JSNT3L2 (2008) 195-209 2008 SAGE Publications http://JSNT.sagepub.com DOI: 10.

1177/0142064X08098281

AJSNTT

The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony? A Critical Examination of Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses Jens Schrter
Theologische Fakultt, Otto-Schill-Strae 2, 04109, Leipzig, Germany Prof. Jens. Schroeter@t-online.de

How is the formation of the Gospels related to the historical Jesus? This question has been discussed passionately since the beginning of historicalcritical research on the Gospels, unsurprisingly, for at stake here are the foundations of Christian theology and faith. Is it possible to trace back the contents of Christian faith to Jesus himself, or is the Christian confession based on ideas that were imposed on his life and death only afterwards? Are the origins of Christian faith accessible by 'pure historical' examination, or is there always an inextricable interrelation of historical event and interpretation? Does Christian faith have a secure historical basis in the activity and fate of Jesus of Nazareth lying behind all shapes and peculiarities of Christianity, or is such a foundation always a construct of the historian, depending on his or her view of reality and therefore provisional and changeable? Richard Bauckham's monumental monograph is a challenge not only for the interpretation of the Gospels, but also for historical Jesus research. The main argument of the book, namely that the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony, is aimed at a re-evaluation of the transmission processes of the Jesus traditions prior to the Gospels. Bauckham wants thereby to develop a paradigm that is able to answer the questions mentioned above. The necessity of such an approach for Bauckham resultsfromthe observation that the relationship of event and interpretation is adequately considered neither in recent Jesus research nor in the prevalent methodological paradigm for the interpretation of the Gospels. With regard to the former he thinks of approaches in recent Jesus research in North America, with regard to the latter he has his sights on older German form criticism. Whereas more recent Jesus research has tried 'to reconstruct the historical figure of Jesus in a way that is allegedly purely historical,freeof concerns

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of faith and dogma',1 the form critics attributed the Gospels to an anonymous church tradition and ignoredfondamentalaspects of those processes that led to their formation. Bauckham wants to overcome these insufficiencies, which resulted in a historical Jesus without Christian faith or in Christian faith without a historical Jesus, by introducing eyewitness testimony as the appropriate historiographie category for the formation of the Gospels. In some way Bauckham's approach reminds the reader of the recent monograph of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (Ratzinger 2007). Both authors emphasize the close connection between the ministry of Jesus and the shape of Christian faith, which have been separated in a questionable way by historical-critical exegesis, and especially by the form critics. Moreover, in both approaches, the attribution of the Gospel traditions to eyewitnesses plays an important role. This becomes particularly obvious with regard to the Gospel of John, which is attributed by Bauckham and Ratzinger to the personal memories of Jesus' beloved disciple, whom Bauckham even identifies with the presbyter John mentioned in two of John's letters and by Papias. In Bauckham's book the methodological and historiographie value of the category 'eyewitness testimony' is even reflected in afondamentalway. He highlights its importance for historiography in the ancient world in general and for the formation of the Gospels in particular. Bauckham introduces the category 'eyewitness testimony' (sometimes only 'testimony')rightat the beginning. The basis is his conviction 'that all history, like all knowledge, relies on testimony'.2 Therefore, the assumption in 'modern development of critical historical philosophy and method' that the historian could access the historical truth independent from testimony has to be rejected. History, instead, is always an indissoluble combination of fact and interpretation. In the case of the Gospels the category 'testimony' is especially appropriate because it enables us to read the history of Jesus as the revelation of God in a way which precisely meets the intention of these writings. 'Testimony' therefore is

1. Bauckham 2006: 2. Such a historic-hermeneutical and naive approach may apply to some recent North American Jesus scholarship but is by no means representative of actual Jesus research in general. Cf. Dunn 2003:99-136; Schrter 2006. 2. Bauckham 2006:5. That Bauckham describes this insight as a 'rather neglected fact' is surprising insofar as hermeneutical and epistemological aspects have been broadly discussed in theory of history and also in Jesus research in recent years. It is somewhat disappointing that this discussion, apartfromJames Dunn's seminal study on Jesus, is not considered in Bauckham's book.

