Bauckham On the Three Gospels of Papias

[Secret Alias]

Bauckham begins by examining what Papias means by 'living voice':

In order to understand Papias’s preference for the “living voice” over written sources we must first recognize that it was an ancient topos or
commonplace. Loveday Alexander has pointed out the close parallel in the prologue to one of the works of the medical writer Galen, where he quotes a “saying current among most craftsmen” to the effect that “gathering information out of a book is not the same thing, nor even comparable to learning from the living voice.”56 The phrase “from the living voice” (para zoe phones) here is precisely that used by Papias, though Papias adds “and surviving” (kai menous3s). Two other known sources refer to the assertion that “the living voice” (in these Latin texts: viva vox) is preferable to writing as a common saying (Quintilian, Inst. 2.2.8; Pliny, Ep. 2.3).57 So it seems certain that Papias is alluding to a proverb. In the context of scientific and technical treatises such as Galen’s, this proverb expresses the easily understandable attitude that learning a craft by oral instruction from a practitioner was preferable to learning from a book.58 But even if it originated in the craft traditions, the saying was certainly not confined to them. Seneca applied it to philosophy, meaning that personal experience of a teacher made for much more effective teaching than writing: “you will gain more from the living voice (viva vox) and sharing someone’s daily life than from any treatise” (Ep. 6.5).59

In all such cases, what is preferable to writing is not a lengthy chain of oral tradition, but direct personal experience of a teacher. In discussion of rhetoric, the phrase was used by Quintilian (Inst. 2.2.8) and Pliny (Ep. 2.3) to express a preference for the communicative power of oral performance by an orator, which cannot be adequately conveyed in written texts.60 Alexander sums up her study of this topos:

We have seen that the “living voice” had a wide currency as a proverb of general import, but also that it is possible to identify three cultural worlds in which it has a more specific application. In rhetoric, it reinforces the centrality of live performance. Among craftsmen, it expresses the widely-felt difficulty of learning practical skills without live demonstration. And in the schools generally it serves as a reminder of the primacy of person-to-person oral instruction over the study (or the production) of manuals and handbooks.61

In all these cases, the proverb refers to firsthand experience of a speaker, whether an instructor or an orator, not to transmission of tradition through a chain of traditioners across generations. In the context of the schools, it seems sometimes to have been brought into connection with oral tradition,62 but even in this usage the “living voice” of the proverb does not refer to oral tradition, but to the actual voice of the teacher from whose oral instruction one learns directly. It follows that in the case of Papias’s use of the proverb, as Harry Gamble points out, “it is not oral tradition as such that Papias esteemed, but first-hand information. To the extent that he was able to get information directly, he did so and preferred to do so.”63

Alexander does not mention historiography, and the saying about the living voice itself does not seem to appear in the extant works of the historians. There is, however, an equivalent proverb, also cited by Galen, who says it is “better to be an eyewitness (autopt3s) by the side of the master himself and not to be like those who navigate out of books.”64 Galen applies this proverb, like the saying about the living voice, to learning a craft directly from an instructor rather than from a book, but it was also cited by the historian Polybius (writing three centuries before Galen) when he compared historiography to medical practice (12.15d.6). This is part of Polybius’s savage criticism of the work of the historian Timaeus, who relied entirely on written sources. It is notable that Polybius was also fond of the word autopt3s (“eyewitness”),65 which Alexander has shown was characteristic of medical literature, as in the quotation from Galen just given.66 Though this word is not common in the historians generally, Polybius uses it to refer to a concept that was central to the method of ancient historiography: reliance on direct personal experience of the subject matter, either by the historian himself or at least by his informant.

Continuing his attack on Timaeus, Polybius writes that there are three modes of historical — as of other — inquiry, one by sight and two by hearing. Sight refers to the historian’s personal experience of the places or events of which he writes, which was so highly prized by ancient historians and which Polybius, like Thucydides and others, considered of first importance. One of the two forms of hearing is the reading of memoirs (hypomn3mata)(in the ancient world written texts were “heard” even when a reader read them for him/herself67): this was Timaeus’s exclusive method of historical research but was put by Polybius third in order of importance. More important for Polybius was the other form of hearing: the interrogation (anakriseis) of living witnesses (12.27.3).

As Samuel Byrskog has reminded us and as we noted in the previous chapter, ancient historians, considering that only the history of times within living
memory could be adequately researched and recounted, valued above all the historian’s own direct participation in the events about which he wrote (what Byrskog calls autopsy), but also, as second best, the reminiscences of living witnesses who could be questioned in person by the historian (what Byrskog calls indirect autopsy).68 The latter might sometimes be stretched to include reports received by the historian from others who had questioned the eyewitnesses, but since the principle at stake was personal contact with eyewitnesses it cannot be understood as a general preference for oral tradition over books. It did not, of course, prevent the historians themselves from writing books, since their purpose was, among other things, to give permanence to memories that would otherwise cease to be available, to provide, in Thucydides’ famous phrase, “a possession for all time” (1.22.4).69

