1. Lightfoot's Motives

I start with the implications of what Massey says about Lightfoot's motives. The impression of Lightfoot as a person which one gets from Massey's article (rightly or wrongly) is of someone who was fairly forceful, ‘determined that he would be the one to introduce the results of form criticism into English scholarship’ (605; emphasis added), though the publication of Taylor's book in 1933 ‘raises the question of whether Lightfoot's presentation of form criticism was necessary’. And overall, one gets the impression of a man set on deceiving the scholarly world about his own contributions, passing off the work of others as his own in order to feather his own nest.Footnote ⁹

None of Lightfoot's contemporaries is still alive and one is therefore reliant for information on his own published works together with material written about him by those who knew him well. Those who did know him paint a picture of the man quite unlike that implied by Massey. In particular Dennis Nineham's two summary essays about Lightfoot give a totally different assessment of him, as a human being, a teacher, a scholar and a writer.Footnote ¹⁰ Nineham knew Lightfoot personally and he gives a picture of someone who was incredibly shy and also diffident about his own academic abilities and standing. Lightfoot was by all accounts not at all convinced that he had anything original to say in New Testament scholarship; in his own estimation he was (simply) passing on the fruits of scholarship as developed by others, and he had no agenda to be claiming credit for the work of others. He himself says in the Preface to his History and Interpretation that he ‘ha[s] tried to give a brief account of recent German study of the gospels’,Footnote ¹¹ and quite explicitly refuses to claim any great (or indeed any) originality for what he is presenting. Indeed Nineham says that ‘any suggestion of “projecting” himself or his views would have been abhorrent to him’.Footnote ¹²

The suggestion that Lightfoot's (re-)presentation of the work of German form critics was redundant (not ‘necessary’) in 1934, given that Vincent Taylor had published his own work in 1933, is also unpersuasive. As Massey notes, British New Testament scholarship up to the 1930s (and indeed in many respects some time later as well) was almost uniformly antagonistic to the disciple of form criticism as developed in Germany, primarily because it seemed to call into question the historicity of so much of the gospel tradition. Taylor did indeed adopt some of the work of the German form critics (e.g. using their classifications of the individual pericopae in the Gospels), but still claimed that, on the (for him) critical issue of historicity, form-critical methods could be adopted without in any way questioning the fundamental historical reliability of the Gospels.Footnote ¹³ Lightfoot on the other hand was far readier to accept the possible implications in relation to questions of historicity of the work of the German form critics. Yet, for him, these were not regarded as something dangerous or threatening, but rather could be adopted positively and constructively. This would involve a radically different approach in the way the Gospels were read; but this was something which could be welcomed and affirmed. It is true then that Lightfoot's summarising of the work of German form critics was not ‘necessary’ at one level in the light of Taylor's (slightly) earlier work; but what Lightfoot presented was an entirely different perspective on such work, especially on the issue of whether the Gospels could be taken as ‘straight’ historical accounts of the life of Jesus. The form critics’ claim that the individual stories of the tradition circulated as independent units prior to being incorporated into the gospel was used by Lightfoot to argue that the sequence and order of the materials in the Gospels told us little if anything about any sequence in the life of Jesus, but rather showed us something about the way in which the evangelists wanted to get their message about the significance of Jesus across. Similar considerations applied to the geographical settings which the evangelists give. Lightfoot's presentation of the work of form criticism was thus quite different from that of Taylor (even if they coincided in their presentations about the classification of the units of the gospel tradition). Far from presenting any redundant or ‘unnecessary’ repetition of Taylor's work, Lightfoot did here provide something very different in tone and in approach.Footnote ¹⁴

2. Lightfoot and Dibelius

Massey's critique of Lightfoot focuses on his use of the work of Dibelius and of Lohmeyer. I start then with the use of Dibelius. I noted above Massey's claim that Lightfoot summarised Dibelius’ work but tried to pass it off as his own, and also his claim that Lightfoot might well have been ‘embarrassed’ by the appearance in print of the English translation of Dibelius’ major monograph just before the publication of his own Bampton lectures.

