AIMING FOR THE BULL’S EYE:

A CRITIQUE OF THE HISTORICAL-METHODOLOGICAL

METHOD FOLLOWED BY BOCK AND WEBB IN THEIR BOOK,
KEY EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS

Ruben Videira Soengas

CONTENTS

Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1
The Presuppositions and Procedures behind The Method ..................................................... 1
Historical-Critical Method A Priori Principles .............................................................. 2
Historical-Critical Method Dangerous Procedures ........................................................ 3
Historical-Critical Method Scientific Presuppositions .................................................. 5
The History and Philosophy behind The Method .................................................................. 7
Historical-Critical Method Forerunners ......................................................................... 7
Historical-Critical Method Philosophy .......................................................................... 9
The Rationalism of The Pre-Modern Era and HCM ................................................ 9
The Skepticism of The Modern Era and HCM ...................................................... 10
The Deconstructionism of The Postmodern Era and HCM ................................... 12
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 16
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 17

Introduction

The purpose of the book Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus is to explore
key activities in the life of Jesus, which may probably be highly historical and significant to
understand the person of Christ. In order to achieve this goal, the authors embraced the
methodology of historical criticism, which in light of their own presuppositions seems to be
the strength of their argument. The writer of this critical review, however, is set to prove that
such strength becomes the very own weakness of this book. So, instead of analyzing and
criticizing individual aspects and argumentations within the book, one’s endeavor is to
demonstrate the inconsistency and irrationality of the authors’ methodology throughout the
entire volume. If it is possible to prove the erratic nature of the Historical-Critical Method
(hereafter HCM), then the entire book loses its credibility and falls apart. In order to attain
the proposed goal, the presupposition and principles behind the method will be, first,
uncovered to then demonstrate its atheistic and skeptical philosophy in light of the
development of the several worldviews that were the realm for the nurturing of the HCM.

The Presuppositions and Procedures behind The Method

True Christianity is absolutely dependent on history. The incarnation, death,

resurrection and ascension of the Messiah are understood as real events within the history-
time-space frame. In fact, these are foundational to the Christian faith. If the collection of
such events was the result of theological presuppositions from the “Evangelist,”1 then the
object of the faith is dissolved in the midst of mortal myths. Thus, if Christian history is lost,2

1
The Evangelist is a term used in the tradition of Textual Criticism to refer to a character in church
history that penned the historical tradition of Jesus. He followed a three-stage transformative process of
separation, liminality, and aggregation. Ergo, he transformed the experiences of Jesus in his earthly ministry, in
order to replicate the experiences within the community on the path of discipleship. These transformations
encompass some of the basics of the spiritual quest and encounter with the divine: testing, catechesis, healing,
epiphany, and commissioning. In terms of redaction, the transformation of Jesus in the gospels’ narrative
emphasizes their importance for the understanding of Jesus’ ministry and mission; of course, all this according
to the assumption that there was an Evangelist. See K. C. Hanson, "Transformed on the Mountain: Ritual
Analysis and the Gospel of Matthew," eds. Mark McVann and Bruce Malina and Society of Biblical Literature,
Semeia 67 (1994): 147.
2
What is meant by Christian history is the true recollection of time-space real events relevant for
Christianity. The writer intends not to allow for a history of the faith, meaning an ethereal portrayal on unreal
events that convey theological axioms later on developed in the bar of history. Since the study of history is at
stake, it seems profitable to further define the different senses of history. History and its cognates have been
used, in at least five different ways: 1) history as an event, meaning it happened, whether or not it can be known
or proven. 2) History as a significant event; not all events are significant history; it is often assumed that history
consists of the ones that are. 3) History as a probable event, meaning that the event did not only happen but also
there is a high probability that it can be demonstrated. 4) History as writing-about-events-in-the-past. To say
that something is historical in this sense is to say that it was written about. 5) History as what modern historians
can say about a topic, and what is meant by “modern” is post-Enlightenment scholars who can prove an event
within the post-Enlightenment worldview. Bock and Webber, when using “history,” will often refer to senses
number 5 and 3, and by implication 2. The writer of this paper will use “history” in senses number 1 and 2 and
by implication 3. The rationale behind these two different approaches functions diametrically opposite. See N.
T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 3 (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2003), 12–13.

1
 2

Christian faith is worthless.3 Thereby Christianity is the direct result of God’s acts in history,
culminated in the historical person of Christ.4 Reason why the gospel narratives are not “the
eternal event of myth but the unique, unrepeatable history; not an idea but a happening; not a
cultic drama, but history in earnest.”5
The historical character of the Christian faith, however, becomes its weakness to the
academia domain. If Christianity necessarily relies upon history, then one obviously wonders
if it may be possible to be certain whether or not such events happened. Moreover, in an
equally important sense, Christianity is absolutely dependent upon the interpretation of God’s
acts in history. The gospels’ documents in themselves are not enough. To make informed
judgments is also required, and at this point is where the Historical-Critical Method becomes,
some would say, a necessity.6 Hence, the veracity and the meaning of the gospels can only be
determined through historical study. It will throw light on the “obscure” narrative by
determining the nature of the events more precisely to which such document bears witness.
The conjecture is that when it comes to historical studies “no witness can be permitted to go
unexamined and no authority unquestioned. The historian does not accept the authority of the
witnesses; rather, he confers authority upon them, and he does this only after subjecting them
to a rigorous and skeptical cross-examination.”7 Consequently, and generally speaking, a
historical method frame is necessary to properly understand the NT.

Historical-Critical Method A Priori Principles

The task of the historical-critical scholar is to reconstruct the historical conditions of

the production of a text and then to determine the author's intended meaning from within that
background.8 This is the historical side of the HCM, which stresses three principles. First, the
principle of criticism, which says that the historian knowledge is a matter of probability, and
is thus open for revision.9 In other words, the historian produces only a “reduced
representation of the past.”10 He selects only what leads to the generalization and conclusions
of his purpose in writing. The assumption, therefore, is that “history is a selective system.”11
This principle conveys a methodological doubt to the extent that it engenders an intense
skepticism about sources of the possibility of divine activity. This claim undercuts the

3
In 1 Corinthians 15:13–14 the apostle Paul claims the intrinsically dependence of the faith to the
historical fact of the resurrection.
4
See Donald A. Hagner, "The New Testament, History, and the Historical-Criticla Method," in New
Testament Hisotry and Interpretation, eds. David Alan Black and David S. Dockery (Grand Rapids: Zondervan
Publishing House, 1991), 74.
5
Heinz Zahrnt, The Historical Jesus, trans. by J. S. Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers,
1963), 65.
6
See Hagner, 75.
7
Van A. Harvey, The Historian & The Believer. The Moraloty of Historical Knowledge and Christian
Belief, with a New Introduction by the Author (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 107.
8
See B. D. Smith, "The Historical-Critical Method, Jesus Research, and the Christian Scholar," Trinity
Journal 15, no. 2 (1994): 202.
9
See Hagner, 83.
10
Edgar Krentz, The Historical-Critical Method (Philadelphia: Fortress Press , 1975), 37.
11
Edward Hallett Carr, What is History? Reprint (New York: Knopf and Kampf, 1962), 138.

