Craig Evans - Who Created Christianity?: Fresh Approaches to the Relationship Between Paul and Jesus

I would like to thank the editors for inviting me to write a foreword for this book, which has brought together such a fine group of scholars to work on a topic that has been very close to my heart for many years.

I suppose that my interest in the Paul and Jesus question could be traced back to the influence of my father, John Wenham. He was probably best known for his introduction to New Testament Greek, The Elements of New Testament Greek (1965), but his main interest was summed up in his Christ and the Bible (1972). He was committed to following up fearlessly and rigorously the historical and ethical issues that are thrown up by following Jesus own high view of Scripture. This commitment took him in all sorts of directions, including to a re-examination of questions to do with Gospel origins. Among other things, he dared to ask skeptical questions about what was then one of the surest results of criticism, i.e., the Two Source hypothesis. He was impressed with the case for Matthean priority as propounded by scholars such as H. G. Jameson, John Chapman, and William Farmer. Like Farmer, he believed that scholars had got locked into a hypothesis that became (and remains) overwhelmingly fashionable but was rarely critically examined. Much of his thinking appeared in his Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke (1991).

When I started doctoral study at Manchester University in 1967, I thought that attempting a fresh and independent review of the Synoptic Problem could make a good thesis topic. I had studied previously at Cambridge University, sitting at the feet of Professors Charlie Moule and Dennis Nineham, who represented wonderfully different approaches to the Gospels; and I was supervised by Geoffrey Styler, one of whose main contributions to scholarship was a good article defending the Two Source hypothesis. At Manchester, I was supervised by Professor F. F. Bruce. I am not sure if he was very interested in the Synoptic Problem, though he was an amazing polymath and expert in most things! He accepted the Two Source hypothesis, but his heart was in historical and Pauline studies rather than in Gospel origins. He came into New Testament studies from the study of ancient history, and he was struck by the contrast between the skeptical approaches of many New Testament scholars in relation to biblical history and the much more open and positive perspectives of classical historians.

Bruces major contribution to my research was first and foremost to get me to narrow my research down to one particular passage, instead of hoping to solve the whole Synoptic Problem. This led to my thesis on The Composition of Mark 4:134, in which I compare the Matthean and Lukan chapters. I found a number of ways in which Marks version seemed secondary to Matthew in particular (hence my article on the interpretation of the parable of the sower subsequently published in NTS in 1974). Professor Bruce commented that at the end of my research, he was perhaps even more persuaded of Markan priority than when I started! Quite a tribute to my thesis from such a great and gracious scholar! My own thinking has moved on since that time, but what I continue to be persuaded about is that in the parables discourse and many other passages, Matthew and sometimes Luke have older versions of the traditions than Mark.

This was reinforced when after some years of teaching in India, I returned to research with the Gospels Research Project at Tyndale House in Cambridge, and I turned my attention to study of Mark 13 and parallels. The main findings of the research were published as The Rediscovery of Jesus Eschatological Discourse (1984), in which I argued that, although there was probably some interdependence between the three synoptic evangelists, they all also knew and drew independently on a common pre-synoptic form of Jesus discourse. It was a little like a jigsaw with each evangelist putting in some of the pieces; one curious but fun example is that we find Luke recording Peters question to Jesus question: Do you say this [parable] to us or to all? (Luke 12:41) and Mark recording Jesus answer: What I say to you I say to all, keep awake (Mark 13:37). A silly idea, or actually a serious possibility that they have been influenced by a common oral tradition?