Stein on Miracles

I have posted a couple of excerpts in the past few weeks from Robert Stein's book Jesus the Messiah: A Survey of the Life of Christ. I find the book so profitable that I plan begin posting at least one excerpt from every chapter. Maybe one per day. But just so that this doesn't become a Robert Stein blog, I will mix in other things along the way.

Chapter 1 is entitled ""Where You Start Determines Where You Finish: The Role of Presuppositions in Studying the Life of Jesus." His main point is that no Bible reader or scholar come to the Gospels with a blank slate. We all have presuppositions. In this excerpt, he points out that liberal scholars are not as unbiased as they sometimes like to let on.

In light of the importance of presuppositions about the supernatural on the outcome of one's work, authors should make clear from the start the position they take on this matter. It is misleading to say that 'due to their investigation of the accounts' authors conclude that Jesus was not born of a virgin, that the miracles are later myths created by the church, that the faith of the early church gave rise to the accounts of the resurrection and not the other way around, and so on. All these conclusions were predetermined before any investigation began. It should come as no surprise that when one starts with the view that miracles cannot happen, the conclusion is that the miracles investigated did not happen.

Robert H. Stein,  Jesus the Messiah: A Survey of the Life of Christ, 

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Messiah-Survey-Life-Christ/dp/0830818847/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320782363&sr=1-1