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the historiographically and theologically appropriate model for the interpretation of the Gospels. It calls into question the idea of an anonymous oral transmission of the Jesus tradition before the formation of the Gospels. Thefondamentalmisapprehension of this idea is that it leaves unconsidered the role of the eyewitnesses, testified to by Papias as well as by the Gospels themselves, in favour of an 'anonymous folk literature' as the appropriate model for the transmission of the Jesus tradition. With his view Bauckham aligns himself with the criticisms against the form-critical approach which, since Vincent Taylor, has been accepted in British scholarship only with reservation. Taylor's famous dictum '[i]f the Form-Critics are right, the disciples must have been translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrection' is quoted by Bauckham with approval (7). In a later chapter he takes up the main criticisms against the form-critical approach from recent decades: the assumption of a 'pure form' at the beginning of the transmission process, the supposition of a strict relation between genre and 'Sitz im Leben', the notion of certain laws of transmission, the 'romantic' idea of an anonymous folk literature, the hypothesis of an exclusively oral transmission of the Jesus tradition in the first decades and the application of a literary model to processes of oral transmission (246-52). Although these criticisms would already suffice to prove the formcritical model as unsatisfactory, Bauckham sees the main problem in the influence that the idea of a 'long period of creative development of the traditions before they attained written form in the Gospels' (249) still exerts on current Gospel research. His approach presents a fundamental criticism of this presupposition. Taking eyewitness testimony as his point of departure, he wants to show that those persons who were themselves involved in the events, and therefore are reliable witnesses, transmitted the Jesus traditions from the beginning. Before this approach will be scrutinized in more detail, a remark will be given on the theologicalhistorical constellation behind this debate. The assumption of a longer oral, 'creative' phase of the Jesus tradition goes back as far as Johann Gottfried Herder and was prominently advanced a hundred years before the basic publications of the form critics by David Friedrich Strauss. Strauss traced the traditions behind the Gospels back to 'mythical' interpretations of the events of Jesus' activity during their oral transmission. The designation 'myth' thereby means that Jesus' ministry was interpreted by religious ideas taken over mainly from the Old Testament. That these ideas were imposed on the Jesus traditions from the very beginning would make it impossible to draw a sharp distinction between historical and unhistorical aspects in the Gospels. The

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inseparable connection of historical event and 'mythical' interpretation has rather to be regarded as a characteristic of the Jesus tradition since its earliest commencements. Strauss's ideas were heavily disputed already during his lifetime. Christian Hermann Weie, professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig, criticized them as 'faint and nebulous suppositions' that were already disproved by Papias's testimony about Mark and Matthew (Weie 1838). The sources mentioned by Papiasa Gospel of Mark that is allegedly based on Peter's memories, as well as Jesus' 'logia' collected by the apostle Matthewwere the actual commencements of the Jesus tradition and would prove speculations about a phase of oral transmission as pure fancy. The reference to these two sources was the origin of the so-called 'two-source-theory'. It is worthwhile to note that this theory originally was not developed to solve the Synoptic Problem, but to trace back the Jesus tradition to two written sources in order to refute the idea of an oral tradition behind the Gospels. The problem indicated by Bauckham has therefore been an integral part of the historical-critical research on the Gospels since its very beginning. It could even be stated that Bauckham's refutation of the formcritical approach is a version of the controversy between Strauss and Weie under new circumstances. Thereby it is remarkable that with Weie, as with Bauckham, Papias's testimony plays a decisive role for the assumption of a tradition that originated with identifiable witnesses. As already mentioned, Bauckham applies this theory even to the Gospel of John, as Weie did not. The differences between this Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels are in his view due to the fact that John's Gospel is an 'idiosyncratic testimony of a disciple whose relationship to the events, to Jesus, was distinctive and different' (411). The theologically and historically explosive question therefore is whether the traditions that were taken over by the Gospel writers deliver an adequate picture of Jesus' activity because they originate with eyewitnesses, or whether the theological convictions that shaped these traditions have displaced their historical reliability to a considerable degree. There is agreement between Bauckham on the one hand and Strauss and the form critics on the other that Jesus' activity and fateas all historical eventsare only accessible by their recollections. But it is disputed whether these memories by their interpretations concealed the events themselves or, to the contrary, kept their essential aspects. Strauss, like Bultmann and Dibelius, regarded thefirstoption as more probable. According to Strauss, the history of Jesus was embedded into 'mythical' interpretations, as for example the parousia of Elijah was trans-

