Southern Baptist Theology in the Late Twentieth Century
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 54, No. 2 – Spring 2012
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By Craig S. Keener. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. 831 + xxxviii pages. Hardback, $60.00.
Craig Keener, professor of New Testament at Palmer Theological Seminary, has written an excellent and helpful addition to what has become a field crowded with numerous writings in the last two decades: historical Jesus research. Interestingly, the book prologue is unusually frank. Keener admits he wrote this volume to impact this field because many scholars have otherwise ignored what he has written on this subject in his commentaries (xxviii–xxix). Keener’s commentaries on John (two volumes) and Matthew are great, but the field of historical Jesus research is so crowded with books that scholars tend to ignore what is written in commentaries.
Keener’s work has three sections. In the first section he gives a brief overview of historical Jesus research in order to show where his view fits (46), which is a refined and more conservative view of E.P. Sanders, under whom Keener studied. He views Jesus as an eschatological prophet (35, 41, 43–46). As do most New Testament scholars today (but not this reviewer), Keener believes in the Two Source Theory of Gospel origins, which includes Markan priority and the existence and use of the Q document (61, 71, 74, 127, 131–33, 236, 281).
It is the second section of the book that offers the best contribution to historical Jesus research. Here Keener gives valuable insight of Gospel genre in comparison to genre in Greco-Roman literature—primarily in biography and historiography. Four strengths are evident. First, although he makes distinctions between modern and ancient biographies as well as historiographies, he also demonstrates helpful similarities (81–84, 94–96, 109–10). Second, citing numerous historical examples, Keener proves that ancient biographers and historiographers were much more concerned with writing accurate historical details than modern Bible critics give them credit (79–81, 96–98, 123). Third, he proves that ancient historiographers valued eyewitness information as the most valuable source and understood that recent sources (such as what the canonical Gospel writers had—mere decades after the events), were much more reliable than later sources (102–05). This research is invaluable for answering Bible critics who claim that the Gospel writers disregarded actual historical events and simply created events for unprovenanced sayings of Jesus. Keener continually contends that the ancient biographer and historiographer rarely invented fictitious events because that practice brought scorn from both peers and patrons (97, 100–02). Fourth, Keener notes the value of and the ancient expectation that an historian would write from a certain perspective (it is impossible not to have any biases), but the writers still sought to be objective in citing historical events (118).
The third section of the book is the application section: going through the Gospels to test what is historically accurate, but this is mostly a thematic treatment. Although very good, it is simply too short. Keener should have created this section as a separate volume, similarly to what Darrell Bock did in his excellent informal trilogy that culminated with Jesus according to Scripture.
Why should a conservative Christian be interested in historical Jesus research? First, it is important for conservative Christian scholars to participate in this scholarly debate about how accurate the four canonical Gospels are in depicting the true, historical Jesus. Opinions vary from the Gospels being totally accurate (the most conservative view) to mostly inaccurate (the most liberal view), with a range of views in between. Second, it is important for non scholarly conservative Christians to be familiar with this scholarly conversation because one can glean much useful apologetic material to use when sharing with a skeptic about the Bible.
Although easy to understand, Keener’s book adds to what can be a very technical and sometimes tedious field, so this book is most valuable to the scholar or student in the field of historical Jesus Research. So, the pastor, teacher, or student looking for insightful information from the Gospels would be better served by using Keener’s commentaries on Matthew or John rather than this book.
Since the subject matter is so specialized, the decision to use endnotes (209 pages worth) rather than footnotes for this volume is quite puzzling. Normally publishers use footnotes for scholarly, technical works like this book because readers of these books want to read the numerous footnotes. Correspondingly, publishers use endnotes when a book has a popular audience because non-technical readers will be put off by footnotes. So, the scholarly reader must flip back and forth in this book several times every page or simply forego reading footnotes along with the text— neither one a good choice.
The conclusion is surprisingly short (barely half of a page) for a book this size, but the last sentence sums up well the tenor and the direction of the book: “Although scholars may differ with this or that aspect of the portrayal, I believe on the whole there is much that we can know about Jesus historically, and that the first-century Gospels preserved by the church remain by far the best source for this information” (349).