Before considering these points specifically, one should perhaps try to say something about Lightfoot's academic writing style, and in particular his practice of footnoting. One must take account of the fact that Lightfoot was writing at a time, and in an academic context, which was in many respects rather different from our own. Lightfoot's use of footnotes might well be regarded today as somewhat ‘sloppy’ and/or inconsistent. References in footnotes were not always given consistently (sometimes with a title only, sometimes without a specific page reference, sometimes with a reference given in the text but no footnote at all).Footnote ¹⁵ So too the number of footnotes is relatively small. Yet in many respects this reflected the period in which Lightfoot was writing; it also reflects the genre of the books under discussion here: all were originally lectures given orally and the printed version still reflects that oral style and delivery to a certain extent (where any possible footnotes would not be read out!)

Today the standard and rigour of footnoted references has certainly been tightened up considerably so that a reference would de rigeur be expected to include an exact title, date and place of publication for a book, title, journal reference (volume number and date) and page numbers for an article. But so too the number of footnotes has multiplied considerably since Lightfoot's day. One might almost be forgiven for thinking that the academic value of a scholarly article is regarded as being in direct proportion to the number of footnotes the author writes: an article with 150 footnotes looks very learned; an article devoid of footnotes looks amateurish! All of us know that such a claim is ludicrous, but it is still the case that the trend over the last fifty years or so has seen the number of footnotes in scholarly articles mushroom. For better or worse, the situation in the 1930s was rather different. In part the dangers of possible plagiarism may have been felt to be less intense than today. But the norm was generally to give far fewer footnotes in essays and books than has become customary today.

This is particularly relevant in assessing the claim that Lightfoot did not give proper acknowledgement of his debt to others. Lightfoot himself provides an interesting comment in the Preface to his History and Interpretation regarding footnotes. He says: ‘The footnotes have assumed larger proportions than I could wish; they are intended chiefly for the student, and may usually be omitted by the general reader.’Footnote ¹⁶ He explicitly says too that he has ‘purposely refrained from constant references to many British and American works dealing with the subject matter of these lectures’, and refers to the works of H. J. Cadbury, B. S. Easton and Vincent Taylor: the reason given is that ‘such books … are already widely known and are easily accessible’.Footnote ¹⁷ Evidently Lightfoot did not see it as incumbent upon him to highlight every detailed point where he agreed or disagreed with other contemporaries, or to show how he positioned himself in relation to others. Such was not the purpose of his writing the book (or the lectures which went before). In part this may have been due to his own self-effacing modesty (cf. above): the book was not intended to be about himself but about its subject matter, and where he himself stood in relation to others was in a real sense a distraction.

All this is relevant to the issue of how far Lightfoot can be, and/or should be, ‘blamed’ for not acknowledging his debt to Dibelius in writing his History and Interpretation. Today, anyone summarising the views and theories of another person would probably pepper the discussion with multitudinous footnotes detailing where each individual point was to be found in the writing being summarised. Lightfoot certainly does not do that. However, he does make transparently clear in his book his debt to Dibelius, and that he is basically representing the views of Dibelius, not his own. He says in his Preface that, at least for the part of the book dealing with form criticism, he is presenting the theories of German form critics. Thus in the second lecture/chapter, on ‘Formgeschichte’, he starts on p. 42 to introduce the work of ‘the Formgeschichte school’. His introductory comments finish on p. 43 with the remark that he will then focus on the two types of story isolated by the form critics (‘paradigms’ or ‘apophthegms’, and ‘Novellen’) in the rest of the lecture/chapter. A footnote here then mentions the works of Dibelius, Bultmann and Schmidt, and finishes by saying, ‘In the remaining pages of this lecture I have closely followed Dr. Dibelius.’Footnote ¹⁸ It is thus absolutely clear that he is giving the views of Dibelius, not those of his own.

