Doherty laid out the evidence that all knowledge of a Jesus in the historical past was said to have come to the NT epistle authors by revelation. (So much for the “oral tradition” hypothesis!)
McGrath responds in his review of chapter 3 of Doherty’s Jesus Neither God Nor Man that Doherty’s argument falls flat because Jewish literature speaks of future (mythical?) events as coming by revelation!
What does it take to become a professor at Butler University?
See also my comment in response to Steven Carr on the What McGrath Forgot post.
Incidentally, I have been preparing for some time a post on a book by Robert G. Hall, Revealed Histories: Techniques for Ancient Jewish and Christian Historiography (1991). Hint for what is to be included — even “historical events” in the Odes of Solomon and Ascension of Isaiah, such as Jesus walking on water and descending from heaven, are “revealed”.
Where genuine past events are written about, the revelation is exclusively in the “correct interpretation” or “meaning” of those events. But in the New Testament epistles it is the event itself that, as Doherty makes clear, is revealed.
