New Richard Bauckham Homepage

One of my favourite British NT scholars is Richard Bauckham (also one of the elite few NT scholars who are actually shorter than me). Any ways, Richard Bauckham has a new website that links to articles, books, sermons, and unpublished essays by him. Well worth checking out! I can't wait to read his unpublished essay on the NT and the episcopacy! I should also mention that Richard will be presenting the annual Tyndale Fellowship NT Lecture in Cambridge in July - so go ye to the Tyndale Fellowship NT group and hear him and stack of other great exegetes as well!

Gospel Audiences: Martin Hengel

Over at NTGeek, Greg Carey has a post on The Gospels: For All Christians? where he briefly critiques Bauckham's argument that the Gospels were not intended exclusively for isolated and introspective communities belonging to the Evangelistgs. Many have criticised Bauckham for this argument (e.g. Phil Esler, David Sim, Margaret Mitchell, and Thomas Kazen) and I've defended him in two articles in Journal of Theological Studies and European Journal of Theology (I should also mention that Micky Klink is editing a book in the LNTS monograph series as a follow up to Bauckham's work on the Gospels and it should be out next year). I think Bauckham is a bit misrepresented. He doesn't deny that the Gospels were influenced by the ecclesial situation that the Evangelists faced and that the Gospels were initially distributed and utilised among the Evangelist's own circle. What he does argue is that the respective Gospels were not intended exclusively for use in their own "community" and they are not simply mirrors of the disputes of a Matthean, Marcan, Lucan, and Johannine community. The Gospels were writen for as many Christians that might read them.

In reading over Martin Hengel's book on The Four Gospel and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, I was highly amused by this quote:

"Therefore nothing has led research into the Gospels so astray as the romantic superstition involving anonymous theologially creative community collectives, which are supposed to have drafted whole writings."

In other words, the Gospels are not simply the products of hypothetical (or fictitious?) groupings known as Gospel communities.

Richard Bauckham's New Book

Richard Bauckham's first volume of collected essays on certain aspects of the Jewish background of the New Testament is out:

Richard Bauckham, The Jewish World around the New Testament: Collected Essays I (548 pages worth!). Here are some of the articles:

• The Rise of Apocalyptic
• The Delay of the Parousia
• The Son of Man: 'A Man in my Position' or 'Someone'?
• The Apocalypses in J. H. Charlesworth's Old Testament PseudepigraphaPseudo-Apostolic Letters
• The List of the Tribes of Israel in Revelation 7
• The "Parting of the Ways": What Happened and Why
• The Messianic Interpretation of Isaiah 10:34
• The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study
• What if Paul had Travelled East rather than West?
• Covenant, Law and Salvation in the Jewish Apocalypses
• The Restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts
• Paul and Other Jews with Latin Names in the New Testament
• Tobit as a Parable for the Exiles of Northern Israel
• The Continuing Quest for the Origins of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha

The essays on the Son of Man, Parting of the Ways, Restoration in Luke-Acts, and Delay of the Parousia are classic Bauckham and I recommend those one's in particular. So in the very least, got your library to order a copy of this book!

HT: Chris Tilling.

The Earliest Christology was also the Highest

I remember reading a quote some time ago from George Caird (his NT Theology I think) that the earliest christology was among the highest in the NT. To back that up is this quote from Richard Bauckham:

"The early Christian movement, very consciously using this Jewish theological framework, created a kind of christological monotheism by understanding Jesus to be included in the unique identity of the one God of Israel. Probably the earliest expression of this to which we have access - and it was certainly in use very early in the first Christian community's history - was the understanding of Jesus' exaltation in terms of Psalm 110:1. Jesus, seated on the cosmic throne of God in heaven as the one who will achieve the eschatological lordship of God and in whom the unique sovereignty of the one God will be acknowledged by all, is included in the unique rule of God over all things, and is thus placed unambigously on the divine side of the absolute distinction that separates the only sovereign One from all creation. God's rule over all things defines who God is: it cannot be delegated as a mere function to a creature. Thus the earliest christology was already in nuce the highest christology. All that remained was to work through consistently what it could mean for Jesus to belong integrally to the unique identity of the one God. Early Christian interest was primarily in soteriology and eschatology, the concerns of the Gospel, and so in the New Testament it is primarily as sharing or implementing God's eschatological lordship that Jesus is understood to belong to the identity of God. But early Christian reflection could not consistently leave it at that. Jewish eschatological monotheism was founded in creational monotheism. If Jesus was integral to the identity of God, he must have been so eternally. To include Jesus also in the unique creative activity of God and in the uniquely divine eternity was a necessary corollary of his inclusion in the eschatological identity of God. This was the early Christians' Jewish way of preserving monotheism against the ditheism that any kind of adoptionist Christology was bound to involve. Not by adding Jesus to the unique identity of the God of Israel, but only by including Jesus in that unique identity, could monotheism be maintained. This applies also to the worship of Jesus, which certainly began in Palestinian Jewish Christianity. This expressed the inclusion of Jesus in the unique identity of the sole Creator of all things and sole Sovereign over all things."

