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History is a science among others. It has its own methods but shares the same naturalistic outlook as any science. Therefore one cannot oppose science and history, because history is science.

In fact it's one of the oldest ones. Many historians of antiquity prefaced their writing by denouncing any recourse to supernatural events (like gods interventions in human affairs). They did so precisely because they were not trying to write mythology but a realistic, naturalistic history of events, and they wanted their readers to understand the difference.1

As a matter of principle, as it was conceived millenaries ago to be a different discourse than mythology, and as currently practiced by modern historians, history is therefore not in the business of confirming miracles. On the contrary, one of its tasks is to demystify the past.

What does that mean in practice? For instance that no modern historian worth his salt can possibly confirm the myth of Genesis about a worldwide flood, in the face of the material impossibility of the Genesis story. The task of the historian is NOT to confirm impossible past events narrated by mythology, but to understand how such a myth may have come about, what initial catastrophy (some natural and necessarily local flood) could have given rise to the myth, what the myth meant / conveyed in the historical context that believed in it, what it may tell us today, etc.

In the case if the Flood, to demystify the past would be to say that the Genesis story has been traced back to Babylon and Summer; that the place is a flood plain lying between the Tigris and Euphrat, roughly where agriculture started and where the first cities in the world were built, in the -3000s; and finally, that it's easy to imagine a local flood there sometime in the 3rd millenary BCE, killing everyone except a guy who was sailing his boat. And that's how the myth came by.

1 This assertion needs nuance. As they created this new discourse, different from mythology that had so far "populated the past", Greek and Roman historians from antiquity took a variety of views re. what we would today describe as myths.

One neat example of what I am talking about is Thucydides. In his work, History of the Peloponnesian War, he explicitly states his intention to provide a factual account of events, free from the influence of the gods or supernatural explanations.

Another example is Polybius, a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. In his Histories, Polybius emphasized the importance of eyewitness accounts and direct evidence, often criticizing other historians for their reliance on myth and divine intervention.

Herodotus, in his work Histories covering the Greco-Persian Wars, often expressed skepticism about the more fantastical elements of the stories he recounted. He did give credence to the myth of the Amazons but recently the origins if this myth have convincingly been traced back to female scythian warriors.

A significant exception to my thesis is the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Unlike some of his contemporaries who avoided supernatural explanations, Josephus often included references to God’s actions, e.g. he interpreted the Roman conquest of Jerusalem as a punishment from God for the sins of the Jewish people.

But then, Josephus claimed that he had a vision from God Himself backing that up...

History is a science among others. It has its own methods but shares the same naturalistic outlook as any science. Therefore one cannot oppose science and history, because history is science.

In fact it's one of the oldest ones. Many historians of antiquity prefaced their writing by denouncing any recourse to supernatural events (like gods interventions in human affairs). They did so precisely because they were not trying to write mythology but a realistic, naturalistic history of events, and they wanted their readers to understand the difference.1

As a matter of principle, as it was conceived millenaries ago to be a different discourse than mythology, and as currently practiced by modern historians, history is therefore not in the business of confirming miracles. On the contrary, one of its tasks is to demystify the past.

What does that mean in practice? For instance that no modern historian worth his salt can possibly confirm the myth of Genesis about a worldwide flood, in the face of the material impossibility of the Genesis story. The task of the historian is NOT to confirm impossible past events narrated by mythology, but to understand how such a myth may have come about, what initial catastrophy (some natural and necessarily local flood) could have given rise to the myth, what the myth meant / conveyed in the historical context that believed in it, what it may tell us today, etc.

In the case if the Flood, to demystify the past would be to say that the Genesis story has been traced back to Babylon and Summer; that the place is a flood plain lying between the Tigris and Euphrat, roughly where agriculture started and where the first cities in the world were built, in the -3000s; and finally, that it's easy to imagine a local flood there sometime in the 3rd millenary BCE, killing everyone except a guy who was sailing his boat. And that's how the myth came by.

