“I am not religious.” I have heard that said so many times. All human beings are religious, even if they are not connected to an organized religion. Everyone has a belief system, a system of faith. We all operate based on certain assumptions that we believe to be true. The same can be said in dealing with historical works. We can assume that the author, based on their credentials, has done their due diligence to research the topic about which they are writing. I grew up in a house with two parents who were both published authors. Both of my uncles, Joel S. Watkins, Jr. and Gary E. Farley, were published authors. Through the St. Charles County Historical Society, I have met many writers. Some of them now have blogs, such as Dorris Keeven-Franke and Cleta Flynn. Louis Launer has written several novels. Blog posts can be about whatever an author is interested in. I have had my share of controversies dealing with history. It is my hope that this post will be the beginning of a series of posts discussing Biblical history. In so doing, we will discover that it is possible for the human imagination to run wild and speculate where facts are sparse, and much is not known. Welcome to a series of posts on ancient history.
The primary source for my belief system is the Bible, as it should be. There are certainly commentators and pastors that helped in providing historical and cultural context to such an ancient book. If we want to know what the Bible says, we need to understand what the Bible meant to the original audience to whom the books of the Bible was addressed. Others choose different starting points for their discussions on Scripture. Cleta Flynn, whom I mentioned earlier, uses Josephus as her starting point and comes to some rather unusual conclusions. Flynn has been interested in Biblical topics from a secular perspective since at least 1979, when she wrote The Parable: A Story of Jesus, son of Joseph (Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Co., 1979). I first met Flynn during her time as Secretary at the St. Charles County Historical Society in 2005. She continued in that capacity for several years. According to her blog, she became interested in the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the 1960s. In 1984, she purchased a copy of The Complete Works of Flavius Josephus, translated by William Whiston in the eighteen century (https://mysearchforpoliticalmary.com/2014/10/16/searching-for-mary-in-all-the-wrong-places-2/). In more recent years, Flynn’s study of Mary’s identity has led to the publication of two books, Searching for Mary Among the daughters of the King (2007), and Searching for a Political Mary Among the daughters of Queen Mariamne (2020). Flynn is simply spinning off attempts to find “the historical Jesus.” That quest, which dates back to the eighteenth century, attempts to demythologize Jesus by treating all miraculous and supernatural aspects of the gospels as community myths that developed over time. What proof is there for such a claim? None but the fertile imagination of authors who go down this path. All this is built on the historical criticism leveled at the Bible from so-called historical scholars who already were predisposed to attack the Bible as an unreliable document that is not truly what it claims to be, that is, the Word of God. Ultimately, this is an attack on the nature and character of God. If what Flynn has written on her blog is true, then God did not keep His promises and those of us who believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord have believed in a lie. ”Let God be true and every human being a liar.” (Romans 3:4)
Historical Projects of Justin Watkins 