Fake News: Martyrdom of Peter and Paul

[neilgodfrey]

Richard John Evans :

' Clearly history is not a science in the sense that chemistry or biology are sciences. It cannot submit its data to scientific experiments; it cannot repeat its own experiments; it cannot control its materials. Wanting these, it will be said that of course history is not a science in any useful sense of the word. Yet it is equally clear that history uses or aspires to use the scientific method. That is, it tests all things which can be tested, and holds fast to what it finds to be true, in so far as it is able to make any findings at all. But how does history ’test’ things? What are the techniques of testing? How does it know when it has arrived at 'truth’ or even when it has achieved agreement of ‘facts’?

The chemist does not inject his personality, his beliefs and prejudices, into the chemicals which he uses in his experiments; how does the historian rid his materials of such foreign ingredients? Indeed can the term ‘scientific method’ ever mean the same thing in history that it means in the exact sciences?

Should it perhaps give place to a more realistic term such as ‘critical method,’ and should ‘scientific’ history yield to 'technical’ history? '

NB. Perhaps it should give place to a more realistic term such as ' educated opinion'.

At first I thought you were quoting Evans, but I think you are asking questions arising from some of the quotations of his, yes?

My own perspective is that there is a difference between "fact finding" and "history". In one sense, learning "what happened" in the past is uncovered by research with primary sources in archives or by the work of archaeologists.

Historians select from the range of available facts and string them into a narrative. In that sense it can be said that historians actually create history. History is not "out there" waiting to be discovered like some fact or principle in chemistry or biology. It is dead and gone and we only have relics left in archives, monuments in the fields, etc. Historians need to draw inferences about what happened from the data. Different historians will draw slightly different inferences perhaps, or if they draw the same inferences about what happened they will string them together differently or join them together with different narratives. Debates follow.

Testing in science is done by setting up a hypothesis that predicts X will follow if Y is true or not true, and then doing the tests.

With history, as I understand it, comparable testing can be done by asking what we would expect to find (or not find) in the evidence if such and such were "true".

I noticed you use a biblical phrase in your comment -- "hold fast to what is true" -- but that's anathema in science and history. The maxim should be "holds provisionally" or "holds tentatively" pending further evidence, tests, etc.

[Paul the Uncertain]

I noticed you use a biblical phrase in your comment -- "hold fast to what is true" -- but that's anathema in science and history. The maxim should be "holds provisionally" or "holds tentatively" pending further evidence, tests, etc.

Scientists as a group are devoted to mathematics and logic, and so hold fast to the truth, insofar as that is possible. Scientists also seem readily to accept observations as facts, although they are mindful that all measurements include some error, and exercise caution when using them.

The maxim, then, seems fine as stated. That is, with the non-Biblical (that I can recall) qualification "in so far as it [a hypothetical generalization of "scientific" uncertainty management methods] is able to make any findings at all."

A similar loaded qualifier occurs back in Father Garraghan's quoted remarks, that (emphasis added) "unaccountably tardy first mention" is suspicious of popular-traditional origin. Seriously possible alternatives within which the first known mention isn't especially "tardy" would make delay accountable and so tend to mitigate first-impression suspicion.

While it seems heuristically plausible that in any given situation the longer the delay. the less reliable the report, there is no obvious way to compare delays across situations. Twenty years in one case might be too much to credit, while a millennium in another could be considered brisk (the fortuitous recovery of cached and forgotten documents, for instance).

[iskander]

Richard John Evans :

' Clearly history is not a science in the sense that chemistry or biology are sciences. It cannot submit its data to scientific experiments; it cannot repeat its own experiments; it cannot control its materials. Wanting these, it will be said that of course history is not a science in any useful sense of the word. Yet it is equally clear that history uses or aspires to use the scientific method. That is, it tests all things which can be tested, and holds fast to what it finds to be true, in so far as it is able to make any findings at all. But how does history ’test’ things? What are the techniques of testing? How does it know when it has arrived at 'truth’ or even when it has achieved agreement of ‘facts’?

The chemist does not inject his personality, his beliefs and prejudices, into the chemicals which he uses in his experiments; how does the historian rid his materials of such foreign ingredients? Indeed can the term ‘scientific method’ ever mean the same thing in history that it means in the exact sciences?

