Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods

Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods. By Darrell L. Bock. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic; Leicester: Apollos, 2002, 230 pp., $18.99 paper.

Darrell Bock, Research Professor in New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, has established himself as the premier American evangelical Lukan scholar, with three commentaries on Luke's Gospel and a major one in the works on Acts. It is natural, therefore, for him to expand his focus to all of the Gospels. This is the first of two volumes which together will create an admirable pair of textbooks covering most everything a seminary-level, semester-long course on the four Gospels would want to introduce. Indeed, these volumes have emerged out of Bock's many years of teaching the material in the classroom. This is the smaller, introductory book, broken into two main parts: "Jesus in His Cultural Context" and "Methods for Studying the Gospels." The second, larger work, which should have appeared by the time this review is published, is Jesus according to Scripture (also with Baker Academic and Apollos), which introduces each of the four Gospels in more detail and then offers a commentary on a harmony of the Synoptics, followed by a commentary on John.

A substantial introductory chapter in Bock's first volume deals with the primary literature generating our knowledge of relevant backgrounds. In chronological order, Bock discusses Jewish sources predating or contemporary with Jesus (the OT, apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, and Josephus), the four canonical Gospels (with brief overviews of their key themes, outlines, and circumstances of composition), and sources that postdate Jesus (esp. the Midrashim, Mishnah, and Talmud).

Part 1 contains three quite different types of material not normally grouped together. The first chapter treats in detail the nonbiblical literary evidence for Jesus, conclusively disproving the recurring claims that we know nothing (or next to nothing) about Jesus from ancient non-Christian sources. The second chapter discusses the issues involved in reconstructing key dates for Jesus' life, also with greater care and detail than introductory textbooks usually provide. Chapters 3 and 4 offer more what one has come to expect in such introductory texts-a survey of the primary political developments of the intertestamental period through the end of Pilate's reign in Judea, followed by "sociocultural history," which somewhat creatively subsumes the discussion of religious developments and sects under a larger treatment of the culture of Jesus' world.

Part 2 more obviously hangs together. After an initial chapter on the three quests of the historical Jesus, Bock devotes successive chapters to historical, source, form, redaction, tradition, and narrative criticism. A unique feature of the first several of these is Bock's interaction with the tiny minority of evangelicals who dismiss these methods completely out of hand (well summarized in Thomas's and Parnell's Jesus Crisis), providing a courteous but convincing critique. Under tradition criticism, Bock deals exclusively with the "criteria of authenticity" of Gospels research, culminating with Wright's new double similarity and dissimilarity criterion. Narrative and genre criticism are the only branches of current literary criticism treated in the final chapter, but these are doubtless the two most important.

Overall, Bock's work is exceedingly well done. Time and again I found myself agreeing exactly with his takes on controversial issues and his choice of material to include on less debated topics. Indeed, there will be little to choose from between his combined two-volume package and my Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (Nashville: Broadman & Holman; Leicester: IVP, 1997), except that those who want greater detail five years more up-to-date should choose Bock and those who favor brevity or who wish to have time to supplement with material from different perspectives should choose me! And, of course, the sequence of our treatments varies noticeably.

There are a few questions, however, that I would pose of Bock's book. Why is the common, conservative dating of Luke to ca. 62, based on the abrupt ending of Acts suggesting that Luke was writing while Paul was still awaiting the results of his appeal to the emperor, not mentioned? Why is a paragraph entitled "Non-Jewish Sources" included under the subheading "Jewish Sources That Postdate the Time of Jesus"? Why is the treatment of the testimony of Thallus and Lucian to Jesus labeled "Thallus and Peregrinus" (one an author; the other, a fictitious name for a parody of Jesus)? Why are minor, debatable references in the Talmud to Christ treated while nothing appears on the specific mention of Jesus by name along with five of his disciples in a portion of b. Sanh. 43a? (A footnote calls this reference too problematic, but it is scarcely as problematic as texts that use no names at all and may not even be referring to Jesus.)