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Though there are many historical narratives in the Bible that are significant for Christians, orthodox Christian faith has traditionally understood itself as rooted supremely in the life, death, and resurrection of a historical person, Jesus of Nazareth. Whether Judaism could survive the discovery that Moses never existed and the Exodus never occurred is not for me to say, but it has seemed to many Christians that Christian faith could not survive if Jesus did not live, die, and rise from the dead. This story of Jesus I shall call 'the incarnational narrative'. I shall use this phrase to designate the story of Jesus of Nazareth, taken from the New Testament as a whole, as that story has traditionally been told by the Christian Church. Thus understood it is not a story about a mere human being, but an account of Jesus as the Son of God, a unique, divine person. 'The incarnational narrative' is therefore my way of designating a particular account which is theologically rich. I do not, however, wish to endow the narrative with more theological baggage than is necessary. In so far as possible, I shall assume a version of the narrative that does not take sides on questions that are disputed in-house among different streams of historic Christian orthodoxy.

Of course many will say that to understand the story of Jesus as an incarnational narrative is already to endow it with too much theological baggage. Clearly, I have already tipped the scales in the direction of the orthodox understanding of Jesus, simply by taking the New Testament story as that document has been interpreted by the Church. The narrative In which I am interested is a 'thick' one, not one that is theologically bare or neutral. Still, it is the narrative itself upon which I wish to focus. There have been, of course, many attempts on the part of Christians to capture the significance of the incarnational narrative, many attempts to express in propositional form what the story is about, why it is important, and what it implies. One can question any such attempt without questioning the fundamental importance of the narrative itself. One can even question whether or not one can and should try to articulate the meaning of the story, as has been done by some recent 'narrative theologians', without doubting in any way the crucial significance of the story itself.

Of course many New Testament scholars today argue that one cannot meaningfully speak of one coherent story found in the New Testament; rather they argue that the message of the New Testament is irreducibly plural. In one sense this contention is absolutely correct. The New Testament was written by diverse authors with diverse concerns and aims, and the various books lend themselves to studies of 'the theology of Paul' or 'the theology of Mark'. Nevertheless, despite this diversity, the Church has historically regarded the New Testament as a unified revelation from God, inextricably tied to the Old Testament, and one which contains a unified story in and through its diversity. That is in fact how the Church has traditionally read the Bible. . .

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