Should it perhaps give place to a more realistic term such as ‘critical method,’ and should ‘scientific’ history yield to 'technical’ history? '

NB. Perhaps it should give place to a more realistic term such as ' educated opinion'.

At first I thought you were quoting Evans, but I think you are asking questions arising from some of the quotations of his, yes?

My own perspective is that there is a difference between "fact finding" and "history". In one sense, learning "what happened" in the past is uncovered by research with primary sources in archives or by the work of archaeologists.

Historians select from the range of available facts and string them into a narrative. In that sense it can be said that historians actually create history. History is not "out there" waiting to be discovered like some fact or principle in chemistry or biology. It is dead and gone and we only have relics left in archives, monuments in the fields, etc. Historians need to draw inferences about what happened from the data. Different historians will draw slightly different inferences perhaps, or if they draw the same inferences about what happened they will string them together differently or join them together with different narratives. Debates follow.

Testing in science is done by setting up a hypothesis that predicts X will follow if Y is true or not true, and then doing the tests.

With history, as I understand it, comparable testing can be done by asking what we would expect to find (or not find) in the evidence if such and such were "true".

I noticed you use a biblical phrase in your comment -- "hold fast to what is true" -- but that's anathema in science and history. The maxim should be "holds provisionally" or "holds tentatively" pending further evidence, tests, etc.

My last post is quoting from this. All the previous posts are quotations from the book of Evans 2014 edition.
History Extension
Stage 6
Source Book of Readings
Published by Board of Studies NSW
GPO Box 5300
Sydney 2001
Australia
Tel: (02 9367 8111
Fax: (02) 9367 8484
Internet: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au
ISBN 0 7313 4588 6
9
Richard J Evans
In Defence of History
Granta, London, 1997
The History of History

page 114
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/sy ... adings.pdf

But page 114 does not belong to the same book you are reading . My last post is about history as in the Source Readings. .

[MrMacSon]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/nero-the-e ... an-history

Great stuff. Our colleague neilgodfrey beat the Beast on this:

http://vridar.org/2015/12/17/the-myth-o ... hristians/

The article accepts that the references to Christians in the time of Nero in Suetonius and Tacitus are both authentic (in the sense that Suetonius and Tacitus both wrote the passages). If so this prima-facie implies that there was a group named Christians (or Chrestians ) in Nero's Rome. It is unlikely that Suetonius and Tacitus are being independently anachronistic here.

Some have argued that the Christians (or Chrestians ) under Nero were different from what we mean by Christians but this does not seem to be what the article is proposing.

Andrew Criddle

I think there are several subsequent texts that suggest the development of narratives around Nero that were resulted in concrete narratives that were then framed as if they had happened in Nero's moral time on earth.

After Nero's death, he was, in certain groups and places (especially the eastern Provinces), expected to return; the Nero redivivus legend.
(Suetonius, LVII.1; Tacitus, Histories II.8; Dio, LXVI.19.3).

Eastern sources, namely Philostratus II and Apollonius of Tyana, mention that Nero's death was mourned as he "restored the liberties of Hellas with a wisdom and moderation quite alien to his character"[162] and that he "held our liberties in his hand and respected them."

Modern scholarship generally holds that, while the Senate and more well-off individuals welcomed Nero's death, the general populace was "loyal to the end and beyond, for Otho and Vitellius both thought it worthwhile to appeal to their nostalgia."

Suetonius relates how court astrologers had predicted Nero's fall but that he would have power in the East (XL.2). And, indeed, at least three false claimants did present themselves as Nero redivivus (resurrected). The first, who sang and played the cithara or lyre and whose face was similar to that of the dead emperor, appeared the next year but, after persuading some to recognize him, was captured and executed (Tacitus, II.8). Sometime during the reign of Titus (AD 79-81) there was another impostor who appeared in Asia and also sang to the accompaniment of the lyre and looked like Nero but he, too, was exposed (Dio, LXVI.19.3). Twenty years after Nero's death, during the reign of Domitian, there was a third pretender. Supported by the Parthians, who hardly could be persuaded to give him up (Suetonius, LVII.2), the matter almost came to war (Tacitus, I.2). Such fidelity no doubt can be attributed to the magnificent reception (and restoration of Armenia) that Tiridates, the brother of the Parthian king, had received from Nero in AD 66 (Dio, LXII.1ff).

While the legend of Nero's return lasted for hundreds of years after Nero's death (Augustine of Hippo wrote of the legend as a popular belief in 422), he also became narrated as the antiChrist.

