[151] any secular text, to any picture, and it can do it to religious texts. This gives me an occasion to make a differentiation here, not in personal terms but in terms of reality itself. Every historical situation can be interpreted in cultural forms---philosophical, political, educational, humanistic, whatever you want to call it---you can understand it, as for instance I gave you the example of Greek culture, which has been understood differently in all periods. And this is also true of all biblical literature, of all religious literature: you can understand, in this way, the literature of the Old and the New Testament. It is Jewish cultural history, and the cultural history of an early sect whom the emperor, Augustus, called Christiani---you can do that. But there is another dimension, the dimension of ultimacy^a, and THIS dimension can be applied ALSO to ALL [the] past, not only to the religious sources and to the churches and their history, but also to the secular sources and to the nations and their histories. You can try to find what is the ultimate meaning of such a thing as Greek culture, as you can find what is the national meaning of such a thing as Old Testament culture. And if you do so, if you ask the question of the ultimate meaning, you make a theological analysis, you try to find out the religious meaning in its ultimacy. And this is substantially in all culture---you remember my basic statement that religion^b is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion. Therefore all religious texts are ALSO culture (they have cultural form), and all cultural creations are also religious (they explain, indirectly, ultimate meaning, ultimate concern). Now what is historical truth, if you apply the religious dimension, the dimension of ultimate concern? It is not factual truth. In the name of faith, you cannot guarantee facts. Facts are a matter of detached experimentation with documents, and can never be reached beyond a high, and in most cases a low, degree of probability. Faith cannot guarantee explanations. WHY Judas betrayed Jesus is not a matter of faith, but a matter of many different hypotheses, whereby even the fact of the betrayal, what WAS betrayed, is a very difficult problem. This is not