I’ve been devouring the easy-to-read books by this man (he wrote more than 40) for over 50 years. I’ve heard him speak only once (to a remarkably small meeting in Melbourne, sometime, I think, in the 1980s). He’s a far better writer than speaker.

A quick check of the John Mark Ministries website and my blogs reveals 15 citations mentioning Professor F F Bruce:

He’s apparently agnostic about conditional immortality. (‘Annihilation is certainly an acceptable interpretation of the relevant New Testament passages’).

His book on The N T Documents: Are They Reliable? has probably been the most read on that topic from a conservative evangelical perspective. Elsewhere: ‘The Bible is a historically reliable collection of  documents…. By the singular care and providence of God the Bible text has come down to us in such substantial purity that even the most uncritical edition of the Hebrew and Greek, or the most incompetent or even the most tendentious translation of such an edition, cannot effectively obscure the real message of the Bible or neutralise its saving power.”

F F Bruce belonged to the ‘Brethren‘ but opposed their prevailing views on Dispensationalism, and also believed that we must view the NT ministry of women through the window of Galatians 3:28 – which would have also put him into a minority among Brethren on that issue. Having been brought up in the Brethren, it’s inexplicable to me how he survived the Brethren ethos. (Did he write an autobiography which mentions that? I must research that one).

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On a prayer/writing retreat recently I picked up a secondhand copy of his book The Real Jesus (1985). What a delightful read! In a sentence, he affirms that the pre-Easter Jesus and the ‘Christ of faith’ are essentially one and the same: ‘they must not be disunited’. ‘Any attempt to separate the two [is] to make him the product of our faith instead of the ground of our faith, if not indeed to make him a figment of the imagination’ (19). Jesus was and is the Son of God, the Incarnate Word, the Saviour of the world: ‘he is an historical figure, and also our eternal contemporary’.

Because Bruce is writing for a general audience (as distinct from an academic one) he doesn’t spell out his anti-Bultmannian views much. For example: I’d have loved a couple of sentences about why the later fourth gospel has an apparently higher Christology than the Synoptics…

Some bits and pieces I marked:

* We are fortunate in having, in the four Gospels in the New Testament, documents which have probably been subjected, over the past two centuries, to more sustained critical analysis than any comparable body of literature in the world (24). (My note: Bruce likes ‘probably’ and its synonyms – he’s cautious about generalizations, when he could easily have used words like ‘certainly’).

* There were about 6,000 Pharisees at the time Jesus lived (36)

* Immediately after the death of Herod, there were troubles in Galilee, led by a man named Judas: they dominated the region until they were put down by Quinctilius Varus, Roman governor of Syria. He crucified two thousand ringleaders of the revolt: their bodies remained fastened to crosses along the main roads for a long time, as a deterrent to others (39)

* The term ‘scab’ as employed by a trade unionist in our country, expresses the same feeling of contempt and abhorrence as respectable people had for the tax-collectors and other “sinners” with whom Jesus associated – all very disturbing to the moral majority of that day . The description “friend of sinners” is one of the most heart-warming designations given to him today; it takes an effort to realize that it was first given to him by way of disparagement, not appreciation (46, 47)

* (Re the story of the Good Samaritan): those who first heard it must have felt as a Ballymena congregation might feel today, if the preacher told them how a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment had recently suffered serious injuries from an explosion on a road in South Armagh. A Church of Ireland clergyman and a Presbyterian elder both drove past, but judged it safer not to stop; it was a Sinn Feiner from the south who gave the man first aid and drove him to the nearest hospital (48)

* To take up one’s cross was not in those days a figure of speech for inconvenience or harassment; the picture which the words conjured up was too horribly familiar. A man who took up his cross did so in order to carry it to the place of execution and be fastened to it there (57)

* Re Jesus as ‘Son of Man’: there is no subject on which specialist students of the Gospels have written at greater length, but there is no unanimity among them on the origin or meaning of the expression (58). The phrase is found in the NT only on Jesus’ lips, with one significant exception – its use by Stephen towards the end of his trial before the high priest and his colleagues: ‘I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’ (59). It was not a title in general currency. Jesus could use it without fear of being misunderstood (59), It may mean something like the representative man (61). ‘The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath’: the sabbath was not ordained for the inconvenience of human beings but for their convenience… Jesus acts and speaks as the one whom God has appointed to be spokesman and sponsor of the race for whose benefit the sabbath rest was instituted (61). Jesus’ personal conviction that the scriptures had to be fulfilled, and fulfilled in him, is embedded in the gospel records (63). So for the present let it be said that ‘the Son of Man’ was Jesus’ way of referring to himself and his mission – a form of words that had no antecedent significance for his hearers, so that he could fill it with whatever meaning he chose – representative man, righteous sufferer, obedient servant of God, or the one foreordained to be invested with universal authority (66).