In the Christian version of the non-canonical Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah (late first century AD), Nero is the anti-Christ ushering in the end of the world. In an interpolation, the so-called Testament of Hezekiah, Isaiah prophesies the end of the world, when Beliar (Belial) the Antichrist will manifest himself as the incarnation of the dead Nero.

Beliar will perform miracles and seduce the followers of Christ until, at the Second Coming,

• "the Lord will come with his angels and with the hosts of the saints from the seventh heaven, and will drag Beliar, and his hosts also, into Gehenna [the figurative equivalent of hell]."

Nero also possesses the attributes of the Antichrist in the Sibylline Oracles, a collection of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic verses attributed to the prophecies of the ancient Sibyl, who identifies herself as a native of Babylon (III.786; also Lactantius, Divine Institutes, I.6) and a daughter (or daughter-in-law) of Noah (III.808ff). In Oracle V, which dates to the late first or early second century AD, Nero has become a resurrected and demonic power symbolic of Rome, itself.

• "One who has fifty as an initial [the Hebrew letter "N"] will be commander, a terrible snake [the serpent or dragon], breathing out grievous war....But even when he disappears he will be destructive. Then he will return declaring himself equal to God" (V.28ff).

Here, Nero is manifested as the Antichrist, "that man of sin [lawlessness]...who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God...shewing himself that he is God" (II Thessalonians II.3-4).

The Sibyl presents Nero both as king of Rome (Oracle V, 138ff) and the means of God's retribution in destroying it (365). A matricide and megalomaniac, who presumed to cut through the isthmus of Corinth and was perceived as responsible for the destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD 70, Nero "will come from the ends of the earth" (363) as a champion of the East and an instrument of God's punishment. He will overthrow tyrants and "raise up those who were crouched in fear" (370) before falling in a final battle against the West. Then there will be peace and "no longer will anyone fight with swords or iron or with weapons at all" (382ff). In this expectation, as in Oracle IV (119ff, 1137ff) and Oracle VIII (70ff, 153ff), one perceives the hope raised by the False Neros among the oppressed provinces of the East.

In canonical Revelation, of course, Nero appears as the beast whose number is 666. In the apocalyptic Revelation of John, Nero is the second beast who, through miracles and the threat of death, compels the worship of the first beast. Moreover, the second beast marks everyone with its own mark, without which "no man might buy or sell" (Rev 13:17). "Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six" (Rev 13:18). The riddle seems to have been forgotten almost as soon as it was written and not solved until 1835 ... see http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 908#p71908

Tacitus narrated a false Nero in Histories 2.

Nero’s reputation as the first persecutor of Christians emerged in this atmosphere.

The Histories were written a few years before the Annals, by about 110, and Tacitus had there discussed Judea without mentioning Christianity. Pliny sponsored Suetonius, who likely was on his staff in Bithynia. Pliny and Tacitus were friends. Tacitus’s term as proconsul of Roman eastern Asia Minor 112-3 could have overlapped with Pliny’s term in Bithynia.

The notion of the Neronian persecution has also provided a location in time for the deaths of Sts. Peter and Paul in Rome, about which Acts of the Apostles and Scripture generally are entirely silent. But if there wasn’t one, then they died under other circumstances?

We need to recognize that ancient Christians were as prone as their pagan peers, and even as their modern successors, to devise fiction to fill in gaps of what we know about the past. A sharp distinction between fiction and documentary history is itself a modern construction.

Authors have variably argued that "We read the lives of the Cæsars: at Rome Nero was the first who stained with blood the rising faith" in Scorpiace 15 is referring to the passage in Nero 16, the Annals 15.44 passage, or to both passages.

See http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... f=3&t=3265

tbc

[MrMacSon]

The following is a modification of the current wikipedia entry about that^ Nero Reference -

K.R. Bradley has argued that the verb in the clause "Punishment was inflicted on the Christians" (Latin: afflicti suppliciis christiani) should be corrected to "affecti", based first on the frequent use of this verb with the word for "punishment", and second on that Orosius, according to Bradley, uses this verb in material dependent on the Suetonius Nero 16 passage.[45] These words in combination indicate that the punishment was capital; cf. e.g. Suet. Augustus 17.5 (death of young Antony), Claudius 26.2 (death of Messalina) and Galba 12.1 (death of officials).

