Didymus

Literary criticism is in the domain of esthetics. It seeks to ascertain the quality and value of literary works.

I think you are actually referring to textual criticism, which is a method of inquiry into the history and provenance of ancient texts, with emphasis on origin, authorship and authenticity. Its purpose is not to separate fact from fiction, but to determine which of the extant texts most reliably represents the original work.

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_criticism, you'll find an amazingly thorough survey of the field and its history.

As the Wiki article points out, ancient texts have been modified over the centuries. Textual criticism endeavors to apply an objective, scientific method to the question of originality. It is to literary evidence as geology and carbon dating are to archeology; it is virtually the only objective way we have to ascertain the original content of the competing texts that have been passed down to us from antiquity. Without textual criticism - or, in rare cases, archeological evidence - we would have no choice but to regard every version - "witness" - as equally accurate.

Of course, other standards can be applied if one is trying to pick the "best" variant. Hermeneutics, esthetics, entertainment value and doctrinal orthodoxy are just a few such standards that have been applied to the NT and other works from antiquity, especially by those publishing modern translations. But in most of these situations, there's no attempt at objectivity; they have other fish to fry.

Ddms

aa5874

Do you have a dictionary?

In my dictionary the verb "to claim" means "to assert as true", as a noun, "a claim" means "an assertion".

Now, propositions can be found to be true or false.

The proposition that the earth is flat is false or invalid, or can be confirmed to be false or invalid.

It is FALSE to claim that validity does not apply to proposition.

If you propose anything that is not true or valid then that propostion is false or invalid.

I am actually terribly surprised and disappointed that you did not realise that your propositions may have totally been false or invalid all along.

Doug Shaver

Several. And I know how to use them, too.

OK.

More particularly, any meaningful proposition *is* either true or false. We might or might not be able to correctly find which is the case.

No. It is true or false. An argument intended to demonstrate its falsity will be valid or invalid.

You can say so as often as you wish. That won't make it so.

Incoherent babbling.

Toto

All true, but I would point out that a significant portion of what is referred to as "New Testament scholarship" is closer to literary criticism than text criticism or history. - for example, Vernon Robbins, who invented an approach that he calls "socio-rhetorical." These scholars sometimes admit that they have no hope of extracting any real historical information from their texts, but they still can analyze the texts to understand them better.

neilgodfrey

This argument confuses two different types of knowledge. And it confuses definitions of what it means to be human with the assessments of probability and plausibility that historians work with.

We "would all agree that Alexander died" and that "you were born" not because of written or oral testimony from others, but because of our very concept of "human being". Birds are born, fly and die. Humans are born, talk and die. A "bird" or "human" that did not have a birth or die would not be a bird or a human.

The level of trust I bring to bear on this fact is not the same qualitative type of trust I bring to bear on a written text about how or when or where a person died.

If we discovered tomorrow lost texts that cast doubt on the claim that Alexander died in Babylon it would interest us, and we would like to study the rival claims, and make assessments of them. But if we discovered a text that said a certain bird, the Phoenix, never really ever dies, many of us would find that less interesting because it is clearly myth. The only thing of interest about it is that many people really once believed it was a true fact. That's because part of being human means we are capable of believing falsehoods, but part of being a bird means that it is mortal like all animals. Ditto for the belief that a human can emerge from dust or drop down out the sky without having been born.

We don't even have to discover contrary claims about the place of Alexander's death. It is quite legitimate for historians to study the earliest interests and agendas of claims made about Alexander and even suggest that Babylon was a fitting choice for a whole host of propaganda reasons to have created as a setting for his death. In other words, the place of his death is a reported detail that is subject to debate and normal standards of probability and plausibility.

Historical facts rest on degrees of probability and plausibility. Facts such the mortality of humans rests on possibility according to what we know and understand in scientific and naturalistic terms. We don't all have to earn PhD's in biology to know these facts. We live in a society that has instituted publicly accountable processes for checks and verification of the most basic principles with which researchers work.

One can opt to reject the assumptions of naturalism and the scientific method underpinning these publicly accountable foundations of our public knowledge. Many religionists and new-agers do, and only among such people can one find those who are prepared to give credence to the possibility that some humans come into the world, presumably dropped down from heaven or having been created out of dust, without ever having been born, or who might never die or who might one day return from death.

Neil

aa5874

So what is the difference between a meaningful propostion, a proposition and a meaningless proposition?

You might not be able to correctly find which is the case. But keep babbling.

Doug Shaver

In this context, a proposition is any assertion of ostensible fact. If the proposition can in principle be judged true or false, then it is meaningful. If it cannot even in principle be judged true or false, then it is meaningless.

aa5874

So, you have finally realised that you have just been babbling all along.

Doug Shaver

The lurkers can decide which of us has been babbling.

mountainman

But how shall the opinion of the lurkers be communicated to the lurkers and the respondents? For surely, once a lurker communicates an opinion then he or she is no longer a lurker, and is no longer thus representative of the lurkers. Sometimes it is preferable to reserve opinion, and carefully keep examining the evidence, and its statistical distribution.


best wishes,


Pete