This historiographic context is the one in which Papias’s use of the proverb about the living voice most appropriately belongs. It would have been easy
for this common saying, used as we have seen in a variety of contexts, to be applied also to the well-known preference among the best historians for
eyewitness testimony rather than written accounts. It expresses that as aptly as it does the practice of learning directly from master craftsmen or
philosophers. Against a historiographic background, what Papias thinks preferable to books is not oral tradition as such but access, while they are still
alive, to those who were direct participants in the historical events — in this case “disciples of the Lord.” He is portraying his inquiries on the model of those made by historians, appealing to historiographic “best practice”(even if many historians actually made much more use of written sources than their theory professed).70 That he himself wrote down the traditions he collected is not at all, as some scholars have thought, paradoxical. It was precisely what historians did. Papias, who in spite of Eusebius’s prejudiced jibe at his stupidity was well-educated, 71 may well have read Polybius. This historian’s strict principles of historiography were, like those of Thucydides, something of an ideal for later historians at least to claim to practice. Alexander suggests that Josephus was dependent on Polybius when he insisted on his qualifications, as a participant and eyewitness (autopt3s), for writing the history of the Jewish War.72 That Papias claims to have conducted inquiries in the manner of a good historian may also be suggested by his use of the verb anakrinein for his inquiries about the words of the elders, which he made when disciples of the elders visited Hierapolis (“I inquired [anekrinon] about the words of the elders”). This verb and its cognate noun anakrisis were most often used in judicial contexts to refer to the examination of magistrates and parties. But we have noticed that Polybius uses the noun for the historian’s interrogation of eyewitnesses (12.27.3). At another point in his criticism of Timaeus, Polybius calls anakriseis the most important part of history (12.4c.3). The way he continues indicates that again he is thinking of the interrogation of eyewitnesses (i.e., direct observers both of events and of places):

For since many events occur at the same time in different places, and one man cannot be in several places at one time, nor is it possible for a single
man to have seen with his own eyes every place in the world and all the peculiar features of different places, the only thing left for a historian is to
man to have seen with his own eyes every place in the world and all the peculiar features of different places, the only thing left for a historian is to
inquire from as many people as possible, to believe those worthy of belief and to be an adequate critic of the reports that reach him (12.4c.4-5).
The verb anakrinein also occurs in the advice given by Lucian of Samosata in his book about writing history. The context is similar:
As to the facts themselves, [the historian] should not assemble them at random, but only after much laborious and painstaking investigation (peri ton
auton anakrinanta). He should for preference be an eyewitness (paronta kai ephoronta), but, if not, listen to those who tell the more impartial story
(Hist. Conscr. 47).

This suggestion that Papias deliberately uses the terminology of historiographic practice can be further supported from the first sentence of the
passage from his Prologue that we are studying. This has conventionally been translated in this way:

I will not hesitate to set down for you, along with my interpretations (synkatataxai tais herm3neiais), everything I carefully learned from the elders and carefully remembered (emn3moneusa), guaranteeing their truth.73

In favor of this translation is the fact that it is the way in which Rufinus translated the Greek text of Eusebius into Latin. But Kürzinger has proposed a
considerably different translation that is very attractive.74 I have incorporated Kürzinger’s suggestions into the translation of the passage I gave above, translating the opening sentence thus:

I shall not hesitate also to put into properly ordered form (synkatataxai tais herm3neiais) for you everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down (emn3moneusa) well, for the truth of which I vouch.

According to this interpretation, Papias is describing the stages of producing a historical work precisely as Lucian, in his book on how to write history, describes them (immediately after the passage just quoted from him):

When he has collected all or most of the facts let him first make them into a series of notes (hypomn3ma), a body of material as yet with no beauty or continuity. Then, after arranging them into order (epitheis t3n taxin), let him give it beauty and enhance it with the charms of expression, figure and rhythm (Hist. Conscr. 48).

Papias’s use of the verb mn3moneuein refers, on this interpretation, not to remembering but to recording, that is, making the notes (hypomn3mata) —
the memoranda or aids to memory — which are often mentioned in references to the practice of historians in antiquity.75 The collection of notes constituted a rough draft that then needed to be artistically arranged to make an acceptable literary work. This latter stage of the writing process is what, according to this interpretation, Papias meant by the words synkatataxai (or syntaxai, the variant reading that Kürzinger prefers) tais hermeneiais (usually translated “set down together with my interpretations”).76 There is much to be said for this understanding of Papias’s statement. That he vouches for the truth of what he reports is also, of course, a conventional part of the historian’s practice (cf. Lucian, Hist. Conscr. 39-40, 42).

So we may see Papias’s Prologue as claiming that he followed the best practice of historians: he made careful inquiries, collected the testimonies of
eyewitnesses, set them down in a series of notes, and finally arranged his material artistically to form a work of literature. His preference for the testimony of eyewitnesses, obtained at second or third hand, is therefore that of the historian, for whom, if direct autopsy was not available (i.e., the historian himself was not present at the events), indirect autopsy was more or less essential. What is most important for our purposes is that, when Papias speaks of “a living and surviving voice,” he is not speaking metaphorically of the “voice” of oral tradition, as many scholars have supposed. He speaks quite literally of the voice of an informant — someone who has personal memories of the words and deeds of Jesus and who is still alive. In fact, even if the suggestion that he alludes specifically to historiographic practice is rejected, this must be his meaning. As we have seen, the saying about the superiority of the “living voice” to books refers not to oral tradition as superior to books, but to direct experience of an instructor, informant, or orator as superior to written sources.77 But Papias, uniquely, expands the usual cliché “living voice” to “living and surviving voice,”78 thereby making it even more appropriate to the context in which he uses it — the situation in which what he seeks are the reminiscences of those who knew Jesus and in which the passage of time has now been such that few of those people are still alive.

It is worth noting that Jerome, who translated this section of Papias’s prologue into Latin in his brief life of Papias, evidently understood the phrase
“living voice” in this way. He translates the whole sentence thus:

For books to be read are not so profitable for me as the living voice that even until the present day resounds on the lips of their authors (viva vox et usque hodie in suis auctoribus personans) (De vir. ill. 18).

