Congratulations to Richard Bauckham, who has been awarded the Michael Ramsey Prize 2009 for his book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
The winning book — selected from a strong shortlist including, amongst others, Richard Burridge’s Imitating Jesus — was announced yesterday, Thursday May 28th 2009, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, at an awards ceremony held at the Guardian Hay Festival:
Richard Bauckham in his book ‘Jesus and the Eyewitnesses’ had, in the words of one of the judges, ‘Placed something of a bomb under a good deal of New Testament scholarship’. His book shows why we are right to have confidence in the testimony of those who personally witnessed the life of Jesus as recorded in the gospels.
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
Richard Bauckham
ISBN 9780802863904 (0802863906)
Eerdmans/Alban Books, 2006 (538pp)
£14.99
Category: Doctrine and Theology
Subcategory: New Testament
Reviewed by: Phil Groom
Who, exactly, wrote the Gospels? How did the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John reach their present form? Was it through a long sequence of oral transmission, of telling and retelling the Jesus stories in the early church, refining, editing and subtly — or not so subtly — changing them until they became the stories that are now so familiar? Or can we, in fact, trace them back to eyewitness accounts — to Jesus’ actual followers and disciples? Are we, to put it bluntly, dealing with fact or fiction? With genuine history or with history radically reinterpreted through the eyes of faith? How many layers do we need to dig away to find the truth, the real Jesus?
Fantastic news! Richard was my MPhil supervisor 20 years ago in Manchester. Not only does he have a brain the size of a planet, he is a humble and godly man.