History.

Among some of the statements made for the authenticity of the Christian faith and the Bible are the claims of history.  The Alpha program often touts the claim that the thousands of documents confirm the stories of the Bible.

The argument is made that no one questions other historical events with relatively few documents to back up its claims.  Well this is simply not true.  Although we have made the mistake of accepting historical records as true to what happened we are becoming more aware of the distortions in many if not most historical records.  I recall a recent program dispelling the myths attributed William Wallace in Scotland and the story of Simpson and his donkey at Gallipoli.

There are many more examples.  When well meaning people make claims about history that they are not qualified to make, they unknowingly spread mistruths.  For anyone to claim that certain historical writings are accurate is misleading and difficult to substantiate.  The reality is that historians, journalists and other types of reporters are prone to subjective interpretations.  They are also inclined to bend and distort the truth in order to fuel their own gain.  To accept any historical piece of writing as absolute is naive and dangerous.

History has been re-written many times.  Even more recent history has been re-examined and found to be inadequate.  One example is the history of the Aboriginal peoples and European settlement.  Some accounts portray the Aboriginal peoples as friendly and welcoming while other interpretations have said they were barbaric and debase (low).  It seems as though any barbarism and depravity is more appropriately applied to some of the Europeans.  

There is so much more to add, but I'm interested in your comments.

Email me at mikesforum@tpg.com.au

Ecclesian's response to the historical issue

Famous quotes about history and the way it's recorded:

History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.
Max Beerbohm

To know the truth of history is to realize its ultimate myth and its inevitable ambiguity.
Roy P. Basler

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.
Oscar Wilde

History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions.
Voltaire

Imagination plays too important a role in the writing of history, and what is imagination but the projection of the author's personality.
Pieter Geyl

The certainty of history seems to be in direct inverse ratio to what we know about it.
Anonymous (This guy must be famous because his (or her) name appears so much.

God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the .past.
Ambrose Bierce

Writing intellectual history is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.
William Hesseltine

The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts.
Henry Adams

Nothing capable of being memorized is history.
R. G. Collingwood

That generations of historians have resorted to what might be called "proof by haphazard quotation" does not make the procedure valid or reliable; it only makes it traditional.
Lee Benson

Nothing falsifies history more than logic.
Guizot

History is a great deal closer to poetry than is generally realised: in truth, I think, it is in essence the same.
A. L. Rowse

History is a myth that men agree to believe.
Napoleon

History is the distillation of rumour.
Thomas Carlyle

don't believe the truth will ever be known, and I have a great contempt for history.
Gen. George Meade

In mass societies, myth takes the place of history.
William Bosenbrook

History remembers only the brilliant failures and the brilliant successes.
Randolph S. Bourne

We learn from history that we never learn anything from history.
Hegel

The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.
Edward Gibbon

Everyone falsifies history even if it is only his own personal history. Sometimes the falsification is deliberate, sometimes unconscious; put always the past is altered to suit the needs of the present. The best we can say of any account is not that it is the real truth at last, but that this is how the story appears now.
Joseph Freeman

Historians, it is said, fall into one of three categories:
Those who lie.
Those who are mistaken.
Those who do not know.
Anonymous

[History is] not factual at all, but a series of accepted judgments. Geoffrey Barraclough

The writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation.
John Hope Franklin

The historian amputates reality.
Gaetano Salvemini

The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist.
Sir Isaiah Berlin

No opinion can be trusted; even the facts may be nothing but a printer's error.
W. C. Williams

No historian should be trusted implicitly.
G. Kitson Clark

I believe that history is capable of anything. There exists no folly that men have not tried out.
C. G. Jung

If History teaches any lesson at all, it is that there are no historical lessons.
Lucien Febvre

History, in a democratic age, tends to become a series of popular apologies, and is inclined to assume that the people can do no wrong.
A. F. Pollard

Writing history is a perpetual exercise in judgment.
Cushing Strout

History is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such.
Henry L. Stimson