The Translation of History into Economics

In Economic Origins of Roman Christianity, as in their earlier works, Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., and Robert D. Tollison propose the forcing of history into the once-favored rational-agent template of economics, as an aid to a better understanding. Their terminology of choice amounts to translation, applied in a novel way. In the circle of Ekelund and Tollison, this approach has given rise in recent decades to an active social-scientific sub-specialty. Since, however, in translation much is lost, why resort to it as a tool of science?