Jerome here seems to take Papias to mean that he preferred the oral communication of eyewitnesses to the written records of their testimony in the
Gospels. The whole concluding sentence of the passage from Papias, including “a living and surviving voice,” refers most properly to the immediately preceding words: “what Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying.” The words of these surviving witnesses are the most valuable to Papias. What the elders reported of the words of the disciples now dead he collected, but, however illustrious these disciples, the additional distance from direct contact with living witnesses made these traditions less valuable than reports of what still living witnesses were still saying. Papias’s account of what he inquired of the visitors to Hierapolis therefore lists the disciples who were no longer alive first but climaxes with the most valuable information he obtained. Though this came from only two disciples still alive and geographically proximate enough for Papias’s visitors to have sat at their feet and to have much to report from their words, it may well be that, just as the number of the seven named disciples is symbolic, so also Papias evokes the symbolism of the number two, the number required for adequate witness. Though only two, Aristion and John the Elder are sufficient for their witness to be valid.

Therefore Papias’s use of the verb menein (“to remain, to survive”) in the phrase “a living and surviving voice” (zoes phones kai menouses) can be
compared with Paul’s when he writes that, of the more than five hundred who saw the Lord, “most are still alive (menousin heos arti), though some have died” (1 Cor 15:6), or, as we have already suggested, with the words of Jesus about the Beloved Disciple at the end of the Gospel of John: “If it is my will that he remain (menein) until I come” (John 21:22, 23). These texts refer to the survival of those who had seen the Lord. If, as I have argued elsewhere79 and will argue again in chapter 16 of this book, Papias considered John the Elder to be the Beloved Disciple and the author of the Fourth Gospel, the resemblance to John 21:22, 23, would be especially apt, and an actual allusion to this text would seem rather probable. But nothing in our present argument depends on this possibility.

Once again, we should notice a key implication of Papias’s words: he does not regard the Gospel traditions as having by this date long lost a living
connection with the eyewitnesses who originated them. Whether these eye-witnesseswere still living would not matter if the oral tradition were essentially independent of them. Papias assumes that the value of oral traditions depends on their derivation from still living witnesses who are still themselves repeating their testimony.80 Now that these are few, secondhand reports of what eyewitnesses now dead used to say are valuable, but Papias’s whole statement implies that the value of oral tradition decreases with distance from the personal testimony of the eyewitnesses themselves. In fact, the period he writes about, when he collected his traditions, was virtually the last time at which such collecting would be worth doing, and this, of course, is why Papias collected the traditions at that time, wrote them down, and eventually made a book of them. It is surely not accidental that this was also the period in which the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John were being written.

Of the traditions of the words and deeds of Jesus that Papias collected very few have come down to us in the extant fragments of his work. From
Eusebius’s remarks it is clear that he recorded many Gospel traditions especially from Aristion and John the Elder, and that more than the few that have survived were without parallels in our canonical Gospels (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39. 7, 12, 14). But we should probably assume that the majority were simply versions of stories and sayings to be found in the Gospels, of which, by the time he wrote his book, Papias knew at least those of Matthew, Mark, and John. (Papias’s book probably consisted of collections of Gospel traditions along with commentary on them. It belonged, then, to the familiar ancient genre of authoritative text [often oral teachings committed to writing] along with commentary thought necessary for students to fully appreciate the text. In Papias’s case he seems to have offered not so much his own commentary [at least, little of that survives], but rather the comments offered by the Elders he so revered.)

This passage from Papias’s Prologue can usefully be compared with the Prologue to Luke’s Gospel, probably written around the time when Papias
was engaged in the collecting of traditions that he describes in the passage. In his relationship to the eyewitnesses Luke is comparable with those
Papias calls “the elders” (though this terminology was probably confined to Asia). That is, Luke received traditions directly from the eyewitnesses. As
Martin Hengel puts it:

As the emphatic “just as they were delivered to us”[Luke 1:2] shows, between Jesus and the earliest “literary sources” about him (including Luke, the author himself) stand only those who had been direct eye-witnesses of the activity of Jesus from the beginning. . . . Luke was an author at the end of the second generation.81

It is particularly significant that Luke refers to the eyewitnesses, those whom Papias calls “disciples of the Lord,” as “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses (autoptai) and ministers of the word.”82 These are certainly a single group of people, not two.83 They are disciples who accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry (cf. Acts 1:21) and who were prominent teachers in the early church. They certainly include the Twelve (cf. Acts 6:4) but also others, since Luke’s Gospel and Acts make it particularly clear that Jesus had many disciples besides the Twelve (Luke 6:17; 8:1-3; 10:1-20; 19:37; 23:27; 24:9, 33; Acts 1:15, 21-23), and the possibility that Luke’s informants included such disciples must be taken seriously. The fact that these informants — whether the Twelve or other disciples — were not only eyewitnesses but also prominent teachers in the early Christian movement shows, in coherence with what we have learned from Papias, that they did not merely start the traditions going and then withdraw from view but remained for many years the known sources and guarantors of traditions of the deeds and words of Jesus. Like Papias, Luke will have inquired and learned what Peter or Cleopas or Joanna or James had said or was saying

[FransJVermeiren]

SA, maybe you should mention that you are quoting the "A Living and Surviving Voice" paragraph from Bauckham's book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (p. 21-30).

Below you find a slightly edited version of my review of Bauckham's book on Amazon.com.

