Quotes about Historical

The Scriptures are not merely a record of historical events that have passed. They constitute for every age a revelation of God's mind and will to each individual.

The Babylon whose fall is described is then not merely the historical Babylon, Israel's conqueror, but also the symbolic Babylon. Its fall signifies the dethroning of every power opposed to God.

Atheistic New Testament scholar Gerd Ludemann concludes, It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.

Embarrassing admissions support historical claims. An indicator that an event or saying is authentic occurs when the source would not be expected to create the story, because it embarrasses his cause and `weakened its position in arguments with opponents.

Early testimony supports historical claims. The closer the time between the event and testimony about it, the more reliable the witness, since there is less time for exaggeration, and even legend, to creep into the account.

Although the non-historical genre theory can seem quite reasonable at first glance, it is plagued with serious problems. First, it cannot account for the empty tomb, especially since this can be established by multiple arguments, even from texts outside the New Testament accounts.

2. Attestation by an enemy supports historical claims. If testimony affirming an event or saying is given by a source who does not sympathize with the person, message, or cause that profits from the account, we have an indication ofauthenticity.

It is important to learn to understand in a historical text, a text from the past, the living Word of God, that is, to enter into prayer and thus read Sacred Scripture as a conversation with God.

Jesus as a concrete historical personality remains a stranger to our time, but His spirit, which lies hidden in His words, is known in simplicity, and its influence is direct.

We may not like the Jesus of the historical documents; but like him or not, we meet him there as a divine being on whom our personal destiny, both in time and in eternity, depends.

When eighteenth-century British society had retreated from the historical Christianity it had earlier embraced, the Christian character of the nation—which had given Britain, among other things, a proud tradition of almshouses to help the poor, dating all the way back to the tenth century—had all but disappeared.

It is a question of the freedom of God, which finds its strongest evidence precisely in that God freely chose to be bound to historical human beings and to be placed at the disposal of human beings. God is free not from human beings but for them. Christ is the word of God's freedom.