Christian belief that the world and history do matter for humanity, especially in the events
central to divine promises of salvation.12
The second principle is the criteria of analogy, which stipulates that only that which is
analogous with what it is experienced today can have a claim to being accepted as historical.
Since historians cannot know what has happened in the past they cannot dogmatize about it.
Therefore, when one is looking at an ancient account, he must judge it according to his
experience and that of his contemporary. It assumes that there is no available alternative.
There is no particular reason to doubt that things occurred differently in the past. To admit
such a possibility is to throw away the historical criterion. History will be at the mercy of old
stories of people turning lead into gold.13 The principle of analogy is simply a “surprise-free
method.”14 It determines the veracity of history on current trends. It underlines the criterion
of dissimilarity regarding the gospels. There is no saying ascribed to Jesus that may be
counted as probably authentic if it has parallels in both Jewish and early Church sayings.15
The logic behind this criterion is that, if the material is different than traditions in either
Judaism or early Christianity, then the origins of the material cannot be traced to either of
these sources and so may be viewed as originating from Jesus.16 Thus, the presupposition is
that if there are contradictions between gospel sayings, these should be attributed to different
church factions ascribing their views to Jesus based on various rabbinical sayings in order to
Judaize early Christianity. However, one may take this criterion even further and assume that
if applied, too little data would be left, since only little material meets this criterion.17 Then,
there would not be a historical Jesus at all.
The third principle, that of correlation, implies that all historical phenomena are so
interrelated that a change in one phenomenon necessitates a change in the causes leading to it
and the effects it has.18 This is a priori principle that rules out the possibility of causation
from outside the system. Hence God cannot act in history.

Historical-Critical Method Dangerous Procedures

Several criticisms may be raised against the previous HCM presuppositions. First,
HCM could be labeled as Modernist and Neo-Modernist, because it emphasizes the human
elements in the Bible and not paying sufficient attention to the Bible as the Word of God.19

12
Darrell L. Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus. A Guide to Sources and Methods (Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 2002), 159.
13
See Robert M Price, "Jesus at the Vanishing Point," in The Historical Jesus. Five Views, eds. James
K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009), 56–57.
14
See Clark H. Pinnock, The Scripture Principle (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1992), 149.
15
See Price, 59.
16
See Robert L. Webb, "The Historical Entreprise and Historical Jesus Research," in Key Events in the
Life of the Historical Jesus. A Collaborative Exploration of Context and Coherence, ed. by Darrell L. Bock and
Robert L. Webb(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 64.
17
The central tenet of form criticism makes this criterion all devouring. If every gospel periscope needs
to have a pragmatic use in order to be transmitted, then all sayings must be denied, since they were relevant and
pragmatic in light of the Jewish context of the early church.
18
See Krentz, 55.
19
J. A. Fitzmyer, "Historical Criticism: Its Role in Biblical Interpretation and Church Life,"
Theological Studies 50, no. 2 (1989): 244.

Second, HCM follows a liberal consensus that will bring the Church to the end of orthodoxy.
20
This liberal consensus is the most vigorous intellectual movement since the Middle Ages,
and it is being promoted by exegetes and theologians, awakened from a long hibernation.
Having adopted advanced techniques from mainly Protestant scholars, they have used them
for a radical rethinking of the faith and have been dismantling traditional Christian theology.
Their work has brought them to conclusions that conflict with traditional doctrines, raising
doubts about the gospel accounts of the claims Jesus supposedly made.21 Third, HCM is
overly preoccupied with the prehistory of the text and consequently neglecting its final form,
its literary features, its canonical setting, and especially the theological meaning of the sacred
text. Therefore, HCM does not seek to harmonize the text. Instead it looks for unsolvable
problems that undermine the inspiration of the text. Finally, HCM operates with all or some
of the following three suppositions. First, miracles do not happen. Such texts need other
explanations of origin. Second, the books of Scripture are human works, not divinely
inspired; ergo, impossible to harmonize. Finally, problems and discrepancies in the text
indicate the human character of these works.22
These suppositions allowed for the truth claims made by a biblical text to be open to
refutation. There can be no instances of special pleading; all texts are to be treated alike. In
other words, the biblical texts are to have no a priori authority, since such a distinction would
necessarily mean that the interpreter would make decisions
 in advance about the potential
existential import of some texts relative to others.23 Therefore, it becomes axiomatic that a
biblical text means only what its author intended it to mean. Most biblical scholars would
agree with such a statement; the problem is that for HCM the gospels are the result of
theological inferences and tradition developed later in church history after the death of Mark,
Matthew and Luke.24 In the words of Benjamin Jowett, "scripture has one meaning—the

20
See Joseph G Prior,. The Historical Critical Method in Catholic Exegesis, Tessi Gregoriana Serie
Teologia 50 (Roma: Gregorian University Press, 2001), 274.
21
Fitzmyer, 245.
22
For a more extensive discussion see Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus. A Guide to Sources and
Methods, 158.
23
See Smith, 202.
24
In light of the HCM, the convention is that the traditions contained within the gospels are understood
to have passed through various stages before they came to be written in the gospels: 1) Events stage:
eyewitnesses observe and event and/or hear a saying. 2) Oral tradition stage: eyewitnesses tell others about what
they saw and/or heard who in turn tell others. 3) Early collections stage: collections of oral traditions are made
based on similarity of the subject material or interest of the collector and 4) gospel composition stage: the
gospel writers use material from earlier written gospels, other early collections, and other oral traditions to
compose their own gospel. At any time in this process, it is assumed that it would be historically possible that an
event or saying that had been observed or heard was later added to or changed in some way, and it could also be
possible that an event or saying was created by someone and inserted into the process at any stage in a written
gospel (see Webb, 56). The assumption is that the gospels are merely human documents; hence HCM is
necessary in order to help the critical historian to establish what parts of the historical account were added or
changed, since to do such a thing seems to be a pattern in historical documents. This argumentation completely
and blatantly ignores the role of the Holy Spirit in gospel composition. Thus, the gospels become mere human
accounts and by extension are not granted any greater historical authority. Sadly, if it is not possible to
determine the authenticity of a gospel pericope, the HCM would say that while it is probably not historical, this
pericope still presents a profound truth about Jesus from a Christian theological perspective. However, one asks,
if a critical historian is able to detach theology from history, then what makes Christianity any different than
Buddhism, or Hinduism? Why and how could Webb assert that only Christianity is the way to salvation if it has
lost its historical authenticity? Whatever is being said in the gospels and does not truly and faithfully depict a

meaning which it had in the minds of the Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to
the hearers or readers who first received it."25 The issue with such approach is that of source
criticism. If the final text is the result of an unknown author that recompiled traditional
sayings over time, then only when the historian strips apart the compiler’s “add-ons” he may
have a probability of looking at the original text and thus its original meaning. This a priori
conjecture denies the authorial intent to what HCM calls the final form.

