![](\"https:\/\/www.haverford.edu\/library\/special\/aids\/geofox\/geofox1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\nBut I suspect that it would be a mistake to make much of this either in support of or against mythicism, since the mythicist emphasis on this point reflects a failure to appreciate what is characteristic of the epistolary genre. One of the first things one learns when studying letters is their occasional nature. With rare exceptions, they represent either\u00a0a moment from\u00a0a conversation, or an address to specific needs and circumstances. Rarely is the letter used as a means of putting down one\u2019s views in a comprehensive and systematic manner.<\/p>\n
In order to collect a wide array of illustrations of this point,\u00a0and not having the time to wade through a number of individuals\u2019 letters that I would find it fascinating to read\u00a0(and not only in order to illustrate the point being made in this blog post),\u00a0I thought I\u2019d ask readers of this blog\u00a0to share examples, across a range of time periods, of\u00a0events we\u2019d have to assume never happened, and details we\u2019d have to assume to be unhistorical, because they are never mentioned in an individual\u2019s letters (even though we may know about them from other sources). Are there events or people that Pliny never mentions? Works that Wagner or Tchaikovsky might be thought not to have composed, events that they might be assumed not to have lived through, or people they might be assumed not to have met, if we only went by their letters? Of course, in the case of the composers I mentioned we have a far\u00a0greater number of\u00a0letters than in Paul\u2019s case (more than 10,000 from Wagner<\/a> and more than 5,000 from Tchaikovsky<\/a>) reflecting the increase in literacy, the reduction of cost of writing materials\/inexpensive paper, and changes that allowed for writing to become something other than a professional activity\u00a0almost entirely\u00a0the purview of\u00a0scribes. Nevertheless, looking at even relatively recent and more extensive letter collections, I suspect we might find things are not mentioned which we can be confident happened, reflecting the occasional nature of the letter. Obviously in an ancient context this would all the more have been the case.<\/p>\n So I appeal to the range of interests and areas of expertise represented among readers of this blog: What examples can you offer of things that happened but are not mentioned in a particular individual\u2019s letters?<\/p>\n A characteristic feature of mythicism is to make much of the fact that Paul\u2019s letters do not provide a narrative description of the life of Jesus nor much in the way of teaching of Jesus explicitly attributed to him. As one commenter noted in the past, however, the relative lack of information is every bit […]<\/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-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n