{"id":473,"date":"2007-02-03T22:09:57","date_gmt":"2007-02-03T20:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/2007\/02\/03\/why-the-bible-is-bad-history\/"},"modified":"2007-02-03T22:09:57","modified_gmt":"2007-02-03T20:09:57","slug":"why-the-bible-is-bad-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/03\/why-the-bible-is-bad-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Bible is "Bad History""},"content":{"rendered":"

I read an interview<\/a> today with James Crossley, an NT scholar at the U. of Sheffield.  He was named the “Blogger of the Month” for January, which means that someone thinks he’s important.  I just wanted to point out two paragraphs near the end:<\/p>\n

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There are plenty of evangelicals doing excellent stuff and in certain cases you ‘d never guess they were evangelicals. Then some do the kind of history that can only be described as the equivalent of Intelligent Design. God directly intervened in history, made Christianity happen, bodily raised Jesus from the dead etc. etc. These are the kinds of explanations professional historians wouldn’t touch, just as professional scientists, at least so it seems to me, wouldn’t touch Intelligent Design. <\/p>\n

Relating this to your question (sort of), there is something problematic going on when certain scholars can talk of doing good history, accuse opponents of doing bad history, and then tell us that someone’s mother was a virgin, people really did bodily rise from the dead, and that God’s hand is working in history. If you believe those latter points and want to argue for them, fine. But it isn’t what historians would call good history so perhaps it is time, at the very least, to acknowledge that the rhetoric is inconsistent. I can’t imagine too many professionals working in history departments coming up with arguments in favour of the miraculous or the divine hand in history. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other words, if you believe that there is a God who works in this world (i.e., supernatural), then you are, by definition, not a historian.  History, by definition, excludes the possibility of the supernatural.  This idea is anything but new, but I thought it worthy of noting given its clear and recent expression. <\/p>\n

If you want to win the debate, simply define your terms so that your opponent is automatically disqualified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read an interview today with James Crossley, an NT scholar at the U. of Sheffield.  He was named the “Blogger of the Month” for January, which means that someone thinks he’s important.  I just wanted to point out two paragraphs near the end: There are plenty of evangelicals doing excellent stuff and in certain\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}