Chili

. . . and that is where reading skills begin and later we agree with it in full but only in the metaphor and without any contradiction. In fact, it is where appearances become reality once the fog has lifted in our own mind .

Steve Weiss

Your point is buried in opacity. If you have a point please express it intelligibly and concisely. Thank you.

Steve Weiss

If there is a point being made here I fail to find it.

steve_bnk

I'd disgree. Historians will always be inescapabley biased. History is not journalistic recounting of facts. It is not myth but historians will interpolate, fill gaps, and connect the dots. Facts are always limited and subject to interpretation.

Steve Weiss

The problem with history, and I used to teach Western History, is that the facts are hard to come by, even in cases of contemporary history. Today, for example, there are secrecy laws based upon alleged national interest that intentionally make the facts unavailable. In the case of ancient history there is very little data that has been preserved, and even eye witness accounts are notoriously suspect then and now. So, just what is a fact is a matter to address before one may claim that one has them.

An additional problem is that history is written differently by authors approaching the data from different philosophical points of view. The conclusions reached about the spread of Western culture and science as interpreted by classical liberals is far different from that done by those who take an environmentalist or anti-colonial stance. Obviously, capitalists and Marxists are unlikely to agree on what moves history and what is to be learned from studying it.

So, it is helpful for an author to clearly state that he is a Roman Catholic and will be taking a theistic approach to Western History (the term itself is subject to debate) and that the Church is beyond reproach for the mega-deaths that it has caused. At least then one can make a conscious choice of whether to spend time reading and analyzing works that proceed from those premises or to rather approach the topic from a less amoral perspective.

sotto voce

Correction. 'Roman Catholic Church'

rizdek

What's wrong with classifying it as religious? It's the foundation for several religions. Maybe eventually all religious works will be classified as a subset of literature...mythology/fables/allegories etc., but for now, many folks use them to ruin their lives, so the religion classification works.

sotto voce

Well, yes, librarians are paid to get things right.

It must be a confused bag of contradictions, then!

Or maybe it's that it supports one religion, that tells people what they don't want to know; so they devise 30 000 ways of pretending to follow it. Does that make sense?

It's pretty well what the Bible predicts, anyway.

tanya

Let's have a look at one "historian's" view, a guy who satisfied Steve Weiss' suggestion that the historian identify his own prejudices at the outset:

Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews.

Here's an excerpt from one of the three passages in this particular book, where he describes Hercules:

Note that this description is unqualified, presenting Heracles as if he had been a genuine living human being.

Then we have two choices: we can regard this "historical" work of Josephus as fictional, in whole, or in part.

Either way, we are obliged, absent evidence of forgery, to accept this writing, in context, representing the author's acceptance of the existence of Hercules, a man born of the union of an ordinary female, and a supernatural, omnipotent god: Zeus. We are also then, able, to understand, from this illustration, that the "history" propounded by Josephus, consists of unqualified, unverifiable anecdotes, rumors, and superstitions.

The reader of Josephus' text is unable to ascertain, from the written words, which events actually occurred, and which are fables, hyperbole, or simple fiction. The bible as novel--as fiction, seems most reasonable, based upon the sort of supporting documents available to us, such as this book by Josephus.

sotto voce

Who will admit to all his/her prejudices? Who even knows all his/her prejudices? We often don't know our prejudices until we are put in a tight spot.

Just as we can accept a report in a newspaper as fact, or as fiction. Just as we can accept witness in a trial as fact, or as fiction. We exercise discrimination in all our experiences, using our own judgment, our own past experiences. Many regard the Bible as reporting real events, and they have done so for over two thousand years. It may need a lot of argument to overturn that perception.

The novel is not synonymous with fiction. The Bible may be 100% fictional, along with ancient documents of the First Punic War and thousands of other manuscripts that are accorded historical status. There is no argument about that. The argument is about the pejorative (and inexpertly anachronistic) use of the word 'novel'. This, I suspect, is due to a recent comparison in this forum of the Qur'an with the value of the novels of Barbara Taylor Bradford. The Qur'an was not then described as a novel.

The suggestion here is that the Bible should be classified as a novel, therefore as complete fiction and intended as fiction. It is not taken by anyone as overt fiction. If it is fiction, it must be proved to be fiction. And there is yet to be seen in this thread, 60 posts on, a syllable to establish that.