Living witnesses

Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is full of intriguing information and innovative arguments. At least the arguments look innovative in the context of contemporary NT scholarship. In any other context, they look like common sense. Like this: “We [NT scholars] have become accustomed to working with models of oral tradition as it is passed down through the generations in traditional communities. We imagine the traditions passing through many minds and mouths before they reached the writers of the Gospels.” Even on the the dating accepted for the gospels “the period in questio is actually that of a relatively (for that period) long lifetime.”