In Roman usage, the word superstitio refers to any excessive religious devotion, within or outside traditional Roman religious practice. It appears to Suetonius this particular excessive devotion was new and mischievous: Marius Heemstra thinks he was backdating the accusation to the time of Nero.[46]

The word translated as "mischievous" above is maleficus which can also mean "magical". As a noun the word means "magician". An accusation that Christians were using what would be called "black magic" aligns with what the pagan philosopher Celsus is said to have done about 177.[47]

Unlike the reference to the persecution of Christians by Nero in Annals 15.44, the passage in Nero 16 does not relate Nero's punishment/persecution of Christians to the Great Fire of Rome.

Some author argue that when Tertullian wrote: "We read the lives of the Cæsars: At Rome Nero was the first who stained with blood the rising faith" (Scorpiace 15) he is referring to the passage in Suetonius' Nero 16, but others hold that Tertullian is either referring to the Tacitus Annals passage or to both passages [50, 51, 52].
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
45 K. R. Bradley, "Suetonius, Nero 16.2: ‘afflicti suppliciis christian’", The Classical Review, 22, p.10.

46 Marius Heemstra, The Fiscus Judaicus and the Parting of the Ways (Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Company. 2010) ISBN 9783161503832, p.89.

47 Wilken, Robert Louis (2003). The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (2nd ed.). Yale University Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0300098396.

50 Mary Ellen Snodgrass, Encyclopedia of the Literature of Empire, USA 2010, p. 270. Cf. Heinrich Hoppe, De sermone Tertullianeo quaestiones selectae, Marburgi Chattorum 1897, p. 26 f. "Tertullian kombinierte im Jahr 211/212, als er 'De scorpiace' schrieb, eine Nachricht aus der Nero-Vita Suetons mit den Apostelakten und zwei Bibelstellen", writes Otto Zwierlein, Petrus in Rom: Die literarischen Zeugnisse, 2nd ed., de Gruyter, Göttingen 2010, p. 119.

51 Waszink noted that "n scorp. 15 (178, 11/2) we read vitas Caesarum legimus: orientem fidem Romae primus Nero cruentavit [i.e. "We read the lives of the Cæsars: At Rome Nero was the first who stained with blood the rising faith"] (again from Suet. Nero, ch. 16)"; see Jan Hendrik Waszink, "Quinti Septimi Florentis Tertulliani De Anima", Brill, Leiden 2010 (original: J. M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1947), p. 479. Merrill wrote: "He [Tertullian] also had read (perhaps while resident in Rome) the Lives of Suetonius", with "Scorp 15 uitas Caesarum ... cruentauit (Suet. Nero 16, 2)" supplied in the footnote; see Elmer Truesdell Merrill, Essays in Early Christian History, Macmillan 1924, p. 121 with n. 2.

52 See Anthony R. Birley, Marius Maximus: The Consular Biographer, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 34, 3, 1997, p. 2752, with n. 230, and Simon Swain, Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire (ed. M. Mark J. Edwards, Simon Swain), Oxford 1997, p. 24, n. 65. Both authors refer to Timothy D. Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study, Oxford 1971, for Tertullian having referred to Tacitus as "the Lives of the Caesars".
_____________________________________________

Claudius 25, also attributed to Suetonius, refers to the expulsion of Jews by Claudius and states (in Edwards' translation):

• "Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome."

Acts of the Apostles (18:2) makes a parallel commentary: -

• "And he found a certain Jew named Aquila, a man of Pontus by race, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome: and he came unto them"

[MrMacSon]

.
In Acts of Ps-Linus, Martyrdom of the Blessed Apostle Peter (Martyrium beati Petri apostoli a Lino conscriptum), Peter is narrated as interacting with the antiChrist Nero at the beginning; and the end, as a vision.

Peter is captured and brought before Agrippa and Peter is able to give a speech, including revering the cross. Peter continues to speak before finally dying. His body is annointed and, post-mortem, he talks to his executioner.

Then

[17] But when Nero found out that the blessed Peter had died, whom he had given orders to torment, not to kill, he sent [instructions] that Agrippa be arrested, since without [receiving] his [i.e. Nero's] sentence [to that effect] he had killed Peter —whom he [i.e., Nero] was planning to punish using various torments. He complained that he had been robbed of Simon, the protector of his salvation, by that man's tricks, and he grieved for the misfortune of such a great friend, who was supplying him and the state with countless good things. Agrippa, however, by the intervention of his friends, secured the privilege of living at his own home as a private citizen, despised and deprived of his prefect's office. Thus he avoided Caesar's fury, but he did not escape the vengeance of divine judgement, which he soon experienced, and perished terribly.

