thoughts on bauckham's jesus and the eyewitnesses

I finished Bauckham's book a bit ago and I've been mulling it over in my mind off and on since. There's much that I like about it, but there are some things that I'm not entirely convinced by.

First, the things I like:

• The emphasis on eyewitness testimony as the foundation of the Gospel traditions. I've always been struck by the "witness/eyewitness" motif used in significant ways in early Christian writings, especially in Luke, John, Acts, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, 1 John, Revelation, Papias, and the like. Now, the motif is not used in exactly the same way in all these writings, but in several of them it claims to reflect the eyewitness testimony of those who participated in Jesus' public career and heard him teach. On this, I was actually a little surprised that Hebrews didn't get more attention by Bauckham: Hebrews 2:3 claims that "this salvation was first spoken by the Lord and attested to us by those who heard him," and in subsequent chapters one sees a few interesting Synoptic-like "historical Jesus" tidbits (e.g. 2:18; 4:15; 5:7-9--The Temptation and Gethsemane, the beginning and end of Jesus' public career?).
• The implications of acknowledging this for doing Gospels research. I do think Bauckham's work is the biggest nail yet in the coffin of a traditional form-critical approach to the Gospel traditions. One will no longer be able to advocate an "anonymous community creativity" any longer without seriously grappling with this book. I also appreciate that Bauckham has not proposed a simple one-to-one correspondence between the eyewitness tradents and the final form of the Gospels: the Gospels derive from their eyewitness sources, but at least Matthew and Luke are not solely dependent on single eyewitnesses, and all four Gospels have been shaped to reflect a particular angle on Jesus' life and teachings. Source and redaction criticism still have a significant role to play in understanding the construction and theology of the Gospels.
• The work done interpreting Papias and on names in the Gospels. These were, for me, the most fascinating and freshest parts of Bauckham's book. At this point I find Bauckham's work on both these counts generally convincing: especially Papias' historiographical purposes, his desire for living testimony (not simply oral tradition) over against written accounts, and the named, non-public persons in the Gospels as eyewitness sources for Gospel traditions.

But there were some areas which failed to convince:

• The indication of the Gospels' eyewitness sources by the use of inclusio. This is one idea that I'll have to mull over some more, but at this point I'm not entirely convinced. [Update: Rick Brannan nicely sums up one of my questions on this: "As regards Mark, if his main source is Peter, what is the likelihood that the first and last testimony he uses are Peter's?"]
• John the Elder as the "beloved disciple" and author of the Gospel of John. Bauckham has put together an impressive case for this, probably as good as it could be. Still, I'm not convinced. I do think Bauckham has rightly identified the "beloved disciple" as a real historical person and as the eyewitness source of the Gospel's material, but at this point I'm not convinced that John the Elder makes better sense than some other options.
• The "he, we, and I" of John 21:20-25. I'm not convinced by Bauckham's claim that these all actually mean "I" in reference to the "beloved disciple" as first-person author of the Gospel as we have it. I'll gladly concede that "we" and "I" can be used interchangeably in a rhetorical fashion to mean "I" (I think this explains the phenomenon in Hebrews, for example). And I'll even concede that first-person narrative accounts may use "he" for the author and shift to a first-person "I" in a conclusion or some such. But to my mind this doesn't adequately explain what we see in this passage in John: "This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true." This seems to create a distinction, a separation of person, between the "we" and the "he." I understand that in Bauckham's theory the author is making a transition between the third-person narrative and the first-person authorial claim, but any of the following would seem more natural to me: "This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and I know that my testimony is true"; "This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that our testimony is true"; or "This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and he knows that his testimony is true," following up with the first-person statement in 21:25. On this last option, it is worth noting that this is precisely the way the claim is made in 19:35, remaining consistently in the third person. The bottom line: I think the claim of 21:24 is that the "beloved disciple" is the eyewitness source and originating author of the Gospel's material, which has been edited into its final form by an individual or group following the death of the "beloved disciple," a death which was disconcerting for people who had believed that the "beloved disciple" would remain alive until Jesus' return (cf. 21:21-23).

In summary, you could say I am generally convinced by Bauckham's general thesis, but not particularly convinced by some particular ideas.