Apologetics thought of the day: One of the many flaws in current apologetic methodology is the common insistence on considering the gospels' historical reliability in incident-by-incident fashion. Events/sayings are sorted into "easy/not so easy to verify historically." /1

E.g., Jesus' crucifixion gets checked "easy to verify." Jesus' virgin birth, "not so easy." We accept it as Christians but we can't access it "from an historical perspective," or so the meme goes. Same for numerous other details large and small surrounding Jesus' life/passion. /2

This is an extremely rigid approach, dictated more by the winds of scholarly fad than by any objective measure of good historical praxis. It severely and needlessly hamstrings those seeking a robust framework for gospel reliability. /3

Far better, more nuanced, and more satisfying is a holistic framework, whereby the gospels are analyzed and earn our trust as *consistently reliable records*. The gospel writers earn our trust as *consistently truthful reporters*. /4

Seen in this light, while it can still be true that elements like Jesus' crucifixion are OVER-verified, the artificial idea of a great gulf between elements like these and elements like the virgin birth "from a historical perspective" is just that--artificial. /5

Be very suspicious of Averroistic rhetoric which implies that things shift significantly when we read the gospels with our "Christian hat" vs. our "historian hat." Soundbites like this are based on misconceptions about how strong the case for gospel reliability really is. /End

@DrPJWilliams