Pugnacious? Moi?
Submitted by Heather on July 10 1999 at 18:38:33
In reply to I can't even pronounce Hero...Herowhatsis! Submitted by Triple Q on July 10 1999 at 16:10:38
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"Okay, does that mean that even Christians don't believe that the incidents in the Bible happened? That would make this whole conversation redundant, wouldn't it? :)" Yes, that's sort of what I've been trying to put through your head. *Ding!* :) Not all Christians, of course, and scholars disagree on which events may have taken place and which ones probably didn't. On one end of the scale, nobody except the fundamentalists are saying that the Garden of Eden existed (though you can get really symbolic and talk about the fall of man in evolutionary terms). On the other end of the scale, biblical scholars quibble over such matters as whether the Gospels were really written by the people they claimed to have been written by, where exactly the writing took place, to what extent the Gospels were based on previous documents and to what extent they were based on oral traditions, and which Gospel writers had read other Gospel writers' writings. And you thought you were tackling a subject that could be resolved in a few posts. :) "Or are you trying to say that because of the fabrication of one single speech that the war itself never happened? *chuckle*" Sorry, dear, your joke falls flat, for the simple reason that there are wars recorded in ancient documents that we're not sure took place. Not in Thucydides, mind you; he was almost as meticulous as modern historians and consequently is boring as heck to read. "And it is quite obviously, even to a layman, that Josephus used the Bible manuscripts to write his history. He parallels the Bible documents practically word for word." Yup, which is why most historians don't think he wrote those bits. Here's how Luke Timothy Johnson – a minimalist who is prepared to accept almost no documentary accounts of Jesus as passing the test of history – dissects the passage; the later Christian additions, to his mind, are in italics. "At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one should call him a man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. He was the Messiah. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wondrous things about him. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out." I'm not into the Jesus Seminar method of cutting out bits of documentation that conform with my views, but these insertions by later Christians are so clumsy that it's clear they couldn't have been written by Josephus. "Any decent historian can tell you that, if you want to prove something happened, you need to compare it to totally unrelated documents...preferrably from totally different cultures." Any decent historian will spend his life studying modern history rather than ancient history, where the criteria you demand for historical authenticity frequently do not exist. To cite an example: One of the most famous figures in the ancient world was Pythagoras. None of his writings survive, and the earliest biography on him was written three centuries after his death. To give you some sense of how conflicting the biographies are, here's a modern historian's summary of the downfall of the Pythagorean school, a major event in the ancient world: "A revolt was led against the Pythagoreans by Cylon in 500 B.C.E. – some say because he was rejected admission into the school – and a period of unrest followed. During the revolt led by Cylon, or during another revolt which followed, various meeting houses were attacked and a good number of Pythagoreans may have perished in the flames. This final attack seems to have been rather successful, and those Pythagoreans that remained alive seem to have migrated to mainland Greece with the exception of Archytas at Tarentum. Unfortunately, the details concerning the attack on the school are sketchy and little more can be said than the above." Similarly, we only have two major biographical sources for Plato, and our major information on Alexander the Great comes from three biographies, the earliest of which was written three centuries after Alexander's death. Therefore, having four documents describing in detail the same events – even when those documents may have been using common sources – is quite unusual for the ancient world. Usually, historians of ancient events are lucky if they can find two sources. Naturally, the only proper solution is for them to become journalists. :) Heather |