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ferred to John the Baptist, or Jewish expectations of a Messiah were used for the interpretation ofJesus' activity. According to Strauss, the dogmatic truth of Christian faith was in no way affected by these observations. In the Gospels this truth is expressed, however, as 'ideal truth', not as transmission of historical facts. Bultmann and Dibelius also highlighted the formative influence of Old Testament stories (as for example in the vocation story in Mk 1.16-20), referred to analogies in Graeco-Roman texts (as for example in the chreiai or in the miracle stories) and emphasized the influence of the early Christian confessions on the Gospels (as for example in the story of Jesus' baptism or in Peter's confession 'You are the Christ') to point out that the Jesus traditions underwent processes of massive shaping and interpretation before they reached the Gospels. Bauckham's view is strongly opposed to these assumptions. According to him, the Jesus tradition has to be regarded as 'recollective memory' relying on eyewitness accounts that did not go through a phase of anonymous oral transmission and was therefore not altered in a significant way before it was written down by the authors of the Gospels. As Bauckham points out, using insights from psychology, such memories should be characterized as reports about 'unique or unusual events' of great importance for the transmitters themselves because they were emotionally involved in them. They were shaped by 'vivid imagery', contained irrelevant details about places and persons, mostly lacked exact dating and werefrequentlyrecalled. Exactly these features would also characterize the traditions taken up by the Gospel writers (319-57). The process of transmission of these traditions has therefore to be described as 'remembering Jesus'. Bauckham thus defines the concept of 'remembering' in a particular way. He dissociates himself from the model of an anonymous folk literature, but at the same time deals critically with the approach taken by Kenneth Bailey and thereafter by James Dunn. In that approach there is a distinction between the form-critical model of an 'informal, uncontrolled oral tradition' on the one hand and the 'formal controlled oral tradition' of the Scandinavian school on the other. Bailey's own model of an 'informal controlled oral tradition' is placed between these two.3 Bauckham makes the criticism that with the characterization 'informal' Bailey and Dunn neglect the role of the eyewitnesses. That would do justice neither to the importance of eyewitness accounts in ancient historiography nor to the way the Jesus tradition was transmitted in the first decades according to the earliest testimonies.
3. Bailey 1991: 34-54. Cf. Bauckham 2006: 252-63.

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For his own description of the transmission process, Bauckham refers to the importance of eyewitness testimony in ancient historiography as it was emphasized already by Samuel Byrskog (2000). Byrskog had pointed out, however, that the eyewitness at the same time appears as an 'interpreter' who was 'socially involved' in the reported events as a 'participant'. For ancient historiographers this personal involvement was no obstacle to considering eyewitnesses as especially qualified witnesses of the concerned events. It means, however, that events from the past are only accessible through the reports about them. Eyewitness testimony, therefore, ensures closeness to the reported events but by itself says nothing about the authenticity or even reliability of the reports. At this point a crucial aspect for the evaluation of the conception of 'testimony' emerges: As already becomes obviousfromthe differences between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John, Jesus' activity could be recounted in early Christianity in quite different ways. This spectrum would even be broadened if the apocryphal Gospels were included, for example the Gospel of Thomas, which Bauckham touches on only in passing. Bauckham explains this diversity not historically or theologicallyfor example by pointing to the elaborated post-Easter perspective of the Gospel of John or to the Gospel of Thomas as a text from a later stage in the tradition history than the New Testament Gospelsbut by referring to different modes of recollections of eyewitnesses. Here a serious problem emerges. If the category 'eyewitness testimony' is defined in such a broad way, its relationship to the recollected events is obscured. If Jesus' life and fate could be recounted in markedly different ways in early Christian Gospels, it seems necessary to distinguish between historical, reliable recollections and secondary, legendary traditions which originated only later. Without such a distinction legendary stories in the New Testament Gospels and the apocryphal Gospels would gain the same status as those accounts that are fundamental for a historical description of Jesus' activity. It seems unavoidable, therefore, to evaluate the different accounts critically with regard to their particular perspective and to evaluate them accordingly. From such an evaluation it could result, for example, that particular accounts in the Gospelsfor example the birth stories in Mt. 1-2 and Lk. 1-2, Jesus' teaching about the mystery of the kingdom in Mk 4 or the revelatory speeches in the Gospel of Johnare in thefirstplace due to interpretations of Jesus' activity in different historical situations andfromvarious theological perspectives. Only after an interpretation within the context of the Gospels, then, does it seem possible to ask whether they might originatefromrecollections of eyewitnesses.

