Steve Weiss

Truthfulness can never be assumed; it must be demonstrated. The presumption is that a work is fiction until proved otherwise. In the case of the bible, the stories are beyond demonstration and are, therefore, false.

Steve Weiss

How do you differentiate true from false? And is this an issue for believers?

Steve Weiss

A person who tells a lie is a liar. A person who murders is a murderer. A book which tells falsehoods or deceives by claiming the truthfulness of an event that is patently a myth or nonsensical is decredited.

There is, indeed, a difference between the erroneous or unfactual and a lie. A lie is a falsehood that is presented as if it were true when it is obviously false or impossible. It does not matter how many people testify to a falsehood or strongly believe it to be true. By objective standards statements are either valid or invalid, fact or fiction. It remains for those who assert claims to prove them, and until they do the claims are mere words. Biblical claims are beyond proof, they are just tall tales fit for the consumption of the terminally naive.

Steve Weiss

Those who make truth claims are obligated to prove them if their statements are to be considered. If they fail to do so, their statements are to be ignored and given no cognitive weight. In the case of the bible, not only are the fictions within it unproven, they are unprovable. A bit of honesty goes a long way, and lies do damage credibility. The bible is a whole fabric of lies from Adam and Eve to resurrections and other assorted miracles.

Steve Weiss

You presume incorrectly. There is no reason to presume veracity. Long-held traditions give them no more credibility than newer ones, and probably less as they are less verifiable. A tradition is just a habit and is usually a bad one.

mountainman

I can find no hard evidence against the 'yes' answer
despite searching exhaustively for quite some time.

There are two options:

1) There was an existent little known religious order called
"christianity" which Constantine embraced through love of
religion, philosophy and the "Roman Way".

2) There was no existent "christianity" - it was invented by
a malevolent dictator as another avenue of power, aside
from the avenue of military power and civil power.

spin

That's not very benevloent.

I talked about a corpus of knowledge, not a status quo. Status quo is nothing more than a bunch of opinions. It is the evidence, not the opinion, that matters. The corpus of knowledge is the collected evidence. Remember that everything is up for re-analysis, except status quo. Status quo is the lazy person's guide. I usually couldn't care less about it. The corpus of knowledge lies in the texts, the epigraphy, the coins and other artefacts.

Our problems of course become exacerbated when we come across matters whose central narrative cannot be in any sense corroborated with our corpus of knowledge. My tendency is to leave such things hanging as at this time unconfirmable, a state of limbo, from which they can be called back if more relevant information comes along to confirm or reject them.

Texts are not written in a vacuum. They often belong to certain genres. If a text can be shown to adhere to a genre, then it has context to help us understand it.

Initially it's sufficient to be aware that there are other possible reasons for the presence of known people peripheral to a narrative.

Other purposes may be divined if one can relate the text to a recognizable genre. Again, if one can define authorial predelictions or indications of authorial interests which lie not in the narrative elucidation but in aspects not usually associated with historical presentation, we have fields to investigate.

Until we can demonstrate that miracles have occurred, such materials cannot be considered in the realm of historical analysis. This doesn't mean that one dismisses them as false, but shelves them as not material that can provide in themselves anything we can work with. This means that as conditions change then they can perhaps become useful.

This isn't quite the fodder for history. One has the potential to eke material from any source. We do get something out of the Satyricon, given that we can locate its writing and know what it is dealing with and why, we can get some understanding of the times from it. It still isn't the food for history in its narrative content.

Guess so.

What I intended was to speak with forum members and get an understanding of what there views on history are, what they feel it should be, what they might want to know to get a better understanding of history, etc.

Our only guide is the sturdiest corpus of knowledge of the past that can be cobbled together with chewing gum and string.

I'm not a great one for traditions. They are only as good as the evidence they can muster. I'll eagerly read a secondary source to see what evidence they use. Some such sources I appreciate and look forward to reading because I like the ideas of the writer or their facility with the available evidence. But it always comes down to the evidence. I can appreciate the desire not to reinvent the noodle, but one must be prepared to do so -- with sufficient evidence.


spin

mountainman

Someone erroneously commented that "Historical fiction"
is a modern genre. My logical point was that the text
Historia Augusta is often regarded as historical fiction
and is dated to the same century that the "bible" was
first bound and published.

spin

Let me reiterate my unanswered question:

Could you make some clear logical point, or should we conclude that you haven't got one?

Thanks.


spin

aa5874

Do you alone determine irrelevancy and the boundaries of my data? I do not agree with everyone's position but I certainly do not define them as irrelevant.

My position is that the Jesus the Christ is fictitious, he was brought from heaven to earth by divine intervention. Some brought Jesus the Christ to earth by the fictitious virgin birth, others through baptism, some by the 'phantom' and others as the unbegotten son of Gods alien or superior to the God of the Jews.

In Against Heresies, all versions of Jesus the Christ existed in heaven or some unknouwn place of abode, before he came to earth, i.e he existed as a myth before he became a person.

Even the NT clearly shows that Jesus the Christ was already in existence before he came down from heaven, John 3:13, "And no man hath ascended upto heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven".

The Jesus of the NT was not a historical figure who was deified, but a deity that was sent from heaven to appear historical.