NTW and History

NT Wright addresses the problem of history.

First of all there is no pure  objective history.  History is always being reported from a certain point of view. This does not imply we can not know historical events, only that there is a particular reason and particular perspective as to why that time and event in history is being written

NT Wright is applying his same concept of critical realism to history as to how he applies it to literature.

When reading history we must be aware of the author's intent in reporting a historical event, of the surrounding events of the  historical time,  its culture, its religious and political  presuppositions, and to be aware of our own prejudices and subjective points of view. Then logically bring them together into a coherent understanding of the historical event in question.

For NT Wright even the placing of a video camera to record a historical event still has its own subjective value because a individual decided a time, a location, a direction in which to record; therefore  a  videotaped version of an event has some subjective point of view by the person recording and potentially even the individual watching the recording . Some subjectivity is always involved in history but this does not invalidate objective history or our ability to understand and know that certain events took place.