mens_sana

For a time, everyone thought the Epic of Gilgamesh was all myth (fiction). Then someone found out that there really was a Gilgamesh, King of Uruk. At one time, secular scholars thought the Book of Daniel was all fiction until artifactual evidence of a real Belshazzar popped up — that Daniel 11 was just ranting, until a highly accurate account of the military campaigns of Antiochus III & IV was discovered there.

There is some speculation that Herakles was a real person too. (Please don't read more into this than can be seen at its visibly printed level. )

aa5874

This shows your dependence on the anecdotes called the Jesus stories. You MUST cling to them to show that your HJ lived.

You MUST believe that parts of the tales are true. You have no other choice.

You MUST cling to or believe that Mary, or the authors of the Jesus stories gave mis-leading information or lied about the conception or birth of Jesus.

You MUST cling to or believe that Jesus himself, or the authors of the Jesus stories, lied or gave erroneous information about the temptation, the raising of a dead, the transfiguration, the resurrection and ascension.

I have rejected the entire NT as fairy tales or anecdotes but you still Cling to the NT, because you MUST BELIEVE your HJ is in it.

mens_sana

I would have appreciated a reply that actually addressed what I posted. As it is . . .

patcleaver

No. Josephus is not reliable. Josephus commonly exaggerated, embellished, and overstated his writings. Much of what he wrote is self-serving. Antiquities and War are propaganda commissioned by Vespasianus and Titus Flavious and can not be trusted. Josephus works were intended to be believable and difficult to dispute, but otherwise there is no reason to think that either Josephus or Vespasian cared whether it was accurate. Most of what he says seem to be myths and legends and hearsay and things that he was unlikely to know about and that he simply made up.

The things that are the most likely to be correct in Josephus are the things that were well known at the time or that he copied from others, and these are the very things that we are most likely to be able to verify independently from Josephus. We can not presume that anything in Josephus that we can not verify is true.

There are several books that point out how unreliable Josephus is.

Flavius Josephus, Translation and Commentary: By Flavius Josephus, Steve Mason, Louis H. Feldman, Christopher Begg, Paul Spilsbury.

Even modern histories are secondary sources, and historians do not rely on secondary sources. Ancient histories are much less reliable then modern histories.

There is no presumption of validity for documents. All documents are presumed to be unreliable until there is sufficient evidence that they are reliable. Documents are not evidence of anything until they have been proven likely to be reliable.

We don't need a reason to presume a document is unreliable because the proponent of a document has the burden of proving that its reliable. If there is any reason to think that a document might be a fiction or a forgery or a mistake, then it should certainly be presumed to be unreliable.

Similarly, there is no presumption that a part of a document is not an interpolation - all portions of a document are presumed to be interpolations until there is sufficient evidenced to prove that they are unlikely to be interpolations. No part of a document is evidence of anything until you have proved that the part of the document is likely reliable.

We don't need a reason to presume that a part of a document is an interpolation because the proponent of the part of the document has the burden of proving that its not an interpolation. If there is any reason to think that part of a document might be an interpolation then it should certainly be presumed to be an interpolation.

Most ancient documents are forgeries. Most ancient documents are fiction or recorded mythology. Forgery and interpolation of documents was practically universal until the printing press.

History has shown that political and religious fanatics are willing to lie and forge documents for their irrational beliefs. Any document related to religion or politics is very likely to be a forgery, and if not a forgery, then very likely to be heavily interpolated.

Illegal aliens usually have forged documentation. Teenagers often present forged ID's to buy alcohol. Taxpayers regularly forge receipts for tax records. Corporations cook their books whenever they think they can get away with it. About 40% of US currency was counterfeit at the end of the Civil war. Most US tax payers admit that they lie on their tax forms. In the US, about 45 million dollars of US currency is counterfeit, and overseas, about 10% of US currency or 30 billion US dollars are counterfeit. 30% of software sold over the internet is counterfeit. 10% of drugs sold in the world are counterfeit. 20% of trademarked items sold in the world are counterfeits. Experts estimate that at least 90% of signed sports memorabilia are fake. Antiquities shops in the Middle-East are filled with forged manuscripts and fake artifacts. Bible archeologists regularly present forged documents and fake artifacts and make outrageous claims to try to prove that the bible is reliable.

There are many hundreds of ancient non-Christian religious scriptures and almost no Christian believes that any of them are reliable. Carbon dating might prove that the Gospel of Judas was produced around 280, but almost nobody believes that Judas wrote it. Early Christian writing included about 50 gospels and hundreds of epistles and revelations circulating at the beginning the 4th century, that Orthodox Christians claimed were forgeries, and they were not included in the NT. Many of the Epistles in the NT have been shown to be forgeries, and many of the books in the NT have been shown to be heavily interpolated. There is no reason in the world to think that any of the books of the Bible, or any other ancient manuscripts, are genuine or reliable except wishful thinking.

patcleaver

Jesus is a myth unless he magically reserected from the dead.

In a fictional story, the most likely things to be true are things that are well known or that can easily be verified. Things that are not otherwise well known or easily verified are very unlikely to be true.