With its more than 500 pages this book is an example of thoroughgoing biblical scholarship. Bauckham extensively elaborates his hypothesis that the gospels are much more based on eyewitness testimony than is generally accepted, and I think this conclusion is right. This is an important achievement, as the gospels have supposedly been written between 40 and 60 years after the facts. Below, however, I will try to show that the eyewitness case is much more straightforward than Bauckham expounds in this book.

Let it be clear from the beginning that I have a lot of objections against this book. I set aside the most fundamental ones for the second part of my review. Let’s start with two ‘minor’ objections that question Bauckham’s intellectual honesty.

The first one is that Bauckham is discrediting two early Christian writers, Quadratus and Philip of Side (and Papias of Hierapolis together with the latter one). The information these authors provide is quite embarrassing for anyone accepting the traditional chronology of the origins of Christianity, so Bauckham tries to get rid of them. Quadratus reports that some of those who were healed or raised by Jesus (who, according to the gospels, was crucified around 30 CE) were still alive in 125 CE, the year to which Quadratus’s work can be dated with certainty. Philip of Side, a fourth century Christian writer, mentions Papias of Hierapolis, a contemporary of Quadratus, and according to the former Papias gives exactly the same information: ‘about those who were raised from the dead by Christ, he says they survived until Hadrian’. Hadrian was the Roman emperor from 117 to 138 CE. Bauckham postulates that Philip of Side has mistaken Papias for Quadratus, and ‘one source, no source’, he deceitfully disposes of these two important witnesses. However, in the Papias fragment he provides, Philip of Side shows that he is well-informed about Papias, so I think these two fragments independently inform us about a chronology problem in the origins of Christianity as presented in the gospels.

My second ‘intellectual honesty’ objection is the way Bauckham discusses three of the apostle names: Iskarioth, Zealot and Bariona. For Judas Iskarioth he only gives the explanation ‘from (the village of) Kerioth’, not even mentioning the ‘Iskarioth = sicarios’ hypothesis, which shows Judas as a possible ‘dagger fighter’, a member of the guerilla fighters faction which was active in the 50s and 60s of the first century CE, the decades preceding the war against the Romans. The same for Simon the Zealot, about whom Bauckham develops a strange argument: because in the relevant sources the name Zealot does not appear before the outbreak of the Jewish war in 66 CE, Simon is not a real (military and insurrectionist) zealot, but a zealot in a broader sense, to be interpreted as ‘zealous for the law’. For Bariona (Simon Bariona), Bauckham uses the same method of silence as for Iskarioth. He does not mention the possibility that Bariona is not ‘bar Jonah’ meaning ‘son of Jonah’, but may refer to Simon as a member of the biryonim (singular biryona), the ‘outlaws’ or ‘brigands’ who are also associated with the rebellion against the Romans. Bauckham deceitfully writes these apostles away from the war period.

Let’s now turn to the fundamental objections. A first major objection is to be found in Bauckham’s discussion of the gospel of John. Bauckham extensively discusses this gospel, and brilliantly shows that the fourth gospel is not just ‘the last and the least trustworthy’, but that it is much more important and trustworthy than is generally accepted because it has been written by one of Jesus’ disciples, and not by just one of them, but by Jesus’ beloved disciple. Bauckham however does not tell the other part of the story. How did this authorship happen chronologically, accepting that Jesus was crucified around 30 CE and the gospel of John was written around 90 CE? Let’s suppose that John was a young man, in his twenties, when Jesus was crucified. Then he wrote his gospel when he was about 85 years old. Although this is not impossible biologically, it is highly improbable for several reasons.

A first reason is that the circumstances of life were much more uncertain during that era than they are nowadays. Bauckham himself gives a nice quote from the Church Father Irenaeus (second half of the second century): ‘For everyone will admit that the age of thirty is that of someone still young and this period of youth extends to the fortieth year. It is only from the fortieth and fiftieth year that a person begins to decline towards old age.’ How then do we have to imagine John waiting until his very old age to write down the exceptional events he experienced 60 years before?
A second reason is comparison. As far as I know no other author in world history has ever waited so long to commit his story to paper, and as far as I can see there is no reason to accept John as an exception. This huge delay just does not make sense, the more because what Jesus and his companions had experienced was so spectacular that the need to report it soon after the events must have been greater for John than for any other author experiencing less important things.

One could also imagine that writing practice in Antiquity was quite different from our days. But as far as I know there are no examples of first reports following four decades after the events. In the same years as the first gospel (shortly after 70 CE) Josephus wrote his account of the war of the Jews against the Romans (66-70 CE). Also Paul wrote his letters to the communities he founded shortly after he founded or visited them, without any significant delay.

The argument for the gospel of John also extends to the canonical gospels in general. Bauckham emphasizes several times that the gospels are biographies (‘bioi’), and he also asserts that ‘in their close relationship to eyewitness testimony the gospels conform to the best practice of ancient historiography’ (p. 310). This ‘best practice’ then implies that the accounts, stemming from the authors themselves or from eyewitnesses they interrogated, were recorded soon after the events.

When taking the traditional chronology for granted, this huge time gap between the events and their report has to be filled. An enormous amount of literature has been produced to explain away this chronological anomaly. Bauckham also sets himself the task to do so. ‘Oral history’, ‘tradition’ and ‘recollecting memory’ are the main concepts of this section of his book. Although the ‘recollecting memory’ theory is interesting in itself, this section of the book is not at all convincing. The whole ‘tradition’ concept is an empty vessel which does not provide any sound argument of how information was stored and passed during these ‘tradition’ decades. Bauckham extensively fights the form criticism school of biblical scholarship and he is right to do so, but I believe the disease of his own theory if only slightly different. These three concepts are rationalizations of something which does not make any sense.

