History, Historians, and Historicity

If we are going to examine the Bible as historical document, then its fair to spend time examining what exactly is history. And that of course links to the work that Historians do. In episode 1, we talked about whether or not I, Carl, am a Historian, so hopefully you did listen to the first episode (or go back to catch it). And I am equally as prone to say that I am a Professor (somewhat linking to how British Academics see the top rank of scholarship), and a Professor of History.  So, knowing what History is and what Historians do is vital in order to explain about events or people from the past.

Tied to those two concepts is then understanding what the evidence is that supports an event or a person. We must have evidence to tell us of an event or person, but how do we measure that evidence?  In this episode, we will examine how to do that, and then from that evidence, we can better define or examine the historicity of a thing.

In this episode, I reference a chart of works from antiquity, and said "you can search it online."  You can, but I found one here within this article that I recommend to you. It has a version of the most recent information from scholar Josh McDowell, from his 2015 book "God Breathed." Some of the other charts you might find online reference earlier data, often from McDowell; clearly the information is available for each ancient source, but you'd have to really do some deep digging on the point.  And clearly, since 2015 (or earlier), new copies could have been found which change the number.