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by _urga 5014 days ago
Did it happen? What does it mean? Our history is far more embarrassing/surprising/extraordinary than we like to admit. Which may be why we like to speak so much of science and so little of history. But history holds its own. Often it's not the happening of an event in history that we have difficulty with, but its meaning. Consider the historical accounts of Christ ("the King"). He happened, in history. We read the letters written by those who persecuted him, believed him, walked with him, saw him do the things he did, those who loved him and those who hated him. Did it happen? To the historian, of course. But to the common man, what does it mean? And there we grind to a halt... mistaking naturalism for science, unfamiliar with the nature of historical evidence, textual criticism, the death of form criticism, practicing historical revisionism, historical denial, conflating possibility with frequentism etc. But did it happen? If it happened, what does it mean?