In the same spirit Bauckham postulates that the gospels were written when and because the eyewitnesses were old and on the brink of death. How should we imagine this concretely? As already said before, life was much more fragile then than it is nowadays. How did the gospel writers cope with the uncertain life conditions of the eyewitnesses and of themselves? For example, did Mark think in 60 CE: Peter is 55 years old now, he seems to be in good health, I shall wait some more years to write down his story which I already know for (many/some) years? Did he continue thinking so year after year without taking his pen and a scroll of papyrus?

I have researched the origins of Christianity extensively, and I think the case is much simpler than the far-fetched ‘oral history’ and ‘tradition’ theory set forth in this book (and in countless books before). The main result of my investigation is that the gospels contain the most spectacular case of chronological fraud ever committed in historiography. The gospels have not been written after 70 CE after a waiting period of 40 years, but they were written then because the crucial events of these works took place in 70 CE and the preceding years. So the gospels have been written by eyewitnesses – of course they have – in the years following the events. Why would their writers have waited 40 to 60 years to tell the world about the great and extraordinary things which had befallen them, the events that in their eyes constituted God’s acts for the salvation of the world? After the terrible defeat against the Romans, however, it was far too dangerous to tell the real story. It was safer to antedate the events by some decades, and to introduce a ‘good Roman’ (Pilate) and the ‘bad Jews’ to give this story a chance in the hostile and oppressive Roman empire. Bauckham is an expert in the Jewish/Christian pseudepigraphical literature, he can affirm that antedating was a common literary technique in that era to conceal subversive liberation stories from the enemy.

At the end of his book Bauckham says that the trustworthiness of testimony as form of historiography should be tested, its internal consistency and coherence as well as its consistency and coherence with other historical evidence we have and that it should be confronted with whatever we know about the historical context. In this way the gospels could tell things in spite of themselves. I have tested the historiographical value of the gospel stories in a combined reading of the New Testament, the works of Josephus, the Apostolic Fathers, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament and the Nag Hammadi library. Numerous connections, generally subtle and veiled, between these writings have come to the surface and the discovery of the real chronology of the origins of Christianity is the main result of my investigation.

In his Life the Jewish historian Josephus reports a case of three prisoners of war executed by crucifixion at the very end of the siege of Jerusalem in the summer of 70 CE. ‘Two of them died in the physicians’ hands; the third survived.’ Quite some imaginative powers are needed to see that this is the report of the core event of the gospels. Meticulous research has uncovered numerous vestiges of the war of the Jews against the Romans in the gospels.

[Secret Alias]

What does everyone think is Bauckham's strongest evidence for Papias knowing our gospel of John? I am not quite sure I see a strong argument for this other than his interest in John the elder.

[Ben C. Smith]

I set aside the most fundamental ones for the second part of my review. Let’s start with two ‘minor’ objections that question Bauckham’s intellectual honesty.

The first one is that Bauckham is discrediting two early Christian writers, Quadratus and Philip of Side (and Papias of Hierapolis together with the latter one). The information these authors provide is quite embarrassing for anyone accepting the traditional chronology of the origins of Christianity, so Bauckham tries to get rid of them. Quadratus reports that some of those who were healed or raised by Jesus (who, according to the gospels, was crucified around 30 CE) were still alive in 125 CE, the year to which Quadratus’s work can be dated with certainty. Philip of Side, a fourth century Christian writer, mentions Papias of Hierapolis, a contemporary of Quadratus, and according to the former Papias gives exactly the same information: ‘about those who were raised from the dead by Christ, he says they survived until Hadrian’. Hadrian was the Roman emperor from 117 to 138 CE. Bauckham postulates that Philip of Side has mistaken Papias for Quadratus, and ‘one source, no source’, he deceitfully disposes of these two important witnesses. However, in the Papias fragment he provides, Philip of Side shows that he is well-informed about Papias, so I think these two fragments independently inform us about a chronology problem in the origins of Christianity as presented in the gospels.

My second ‘intellectual honesty’ objection is the way Bauckham discusses three of the apostle names: Iskarioth, Zealot and Bariona. For Judas Iskarioth he only gives the explanation ‘from (the village of) Kerioth’, not even mentioning the ‘Iskarioth = sicarios’ hypothesis, which shows Judas as a possible ‘dagger fighter’, a member of the guerilla fighters faction which was active in the 50s and 60s of the first century CE, the decades preceding the war against the Romans. The same for Simon the Zealot, about whom Bauckham develops a strange argument: because in the relevant sources the name Zealot does not appear before the outbreak of the Jewish war in 66 CE, Simon is not a real (military and insurrectionist) zealot, but a zealot in a broader sense, to be interpreted as ‘zealous for the law’. For Bariona (Simon Bariona), Bauckham uses the same method of silence as for Iskarioth. He does not mention the possibility that Bariona is not ‘bar Jonah’ meaning ‘son of Jonah’, but may refer to Simon as a member of the biryonim (singular biryona), the ‘outlaws’ or ‘brigands’ who are also associated with the rebellion against the Romans. Bauckham deceitfully writes these apostles away from the war period.

I think you are far too quick to level charges of intellectual dishonesty where simple bias will do. I find Bauckham to be very tendentious in places. But your examples above fall far short of intellectual dishonesty, since Bauckham is not hiding or falsifying evidence. That he is interpreting evidence in a way you disagree with is not intellectual dishonesty.

