Book Review: The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg

I was first made aware of this book a few years ago when I read The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. For those unfamiliar with that book, the author is a former journalist who wanted to examine the evidence for the claims of the gospels by interviewing various christian scholars. One of the first experts Strobel interviews was Craig Blomberg, who refers to The Historical Reliability of the Gospels several times. The version I read was a later addition, and has clearly undergone some revisions. For starters, the version I read referenced books written after The Case For Christ was published.

To begin with, you have to note what this book is and what it is not. Blomberg deals with this question at the start of the book. He is only interested in the historical side of the gospels. Of course, from this stems the theological aspect, but that is not the aim of the book. He also restricts his view to look at the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John; there is very little by way of discussion of the rest of the New Testament, though I personally felt that it would have been apposite to include a look at Acts as well, given that that is the only historical book of the New Testament. Yet it has been left to a very brief discussion at the end of the book.

What follows is a work which summarises the scholarship of others, leaning heavily on the work Gospel Perspectives (which Blomberg contributed to, amongst others). He begins by looking at the general methods for the historical study of the gospels. These include harmonisation, redaction criticism and form criticism. Here, I felt Blomberg was fairly even-handed and gave praise to each methodology where due and criticism where it was deserved.

He demonstrates that he is not afraid to tackle potentially thorny issues head-on as from here he launches straight into the issue of miracles. He lays out various objections that one may have to believing the miracle stories of the gospels and then sets about his task of trying to show why they may be considered reasonable. It is here that I began to diverge from Blomberg. It seems his conclusions were reached before doing any research, though one may have guessed this from the outset. Personally, I found the chapter quite unconvincing and the arguments put forward fairly weak. That’s not to say I think it is without merit, but merely that his conclusions do not resonate with the evidence he presents. Central to this, and central to all of christian belief is the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Though multiple references are made to the recent magnum opus on this topic, N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God , I felt that Blomberg’s case was too watered down. If it doesn’t convince me, a believer (albeit one not to taking to believe anything that confirms my viewpoint) I strongly doubt it would convince even the most open-minded of sceptics.

From here, he then widens his viewpoint to look at contradictions between the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark & Luke), though he acknowledges at the start that there are so many “supposed” contradictions that he doesn’t have space to address them all. This is a little more reasonable than the previous section, particularly when one takes into account redaction criticism. The main argument is that if you accept that the gospels do not necessarily contain verbatim testimonies then to say “Jesus said x” may still be an honest and reliable account of the message he conveyed.

Central to Blomberg’s argument is to compare the multiple accounts of Jesus’ life to multiple accounts of other historical events and persons. Where there are summaries or apparent omissions, Blomberg challenges the critical reader to consider whether the gospels are often judged more harshly than other historical works. In particular, he argues that we ought to try and view the gospels through the eyes of early historians, rather than apply 20th/21st century historical analysis to a context where it does not belong.

Moving on from the Synoptics, he goes on to look at the specific case of the gospel of John. This is by far the most slippery of the gospels, when it comes to historicity. It seems to me a fairly common consensus that John was the last of the gospels to be written, and is the most “theologically biased.” In this, my opinion has generally been that the author of John’s gospel has been more of a portrait painter, whereas the Synoptic authors were trying to be more like photographers. So John has more character fleshing out the work, at the expense of strict historicity. Blomberg’s analysis seems to try to reconcile this view with his hypothesis that the gospel is also historically accurate. In this, though, he seems to come rather unstuck. He resorts to rhetorical flourishes at the end of his sections which give a far more firm conclusion than his own analysis allows for, which rather frustrated me as a reader. He tries to wriggle through arguments, rather than accepting what seems, to me at least, to be a far more reasonable conclusion that the gospel of John actually has some inconsistencies with the Synoptics. This is probably best demonstrated by Blomberg’s own words:

“Is John unaware the Jesus was born in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth? In fact, John knows the birthplace, but apparently some in Jesus’ audience did not. Their ignorance is not surprising, since Jesus had grown up and lived in Galilee for all but the earliest years of his life. That John lets this mistaken impression stand without comment testifies only to his skilful use of irony.”

His last major study is to look at the historicity of Jesus outside of the gospels; in other words the potential corroborative or falsifying evidence. This is one of the more convincing chapters, though its main point seems to be correcting the hypothesis that Jesus never existed.

In the appendices, Blomberg really hits the nail on the head. His section on historical methods is, I think, bang on. Here, he discusses what should be the “status quo” of belief when looking at any historical source. Should it be disbelieved until otherwise shown to be true? Should it be believed until otherwise shown to be false? Or should the default position be somewhere between? For me, this should probably have formed part of the introduction to the book as this historical hermeneutic is vital to how one undertakes such a study.

In his conclusion, Blomberg does not conclude that the gospels are entirely historically accurate. The evidence is not strong enough. Instead, he concludes that they have “general reliability.” That is, though they may not pin down every point precisely, they are sound enough to be regarded as the most trustworthy accounts for the life of Jesus.

There is one key omission from his discussion, and one that has been on my mind quite a bit over the last 6 months or so, which is the historicity of the Nativity narratives. But with that and a few points already mentioned aside, this is a worthwhile book to read. I don’t think it’s a totally convincing case but it does deserve to be taken seriously, as indeed Blomberg takes seriously the views of serious critical scholars.

Book Review: God's Philosopher's by James Hannam

When I first saw this book (I forget where) it seemed just about as ‘up my street’ as a book could me. My main two passions are christianity and science. So books that cover the two (without being needlessly antagonistic towards each other) tend to end up on my reading list.

In his introduction Hannam sets out his aim which can be summarised as “myth-busting.” Some may regard it as revisionist, though I think that would be a little harsh. The central myth is that the latter middle ages did not contribute much to scientific thought, and that the Enlightenment emerged out of a medieval intellectual vacuum of The Dark Ages; the latter two terms Hannam regards as prejudicial and which are then subsequently rarely, if ever, used again.

Hannam also goes so far as to cite the particular examples which he considers have given rise to popular misconceptions, with John William Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science being probably the most famous example.

The structure of the book is one of multiple mini biographies. These are given in pretty much chronological order. The timeline covered is roughly A.D. 999, when Gerbert of Aurillac became pope, through to 1642 which saw the death of Galileo. Given this time period and the number of figures involved, it can be hard to keep track of who is who, though the appendix does contain a very helpful timeline as well as a list of characters with a 2-4 line summary of why they are important.

At the start of the book, one could be forgiven for questioning whether or not it’s a science book, as much of the discussion is theological in nature, and could be considered a summary of medieval church history, particularly given the inclusion of several popes into the discussion as well as Thomas Aquinas, famous for his Summa Theologica. But that’s kind of the point. As the book progresses, we get more and more towards what our modern 21st century sensibilities recognise as science, but it is a gradual process with no sudden great leaps.

