Richard Burridge, Four Gospels, One Jesus

Steve Walton: Richard Burridge, Four Gospels, One Jesus? Classic edition launch/page 1

Richard Burridge, Four Gospels, One Jesus? Classic edition launch
King’s College London chapel, Tuesday 21 May 2013

It was 22 May 1995, and I was sitting in a room being interviewed for the post of Tutor in New Testament at St John’s College, Nottingham. Facing me was what, with hindsight, was an intimidating panel being asked what you mean by ‘hermeneutics’ by John Goldingay with Tony Thiselton who is ‘Mr Hermeneutics’ in the room is certainly intimidating! There was a moment in the interview when I was asked which recent scholarly NT book I’d read and appreciated, and I responded, a little hesitantly, to say that Richard Burridge’s book What are the Gospels?was the most stimulating and helpful thing I’d read recently. The hesitation was because there, on the panel, was Richard Burridge himself, and he had the grace to chuckle, I recall, when I mentioned his book.

Reading that key book was my first introduction to Richard’s writing skills, so when I discovered Four Gospels, One Jesus? it went straight onto the reading list as a key book for the course on the Gospels which I taught at St John’s (for I did get the job!). Reading it again in the last week has been like meeting an old friend and remembering what it was that drew you to them as a friend. It is a remarkable book, for it sits on the boundary of the academy and the church, and speaks and contributes very effectively in both directions—and it’s so readable that lay Christians can read it alongside scholars and students.

In this book Richard summarises his earlier What are the Gospels?, which, it may justly be said, caused a reassessment of the standard approaches to the Gospels which had reigned in the scholarly world for a few generations. Specifically, Richard’s background in Classics allowed him to study the Gospels alongside other ancient ‘lives’, and enabled him to argue cogently that the Gospels are of the same genre as those ‘lives’. This overturned the standard view that the Gospels were not biographies, a view that made the error of looking at the Gospels through the lens of modern biographies, rather than ancient ones. The major result of this study was, then, the astonishing claim that the Gospels are books about Jesus. This may sound like a statement of the blindingly obvious, but for many years previously the standard critical approaches to the Gospels treated them as resources for understanding the earliest churches, the transmission of stories about Jesus, the activities of the four evangelists just about anything apart from Jesus himself!

This sea change in scholarship is Richard’s major contribution to the scholarly world; he was not alone in making this argument Graham Stanton, of blessed memory, is another. Graham’s doctoral work, Jesus of Nazareth in New Testament Preaching, argued that the earliest believers did regard preserving memories of Jesus and his teaching as important, and Richard’s work built on this by offering a rigorous case that the Gospels were intended as books telling the story of Jesus, rather than being a coded version of early church history. It is noteworthy that Graham wrote a commendation of the first edition of this book, describing it as a book which would enable ‘[n]ovices and old-hands alike [to] read the gospels with new eyes.’

It was this approach that Richard then followed up with Four Gospels, One Jesus? In it, Richard applies his biographical understanding of the Gospels to reading the four Gospels, teasing out the four portraits of Jesus which are there. He shows great sensitivity to the writing of each of the evangelists in his study, and enables us to read the Gospels with fresh eyes. In place after place, as I re-read the book, I found myself nodding and agreeing, as well as frequently being reminded of insights from Richard’s work that I had long ago incorporated into my own teaching and writing.

Richard’s work was in the vanguard of the then-newer ‘literary’ and ‘narrative’ approaches to the Gospels now very much mainstream in scholarship. He reads the Gospels as unified narratives, seeking the themes, plot, and threads which run through each. Brilliantly, he uses the four classic living creatures associated with each Gospel as a lens through which he looks at each Gospel.

To take an example, when it comes to Luke’s Gospel, the ox is the classic picture of Luke, and Richard expounds Luke’s Gospel as the story of Jesus as the beast of burden who will ultimately be offered in sacrifice. The ox, which we moderns can think of as a ‘plodder’, was seen as a strong, powerful beast in the ancient world. Richard takes these characteristics and shows how they fit Luke’s portrait of Jesus. He sketches the way Luke’s introductory chapters look like the way ancient biographies introduced their subject’s family background, birth and childhood. Jesus, who will be the sacrificial ox, is brought to the Temple the place of sacrifice at eight days old, and appears there again at twelve years old, engaging with the teachers in an astonishing way. The hymns of the infancy narratives signal Jesus’ power and what his power will accomplish the strong ox will bring great change and reversal to many in Israel, and even bring blessing to Gentiles. Jesus, the bearer of burdens, is compassionate towards outsiders: tax collectors and sinners, Gentiles, women, people in poverty. Jesus, the sacrificial ox, has a deep spirituality, rooted in prayer, enabled by the Holy Spirit, and spilling over into praise and joy. Ultimately, he plods steadily, ox-like, towards Jerusalem, through Luke’s long central section, delivers a farewell speech which befits an ancient ‘life’, and even as he is taken to be crucified, shows compassion to the women of Jerusalem who weep over him. And, of course, it is to women that Jesus appears first at Easter and the final section draws the major threads of the Gospel together: joy, God’s plan, Jesus who is now the universal saviour, and who will pour out the powerful Spirit on his followers for their mission.

My time has gone: I hope I’ve managed to give you enough of a flavour of this superb book to encourage you to read (or re-read) it. Thank you, Richard, for the care and thought you put into this book: it’s a joy to see it available afresh for another generation!

Steve Walton
May 2013