Finally, Nero turned his attention to the persecution of those who, he learned, had associated on rather friendly terms with the blessed Peter, so that at least by their punishment he might be satiated regarding Peter. But the blessed Apostle made this known to the brethren by a revelation, and suggested how they might avoid the beast's savagery. For Nero in a vision saw the holy Peter standing before him, and, after being scourged by someone on that man's orders, he heard:

• "Restrain your hands, most impious one, from the servants of our Lord Jesus Christ; you will not be able to hold them now."

Then, being alarmed, he was quiet for a little. In addition, the brethren were both rejoicing and exulting in the Lord, strengthened often by a vision of the blessed Apostle Peter, glorifying the Lord God, the Almighty Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, to whom belong glory, power, and worship for ever and ever. Amen.

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/linus_01_peter.htm

"The text appears to be based on the apocryphal 'Acts of Peter', which is known primarily in a Latin version (the so-called Actus Vercellenses) and, for the martyrdom itself, in Greek. ... The Greek text is translated in Hennecke-Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha (rev.), 2: 311-17 (see 2: 321 n. 153)."

In 'Acts of Peter', Peter is described as being crucified head down.

The death of Peter is 'attested to' by Tertullian at the end of the 2nd century, in his Prescription Against Heretics, noting that Peter endured a passion like his Lord's. In Scorpiace 15, Tertullian also speaks of Peter's crucifixion: "The budding faith Nero first made bloody in Rome. There Peter was girded by another, since he was bound to the cross".

According to Encyclopedia Britannica online, it is probable that the tradition of a 25-year episcopate of Peter in Rome is not earlier than the beginning or the middle of the 3rd century. The claims that the church of Rome was founded by Peter or that he served as its first bishop are in dispute and rest on evidence that is not earlier than the middle or late 2nd century.

John 21:18, 19 clearly alludes to the death of Peter and are cast into the literary form of prophecy. The author of this chapter is aware of a tradition concerning the martyrdom of Peter when the Apostle was an old man.

'Letter to the Corinthians', attributed to Clement of Rome, says of Peter's martyrdom: "Let us take the noble examples of our own generation. Through jealousy and envy the greatest and most just pillars of the Church were persecuted, and came even unto death. … Peter, through unjust envy, endured not one or two but many labours, and at last, having delivered his testimony, departed unto the place of glory due to him." (Chapter 5).

and "To these men [Peter and Paul] who lived such holy lives there was joined a great multitude of the elect who by reason of rivalry were victims of many outrages and tortures and who became outstanding examples among us" (6:1).

[MrMacSon]

.
According to Wikipedia, "Paul's death is described in a number of sources":

• I Clement suggests that both Paul and Peter were martyred.[84]
• There is an early tradition 'found' in the writing of Ignatius that Paul was martyred.[85]
• Dionysius of Corinth, in a letter to the Romans ([supposedly] 166–174 AD), stated that Paul and Peter were martyred in Italy.[86] Eusebius also cites the Dionysius passage.[87]
• The Acts of Paul, an apocryphal work [supposedly] written around 160, describes the martyrdom of Paul. According to the Acts of Paul, Nero condemned Paul to death by decapitation.[88]
• Tertullian in his Prescription Against Heretics (200 AD) writes that Paul had a similar death to that of John the Baptist, who was beheaded.[89]
• Eusebius of Caesarea in his Church History [Book II, Chapter 25:5-6] (320 AD) 'testifies' that Paul was beheaded in Rome and Peter crucified. He wrote that the tombs of these two apostles, with their inscriptions, were extant in his time; and quotes as his authority a holy man of the name of Caius.[90]
• Lactantius wrote that Nero "crucified Peter, and slew Paul." (318 AD)[91]
• Jerome in his De Viris Illustribus ('On Illustrious Men') (392 AD) states that Paul was beheaded at Rome.[92]
• John Chrysostom (c. 349–407) wrote that Nero knew Paul personally and had him killed.[93]
• Sulpicius Severus says Nero killed Peter and Paul. (403 AD)[94]
  • [94] = Chronica II, 28–29.

