modes of expression of modern quantifiable research and there-
fore gives the misleading impression that it can produce a ‘true’,
‘accurate’, or ‘factual’ account of early Christianity based ‘trans-
parently’ on ‘data’ (Klutz 1998; Fiorenza 2000). Modern scholars
generally protest that they can only produce subjective pictures
of the past, meaning that their accuracy can be compromised by
the assumptions that researchers bring with them to their topic.
The nineteenth-century optimism that ‘scientific’ history could
produce accounts of the past ‘as it really was’ has fallen so out
of favour that words like ‘positivism’, which is used to describe
this approach, seem to be deployed these days almost as terms of
abuse. For my own part, I have never laboured under the illusion
that we can produce a picture of the past that is accurate in every
detail: after all, a new piece of evidence or a different method-
ology can throw accepted interpretations into doubt at any time.
Nevertheless, events didhappen in the past, and I think we can
aspire to accounts of them that are plausible by being sensitive
to all varieties of sources and the problems they present. The rest
of the book aims to show ways in which this can be achieved.SOURCES AND THEIR INTERPRETATION
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