Bauckham is hardly the first to suspect that Philip Sidetes confused Quadratus with Papias; this is a rather common position, yet you write as if Bauckham were striking out on his own here (saying that the hypothesis is something that he "postulates"). It has, in fact, been my own position on the notice in Philip Sidetes for quite some time now (I do not even recall from which scholar I first got the idea, but it was from long before I ever read Bauckham or even Gundry), though I am open to other options and have been rethinking the position lately. Does this position make me intellectually dishonest? In urging your own interpretation of the evidence you present no single piece of evidence which Bauckham himself does not consider (or at least defer to other scholars on, in the two footnotes he provides on the topic), so it cannot be that Bauckham is hiding or falsifying evidence. You simply disagree with his interpretation; and that is not the same thing as intellectual dishonesty.

You are correct that Bauckham does not explicitly mention the sicarius hypothesis for Judas Iscariot, but he refers the reader in a footnote to discussions of the various options in Brown (who dedicates an entire appendix to Judas) and in Meier. There is no malfeasance in this whatsoever; Judas' designation is hardly the main point of his thesis. His argument concerning Simon the Zealot may be strange and, again, tendentious; but strangeness and tendentiousness are not intellectual dishonesty. As for Simon Barjona, as far as I can tell Bauckham uses this name only as an example of a patronymic (along with such names as Bartimaeus); he does not mount any arguments having to do with Simon having a father named Jonah or John at all. I mean, seriously, he even states that the "apparent conflict as to the name of Simon Peter’s father is not strictly relevant to our discussion of the lists of the Twelve" — how much clearer could it be that this is at best a peripheral issue for the thesis of the book?

I am posting this response because I think it hinders the discourse to so quickly resort to accusations of dishonesty; it is a form of poisoning the well. I myself have argued against Bauckham's interpretations of Papias (for example) on several very recent threads here, and I would likely agree with many of your criticisms of his argumentation. But to claim that he is being dishonest, with no more evidence for the charge than you present above, is, to be honest, irresponsible.

[Ben C. Smith]

What does everyone think is Bauckham's strongest evidence for Papias knowing our gospel of John? I am not quite sure I see a strong argument for this other than his interest in John the elder.

His strongest argument, IMHO, is the emphasis on the lack of order in Mark; Bauckham assumes that Papias or his elder is comparing the contents of Mark with those of some other gospel text, and that Matthew (the only other text mentioned, whether our canonical Matthew or not) is not different enough from Mark to count. For my money, however, Kunigunde is correct when she writes:

I think Papias made no comparison between Mark and Matthew. My impression is rather that Papias preferred the oral tradition handed down by Aristion and the presbyter.

Phrased like this, it does not even seem controversial. And the key items on any list of different orders between Mark and John are not the kind that would necessarily require the comparison of two texts. They were obviously living traditions (the Quartodeciman fast, for example, and its relationship to the timing of the crucifixion; or the length of Jesus' ministry as it pertained to certain interpretive speculations; even the order of miracles, first and second and so on, need not be strictly textual). This is why I think that the order to which Mark is being compared is simply the order of events in Jesus' life which, in Asian tradition (the "living voice"), was being formulated at the time.

Bauckham also argues (in another book) that Papias' order of names in the list of disciples tracks the order of names as presented in the gospel of John (Andrew is introduced first (1.40), followed by Peter (1.40) and then Philip (1.43). Thomas waits till later (11.16), but still in order if you skip Nathanael and Nicodemus. The brothers Boanerges are next (21.2), appearing in the appendix (which Bauckham does not really treat as an appendix), if you skip Judas (not Iscariot). Finally, Papias adds Matthew simply because of his authorship of the logia. But MacDonald has rightly, I think, called this argument a house of cards.

[Ben C. Smith]

What does everyone think is Bauckham's strongest evidence for Papias knowing our gospel of John? I am not quite sure I see a strong argument for this other than his interest in John the elder.

Oh, and Bauckham also thinks that "the elders" in Against Heresies 5.36.1-2 are a reference to Papias, and their reported tradition includes a quotation from John 14.2.

[JoeWallack]

I think you are far too quick to level charges of intellectual dishonesty where simple bias will do. I find Bauckham to be very tendentious in places. But your examples above fall far short of intellectual dishonesty, since Bauckham is not hiding or falsifying evidence. That he is interpreting evidence in a way you disagree with is not intellectual dishonesty.

JW:
Alright, you don't think Bauckham was proven to be dishonest based on what you responded to above. But in general, while Bauckham claims/postures that he is a modern scientific historian, he completely ignores (not just denies) the issue of supposed testimony that consists mainly of the impossible. These impossible claims are in fact the best evidence we have regarding the quality or lack there of of the "testimony". Contra Bauckham, the only related conclusion we can be certain of is that there were no eyewitnesses to impossible events. This means it is unlikely (very) that any eyewitness claimed they were an eyewitness to an impossible event. While it is possible that an eyewitness claimed to witness the impossible, that they did not so claim is an exponentially better conclusion than any that are made by Bauckham. The best comparison would be the US legal system. A known "witness" would immediately have her testimony impeached with a small amount of impossible testimony. This is the biggest problem Bauckham ignores. You also have the problems of GMark being original, copied, anonymous, anti-historical witness, anachronistic, discrediting Peter and significantly stylish. Again, all more important issues than anything Bauckham mentions.

So Bauckham is just another theologian masquerading as a scientist. If this is not dishonesty than what is your explanation? Stupidity or poor writing skills? Or is religious belief a defense against dishonesty all by itself?


Joseph

Skeptical Textual Criticism

[Ben C. Smith]

I think you are far too quick to level charges of intellectual dishonesty where simple bias will do. I find Bauckham to be very tendentious in places. But your examples above fall far short of intellectual dishonesty, since Bauckham is not hiding or falsifying evidence. That he is interpreting evidence in a way you disagree with is not intellectual dishonesty.