* When it came to interpreting and applying specific commandments, Jesus did not follow the procedure of contemporary rabbis. Indeed, he dismissed their rulings, handed down to one generation from another, as too often prone to obscure or frustrate the original intention for which the commandments were given…. (Luke 13:14): whether there was urgency or not, the sabbath was a specially appropriate day on which to heal people, because that was so completely in keeping with the creator’s purpose in instituting the sabbath (71)

* ‘What God has joined together, let no one put asunder’ (Mark 10:9). Jesus was not being a ‘rigorist’ and he certainly had no thought of laying down canon law. He was concerned to insist on the divine intention underlying the institution of marriage. His ruling, moreover, safeguarded the interests of women. In Jewish law the initiative in divorce lay with the husband; the balance was tilted one-sidedly against the wife, and Jesus’ ruling had the effect of redressing this unequal balance… ‘It was a sermon that was preached, not an act which was passed’ (James Denney) (72)

* Non-violence is inculcated in all the strands of Jesus’ teaching… [but] it is not for those in a free society to condemn others who feel that their only course of action against an oppressive regime is to take up arms against it (73)

* Any courting of human applause is discouraged: actions which are in themselves good are deprived of any virtue if they are done ‘before men in order to be seen by them’ (Matthew6:1). ‘Be perfect’ (Matthew 5:18) means something like ‘all-embracing in your love’ . If God does not discriminate between the good and the bad in sending sunshine and rain, so his children should equally show kindness to all (75)

* If the outer court of the temple in Jerusalem was cluttered up with market stalls and the like, there was less room for Gentiles to worship God. Hence Jesus voiced his protest: ‘Is it not written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations”?’ (83)

* Jesus had no exaggerated esteem for rulers as such, whether for the tetrarch in Galilee, the chief priestly establishment in Jerusalem, the governor of Judaea or his master in Rome (85)

* The synoptic evangelists narrate the Last Supper as though it were a Passover celebration; John, however, says it was held before the feast of the Passover. Perhaps Jesus used another reckoning than the Temple calendar, or he deliberately arranged to celebrate it on the Thursday evening because he knew that he would no longer be alive to celebrate it on the Friday evening. They did it without a lamb – which was not unprecedented; it was indeed the rule rather than the exception, for the Passover had to be celebrated without a lamb by every Jewish family in the world outside Jerusalem (89-90). There are also differences between Mark’s form of institution and Paul’s – but the basic statement ‘This is my body’ is constant; whatever is added is designed to bring out its meaning (91).

* The idea of presenting one’s life as a sin-offering for others was not unprecedented…  In the days of the Maccabees, the aged scribe Eleazar, said with his last breath ‘O God… be gracious to thy people and let our punishment be a satisfaction for them. Make my blood their purification, and take my life to ransom theirs’ (4 Maccabees 6:27-29) (94-5)

* When Christians affirm their belief in the resurrection of Christ, they are not referring primarily to the fact that the tomb was empty… The early Christians did not believe that Jesus was risen again because they could not find his dead body. They believed because they had found the living Christ… By ‘resurrection’ they meant the resurrection of the body; if they had meant only that the spirit and power of Jesus lived on, ‘resurrection’ is not the word they would have used (116-7)

* Theologically,  Sadducees followed what they believed to be ‘the old-time religion’. They regarded the Pharisees as innovators…; the Pharisees’ belief in the resurrection of the body was rejected by the Sadducees as a new doctrine with no biblical foundations. (The one OT document where it is unambiguously taught is the book of Daniel; but the Sadducees quite probably did not accept that book as part of the canon of sacred writings)  (128)

* There is a place in the rabbinical writings where seven categories of Pharisees are distinguished – some of them not unlike those which incurred Jesus’ censure – and only one receives unqualified commendation: the Pharisee who is a Pharisee for love of God (Palestinian Talmud, tractate Berakot 9.7)… It would be fair to say that the Pharisees whom Jesus criticized most severely were those who were unfaithful to the noblest ideals of Pharisaism (132)

