21 - Final Conclusions, and Postscript

Summary

Part I of this book summarized some of what we know about the Jewish Palestinian context in which Jesus lived and worked, about the historical sources that tell us about him and about scholars’ assessment of those sources and the story they tell. These sources must have been more minutely examined and discussed than almost any other documents in history, and there are any number of ideas and opinions about almost everything they describe. That might be a cause for historical despair, and is certainly a reason for scholarly caution about what can and cannot be ‘proved’.