JW:
Alright, you don't think Bauckham was proven to be dishonest based on what you responded to above. But in general, while Bauckham claims/postures that he is a modern scientific historian, he completely ignores (not just denies) the issue of supposed testimony that consists mainly of the impossible.

I will return to the issue of him posturing as a "modern scientific historian" in a bit, but in the meantime I will agree with you that he usually ignores the issue of eyewitnesses testifying to the miraculous. Usually, but not always. In chapter 8 of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, for example, he writes, "The strongest objection to the historicity of John’s story of Lazarus — or even to a historical basis of some kind for it — has always been that it does not appear in the Synoptics." Here he leaves open whether the miracle (which I would agree with you is impossible) actually happened as narrated or whether it merely has an "historical basis of some kind" — which is a different matter. My personal sense of Bauckham is that he himself believes that miracles can happen, but that he does not hang his scholarly hat on that possibility because rational people can easily disagree with him on it. There are Christian scholars who do this explicitly; and I think Bauckham does it implicitly.

And I do not think that there is any necessary dishonesty involved in any of that (though I will readily admit that this line of inquiry is better suited to point up any dishonesty on his part than anything that Frans brought forth). Bias, yes. Not by virtue of the very fact that he does not address the miraculous (classicists often sidestep in a very similar way the miraculous accounts of Augustus, Alexander, and others which present themselves to the historian), but rather on the merits of my personal assessment of him as a scholar. I often stare at his paragraphs in wonderment at the naïveté I believe I am reading. The same thing happens when I read N. T. Wright. But that is not the same thing as dishonesty. I may be wrong about both Bauckham and Wright; perhaps they are both being dishonest; but I do not think that I can reasonably demonstrate it.

Our own Bernard thinks that some of the miracle stories go back to eyewitness testimony, but have been exaggerated into miracles from originally remarkable but in no way miraculous events:

http://historical-jesus.info/89.html (the walking on water)
What can we figure out about that very ambiguous telling of this story?
An eyewitness (probably Peter) must have told an anecdote:
When rowing against the wind (and close to shore), they were surprised to see Jesus walking by the lake (i.e. on the beach). He boarded the boat (no need to say they headed for shore first, it was obvious), and then the wind ceased, which could be interpreted as a miracle (as in Mk 4:41 'the calming of the sea'). Also, the two occurrences of "walking on the sea" in Mk 6:48-49 are very similar of Da 12:6-7a "And one said to the man clothed in linen , who was above the waters of the river, "How long shall the fulfillment of these wonders be?" Then I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river"

http://historical-jesus.info/88.html (the feeding of the five thousand)
So what happened?
A plausible and logical explanation is as follows:
a) Villagers would meet outside their dirty and cramped villages.
But why?
b) The occasion was probably a festival, like the eight days autumnal one of the tabernacles & its associated feasts. But few Galilean peasants could afford to go to Jerusalem (3-4 days walk away) to celebrate it. Instead, they would go to a near ground outside their village/town.
c) These folks would bring with them more food than they could eat (as for any feast!). However it seems the occasion of the gatherings and the provenance of the food (naturally from the people there!) were never mentioned by the teller(s)!
d) Jesus' disciples picked up the scraps not eaten by the feasters, filling up baskets. And they were telling about it later, probably presenting these collections as a gift from God.

In my opinion, this tracing of such stories back to eyewitness testimony is quite credulous, as I have argued elsewhere on this forum. But that does not make Bernard dishonest in any meaningful sense of the term.

Bauckham, by (usually) ignoring the miracles themselves in events which he traces back to eyewitness testimony, leaves open several possibilities:

1. Miracles sometimes happen, and this was an example.
2. Miracles sometimes happen, but this was a mundane event which got reported as a miracle.
3. Miracles do not happen, and this was a mundane event which got reported as a miracle.
4. Miracles do not happen, and the eyewitness has completely fabricated at least that element of the event.

Other shades of possibility may be available, as well. But the point here is that Bauckham is free to trace the testimony back to eyewitnesses without committing to the historicity of the miracle itself; he is free to leave that part open.

Bauckham is free to do this because he, like so many others (both religious and skeptical) probably disagree with you on the following point:

These impossible claims are in fact the best evidence we have regarding the quality or lack there of of the "testimony". Contra Bauckham, the only related conclusion we can be certain of is that there were no eyewitnesses to impossible events. This means it is unlikely (very) that any eyewitness claimed they were an eyewitness to an impossible event. While it is possible that an eyewitness claimed to witness the impossible, that they did not so claim is an exponentially better conclusion than any that are made by Bauckham.

I know that I for one disagree with the main thrust of this point of yours. Eyewitnesses are completely capable of fabricating miracles, and I think that you drastically underestimate the chances of one doing so. Alexander the Great is a fitting example. At least five eyewitnesses to his military campaigns wrote accounts of his exploits: Callisthenes, his court historian; Ptolemy and Nearchus, two of his generals; Aristobulus, another officer on the campaign; and Onesicritus, a chief helmsman (though he claimed to be more!). These accounts are now lost to us, but parts of them are preserved by later historians. The important part for our purposes is that these eyewitnesses were capable of recounting miracles and outright fabrications:

Plutarch, Life of Alexander 46.1-2: 1 Here the queen of the Amazons came to see him, as most writers say, among whom are Cleitarchus, Polycleitus, Onesicritus, Antigenes, and Ister; but Aristobulus, Chares the royal usher, Ptolemy, Anticleides, Philo the Theban, and Philip of Theangela, besides Hecataeus of Eretria, Philip the Chalcidian, and Duris of Samos, say that this is a fiction [πλάσμα]. 2 And it would seem that Alexander's testimony is in favour of their statement. For in a letter to Antipater which gives all the details minutely he says that the Scythian king offered him his daughter in marriage, but he makes no mention of the Amazon. And the story is told that many years afterwards Onesicritus was reading aloud to Lysimachus, who was now king, the fourth book of his history, in which was the tale of the Amazon, at which Lysimachus smiled gently and said: ‘And where was I at the time?’ However, our, belief or disbelief of this story will neither increase nor diminish our admiration for Alexander. [Greek text.]