1 This assertion needs nuance. As they created this new discourse, different from mythology that had so far "populated the past", Greek and Roman historians from antiquity took a variety of views re. what we would today describe as myths.

One neat example of what I am talking about is Thucydides. In his work, History of the Peloponnesian War, he explicitly states his intention to provide a factual account of events, free from the influence of the gods or supernatural explanations.

Another example is Polybius, a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. In his Histories, Polybius emphasized the importance of eyewitness accounts and direct evidence, often criticizing other historians for their reliance on myth and divine intervention.

Herodotus, in his work Histories covering the Greco-Persian Wars, often expressed skepticism about the more fantastical elements of the stories he recounted. He did give credence to the myth of the Amazons but recently the origins if this myth have convincingly been traced back to female scythian warriors.

A significant exception to my thesis is the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Unlike some of his contemporaries who avoided supernatural explanations, Josephus often included references to God’s actions, e.g. he interpreted the Roman conquest of Jerusalem as a punishment from God for the sins of the Jewish people.

But then, Josephus claimed that he had a vision from God Himself backing that up... 🤔

History is a science among others. It has its own methods but shares the same naturalistic outlook as any science. Therefore one cannot oppose science and history, because history is science.

In fact it's one of the oldest ones. Most of the historians of antiquity prefaced their writing by denouncing any recourse to supernatural events (like gods interventions in human affairs). They did so precisely because they were not trying to write mythology but a realistic, naturalistic history of events, and they wanted their readers to understand the difference.

As a matter of principle, as it was conceived millenaries ago to be a different discourse than mythology, and as currently practiced by modern historians, history is therefore not in the business of confirming miracles. On the contrary, one of its tasks is to demystify the past.

What does that mean in practice? For instance that no modern historian worth his salt can possibly confirm the myth of Genesis about a worldwide flood, in the face of the material impossibility of the Genesis story. The task of the historian is NOT to confirm impossible past events narrated by mythology, but to understand how such a myth may have come about, what initial catastrophy (some natural and necessarily local flood) could have given rise to the myth, what the myth meant / conveyed in the historical context that believed in it, what it may tell us today, etc.

In the case if the Flood, to demystify the past would be to say that the Genesis story has been traced back to Babylon and Summer; that the place is a flood plain lying between the Tigris and Euphrat, roughly where agriculture started and where the first cities in the world were built, in the -3000s; and finally, that it's easy to imagine a local flood there sometime in the 3rd millenary BCE, killing everyone except a guy who was sailing his boat. And that's how the myth came by.

History is a science among others. It has its own methods but shares the same naturalistic outlook as any science. Therefore one cannot oppose science and history, because history is science.

In fact it's one of the oldest ones. Many historians of antiquity prefaced their writing by denouncing any recourse to supernatural events (like gods interventions in human affairs). They did so precisely because they were not trying to write mythology but a realistic, naturalistic history of events, and they wanted their readers to understand the difference.1

As a matter of principle, as it was conceived millenaries ago to be a different discourse than mythology, and as currently practiced by modern historians, history is therefore not in the business of confirming miracles. On the contrary, one of its tasks is to demystify the past.

What does that mean in practice? For instance that no modern historian worth his salt can possibly confirm the myth of Genesis about a worldwide flood, in the face of the material impossibility of the Genesis story. The task of the historian is NOT to confirm impossible past events narrated by mythology, but to understand how such a myth may have come about, what initial catastrophy (some natural and necessarily local flood) could have given rise to the myth, what the myth meant / conveyed in the historical context that believed in it, what it may tell us today, etc.

In the case if the Flood, to demystify the past would be to say that the Genesis story has been traced back to Babylon and Summer; that the place is a flood plain lying between the Tigris and Euphrat, roughly where agriculture started and where the first cities in the world were built, in the -3000s; and finally, that it's easy to imagine a local flood there sometime in the 3rd millenary BCE, killing everyone except a guy who was sailing his boat. And that's how the myth came by.