Historical-Critical Method Scientific Presuppositions

HCM, as any other historical method, studies any narrative, like the gospels
themselves, that may convey, describe or refer to historical information in a specific passage;
in order to determine what actually occurred.26 Therefore, to some, at first sight, it may seem
helpful. However, the principles previously discussed show that the presuppositions behind
the historian would determine his interpretation and usage of the method. While not all
historical methods follow the same presuppositions, the HCM presuppositions—a matter of
considerable debate and disagreement—are, generally speaking, oriented towards theological
rationalism, becoming a historical method that enthrones human intellectual autonomy. Thus,
Christian faith is seen as an independent power from a set of divinely inspired documents. Its
authenticity relies upon the individual that has the ability of reason and consents to the
Christian tenets, and then, by extension, the documents of the Christian faith become
authoritative. The main and disastrous dilemma of HCM is that the authority of the text is
given by the reader’s worldview and not the text itself. Ironically the starting point would not
be the inspired authority of the sacred Christian texts, but the authority of the historian to
determine if such text may have some kind of authority.27 This approach strikes at the heart
of the Christian faith, and its warp and woof are a priori presuppositions that could be
categorized in two main groups, naturalistic and theistic.
The naturalistic approach rejects descriptions and explanations that involve divine
causation, because cause and effect within the space-time universe is understood to operate
within a closed continuum.28 It assumes that the physical, space-time universe constitutes the
totality of reality. Thereby, history is concerned with events within the natural, space-time

historic account as a genuine and significant recollection of historical events, lacks any theological authority.
Christianity loses its message and its claim of divine authority.
25
Benjamin Jowett, "On The Interpretation of Scripture," Iin Essays and Reviews (London: John W.
Parker and Son, West Strand, 1860), 378.
26
See I. H. Marshall, "Historical Criticism," in New Testament Interpretation. Essays on Principles
and Methods, ed. I. Howard Marshall (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977), 126.
27
See Werner Georg Kümmel, The New Testament: the history of the investigation of its problems, 2nd
ed., trans. by S. McLean Gilmour and Howard C. Kee (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972), 62–69.
28
One is curious to know how a HCM historian with a natural approach would answer to their assumed
causation principle in light of the Relativity Theory. For, according to Einstein, there is no one causation-
framework for the whole cosmos, so what has been caused in the past from one perspective is already future
from another. So then, past, present and future causation simply exist as absolutes although the individual
experience of each may be relative. Relativity allows for causation, but not as a close lineal bar—cause, effect.
Causation is an absolute. Thus the empirical understanding of relativity does not demand static and lineal
causation. Instead, it explains human history as absolute and human experience as relative. This denies the idea
of a close continuum, and therefore, attacks the natural worldview of any critical historian. See William Lane
Craig, God, Time and Eternity: The Coherence of Theism II: Eternity (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
2001), 173.

universe. Ergo, only those past events that correlate to the present human experience of the
space-time physical realm could be ascribed as historical.29 The theistic approach is the
opposite pole.30 It does not necessarily accept all historical claims as the result of divine
intervention. But it would allow for such claims, as the historical explanation of an event,
when the evidence would support it. This approach does not reject the scientific paradigm,
but rather views history as having precedence over science.31 For this approach on reality
includes not only the physical, space-time universe, but also a supra-mundane, supernatural
world that can and does interact with humans in the physical, space-time universe.32
These two approaches, naturalistic and theistic, permit their view of reality (natural or
supernatural) to define the type of causation used in historical explanations. Therefore, for
either position, there is a necessary empirical element to the historical method. This means
that the foundation for both approaches has to be observable data interpreted by the historian
and presented as evidence. Jonathan Worman explains:
A person who makes a claim to knowledge has to defend it to the satisfaction of
others, by appealing to public standards that all can share. Experience, as
encapsulated in the language we learned to share in talking about a shared world, is
pre-eminently the right kind of thing for this role. Private and privileged sources for
knowledge claims, no matter how splendid, are worthless, unless others can be
persuaded, by good objective reason, to go along with them. “Knowledge” an
ordinary English word, we were taught to use correctly as children, and it is a matter
for public checking.33

The problem with such an assertion is that it assumes that collective agreement equals
genuine knowledge. So the consensus of the mass determines the veracity of the historical
event, which has historically been proven as absurd. In the middle ages the consensus and the

29
See Ernst Troeltsch, Religion in History (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1997), 14.
30
Webb suggests a third option called “methodological naturalistic history” as one which belongs to
the theistic category. He explains that the historian who follows such approach would limit his explanation of
historical events to natural causations, whether he believes in God or not (See Webb, 41–45). The writer has
decided to not deal with this view because, pragmatically speaking, it is no different than the natural approach.
In one sense it is no man’s land. The logic behind such a proposal is that if a historian explains a historical event
in light of his theistic worldview, then a naturalistic historian will not embrace such explanation as valid,
because the theistic historian is introducing a type of argumentation that is wholly different from all others used
in historical explanations. The historian’s explanations, according to HCM, must be open to verification by the
reader from observable data. Hence, a theistic explanation is not a working system within HCM paradigm. In
order to solve this tension, the limited methodological naturalistic history is proposed; however, such an
approach says, “I believe in God, but I look at history like if He did not exist, so that you and I could be at the
same level.” The fallacy of Webb’s argumentation is that he is proposing that the theistic historian would
embrace the methods of the very same worldview that he is trying to prove wrong. This is nonsense. In order to
be part of the academia dialogue, one must abandoned the very same approach that he is trying to defend. If that
is the proposed solution, then one ought to be consistent and take it to its logical conclusion: methodological
naturalistic history has no explanation for the causation of the natural physical world. Thus, if it cannot be
explained nor validated with observational data, then it is not a true historical event; which begs the question,
“what is then reality?”
31
See Benedetto Croce, History, Its Theory and Practice, The European Library, ed. J. E. Spingarn,
trans. Douglas Ainslie (New York: Harcourt , Brace and Company, 1921), 98–99.
32
Webb, 41.
33
Jonathan Gorman, Understanding History. An Introduction to Analytical Phyiosophy of History,
Philisophica 42 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1992), 22.

experience shared by the public was that the earth was at the center of the solar system. No
scientist would support such a claim today. Thus, the fatal flaw with either approach, theistic
or naturalistic, is their dependency on empirical evidence and validated data. Therefore, none
is sufficient to study the historical evidence of the synoptic gospels.34 In the end, these
inconsistencies within the HCM manifest its philosophical roots contrary to biblical
revelation. HCM is the product of the epistemological revolution of the Enlightenment.
Consequently, once the HCM’s intrinsic presuppositions are understood, the historian would
see the corruption of the method, and to this the writer turns.

