I would call this book approachable rather than accessible, as it assumes a working knowledge of Greek (on which Wenham literally wrote the book, being the author of the influential Elements of New Testament Greek). However, even on the rather impressionistic basis of a rapid reading (skipping over much of the linguistic detail as beyond my prep school Greek), I must regard the book as a learned and well-constructed attempt to overturn the consensus of sceptical 19- and 20th-century Biblical academia, and in the process, to illustrate how contentious that supposed consensus actually is. Wenham argues cogently against the assumption that verbal similarities between the Gospels indicate direct literary relationship of the kind familiar from (say) Hellenistic poets, and in favour of the power of oral tradition, and the veracity of patristic writers who were only one or two generations removed from the Apostles. Dispelling the aura of unanimity created by many modern commentaries, he summarizes the arguments of noted scholars (and his own) against the existence of Q and in favour of the chronological priority of Matthew over Mark. On the spectrum of dates offered for the Synoptic Gospels, some pushing them way into the second century, he comes down firmly in favour of early dates, accepting the general tenor of patristic authority (Papias, Eusebius, et al.), along with internal evidence, that the three Gospels were essentially completed not only before the fall of Jerusalem (AD 70), but before the death of Paul (c AD 62) which the Book of Acts so significantly fails to cover. More informed readers may find things to quibble with, but it is a very sensible book. The author frankly accepts that, as an evangelical, he does not work from the naturalistic assumptions which, since the Enlightenment, have produced a "hermeneutic of suspicion" which delights in iconoclastic approach to early traditions and applies literary-critical methods to an obsessive extent which might seem laughable in any other field.

MB 4-x-2012 ( )