As a young teacher of English and religious studies in the late 1960s I found myself teaching “Bible knowledge” for the Cambridge overseas examinations at a mission-founded school in western Uganda. Among the very few books available was St Mark by the Rev Dennis Nineham, and reading it was transformative. Though Nineham’s approach to the gospels has long been superseded by a host of other critical stances and perspectives, what he offered was a clear focus on how the stories about Jesus came into being and were recalled, transmitted and recorded, and what the function of those stories in the early Christian communities might have been. In a culture where the biblical texts – all of them – were seen as marked by literal veracity, bringing Nineham’s perspective to bear in the classroom was illuminating. Perhaps strangely, his stance didn’t undermine faith in the significance of the gospels as texts to learn and live from. Nineham’s own later move to sceptical myth-busting in The Myth of God Incarnate wasn’t the only possible direction. For some of us, it led to a more rational critical stance – something for which I remain very grateful to him.
