Wednesday, 8 October 2014

The Gospels for All Christians (New Testament Studies),
Richard Bauckham, Eerdmans, 1997, page 1

Nearly all scholars writing about the Gospels now treat itas virtually self-evident that each evangelist addressed the specific context and concerns of his own community, and a large and increasingky sophisticated edifice of scholarly reconstruction has been erected on this basic assumption. But this view of the Gospel's intended audiences has never been justifid by argument and disussion, and still less has it been established in debate with the other obvious possibility: that the Gospels were written with the intention that they should circulate around all the churches.

Bauckham the proceeds, in his usual thorough way, to demolish the idea of audience-specific Gospels - the Matthean Community, the Johanine Community - supported by a number of contemporay scholars.