This is an outline for an audio resource.

How can you present the Bible as true?

Is history knowable at all?

• History is a matter of subjective opinion. 
• The quest for historical truth should not be embarked upon at all – it is a fruitless, even impossible exercise.

How do we have access to history?

• Mid 1800s history is an exact science, facts can be presented objectively.  Von Ranke: “the historian must present the past as it actually happened.”
• By 1920s ideal of historical objectivity under fire – interpretation is the key.
• By 1960s and post modernism – complete historical relativism.

Pragmatic Hermeneutics

• We have access to history via converging lines of evidence.
• Written evidence
• Eye witness testimony
• Photographs/cartoons/paintings/etching
• Archaeological remains
• Inferential evidence

New Testament History

• Written accounts by non-Christian sources
• Eye-witness testimony
• Inscriptions, paintings
• The empty tomb, archaeology
• Inferential evidence – the transformed disciples

Luke’s intentions: 'Therefore since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.'  Luke 1:3-4

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