Mark Twain made famous the old quip, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The point of the idiom is that even such supposedly “brute facts” as statistics can be interpreted to have multiple meanings.
Numbers Don’t Lie: Historiography and Modernity
Many people bemoan the study of history. After all, history is simply rote memorization of names and dates—or so goes the story. This is the popular view of the discipline: historians examine texts and artifacts, and reconstruct the events of the past as they took place. “Just reporting the facts,” as it were.
This is the understanding of historiography as inherited by the Enlightenment. Leopold von Ranke was a German historian who is credited as a pioneer in applying the scientific method to historical inquiry. Ranke’s ultimate goal was to report “true” history; totally neutral, free from bias, and completely “objective.” This legacy—and the residual ripples of Modernity—is still seen as the popular mentality to this day.
Eye of the Beholder: Post-Modernity and Interpretation
However, there is another famous old quip: “History is written by the victors.”
Post-Modern philosopher Jacques Derrida made the (in)famous critique that there is in fact no such thing as “objective” observation.
In his philosophical studies of language, Derrida observed that no communication is direct and straightforward, but rather is mediated through language and subject to interpretation. James K.A. Smith offers a concrete example: if I shout “Duck!” in a golf course, it means something radically different than if I shout “Duck!” in a field while you’re holding a shotgun (pg.52, “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?“).
But moreover, in the same way that language is subject to interpretation, Derrida proposed that everything in human experience is subject to interpretation—whether we are aware of it or not. There are no “brute facts,” but only “interpretations”; some more valid than others. 
For example, the four-pronged piece of metal that we interpret as an eating utensil and call a “fork,” Ariel in The Little Mermaid interprets as a “dinglehopper”—an instrument for combing one’s hair (Smith, pg.40). Through each of our individual pasts, experiences, and more, we are conditioned to interpret certain “brute facts” in particular ways. Absolutely everything, then, is subject to interpretation.
This same subjectivity to observation and interpretation is carried over into historiography. Contrary to Ranke’s project, there is indeed no “true” history that is not subject to interpretation. Everybody has a perspective—our own conditioned “lenses” with which we view the world. A Protestant will deliver a completely different account of church history, for example, than a Roman Catholic will.
Old Habits Die Hard: Pre-Modern Historiography and The Bible
What, then, about history that pre-dates Ranke and the historiography of Modernity?
Old Testament scholar Pete Enns highlights the example of the “Mesha Inscription” (pg.36, “Inspiration & Incarnation”). This is an ancient inscription that was found, dating to around 830 BCE. Mesha was the king of Moab, and a contemporary of king Omri of Israel. The inscription reads:
Omri was the king of Israel,
and he oppressed Moab for many days,
for Kemosh was angry with his land.
And his son succeeded him,
and he said…he too…
“I will oppress Moab!”
In my days did he say [so].But I looked down on him and on his house,
and Israel has gone to ruin, yes, it has gone to ruin for ever!
And Omri had taken possession of the whole land of Medeba,
and he lived there (in) his days and half the days of his son, forty years,
but Kemosh [resto]red it in my days.
Mesha appears to be gloating over deeds and interactions with Omri and Israel.
The Old Testament also records Mesha as having been a contemporary of Omri, and offers a different take on the relationship between the two parties:
Now Mesha king of Moab was a sheep breeder, and he had to deliver to the king of Israel 100,000 lambs and the wool of 100,000 rams. But when Ahab died, the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel. (2 Kings 3:4-5).
These texts each represent diametrically opposite perspectives of interpretation on similar events. Mesha says that Israel “oppressed” Moab, and goes so far to say that “Israel has gone to ruin for ever.” Israel, on the other side of the coin, records that Mesha quit paying tribute and rebelled. Regardless of whether they are describing the same events, each text represents a particular interpretation of the relationship between the nations.
