All History is a Fiction

In my daughters of ethiopia class last night the professor declared that all of history is a fiction story told by a person with a bias. I tend to agree. We only have the records of facts that someone in the past thought was important to tell a story. That is to say, to explain why they think something ended up the way it did. It does not give the full picture only the story the "historian" wants to tell.

For example, the French Revolution was interpreted to have been caused by the monarchy and various other aristocratic and political (I hope you all know your history I don't want to recount it) blah blah blah. But that was a history from the aristocratic perspective written by people concerned with why their upper middle class system was revolting against the king. This was accepted as history as to why France had a revolution and beheaded their king. Another perspective has been written recently though that looks at the revolution from the perspective of the sansculottes (shoeless people) and as it turns out they were the ones (in their minds and chronologically) who started the French Revolution and the reason was because they wanted bread. The king was beheaded because the sansculottes could not get bread.

History is perspectival and filled with personal emphasis on particular events that may or may not give the reader an accurate picture of what every single person affected by the event felt, thought, or how they reacted to this event.

I would say that Theology is the same but even more tribal in nature. It's a good thing may of the early church leaders knew this and wrote their story accordingly. The early church was very diverse and it liked it until it was taken over by "The Empire." Christianity is a faith that should be based on a unity that brings about diversity not a unity that brings about uniformity as Constantine molded it.

Added September 29th, 2004 09:27: It seems the discussion for this entry has moved to David McNelis' blog