Crossley on Wright’s Perverse Apologetics

“Casey was hardly wrong (elsewhere) in suggesting Wright’s evangelical belief has interfered with his scholarship. I think it is fair to be suspicious when Wright comes to conclusion such as Mark 13 not referring to the second coming and the son of man coming on clouds meaning vindication (etc etc) based on no evidence for son of man ever meaning anything like this and Wright’s reading contradicting the problematic (and blindingly obvious I would argue and have argued) conclusion that Mark 13 predicts the return of Jesus within a generation. And I can’t help but think Wright’s belief gets in the way too much when he thinks the bodily resurrection is as historically likely as the fall of Jerusalem etc.”
– James Crossley, Earliest Christian History

That was delightfully understated. I confess to smirking at Crossley’s “And I can’t help but think Wright’s belief gets in the way too much when he thinks the bodily resurrection is as historically likely as the fall of Jerusalem etc”.

But to be fair to N T Wright (really!), he’s got plenty of rotten-minded company when it comes to considering what ‘historicity’ is, in relation to the Gospels …

“When I find, for example, that some of the nature miracles of Jesus seem as well evidenced as other events in the Gospels that are widely regarded as historical, I regard them as reasonably probable events.”
– Richard Bauckham, Panel Review of Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, 17 November 2007

I wonder how many history departments have taken up Wright’s and Bauckham’s approach to historicity? Surely it’s not only the conservative theologians who have seen the light?