History, historiography and Christian origins

The study of Christian origins should in no way differ from the study of an ything past and, yet, historical studies of Christianity continue to "privi lege" the data with imagined origins. In contrast to such imaginative ficti ons, critical historiography is based on human events presumed actually to have occurred. The productions of and, consequently, the explanations for s uch data instantiate both the material and the mental environments of human beings. Whereas the common constraints of biology are clear and those of c ognition are increasingly so (although both are traditionally discounted in accounts of Christian beginnings), historically valid theories of socio-cu ltural contingencies remain contested, as does the relationship between the se three domains. Since the earliest historical evidence for "Christian" gr oups is socio-cultural, i.e., textual, might these texts be better understo od historically as themselves positive data for a plurality of Christian so cial formations rather than as historiographical documents containing posit ivistic data about Christian origins? In this way, it is possible to access real activities of real human beings in the past in their actual relations hips.