The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story

[MrMacSon]

.
The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story
by Christian theologian Michael F Bird

PAPERBACK; Published: 8/22/2014
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6776-6

http://www.eerdmans.com/Products/6776/t ... -lord.aspx

In this book, through a distinctive evangelical and critical approach, Michael Bird explores the historical development of the four canonical Gospels. He shows how the memories and faith of the earliest believers formed the Gospel accounts of Jesus that got written and, in turn, how these accounts further shaped the early church.

Bird's study clarifies the often confusing debates over the origins of the canonical Gospels. Bird navigates recent concerns and research as he builds an informed case for how the early Christ followers wrote and spread the story of Jesus — the story by which they believed they were called to live.

In the study of Christian origins, we tend to talk a lot about Jesus of Nazareth travelling around Galilee and Judea in 29-30 AD announcing the advent of the “kingdom of God” (see Mark 1:14-15), but then, very often, we quickly skip forward some 150 years to an Asian bishop living in France named Irenaeus, who wrote that there can be no more and no fewer than four Gospels (see Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 3.11.8).

The question I’ve always been struck by, however, is this: how exactly did we get from Jesus to Irenaeus? Or, to put it another way: how did we go from Jesus’ kingdom-message to a book about Jesus as the crucified and risen Messiah?

Answering that question is basically the task I set myself in writing The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus.

The way I undertake that task in the book is this: first, I outline the nature of the problem and offering an extended excursus on the origin and meaning of euangelion – the word we now know as “gospel” (chapter one). Then I examine why the first Christians might have deliberately remembered and retold stories of Jesus and about Jesus (chapter two). Following that, I look at the various models for the transmission of the Jesus tradition in light of both ancient orality and ancient book culture (chapter three). Next I provide an introduction to the Synoptic problem and the origins of the Fourth Gospel (chapter four). After that, I discuss both the particular genre and the broad purposes of the Gospels in light of ancient literature (chapter five). Then, finally, I narrate the origins of the fourfold Gospel that became authoritative in the developing church (chapter six). The book, in a nutshell, is about how we got the Gospels and why they are what they are.

... It serves not so much as an introduction to the individual Gospels, but, rather, as an introduction to the Jesus tradition and its crystallization into the fourfold Gospel as it now exists in the New Testament canon.

https://eerdword.wordpress.com/2014/08/ ... el-f-bird/

[MrMacSon]

... The book is an explanation of the historical process which took place from the time of Jesus’ Kingdom announcement to the circulation of a collection of books describing Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. The result is a “must-read” work by all who are interested in the “what, why, how, and where of the Gospels.”

Bird covers five main topics in the course of his writing: the purpose and preservation of the Jesus tradition, the formation of the Jesus tradition, the literary genetics of the Gospels (including the Synoptic Problem and the Johannine Question), the genre and goal of the Gospels, and the significance of a fourfold Gospel. For each topic, the reader should expect Bird to summarize and critique an impressive amount of historical theories and scholars and then offer his own scholarly and thoroughly evangelical conclusion. Each chapter is also followed by a helpful and interesting Excursus on a related topic (such as patristic views on the order of the Gospels or the non-canonical Gospels).

Bird occasionally goes after some “sacred cows” of scholarship, such as when he attacks the merit and purpose of the idea of positing communities behind the Gospels (such as a Markan community or a Johannine community). He interestingly notes that few historical/literary scholars do this as a way of interpreting other ancient authors. However, for the most part Bird helpfully lays out the majority opinions in the world of scholarship and then carefully crafts his own tentative conclusion. I was particularly impressed with his handling of the Synoptic problem and his explication of the historical and theological significance of the fourfold Gospel.

http://cataclysmicblog.com/2014/10/30/b ... el-f-bird/

[toejam]

I picked this up the other day. I've skimmed through most of it, and about 1/3 of the way through it proper. This is about as conservative as I can read without getting the shits. It's boarding on straight apologetics without falling into full inerrancy mode. Think Richard Bauckham, James Dunn, N.T. Wright etc. It's not too bad, but tries its best to put everything in the most rosy light possible. He makes a sound argument for a variation on the Three-Source hypothesis (i.e. Luke using Mark, Q and Matthew) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-source_hypothesis), which is where I find myself leaning on that question.

[MrMacSon]

Review: by "Amazon Customer" 'VINE VOICE' on August 30, 2014

• ... <snip> ...

