I know there isn’t much happening here AGAIN, but I wanted to look at this.  I kinda have some issues with this.  Let’s look at the New Testament for a second.  It isn’t all that clear whether ANY of Gospels was written by eye witnesses.  That is, those who PERSONALLY WITNESSED Jesus life, ministry, death and resurrection.  However, that is not to say that those who were not eyewitnesses did not pass on eye witness material that THEY received.  And if we look at the fact that it is becoming more fully accepted that some of these stories developed from the 20’s--30’s to 60’s—70’s in which there was a full recasting of the material that it may speak to the needs of the church then we really would not be able to extract from this material TESTIMONY to the Jesus who could have been seen and heard in the 20’s—30’s.

Well, I think the historical-critical approach has made us aware that we should not UNQUESTIONINGLY ACCEPT what is claimed (to have been seen or heard) ESPECIALLY on miraculous claims.  There COULD BE fraud.  I mean there are some real problems with this.  Like, if we can accept fraud in the Bible, then that might encourage deliberate fraud on what are believed to be justifiable grounds.  So, we cannot treat people who claim to be witnesses as having unquestionable authority simply because they make the claim.

However, to go by the way of skepticism is to go to the other extreme.  People weren’t gullible back then and they were aware of the difference between fact and fiction and to establish whether something happened or not when it came to eyewitness testimony.

Sometimes, “history” was written such that there was concern with only that which was relevant.  But this does not mean that they did NOT preserve NOTHING or invented material from scratch.  Churches had reason to preserve factual witness to Jesus.  This, however is no reason to abandon investigating the stories, as if we have a guarantee of inerrancy of their witness.  The possibility of embellishment should be of concern to us.  But this should make us stop and consider that there is good grounds for believing these witnesses.  As one scholar says, the witnesses should be treated more as friends to trust than as enemies whom we suspect and torture.

When they testify to events that cannot be satisfactorily explained by normal natural causes or human causation, examining the witness does become more complicated.  And so, not every story we need to treat as “historical” in the sense that it actually happened.  That we need to take it as a witness to a literal historical event.  But those stories that deal with Jesus resurrection and miracles should be treated differently than those events such as floating axheads.  The reason for this is because of their place within the wider story of God’s action (i.e. Barth).  It WOULD matter that Jesus was NOT MERELY resuscitated as opposed to his being resurrected.  THIS historical event is of greater significance than the significance of your next door neighbor driving a nail through a four by four—to refer to Ogden.  This event by it’s very nature does not conform to the rules of historiography.

So what we have is that those “normal rules of historiography” should be seen within the broader context of one’s “philosophy of history.”  It makes a difference if God is included in the that.

The resurrection did not take place in isolation but MAKES SENSE in light of other beliefs.  Though this does mean that it actually happened, it does mean that it does alter the way in which we come to a judgment on WHETHER it happened.

That we NEED the witnesses’ testimony to BE TRUE MEANS that it would be possible to INTENTIONALLY fudge the evidence (which is a good reason to seriously consider our critics (contra Darby).  On the other hand, we are not under any obligation to believe the witness simply because of our predilections for doing so.