spin

What you are blithely calling obscurantism, is what modern historians are calling being more systematic with sources. It's just you seem to prefer the good old sloppiness of loose history.

We know without too much effort that much of the principal narrative that, say, Tacitus supplies is covered by coins, statuary, inscriptions or other archaeological indications. Tacitus isn't really primary material because he is writing several generations after the period he deals with, but much of his source material proves accurate, so his work is given historical credibility because we can validate much of what he writes. He is still shaping material -- every historian does and Tacitus was himself a historian working apparently with raw materials --, so he will still need to be handled with care. We build a part of the picture of the past working with the raw materials we have and Tacitus, which in turn will allow us to claim more history from other sources because You basically know all this, but you can't permit yourself to face what's necessary, because you don't like the implications. You'd prefer to be able to be slack and that's where denial comes to the rescue.


spin

Roger Pearse

Perhaps you would demonstrate why my description of this as obscurantism was wrong, using reasoned argument?

Instead we find an argument by vague authority: noted and rejected. I don't know that you have any information on what "modern historians" believe. Anonymous posters online claiming the backing of scholars tend to be children who have read one book.

But let us put this to the test. We would all be most interested to see you produce evidence that the consensus of ancient historians is that we "have nothing to do history with" unless, for each literary source, we "know when the texts were written" and don't "know next to nothing about their origins".

Good luck.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

aa5874

But, Tertullian in "On the Flesh of Christ" cleary depicted that there were serious conflicts among Jesus believers whether Jesus had any FLESH.

According to Tertullian, there is no question, no conflict among Jesus believers that Jesus existed and still exists as a God. His Spiritual Nature is undisputed.



Now once it is AGREED that Jesus had a Spiritual nature, there is really no need to proceed any further.

The information about Jesus is not credible, it is virtually impossible that there was a God, a Spiritual being on earth during the days of Tiberius.

Whether this Spritual being had human flesh, flesh of an angel or apparent flesh is moot.

The written information, the evidence, as presented by Tertullian about Jesus is just not true.

Ben C Smith

Perhaps you could explain how you used this process to arrive at your conclusion that Paul hailed from (Tarsus in) Cilicia. Did you use the Acts of the Apostles?

Ben.

Roger Pearse

Well said.

spin

Instances of not following to good procedure are not the basis for changing good procedure. But you can see the sorts of problems we face when dealing with this material. Do you wave procedure or correct the wavering?


spin

spin

Is not this a child who has read no book bleating for being caught out?

The reason for the debates over the last few decades regarding minimalism and the writing of a history of Israel is one of sources. Unverifiable sources don't make make source status. It leads to the question "can we write a history of Israel?", as a line of thought published by N.P. Lemche, and the question reflects a disaffection due to the lack of sources.

Reductionism.



--

I discover due to being interrupted when writing my last response to you that I didn't finish a clarification I was including:

We build a part of the picture of the past working with the raw materials we have and Tacitus, which in turn will allow us to claim more history from other sources because...

The picture I was painting was one of building up an accumulated body of historical knowledge starting with the raw materials of ancient history as a basis to validate sources richly supported by those raw materials. This allows us to validate more sources from the indications found in the already validated sources and so on.


spin

bacht

In this case the textual evidence points to an improbable datum, a god-man in Hellenistic Palestine. Surely such an extraordinary claim requires more evidence than the testimony of believers written decades later?

aa5874

We have enough. He is fiction.

Ben C Smith

We correct the procedure, stick to our best understanding of it as best we can, and continue to hone it until we get it right.

But my observation has been that not following procedure is more often used as an accusation of our intellectual opponents than as a form of self correction.

Ben.