It’s worth quoting a few passages from Thomas L. Thompson‘s The Mythic Past (aka The Bible in History). I believe they have a relevance that extends beyond the Old Testament.
Naively realistic questions about historicity have always been most out of place when it has come to Israel’s origins — if only for the fact that the genre of origin stories that fills so much of the Bible relates hardly at all to historical events, to anything that might have happened. It rather reflects constitutional questions of identity. (pp. 34-35, my emphasis)
The genre of origin stories hardly relates at all to historical events? Now one sees the pressing need for Historical Jesus scholars to bypass standard scientific methods of dating documents in order to date the Gospels as close as they reasonably can to the presumed events contained in their narratives. How can an origin story not relate to history if the story is composed within living memory of the events? The circularity of this is never addressed as far as I am aware.
We know the events really happened. No-one would have made them up. How do we know?
Because the narrative is a historical record, more or less.
How do we know the narrative is a historical record?
Because it is about events we know really happened — no-one would have made them up.
And all the subsequent scholarly apparatus thought to bring us closer to the historical Jesus is built upon this logic.
Continue reading “Confusing stories with historical evidence”