The History and Philosophy behind The Method

The HCM of biblical interpretation was not used in patristic, medieval, or

Reformation periods of the Church. Isolated patristic commentators, such as Origen,
Augustine, or Jerome, may have used primitive forms of criticism that at times resemble this
method, but the mode of exposition was then largely literal and/or allegorical, sometimes
preoccupied with what has been called the "spiritual" sense of Scripture.35 It is commonly
believed that the followers of the Reformers established this new scholasticism, becoming the
forerunners of the HCM.36

Historical-Critical Method Forerunners

HCM begsn to rise as a new approach to New Testament interpretation under the
influence of Johann Salomo Semler (1725–91), who approached the New Testament canon
on a historical basis, and Johann David Michaelis (1717–91), who created a false dichotomy
between the historical character of the gospels and the theology of the documents.37 It is at
this point that the HCM began to focus on specific interpretative issues within the New
Testament, including issues related to the gospels. Both these men were indebted in some
measure to Richard Simon’s work. Interestingly, Simon was motivated by a desire to weaken

34
In response to Gorman’s declaration, one wants to briefly present an alternative to his epistemology.
Gorman emphasizes the need for public consensus and discussion; such an idea is not necessarily far from the
truth. However, instead of proposing a social empirical consensus, one would argue for an epistemology based
on the universal laws of logic, which are: the law of identity (P is P), the law of non-contradiction (P is not non-
P), and the law of excluded middle (either P or non-P). These govern all reality and thought and are known to be
true because they are intuitively obvious and self-evident and because those who deny them use these principles
in their denial, demonstrating that those laws are unavoidable. The relevancy of these laws is that while
empirical, they allow for the reality of the supernatural. Divine causation does not contradict logic since God
Himself acts within history according to the coherence of His own logic, which is foundational to human logic.
Thereby, when historians try to explain the causation of a historical event, the method should not be one that is
understood and approved by all because they could validate the data empirically; such approach cannot explain
the existence of non-empirical realities, such as human thoughts. But one that is universally self-evident, true
knowledge is always coherent with God’s actions. See Ted Cabal, Chad Owen Brand, E. Ray Clendenen et al.,
The Apologetics Study Bible: Real Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible
Publishers, 2007), 1854.
35
See Fitzmyer, 246.
36
F.F. Bruce, "The History of the New Testament Study," in New Testament Interpretation: Essays on
Principles and Methods, ed. I. Howard Marshall (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1977), 34.
37
Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus. A Guide to Sources and Methods, 156.

the force of the Reformers’ appeal to the authority of Scripture. In short, Semler and
Michaelis should be acknowledged as pioneers in the HCM.38
Michaelis’ disciple, Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, followed Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s
thesis. He envisaged a primitive Aramaic Gospel of the Nazarenes, which was used by Mark
and the other canonical evangelists—precursor of the document Q theory. Eventually, under
the influence of these men, a sharp distinction between the portrait of Jesus in the Gospel of
John and that in the other three Gospel would be drawn.39
Semler’s pupil, Johann Jakob Griesbach, marked the transition from the “post-
Reformation” to the “modern” age of New Testament study. He focused his literal studies on
the Gospels and their interrelationship. He did turn his back on tradition and investigated the
literary problem from a modern perspective, moving away incipient HCM from orthodoxy.40
The new approach to biblical criticism and interpretation at the end of the eighteenth
and beginning of the nineteenth century is paralleled in other fields of study. Alexander
Geddes, father of the “fragmentary hypothesis” of the composition of the Pentateuch
distinguished three theological strands in the New Testament: the Jewish-Christian (in the
Synoptic Gospels, most of Acts, the letters of James, Peter and Jude, and the Apocalypse),
the Alexandrian (in Hebrews and the Johannine Gospel and letters) and the Pauline. These
represent three separate lines along which the message of Jesus was interpreted and
developed.41
In the XIX century, Lachmann paved the way for the general acceptance of Mark’s
priority over the two other Synoptic Gospels and their dependence on Mark. Lachmann’s
New Testament investigations had been stimulated by Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher
(1768–1834), who argued that the logia of Matthew should be understood as a collection of
the sayings of Jesus.42 During Lachmann’s life, F. Strauss and F.C. Baur appeared in the
horizon. Their works signaled the beginning of the school that dominated German theology
and New Testament Criticism, the banner of HCM in Europe. Both Strauss and Baur
accepted Griesbach’s radical and rational thinking.43 Strauss found it impossible to believe in
a transcendent God who intervenes in the life of the world, and hence found it impossible to
accept the gospel witness to Christ. What he provided was a carefully constructed
replacement for the gospel story, based on a thorough-going typology of miracle and myth.
The rationalistic interpretation of the narrative was thus displaced by a mythological
interpretation.44
Schleiermacher, a German theologian and philosopher, infused basic rationalism into
the area of New Testament studies. His studies spread individualistic rationalism, which says
that the self-conscience and experience of the individual determine the meaning of religious

38
Bruce, 36.
39
See William R. Farmer, The Synoptic Problem. A Critical Analysis (Dillsboro: Western North
Carolina Press, 1976), 5–8.
40
Ibid.
41
Bruce, 38–39.
42
Stephen Neill and Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986, 2nd ed.,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 73.
43
Farmer, 18.
44
Bruce, 40.

documents.45 He accepted the gospel story as a whole but rationalized its details so as largely
to evacuate them of theological significance and to reduce them to nothing. The miracles of
raising the dead, like the resurrection of Jesus himself, were interpreted in terms of the
reanimation of people who were only apparently dead; the superficial piercing of Jesus’ side
inadvertently performed the beneficial service of a phlebotomy, and the supernatural features
in the accounts of his appearances to the disciples as due to presuppositions on the part of the
latter. The impact of Schleiermacher’s approach heavily nuanced today’s HCM.
In essence, the influence of these men disqualified a history in which God was active
in the events as a source of reason and historical tradition.46 A secular wall separated religion
and the mind, opening the door to today’s approach to the gospels, which asserts that they
contain valuable lessons that are not founded on historical events. This is an unprecedented
divorce for the church between history and gospel.47 The fault for such a false dichotomy
defended by these scholars is at a worldview in development during their lifetime.

Historical-Critical Method Philosophy

In order to understand the philosophy behind the development of HCM it is necessary

to trace its baggage to the worldview or worldviews where it was nurtured from its origin.
After all, the HCM did not appear out of the blue. The HCM is the fruit of incipient
modernism and later postmodernism, which is a fatalist response to Christian orthodoxy. The
pendulum swung diametrically opposed from one end to the other. Understanding what
caused such a deviation is crucial to establish whether or not the system offers a valid method
for the study of the New Testament and specifically of the synoptic gospels.

The Rationalism of The Pre-Modern Era and HCM

Pre-modernism is the period of history that led through the Dark Ages, the
Reformation and the 1700s. During this era, people believed in the supernatural, the divine
and the reality of spiritual realms.48 The pre-modern mixed bag of beliefs included three
elements: The first element was the Mythological Paganism inherited from the ancient
Greeks, which even Socrates rejected arguing that the stories of the so-called gods were
nothing more than projections of human vices. Most of this mythological tradition contained
moralistic tales about the battles of good versus evil. The second element was Classical
Rationalism. This was the result of the minds of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates
challenged Mythological Paganism and argued for the existence of one God behind all
history. Plato developed classical idealism, which was the view that particulars of this world

45
Ibid.
46
Many academic works have already produced a detailed and excellent timeline of the origin of
historical criticism. Hence, the purpose of the present discussion is simply to see the influence of some key
characters. For a larger discussion see F. David Farnell, "Philosophical and Theological Bent of Historical
Criticism," in The Jesus Crisis. The Inroads of Historical Criticism into Evangelical Scholarship, eds. Robert L.
Thomas and F. David Farnell (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1998), 85–131; Eta Linnemann, Historical
Criticism of the Bible. Methodology or Ideology? Trans. Robert Yarbrough (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications,
1990), 23–43; Krentz, 6–32.
47
Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus. A Guide to Sources and Methods, 157.
48
Rick C. Shrader, “Postmodernism," Journal of Ministry and Theology (Baptist Bible College) 3, no.
1 (Spring 1999): 17.

