Is the Sky Falling in the World of Historical Jesus Research? Available to Purchase

For years, historians of Jesus have employed the criteria for authenticity in their work and a few scholars have occasionally called the value of the criteria into question. Fairly recently, however, a team of scholars, many of whom are highly esteemed, contributed critiques in a volume in which they expressed doubts pertaining to the value of the criteria. Several of the contributors even called for their abandonment. But the extent of their pessimism is ill-founded and based on a postmodernist approach to history that, while gaining momentum within biblical scholarship, has already been debated for decades among historians practicing outside the world of religious studies and has largely been found wanting.