The Bible
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 50, No. 1 – Fall 2007
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By James D.G. Dunn. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005. 136 pages. Softcover, $15.00.
To a conservative reader who is familiar with the excesses and problems of the new perspective on Paul brought by E.P. Sanders, Dunn’s calling for a new perspective on Jesus could have unwelcome connotations. However, there is no need for fear and trepidation, for Dunn brings a welcome and long-needed correction not only to the quests for the historical Jesus in particular, but to numerous errors in handling the Synoptic Problem and New Testament higher criticism for the last two hundred years.
Dunn is the Emeritus Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham. A prolific writer and expert in many New Testament subjects, Dunn wrote Jesus Remembered in 2003, and this present small volume is a summarization of that much larger volume as well as a mov- ing forward of some of its points (7–8). Dunn delivered parts of the three chapters and appendix in this book in a variety of scholarly lectures presented from 1999–2004 (7).
The three major failures of the previous quests for the historical Jesus, according to Dunn, are that its proponents “started from the wrong place, began with the wrong assumptions, and viewed the relevant data from the wrong perspective” (57). From a neophyte or lightweight theologian, these claims might sound presumptuous or pejorative, but Dunn is a major scholar. He presents solid evidence to justify his claims, and he offers thoughtful correctives for each of these excesses. Dunn devotes a chapter to suggesting how to right each of these errors: (1) realize Jesus’ disciples responded to him by faith from the beginning of his ministry— long before their post-Easter insights, so one does not need to strip away reflections of faith in the Gospels (15–34); (2) recognize the important oral stage of performance and transmission of Jesus stories, so as not to get bogged down in examining a written stage only (35–56); and (3) seek the characteristic Jesus (what the Gospels agree were his characteristics) rather than the distinct Jesus (only searching for obscure elements in the Gospels) (57–78). All of these responses are needed correctives, and Dunn clearly and compellingly sets them forth.
Demonstrating a lucid writing style with good examples (44–45, n. 31, 68, 79–81) as well as helpful summaries and transitions (34, 53–54, 56–58, 77), Dunn’s book is both accessible to the novice and enlightening to the expert. Yet, although meant to be short, this book is too short. Much of the appendix—a presidential address by Dunn at the University of Durham—repeats chapter two, so it would have been more helpful to abridge it and add more material to the three main chapters of the book.
Dunn’s primary strength lies in his call for an acknowledgment and reassessment of an oral stage of transmission of Jesus material. Although Richard Bauckham, in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006, offered some need- ed nuances to Dunn’s theory of oral transmission, Dunn’s descriptions are helpful. Dunn explains and elaborates five important characteristics of oral tradition (46–51, 93–99); however, his fifth point about the fluidity and flexibility within oral transmission may be overstated and problematic (51–52), allowing for too much divergence. Bauckham offers a needed corrective to Dunn that not only the community exercised control over the oral transmission, but the individual eyewitnesses did as well (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 260–63).
Typical of many New Testament scholars, Dunn believes in the two- document hypothesis, Markan priority (103), and the Q hypothesis (110). Interestingly, he does not propose a Q document so much as oral and written Q material, which he says will never be fully delineable (122). In the end, this is more plausible than the hypothetical Q document. Dunn’s assertions reveal the need of a total reopening of the Synoptic Problem (see 112). This book, along with, Jesus Remembered, present important corrections in the field of Gospel studies.
