The argument of this hefty tome is strikingly radical and merits a much longer review than this one. Its author, the distinguished New Testament scholar, Richard Bauckham, argues that the Gospels ‘put us in close touch with the eyewitnesses of the history of Jesus’; and the evangelists present their work as based upon and incorporating the testimony of eyewitnesses. Their aim is not to supersede such testimony but to give it ‘a permanent literary vehicle’. In the case of John's Gospel, we have a document actually written by an idiosyncratic eyewitness, the elder John, not a member of the Twelve, but a follower of Jesus nevertheless. Understandably, it is precisely this author who pays so much attention to the significance of eyewitness testimony. ‘There is’, Bauckham notes, ‘no epistemological chasm between the eyewitness testimony and the theological significance of the events as the author develops it. Not being eyewitnesses themselves, the other Gospel writers are less theologically ambitious.’ Bauckham concedes that the writing of a Gospel was ‘significantly an interpretation’ but by writing their works the evangelists intended to preserve continuity with their eyewitness sources, individuals who themselves necessarily sought in their own testimony to combine ‘the empirically observable with the perceived significance of the events’ which they witnessed. ‘They were not just reminiscing but telling stories of significance.’

Bauckham's argument is not entirely without precedent. It owes much to B. Gerhardsson, particularly in its detailed critique of the Form critics, who appear as the book's bugbear, and to Samuel Byrskog, whose Story as history: history as story (2000) brought the whole question of eyewitnesses once again to the centre of Gospel discussion. But it seeks to take the arguments of these and others further through a reexamination both of the Gospels, and the early patristic sources which have often been deemed as misleading in what they assert about the origins of the Gospels; and by an intriguing and subtle attempt to make use of recent work on memory better to display the fact that the Gospels can legitimately be seen to bear the imprint of eyewitness testimony. Many of the opinions expressed will seem eccentric to students of the Gospels; named individuals in the Gospel were often eyewitnesses to the events they are purported to have taken part in and the Gospels witness to what he calls an inclusio of witness whereby in subtle ways we can see how the major eyewitnesses of the evangelists appear at the beginning and the end of their texts; Peter was a major source of Mark's Gospel and so Papias's testimony, subjected to detailed and stimulating analysis by Bauckham, is largely right; variations in the Gospel accounts can in general be accounted for without reference to the kinds of arguments Form and redaction critics have put forward; the forms in which stories are often preserved need not be explained by reference to the very precise contexts in which they arose but rather by reference to the naturally schematising character of the memory; John's Gospel is, as stated above, the only Gospel to be written directly by an eyewitness and its very boldness of vision derives precisely from the fact of its origins in the pen of an eyewitness. One could go on.

This book, which in many ways reflects a general shift in Gospel studies to a more conservative view of their content, could be described as conservative scholarship at its best in that in an often stimulating and never dull way it dares to reconsider ancient positions which in many ways had been left for dead by the scholarly world, and it does so with subtlety and intellectual sophistication (no more so than in its author's discussion of the whole issue of memory and testimony). Many questions, of course, emerge. Why, if Bauckham is right about the importance of eyewitness in the writing of the Gospels, did Matthew and Luke feel it necessary to copy Mark? Because it was known that Mark's source was Peter? Why are there variations between different accounts of the same important events, notably, for instance, the words of Jesus at the Last Supper? Has Bauckham not underestimated the importance of context in the ways in which tradition is preserved and changed? Can one really account for the strikingly distinctive voice of John's Gospel by reference to the eyewitness who has created it? While it may be acceptable to talk about the role of deferred memory in the interpretation of the facts of Jesus, not least in an account of the origins of John's Gospel, can this really explain the factual differences between John and the Synoptics? And does not reference to testimony, especially where this involves the Gospel of John, raise more questions than it in fact answers? While it may be true that radical suspicion of testimony ‘is a kind of epistemological suicide’, what precisely is the workable alternative? Bauckham, reflecting the language of the critical realists, calls for a more trusting approach to the text and for an openness to the exceptionality of the event to which testimony is given. But that is precisely the problem – what does it mean to be open to exceptionality while at the same time being critically aware, especially when the presentation of that exceptionality must owe something to deferred memory, a point which again looms largest in consideration of John's Gospel?

This is a remarkable book, at once provocative and scholarly. It should stimulate debate in a whole variety of significant areas, and if it succeeds in doing that, it will have succeeded greatly.