But even if I were to grant that Neil Godfrey\u2019s recent arguments against E. P. Sanders wee persuasive, all they would have accomplished so far is to indicate that the evidence is inconclusive regarding the historicity of these particular incidents and sayings. In order to conclude that these stories are most likely<\/em> not historical, we need some further argument. In short, there needs to be a willingness to discuss the designer(s). <\/p>\n Historians are interested in literature that doesn\u2019t actually relate historical stories. A historian of early Christianity will be interested in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, or the Acts of Paul and Thecla,\u00a0even if they are persuaded that they do not contain\u00a0any genuine historical information about Jesus or Paul or Thecla. Because when we situate them in their historical context, they tell us about the time in which they were written, the views and beliefs that Christians had in that period. And that contributes to our understanding of history.<\/p>\n If the Gospels were pure fabrication, I would still want to understand when they were written, and what sorts of communities produced them.\u00a0Historians don\u2019t just look at texts to get information from the details of the story about the time in which the story is set. Even when historians feel there is little or no valuable\u00a0historical information in a story, they still study it carefully to learn about the author (even if we don\u2019t know his or her name) and the time in which it was written.<\/p>\n Thus far, I\u2019ve only encountered two sorts of mythicism. The creationist sort that posits implausible scenarios and doesn\u2019t seem aware that you cannot simply redate events in the history of Christianity without correlating this with what we know about the earlier or later period you are moving events or composition to.\u00a0The other sort sometimes\u00a0points to genuine historical uncertainties \u2013 but then fails to\u00a0follow through by asking the next question any historian would ask: If not then, then when<\/em>?\u00a0<\/p>\n Mythicists seem to be united in believing they have something to say, an insight into history that historians have missed. But as long as they fail to follow through and undertake a complete historical investigation, they shouldn\u2019t be surprised that the impression given is that they are really motivated by polemical aims of some sort or other,\u00a0rather than a genuine concern to clarify our historical understanding of Christian origins.<\/p>\n One category of mythicists, like young-earth creationists, have no hesitation about offering their own explanation of who made up Christianity. They may not always be very specific (or even remotely plausible for that matter) but they do not hesitate to offer an \u201cexplanation\u201d of sorts: Christianity began when people borrowed motifs from myths about Horus, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-1502913188522309049?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")