Loading...I have started to post the Q&A that I have done for my publisher (HarperOne) on my new book (due out one month from today! March 1, 2016), Jesus Before the Gospels. I’m really excited about its release. In many ways it is very different from anything I’ve published before, even though it is dealing with the reliability of the Gospels.
Here is the second of three installments of the questions and answers.
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1. In the book, you look at anthropological studies undertaken in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Ghana, and other places of oral culture. What do these studies reveal about the oral traditions of Jesus’ time?
It is surprising to me that scholars of the New Testament – who frequently refer to the high accuracy of traditions passed along in oral cultures – have so rarely bothered to see what we actually know about oral cultures and their means of preserving their traditions. Since two Harvard scholars named Milman Parry and Albert Lord began to study the passing on of oral traditions in Yugoslavia in the 1920s, up through studies by such famous cultural anthropologists as Jack Goody and Jan Vansina, experts have shown time and again that in oral cultures there is simply no sense that traditions should be preserved intact, word-for-word. On the contrary, in oral cultures (unlike our written culture), it is widely assumed…
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Can’t there be different types of oral tradition that might be more historically accurate than others? For example, my understanding of how the Koran was assembled was that Mohammed assigned each person in his group to listen carefully and memorize every word each time he returned with a new revelation from God. Each person had a specific section that they were responsible for preserving. Later the different sections were written down and combined into the Koran. Isn’t it more likely that this process would lead to a more accurate historical text?
Yes indeed. Some are *way* more accurate than others!
Do you offer an alternative explanation for the miracle stories in your book? As in what you believe was the core truth of the stories? Does that make sense?
I do deal with the question of Jesus’ miracles — but I don’t offer alternative, non-miraculous, explanations of what *really* happened.
Even if one has no “alternative explanation,” it is helpful to keep in mind that miracles are performed by prophets in earlier Jewish Scriptures and in other Jewish stories without ever being taken taken as a sign that the person “performing” the miracle is divine in any way.
“It is often thought that we have early evidence from the writings of the church fathers that the Gospels ultimately go back to (trustworthy) eyewitness testimony. In my book I deal directly with this issue.”
This would seem to overlap with Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Will you be addressing any of his arguments head on?
Yes indeed! By name!
The first I heard of Bauckham was in the counter book to How Jesus Became God. I think claim was that he was something like the leading scholar and shame on you for not referring to his work. (Like there’s some world ranking among scholars.) Since then I haven’t actually looked him up and still don’t know anything about his work. What are his claims about eyewitnesses?
Long story. He thinks the Gospels are ultimately based on eyewitness testimony (the Gospel of John is allegedly actually *written* by an eyewitness) and are therefore essentially reliable.