I know from having read some other reviews of Hannam’s book that his viewpoint is not universally accepted. I myself am no expert in this period of history so cannot really comment on its validity. The strength of the book is its meticulous cross-referencing, where original sources are preferred over secondary and an extensive bibliography is also included. So any time a claim is made that may go against one’s preconceived notions, the author gives the reader all the help they need to check the relevant facts. But this is not merely a scholarly book; it’s written with evident enthusiasm for the subject being discussed, like a highly energetic tour guide taking you round an exhibit for which they have a passion. It’s this exuberance that comes off the page which makes it pleasure to read, as well being highly informative.

Book review: Churchill’s Empire by Richard Toye

I was made aware of this book some time ago by a friend with links to the New York Times, where it had been reviewed by the now discredited journalist, Johann Hari. My understanding, based on that review and a couple of other references I picked up that this was not going to be a totally fawning biography of Churchill, focusing more on his early years in the foreign office.

This is not an holistic biography. The author’s aim is solely to look at Churchill’s influence on matters relating to British imperialism. As such, very little time is spent looking at the particulars of the First World War and when it comes to the Second World War, much might appear to be overlooked, though I think in reality the author is here correcting what has previously been overlooked in other Churchill biographies.

The subtitle of the book, The World That Made Him And the World He Made, is very apt. Toye works in a chronological order, starting with Churchill’s schooldays in the late 19th century. Toye shows us the influence that Churchill’s old schoolmasters had on him, along with his reading of Gibbon’s The Rise and Fall Of The Roman Empire.

From here, we look at Churchill’s time in Africa which influenced his own writing of My African Adventure. Throughout the book, the portrait of Churchill that is painted is that of someone who contrary. The book doesn’t flinch from including some of the racist language used, which may offend some readers. Certainly, if it were to be read aloud, such a reading would be unbroadcastable, though for the sake of decency, I shan’t include any of the offending words here.

In my opinion, the most fascinating sections of the book are those dealing with India. The Churchill we see here is one who cares for the needs of those would call India ‘home’ but he also lacked any confidence in their ability to rule themselves. So we have two threads of racism and care intertwined throughout Churchill’s life. Probably the most damning section looks at Churchill’s role in the Mau Mau uprising, and I was left thinking had the same thing happened in the 1990s whether or not Churchill might have been pursued and charged with war crimes.

It’s a very enlightening book, well-written and really quite accessible. Some of it does seem to get a bit ‘samey’ though I think this is just a consequence of the events being described, rather than the fault of the book’s author. I think it’s an important read for anyone interested in Churchill or in British imperial history.

Book Review: Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth by Alister McGrath

I read this as a follow-up to Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities, in part of my effort to understand the history of the early church better, and to understand why modern Christianity has taken the shape it has (even if that shape is somewhat fractal-like). Of all of McGrath’s previous writings (I’ve read a fair few, though not all) my favourite to date was his history of Protestantism, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea. With that in mind, I was looking forward to another book that was more historical in nature than apologetic.

In his introduction, McGrath attempts to outline his understanding of why there has been renewed interest not only in the history of heresy, but also the resurrection (or adaption) of earlier heretical ideas. From here, he starts to give an overview of the book: why it is important to have an understanding of the history of belief and how the notions of orthodoxy and heresy arose.

McGrath then goes on to have a look at some specific heresies; who the main characters were behind them, a history of their origins and the reasons why they became viewed as heresies. These specifically include Arianism, Docetism, Ebionitism, Montanism, Pelagianism & Valentinism.

The portrait that is painted by Ehrman of a minority heresy that is marginalised and oppressed by an emerging orthodoxy is called into question by McGrath. Ehrman’s history was derived (and acknowledged) in part from that of Walter Bauer, where there was a metanarrative of a battle between the hegemonic orthodoxy and the oppressed individuals that were thrown out of the church for heresy. Instead, the picture we are presented with is of various groups of people who made an honest attempt to understand the person and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Rather than being driven out of the church, the theologies were considered to be dead-ends that ultimately undermined the person and ministry of Jesus. When such views were then rejected, their protagonists left of their own accord in order to establish their own breakaway churches.

In a discussion on the relation between orthodoxy, heresy and political power, McGrath makes one excellent point. Those who defend the heretics by portraying them as the freethinking liberals who are hushed by a more conservative, oppressive orthodoxy, the question is posed: what if it had been the other way around? Some heretical ideas may have led to Christianity becoming far more like Islam, where there was far more oppression of women, a leader who is revered as good but not divine and where it is likely that any suppression of heretical ideas would have been at least as fierce as it actually was. In other words, the oppression (if any) faced by the heretics would simply have had a different target if what we recognise as orthodoxy had been deemed heretical.

McGrath also points out the difference of what is a genuine heresy (being a theological disagreement) and what is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a heresy (which was more often than not a challenge to the authority of the church). His main point in example is that of Martin Luther and the origins of the Reformation, declared to be a heretic by the Roman Catholic church, but which was ultimately shown to be a restoration of patristic ideas and that it was particular aspects of Catholicism that were in fact heretical, and continue to be so to this day.

There is also included a slightly odd little chapter on how Christian heresy relates to Islam. In it, he points out that the forms of Christianity which Mohammed talks about are highly characteristic of certain heretical ideas that were more common in the area that he moved around in prior to his writing the Qur’an.

The one thing that spoilt the book is some of the small rhetoric touches McGrath uses. He still seems to be in a similar mindset to when he wrote The Dawkins Delusion, with references to a secular/religious divide which he seems to have projected back on to an earlier period where such a divide did not exist. That said, this laxity in language is not wholly pervasive, it merely peppers the text every now and then.

Overall, it is a very good book and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested not only in the history of particular heresies, but also in the very idea of a heresy. It is not an overly academic book, and is written very much as an introduction to the subject. The notes contain many further references for the interested reader. This gives it the strength of being very accessible and, as ever, McGrath’s writing style is very clear and easy to follow.

Only one way to God?

I was struck recently by something I have known about for a long time, though had seemed to take for granted. Jesus stated “no one comes to the father except through me.” Now I was listening a few months ago to a lecture Tom Wright gave to the Faraday foundation, entitled Can A Scientist Believe In The Resurrection? In it, Tom describes his experience of trying to read The God Delusion. One of the things that frustrated him was that in Dawkins’ polemical door-stopper, he only devotes one chapter to Jesus. I am of the understanding that Dawkins finally, after many years of denying Jesus’ existence, even in the teeth of the evidence, has ceded some ground and acknowledged that a person called Jesus probably existed, though I’m not sure if he’s gone any further than this.

Dawkins’ marginalisation of Jesus does seem to have crept into much of the atheistic discussions that I come across. Of course, it may be possible that I’m just looking at the wrong discussions! Working on the presumption that what I have viewed is at least somewhat representative, there is a trend to try to define the nature of “God” and then deny or affirm his/her/its existence.

