Keith&Co.

That would be a poor argument.
On the other hand, i never made it. I was arguing that corroboration is better history than noncorroborated reporting, but never said rejected entirely without it.
Please RTFP before RSVPing.


Please, aside from answering the statements you read into my posts:

What are the standards for evaluating historical documents, Roger?

gstafleu

There seems to be wide agreement that the documents from within the Christian mythology (call them the "NT" if you wish) contain a large amount of what I have called, in another thread, "Faith Based Inventiveness" (FBI for short). Nobody on this forum (with, I suppose, the possible exception of some passing fundies) seems to dispute this. Given the acknowledged presence of FBI, the question then becomes: how can we distinguish the FBI passages from the "real" ones.

Because FBI appears to be such a powerful content generation tool, it seems difficult to come up with a criterion of distinction, other than "something referenced inside the mythology is also referenced outside it." That "something" can be anything: The fact that a bunch of people "saw" Jesus after his death, the fact that Jesus walked on water, the very existence of a historical Jesus,... you name it. The problem of course is that there seems to be very little outside-the-mythology reference to inside-the-mythology items (external references, BTW, don't have to be documents: a coin with a picture of Augustus and inscribed with his name, an inscription on a wall, remnants of a battle--these all will do (these are of course general examples, not Christianity-oriented ones)).

Please notice that this situation is different from stating that you don't accept the historical accuracy of any ancient document without a satisfyingly large number of external references. The difference lies in the fact that we have good reason to believe that FBI is quite active in the generation process of religious documents, but less so in non-religious ones. Not that FBI is totally inactive in non-religious documents, but apparently it is significantly less active there. Hence the greater requirement for outside confirmation when it comes to religious documents.

Gerard Stafleu

Roger Pearse

Nothing in this seems to need further comment from me.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

I dispute this, but then I am a fundamentalist.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

gstafleu

You are now . So, do I take it then, that you think that the majority of what we find in the NT, be it people seeing (whatever that may mean) Jesus after his death, Jesus walking on water, raising the dead, what have you, that the majority of these "acts" do indeed represent historical events, that is events that really happened in a fashion that is reasonably similar to the way they are described?

Gerard Stafleu

Keith&Co.

You make a strawman attack on my post, then refer to my response as an evasion. How christain of you.
Can i take it, then, that you cannot show where i said to reject any uncorroborated document on that issue alone?
Can i take it, also, that you are unwilling or unable to provide the actual criteria for evaluating ancient documents as historically accurate?
Or are such evasions part of the 'all the best' you wish upon us?

Roger Pearse

[deleted]

Roger Pearse

Surely. Is there any particular reason why they should not?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Toto

Locking this for review

Toto

OK, I will reopen this, but please keep the personal comments in check.