Richard Bauckham

This momentous book argues that the four Gospels are closely based on the eyewitness testimony of those who personally knew Jesus. Noted New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham challenges the prevailing assumption that the accounts of Jesus circulated as anonymous community traditions, asserting instead that they were transmitted in the names of the original eyewitness. To drive home this controversial point, Bauckham draws on internal literary evidence, the use of personal names in first-century Jewish Palestine, and recent developments in the understanding of oral tradition. "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" also taps into the rich resources of modern study of memory, especially in cognitive psychology, refuting the conclusions of the form critics and calling New Testament scholarship to make a clean break with this long-dominant tradition. Finally, Bauckham challenges readers to end the classic division between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith, proposing instead the Jesus of testimony as presented by the Gospels. Sure to ignite heated debate on the precise character of the testimony about Jesus, "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" is a groundbreaking work that will be valued by scholars, students, and all who seek to understand the origins of the Gospels.

The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

The Book of Revelation is a work of profound theology. But its literary form makes it impenetrable to many modern readers and open to all kinds of misinterpretations. Richard Bauckham explains how the book's imagery conveyed meaning in its original context and how the book's theology is inseparable from its literary structure and composition. Revelation is seen to offer not an esoteric and encoded forecast of historical events but rather a theocentric vision of the coming of God's universal kingdom, contextualised in the late first-century world dominated by Roman power and ideology. It calls on Christians to confront the political idolatries of the time and to participate in God's purpose of gathering all the nations into his kingdom. Once Revelation is properly grounded in its original context it is seen to transcend that context and speak to the contemporary church. This study concludes by highlighting Revelation's continuing relevance for today.

The Theology of the Book of Revelation

A concise, engaging introduction to the Bible's ecological vision

Rediscovering the Community of Creation

Bible and Ecology

Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (New Testament Studies)

The Gospels for All Christians

Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels

Gospel Women

How to Read the Bible Politically

The Bible in Politics

Christian Witness in a Postmodern World

Bible and Mission

Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John

The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple

God Crucified 

Bauckham shows that Jesus was devoted to the God of Israel, with a special focus on God's fatherly love and compassion, and like every Jewish teacher he expounded the Torah, but did so in his own distinctive way.

Jesus: A Very Short Introduction

Richard Bauckham offers a fresh approach to the relationship between humanity and creation and our responsibility before God to steward wisely. The Bible offers fresh and often innovative approaches to a wide range of the issues that arise in relating the Bible and Christian theology to the ecological concerns of our contemporary world. Clear, biblical teaching on ecology Encourages readers to a more responsible relationship to the planet Those interested in ecology and Christianity in tandem Anyone concerned with a greener world. It aims to show that the subject than is commonly supposed. While focusing especially on biblical material, it also engages Francis of Assisi, modern nature poetry, Matthew Fox and the history of interpretation.

Living with Other Creatures: Green Exegesis and Theology

Trevor A. Hart

Trevor Hart

The hopes by which the modern West has lived are widely understood to have failed. At the outset of the third millennium, we see the ideology of historical progress for what it is -- a myth that can no longer provide humanity with grounds for true hope. In Hope against Hope Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart present a way forward -- through a radical faith in a global future that is in God's hands. Using the present failure of secular hope as the context for a renewal of the Christian vision for the future, Bauckham and Hart seek to re-source Christian hope from its rich heritage of biblical promises and their interpretation in the Christian tradition. In a fresh and skillful way they explore the major images of eschatology -- the Antichrist, the millennium, the last judgment, the kingdom of God, and others -- proposing the category of imagination as the key to understanding their significance today. The authors insist throughout on the cosmic scope of Christian eschatology, writing of God's future not just for human individuals but for the whole creation, and they explore the relevance of such an eschatology for Christian living in the present. A thoroughly interdisciplinary work that integrates biblical study, systematic theology, and astute analysis of contemporary Western culture, Hope against Hope is unique in offering a heartening look at the future from the perspective of life today.

Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium

Hope Against Hope

Internationally respected scholar Richard Bauckham offers a brief, engaging study of divine revelation in Scripture. He probes the deep meaning of well-known moments in the biblical story in order to address the key question the Bible is designed to answer: Who is God? Accessible for laypeople and important to scholars, this volume begins by exploring three key events in the Bible in which God is revealed: Jacob's dream at Bethel (the revelation of the divine presence), Moses at the burning bush (the revelation of the divine Name), and Moses on Mount Sinai (the revelation of the divine character). From there, Bauckham shows how the New Testament builds on these Old Testament passages by exploring three revelatory events in Mark's Gospel, events that reveal the Trinity: Jesus's baptism, transfiguration, and crucifixion.

Key Moments of Biblical Revelation

Who Is God?

James Davila

Alex Panayotov

This work stands among the most important publications in biblical studies over the past twenty-five years. Richard Bauckham, James Davila, and Alexander Panayotov’s new two-volume collection of Old Testament pseudepigrapha contains many previously unpublished and newly translated texts, complementing James Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and other earlier collections. Including virtually all known surviving pseudepigrapha written before the rise of Islam, this volume, among other things, presents the sacred legends and spiritual reflections of numerous long-dead authors whose works were lost, neglected, or suppressed for many centuries. Excellent English translations along with authoritative yet accessible introductions bring those ancient documents to life for readers today.

More Noncanonical Scriptures

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha

A crucial responsibility for Christian interpreters of Scripture today, Richard Bauckham insists, is to seek to understand our contemporary context and to explore the Bible's relevance to it in ways that reflect serious critical engagement with that context. In The Bible in the Contemporary World Bauckham models how this task can be carried out. Bauckham calls for our reading of Scripture to lead us into increased engagement with the important issues of today's world, including globalization, environmental degradation, and widespread poverty. He works to bring biblical texts into relationship with these contemporary realities by means of the Bible's metanarrative of God and the world, in which God's purpose takes effect in the salvation and fulfilment of the world as his cherished creation.

Exploring texts and contexts - then and now

The Bible in the Contemporary World

The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship.

Jude, 2 Peter

This is a collection of twenty-four essays by Richard Bauckham first published between 1976 and 2008, some of which have been updated for this volume. Many aspects of the literature and thought of early Judaism are covered, including life after death, the provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, the Jewish apocalypses, the book of Tobit, the Horarium of Adam, and the Contra Apionem of Josephus. There are discussions of 'the parting of the ways' between early Judaism and early Christianity and of the relevance of early Jewish literature for the study of the New Testament. Other essays throw light on specific aspects or texts of early Christianity by relating them to their early Jewish context. These include studies of the delay of the parousia, the restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts, and the use of Latin names by Paul and other Jews in the early Christian movement. The essays in this volume result from the author's conviction, throughout his career, that the New Testament texts can only be understood adequately through wide-ranging and detailed study of the Judaism of the late Second Temple period.

Collected Essays I

The Jewish World Around the New Testament

Richard Bauckham explores the historical and literary contexts of the Epistle of James, discussing the significance of James as the brother of Jesus and leader of the early Jerusalem church. He gives special attention to the aphorisms which encapsulate James' wisdom, and to the way that James' teaching closely resembles that of Jesus.

James

Recent discussion of the interpretation of New Testament Christology has been closely linked with debate about the nature of Jewish monotheism in the period.This book argues that once Judaism's perception of the uniqueness of God is correctly understood, it becomes clear that the first Christians simply included Jesus in the unique identity of the God of Israel. According to Richard Bauckham, the earliest Christology was already the highest Christology, a fully divine Christology entirely compatible with the Jewish monotheistic understanding of God. In place of the misleading categories of "functional" and "ontic" Christology, he argues that New Testament Christology is best viewed as a Christology of "divine identity." For such a Christology, the exalted christ and the earthly, crucified Jesus both belong to the unique identity of God. This approach, in turn, has important consequences for the New Testament's understanding of God. The divine identity -- who God truly is -- is to be seen in Jesus' humiliation, suffering, and death as well as in his heavenly glory. Originating as the prestigious 1996 Didsbury Lectures, "God Crucified makes a significant contribution to biblical studies of interest to Jews and Christians alike.

Richard Bauckham

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