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What does that now mean for the traditions behind the Gospels? Bauckham, referring to Papias's testimony and to the prologue of Luke's Gospel, argues that the reliance on eyewitnesses played a determining role for securing the Jesus tradition in thefirstdecades. Papias's reference to a 'living and surviving voice' ( ) should thereby not be interpreted metaphorically but as referring to a witness who was still alive in Papias's time and had personal memories of Jesus. This is, however, hardly convincing. It is much more probable that Papias here takes up the ancient topos of the viva vox in order to underline the priority of oral tradition over against written accounts.4 Moreover, the participle is hardly to be understood as referring to a living eyewitness. As, for instance, 1 Pet. 1.23 ( ) shows, it is rather a reference to the everlasting quality of 'God's living word/voice'. It is also hardly possible to draw conclusions concerning the origin of Jesus traditionsfromLuke's prologue.5 Rather, Luke uses various topoi of prologues in ancient literary works to describe his own work as relying on carefol investigation of the events which are reported in correct order. In that way Luke justifies the fact that he retells again what others have already written down before him. A judgment concerning the origin of the traditions taken over by Luke can scarcely be derived from such a highly conventional statement. From Papias's testimony Bauckham develops another remarkable hypothesis. According to this view, Papias observes a lack of order not only in the Gospel of Mark, but also in Matthew's Gospel. The reason for the former was that it is a transcription of Peter's speeches (though Bauckham himself considers the assertion of a missing order in Mark as unjustified), while in the latter the original order was destroyed by the different translations mentioned by Papias. Bauckham's conclusion is that Papias must have known a Gospel with the 'correct' order and compared it to those of Mark and Matthewnamely the Gospel of John! This surprising solution allows Bauckham to interpret the Gospels of John and Mark as respectively indirect and direct eyewitness testimonies that represent Jesus' activity in particular ways. Thereby the Gospel of John made use of Mark's Gospel and also presupposes readers' knowledge of it. The most relevant eyewitness for the history of Jesus, according to Bauckham, was the circle of the Twelve. This would already become obvious from the preservation of their names in the lists that occur in the
4. Cf., e.g., Krtner 1998: 47. 5. Cf., e.g., Schmidt 1999: 27-60.

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Synoptic Gospels and Acts. This conclusion remains somewhat unclear because the preservation of names by itself says nothing about the role of the concerned persons as eyewitnesses. Bauckham also refers to otherwise unknown persons in Gospel stories as, for example, Levi in Mk 2.14, Bartimaeus in Mk 10.46, Simeon and Hannah in Lk. 2.25 and 36, or Nathanael and Nicodemus in Jn 1.45 and 3.1. Using Talflan'sLexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity (2002), Bauckham is able to show that in most cases the persons mentioned in the Gospel stories bear common Jewish names. It is hardly convincing, however, to draw a historical conclusion from this observation. It simply shows that the Gospel authors gave their narratives a 'realistic effect' by choosing names that were common in the Jewish context of ancient Palestine where the narrated events took place. Every good narrator of a novel or a fictional story would do the same. It is nevertheless absolutely possible that the persons mentioned in the Gospels are in some cases individuals who experienced the healings or were called as followers and hence became bearers of the concerned traditions.6 If this assumption is correct, it would enable us to identify some of the bearers of the Jesus tradition by their names. This has of course to be distinguished from the literary form and pragmatic function of these traditions in the context of the Gospels in which they now appear. Taking the story of the blind Bartimaeus in Mk 10.46-52 as an example, this can be clarified as follows: Bartimaeus might have had an encounter with Jesus and been healedfromhis blindness. Afterwards he might have told this life-changing event to others who picked up the story and retold it again in Christian circles or to highlight the extraordinary power of Jesus in the context of early Christian mission. When Mark included the story into his Gospel it had already passed through a transmission history of approximately 40 years. In this process the report about the encounter experienced considerable elaborations. Probably Jesus and Bartimaeus spoke Aramaic with each other. Perhaps even the whole story about the healing was transmitted in Aramaic in the first years. At some point, however, it must have been translated into Greek. It obtained the form of a miracle story and was embellished with features which made it more lively (Jesus' command to be quiet, the even louder crying of Bartimaeus, the throwing off of the cloak, the healing because of Bartimaeus's faith). Moreover, the designations 'Son of David', 'the Nazarene' and 'teacher' point to the perception of Jesus by the inhabitants of Galilee. In this way the story became an example for Jesus' healing activity and received a
6. For the healing stories this was argued already in Zeller 1981.