* There was some debate among the rabbis on the question as to whether God did or did not keep his own sabbath law, and some ingenious arguments were devised to show that he did, without desisting from his continuous work of providence (133)

* Jesus’ nation directly (as in Judaea) or indirectly (as in Galilee) was under the control of Rome, but Jesus did not hint that Rome’s control should be resisted. He appears to have followed in the tradition of Jeremiah and other prophets in viewing Gentile domination of Israel as divinely ordained for a particular time and purpose (140)

* Jesus was criticized for lax sabbath practice, but he took it for granted that his critics would agree that an animal in distress should be relieved on the sabbath, even if the relief involved some activity that would strictly be classified as ‘work’. [But even this was forbidden by the Qumran community] – not that they were intentionally callous, but they were convinced (misguidedly) that the law of God took precedence over humanitarian considerations (146)

* There is one highly important aspect of Jesus’ present order of existence that the creeds pass over without mention. That is his abiding presence with his people (148)

* Jesus is not to be thought of as a secondary deity alongside the supreme God. As the Son, he is the very expression of the Father; in him we see ‘the human face of God’ (159)

* The witness of several NT writers is that Jesus, now exalted as Lord of the universe, does not merely save and help his people by remote control; he is present with them and, indeed, lives within them (161)

* Unlike Paul, John does not use the figure of the body of Christ; instead his teaching about the mutual indwelling of Christ and his people is expressed in the parable of the true vine… (162)

* When one of the later documents of the NT emphasizes that Jesus ‘came by water and blood’ (1 John 5:6), the writer seems to have in view an idea, current in his day, that the divine being came upon the man Jesus when he was baptized in the Jordan and gave him the power to accomplish his mighty works, but left him before his death; and he aims to rule this idea out of court. Such an idea was totally subversive of the Christian gospel (173). Note from Rowland: F F Bruce, an Evangelical scholar, shows deference regularly with his ‘seems to…’ type statements to the ideas of more liberal scholars. This book, if read carefully, betrays an intimate knowledge of the theology of Bultmann / the Jesus Seminar, for example…

* We should not disparage the founders of any of the great world-religions, but it is the simple truth that none of them is entitled to be called the Saviour of the world (182)

* In Jesus’ day there were three outstanding personages who were widely expected to appear in Israel – a great king (a second David), a great priest (a second Aaron), and a great prophet (a second Moses) (184). Jesus is hailed in various places as the ‘one who came – king, priest and prophet’ (188)

* In the Gospel of John Jesus is called ‘the Lord’ three times before his death; it is remarkable that these three instances (John 4:1; 6:23; 11:2) come in passages which are widely recognized on other grounds as due to an editor  rather than to the evangelist himself (200)

* These NT writers, Paul and the others, were monotheistic Jews by upbringing and instinct. What possessed them to transfer to Jesus of Nazareth titles and activities which belonged to God alone? (204)

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A PS from a Christian journalist-friend: I remember when he died I wrote an obituary that mentioned F F Bruce knew the entire Old and New Testaments off by heart, in the original languages!

Another: I am related to FF Bruce. To my knowledge he never wrote an autobiography. He used to take my dad to Sunday school when he was a kid (in Aberdeen). There was also a strong mission hall emphasis in the family: Old Aberdeen and Gordon Mission: outreach to the Gordon Highlanders. Think movie Chariots of Fire. Two of my aunties were missionaries with CIM in the 30s and uncles lay preachers. The way my dad described it was that they would check the newspapers to see who was preaching @ night and then decide where to go. So he had non-brethren influences.

From Ward Gasque: ‘He also wrote an article “On Staying with the Brethren”. Published in the Journal of the CBRF. It is available online, I believe.WWG’ (Rowland: anyone know the URL for that article? Can’t find it). ‘FFB did write his memoirs. He also wrote 80 books, not merely 50. Tim Grass has recently written a full scale biography that will be out next year. I gave a lecture on FFB at the John Rylands Library a couple of years ago. It was published in Crux (the journal of the Regent College faculty).’

Ward Gasque’s article on F F Bruce is here. (Rowland: tried to paste a long URL and then a TinyURL and neither worked. Can anyone help?)

But see this