In 2006, Bauckham published his most widely-read work Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, a book that defends the historical reliability of the gospels.

This opposes the view that the four gospels were written later and not via interviews with direct eyewitnesses, but were rather the result of a longer chain of transmission of stories of Jesus filtered through early Christian communities over time.

Bauckham is a senior scholar at Ridley Hall in Cambridge, and a visiting professor at St Mellitus College in London.

His current research interests include Jesus and the Gospels, New Testament Christology, and the relevance of the Bible to ecological issues.

He also gave a series of the Scottish Journal of Theology Lectures in Aberdeen on "The Gospels as History: Comparisons with Ancient and Modern Historiography".