Josh McManaway pointed out some Ben Witherington lectures available online. I always enjoy listening to BW3 even when I don’t agree with him. Having listened to the lectures, I wanted to add some comments. It is unfortunate that Baylor didn’t put these on as regular quicktime movies so that users could download if they wanted. There is unfortunately a lot of hangtime when trying to watch these types of streaming channels.

The first lecture is titled “Canonical Pseudepigrapha: Is It an Oxymoron?“. He offers a conservative approach to the idea of canon. One issue that caught my attention was his, admittedly brief, mention of Lee McDonald’s thought in his book “The Biblical Canon”. I took a canon class with Lee and am well acquainted with his thoughts, but Witherington clearly does not. Witherington sets himself up against McDonald as saying there was a canon consciousness in the first century already, whereas McDonald claims this was a process that became prominent not until the 3-4th century. This is an incorrect caricature of McDonald’s work. It is quite obvious that there was canon consciousness for the OT and even to some extent early Christian documents that would become the NT. The point that Lee continually makes, very legitmately, is that we do not know the content of these canons. The risen Jesus’ mention of the “law, prophets, and psalms” is not enough to assert that we know what was in that canon. The criteria for deciding what was in the canon happened later, which BW3 admits. Later in this lecture he says that we can say de facto the canon was therefore closed in the first century. This is anachronistic if you are talking about the closing of the canon. You can, perhaps, say that all the books which later constituted the canon were done by the end of the first century, but not that it was therefore closed. It continued to be a question in the following centuries. McDonald’s work on canonical lists is food for thought at this point—we have lists and collections with wide-ranging contents. If the canon was de facto closed, wouldn’t the early canonical lists and manuscripts de facto reflect it?

His second lecture is titled “Oral Texts and Rhetorical Letters: Rethinking the Categories“. I appreciated this lecture a lot to help me understand BW3’s understanding of rhetorical criticism. I don’t think I’m alone in being puzzled at the label “socio-rhetorical” being applied to Witherington’s commentaries. Socio-rhetorical criticism is still very much a criticism in development, spear-headed by Vernon Robbins. Socio-rhetorical criticism also has its own nomenclature and a pretty clear methodology. None of this comes into play in BW3’s commentaries, which results in some unfortunate confusion of terms.
After listening to this second lecture, I understood a little more Witherington’s approach. He critiques Vernon Robbins and company for employing and applying modern rhetorical study to the NT. In Witherington’s opinion, they should be studies in the light of ancient rhetoric, not modern. This helps me understand his position and work better, but I find the objection to Socio-rhetorical criticism a la V. Robbins to be quite flawed. Of course ancient rhetoric will shed important light on the NT, but ‘modern’ methods aren’t sub-par just because they are modern. Would he say the same thing about models of sociology? historical-critical methods? This brings out an interesting observation: Witherington’s so-called “socio-rhetorical” commentaries actually highlight his flawed critique of modern socio-rhetorical criticism. The “-rhetorical” tag on his commentaries indicates that he looks at the NT from an ancient rhetorical perspective, while the “socio” part indicates a modern method.

The third lecture on the site is titled “The Unity of James and Paul: On Implementing the Apostolic Decree.” However, the download is of the 4th lecture, so there is some mix-up here. This video is BW3’s hypothesis that Lazarus is the beloved disciple. I heard this lecture at SBL in 2006. It was interesting, but I’m not sure anyone was convinced of it. Bauckham’s theory that it is John the Elder has my vote. For a paper version of BW3’s argument, see here.