There is an interesting idea in philosophy that I coming round to, that the ontology of something runs counter to its epistemology. That is to say, that which is most fundamental is the last thing to be known. Likewise, that which is most trivial is that which is most obvious and discovered first. Working on this viewpoint, the nature of God is something that is incredibly fundamental to our beliefs, but which is found only at the conclusion of our study. So to me, it makes no sense to try to define God as a starting position, but rather I choose to spend my life (to quote A.W. Tozer) in the pursuit of God.

So instead of going “straight for the jugular” where the evidence is more philosophical and less clear-cut, it seems only logical to me to send any investigation into the existence of God to the place where the best evidence is. That is, to the historical study of the man known as Jesus (as it is anglicised). This ties in with a recent piece by a particular Guardian columnist called Andrew Brown. Now he sort of runs the “Belief” section of the guardian website, and his own beliefs have long been an aspect of speculation, where he has constantly dodged the question. However, recently, he laid out his cards in an article entitled “Why I am not a catholic.” As with most things he writes, I agreed with some and disagreed with a fair bit too. What I found particularly interesting was that he did not accept the historical claims of the gospels. The reason I find this interesting is because it is the exact reverse of the reason that clinched my belief.

*As an aside, I actually met Andrew shortly after writing this. It was quite a random evening, where I'd agreed to meet up with Tim Skellett, who runs the Heathen Hub, and he'd pre-arranged us going to the Guardian offices to meet Andrew. It was quite a random evening, though it made for a fascinating study in body language!*

So the question then is: can you come to a correct understanding of God without Jesus? If you accept Jesus’ word, then the answer would surely have be ‘no.’ Of course, I as a Christian, I would naturally be inclined to go along this route. That is not to say that my understanding of God is necessarily correct in all things, I strongly doubt it is. Of course, I couldn’t tell you which bit! I would admit to being very tempted at this point to making some remarks about other religions, though as my ignorance of the details of these is excessive, this sentence is the only comment I shall make on them.

The other thing that came to my mind was Antony Flew’s final book, There Is A God. I haven’t got a review on this website, though I would heartily recommend it. The Appendix from Abraham Varghese ought to be skipped, due to its scientific illiteracy. The overall gist of it is as follows: Flew authored a very famous paper, entitled Theology and Falsification, which has become a foundation of much of modern atheistic thought. If you have a read of it (which I would recommend you do) anyone who has read/listened to some of the “new atheists” will recognise the thrust of the argument. In the first part of this book, Flew gives a summary of atheistic reasoning. In the second, he gives his reasons for rejecting his atheism and why he was convinced there was a God. There has been a lot written about whether Flew was in a fit state of mind, and there was also speculation over whether Varghese was the actual author of the second half of the book. Now Flew did not become a Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc. It would be more accurate to describe him as a deist. He reached this view by far more philosophical means than historical (although the other appendix, by Tom Wright, is very good). The book does have a feeling of a man who has not yet finished looking (something that, if you get it from this blog, means that I am not totally useless at communication), and I think it is a shame that Flew died before he was able to offer the world what may have been his most valuable contribution to philosophy.

In my own view, I think that the “proofs” for God’s existence fall a long way short. As a mathematician, a proof may be difficult to understand, but it is nonetheless a watertight argument which holds together whichever way you try to pull it apart, provided you stay within the bounds of logic. This last part can be quite important, as I have pointed out before on the fall of logical positivism as an intellectually sound philosophy.

Referring back to Wright again, he uses a very good analogy when it comes to trying to understand God. He likens it to shooting arrows at the sun. Nomatter how good our aim is, we ultimately lack the strength to be able to hit. Paul, referred to this when he said “For now, we but see in a mirror (Gk: esoptron), dimly.”(1 Cor 13:12)

One of the key failings of trying to prove God’s existence by naturalistic means is that such methods are only fit for their scope. Since the general understanding of God is that it exists outside of nature, then conventional methods of scientific enquiry and proof are instantly shown to be hopelessly inadequate for the task. It is like having a sheep tied to stick with a rope in the middle of a field, and expecting the sheep to be able to graze the grass on the next field.

This doesn't of course, reflect on anything anyone says about the reality of God’s existence, whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist or Pastafarian; it only affects the epistemology of that existence. I recall reading a few months ago (forgive me for not being able to provide a reference, it slips my mind where I saw it) a short piece by Alister Mcgrath where he quoted Dawkins as saying something along the lines of “[if god did exist, he would be far greater and more complex that anything the human mind could possibly comprehend].” McGrath’s response was to agonise at how close Dawkins had come to actually understanding something about theology, yet turned his back just before the moment of comprehension.

So might it be, that after centuries of trying to prove Jesus wrong when he said he was the only way to God, that having been confounded at every turn, we might have to acknowledge that he was right after all?

Testimony & Epistemology

After recently reading Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham, some thoughts crystallised in my mind that had been floating around for a bit. This post is my attempt to articulate those thoughts.

Epistemology is a subject in which I have a steadily growing interest. I have just started reading Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery, though it’s a bit of a beast of a book, so don’t expect to see the review much before October. I may come back and revise this post after I have finished that.

As alluded to in my review of Bauckham’s book, the willingness to accept eyewitness testimony (hereafter, to be simply referred to as testimony) does not immediately imply a hermeneutic of credulity. There is a word for those who would accept without critique what they are told as testimony: gullible. Now, in spite of how often I have heard that accusation levelled at all Christians, it simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny; if it were true then everyone who has ever professed faith must be intellectually retarded, but a brief look around the world today, and in history reveals this to be untrue. Of course, that is not to say that every Christian has reached their faith by careful reasoning and the examination of the available evidence; indeed I have met many who prefer to not think about the challenges posed to the claims of Christianity, but these are the minority. There is also then the adage that if you have met a Christian who doesn’t seem to have any doubts, then you just don’t know them well enough.

When I read or talk to critics of the bible, there is a phrase I often hear is “there’s no evidence for….” At which point a look of puzzlement usually smothers my face. The reason for this is that the person I am speaking to has completely disregarded the fact that we have the collection of books known as the bible, which is evidence. I think a far more honest term would be “there’s no corroborative evidence for…” which is a very different statement.

I have heard it said that Christianity is the religion of the historian. I am increasingly coming round to this point of view as most of the strongest arguments come from history, rather than science, philosophy or sociology. That is not to say that these don’t have important things to say about Christianity (and vice versa), rather I just don’t find them as convincing as I do for the historical basis for the person, death and resurrection of Jesus. Where certain ideas taken as cherished by Christians have had to be thrown out of the window because of subsequent research, there do not appear to be any scholars who have credibly formed and tested hypotheses for the origins of Christianity on an historical basis; there may be plenty of supposition, but very little evidence to support this. If anyone knows of a suitable riposte, please let me know as I would love to read it/them.

