Following up on the essay below.

Okay. Let me tell you what I think.  What modern secularist historians do when it comes to historical Jesus research is this: they begin the research with a presupposition that the divine is not real. They do this because there is no way to test for the existence of the divine with secularistic methods, (namely, modern science) and since their research methods are fundamentally rooted in this secularistic approach, they must, to remain true to their discipline, look for explanations for the supernatural in natural ways (see my short paper on science and God and the Bible here). Because, for them, the supernatural does not exist. In short, it would take nothing less than conversion for a secularistic modern historian to admit that what the Gospels express actually happened. For a secularist the resurrection is not possible and, therefore, they must explain the early disciples' belief in the resurrection as some type of false myth designed to get people fired up about something (like revolution?).

A piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The cave where the scrolls were discovered

 With the rise of metamodern thought (post-postmodern) there has been a rise of investigation into the interworkings of social memory in an oral scribal culture. Here is my take: The first three gospels were written within 50 years of Jesus. They were written in a largely illiterate culture. This culture had strict patterns of memorization. In fact, Jewish teachers taught their students rules of memorization and when something needed to be remembered it was a communal event. In short, the community at the time would not have allowed false tales to be spun around the region. Sure, some things are embellished because the gospels are stories. But they are not mythic tales. That would not fit the culture of the time, especially in the Jewish circles from which many early Christians came. So, did the resurrection happen? Is Jesus the son of the Living God?  I cannot prove these things objectively, but I believe in the faithfulness and honesty of the early writers because I believe that they were both held accountable by their communities and filled with the Spirit. 

Until the dead sea scrolls were discovered in 1947 the earliest manuscripts that we had of the Old Testament book of Isaiah were from the medieval period. The Dead Sea Scrolls are dated to before the time of Jesus. When the portions of the dead sea scrolls that contain large chunks of Isaiah are put alongside those from the medieval period, they match almost exactly. In theological implications they do match exactly. That is a gap of over 1000 years. If the book of Isaiah can make it 1000 years, then the Gospels could have made it 50. Jesus is alive.  Miracles happen.

More Dead Sea Scroll