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Has your study of eyewitnesses and tradition affected your confidence in the historical accuracy of the New Testament? Are critical scholars too quick to dismiss the "reporting" in Gospel accounts?

Yes, it certainly has! Most Gospel scholars, including some conservative ones, have been locked into a picture of how Gospel traditions reached Gospel writers that we owe to form critics at the beginning of the last century. I think the form critics were wrong in almost every respect, and we need a new model. I propose one in which the Gospels were much closer to the eyewitnesses and the way the eyewitnesses told their stories than has been envisaged by the dominant scholarly tradition. My proposals need to be debated, and some of my arguments may be proven wrong. We shall see. But that we need a new model is certain.

How would the new model you're proposing affect average believers' devotional lives? Would it make any real difference for them?

The most important point is we can be confident that in the Gospels we find the real Jesus. We don't have to try to get behind the Gospels to "the historical Jesus," as the Jesus Seminar tells us we must. Instead, we can find in the Gospels "the Jesus of testimony," Jesus as he was understood by those in the best position to know him.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

It won Christianity Today's 2007 book award in the Biblical Studies category.

Richard Bauckham's articles on other aspects of the New Testament include "Paul's Christology of Divine Identity," "The Relatives of Jesus," "For Whom Were the Gospels Written," "Weakness—Paul's and Ours," "Only the Suffering God Can help'. Divine Passibility in Modern Theology," and "Universalism: A Historical Survey."

Gary Burge is professor of New Testament at Wheaton College & Graduate School.

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June (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51