V. Nothing to be Concerned About

We are now prepared to return to Harvey’s original question: why is it that the person in the pew pays little attention to contemporary HBC and, despite those decades of research, retains rather a traditional picture of the life and ministry of Jesus? As to why in actual historical fact this is the case, this is a job for an intellectual historian. What we have seen so far, however, is that there is no compelling or even reasonably decent argument for supposing that the procedures and assumptions of HBC are to be preferred to those of traditional biblical commentary. A little epistemological reflection enables us to see something further: the traditional Christian (whether in the pew or not) has good reason to reject the skeptical claims of HBC and continue to hold traditional Christian belief despite the allegedly corrosive acids of HBC.