This is then clearly implied at two further points in the subsequent discussion. On p. 45 he lists the sixteen examples of ‘paradigms’ which ‘Dr. Martin Dibelius of Heidelberg, a pioneer in the new study’ had isolated. In a footnote, he says: ‘My own studies would lead me to form a slightly different list, but it is desirable to give Dr. Dibelius's findings in full.’ Quite clearly then he is representing in his text the views and theories of Dibelius, and he explicitly refuses to give his own theories (except noting a point or two briefly in the footnote). Similarly, on p. 51, when turning to the ‘Novellen’, he says that ‘Dr. Dibelius finds nine in the first nine chapters [of Mark]’; again a footnote gives a rider, where Lightfoot says that ‘I myself doubt whether the first of these [the story of the leper in Mark 1.40–5] is rightly included with the rest’. Again, there is a clear distinction drawn between Lightfoot's own views, noted in the footnotes, and the theories he is presenting in the body of his text. And for the latter, it is all clearly ascribed to Dibelius. It is then transparently clear from Lightfoot's own presentation in his book that he is not claiming in any way to be original in the material on form criticism he is presenting. He is not claiming that the ideas, theories or descriptions (e.g. of ‘paradigms’) are his own or that he has himself discovered something very new or original. He makes it abundantly clear that he is summarising Dibelius and presenting Dibelius’ views and theories.Footnote ¹⁹

Thus having given clear statements that he was reproducing the ideas and language of Dibelius, Lightfoot felt no need to give detailed footnote references for every single detail in the subsequent description of Dibelius. Perhaps today, an author undertaking a similar task would pepper the description with far more footnotes for each specific detail discussed. It is however very doubtful whether much would have been gained by doing this. Lightfoot was writing for an audience who probably did not read German. Since one important aim of a footnote is to enable the reader to check any reference for him/herself, the fact that Lightfoot's ‘implied readers’ (and probably most of the real readers at the time) did not read German meant that detailed references to the page numbers of Dibelius’ German book would have been otiose. The appearance of the English translation of Dibelius in 1934 might have ‘embarrassed’ Lightfoot (see above) to the extent that his own summary of Dibelius’ work might have seemed possibly a little unnecessary if it were now more readily available to those who did not read German; but it did not embarrass him because it showed up the extent of his borrowing.Footnote ²⁰ One suspects that Lightfoot would perhaps have been delighted by the appearance of the English translation as it showed that his summary of Dibelius was accurate, fair and honest.

Massey points to a number of places where Lightfoot appears to reproduce the wording of Dibelius almost verbatim: he prints five examples where Lightfoot's wording is very close to that of Dibelius (Massey gives both the German and the English translation of Dibelius),Footnote ²¹ to back up his claim about what he calls ‘the ambiguous relationship between Lightfoot's summarising and translating’ (606). However, some agreement in wording in the context is scarcely surprising. For example, it is of the essence of Dibelius’ description of a ‘paradigm’ that it is characterised by its ‘Kürze und Einfachkeit’; hence it is hardly surprising that Lightfoot in representing Dibelius’ work for English-speaking readers and hearers writes here of the characteristic of the paradigm as displaying ‘simplicity and brevity’, or that the English translator of Dibelius here refers to ‘brevity and simplicity’.Footnote ²² Lightfoot does stick closely to the wording of Dibelius (though not verbatim) in presenting Dibelius’ views. But perhaps this is precisely because he wants to give Dibelius’ theories as accurately and fairly as he can, partly no doubt in order that they might receive a fair hearing.Footnote ²³

In conclusion there seems to be little reason to accuse Lightfoot of any great academic sins or crimes in his (re)presentation of the views of Dibelius in History and Interpretation. The reader of the book is given the clear information that Lightfoot is claiming to do nothing more than reproduce the arguments and theories of Dibelius. No deception (trying to pass off the theories as Lightfoot's own) is implied, and any reader who draws such a conclusion will clearly not have read Lightfoot's own comments or disclaimers carefully enough.