I think its unlikely, but it would not surprise me much, if it was discovered that there was a little known rabbi named Yeshua in Galilee in the early first century. Jesus would still be a myth. Jesus is a myth unless he magically resurrected from the dead.

It would not surprise me much if I learned that J. K. Rawlins had a nephew named Harry - he would still be a fictional character.

I am really surprised that there wasn't any evidence of an exodus of at least a few hundred slaves from Egypt. Even if the whole Exodus story were fiction, you would expect that easily verifiable facts would be correct. The Egyptians must have laughed there asses off when they read the exodus story, and must of spent centuries pointing out to the poor Israelites that the whole thing was baloney.

The fact that there may have been a Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, does not indicate that the Epic of Gilgamesh is not mythology or that the character of Gilgamesh in the myth is not a mythical character. Even you don't think the magical parts are real. How do you know that the real Gilgamesh was not named after the fictional Gilgamesh of the myth, or that Gilgamesh was not a popular name and it was just a coincidence that a real king of Uruk just happen to have the same name as the mythical Gilgamesh, or some other possibility. Who knows? - who cares?

It does not surprise me at all, that the author of a fictional book of the bible would get the name of the son of the last King of Babylon correct. Daniel was written in the mid 2nd century BCE and Belshazzar was an important figure in the history of Israel from 550. It would be like a US author of a fictional book about the revolutionary war not knowing that George was King of England during the war - it was a well known fact at the time. The thing that surprised me was that the author of the fictional account of Daniel though Belshazzar was the king of Babylon and the son of Nebuchadnezzar, when he was never the king of Babylon and was really the son of Nabonidus who was Nebuchadnezzar's son. Belshazzar king of Babylon son of Nebuchadnezzar is one of the main characters in this historical fantasy, and it was a well known and easily verifiable fact that he never was king and his father was not Nebuchadnezzar - and the author screwed it up. This show just how unreliable the bible really is.

In order for any rational person to believe that Daniel is reliable you have to present evidence that Daniel is substantially reliable. You have to prove that Daniel experienced all the wild and wacky adventures including spending the night in the lions den. Otherwise its just a myth. It would really surprise me if you could prove that anything that was not well known at the time and that could not easily be verified at the time were true. You can not possibly ever prove that the story is substantially true because its fiction.

mens_sana

Aside from Josephus' flaws, is he a historian?
Do you have evidence that those writings were commisioned by the Flavians? Does that mean, if so, that they are worthless as historical documents?
Are you certified as a mind reader, so that we can trust your assessment of his motivation.
Do you know of any ancient historian who consistently eschewed accuracy?
Do you realize that Thucydides made speeches up?
Do you realize how fanatically simple you sound?

patcleaver

I would not have responded if I had read the ignorant statement at the end before I started.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/historian
his·to·ri·an (h-stôr-n, -str-, -str-)
n.
1. A writer, student, or scholar of history.
2. One who writes or compiles a chronological record of events; a chronicler.

You could argue that everyone who writes about history is an historian, or
that only people who are trying to write unbiased true history are historians.
Everyone is biased and we should not presume that Josephus is able to overcome his biases until proven otherwise.
Yes he worked for the Flavians who could have him killed anytime they were dissatisfied with his work.
All documents written in the past are historical documents.
They are valuable at least as a hypotheses of what happened.
There are accurate parts and inaccurate parts and often we can not tell the difference.
Joseph seems to be a propagandist. There are reasons to think that he was not accurate. I have no reason to think that Josephus was intending to write accurate history apart from his motivation to write something that the Flavians approved of, and that met Josephus' goals (whatever they were), and would be believed, and not widely disputed.
All propagandists constantly praise accuracy and the importance of accuracy and claim that their reports are accurate, because that increases the probability that they will be believed. Why don't you research propaganda for examples.
That seems highly likely, some of the speeches are by nations, nations do not make speeches.
This seems to be an ad hominem remark. You can not tell the difference between fantasy and reality and you call me simple.

mens_sana

That is speculation, not proof.

Thucydides explains that he has "put into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments appropriate for the occasion, expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them, while at the same time I endeavored, as nearly as I could, to give the general purport of what was actually said" (History, 1.20.1). This same method of writing history was still being practiced centuries later by Lucian of Samosata (115-200 CE), How To Write History 58: "If some one has to be brought in to give a speech, above all let his language suit his person and his subject ... It is then, however, that you can exercise your rhetoric and show your eloquence."

Do you want to dismiss Josephus as a historian when he was following the historiographic methods of the periode — or do you dismiss him because he writes on subjects that don't "fit" with your anachronistic notion of how history should be written?

patcleaver

I did not say anything against Josephus personally, I am sure that he was a nice guy, and he did what he thought was the right thing, and if he were here, I have no reason to think that Josephus would disagree with anything that I said.

At that time historians were writing what we today would consider historical fiction. However, if you go to apologist websites you will see con-artists making ridiculous claims that everything Josephus wrote was the absolute reliable truth.

mens_sana

They were writing HISTORY — all of them. That you do not understand this — that you insist on imposing contemporary standards on the period — tells me that you are unable to make an objective assessment of their work.

So ridiculous claims are made for Josephus. Why do you appear to flay Josephus because of them? Pile the crap where it really belongs, on the con-artists!