What’s Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander: Historiography and the Historical Jesus

Abstract

A central question raised in a 2011 issue of the JSHJ is how can evangelical scholars productively contribute to historical Jesus research which seems to presuppose tenets at variance with their faith. The impetus for the issue was the 2009 book Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus which was the product of several evangelical scholars who had been working together for a decade. The goal of this paper will be to identify and assess three significant historiographical concerns raised in the 2011 issue – worldviews, presuppositions, and biases as both positives and negatives; criteria for authenticity and negative historical judgements; and lastly methodological naturalism – in order to demonstrate that these are issues all historians pursuing historical Jesus research must equally confront.