"I am skeptical of those who try to drive a wedge between the message of the Gospels and the gospel of Paul" (p 16) [Bird] writes. Paul spent time in Jerusalem and traveled with members of the Jerusalem church.

Here is Bird attacking yet another flimsy argument: "Scholars who take the line that the primitive Christian communities...had only the faintest interest in the life of Jesus...retroject their own ...disinterest..onto the early church" (p 37). In fact, the existence of the Gospels themselves argue sharply against this line of argument.

Perhaps the most intriguing topic in biblical scholarship lately has been oral tradition. After a century or so hunting for early, primitive written strands, for the every elusive Q, and for literary relationships to be discovered hidden in the Gospels, literacy itself is coming under siege, as more and more evidence comes in of how the ancients transmitted oral tradition.

Along with oral tradition, "the problem for those who argue for widespread variation and drastic inventiveness in the Jesus tradition is that they fail" (p 49) to take into account the presence of eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses who wrote. Eyewitnesses who traveled. Bird sums up the evidence and feels "a paradigm shift is therefore required" away from the century-long emphasis on literary transmission.

The old form-critical scholars viewed the transmission of the Jesus tradition as fluid. However, "There is unequivocal evidence, not the least from Paul's letters, that early churches practiced a formal transmission of traditional material" (p 88). The model that Bird favors most is that espoused by Dunn in 'Jesus Remembered'.

Again and again in the Gospels, there are calls to remember what Jesus said. The risen Christ was an impetus for everyone to remember what he had said originally. I should add here that Bird argues for the use of notebooks in the early church. He notes the reference to parchments in 2 Tim 4:13. And it is also clear that notebooks were used by students of rabbis as well as standard in ancient instruction.

Bird has some trouble with Gerhardsson's fixed oral tradition, but Gerhardsson has now modified that position. But, at any rate, the arguments by liberal scholars that material from later prophets became intermingled with earlier sayings by Jesus is highly unlikely as we learn more about how tradition was passed in Second Temple Judaism.

The fact is, it's "probable that the Evangelists intended from the beginning that their accounts be read aloud in churches" (p 273). And Bird draws another conclusion here, that since the Gospels were being read aloud in churches they were therefore functioning as scripture had functioned in ancient Judaism.

Furthermore, the Gospels were aimed at the entire church of early Christians, not at any specific community, as Bultmann insisted. The early Christians had a network of churches, and they communicated and traveled and knew what was going on in other Christian centers. We see this in the earliest evidence of all, in Paul, and then throughout the entire first and second century.

http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Lord-Early ... y+of+jesus

This review points to beg-the-question circularity.

eg.

Here is Bird attacking yet another flimsy argument: "Scholars who take the line that the primitive Christian communities...had only the faintest interest in the life of Jesus...retroject their own ...disinterest..onto the early church" (p 37). In fact, the existence of the Gospels themselves argue sharply against this line of argument.

and propositions become 'facts'
eg.

The fact is, it's "probable that the Evangelists intended from the beginning that their accounts be read aloud in churches" (p 273). And Bird draws another conclusion here, that since the Gospels were being read aloud in churches they were therefore functioning as scripture had functioned in ancient Judaism.

[perseusomega9]

When does he date Acts?

[perseusomega9]

I should add here that Bird argues for the use of notebooks in the early church. He notes the reference to parchments in 2 Tim 4:13. And it is also clear that notebooks were used by students of rabbis as well as standard in ancient instruction.

I wonder if he's arguing that Jesus' disciples followed him around with notebooks? Would that have been typical of apocalyptic preachers of the time?

[ficino]

Wow, I'm glad that after all these centuries, Bird has figured all this shit out.

[ficino]

^ ^ ^ ^

So he wants to have both oral transmission and written records?

That works! Don't see how anyone could falsify such a construction.

[toejam]

Wow, I'm glad that after all these centuries, Bird has figured all this shit out.

To be fair, he admits lots of times throughout that many of his conclusions are educated speculations. He's not claiming to have "figured it all out" E.g. "At the end of the day, most of what is said about the formation of Jesus tradition is based on a priori assumptions, circumstantial evidence, inference, hypothesis, analogy, conjecture, and sheer guesswork. We will never arrive at a foolproof theory of how the Jesus tradition was handled and developed into the canonical gospels..." (p.66/67)

[toejam]

He loves Papias as evidence for the reliability of oral traditions... Yet I'm sure he doesn't believe half the stuff that Papias said about Judas!