Cool story - I wonder if E.P. Sanders ever read it either? And if he did, did it influence his work, or if he didn't, could it have? Perhaps you have there a key moment in the history of NT scholarship... enchanting.

Yes, at least parts of it. But it's an... unstable... kind of book, cobbled together from various bits post-humously. Your description of being on the shoulder of Cromwell reminded me of him - he described history as the history of thought, (flying his idealist colours) and the historians work as penetrating, indeed, (and confusingly) re-enacting the thoughts of the past.

Makes you reconsider Thomas the Tank Engine as a serious figure. I like your description of history here - have you ever read R.G. Collingwood?

There's also a listening to self... 2 Cor 13:5 perhaps?

"and there where two or three of you gather, I am there also" like a ghost.

"the question as question" has the ring of some of those Frenchies you and I read...

Jesus seems to me to be an expert questioner. But is he to be imitated in this?

Tolkien is interesting on this... a little book called Tree and Leaf.

How do different artworks express different theologies?

If Sayer's imagining of Jesus testifies the way it does because of particularly British institutions (as you make clear), then we would need to account for art history, but also history generally. At this point you might very well be able to make parallels with the Papunya...

But we've only deferred (or multiplied, in fact) the problem of truth. And your question of the relation of history and class returns with a vengeance.