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general meaning which goes beyond the single event. Mark took the story over, reworked it according to his own literary style and incorporated it in his composition of the story of Jesus. His account elucidates that the 'true' meaning of Jesus' way is not adequately expressed in Bartimaeus's addresses to Jesus. According to Mark, Jesus is more than a teacher and more than the Son of David: he is the Son of Man whose way leads through suffering and death to his resurrection, exaltation and return to the last judgement (cf., e.g., 8.31-38). The healing of the blind Bartimaeus, who is saved by his faith and henceforth follows Jesus in Mark's story, therefore has at the same time a symbolic meaning: the healing of the blind Bartimaeus in a symbolic sense means that he learned to 'see' who Jesus is and as a consequence joined the group of his followers. The story is therefore consciously placed at the transition from Jesus' public ministry in Galilee and the surrounding regions to his passion in Jerusalem. Thus, different stages in the transmission of the story can be distinguished: the initial transmission by the eyewitnesses of the event (perhaps even Bartimaeus himself), the translation into Greek and the transformation into a typical story of Jesus' healing activity, eventually the literary and compositional incorporation into Mark's Gospel. Because of the diverse reformulations and interpretations during this process it is hardly possible to reconstruct earlier versions of the story, let alone an 'original'version (whatever that means) or the event itself (whatever that means). That such attempts would befruitlessbecomes already obvious from more recent studies on the style of Mark's Gospel, the character of oral tradition as well asfromthe inadequacy of the idea of a 'pure' form at the beginning of a transmission process. The criticism of the formcritical method therefore not only calls into question the assumption of an anonymous church tradition; it also shows that the interpretation of the Jesus tradition has to take its point of departure from the literary form and function of the traditions within the context of the Gospels. The episode of blind Bartimaeus therefore reveals a significant feature of the early Jesus tradition: in earlier stages it consisted of shorter episodes that sometimes may have contained names of involved persons and other details. Here Bauckham has formulated a justified objection against older form criticism, which is of course not new. However, this insight must not be played off against the interpretation of these episodes in the transmission process and their linguistic and compositional integration into the Gospels' narratives. The episodes were formed according to genre-specific conventions (in the particular case according to a healing story); they were interpreted theologically (in our example as salvation by

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faith in Jesus, the Son of David); and they were integrated into the specific perspective on Jesus developed by the Gospel writers (in the Bartimaeus episode by the integration into Mark's story of Jesus, the Son of Man, who acts in God's power and whose way leads through suffering and death to exaltation). Both perspectivesthe obligation to historical events and early traditions as well as the shaping and theological interpretation at later stagesmust not be played off against each other. 'Remembering Jesus' therefore cannot mean to invoke the trustworthiness of eyewitness accounts against interpretations in the transmission process and by the Gospel writers, but to correlate both aspects in an appropriate way. In three of the Gospels, eyewitnesses are presented in a remarkable way, namely in Mark, Luke and John. Bauckham explains this observation with regard to Mark by the fact that he refers to the memories of Peter. Concerning the literary form of the episodes, he refers to the studies of Cuthbert Turner, who had explained certain characteristics of Mark's style with the assumption that Mark in several cases had taken over episodes narrated by Peter and transferred themfromthefirstinto the third person. Against the background of more recent research in the literary, compositional and theological characteristics of Mark's Gospel, however, this assumption is hardly convincing. These studies have emphasized that Mark has revised the traditions according to his own style and not simply taken over eyewitness accounts. Bauckham further argues that Mark as well as Luke and John used the historiographie principle of'inclusio ofeyewitnesses'. In Luke, in addition to Peter, an outstanding role is attributed to the women, as in John to the beloved disciple. Bauckham explains this by the respective 'inclusio': in Mark, Peter is the first and the last of the disciples who is mentioned (1.16 and 16.7). Bauckhamfindsit especially striking that in 16.7 Peter is explicitly mentioned in addition to the disciples to whom he of course belongs: 'tell his disciples and Peter'. Luke introduces the women already during Jesus' activity in Galilee (8.2-3) and they occur again at the empty tomb in ch. 24. In John, the beloved disciplefirstappears as the anonymous companion of Andrew (1.35-40) and again in ch. 21, both times in close relationship with Peter with whom he stands in 'a friendlyrivalry'(128). This 'inclusio of eyewitnesses', according to Bauckham, works as a historiographical principle that can be discovered also in other historiographical works.7
7. Bauckham refers to the Alexander novel by Lucan of Samosata as well as to the biography of Plotinus by Porphyry. Cf. 2006: 132-45.

