In Quest of Jesus, a Guidebook

Written by W. Barnes Tatum Reviewed By Gervais Angel

‘Like us, the Gospel writers tended to make Jesus over in their own likenesses’ (p. 22). The same observation applies to Tatum in this primer. His format—simple language, a mixture of thematic and historical description of basic issues in the study of the Gospels, lucid and helpful diagrams, brief accounts of selected works of scholarship and occasional summaries of his arguments—is ideal for the novice. Although written for the general reader, not for the professional scholar, the book will help someone embarking on serious study of the gospels who wants to survey the subject before an under-graduate course in theology begins or who wants to see the wood of an essay topic before examining the trees in detailed literature.

Tatum covers a large area in a small space. Short sketches are given of ancient attestations to gospel origins, of source-, form-and redaction-criticism and of the synoptic (treated more or less as one) and Johannine portraits of Jesus. He describes historical searches for Jesus from Tatian and Calvin down to Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth, giving summaries of writers like Shirley Jackson Case and S. G. F. Brandon. His final section selects topics—Resurrection and Virgin Birth, Christology, Kingdom Preaching, Ethics, Parables, Miracles and Passion Narratives. To cover so many topics in so short a space is remarkable. But this achievement limits the value of the book. For serious students it introduces topics and writers which must be researched elsewhere, in more detailed works, if they are to evaluate them responsibly. The format is useful for starters; the main course must be derived elsewhere.

His content is extremely disappointing. First published in 1982, the text takes little account of scholarship since 1975. No account is given of recent work (e.g. Drury) on appreciating the gospels as literature, on social forces at work in Jesus’ ministry (e.g. Theissen) and the Jewish behaviour of gospel writers (e.g. Gundry). Further, his critical stance is out of date. In his ‘contemporary view of Gospel origins’ he claims that all traditions about Jesus had to be translated from an Aramaic original into Greek, he commits the reader to Markan priority as something ‘evident’, and, although he distinguishes the four gospels by their portraits of Jesus, he does not consider the distinct literary genres of the four. Jesus is a common theme—but is not the theme treated differently by each writer?


Gervais Angel

Trinity College, Bristol