A legend later developed that his martyrdom occurred at the Acquae Salviae, on the Via Laurentina. According to this legend, after Paul was decapitated, his severed head rebounded three times, giving rise to a source of water each time that it touched the ground, which is how the place earned the name "San Paolo alle Tre Fontane" ("St Paul at the Three Fountains").[95][96] Also according to legend, Paul's body was buried outside the walls of Rome, at the second mile on the Via Ostiensis, on the estate owned by a Christian woman named Lucina. It was here, in the fourth century, that the Emperor Constantine the Great built a first church. Then, between the fourth and fifth centuries it was considerably enlarged by the Emperors Valentinian I, Valentinian II, Theodosius I, and Arcadius.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle#Death

There is superficial commentary such as this - http://www.biblestudy.org/question/sauldie.html

.

[iskander]

From the book , In defence of History, by Richard John Evans :


" Few historians would now defend the hard -line concept of historical objectivity espoused by Elton. The prevalence of historical controversy, endemic in the profession for decades, has long since disabused historians of the idea that the truth lies buried in the documents, and once the historian has unearthed it, no one ever need perform the same operation again....
The notion of scientific history, based on the rigorous investigation of primary sources, has been vehemently attacked. Increasing numbers of writers on the subject deny that there is such a thing as historical truth or objectivity- both concepts defended, in different ways, by Carr as well as Elton. "

NB. History is an educated opinion about the past.

[neilgodfrey]

From the book , In defence of History, by Richard John Evans :


" Few historians would now defend the hard -line concept of historical objectivity espoused by Elton. The prevalence of historical controversy, endemic in the profession for decades, has long since disabused historians of the idea that the truth lies buried in the documents, and once the historian has unearthed it, no one ever need perform the same operation again....
The notion of scientific history, based on the rigorous investigation of primary sources, has been vehemently attacked. Increasing numbers of writers on the subject deny that there is such a thing as historical truth or objectivity- both concepts defended, in different ways, by Carr as well as Elton. "

NB. History is an educated opinion about the past.

It is more than "educated opinion". Evans is not disputing "factness" or the ability to "know facts" -- very much the opposite in his larger argument in In Defence. What he criticizes Elton for is the idea that a historian can be genuinely objective or value-free in interpretation or use of the facts. There is always more to understand about any given "fact", more to know about its context, its place in the overall scheme of events.

A classic example is Whaley's new history of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire -- notice what is new about the book is not new facts but reinterpretations and reassessments of known data:

Germany and the Holy Roman Empire offers a striking new interpretation of a crucial era in German and European history, from the great reforms of 1495-1500 to the dissolution of the Reich in 1806. Over two volumes, Joachim Whaley rejects the notion that this was a long period of decline, and shows instead how imperial institutions developed in response to the crises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, notably the Reformation and Thirty Years War.

Historians bring fresh insights and interpretations to the "facts"; and sometimes some new details may be uncovered in archives that also throw new light on our interpretations of what happened.

That is, history is not set in stone -- an objective story -- but is always open to knew understanding, revision of old understandings, etc.

The "facts" are seen in new lights.

There is a difference between "what happened" -- a particular war, an assassination, a certain meeting, etc -- and our interpretations or perspectives on the "what happened".

Evans is actually arguing against the postmodernist view that everything is "discourse" or that there are no facts in history.

[neilgodfrey]

My last post is quoting from this. All the previous posts are quotations from the book of Evans 2014 edition.
History Extension
Stage 6
Source Book of Readings
Published by Board of Studies NSW
GPO Box 5300
Sydney 2001
Australia
Tel: (02 9367 8111
Fax: (02) 9367 8484
Internet: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au
ISBN 0 7313 4588 6
9
Richard J Evans
In Defence of History
Granta, London, 1997
The History of History

page 114
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/sy ... adings.pdf

But page 114 does not belong to the same book you are reading . My last post is about history as in the Source Readings. .

There appears to be a mistake in attribution, iiuc. Page 114 is from a 1965 writing by Henry Steele Commager, not Richard Evans.

In 1965 we are looking at a time that preceded many of the modern debates among historians that really began with E.H. Carr's book, "What is History?" -- Commager's article does not seem to reflect any knowledge of the debates ensuing from Carr's book.

(Study readings like that are usually selected for their wide range of views to provoke discussion or awareness of the wider debates.)