3. Lightfoot and Lohmeyer

Massey's strongest criticisms of Lightfoot come in the section where he discusses Lightfoot's use of the work of Ernst Lohmeyer, especially his use of an article of Lohmeyer's on the cleansing of the temple which Massey claims Lightfoot effectively ‘borrowed’ (or ‘stole’?) without full acknowledgement and passed off as his own, and where subsequent scholarship has illegitimately ascribed the ideas concerned to Lightfoot.

Lightfoot evidently knew the Lohmeyer family well: he had visited their house in the 1930s and Massey (616–22) documents a number of very friendly letters between Lohmeyer and his wife to Lightfoot in 1938/9. Lightfoot was very taken with Lohmeyer's book Galiläa und Jerusalem, published in 1936, and Lightfoot used this in his own book of essays Locality and Doctrine. Here Lightfoot proposed a similar thesis to that of Lohmeyer, arguing that geographical locations in the Gospels were linked closely with specific ideas, or ‘theologies’. Thus ‘Galilee’ in Mark was associated with the theme of revelation and a Son of Man Christology, whereas ‘Jerusalem’ was seen as the place of rejection. However, as with Dibelius in the earlier book, Lightfoot was quite open and explicit about his debt to Lohmeyer, as indeed Massey himself notes (610). Subsequent to the lectures, Lightfoot acquired a copy of Lohmeyer's newly published commentary on Mark and Lohmeyer's books clearly influenced him in writing the two further chapters of his Locality and Doctrine. This Lightfoot states clearly in the Preface to his book:

And, as Massey himself notes (612), Lightfoot concludes one of these two additional chapters with a three-page translation explicitly attributed to Lohmeyer.Footnote ²⁴ As with Dibelius, Lightfoot had made clear his general use of Lohmeyer's work and there seems to be no ‘improper scholarly practice’ here.

However, Massey reserves his strongest criticism for Lightfoot's later work The Gospel Message of St. Mark. This book also comprised four lectures (given in 1949 at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire), again supplemented by further material: in this case there were four extra chapters, two of which had already been published in the Expository Times, two of which were new. It is in relation to one of these latter chapters that Massey directs his fiercest criticism of Lightfoot. In his chapter 5, Lightfoot discusses the cleansing of the temple in Mark and Massey claims that there is here very heavy, but unacknowledged, dependence on the work of Lohmeyer, in particular on an article which Lohmeyer published in 1941 on the pericope.Footnote ²⁵ Massey does note (612) that in the Preface to the book, Lightfoot does acknowledge some debt to Lohmeyer's work on the same passage in his own writing and presentation of this chapter.Footnote ²⁶ However, Massey says that Lightfoot failed to say anything in text of the chapter itself and hence was failing to give proper recognition of his ‘borrowing’ (see above for Massey's own description of the situation): Lightfoot ‘buried the attribution to Lohmeyer in the preface’ (612), and in the chapter itself, ‘Lightfoot presented Lohmeyer's ideas as his own’ (613). In a long paragraph (on the geography and layout of the Jerusalem temple and the court of the gentiles) Lightfoot's English gives a close translation of Lohmeyer's German, and Massey also gives two other examples of Lightfoot's ‘borrowing’ of Lohmeyer's original, to ‘illustrate the casual nature of Lightfoot's unattributed borrowing and translating/paraphrasing from Lohmeyer's article’ (615).

As with the use of Dibelius by Lightfoot, Massey may have not been fair to Lightfoot here. Massey himself notes that Lightfoot did refer to Lohmeyer's work in his Preface. There Lightfoot says that, in the chapter in question,

Lightfoot makes it very clear here that he is dependent on Lohmeyer for the content of this chapter, and indeed that the arguments and theories set out there are really Lohmeyer's, not his own: the reference at the end of the quotation above to ‘his [= Lohmeyer's] views’ being ‘laid before English readers in this way’ (i.e. in Lightfoot's chapter) is unambiguous.