 10

owed their form to transcendent ideals in the mind of God. Aristotle affirmed the existence of
objective values and argued for a first cause to all causes. He and his analytical method
pushed human reason to dizzying heights. The last and third element is Biblical Theism,
which was the influence of Christianity on the rational mind of the pre-modern era. The
Biblical and the Classical worldviews agreed on the existence of transcendence, on the
possibility of the physical world to be knowable, on objective truth and on intellectual
absolutes. For over a thousand years, Western civilization was dominated by a difficult
mingling of worldviews—the Biblical Revelation, Classical Rationalism, and the remnants of
native pagan mythologies. During the middle Ages this achieved something of a synthesis
resulting in a subordination of the Bible to Aristotelian logic and human institutions;49 in
other words, human reason began to determine the legitimacy of divine revelation. This has
become the HCM’s driving force.
The pre-modern paradigm viewed the world as an undifferentiated whole, and in this
respect, social relationships, personal assessments, inner motivation and so on blended
holistically into a unique perception of truth. In other words, for a pre-modern mind the quest
for knowledge was centered on understanding agendas emerging from peoples of power and
how allegiances or lack of allegiances to those agendas affected a particular world. This
caused the pre-modern mind to think of dualisms—an individual was either allied or opposed
to the agendas of a person of power. Hence, a typical pre-modernist allied to God would
never have questioned the inherent truth of the gospels. Also, essential to the pre-modern
mind was its communal character; it tended to embrace what its community affirmed. For the
pre-modern mind, scientific method and radical doubt are absent. However, objective divine
revelation in the gospels had already been compromised.50

The Skepticism of The Modern Era and HCM

The term modern comes from the Latin word modo, meaning “just now.” It originally
meant something like recent, present or contemporary. It shows the desire to express the
Modern thought as a distinct entity from its predecessors. The Modern society acquired a
different consciousness from the classical antiquity. However, today such a term expresses
obsoleteness.51 The Modern era comprises the “period, the ideology, and the malaise of the
time from 1789 to 1989, from the Bastille to the Berlin Wall.”52 The Pre-Modern Era was
shattered by the three blows commonly associated with Columbus, Copernicus, and Luther:
The Columbian discovery of the New World ruptured the familiar and surveyable
geography of the Middle Ages. The Copernican solar system decentered the earth
from its privileged position in the universe. The Lutheran reformation, in making the
Bible and the believer the final authorities of Christianity, fatally weakened the
communal power of divinity.53

49
Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994), 29–31.
50
Robert C. Greer, Mapping Postmodernism, a Survey of Christian Options (Downers Grove:
InterVarsity Press, 2003), 218–22.
51
Albert Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern Divide (Chicago: Chicago Press, 1992), 20.
52
Thomas C. Oden, “The Death of Modernity,” in The Challenge of Postmodernism, ed. David S.
Dockery (Wheaton: BridgePoint, 1995), 20.
53
Borgmann, 22.

 11

These blows resulted in the founding of Modernity in less than a generation. Francis Bacon,
along with René Descartes and John Locke laid the theoretical foundations for Modernism,
which became essential for the development of HCM.
Bacon was eager to recognize the need for a radically new start. He envisioned the
new scientific research. Descartes was a radical Reconstructionist.54 His epistemological
approach is legendary. He wanted to be completely certain that what he thought he knew was
actually true. So, he took the method of the doubt almost to the limit.55 In his studies he
concluded that he could doubt everything except what he doubted. For Descartes “doubting
equaled thinking:”56
I do not now admit anything which is not necessarily true: to speak accurately, I am
not more than a thing which thinks, that is to say a mind or a soul, or an
understanding, or a reason, which are terms whose significance was formerly
unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing and really exist; what thing? I have
answered: a thing which thinks.57

This is the essence of the modern philosophy—the autonomy of human reason, which
liberated the modern mind from the authority of the ancient sacred texts. Divine revelation
was not part of the equation anymore.

54
Descartes is the first of the modern philosophers. He sets the subject of innate ideas into a new
perspective. Not only is he philosophically disinterested in special revelation, rejecting the gospel accounts, but
he is also ambiguous about the origin of innate ideas, and about their relation to the sphere of supernatural and
ultimate Reason. He is in many ways radically inconsistent. For him the idea of God is detached from grace and
personhood, becoming a mathematical inflexible idea. This view of God and religion led him to see the soul as
merely a psychological entity of the self. The inner being of man is completely removed from the medieval
religious sphere and its supernatural context. Hence, Descartes granted a real existence to matter and thought.
Although he spoke of three realms of existence—god, the world and self—and on paper he asserted god’s
existence, his functional philosophy was detached from supernaturalism. So, for Descartes, true knowledge is
achieved in relation to soul and sensation. The problem is that if all that exists belongs to the three realms of
self, matter and god, in order to truly know, then knowledge must flow from the three realms. Descartes did not
include the divine idea as an axiom for his epistemology. His philosophy develops quite out of touch with
divine revelation. This is significant because in light of the previous argument, Descartes does not present a
rational perspective. In other words, if he was truly rational and consistent with his epistemology, his logic
would be “I think God,” instead of “I think.” If Descartes asserted the perception of the infinite before that of
the finite, that is, the perception of God before self, then the question is, why is Descartes’ philosophy and
epistemology detached from the divine realm of existence? For Descartes, God was merely a force that bridged
matter and mind together, a force that later was going to be defined by the evolutionary naturalist as simple
energy. Two aspects of Descartes’ philosophy are crucial to understanding the development of the HCM: first,
his epistemology—asserting the existence of the divine realm he rejected divine revelation leaving the doors
wide open for relativism and the rejection of the gospels historicity, and second, his understanding of the divine
as the bridge between the world of conciseness and the world of matter resulted in the denaturalization of God.
His personhood became a mere force or energy that held matter and thought together. Thus, the immanent God
revealed in the gospels must not be true. For more information see Second and Third Meditations in René
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, ed. by John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996). Also, see Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 1. 6 vols (Wheaton:
Crossway Books, 1999), 301–307.
55
This has become the foundation for the a priori principle “methodological doubt” embraced and
used by the HCM. See section under heading Historical-Critical Method A Priori Principles.
56
James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door, Kindle Electronic Editio (Downers Grove: IVP Academic,
2004), Chapter 9, Location 2109.
57
Descartes, 29.

 12

If Descartes promotes innate ideas, Locke, biased of empiricist forces, denies all
innate factors. He also emphasizes that the so-called eternal truths of religion and morality,
and rational thought itself as well as conscience and all man’s noblest features, are products
of development and individual acquisition due to environmental influences. In other words,
the notion of innatism arises from an apparent universal consent, which does not, in fact,
exist. Some could argue that it exists, but if that was the case, then it should be accounted as
an inference from experience. This means that man learns the words of morality and religion,
even before he knows the ideas of the good and of God. Hence, what is at stake is the origin
of knowledge and ideas, and Locke accounted for this in terms of sensation and reflection. In
perception, the mind is purely passive; all functions of the human mind belong to the lower
animals. But man, has the gift of abstraction that enables him to compose universal notions.
Such perspective led to agnosticism in the field of New Testament studies. Moreover, if the
origin of knowledge is mere experience, then each individual’s knowledge is purely true
since experience cannot contradict itself. This, logically, results in the loss of absolutes, the
embracement of relatives and the rejection of divine authority. Lock’s work—Treatise—is a
celebration of the individual, the unencumbered and autonomous human being. The
autonomy of the single self is the new authority of last appeal. Unquestionable, these are
outbreaks seen in HCM.58
This era of reason, scientific discovery and human autonomy is termed the
Enlightenment, which caused the Western world to be committed to this modern agenda. The
Enlightenment rejected Christianity and saw the whole universe as a closed system of cause
and effect.59 During this time, British Deism claimed that the character of God was only
necessary to get everything started, but not for everyday life.60 Eventually thinkers even
discarded Enlightenment classicism. Rationalism was supplanted by Empiricism, resulting in
materialism—only that which is observable is real. During the Enlightenment, tradition tried
to find ways of doing without the supernatural.61 This philosophical and modern flux set the
stage for the development of the HCM. It sparked Romanticism and Existentialism—both,
the voices of dissent of the HCM.

