The need for an explication of what is meant by ‘fact’ is inevitable, since it is part and parcel of the historical operation. No scholar of religions can or should avoid it. If one confuses the issue of historical imagination with that of fiction, there is no need anymore for notions like ‘history’ or ‘tradition’, indicating a past effecting the present. If the referent is not only represented but even replaced by historiography, historians are presenting fictions in the guise of facts. As a consequence ‘history’ and ‘tradition’ do not belong to the basic critical terms in religious studies. The question is: What are we loosing and what are we gaining by doing so? In answering it I first would like to explain why the distinction is basic to any theory of history. It is obvious for everybody reading or writing history that the representation of past data cannot be easily distinguished from imagination or fiction. Where exactly runs the line between them? That dilemma has fuelled reflections on historiography since the 19th century. The complex and rich debate quickly has turned into the fundamental issue of the validity of any historical knowledge in comparison particularly with natural sciences.
