Vague thoughts on Scripture & revelation: it seems to me that, historically, the Christian church has discussed God's special revelation in at least three ways: in Christ, in God's calling together and care for the people of Israel, and Scripture as a faithful record of the above

Crucially, these all more-or-less hung together: Scripture was inspired special revelation, yes, but not in any way divorced from the history which Scripture narrated. Scripture revealed in textual form God's self-revelation to Israel and in Christ, in history.

Now, problems come in when the beginning of critical scholarship raises questions about the relationship of Scripture to the events it describes. Suddenly there's a potential gap between Scripture as God's written Word and the actual history of God with God's people.

There are, I think, three broad sorts of responses here (although these are ideal types, with most people holding a combination of sorts):

One is to (re-)eliminate any gap between Scripture & the history it depicts. This may be done on theological grounds, rejecting critical approaches as incompatible with Christianity. It may also attempt to use critical methodologies to defend traditional args for historicity.

Another is to seek to get 'behind' Scripture to the real history it attempts to depict. Here revelation is identified w/the actual historical events, and above all the person of Christ, with Scripture as a witness. This is the liberal Christian use of higher criticism.

A third, is to treat Scripture as God's revelation, even if there is, at least possibly, a gap between Scripture and history - even if, say, the OT doesn't accurately depict the emergence of Israel in the ANE. I think of Childs here, but it's also an older strategy - Origen, say.

The mere three was probably a simplification - there's also, as @beneliest reminds me, a sort of Schleiermachian view of Scripture as the accurate depiction of the religious consciousness of its authors, which is less interested in the historicity of the events described.

And here the locus of revelation is not really Scripture or history but the religious consciousness of the Scripture-writers, which we come to share.

Now, I think there are some potential issues with all of the approaches. The Scripture-over-history approach (Childs, e.g.) can lead to a sort of docetic view of Scripture, in which the history comes not to matter at all.

Yet if this insulates it from critical worries, it is difficult to square this view with the genres of Scriptural writing, many of which are historical or at least history-like. And at the very least on Scripture's own argument you need the resurrection's absolute historicity!

The history-over-Scripture view, then (hist crit) often dismisses entirely Scriptural claims to revelation, seeking a sort of mastery over and judgment of Scripture which imo is incompatible with (at least historical) Christian approaches.

It often also smuggles in methodological atheisms, and often simply does not have extrabiblical historical material to use. Yet it does put before us helpfully that the history matters, that religious truth can't be divorced from the humanly-discernable history of God's people.

Finally, the there-is-no-gap view can devolve into an anti-intellectual fideism (historical records don't matter, just grit your teeth and trust Scripture) or the problems of the hist-crit view (if you trust that hist-crit will validate trad views...what happens when it doesn't?)

So this is my current diagnosis. Now in a solution I know I want to hold together these things:
(1) Scripture is as God wants it to be
(2) Scripture is a faithful record of God's dealings with God's people
(3) There is a possibility of a gap btwn Scripture & history in some cases

And I might add a fourth:
(4) Scripture's end is to bring us to saving faith in Christ Jesus, and it is efficacious towards that end.

And I definitely don't feel like I have this worked out but definitely hope to keep thinking about it, hopefully with you all, in the coming months and years.