Massey's complaint is that this is ‘buried’ in the Preface and not acknowledged at all in the body of the chapter itself. However, as with much of his previous work and perhaps in tune with quite a lot of academic practice of his time, Lightfoot was evidently not concerned to give detailed footnotes in the body of his text. Throughout the book, there are very few footnoted references to the works of other scholars (see above). Indeed at times Lightfoot appears to expect that his readers will know where to find the view he is expounding set out. Thus at the start of his chapter 2, he refers to C. H. Dodd's work on the Apostolic Preaching. The reference is casual: there is no footnote, and indeed no precise reference to the published work being referenced here:

Lightfoot thus gives a succinct summary of Dodd's theories about the earliest apostolic preaching, but without any precise detail of where the summary has come from, how accurate it is, which words are Dodd's own and which are Lightfoot's summary. Almost certainly, this reflects the oral nature of the original lecture. (In presenting a lecture, one does not read out the details of the footnote which might have been given!) So too Lightfoot clearly expected at least some of his readers to be familiar with Dodd's work (cf. ‘you remember’ above). They did not expect, and perhaps did not want, a precise reference for Dodd, with exact title, name of the publisher and place of publication, year of publication and exact page number(s). And so Lightfoot does not give these details.

The situation with Lohmeyer in his chapter 5 is not exactly the same as with Dodd in his chapter 2. In this case, the reader (both the implied reader and the real reader) did not know Lohmeyer's work. Yet Lightfoot does make it abundantly plain in the Preface that what he is doing in this chapter is (simply) reproducing Lohmeyer's work and is not presenting it as his own or trying to pass it off as such. In line with the general ethos of the book as a whole (and probably reflecting the original format of the basis of the book as a set of oral lectures), there are then no footnotes in the body of the text to make explicit the precise page numbers of Lohmeyer's article which Lightfoot is here representing.

The lack of explicit citation by Lightfoot may also have been part of his individual style. There are a number of places where he may be quoting somebody but does not explicitly say so – partly because he may have thought it unnecessary to do so. Two examples may illustrate this. In his first Bampton lecture, Lightfoot gives what appears to be his own summary of the witness of Papias about Mark:

There are no inverted commas, yet the words are in part all but a quotation of the famous saying of Papias recorded by Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 3.39.15). Perhaps Lightfoot realised that people would recognise, and accept, his words for what they were. The other case concerns a famous passage in Lightfoot's work where he himself clearly thought that people would recognise that he was quoting and was taken aback, and disappointed, when his readers failed to recognise the allusion. Thus at the very end of his Bampton lectures, Lightfoot wrote about how far the Gospels might give us information about Jesus. He says:

Again there are no inverted commas to indicate a quotation, and on the basis of these words, Lightfoot was harshly criticised for being so apparently negative about the historicity of the Gospels and how much information about Jesus we can glean from them. In fact Lightfoot had intended an allusion to Job 26.14 (RV ‘Lo these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power, who can understand?’). Lightfoot himself later published an explanation of his (non-)‘quotation’, saying:

Clearly Lightfoot cannot have expected his readers to recognise his debt and allusions to Lohmeyer's work in his chapter on the cleansing of the temple; but his practice of alluding very closely, and all but quoting, other people/texts without the normal punctuation marks (i.e. inverted commas) to indicate this is by no means unprecedented in Lightfoot's work.

