The Jesus Freaks Will Hate This

[abaris]

And if what they were told was the truth?

OK, personal story to illustrate how being critical of your sources works. When you study history, at least here in Europe, one of the first lessons is to be presented with a text, not longer than a paragraph. It bears no title, no date and no authorship. The text is genuine and describes a real event. Your task now is to determine WHEN, WHERE and WHY it was written by reading and analysing the writing. In my case it was from the back then still existing GDR. The author used certain keywords like dialectic pointing in that direction.

I capitalised the When, where and why, since these three questions are the pillars of historical research when it comes to texts. What did the world look like when the author set up to write his piece? What did society look like in his part of the world, when he wrote it? Ultimately, why did he feel the need to write about that particular event? Was it his decision or was he writing because someone tasked him with it?

Point is, every text can bear truths as well as lies as well as legends. They key is to filter and to be critical. I guess you wouldn't take a text from the former GDR at face value just because some historical figures match up with reality. But the same holds true for the gospels.