Trust the Gospels with confidence?

Ever since the Enlightenment a stream of critical scholarship has declared it impossible. It was often argued that the gospels reflected the needs of the early church, rather than the actual events which happened during Jesus' lifetime. Prof Richard Bauckam (whom I had the privilege of meeting last week!) offers a fresh and significant alternative to that status quo. In his groundbreaking book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, which earned him the Michael Ramsey Prize in 2009, Bauckham makes a significant case for the reliability of the Gospel accounts of Jesus based on new research relating to among others the modern study of memory, especially in cognitive psychology. Check out the YouTube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL01T4mVBf8

Google books offer a relatively extensive exerpt from the book. It is free:

http://books.google.com/books?id=ybOa_w8PCcQC&dq=jesus+and+the+eyewitnesses&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=pjRnS7m3B8eQjAfurdCWBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

SENIOR NEW TESTAMENT SEMINAR - CAMBRIDGE, Lent Term 2010

Quite an impressive line-up for Lent here in Cambridge. I managed to attend the first two and hope to attend most of the others too.

SENIOR NEW TESTAMENT SEMINAR, Lent Term 2010

19 January The Quest for the Historical Jesus and Jewish-Christian Dialogue
Professor Donald Hagner (Fuller Theological Seminary)

26 January Convlict and Convergence: Interpreting Christian Origins
Professor Judith Lieu - Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity, Inaugural
Lecture (Robinson College)

2 February Marcion and the Synoptic Gospels
Professor Judith Lieu (Robinson College)

16 February Luke and the Historical Paul
Dr Michael B. Thompson (Ridley Hall)

2 March 'Race', 'Nation', 'People': Ethnic Identity-Construction in 1 Peter 2.9
Professor David Horrell (University of Exeter)

My first post!

This is my very first post! My aim with this blog is to provide useful information for postgraduate and particularly PhD students in New Testament and Patristics studies.

What will make this blog unique? I will report on events, discussions and insights from scholars in and around Cambridge - UK; Nijmegen - the Netherlands; and at some stage also from two universities in Germany (to be announced later).

To give you a taster, I have recently had interesting conversations in Cambridge with prof Donald Hagner (emeritus from Fuller in the USA), prof Leander Keck (emeritus from Yale in the USA) and prof Richard Bauckham (emeritus from St Andrews in Scotland). I also attended the inaugural lecture of prof Judith Lieu at Cambridge University. Exciting stuff!

At the moment, I'm doing research at Tyndale House in Cambridge in preparation for a PhD which I hope to start sometime later this year. My research interest is particularly focused on resurrection in 1 Corinthians.

Will be nice to meet some new friends with mutual interests.

To find out more about me, you're welcome to look at my profile.