One of the reasons which Lightfoot gives for doing what he does in the chapter on the cleansing of the temple is that the article of Lohmeyer would have been not easily accessible by English readers in the late 1940s (cf. above: ‘very few copies … are likely to have reached this country’). Lohmeyer's article was published in Theologische Blätter, a journal which was almost certainly not available in virtually all UK academic libraries in the late 1940s, and certainly would not have been available outside university academic contexts.Footnote ³² Quite apart from the issue of how many English students would have read German at this time, the lack of availability of the article makes Lightfoot's comment here entirely intelligible. His comment too links up with what was noted earlier here (on Lightfoot's innate diffidence and his belief that he was primarily passing on the work of others) and his stated policy in his first book about what to include, and what not to include, in footnotes. There Lightfoot said that he had avoided excessive (or almost any) references to the works of people such as Cadbury, Easton or Taylor, as their work would be well known to his readers (see above). By contrast he said that he had included a number of references to articles, especially those of C. H. Turner on Markan usage, ‘since these are less readily available to many’.Footnote ³³ Lightfoot clearly saw himself then as someone who could pass on the ideas and theories of others, and it was important to do so in cases where the ideas in question had appeared in locations which might be difficult for his readers to access.

What though of the detailed ‘agreements’ between Lightfoot and Lohmeyer which Massey has highlighted? It is true that, in his description of the temple and the court of the gentiles, Lightfoot is very close to Lohmeyer (though it is by no means a case of verbatim agreement: there is disagreement in the order of the points made, and some variation in wording). But given that Lightfoot does clearly state in his Preface that he is representing the argument of Lohmeyer's article, some agreement is to be expected. It would appear that Lightfoot had made some detailed notes of Lohmeyer's article and these are reflected in this paragraph.Footnote ³⁴ Certainly one would expect some detailed notes to lie behind his expressed wish to transmit ‘his’ (= Lohmeyer's) views and arguments in this chapter.

Although some of the substance of the argument of Lightfoot's chapter is recognisable as coming from Lohmeyer's article, with a number of the same points and references, it is still the case that the former is not simply a simple repetition of the latter. Lightfoot's chapter is not a clone of Lohmeyer. Some parts of Lohmeyer's essay are passed over; in other parts Lightfoot develops his own theory. He talks mostly about the ‘messianic’ elements in the story, where Lohmeyer talked about ‘eschatological’ ideas. Lohmeyer's (characteristic) talk of Jesus as the hidden and revealed Son of Man is omitted by Lightfoot. And Lightfoot develops his own ideas that the cleansing story might be integrally connected with the passion narrative in Mark.Footnote ³⁵ He also digresses to discuss Matthew's account, and the possible link with the Last Supper traditions, claiming that for Matthew and Mark, the eschatological fulfilment to which the cleansing story points (Isa 56.7 is taken as a prophecy about the end-time) finds its climax and completion in the giving of the cup in the Eucharist and on the cross. This Lightfoot did not get from Lohmeyer! Thus for all Lightfoot's modesty, and his insistence that he was simply reproducing, and regurgitating, the work of Lohmeyer, his own presentation has its own distinctive features which clearly reflect Lightfoot's own work and thinking.

One other point of Massey's may be noted here. Massey claims that ‘unfortunately, English-language scholarship on Mark has attributed these ideas to Lightfoot rather than to Lohmeyer’ (615), with most citing Lightfoot alone and giving Lightfoot the credit for such ideas about the story. This state of affairs is not quite true,Footnote ³⁶ though it is also credible in general terms. The very fact that Lohmeyer's article appeared in such an inaccessible place would make it understandable for a commentator not to send readers searching for an article which would be difficult to track down.Footnote ³⁷

Massey's criticisms of Lightfoot in his use of Lohmeyer may thus be overstated. Lightfoot does clearly acknowledge his debt to Lohmeyer. The reader of Lightfoot's book is (or should be) in no doubt about this. There is then no evidence that Lightfoot was trying to steal Lohmeyer's thunder or to claim credit for someone else's work. If anything, there might be a slight divergence between what Lightfoot said about the chapter in question and what it actually contains in that Lightfoot was in part developing his own ideas which departed somewhat from Lohmeyer, but without indicating this. Rather than ‘borrowing’ (or stealing) Lohmeyer's ideas and claiming them as his own, he was possibly attributing to Lohmeyer his own theories. Perhaps though Lightfoot's own innate modesty and lack of self-confidence is the reason. Certainly, there is nothing to suggest that Lightfoot was being deliberately dishonest, and nothing to indicate that he was illegitimately adopting the work of others and claiming it as his own.

