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Alternative History

Why Revisionist History Isn't Accurate

As I mention on the front page, this is not an alternative history site.

The more I've devoted myself to studying history (and science), the more I've found that scholars are forced to keep each other honest.

If you come up with the new, unique view that no one else has, and you can prove it, you'll be famous. As a result, scholars want to challenge the status quo. They want to go against the grain.

But in scholarly circles, you have to have evidence to back it up.

Darrell L. Bock has written an excellent expose and refutation of some of the more popular attempts at an alternative history of Christianity.

Eventually I'll have pages up on these revisionist histories myself. Until then (and after), his book, The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities, is well worth reading. (Ad notice: I get a small commission of you buy this book.)

Oh, sure, you'll be castigated for a while. The "old school" will roast you. Eventually, though, if you've got the evidence on your side, you'll win.

I do look at alternative histories, but they're always wrong. Whether Christian (like The Trail of Blood and The Torch of the Testimony) or secular (like The Da Vinci Code), they're based on shallow research and faulty reasoning.

Why Not Leave It to the Scholars?

Because they're boring and hard to understand.

My job is to sort through all the boring stuff, find what you want to know, make sure the scholars have really done their homework, then report it to you.

In the end, however, the history you're learning here came from scholars who did long, difficult research in order to find these things out. Again, this is not an alternative history site.

It's a LOT of work checking on who really did the research, but it's not difficult, just time-consuming. Once a scholar has blessed the rest of us by hunting down those sources, it's just a matter of actually checking the sources to find out who's telling the truth and who's dishonest or living in wishful thinking.