1 This assertion needs nuance. As they created this new discourse, different from mythology that had so far "populated the past", Greek and Roman historians from antiquity took a variety of views re. what we would today describe as myths.

One neat example of what I am talking about is Thucydides. In his work, History of the Peloponnesian War, he explicitly states his intention to provide a factual account of events, free from the influence of the gods or supernatural explanations.

Another example is Polybius, a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. In his Histories, Polybius emphasized the importance of eyewitness accounts and direct evidence, often criticizing other historians for their reliance on myth and divine intervention.

Herodotus, in his work Histories covering the Greco-Persian Wars, often expressed skepticism about the more fantastical elements of the stories he recounted. He did give credence to the myth of the Amazons but recently the origins if this myth have convincingly been traced back to female scythian warriors.

A significant exception to my thesis is the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Unlike some of his contemporaries who avoided supernatural explanations, Josephus often included references to God’s actions, e.g. he interpreted the Roman conquest of Jerusalem as a punishment from God for the sins of the Jewish people.

But then, Josephus claimed that he had a vision from God Himself backing that up...

History is a science among others. It has its own methods but shares the same naturalistic outlook as any science. Most of the historians of antiquity prefaced their writing by denouncing any recourse to supernatural events (like gods interventions in human affairs). They did so precisely because they were not trying to write mythology but a realistic, naturalistic history of events, and they wanted their readers to understand the difference.

As a matter of principle, as it was conceived millenaries ago to be a different discourse than mythology, and as currently practiced by modern historians, history is therefore not in the business of confirming miracles. On the contrary, one of its tasks is to demystify the past.

What does that mean in practice? For instance that no modern historian worth his salt can possibly confirm the myth of Genesis about a worldwide flood, in the face of the material impossibility of the Genesis story. The task of the historian is NOT to confirm impossible past events narrated by mythology, but to understand how such a myth may have come about, what initial catastrophy (some natural and necessarily local flood) could have given rise to the myth, what the myth meant / conveyed in the historical context that believed in it, what it may tell us today, etc.

In the case if the Flood, to demystify the past would be to say that the Genesis story has been traced back to Babylon and Summer; that the place is a flood plain lying between the Tigris and Euphrat, roughly where agriculture started and where the first cities in the world were built, in the -3000s; and finally, that it's easy to imagine a local flood there sometime in the 3rd millenary BCE, killing everyone except a guy who was sailing his boat. And that's how the myth came by.

History is a science among others. It has its own methods but shares the same naturalistic outlook as any science. Therefore one cannot oppose science and history, because history is science.

In fact it's one of the oldest ones. Most of the historians of antiquity prefaced their writing by denouncing any recourse to supernatural events (like gods interventions in human affairs). They did so precisely because they were not trying to write mythology but a realistic, naturalistic history of events, and they wanted their readers to understand the difference.

As a matter of principle, as it was conceived millenaries ago to be a different discourse than mythology, and as currently practiced by modern historians, history is therefore not in the business of confirming miracles. On the contrary, one of its tasks is to demystify the past.

What does that mean in practice? For instance that no modern historian worth his salt can possibly confirm the myth of Genesis about a worldwide flood, in the face of the material impossibility of the Genesis story. The task of the historian is NOT to confirm impossible past events narrated by mythology, but to understand how such a myth may have come about, what initial catastrophy (some natural and necessarily local flood) could have given rise to the myth, what the myth meant / conveyed in the historical context that believed in it, what it may tell us today, etc.

In the case if the Flood, to demystify the past would be to say that the Genesis story has been traced back to Babylon and Summer; that the place is a flood plain lying between the Tigris and Euphrat, roughly where agriculture started and where the first cities in the world were built, in the -3000s; and finally, that it's easy to imagine a local flood there sometime in the 3rd millenary BCE, killing everyone except a guy who was sailing his boat. And that's how the myth came by.