events in history and also prophetic interpretations explaining who Jesus really was—the messianic Redeemer, the incarnate Son of God. They record many facts that history cannot understand or explain, for example, that Jesus was born by God’s creative act in the body of Mary, that the crucified Jesus was raised from the dead. The modern critical method of studying history, outlined in the next chapter, has assumed that all historical events must be explained by natural historical causes. From this