The Eyewitnesses in their Own Words: Testing Richard Bauckham’s Model Using Verifiable Quotations

Abstract

In his influential Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham claims that eyewitnesses to events in Jesus’ life minimized changes to Jesus sayings by establishing a culture of formal control in oral performance, a culture reflected in the gospels and Acts. This study tests Bauckham’s hypothesis using verifiable internal quotations, cases where a single text narrates the original speech act and its later direct quotation by the speaker or by another character. Most quotations modify the original statement, and eyewitnesses paraphrase roughly as often as others. Whatever the historical character of the eyewitnesses actually was, they are not portrayed as the careful reciters of Jesus’ words that Bauckham’s model requires.