What’s coming up on this Saturday’s episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.
I am writing this one early because due to the Thanksgiving holiday, I will be out of town, but I want you all to know about what’s coming up this week.
We’re going to be discussing the topic of ancient historiography. How is it that ancient historiography was done and how is it that we can know something is true in the field? Fortunately, we will have a remarkable expert on to discuss that, and that’s Dr. Paul Maier.
The relevance of this topic is that so few people today have any idea how to do this. For instance, we are told that no contemporary historian mentions Jesus supposedly. Yet how many of them talk about Hannibal or about Alexander the Great or how many of them talk about the erupting of Vesuvius in 79 A.D.?
How is it that someone can trust a source that is decades after the event? In the case of people like Hannibal and Alexander the Great, we normally rely on people who write about the event CENTURIES after it took place. If we can trust them then, is there a reason to not trust the gospels?
What are the rules that one uses? Does one accept everything they read uncritically? When does an ancient account get the benefit of the doubt? If we have sources that disagree amongst themselves, what exactly do we do in order to explain that? Can we arrive at the truth or do we throw everything out and give up?
What about the claims of miracles? Do we have any criteria whereby we can examine a claim of an event that could be deemed impossible?? If we were to apply the rules of ancient historiography to the gospels and to the person of Jesus, how would Jesus turn out? How would the gospels turn out?
This is a needed program today as many of us debate atheists on the internet who frankly don’t know the first thing about ancient historiography, and to be fair, too many Christians don’t know the first thing either. This is not just an atheist problem. This is a problem with people in general not knowing how to do history and only being taught facts on history instead of a methodology on history.
This is why it is important to learn from those who are credentialed historians and that is why I am excited to get to have Paul Maier on my show to discuss this. While much of this has been about Jesus, I really plan to discuss ancient historiography in general and then in the end tie it in with Jesus, especially explaining why the Christ-myth theory is not accepted by serious historians.
I hope you’ll be listening in this Saturday from 3-5 PM EST to hear Dr. Paul Maier on the show. The date will be 11/30/2013. The call in number if you want to ask a question is 714-242-5180. The link can be found here.
Hope you’ll be listening!
In Christ,
Nick Peters