One of the main reasons certain scholars still disagree as to how much of the Gospel portraits can be corroborated by historical research has to do with initial presuppositions. An antisupernaturalist worldview will clearly rule out much a priori. A second important issue involves the “burden of proof.” Does one assume a saying or deed of Jesus to be authentic unless contradictions or inconsistencies with other data emerge? Or does one assume all the data to be inauthentic unless good reasons can be marshaled for accepting them? The former approach is the standard one in the investigation of
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