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The reference to named individuals at several places in the Gospels is indeed striking. It is a merit of Bauckham's study to have worked out that characteristic with admirable erudition. Sometimes, however, his hypotheses seem somewhat far-fetched and hardly convincing, as, for example, the alleged transformation of Peter's accountsfromthefirstinto the third person in Mark's Gospel or the identification of the beloved disciple in John's Gospel with the presbyter who is mentioned in the second and third letter of John and by Papias.8 Moreover, the assignment of the traditions to eyewitnesses must not lead to a disregard of the literary and theological shaping of the traditions by the Gospel authors. Even if the traditions originated with eyewitnesses, they now appear as literarily reworked and theologically interpreted traditions and as integral parts of the compositional strategies of the Gospel writers. Moreover, the derivationfromeyewitnesses says nothing about the reliability of the accounts. As Johannes Fried has demonstrated in a comprehensive study, it should not be forgotten that the category 'memory' has to be examined critically because it presents incidentsfromthe past more often than not in a highly selective and subjective manner (Fried 2004). Because of their personal involvement, eyewitnesses lack a critical distancefromthe reported events. This was certainly also the case with Peter and the other disciples as companions of Jesus during his activity and detention. This observation is even underlined by Bauckham's comparison of 'Holocaust testimony and Gospel testimony' (493-505). The reports of survivors of the concentration camp in Auschwitz are highly subjective accounts from the perspectives of affected persons. There is no doubt that as memories of those individuals these reports deserve the highest respect. But it is also obvious that they cannot serve as the only relevant or authoritative sources for a history of German National Socialism. Eyewitness testimony is rather a very specific historical source whose characteristic is that it derives directly from people who were personally involved in the events. When it is included into the description of a certain period of history, this characteristic has to be considered critically and brought into relation with other sources. It would be by no means plausible, however, to argue that eyewitness testimony has by itself a privileged position among historical sources. The reference to 'testimony' as a 'theological model for understanding
8. The unnamed disciple from Jn 1.35 is often identified with the beloved disciple. Whether one follows that assumption or not, the introduction of an (at least in this story) anonymous disciple is a literary characteristic of John's Gospel, not a historical statement about an eyewitness.

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the Gospels' therefore in no way leads by itself to the 'historical reality of Jesus'. The description as testimony first and foremost means that some of the episodes in the Gospels may have been transmitted in the beginning as selective and subjective eyewitness reports. It is at the same time obvious that the recollections of Jesus' activity did not enter the Gospels as unchanged and uninterpreted eyewitness testimony. The linguistic and compositional peculiarities of the Gospels instead show that these reports underwent a thorough reworking. It must be regarded as a weakness of Bauckham's study that he does not adequately consider that latter aspect. It should have led to a more balanced evaluation of the origin of the Jesus tradition and its interpretation in the Gospels. This leads to a further basic demur that should be raised in connection with the model of 'eyewitness testimony'. Bauckham criticizes a 'nave historical positivism' that ignores the fact that history is always a combination of fact and interpretation. This might be an apt criticism of certain tendencies in more recent Jesus research, especially in the United States. This insight means that a historical-critical interpretation of the Gospels does not present eventsfromthe past as they 'really' happened but rather draws a picture of the past by using the tools of historical criticism. As such, the distinction between event and interpretation should not be neglected. It is also not plausible to consider the interpretation of eyewitnessesfromthe outset as the 'appropriate historical interpretation'. Probably, other contemporary witnesses who left no written documents interpreted the activity of Jesus quite differentlyfor example his enemiesand it is possible even today to describe the activity and fate of Jesusfromother perspectives than those of the Gospelsas it is usually done in historical-critical Jesus books. The 'nave positivism' that is aptly criticized by Bauckham cannot be overcome therefore by replacing the events of Jesus' ministry and fate with allegedly eyewitness testimony. At the end of his book, Bauckham integrates the eyewitness accounts into the perspective of critical historiography. He refers to Paul Ricoeur, who has, however, tied historical memories strictly to tracesfromthe past as their critical measure. Bauckham concedes that trust in testimony must not mean 'blind belief, because the reception oftestimony is characterized by 'a dialectic of trust and critical assessment' (490). The reason is that '[t]estimony shares thefragilityof memory', but often no other sources are available. That the Gospels are to be preferred for the reconstruction of the historical Jesus because 'for most purposes, testimony is all we have' does of course not lead to the conclusion that '[testimony offers us.. .both a reputable historiographie category for reading the Gospels as history, and also a theological model for understanding the Gospels as the

