Bart D. Ehrman; Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend
"The apocalyptic dualism that proclaimed a dividing line between the current evil age and the future utopiam age mutated into a non-apocalyptic dualism between this evil world and the world of God. In other words, a horizontal dualism that was sketched in time - this age and the age to come - was transformed into a vertical dualism sketched in space: this world and the world above."
"There are very few people in the world (Preterism) who are interested in the past simply because they want to know what happened, who are intrigued (and obsessed, aka horizontal dualism) with history because (in theory at least) it's just there. There is always a question, of course, if history is actually "there" at all. Where exactly is it? And if it isn't anywhere, then how do we know it was ever there?"