The Deconstructionism of The Postmodern Era and HCM

Early nineteenth century encompasses the transitional period. Romanticism turned the
rationalism of the Enlightenment upside down. Rather than seeing nature as a vast machine,
the romantics saw nature as a living organism. Also, in reaction to the anti-spiritual and
mathematical attitude of the Enlightenment’s humanism, Romanticism brought back an
appreciation for the human and the spiritual. The romantics believed that God is close at hand
and intimately involved in the physical world. Some went so far as to believe that God is
identical to nature and to self—New Pantheism. Moreover, Romanticism assumed that

58
See Henry, 310–14; John Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding (London, 1796); and
Borgmann, 24–25.
59
Presupposition behind the natural approach to the study of the synoptic gospels, see discussion under
heading Historical-Critical Method Scientific Presuppositions.
60
The Enlightenment thinkers sought to devise a rational religion, a faith that did not depend upon
revelation. The result was Deism. According to Deism, the orderliness of nature proves the existence of a deity;
however, God is no longer involved in the creation, and thus, the historical accounts of the gospels become
mere theological stories detached from historical events, since God does not act within human history.
61
Veith, 33–35.

 13

emotions are the essence of humanness. The romantics exalted the individual over
impersonal, abstract systems. Self-fulfillment was the basis for morality; hence, its
cultivation of subjectivism, irrationalism and intense emotionalism. However, a few decades
later, Romanticism faded away paving the way for Existentialism.62
Existentialism was the major philosophical system in the twentieth century that
seriously challenged Modernism. It attempted to define truth in a context where universal and
absolute truth was understood not to exist, meaning that there is no meaning in life—an
Existential life creates its own meaning through relativism. In some regards, Existentialism
was similar to Modernism. For instance, Existentialism began where Descartes began—
radical doubt or Cogito. The difference is that Existentialism insisted that from this starting
point one could not reach absolute or universal truth. Instead, all one could do was to
experience the world as it is. This thinking applied to the study of historical texts, led the
existential historian to doubt the genuineness of historical accounts, especially the gospels.
Now, historians deal with probabilities, instead of accepting the gospels as witnesses of
historical events.
A major criticism against Existentialism is that it presupposes the possibility of a
mindset not influenced by history and culture. However, no individual can think from a blank
slate. This statement is already influenced by the baggage of culture and history. It is a
contra-response to the Modern worldview. Thus, the existential mind comes to the
presupposition of thinking aculturally and ahistorically from its own culture and history.
Moreover, a philosophy is more than its origin—for Existentialism the uninfluenced human
mind— it is also language and epistemology. Thus, consistency with the Existentialist’s
presupposition requires to not only reject history and culture, but any epistemological and
linguistic historical baggage that even the existentialist needs in order to formulate its
presuppositions.
Romanticism, as well as Existentialism, depicted the voices of dissent that opened the
way for Postmodernism. This term first suggests that Postmodernism “follows modernism
chronologically as descriptive of the predominant cultural mindset, and secondly its
ascendance marks, and may have hastened, the relative collapse of modernist philosophy.”63
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the term began to be used under the influence of French
literary criticism and philosophy, and postmodern theory became interwoven with
poststructuralist discourses, particularly that of deconstruction. In the late 1980s
Postmodernism also became associated with antifoundationalist philosophical discourse,
particularly within the field of epistemology.64
By the mid 1980s Postmodernism had become integrally connected with
poststructuralist textual practices and literary criticism. Postmodern theory began to employ a
great number of ideas and methods taken from French poststructuralism. “The most
influential poststructuralist discourses on the shape of emerging postmodern writings were
the literary-critical work of Roland Barthes (1915–80), the deconstructive practices of
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), the genealogical criticism of Michel Foucault (1926–84), the

62
See Shrader, 21; and Veith, 35–38.
63
Michael Cox, "Signs and Significance: A Christian Analysis of Two Postmodern Perspectives,"
(Master's Thesis, Cincinnati Bible Seminary, 2002), 13.
64
See Craig A. Phillips, “Postmodernism,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, ed. by Erwin
Fahlbusch and Geoffrey William Bromiley, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmands, 2005), 4:298; and Greer, 227.

 14

psychoanalytic work of Jacques Lacan (1901–81), and the philosophical/sociological work of

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–98).”65
Jacques Derrida, an Algerian philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century,
is widely considered one of the champions of deconstructionism. Derrida sought to
deconstruct the binary and hierarchical oppositions within the Western philosophical
tradition, including, for example, presence/absence, speech/writing, mind/body, and
inside/outside. In other words, deconstructionism refers to a certain Western way of looking
at entities, meaning, time and consciousness as present in the present—Being. According to
Derrida, in the Western world consciousness is the primordial experience of Being. Thus, the
phenomenon constituted by observation and experience is perceived subjectively and
idealistically and it is an intentional phenomenon. Derrida, nonetheless, questions if
subjective consciousness could be the grounds for transcendental knowledge. However, he
does not offer a system, instead, his deconstructionism is an abyssal “etcetera,” which would
threaten both identity and the very concept of the concept. Thus, Derrida describes a textual
concept. The reader does not need to actively perform deconstructionism; rather it happens in
the text itself, and in particular within the unique historical reading act. This means that the
text is read with a self-awareness of the absence of the author’s intentions. In other words,
according to Derrida, within individual systems of truth, modifications to definitions are
“always already” taking place, preventing truth from stabilizing even within individual
systems of thought. That is, even within individual systems, definitions are in a constant state
of flux, deconstructing and reshaping their societally understood meanings on the fly. Hence,
truth lacks definition even on a cultural level. Therefore, all assertions are equally
indeterminate—and equally respectable, which is the heart of the philosophy behind the
HCM.
Nevertheless, Derrida’s characterization of deconstructionism is problematic since it
does not give access to the original truth; it does not offer the final solution. Moreover,
Derrida’s analysis of deconstructionism is so broad and open that it is hard to specifically
define it. It makes one wonder if he truly and genuinely understood his own term borrowed
from Heidegger. If the reader automatically deconstructs the text, why should one accept the
false universalism hidden behind Derrida’s deconstructionism? Why could one not detach the
text from the author’s original intention and deny Derrida’s deconstructionist position? If
every assertion is indeterminate; then, does Derrida really have the ultimate authority on this
issue? Why is Derrida offering a “rule” automatically applied by the individual, if each
example is different than the rule? That shows that there is no such thing as the rule of
deconstructionism. Throughout this whole deconstruction process it is evident that a
particular bias is present, which is the philosophy of idealism that suggests that all of reality
is based upon words or ideas. But what if reality is more complex than Idealism suggests?
What if processes also count? Perhaps Being—the key concept for Derrida—can be labeled
with a word, but is not reducible to a word. Perhaps reality exists apart from language. The
use of the word “dog” or “poodle” does not determine the existence of a dog. One may call a
poodle “dog” or “poodle” without changing the reality of the dog’s existence. In short,
Derrida’s deconstructionism does not change reality,66 and regarding the HCM, it means that
the evaluations and conclusions attained by the system itself do not deny the reality of a
historical event. Hence, the HCM is contained within a philosophical and unavoidable

65
Phillips, 299.
66
See Phillips, 299; Greer, 227; Marika Enwald, "Displacements of Deconstruction," (Academic
Dissertation, University of Tampere, 2004), 46–61.

