Originally Posted by Jim West

Most “histories” of Ancient Israel and Earliest Christianity are simply examples of circular reasoning. Many historians use the Bible as a historical source; they reconstruct a history which is often nothing more than a recapitulation of the biblical telling; and the Bible is affirmed as historical because of the history so constructed. Similarly, the life of Jesus, for instance, is gleaned from a reading of the Gospels. Said reconstruction is named a ‘history of Jesus’ life.” That “history of Jesus’ life” is then utilized to prove historically the life of Jesus as described in the Gospels. One need only pick up John Bright’s “History of Israel”2 or Joseph Ratzinger’s “Jesus”3 to see circularity in action. True, ancillary materials are added to these histories (on the very rare occasions that they are available)- but these only reinforce the circularly circumscribed reconstruction.

. . . . In fact, even though Luke appears to be casting his Gospel in “historical” garb, he only adopts that appearance in order to make his story of Jesus sound very much like the Septuagint’s story of God’s acts on behalf of his people. That is, Luke is writing in a style intentionally mimicking the Old Testament so as to make clear to his readers that the story of Jesus is just the continuation of the activity of God among his own. If Luke were writing “history,” he got a number of things mucked up (as all commentators and historians recognize- e.g., the census he mentions at the beginning of his Gospel). But Luke doesn’t care about such things because he’s doing theology, not historiography.

Originally Posted by Toto

Jim West has a PhD and writes a lot. Everyone needs content.

But this seems better than some of his other opinion pieces.