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6. Notwithstanding this important logical difference between them, however, both kinds of statements are properly historical because or insofar as they both have to do with, express representations of, actual events of the past, or the actual course of past events.

Wiki Markup7. It is characteristic of religious traditions generally, and certainly of the Christian religious tradition in particular, to include both logically different kinds of historical statements \ -\- or, at any rate, what appear to be such. (By the qualification, I want to take account, also, of what are properly distinguished as "legends," because, although they do indeed _appear_ to be empirical-historical statements, they are not really such after all, but rather a certain way of expressing an existential-historical representation of actual events of the past, or the actual course of past events. Moreover, even statements that are not legendary, but properly empirical-historical, may owe their place in a religious tradition, not to an empirical, but to an underlying existential, interest. This may well be true, for example, even of reports in the earliest stratum of the synoptic tradition that Jesus so spoke of the imminent coming of God's rule and of the Son of Man as to imply an extraordinary claim for the decisive significance of his own person and words \ [Lk 12:8 f.; Mk 8:38\]. Even if such sayings could be shown by empirical-historical evidence and argument to be authentic sayings of Jesus himself, there remains the possibility that the reason they were attributed to him was not empirical-historicat but rather existential-historical.)

8. Also characteristic of at least the Christian religious tradition is that empirical-historical statements are, as a general rule, not so much asserted as assumed, while existential-historical statements are typically asserted, i.e., are statements making or implying a claim to truth.

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