This essay explores how it is possible for scholars who have a faith perspective to still participate in historical-Jesus research in a critical manner that is credible to the wider academic community. The focus is on the tensions created for the scholar when the primary sources use divine causation as an explanation for an event. The first part of the essay considers what the term 'history' means and how a historian goes about doing history (i.e., the 'rules of the game'). The second part considers three different approaches used in biblical studies to handle descriptions and explanations in the primary sources that use divine causation. The ontological-naturalistic approach rejects such explanations while the critical-theistic approach is open to such explanations. Distinguishing these two approaches from each other are different ontological worldviews. Based upon the understanding of history developed in the first part, the essay argues for a via media between these approaches that sets aside the ontological impasse. Methodological naturalism views history and historical method to be limited to human causation. This is an acknowledged methodological limitation, rather than an ontological one. Issues of divine causation are left to the distinct discipline of theology.

Jude's use of `story' is integral to his rhetorical argument. The author uses narrative episodes drawn from the Jewish scriptural tradition, the story of Jesus, and the story of the Christian community to whom he writes to accomplish his rhetorical purposes. The narrative episodes drawn from the Jewish scriptural tradition and from the story of Jesus do not create a coherent story with a plot, but the narrative episodes concerning the Christian community do have a coherent story with plot and conflict. Jude weaves narrative episodes from the Jewish scriptural tradition and from the story of Jesus into the story of the readers' Christian community in order to have a rhetorical impact on the direction of the future plot-line of this community's story.

B OOK L IST Books on the Historical Jesus DUNN, James D.G., and Scot McKNIGHT (eds.), The Historical Jesus in Recent Research (Sources for Biblical and Theological Study, 10; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005), hb, xvi + 618 pp. ISBN 1575061007. $42.95. This massive collection of significant essays on the historical Jesus have been brought together by Dunn and McKnight. They are divided into several parts, each of which is introduced by either Dunn or McKnight in a short essay. While one might quibble with some of their choices, nevertheless, this is a valuable resource for our own libraries and