As I have said before, my worldview is that the set of things for which there is evidence is smaller than the set of things which are true. That is to say, there may be many truths for which there is no evidence. Of course, this then raises the question, “How do we know it’s true?” which is perfectly valid and deserves serious consideration. I still don’t have a definitive answer for that.

One of the key differences between history and science is the ability to generate evidence. Science can devise experiments in order to gather new evidence from well-designed experiments in order to confirm or deny an hypothesis. History, on the other hand, has to build the most reasonable explanation, based on the evidence available. Of course, you can always do archaeological excavations, or search through ancient libraries, but you can’t always find what you want. To go back to Bauckham, much of his book was based on the testimony of Papias, but we have no surviving manuscripts of his; only some quotes from Eusebius a couple of centuries afterwards.

To give a somewhat trivial example, I could tell you what I had for dinner last night. It happened to be a chicken curry. I can testify that that is true, and I know it to be so. However, I ate alone, with the blinds shut, so there are no other eyewitnesses, as far as I know. So how might one determine whether or not my testimony is true? Well, one could go through my bins and examine the contents thereof to find evidence of the ingredients of a chicken curry. This would certainly not constitute proof as there would be no way to pin the ingredients down to a specific date (it could have been the night before) or to ascertain that the ingredients were used together, as opposed to being used in the cooking of two separate meals.

An alternative approach may be to pump my stomach and examine the contents. Now this is a pretty extreme measure, but if you really wanted to find out, then this may be an option; albeit one that I would resist with what little physical strength I have! Also, this method would only work for the last couple of meals. If my question had been posed about what I ate on the 10th of February this year (or last year) then the answer would be quite unknowable; although in this case, I couldn’t testify myself, as I don’t have that good a memory.

Of course, we could try to falsify the proposition, yet what are the falsification criteria? Perhaps I was seen elsewhere, eating something different; but in the absence of other eyewitnesses, this cannot be a possibility. It is not clear to me that there are, given what the circumstances outlined above, any criteria upon which can be based any level of falsifiability. To draw the analogy to a close, before it gets over-strained, the fact that I ate a chicken curry is, for all practical purposes, unfalsifiable. However, this does not impact on the truth of the assertion. So it is with testimony. There may be many potential ways in which a testimony may be falsified (e.g. by direct contradiction with another testimony – although we need to be careful about the possibility of two different views of the same thing appearing radically different, or contradiction with other corroborative evidence, etc.). However, as noted above, the historian cannot generate additional evidence. He or she may search for it, but it may simply be the case that what they are searching for has been lost.

So then, if testimony is all we have, what can we say about it? Bauckham’s approach was to give them the benefit of the doubt. In this, I would somewhat agree with him, but with a word of warning. If a witness is shown to be untrustworthy in related key areas, then extra doubt may of course be cast on their testimony. I would think it unwise to reject them outright because of this.

There has been a recent example, when such a rejection has taken place. That is, in the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK). The case was dependent on an eyewitness, but the case was ultimately thrown out because of a lack of corroborative evidence and aspersions made against the eyewitness. For my part, I do not hold an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of DSK. I merely include this paragraph to get you thinking at how relevant, and thorny, the issue still is today. It is not a problem restricted to historical theology, and one which I think we will continue to wrestle with for many years to come.

Book Review: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham

I’d not really come across Richard Bauckham much before and this was the first book of his I had read. He was heavily referenced with some favour by Tom Wright in The Resurrection Of The Son Of God, and a five minute search reveals that Bauckham is an emeritus professor at Edinburgh (though currently on placement to Cambridge), where Wright now has a nominal post, though I understand this is merely to let him write his prodigious amount of books.

There is no great lengthy introduction to this work, and Bauckham dives straight into his proposition, giving us a quick glance at the conclusions he will reach (I would graciously assume that the book was researched and the conclusions reached prior to the writing of the introduction). The title kind of says it all, although Bauckham does not think that the 4 gospels were all first-hand eyewitness accounts. Rather, his assertion is that they faithfully record the eyewitness testimony of others.

The depth and breadth of Bauckham’s reading and understanding can hardly be doubted, and this is a work of immense scholarship. The downside is that in being rigorous, it gets extremely dry in places. It took me an awfully long time to get through this, not least because I kept dropping off during my daily commute, though that may have had something to do with the workload I have had of late.

I did get the impression that at times he made a little too much of some very scant evidence, though that is not to undermine his whole argument. For those who would contest his viewpoint that the gospels were based on eyewitness testimony and were not either invented or significantly distorted through oral traditions, Bauckham’s work would need to be very carefully dissected; something I am not knowledgeable enough to do.

The book’s first main contention is that those who were name-checked in the gospels were present because they were witnesses. I found this quite an unusual proposition and not entirely convincing. From here, Bauckham looked at the frequency of names in the society at the time, and concluded that the names we find are fairly typical of what we might expect, though I was unsure of what this was meant to prove. That said, it did contain some extremely interesting points about individuals known by two different names (I immediately thought of Saul/Paul, though Bauckham, oddly, didn’t mention this) as the disparity between lists of names is an objection I often find cited against the gospels.

One writer on whom he hangs a lot of his argument is Papias, who I think is very seldom known in modern Christian circles (at least the ones I move in). This demonstrates for me quite well how historians have to deal with the evidence they have available, as opposed to scientists who can devise experiments in order gather evidence. For those of you who don’t know, there are no known surviving works of Papias. So how can Bauckham rely on his writings, if we don’t know what they are? Well, it’s because he is quoted by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History. The quotes amount to just a few hundred words, much shorter than the length of this review!

One of the most interesting chapters concerns the proposition that Mark’s gospel (widely regarded as the first to be written) was based predominantly on the testimony of Simon/Peter. The main piece of evidence in favour of this is some Greek grammar, where a third person perspective is used quite awkwardly, when a first person perspective would read more naturally. Unfortunately, my Greek grammar is not good enough to be able to form a suitable critique on this, though there is a lot more to it than the crude outline I have given.

After his detailed look at Mark, Bauckham then moves on to look at the way the testimonies of the original eyewitnesses would have been passed on. He takes a sceptical view of the form critics, most notably Rudolph Bultmann. He also takes a look at the more modern, moderate style of form criticism, more widely accepted, as put forward by Kenneth Bailey in his highly influential work, Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels; a copy of which you can find, for free, here.

In Bauckham’s analysis he draws out a very important point which is often ignored by critics who dismiss gospel tradition as “Chinese whispers” in that the gospel stories were not passed down through many generations, with each generation adding new material in an uncontrolled way. Rather, we are talking about 1-2 generations, where many of the original eyewitnesses were still alive and could be consulted if there were any doubt on the details.

From here, he takes a slightly different direction and looks at psychology. I suspect that this may be Bauckham’s weak area, unless he is a true polymath. He looks at whether or not eyewitness memory can be reliable at all. He cites a couple of examples both for against the proposition, before looking at the characteristics of what distinguishes true memory from false memory and examining the gospel evidence to determine which we find there.

