = son of, Timaeus = father's name! So all those names like that are actually nicknames! crazy. Plus, on a personal note, if I ever do Post-grad work, I never want to have to go through this kind of information: (Click for a blown up image)

Chapter Three: Names in the Gospel traditions. (Or, whats in a name?)

In chapter three Bauckham starts to make good on one of the explanations that his thesis requires... that is that there should be some evidence of eyewitness testimony within the Gospel's themselves. If we can find none, then it might possibly nail the coffin down on Bauckham's thesis, especially if we were instead to see evidence of oral tradition, and not oral history (for the difference see my review of chapter 2).

So, Bauckham starts of by remarking that there is a phenomenon in the Gospel's that he has not seen satisfactorily explained. This phenomenon is names. Why are names a phenomenon in the Gospels? Well, the main reason is that when we look at the names in the canonical gospel's (Matthew, Mark, Luke & John) we see that there are both named and un-named people. Why is this the case?

Finally we see Bauckham tackle the form critics arguments head on. Here he takes on one of the preeminent form critics of the 20th Century. Rudolf Bultmann. Rudolf argued that the names were evidence of oral tradition, as people would like to give names to people that were previously unknown. So, as we read the gospels in the chronological order in which they were written, we would expect the number of named characters to increase across them.

However, we do not find this, and after a series of complicated arguments that would take forever to summarize here, he calls Bultmann's hypothesis 'Preposterous' (although he hides his own judgement behind the veil of a quote by one Joseph Fitzmyer). He then notes another theory which states the exact opposite tendency, that of names disappearing as time wears on, and more people becoming unknown. Then, upon looking at the gospels we see this very tendency, we do not see names appearing (in the synoptics there is not a single example of a previously un-named character becoming named in either Matthew or Luke), but we do see names disappearing.

Why is this an interesting phenomenon? Well, the most widely accepted theory regarding the compiling of Matthew and Luke is that they are copying Mark when they can. So when we see Mark, Luke & Matthew agreeing, that is evidence of them copying Mark (this theory is known as 'Markan priority'). But, if names are disappearing, when they in fact have the source of Mark there with the names written, then we have an an odd puzzle to solve.

At the end of this chapter Richard has a load of tables with all the names listed in them and where they appear. Here I will give you an example of this random disappearing of names:

First go to Mark 5:22 and note that there is a man named Jairus. Now, turn to Matthew 9:18 and note the same story but Jairus is now just a 'ruler'. Luke mentions Jairus in Luke 8:41.

Now for another even more thorough example:
Mark 10:46 and we have Blind Bartimaeus the son of Timaeus. Now turn to Matthew 20:30 where we have two blind men whilst Jesus is leaving Jericho. Neither are named. Now turn to Luke 18:35 where we meet this blind man at Jericho who is nameless.

So, how can we account for this interesting lack of names? Bauckham thinks this is evidence of eyewitness testimony. Why? well, in brief, his argument goes that, since Mark is the first gospel written, he was talking to these eyewitnesses. (I.e. Bartimaeus.) And he included their names since they were important members of the early Christian community, this is so that the Christian community who heard this story when hearing Mark's gospel read out, could go and check the facts or hear the story from Bartimaeus himself. However, by the time of Matthew and Luke they may have been dead or not a part of the community in which this gospels were written, so using their names would be irrelevant to them, since nobody that heard their gospel's could check with the people anyway.

Bauckham then gives a few more interesting case studies involving the woman at the cross and the empty tomb, which he examines in some detail (and it also gives me an idea for a future post series...) and he also looks at simon of Cyrene and his sons. Finally he looks at the rare case of 'recipients of miracles' and how they are treated across the gospels.

He then finishes off this very convincing chapter by adding a qualification about Mark's gospel as it were. Here he says that vivid detail in and of itself is not indicative of eye witness testimony, but could just be evidence of the author's artistic flair, and in fact if no flair is detected, then that is also not indicative of mere oral tradition, instead it has nothing whatsoever to do with the debate Bauckham claims, and he then mentions he will deal with this more fully in chapter 13.

Any objections?

This chapter to me was super convincing. I, with my limited knowledge, could not begin to form an argument against it. However, it would be interesting to see what date these manuscripts are found at exactly, and when are the earliest dates known of the names of say Jairus or Bartimaeus. Perhaps one could pull an argument that says, no, the names are going the other way, Marks gospel has been tampered with and the names are being added in later by some scribe. They could then back this up with an argument that Bauckham mentions on pg 44 (note: this is not an argument in use today, but it could be potentially used) where he states that it was common practice for Jews to add names to characters in their scriptures which were not previously named and he gives an example from pseudo-Philo's book Biblical antiquities in which Cain's wife is given a name and so is Jephthah's daughter. However, Richard assures us that the evidence suggests this did not happen. I would like to see more development in this area. So, if an early manuscript of mark was found which leaves say, Bartimaeus unnamed, then that would effectively sink this hypothesis.