Plutarch, Life of Alexander 27.1-4: 1 At all events, during the journey which he made at this time, the assistance rendered him by Heaven in his perplexities met with more credence than the oracles which he afterwards received, nay, in a way, the oracles obtained credence in consequence of such assistance. 2 For, to begin with, much rain from heaven and persistent showers removed all fear of thirst, quenched the dryness of the sand, so that it became moist and compact, and made the air purer and good to breathe. 3 Again, when the marks for the guides became confused, and the travellers were separated and wandered about in ignorance of the route, ravens appeared and assumed direction of their march, flying swiftly on in front of them when they followed, and waiting for them when they marched slowly and lagged behind. 4 Moreover, what was most astonishing of all, Callisthenes tells us that the birds by their cries called back those who straggled away in the night, and cawed until they had set them in the track of the march. [Greek text.]

Arrian, Anabasis 3.3.4-6: 4 But there was a copious supply of rain for Alexander, a thing which was attributed to the influence of the deity; as was also the following occurrence. Whenever a south wind blows in that district, it heaps up the sand upon the route far and wide, rendering the tracks of the road invisible, so that it is impossible to discover where one ought to direct one's course in the sand, just as if one were at sea; for there are no landmarks along the road, neither mountain anywhere, nor tree, nor permanent hill standing erect, by which travellers might be able to form a conjecture of the right course, as sailors do by the stars. Consequently, Alexander's army lost the way, and even the guides were in doubt about the course to take. 5 Ptolemy, son of Lagus, says that two serpents went in front of the army, uttering a voice, and Alexander ordered the guides to follow them, trusting in the divine portent. He says too that they showed the way to the oracle and back again. 6 But Aristobulus, whose account is generally admitted as correct, says that two ravens flew in front of the army, and that these acted as Alexander's guides. I am able to assert with confidence that some divine assistance was afforded him, for probability also coincides with the supposition; but the discrepancies in the details of the various narratives have deprived the story of certainty. [Greek text.]

Here we find eyewitnesses to Alexander's career making claims of impossible events. The same thing has happened many times over in history; Francis of Assisi's actual companions and eyewitnesses reported some of his purported miracles, for example; such stories did not wait a polite period of time before emerging as hagiography. The point here, of course, is that a report of something impossible (miraculous) is not necessarily a good way to discount that a person was an eyewitness.

That said, of course I think Bauckham is wrong in his methods of tracing stories about Jesus back to eyewitnesses. Of course I think he trusts the record too much. But, again, that is not the same thing as being dishonest.

You wrote above of him posturing as a "modern scientific historian" in some way, and later in your post you reiterated:

So Bauckham is just another theologian masquerading as a scientist.

But there is no masquerade here at all. On his own web page, http://richardbauckham.co.uk, he writes, "I am a biblical scholar and theologian." It is more than fair to argue that his theology has influenced, colored, or even infected his scholarship; I would agree. But I would not call that dishonesty; that is bias. He certainly does not hide his being a theologian behind a mask.

If Bauckham were to believe in miracles, but also to give us the sincere impression that he does not, as part of a strategy of arguing for things in a way which leaves the reader little choice but to accept the miracle, that would be dishonest. If you think that is what he is doing (but, as you say, ignoring the miraculous rather than denying it), then you have every right to think of him as dishonest. But that is not my impression of him; therefore, I cannot convict him of dishonesty.

If this is not dishonesty than what is your explanation? Stupidity or poor writing skills? Or is religious belief a defense against dishonesty all by itself?

A religious belief (in miracles, for example) may be either sincerely held or cynically held. My father, a pastor and missionary, believes in miracles; as far as I can tell, his belief is sincere, not cynical (that is, I do not think he is espousing such a belief merely as a way to garner respect in his religious circles or, worse, to cheat people out of their money). I think he is wrong in that belief; but I do not think he is being dishonest.

Unfortunately, it is often impossible to tell from the outside what has led to any given person's religious beliefs; in the gentlemanly spirit of mutual respect, I choose not to prejudge the issue, which means I may be wrong about Bauckham by default, since it is possible that he is being dishonest but has disguised his motives well enough to put me off the track. There are apologists who tip their hand and expose their own dishonesty, and there are apologists who either do not tip their hand or have no hand to tip. But apologetics themselves are no sure guarantee that the apologist is himself or herself being dishonest. YMMV.

[Secret Alias]

And what's more EVERYONE in this field of study can be accused of the same 'dishonesty.' There are mythicists whose 'interest' in the gospel inevitably come down to disproving the gospel. The same can be said for Christians studying Judaism to prove that Jesus really was the subject of Jewish prophesies and Jews studying Christianity to disprove the converse. In truth everyone in this field of study is 'dishonest' by these standards. With that said I do find Bauckham 'annoying' with respect to his trust in these bad historical sources but again 'annoying' is a charge that could be leveled against everyone in the field by someone in the field.