Chapter 92 of 404

Concerns for Historical Information

In ways that differed starkly from modern historians, ancient historians were creative with speeches and moralistic adaptations.³ Here, however, we examine the more “conservative” side of ancient historiography: historians did not normally invent “events” in their sources. (Even those that accused others of extensive embellishment rarely accused them of inventing battles, deaths, and so forth.) Rhetorical adaptation (in which some historians like Josephus apparently took great pride) was not novelistic composition from scratch, and events tend to remain among different writers even as interpretations of those events vary. Paul’s letters suggest that the earliest Christians were interested in the apostles and their advance of the gospel.⁴

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