His last piece of analysis is to look at the gospel of John in more detail and to examine the view (which Bauckham supports) that is the testimony of the unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved.” Much of the discussion regards the identity of “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and whether this was John the Elder or John the son Zebedee. However, given the earlier discussion on the frequency of names, John was the 5th most common name, so the discussion, though interesting, does not really progress the argument much.

The concluding chapter of the book is one of the most thought-provoking and I intend to write a much fuller post on this chapter alone. As mentioned at the top, there is very little by way of introduction. It is only now, at the end that I realise why; the introduction is at the end! In this chapter, Bauckham sketches his epistemology and his reasoning behind why he considers the testimonies he has reviewed to be of value to the historian and the theologian (as well those for whom the two disciplines are intimately entwined). He adopts a possibly controversial approach by drawing parallels, albeit with significant caveats, to the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Much of the best available evidence we have for the details of the Holocaust has come from the witness of those who were present at the time, and similarly the best available evidence for the details of the life, death & resurrection of Jesus comes from the witness of those who were present at the time. I can understand that some may see this as poor form, citing an event so emotionally charged and volatile, which his critics may pounce on, though I think Bauckham does not overstep the boundary into disrespect or emotional blackmail. In this chapter, Bauckham is extremely critical of those who would undertake an historic review of the gospels with a default position of rejection. So, it might be reasonably said that the author is advocating a hermeneutic of credulity, though this would be to misunderstand him, as he does explicitly state that witness testimony should be reviewed critically.

There is one interesting omission, which I felt was not dealt with properly, and that was the relation of gospel writers (OK, Matthew & Luke) to the nativity. In his chapter “Eyewitness from the beginning” Bauckham is clear that this refers to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, when he was around 30 (according to John). There is no space given to the discussion of the possible eyewitnesses to the birth of Jesus, his early life, or the family tree (however problematic that is!).

So what shall I say in conclusion? Well, it’s not the faint-hearted. It does get quite tedious at times and Bauckham’s writing style is not the most lively I have read. Nonetheless, it is a book worthy of very serious consideration, with many important questions asked and challenges raised to those who would not accept the gospels as being grounded in the contemporary eyewitness testimony.

Book Review: Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with this book. I had heard various things about Ehrman, though had not read anything of his before. Since he is a former student of Bruce Metzger, I expected extremely careful and thorough scholarship. At the same time, I had heard that his own beliefs had covered a gamut of viewpoints over the years from Christian to atheist to agnostic, and that his writings were deeply critical and challenging to modern day Christians. So, unsure of precisely what to expect, I opened his book with an open mind.

I have to start with a comment on Ehrman’s writing style and communication abilities: they are superb. He makes his case very cogently and acknowledges where there are doubts and possible objections to his propositions. Thoroughly honest in his approach, his model of writing is one that could well be followed by many others. Few theologians I have read have written with such clarity.

So what are these propositions? Well, he invents a new term for an old group known to any historian of church history. The early church leaders are now rebranded as “proto-orthodox.” That is, a group of people in the 2nd-4th centuries whose beliefs became what we now recognise as Christian orthodoxy. To summarise, imagine a young tree sapling. The traditional view of church history has been that “heretical” views and non-orthodox texts and opinions grew out of early Christianity as a kind of ‘branch’ that either was cut-off or died anyway, leaving the main trunk intact. The revisionist viewpoint espoused by Ehrman was that there were lots of saplings growing in parallel, and that in the battle for survival, most of the saplings were killed and the victors, being the ones who wrote the history, distorted the true picture of what happened. Ehrman’s hypothesis, crudely outlined above, owes a great deal to Walter Bauer, who is given due recognition and acknowledgement in the text.

This certainly should raise a few eyebrows amongst historically-minded Christians. For the first third of the book, which I thought were the most interesting, he looks at a few early non-canonical writings at the stories they contain as well as the stories behind their discovery and their authorship. Throughout this discourse, there is this thread of “proto-orthodox” though it seems entirely superfluous to the discussion, and no attempt is made to justify it. The central third of the book looks at the different bodies of beliefs, looking at the Ebionites, the Marcionites and there is a broad overview of the broad spectrum of belief which fell under the umbrella term of Gnosticism.

It is only in the last third of the book that Ehrman attempts to justify his proposition of the “proto-orthodox.” Crucial to this discussion is the authorship of the books of the New Testament. Here is where some of his arguments seem to lack coherency. For example, he states (quite correctly) that we have no surviving “original” documents but then goes on to argue that the “proto-orthodox” have altered the originals to suit their own doctrines. But if you do not know what the originals said, how can this be justified?

Likewise, I am well aware that there are controversies over the identity of the authors of the New Testament, but Ehrman does not really explore these. On a number of occasions, he states that the books of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus and 2 Peter were probably forgeries, though no evidence to support this proposition is ever given. Instead we have reference to “most scholars” though these are not named or referenced. So, whilst being eager to get to grips with this more revisionist viewpoint, I was left frustrated that it was not well supported.

In conclusion, I do not find Ehrman’s revisionist definition of early Christians as “proto-orthodox” to be convincing. It is well-argued, but the evidence presented just doesn’t seem to provide sufficient weight to back up his proposition. The conclusion of the book is also slightly odd. Ehrman recognises that there are some elements of heretical groups that are making a comeback in one guise or another, and he seems to suggest that a plurality of belief and the resurrection of some gonostic or Marcionite thinking is necessarily a good thing. But to me, applying Occam’s Razor, the simplest and most logical explanation behind the demise of the heretical elements looked at here were because they were late inventions that grew out a pre-existing orthodoxy that was already in place from the time of Acts. These later ideas lacked that most important ingredient: truth. While having different opinions is perfectly welcome, I do not agree with Ehrman that this in itself is a good thing if it introduces untruth. I have great respect for his writing and his research, and would recommend this book to anyone interested in this history of early Christianity and the heretical beliefs that grew out of it. However, I would recommend it as part of a wider study, which I shall be doing myself. I have, as you may see, recently completed The New Testament And The People of God by N.T. Wright and on my table, waiting to be read this summer/autumn are Alister McGrath’s Heresy: A History of defending the truth and W.H.C. Frend’s The Early Church.

Book Review: The New Testament Documents – are they reliable? by F.F. Bruce

It has to be noted that it is quite a short book (123 pages excluding preface, bibliography, etc.) though it does pretty much what it says on the tin by looking at some of the evidence in support of the reliability of the New Testament. Regardless of whether you agree with Bruce’s analysis, it has been a hugely influential book in modern christian thought.

In Bruce’s analysis, he does skim on some of the detail which I admit frustrated me a little. For example, in the first chapter, he looks at the date of the authorship of the books of the New Testament. I felt that this was a little too brief and that there could be plenty of arguments posed for dates slightly later than Bruce supposes.