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entirely appropriate means of access to the historical reality of Jesus' (5). That in most cases no other sources than the Gospels are available says nothing about the character of these sources and their usefulness for a historical outline of the ministry of Jesus on the basis of historical-critical analysis. The statement 'trusting testimony is indispensable to historiography' should therefore be reformulated into 'relying on testimony' is indispensable for historiography, whereas 'trusting' is not, because historical testimonies are not by themselves trustworthy but in need of critical examination. To sum up, Bauckham's book is an outstanding study of the early Jesus tradition and the origin of the Gospels. Itrightlycriticizes weaknesses of the form-critical model of an allegedly anonymous church tradition. Problems with Bauckham's approach, however, arise mainly at three points. The main problem is the unreflective assignment of literary observations to a historical level. As a consequence, the model of eyewitness testimony is not adequately related to the literary and theological character of the Gospels. Already a hundred years ago William Wrede had made the criticism that Gospels scholars in their interpretations moved too quickly from the literary to the historical level. The observation of Wrede and KarlLudwig Schmidt that the picture of the life of Jesus provided by the Gospels is a literary product and does not rely on living experience should also not be put aside too airily. In the footsteps of these predecessors, contemporary research has shown that the Gospels are linguistically and compositionally coherent narratives that develop the meaning of Jesus' activity and fate in the form of 'narrative Christologies'. The category ' eyewitness testimony' can contribute to this picture insofar as it elucidates the origin and early stages of transmission of some Jesus traditions. It cannot explain, however, the formation of the Gospels themselves. In this regard the insights highlighted by Wrede, the form critics and narrative criticism are still valid and are put aside too hastily in Bauckham's study. This is all the more astounding as he forcefully emphasizes that history is always an interrelation of event and interpretation. This insight is not sufficiently applied to the Gospels as theological interpretations of the early Jesus traditions in the light of early Christian confession. Second, Bauckham underestimates the dynamics of oral tradition. Even if one agrees with his assumption that in the beginning the Jesus traditions were transmitted by identifiable eyewitnesses, 'performances' of these traditions during the process of oral transmission cannot be excluded even as linguistic variations and theological interpretations that

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they received before they gained their written form in the Gospels cannot be excluded. The third andfinalobjection is related to this. A danger of the model developed by Bauckham might be that it promotes an uncritical view on the Gospels as writings that should be 'trusted' rather than scrutinized critically. That would be a problematic consequence, already because in not a few episodes it would be difficult to prove eyewitness testimony,9 and even where it may be plausible, that cannot mean that a historicalcritical analysis should be put aside. In fact, such an analysis is in any case necessary in order to develop a convincing scenario of the formation of the Gospels. The category 'eyewitness testimony' can contribute to an understanding of the early Jesus tradition only insofar as it is integrated into a perspective on the Gospels as consciously composed literary and theological Jesus stories. References
Bailey, K.E. 1991 'Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels', AJT 5: 3454.

Bauckham, R.J. 2006 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans). Byrskog, S. 2000 Story as HistoryHistory as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History (WUNT, 123; Tbingen: Mohr). Dunn, J.D.G. 2003 Jesus Remembered (Christianity in the Making, 1; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans). Fried, J. 2004 Der Schleier der Erinnerung: Grundzge einer historischen Memorik (Munich: C.H. Beck). Ilan, T. 2002 Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity: Part I: Palestine 330 BCE - 200 CE (TSAJ, 91; Tbingen: Mohr). Krtner, U.H.J. 1998 Papiasfragmente (Schriften des Urchristentums, 3; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft).

9. It is probable that several episodes in the Gospelsfor instance the prologues or the infancy storiescannot be interpreted as eyewitness accounts but are due to the theological shaping of the Gospel writers. This would affect, for example, Bauckham's reference to Simon and Hannah in Lk. 2 as eyewitnesses.

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