 15

fallacy. While it aims to “reveal” the authentic history behind the gospels accounts, it cannot
escape the fact that its methodology does not prove the historicity of an event. That is the
fatal flaw of a historical critical method that follows deconstructionism.
The term Postmodernism evokes what it wishes to surpass—Modernism itself.
Therefore, Modernism and Postmodernism are not two unique and independent categories
but interwoven concepts. Hence, Modernism did not suddenly cease to exist, so that
Postmodernism may begin; both still coexist. Consequently, Postmodernism gravitates
towards indetermanence67 and immanence,68 which results in relativism. Hence, history is
nothing but a social construct, and science, despite its pretensions to truth, is just another
narrative that encodes the dominant ideology of the culture that produced it.69 Therefore
HCM becomes a necessity.
The postmodern philosophy encompasses several aspects. First, the rejection of
metanarratives—rules about how knowledge was to be carried, who may speak, and who
must listen—which results in multiple realities created by individualistic perspectives and the
lack of critical consensus. Second immanence, this is human beings make themselves who
they are by the languages they construct about themselves. Third, the present-future historical
perspective—the past has become unknowable since language is meaningless; and finally,
relativism or chaos as the norm, which inevitably leads to open-endedness and deep
skepticism about classical values and definitions.70 Postmodernism, in words of Oden, is
“deconstructionist literary criticism and relativistic nihilism.”71

67
This term refers to a complexity of items included in the Postmodern strain, such as: ambiguity,
discontinuity, heterodoxy, pluralism, randomness, revolt, perversion, deformation, decreation, disintegration,
deconstruction, decenterment, displacement, difference, discontinuity, disjunction, disappearance,
decomposition, de-definition, demystification, detotalization, delegitimization, and it was coined by Ihab
Hassan to designate two central, constitutive tendencies in postmodernism: one of indeterminacy, the other of
immanence. The two tendencies are not dialectical for they are not exactly antithetical, nor do they lead to a
synthesis. Each contains its own contradictions, and alludes to elements of the other. Their interplay suggests
the action of a “polylectic,” pervading postmodernism. In other words, it characterizes a cultural situation in
which a pluralism of critical discourses exists, yet there is no possibility of critical consensus among its many
strains. See Nick Gravila, "The Postmodern Summer Session: A Report on ISISSS '86, " in The Semiotic Web,
eds. Thomas A. Sebeok and Jean Umiker-Sebeok (New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1986), 693; and Ihab Hassan,
"Toward a Concept of Postmodernism," in The Posmodern Turn, eds. Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon (New
York: State University of New York, 1993), 282.
68
Hassan uses this term without religious echo “to designate the capacity of mind to generalize itself in
symbols, intervene more and more into nature, act upon itself through its own abstractions and so become,
increasingly, immediately, by its own environment.” This tendency refers to concepts such as diffusion,
dissemination, pulsion, interplay, communication and interdependence. These things are carried over from
human beings as “gnostic creatures constituting themselves, and determinedly their universe, by symbols of
their own making.” During this process history becomes derealized by media into a happening, science takes its
own models as the only accessible reality, and technology projects people’s perceptions to the edge of the
receding universe. Once again, clear outbreaks of the HCM. See Hassan 282.
69
Jim Holt, "Is Paris Kidding?" New York Times, November 15, 1998, under "Books."
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/15/books/is-paris-kidding.html?ref=bookreviews (accessed May 1st, 2012).
70
See Harold Johnson, "The Research and Development of a Storying Model to Address The
Postmodern Worldview with the Biblical Worldview," (Doctoral Thesis, New Orleans Baptist Seminary, March
2000), 6–7; William Edgard,"No News Is Good News: Modernity, The Postmodern, and Apologetics."
Westminster Theological Journal (Westminster Theologicla Seminary) 52, no. 2 (1995): 371.
71
Oden, 26.

 16

The rise of the HCM is viewed by its advocates as a milestone in the history of the
church, separating the pre-modern age, from the enlightened and scientific age. At this point
in the history of the church, it is the general consensus that the rise of the HCM has been a
positive development.72 However, in light of the previous philosophical discussion one has to
affirm the basic incompatibility of the HCM with faith in Christ.

Conclusion

In light of the presupposition, history and philosophy behind the HCM, it could be
said that the HCM rejects the assumption that the totality of the gospels may have only the
historical meaning as intended by the original author. Consequently, explanations for Jesus'
sayings and his life events must be sought. But, from a HCM approach to appeal to the text of
the gospels to support Jesus’ sayings casts doubt on the intellectual competence. Hence, the
HCM begins by making a distinction in principle between the historical Jesus and the Jesus
constructed by the early church. The assumption is that some elements of the portrayal of
Jesus found in the canonical gospels may be unhistorical. Such documents, however, were
written under the intention to reveal the true historical Jesus. Thus, if the critical scholar
rejects the foundational authorial intent, then he must reject any element of the portrait of
Jesus that rests on these documents.
The HCM supposes a serious dilemma for the critical historian. He defends his use of
such system on the presupposition that he must unveil true history from thick layers imposed
by the early church’s theological and social agenda. Unfortunately, such approach is not
possible. If a critical historian reconstructs a historical event/saying of Jesus, then he may be
compelled to ask whether such belief asserted in Jesus’ saying corresponded to reality. If the
historian judges that it does, then he is admitting the historical nature of the accounts, hence
HCM becomes irrelevant. However, if he denies the reality of such event, then the historian
must seek to explain what led the early Church and Jesus himself to hold an erroneous belief.
If the critical historian presupposes the Christian faith, then he ought to question his own
faith. Since it is based on a belief that has been historically disproved and, furthermore, Jesus,
the Son of God, was mistaken.
The method followed to perform the research for the book Key Events in The Life of
The Historical Jesus is ontologically inconsistent, morally wrong, and contradictory to the
biblical account. It does not add authority to the text; it robs it, instead. So, at its most
foundational level this book does not achieve its goal. Christ is not presented as historically
true. The HCM that the authors embraced for the sake of scholarship becomes the very own
cancer of the faith they claim to defend. HCM is incompatible with the Christian faith. A
Christian historian must operate beginning from the assumption of the historical authority of
the biblical text, especially the synoptic texts. This historian must abandon his intellectual
autonomy, and begin from the assumption that what this textual record intends is true. The
Christian cannot base his research on HCM principles. He must not avoid conforming to the
prevailing methodological standards of the academic world. The path of faith should be
followed, even if this means loss of academic reputation.