After looking at the dates, he begins to look at the contents of the gospels, the importance of Paul’s writings, the historical detail in Luke’s writing (in particular, the book of Acts), before going on to look at other evidence outside of the New Testament such as archaeological evidence and other non-christian written sources.

The book serves as a great introduction to the subject of biblical criticism as a defence for its authenticity, though it is by no means a comprehensive survey. The non-canonical writings of the early church and of the gnostics are given extremely little space. But it is nothing more than an introduction. For the open-minded sceptic, who is willing to engage with the evidence and is looking for a comprehensive review, this is not the most convincing case. There are some gems to be found, though most of them lie towards the front of the book.

In the version I have, there is a great preface written by N.T. Wright, in which he sums up quite well the best use for this book: “The [person] who reads Bruce today will want to supplement him by reading judiciously in more recent writers. But he remains an excellent foundation.”

Book Review: The New Testament and People of God by N.T. Wright

As regular readers of this blog will know (and I know there are more than the 2 “followers” displayed – I can see some statistics!), I have already read and reviewed volume 3 of N.T. (Tom) Wright’s magnum opus, Christian Origins and The Question of God. That was mainly due to my not realising at the time that it was part of a series, something I probably ought to have known, having met Wright a couple of times while he was the Bishop of Durham, though at the time we were discussing So it only seemed right to go back to the beginning and do the whole series. My hope is to be able to go through volume 2 (Jesus and the Victory of God) before he publishes volume 4 (Paul and the Faithfulness of God), currently due out at some unspecified date in 2012.

The book was something of a revelation (if you’ll pardon the pun) as it is the longest introduction I have ever read. Wright spends about the first third of the book (which is 500 pages long – and they ain’t exactly small pages in large print) discussing his methodology and setting out his stall in meticulous detail. I know this may not be of particular interest to readers who want to get the Wright’s summary of Judaic and early Christian history, but it is well worth it, I think, as it demonstrates the level of care needed to approach this topic.

Having set himself up, Wright then proceeds to give a summary history of Judaic thought roughly from the time of Judas Maccabeus through the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. He acknowledges that this is a summary rather than a detailed analysis and does provide plenty of references for the interested reader to follow-up on. At times, it is a bit dry and it took me a while to go through; I would readily admit to not being having taken it all in.

From here, Wright gives what is, in my opinion, the most fascinating chapter: an overview of Christianity from roughly A.D. 30 to A.D. 125. Wright acknowledges the difficulty in trying to study the history of the church given the scarcity over the contemporary sources, and their reliability (e.g. not trusting what Eusebius had to say without at least a pinch of salt).

In both his sections on Judaism and early Christianity, he looks at what they did (praxis), believed and hoped for. The reader should always be aware that this is an introduction, so Wright brushes on topics he intends to look at in much more detail later on. It serves as a useful appetiser and I can’t wait to get going on Jesus and Victory of God.

There were points in it where I was not convinced by Wright’s arguments, though these tended to be on comparatively minor areas. Overall, it is a work of immense integrity and scholarship. It will of interest to anyone who is interested in how historical and theological research is carried out by the best scholars in their field, to those who want to find out about the history and beliefs of the early Christians and the world in which they lived and will be of immense value to all who read it.

A summary of Easter

My aim here is to summarise the case for Easter and to give a rough appraisal of its meaning and importance for me as a Christian. This is not a complete exegesis, as when I started to write this it just longer and longer and longer; which I think goes someway to demonstrating why Easter is at the heart of Christianity. So what follows is a brief overview and as such I have had to omit much detail and nuanced arguments, so I admit from the start that this is incomplete and full of holes. There are then two main ways to look at this: one is to look at the holes and dismiss the whole discussion as fraudulent, the other is to gloss over the holes and accept everything on face value. I would hope that you do not adopt either of these simplistic views, but that you can read and assess the whole thing as it stands, both in substance and in what it lacks. I ought to say from the outset that this subject has been on my mind much over the last few months and to that end my main text (other than the various books that make up the compendium known as the Bible) has been N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God. I also followed this up with Jurgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God. Though I do not agree 100% with the conclusions of either, I think they are well worth following up for anyone who is serious about examining the ideas around Easter.

Each of these books deals with a different aspect of Easter. It’s not hard to tell from the titles that one relates to the crucifixion and the other to the resurrection. Yet in my readings of each of these, as well the biblical texts, it struck me that you can’t really have an Easter theology with considering both aspects. In my opinion, and this is all I am stating here, the crucifixion without the resurrection would leave us without hope, while the resurrection without the crucifixion leaves us unjustified. But for me, with the events of that particular weekend upon which the history of the world hinged, the doctrines of hope and justification are intimately entwined, like the weft and warp of the fabric of faith. Having one without the other leaves everything in pieces. However, I find that it is actually easier (accuse me of laziness, by all means!) to consider the resurrection before the crucifixion.

So then, we need to find out what happened over the course of the Easter weekend, some 2 centuries ago. As this was an historical event, we cannot rely on any notion of repeatable experiment, test groups or empirical measurement as would be the case if we wanted to employ a scientific scrutiny to the claims. It simply falls outside the scope of scientific investigation, so instead the most appropriate methodology to adopt is that of the historian. The best history is constructed by using the widest array of contemporary sources. The most obvious of these are the 4 gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke & John) though it may surprise some to hear that these are not in fact the earliest accounts we have of Jesus’ resurrection. The earliest (that I know of, anyway) is actually Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. But here we have a snag. Was Paul an eyewitness to the death and resurrection of Jesus? Well, it seems that the answer is ‘no’ – so does that discount his testimony? We also have the problem of the apparent differences between the 4 gospels. Do inconsistencies in detail prove that the event did not take place?

To answer these questions, I think it helps to think in terms of journalism. Say, for example, an event happens for which there are various witnesses but which is not recorded by technology. i.e. there were a few people who saw it, but it wasn’t captured on CCTV or on a mobile phone. None of these people are professional journalists, but they describe what they saw to a several journalists. Is it likely that they would all report exactly the same thing? I think it’s pretty unlikely. If you pick up a copy each of the Guardian, The Times, The Daily Mail and The Sun, do a side-by-side comparison of them and what you will find is this:

a) They will not all report on exactly the same set of stories; some will include articles that others leave out
b) On those articles relating to the same event, the reporting will be quite different.

There are a couple of more modern takes on this phenomenon of differences relating to the same event. One of these is known as “Wittgenstein’s poker.” If you haven’t heard of it, I don’t blame you. I only came across it for the first time a couple of years ago. There was a debate which took place at which several highly noted philosophers were having a discussion on the philosophy of science. On one side of the debate was Karl Popper. In the audience were Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell. As the story goes, at some point during the evening, Popper said something that incensed Wittgenstein who grabbed a hot poker from the fire and brandished it at Popper, before storming out of the room. But later on, when asked to recount the details, no one could quite agree. In truth, the fact that there was so much disagreement about the fine details, in spite of a broad agreement on the core of the story, was testament to something extraordinary having happened.

