New book from Bauckham

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I rarely get to read books not directly touching on my own area of expertise (the reception of the oeuvre of Chuck Norris in contemporary South East Asia) but a couple of long plane journeys, with the mandatory delays etc, gave me a chance to work through Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans).  It is a stellar piece of historical scholarship.  I know next to nothing about contemporary biblical studies, but this is historical method at its best, pursued to an exacting standard.  The best history is like a detective novel -- you take an artefact and you extrapolate to the world which produced it.  This is what Bauckham does here, using a multi-disciplinary approach to address the issue of how the gospels came to be written.  Not all will agree with all of his conclusions, but the work is one of the best pieces of historical writing I have read in many years.  And the chapters on the passion narrative in Mark and John's gospel as eyewitness testimony are worth the price of the book.

My basic attitude to Bauckham has always been that, agree or disagree with him, you cannot help but benefit from reading him; and that view is confirmed once again.