4. Lightfoot's Heritage

Massey also has some harsh words to say about Lightfoot's ‘reception’ in the world of New Testament scholarship. He notes (605–6) N. Perrin's description of Lightfoot as ‘the first redaction critic’, and Robinson's and Powley's positive assessment of Lightfoot as ‘a transmitter of German research’ and ‘the first British scholar not to insist on seeing the gospels as primarily historical documents’.Footnote ³⁸ However, Massey claims in his conclusion (616) that Lightfoot's ‘unattributed use of Dibelius and Lohmeyer must lead to the rejection of Perrin's conclusion’ (about Lightfoot as the first redaction critic), and that Robinson's and Powley's conclusions are also misguided as Lightfoot blurred the distinction between ‘appropriate citation and unattributed use of another scholar's work’.

Lightfoot himself cannot be blamed for what others have made of his work subsequently. As noted already, Lightfoot had a very low opinion of himself and his standing. On the other hand, assessments of a person's identity, value and/or the worth of his/her contributions are not always best made as self-assessments! The use which Lightfoot made of German form critics in passing their work on to a wider, primarily English-speaking, audience and readership, has been noted here. But just as, if not more, significant were his suggestive comments about the evangelists themselves. It is this which e.g. Norman Perrin noted in his assessment of Lightfoot as ‘the first redaction critic’. The two issues – of Lightfoot's adoption and transmission of the results of form criticism, and his assessment of the evangelists – are distinct and should not be confused.

Lightfoot's assessment of the role of the evangelists, especially of Mark, was certainly not derived from Dibelius. In the work of form criticism as developed by Dibelius and Bultmann, the role of the evangelists was downplayed considerably. Attention was focused on the ways in which the traditions of the gospel circulated and were used and reused prior to their incorporation into the Gospels, and any contributions by the evangelists were regarded as not very significant. For Dibelius, the evangelists (especially the synoptic evangelists) ‘are not “authors” in the literary sense, but collectors’.Footnote ³⁹ So too for Bultmann, Mark does try to impose some ideas on his tradition, but ‘Mark is not sufficiently master of his material to be able to venture on a systematic construction himself’.Footnote ⁴⁰ Lightfoot went considerably further. In the Preface to his History and Interpretation, Lightfoot summarises the view about Mark which he would develop in the lectures which comprise the book: the author of Mark's gospel ‘was no mere compiler … [He] was gifted with religious insight and genius of no common order’, and he refers to ‘the profound and individual genius of the writer of this gospel’.Footnote ⁴¹ Lightfoot frequently puts Mark alongside John and consistently argues that Mark no less than John must be seen as a creative author. ‘Both their gospels are constructions, works put together and arranged in accordance with a definite plan and purpose.’Footnote ⁴² All this is developed in some detail in his Bampton lectures, and then developed further in his two later books on Mark. Lightfoot has not ‘borrowed’ all this from German form critics for such an assessment of Mark!

For the most part, Lightfoot focuses on Mark's arrangement and order to give insight into Mark's concerns. Insofar as ‘redaction criticism’ involves a focus on the particular characteristics and concerns (perhaps the ‘theology’) of the evangelists, Lightfoot was then very much the forerunner of what was later to be called ‘redaction criticism’.Footnote ⁴³ In the standard, or popular, history of New Testament interpretation, ‘redaction criticism’ has been seen as starting with the work of G. Bornkamm on Matthew, W. Marxsen on Mark, and H. Conzelmann on Luke. Such a neat periodisation is almost certainly inaccurate and misleading, though it is sometimes defended on the grounds that Marxsen was the first to use the term ‘Redaktionsgeschichte’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Lightfoot's work on Mark certainly predates and anticipates later studies which focus specifically on the evangelists’ own distinctive features, concerns and contributions in writing their Gospels. His focus on Mark's arrangement and ordering as an important key to identifying Mark's concerns align him more perhaps with what was later known as ‘composition criticism’, considering the text as a whole and asking what it might tell us about its author and his concerns.Footnote ⁴⁵ This has sometimes been contrasted with ‘redaction criticism’ where the latter is taken more strictly as referring to, and analysing, the changes which an author made to his traditions.Footnote ⁴⁶ Yet even in relation to this kind of ‘redaction criticism’, Lightfoot shows himself to be a pioneer. Thus in his analysis of the Matthean passion narrative, he considers in detail a number of the small changes Matthew makes to Mark as highlighting Matthew's own concerns and giving an insight into Matthew's own ‘theology’.Footnote ⁴⁷