More recently, there was a tv programme broadcast on terrestrial tv (though I admit I have struggled to find reference to it – if someone knows, please help me with this). What he did was to take a group of volunteers (who had volunteered for a different kind of experiment) and he set up a fake stabbing while they were out at lunch. From my memory, there were about 20 or so volunteers, one of whom was a ‘mole’ and had been asked to insert a red herring – with one of the aims of the experiment to find out how many of the other volunteers included this red herring into their testimony. Each of the volunteers were then subject to a police interrogation as to what happened. Everyone gave different accounts; some omitted some details, whilst others were influenced by the mole and reported seeing something which they did not see. So how does this influence our take on the gospel writers? Does the fact that people can report seeing something which they have not mean that the gospels must be wrong? Well, I don’t think so. The casting of doubt on something is very different from outright dismissal, and I would regard anyone as foolish who, on this count, is led to think that the gospel writers must have all been mistaken or were in cahoots with one another to make it up. Instead, what the programme showed was that after the interrogations, the police were able to piece together an accurate picture of what happened, corroborating various witness statements, weeding out the incorrect information and getting to the heart of the matter. And so it is, I believe, mirrored in the gospels, and with particular reference here to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, although the same holds for the rest of the gospel narratives. The fact that they have slight differences between them, but that from looking at them collectively, it is evident that there is a consistent narrative implies that they are reviewing a real, historical event. I read recently somewhere that the slightly confused language that they use was indicative of someone writing about what they can see, but which they don’t understand.

Now let’s suppose for a moment that Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead. What if it was a metaphor or, worse, an elaborate fabrication? Do you think the gospels would have continued to be copied and passed on by the contemporaries of the early Christian movement if they had known it was false? It strikes me as quite unreasonable that one would suppose this. There were enough eye-witnesses around at the time who would have been able to quash this early movement, known as The Way had its basis been historically and accurately incorrect. Without the historical reality of the resurrection, the task of explaining the origins of Christianity becomes very difficult.

One of the most obvious objections to the resurrection is the simple observation, known throughout history, that dead people don’t rise up from the dead. While to some it may appear that Christians are therefore going against common sense, this fact is in fact crucial: dead people, on the whole, don’t rise from the dead. That’s what makes the resurrection such an important event. The falsehood in this argument is one of induction, which the philosopher of science Karl Popper has opposed. He argued that simply because every adult swan you may observe is white cannot logically rule out the possibility that there is at least one black swan in the world. Applying that here, just because everyone you observe dying is not resurrected does not mean you can a priori discount the possibility of the resurrection by inductance. As Conan Doyle put it, via the mouth of Sherlock Holmes: “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” The sticking point here on which Christians and atheists disagree is the definition of impossible. To the atheist, the possibility of resurrection is ruled out from the very beginning and so they immediately start to look elsewhere for their explanations of the rise of Christianity and its belief in the resurrection (if they can be bothered to think that far). However, if we are open-minded to admit the possibility of Jesus having been resurrected then the evidence we are presented with gives good reason to believe that this one-off event was an historical reality.

Are you still with me? If you disagree with me but have kept on reading then I tip my hat to you.

Something this extraordinary then merits further discussion. What does it mean? The Jewish hope, and hence the Christian hope too, is for all to be resurrected. The thing that caught the first century Jews off guard was that it was expected to happen to everyone at once at the end of time. It was not meant to happen to one person before all else. But then this is exactly what John says in Revelation when he calls Jesus “the firstborn from among the dead.” There is a popular myth the surrounds and pervades Christianity that the ultimate hope for the future is to live in heaven. No matter how often you hear this, it is not what is actually what the Bible says. (I hope to be writing a short series on this if and when I eventually finish my series on morality). If you disagree, go find the references and send them over to me. Rather, the hope is of a resurrection en masse and that in new, incorruptible bodies we will inhabit the new earth. So in order to understand what his resurrection meant, we must look back at what his death meant. Of course, for a complete argument, we would need to then go back further and give an account as to his life. But that I do not have space for that here.

We then switch our focus onto to the crucifixion, which need some preliminary remarks. First of all, crucifixion was a Roman punishment, not a Jewish one. So even though Jesus was accused of blasphemy by the Jewish authorities, the punishment for that was stoning (cf. The death of Stephen in Acts). Rather, it was the political aspect of Jesus’ following was more likely the reason for why he was executed. Yet we should not confuse the reason for why he was executed with the purpose of his dying. This tends to be another sticking point at which many people find Christianity unpalatable. But then who said the truth was ever easy to accept? As a Christian, I believe that God is just (in the legal sense of the word); that is, his judgement is fair and he cannot be unjust. It also very true to say that God is loving. The fundamental problem of mankind is what the Bible refers to as ‘sin.’ Now this has become a pejorative term these days, though I do not use it as such. It is the state of separation of mankind from God. Therefore, you sin because you are a sinner; not the other way around. Yet because God is just, it would against its nature (to use a non-gender specific pronoun) to, as many suggest, merely let it slide. To forgive without sacrifice. This is what Bonhoeffer refers to as “cheap grace.” Rather, a debt is owed, but God, in his love, chose to take that debt upon himself through the sacrifice of Jesus as a substitute for the whole of mankind.

To many Christians, the idea of God’s punishment is for us to be separated from his love; in other words to be completely separated from him. What makes this different from the separation of sin is that while we are sinners we are loved from afar. There is no intimate relationship, it is only one-sided from God to us. But its desire is to restore that relationship. But if we reject the evidence of God’s love as manifest through the ultimate sacrifice and continue in a state of self-deifying pride then what each of us deserves (as is only just) is for God to abandon us. I don’t subscribe to the notion of fire and brimstone being literal, but rather that there is no worse state to be in that that of being unloved. And when Jesus was on his crucifix, he was unloved by God. Not only had he been rejected by his people (the Jews), convicted as a criminal (by the Romans) and disowned by those closest to him (the disciples) but he was rejected by God in our place. So Jesus’ death was far more than a simple, if brutal execution. It was God abandoning itself.

We do not and, I believe, cannot know what happened on the silent Saturday. There are some early writings which suggest that Jesus preached to the dead, though I am not convinced of this. What we do know, as the best available historical evidence shows, is that on the Sunday morning he was resurrected with a new body which was still physical, bore the wounds which he had inflicted and yet was incorruptible – a resurrection body which each of us has set aside for us. So his death was not final, we are not without hope. By his dying we were justified and by his rising again we are given the hope of the future. That’s what I understand as the core message of Easter.

Book Review: The Crucified God by Jurgen Moltmann

I read this as a sort of 'Easter follow-up' to N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God. I'd heard various good things about the book and have seen it referenced by quite a few people as being highly influential in their view of the crucifixion.

