The Philosophy of History and New Testament History: A Survey of the Former with Some Implications for the Latter

Abstract

This article surveys a selection of figures in the recent history of historiography with particular focus on their discussion of the nature of historical epistemology (including facts, evidence, and knowledge) and concludes with implications for New Testament history. Figures and works are selected for their representativeness of new thinking in the field at their time, their critique of prior thinking, and in some cases their reception/critique by representatives of that prior thinking. Specifically, I consider in varying depth the historical epistemology of E. H. Carr, G. R. Elton, Hayden White, Richard Evans, Frank Ankersmit, John Zammito, and Aviezer Tucker. These exemplars are considered in order to construct a landscape of traditional, postmodern, and post-postmodern philosophy of historical epistemology. The survey is selective, but the effect is dialectic; ending with recent post-positivist historical epistemology, I raise a number of considerations for thinking about New Testament history.