A brief observation. After years of reading the work of modern “biblical historians,” I have become increasingly aware of something that, in retrospect, should have been obvious from the start.
These scholars are not attempting to understand why, according to the earliest and most persistent traditions, Jesus’ disciples chose martyrdom rather than renounce their testimony—save for John, who, tradition holds, died in exile. They are not interested in taking the empty tomb at face value, nor the Egyptian plagues, nor the Sinai theophany. The reason is simple: as historians, they restrict themselves to what they consider “facts,” and anything supernatural is excluded a priori.
The irony, of course, is that the very narratives that give them employment are known to us because they contain supernatural claims. Yet their methodological commitments require them to reinterpret every such claim into something mundane: Jesus’ body must have been relocated by an unknown party; Moses could not have encountered God “face to face”; the plagues must be literary inventions.
This methodological reductionism permeates much of their treatment of the Christian narrative. No resurrection. No virginal conception. Lazarus merely resuscitated, not raised. No healing of the man born blind. No restoration of the cripple at Bethesda. No post‑mortem appearances of Jesus—these are only later interpolations, fraudulent additions to naïve early texts.
And while they apply similar skepticism to the Hebrew Bible—questioning the plagues, Sinai, manna, water from the rock—they are, curiously, often less aggressive in dismantling Jewish narratives than Christian ones. Their favorite argument is the tired claim that “since author X does not mention event Y, he obviously knew nothing about it.” Since when did the absence of evidence become evidence of absence?
These scholars have no professional obligation to consider the purpose or internal logic of the texts they analyze. They may meticulously reconstruct Paul’s missionary routes, but they have no interest in why he undertook them. His Damascus Road experience is dismissed as fantasy, and his motivation reduced to ego. To admit otherwise—to allow that he responded to a transcendent call—would, in their view, disqualify them as historians. This is the game.
Some defend this posture as “academic objectivity.” But anyone familiar with the academy knows that most of these critics operate from a pronounced worldview that warps their interpretations. Objectivity is not their goal. And, of course, many depend on online monetization; if their work cannot survive peer review, it must survive YouTube.
Here is the problem: bound by the rules of their vocation, these scholars will never understand—nor help anyone else understand—the narratives they spend their careers dissecting as if they were inventions. Only if the narratives are false can they contribute anything, and even then, only in the manner of documenting a conspiracy theory.
The enterprise of analyzing Jesus of Nazareth as merely another prophet or minor figure in late Second Temple Judaism is, frankly, a fool’s errand. Attempting to explain how this one man, stripped of every supernatural claim made by his earliest followers, nevertheless reshaped world history is irrational. Perhaps they imagine that generations of believers suffered a mass delusion compelling them to endure persecution for a story they had been tricked into believing by corrupt religionists?
If these scholars are correct—if none of the supernatural claims occurred—then 2.64 billion people are living a lie. Yet the absurdity is that these academics have chosen a vocation that cannot meaningfully illuminate the story they critique. Believers do not care what they write (since the historians disclaim their beliefs); atheists care even less. Their only audience consists of those on the margins of faith who seek self‑justification by consuming anything that mocks or dismantles Christian claims, who eagerly broadcast their approval on social media, and approvingly follow whatever Zen-inducing or shock headline-generating story they can.
That audience, composed largely of self‑assured cynics, is apparently large enough to sustain a cottage industry of speculative, heretical, and often derisive publications (who are essentially a clown show).
Do not take their bait. They will lead you exactly nowhere.
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