Sublime

Richard Bauckham argues that the Gospels were written down when they were because the original eyewitnesses were starting to die out. Bauckham shows that specific people are named in the Gospels to flag them as eyewitness sources. It was a way of saying, “If you don’t believe me, ask Mary Magdalene—she saw it with her own eyes!” In the case of

The early Christians believed that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah, not, as some Jewish apologists today have absurdly said, “the Christian Messiah.”

The second explains the controversies, though not the crucifixion, at the expense of most of the evidence about first-century Jews. At the historical level, nobody doubts that Jesus was crucified, but a good many doubt that he entered into controversy with the Pharisees in particular. How are we to proceed?

this general thrust, of a very Jewish Jesus who was nevertheless opposed to some high-profile features of first-century Judaism, seems to me the most viable one if we are to do justice, not just to the evidence of the synoptic gospels (they, after all, are easy game for any critic who wants to avoid their implications) but more particularly to the

The Seminar announced to its public that the real Jesus was innocent of the wicked apocalypticism with which so many Christians, not least in the conservative American churches against which American academics react so strongly, had for so long associated him.

Bauckham also observes that the Gospels are too counterproductive in their content to be legends. For example, it is astonishing that in the very foundational documents of the Christian church we would have a record that one of the greatest leaders of the church, Peter, was an enormous failure who even cursed Jesus in public. The only credible