In some important respects, Lightfoot (simply?) took further ideas initially developed by others (as indeed almost every scholar does). In his case, the work of Lohmeyer was clearly very influential, as has already been noted. And it may be that in the history of the interpretation of the Gospels, and the developing interest in the contributions of the evangelists to their Gospels, Lohmeyer's significance has been underrated. Yet Lightfoot was no simple clone of Lohmeyer, and his suggestions about the significance of Mark's ordering of the material as an important part of the evidence showing Mark's understanding and interpretation of the tradition at times go considerably further than Lohmeyer.Footnote ⁴⁸ Perrin's assessment of Lightfoot as ‘the first redaction critic’ may be slightly overblown (in that it ignores others who should be mentioned); but there is little doubt that Lightfoot did indeed anticipate, in a very significant way, movements and trends in study of the Synoptic Gospels which were to dominate scholarship in the generations after Lightfoot. Hence Nineham's assessment (written in 1986), that Lightfoot's work in his Bampton lectures ‘did foreshadow, more than any contemporary work in English, the way Gospel study was to go in the following half-century’, does seem to be apt.Footnote ⁴⁹

Lightfoot was in many respects an important pioneer. His heritage, at least for some, remains with his integrity intact. His written work is now some 70–80 years old, and in some respects it shows its age. Lightfoot's style of writing comes across as slightly old-fashioned in the use of English, and in some of its presuppositions.Footnote ⁵⁰ So too his way of referring to the works of others, in footnotes, prefaces and in some of the assumptions he makes about his readers, are all slightly dated. However, that in no way detracts from the value of his contributions. His work on Mark is still worth consulting (whether we agree with it or not). And his approach to the Gospels, seeing the ordering and arrangement of the material as a vital key to understanding the message which each evangelist is trying to convey, is still widely practised by many. Above all, his integrity is not as questionable as has been suggested. Lightfoot was not a plagiarist. Nor did his work ‘fall outside the norms of proper scholarly practice’. He was though a child of his own day, and he should be judged in relation to the practices and the accompanying norms of his own day, not ours. He fully acknowledged his debt to others, but did so in accordance with the practices of his day, placing his acknowledgements where he thought they should be (even if we would do things differently today if we were in the same position).

Lightfoot was a very cautious scholar, uncertain of his own worth and evidently unwilling to push himself forward. He thought of himself as (simply) the transmitter of the more original works of others. In the view of others who can look back on his work with hindsight (always a wonderful commodity to be able to have!), he was far more than a mere transmitter of the work of others. Just as New Testament scholarship moved on from the form critics’ view of the evangelists as (mere) tradents and collectors to seeing them as authors with their own distinctive viewpoints, so too perhaps the history of New Testament scholarship has moved on in its assessment of the work of Lightfoot: he was no mere tradent, handing on the views of others, but was himself a scholar in his own right, with distinctive ideas of his own, and in many respect someone who was far ahead of his time. If he himself did not see this, others have. We pay tribute to him by rightly continuing to read his books and engage with them. We may well disagree with him. Disagreement and critical engagement with the work of others is what our discipline thrives on. But we can respect his academic integrity and be grateful for all that he gave to the world of New Testament studies.