72
Advocates of the HCM often commit the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. They argue, "If
it is correct then an increase in knowledge will result. There is an increase of knowledge; therefore, it is
correct." However, the knowledge that results is based on empiricism and not the Bible, and as argued before, it
denies the divine logic, thus it is not a valid epistemology. See footnote 34.

Bibliography

Bock, Darrell L. Studying the Historical Jesus. A Guide to Sources and Methods. Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002.

Bock, Darrell L., and Robert L. Webb, . Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus. A
Collaborative Exploration of Context and Coherence. Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009.

Borgmann, Albert. Crossing the Posmodern Divide. Chicago: Chicago Press, 1992.

Bruce, F.F. "The History of the New Testament Study." In New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Principles and Methods, edited by I. Howard Marshall, 20–56. Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977.

Cabal, Tes, Chad Owen Brand, and Ray E. Clendenen et at. The Apologetics Study Bible:
Real Questions, Straight Asnwers, Stronger Faith. Nashville: Holman Bible
Publishers, 2007.

Carr, Edward Hallett. What is History? Reprint. New York: Knopf and Kampf, 1962.

Cox, Michael. "Sings and Significance: A Christianl Analysis of Two Postmodern

Perspectives." Master's Thesis, Cincinnaty Bible Seminary, 2002.

Craig, William Lane. God, Time and Eternity: The Coherence of Theism II: Eternity. Boston:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.

Croce, Benedetto. History, Its Theory and Practice. The European Library. Edited by J. E.
Spingarn. Translated by Douglas Ainslie. New York: Harcourt , Brace and Company,
1921.

Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy. Edited by John Cottingham. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Edgard, William. "No News Is Good News: Modernity, The Postmodern, and Apologetics."
Westminster Theological Journal (Westminster Theologicla Seminary) 52, no. 2
(1995): 357-382.

Farmer, William R. The Synoptic Problem. A Critical Analysis. Dillsboro: Western North
Carolina Press, 1976.

Farnell, F. David. "Philosophical and Theological Bent of Historical Criticism." In The Jesus
Crisis. The Inroads of Historical Criticism into Evangelical Scholarship, edited by
Robert L. Thomas and F. David Farnell, 85–131. Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications,
1998.

Fitzmyer, J. A. "Historical Criticism: Its Role in Biblical Interpretation and Church Life."
Theological Studies 50, no. 2 (1989): 244–59.

Gorman, Jonathan. Understanding History. An Introduction to Analytical Phyiosophy of

History. Philisophica 42. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1992.

17
 18

Gravila, Nick. "The Postmoder Summer Session: A Report on ISISSS 86." In The Semiotic
Web, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok and Jean Umiker-Sebeok, 687-96. New York:
Mouton de Gruyter, 1986.

Greer, Robert C. Mapping Postmodernism, a Survey of Christian Options. Downers Grove:

InterVarsity Press, 2003.

Hagner, Donald A. "The New Testament, History, and the Historical-Criticla Method." In
New Testament Hisotry and Interpretation, edited by David Alan Black and David S.
Dockery, 71–96. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1991.

Hanson, K. C. "Transformed on the Mountain: Ritual Analysis and the Gospel of Matthew."
Edited by Mark McVann and Bruce Malina and Society of Biblical Literature. Semeia
67 (1994): 147–70.

Harvey, Van A. The Historian & The Believer. The Moraloty of Historical Knowledge and
Christian Belief. With a New Introduction by the Author. Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1996.

Hassan, Ihab. "Toward a Concept of Postmodernism." In The Posmodern Turn, edited by

Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon, 273-83. New York: State University of New
York, 1993.

Henry, Carl Ferdinand Howard. God, Revelation, and Authority. Vol. 1. 6 vols. Wheaton:
Crossway Books, 1999.

Holt, Jim. "Is Paris Kidding?" New York Times, November 15, 1998, under "Books."
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/15/books/is-paris-kidding.html?ref=bookreviews
(accessed May 17, 2011).

Johnson, Harold. "The Research and Devellopment of a Storying Model to Address The
Postmodern Worldview with the Biblical Worldview." Doctoral Thesis, New Orlands
Baptist Seminary, March 2000.

Jowett, Benjamin. "On The Interpretation of Scripture." In Essays and Reviews, 330–433.
London: John W. Parker and Son, West Strand, 1860.

Kümmel, Werner Georg. The New Testament: the history of the investigation of its problems.
Second Edition. Translated by S. McLean Gilmour and Howard C. Kee. Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1972.

Keener, Craig S. The Historical Jesus of the Gospels. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2009.

Krentz, Edgar. The Historical-Critical Method. Philadelphia: Fortress Press , 1975.

Linnemann, Eta. Biblical Criticism on Trial. How Scientific is "Scientific Theology"?

Translated by Robert Yarbrough. Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1990.

———. Historical Criticism of the Bible. Methodology or Ideology? Translated by Robert

Yarbrough. Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1990.

 19

Locke, John. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. 27th edition. London: T. Tegg
and Son, 1836.

Maier, Gerhard. The End of the Historical-Critical Method. Translated by Edwin W.

Leverenz and Rudolph F. Norden. St. Lous: Concordia Publishing House, 1974.

Marshall, I. Howard. "Historical Criticism." In New Testament Interpretation. Essays on

Principles and Methods, edited by I. Howard Marshall, 126–38. Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977.

Neill, Stephen, and Tom Wright. The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986.
Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Oden, Thomas C. "The Death of Modernity." In The Challenge of Postmodernism, edited by

David S. Dockery, 19-33. Wheaton: BridgePoint Books, 1995.

Phillips, Craig A. "Postmodernism." In The Encyclopedia of Christianity, edited by Erwin

Fahlbusch and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Volume 4, 296-305. Grand Rapids: Wm.
B. Eerdmands, 2005.

Pinnock, Clark H. The Scripture Principle. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1992.

Price, Robert M. "Jesus at the Vanishing Point." In The Historical Jesus. Five Views, edited
by James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009.

Prior, Joseph G. The Historical Critical Method in Catholic Exegesis. Tessi Gregoriana Serie
Teologia 50. Roma: Gregorian University Press, 2001.

Shrader, Rick C. "Postmodernism." Journal of Ministry and Theology (Baptist Bible College)
3, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 17-25.

Sire, James W. The Universe Next Door. Kindle Electronic Edition. Downers Grove: IVP
Academic, 2004.

Smith, B. D. "The Historical-Critical Method, Jesus Research, and the Christian Scholar."
Trinity Journal 15, no. 2 (1994): 201–20.

Troeltsch, Ernst. Religion in History. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1997.

Veith, Gene Edward. Postmodern Times. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994.

Webb, Robert L. "The Historical Entreprise and Historical Jesus Research." In Key Events in
the Life of the Historical Jesus. A Collaborative Exploration of Context and
Coherence, edited by Darrell L. Bock and Robert L. Webb, 9–93. Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009.

Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God
3. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

Zahrnt, Heinz. The Historical Jesus. Translated by J. S. Bowden. New York: Harper & Row,
1963.