From the very start, this was not what I was expecting at all. The book begins not so much with theological exposition, but with a sociological look at the relevance of belief in the church and of the church's place in society. From the outset, Moltmann states that his intention is to give food for thought and stimulate discussion, rather than give a systematic theology of the cross.

What follows is an extremely tightly written work. That is, is it not easily broken down and each sentence is carefully thought through and argued; and it is not all that easy to follow the argument, if I'm honest. There were numerous times I found myself having to go back on myself, re-read certain passages and try and find the origin of the thread. In that respect, it is not dissimilar to the way Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, with lots of sentences starting with a reference (e.g. therefore, so, since, etc.) to what had been discussed before.

A very large focus is put on the emphasis of God suffering as a result of the crucifixion, and of exploring the theology of what it means for God to be in Jesus and therefore for God to be crucified. Now a lot of my reading, and probably most people's, will be coloured by their own pre-existing ideas about the nature of trinitarian theology and what it means for Jesus to be identified as God and yet abandoned and rejected by God on the cross. In this discussion, Moltmann certainly succeeds in giving a stimulus to thought and careful consideration, although from my point of view I did not agree with him on every point, most notably the fact that here he does not regard the resurrection to be an actual historical event, as was the crucifixion, agreeing more with Bultmann and less with Wright on this matter.

However, his conclusion at the end of the chapter which is given the same title as the book is a beautiful summary of a part of the gospel. Moltmann does not give a systematic theology here, though his concise conclusion is brilliantly written and eminently quotable.

From here, he suddenly jumps off in an apparent tangent for the last 50 pages of the book to his “liberation theology” where he looks at personal psychology and at politics. In here, he echoes an important distinction made by Karl Barth on the separation of faith from religion and proposes that the truth of Christianity be as far removed as possible from religious superstition, the root of so many misguided attacks on Christianity, which we still see today.

Overall, it is very odd book, in that some quite meaty theology is sandwiched between two sections on sociology. There is much to think about here though it is not the most accessible read I have come across by a long way. So would I recommend it? Just about; but you might want to keep a dictionary close to one hand and a Bible close to the other.

Book Review: The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright

At the outset, Wright declares that “Our target is to investigate the claim of the earliest Christians, that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead.” He then takes us under his wing and guides along a journey of scholarship of the highest order. Leaving no stone unturned, he first of all investigates the idea of resurrection, first of all being extremely precise about what he means by resurrection. We then review resurrection traditions in pre-christian paganism and of judaism, constantly asking the question “is it probable that the early christians adapted an earlier tradition to suit their own story, or did something really happen that was of major significance.” Towards the end of the first section, one can become bogged down in the detail. I think this section can be skipped over with little loss overall, but it is was necessary in order for Wright to be thorough in his work, so that any accusations of taking shortcuts or ignoring certain schools of thought would be unfounded.

Having finished his survey of Pagan and Jewish beliefs, he then moves on to look at the early Christian beliefs into resurrection, attempting to chart the writings in a roughly chronological order, thus analysing the writings of Paul before those of the gospel writers. The aim here is to contrast the views of this emerging religion with those of the old and ask what could have prompted the transformation. Then, having seen the changes, the inevitable question that must then be asked is this: what caused the change? Wright is not presumptive in his answer, as I can tell a great many christians would at this point be jumping up and down saying “I know the answer.” But Wright is far more considerate and gives due care and attention to his scholarship. This level of detail may frustrate some readers, as much of the early part of the book discusses resurrection in general, with very little mention of Jesus who only starts to come into the picture after about page 200; even then, much of the focus is really on the hope of a resurrection for all, rather than focussing on the resurrection of Jesus. So in that respect, those expecting a detailed analysis of Easter will have to get through several hundred pages of background before getting what they are looking for.

But it is certainly worth the effort of getting to, once his analysis of the gospel accounts finally begin at page 587. But once he gets under way with it, there seems to be no stopping him. Wright is in his element, giving well-considered, evidenced and thoughtful consideration to the claims and counter-claims that have surrounded Easter for many years. Here, as throughout the book, he uses footnotes to acknowledge and counteract the conclusions of many other theologians, whilst agreeing with some. Foremost in his crosshairs is Rudolph Bultmann. Because much of the groundwork had already been laid, the gospel accounts may appear to be a little short. But do not be deceived; these chapters are immensely rich and in order to take them in I have had to go over them in conjunction with several translations a few times, which takes a fair while to do.

Having finished his survey of beliefs and narratives, the question is then asked: So what? Even if you skip over the first 600 pages and jump straight to last section (though you will be missing out) what you will find is the work of an honest historian who, having looked at the best available evidence, concludes that Jesus of Nazareth was bodily raised from the dead. Not only is this a striking conclusion, but the consequences of it, as expounded in the theology of the earlier sections (most notably Wright's exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15) demand careful consideration by everyone.

In his final flourish, Wright looks at the reasons for calling Jesus the Son of God and what this means both in terms of direct referent and its implications, though the latter part is the lead on to part 4 in his series which, at the time of writing this review, is currently due sometime in 2012.

This is certainly a ‘meaty’ book and though at times you may need a dictionary on hand, it is written in an accessible way and is an immense joy to work through. I would heartily recommend it to anyone interested in resurrection theology and of the future hope (either in heaven or a new earth) for christians.

Book Review: The Borgias And Their Enemies by Christopher Hibbert

It needs to said at the start what sort of book this is and what it is not. It is a narrative, told very much in bitesize chunks, scattered with quotations from the original sources. It is not an analytical review of the period. It details the corruption in the catholic church during the late 15 and early 16th centuries, though never in a polemic way. Hibbert is always measured in his approach and where events are disputed or appear to have been created out of speculation, he is quick to say so and does not draw judgement on their veracity; this is mainly in relation to the rumours of incest. Though even if we set those aside, there is no room for doubt left that the reign of the Borgias was nepotistic, bloody, ruthless and fuelled by greed and lust.

The story is told in roughly chronological order, though as each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the history, there is a little jumping around, so there is no single timeline running throughout. Hibbert's scholarship is evident, though not totally transparent; while he states certain facts and at the end gives a list of further reading, the two are not married up, so that I was left frequently asking “where's the justification or the evidence for that statement” and Hibbert doesn't provide the answer. There is also a seeming lack of questions being asked. I was expecting more centext and at attempt to understand the importance of the Borgias both at the time and their lasting on impact on catholicism, italian politics and the wider world; unfortunately there was none of this.

Instead, what we have is a setp by step case of “this happened. Then this happened. Then this happened. And then this happened” whilst all the time leaving the reader to do all the analysis with only the narrative as a guide. So if you want a dispassionate narrative then this is the book for you. If you are interested in the impact and importance of the Borgias, then you are better off reading Machiavelli's The Prince. That said, this is a valuable resource and I would recommend it as part of any thorough reading of the history of the family and the period.