Rubber Meets the Road: Implications and Application
Jesus called the Old Testament the “word of God” (Mk 7:13)—doesn’t this mean that the Bible’s perspective should report the “objective,” true history? Yes and no. “Yes,” the Bible does report truth, but “no,” it does not report this truth “objectively,” without also being subject to interpretation.
Christians maintain that the Bible, although it is one of God’s conduits of communication, was written by human authors. As such, these human authors were bound in the same way that any other person would be—and that includes the necessity of interpretation when recording historical events.
When we read the Bible in the 21st-century, we are bringing all of our presuppositions to the table. We assume that the Bible is a “book,” or at least that each of the “books” contained within are “books”—when in fact they are often texts that had been composed and redacted over a long tradition. 
(Not to mention that different groups of Christians define the “Bible” with different groups of authoritative “books”!) We assume that a “history” text is the “naked events” as they happened, rather than an interpretive narrative. All of these assumptions and a host more lie at hand as we approach the Bible. In order to do the Bible justice for what it is trying to communicate, we must be aware of these presuppositions and let the Bible operate on its own terms, and not impose our own ideas onto the text.
If archeology challenges our understanding of certain texts, Christians need not immediately assume a defensive posture—perhaps we need to reinterpret our understanding of the historiography of a text. If biological and geological science challenge our reading of Genesis 1+, perhaps we are assuming a 21st-century historiography that was not intended for the text.
Finally, the Bible actually is, in fact, “biased”—and that’s okay. The gospels are records of historical events, but also filtered through theological interpretation of the events unfolding of the incarnate Son of God. John explicitly states that “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God” (20:31). The Bible records an interpretation—God’s interpretation—of the unfolding plan of redemption for the cosmos.
History is indeed written by the victors. And the ultimate victor is the Christus Victor: Jesus Christ.
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This week’s contribution is from a guest blogger, Scott Lencke. Scott is an American pastor, lecturer, and theologian, currently pastoring and teaching in Brussels, Belgium. He holds an MA in Theological Studies from Covenant Theological Seminary, and blogs at ‘
As I said, Stackhouse has taken up the mission of pastorally challenging some things within the church of the UK. One area where he really brings a challenge is into its over-obsession with fads and movements. So, we can see how this relates to the church wider than the UK.
This point is discussed quite well by Judith Shulevitz in her insightful 2003 New York Times article titled 
This is just a very brief announcement to let everyone know that “Dust and Light” now officially has its very own dot-com address! You can find us right here, at 
which recent comments by US attorney general Eric Holder were interpreted by the wider media. Holder, speaking to Justice Department employees for Black History Month, stated that “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” Strong words perhaps, especially if one does not consider the whole of his 2,300 word speech (not a task I am here interested in). And that was precisely Carter’s complaint. Our culture, he says, is increasingly one that takes complex and intricate issues and strips them down to sensational headlines and emotionally charged arguments.
Switching gears somewhat (and treading still closer to home), I sometimes wonder if this is a tendency with which the charismatic branch of the church must deal with in a peculiar way. In the pursuit of building faith (often for healing and the miraculous), areas of genuine complexity are often swept aside. For instance, could this be one of the (possibly many) reasons why the church so often goes without any sort of theology of suffering? Is there not an approach to a doctrine of healing that is actually made more robust by deep considerations of human suffering? My personal yearning is to have faith that can move mountains 
There is a quite beautiful, childlike innocence here which views everything as Gift. One of the problems with disenchantment is that it fosters indifference towards ‘natural’ occurrences, as ‘normal’ and therefore dull. In contrast, by retrieving an older view of the world, Chesterton opens up a way for us to live in a permanent state of wonder, awe and gratitude. There is a certain mystery and magic to fruits, for instance – as to why they should grow on trees and bushes; why they should taste so good; why they should be such bright colours and strange shapes – which cannot be explained. But in order to appreciate this, we have to regain a forgotten innocence that wonders at even the tiniest details of the world; details we adults have since grown used to. This may have been a little of that to which Jesus referred when he spoke of the need to become childlike to receive the Kingdom.