Jewish Interpretations of Paul

As a follow-up to a recent CBR article by myself and Preston Sprinkle on "Jewish Interpretations of Paul in the Last 30 Years", one of my students brought this book to my attention:

Riccardo Calimani,
Paolo, l'ebreo che fondo' il cristianesimo
= Paul, the Jew who established Christianity
(Oscar Storia, Mondadori, 2005)

I once asked Richard Bauckham how was he able to read biblical studies works written in Italian. I shall never forget his reply: "Well, if you can read Latin and Spanish, then Italian is quite easy to manage". I'm sure it is . . . but for us lesser mortals Google Language Tools will suffice in the meantime.

Richard Bauckham's New Christology Book

In glancing over Paternoster's most recent catalogue I noticed that Richard Bauckham's newest book, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity should be out soon (in the catalogue it lists the release date as Dec 07 but Amazon says Sept 08). The blurb reads:

"The basic thesis of this important book on New Testament Christology, sketched in the first essay ‘God Crucified’, is that the worship of Jesus as God was seen by the early Christians as compatible with their Jewish monotheism. Jesus was thought to participate in the divine identity of the one God of Israel. The other chapters provide more detailed support for, and an expansion of, this basic thesis. Readers will find not only the full text of Bauckham’s classic book God Crucified, but also groundbreaking essays, some of which have never been previously published."

Richard Bauckham's Jude and the Relatives of Jesus

I remember one afternoon while in Cambridge making my regular pilgrimage to Gallaway and Porter's book store in the city centre to hunt up second hand and over stock books. This particular day I came across the book Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in Early Christianity by Richard Bauckham. At that point I had not considered either the book of Jude or the Relatives of Jesus as of any consequence to my own work. But given my great admiration for Bauckham I picked it up and found a gem. The book is rather poorly titled if you ask me as he states his focus in the first sentence of the book:

"This book is a contribution to the history of Palestinian Jewish Christianity in the New Testament Period."[1]

At least a subtitle such as "A Contribution to the History of Jewish Christianity in the New Testament" would have revealed the central importance of this work.

Only recently have I had occasion to read parts of the book and I am again, as I have so many times by Bauckham's work, struck by the clarity of his conclusions based on detailed research of primary source material.

In the book he studies Jewish Christianity in the NT by considering three topics: (1) the significance of Jesus' family (excluding James) in the early church, (2) the book of Jude and (3) Luke's genealogy. While it is not apparent at least at first how the third point relates to the first two, Bauckham sees Luke's genealogy as offering evidence--along with the letter of Jude--of the theological character of the Christianity of the relatives of Jesus and their circle in the first generation of the church. He has reason to connect the genealogy and the family of Jesus because of the statement by Justin Africanus found in Eusebius' EH 1.7.14 about Jesus relatives referred to as the desposynoi ("those who belong to the master"):

"From the Jewish villages of Nazareth and Kokhaba they travelled around the rest of the land [most likely a reference to Eretz Israel] and interpreted the genealogy they had [from the family tradition] and from the Book of Days [i.e. Chronicles] as far as they could trace it [or: as far as they went on their travels]."[2]

Bauckham's conclusion is that the relatives of Jesus were the theological heart of the Jesus movement and set its theological course. Their work reveals that they developed a Christology based on three legs: (1) Davidic messianism, (2) "Enochic" apocalypticism, and (3) pesher exegesis.

Most interesting to me at least was his discussion of both the early Jewish Christian mission in Galilee lead by Jesus' relatives from Nazareth/Kokhaba during the first generation of the Jesus movement and the Davidic messianism contained in the Lukan genealogy. Luke's family tree reveals that Jesus' Davidic line runs not through Solomon (as Matthew's does), but through the lesser known son of David, Nathan, who is linked then to Zerubbabel. The genealogy is not Luke's creation and reveals a pre-Lukan traditional genealogy that traced the line from David to Nathan to Zerubbabel.

The striking assertion by Bauckham is that Luke’s genealogy derived from Jesus' family. Thus, as Bauckham avers:

"We must now see the family of Jesus as Davidides, conscious, through family tradition, of the hopes of Davidic restoration which had been cherished in their line since Zerubabbel . . . the tradition may not have been important to Jesus himself, but it was there to be activated and developed when Jesus’ relatives became some of his most convinced and dedicated followers". [3]

[1] Bauckham 1990:1, emphasis added.
[2] Bauckham 1990:61, with my addition.

[3] Bauckham 1990:376.


Bauckham, Richard. 1990. Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.

The End of an Era

If my memory serves me right, as of 01 Nov 2007, Prof. Richard Bauckham officially retires from St. Andrews University. This is a huge loss for St. Andrews and Scotland since Richard is retiring to Cambridge where he'll undertake some part-time teaching in one of the theological colleges down there and also engage in more sustained research and writing. Given Richard's poor health a few years ago, this is probably the best thing for him. It also means that Richard can now finish some major projects he's got on the horizon including:

John commentary in the Two Horizons series.

John commentary in the NIGTC series.

Two volumes on Monotheism and Christology.

Luke commentary for the ICC series.

So happy retirement to Richard, and many productive and blessed years be ahead of you.

Though with Richard's departure I have to face up to a monumental problem since it means that I am now officially the shortest NT scholar in Scotland (woe is me!).

(Wait a minute! How tall is Dr. Alison Jack of Edinburgh Uni? Could someone measure her to see if she's taller than 168 cm? Maybe I'm not the shortest after all?)

Bauckham on CT

Richard Bauckham has been interviewed by Christianity Today concerning his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. See here.