Originally Posted by patcleaver

A word/statement/communication means what the author thinks he means when he says it.

Originally Posted by spin

Given your ridiculous definition of fiction, you could proclaim almost anything you liked was fiction, so I don't think you really need to try to argue anything.

"[N]on-fiction" is not a genre, just as "non-detective" is not. In fact, fiction isn't a genre either.

With regard to Lewis we have both his own comments, comparable works and the content of his efforts to have some idea of his intent.


Rubbish. It is possible at times to derive intent from the literature itself, especially when you know what genres were available to the writer. Writers don't write in a vacuum, but reflect their times.


You've read too much fantasy.


How do you tell what is and what is not fiction in the period when you don't know the standards or contexts for the works you are analyzing? How do you know Tacitus was not writing fiction? Is there not material which you'd consider not veracious in his works? Was Tacitus able to retrieve the words of all the speeches that he wrote into the mouths of his subjects?

Declaring things to be fiction doesn't make them so.


Doh! as a criterion. The literature claims that supernatural beings are real. In fact people of the time tended to believe that they were real. You are unjustifiably projecting modern sensibilities onto ancient people.


How do you know?


Name one word in the Hittite language. You can't? It must have been a fiction. Please use a bit of logic.


Have you checked them all out? Obviously not. You are not able to do so. Another logical problem you won't face is that you assume uniformity for what you haven't experienced. Hamlet says, "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt about in your philosophy."


Many of these have been used in historical texts. Some of the great historians of the past were extremely rhetorical.


Sorry, but this is utter rubbish.


You may be right (though certainly not with Enoch).


You may be right again. Or at least the Jesus Seminar. But it's irrelevant. If a person's life has been embellished it doesn't mean that the person didn't exist. (And remember here, I don't say Jesus existed. I'm complaining about the simplistic nature of your methods of analysis.)


This says nothing to me. Perhaps you needed to explain a little more what you had in mind regarding Honi. At the moment I recall only basically what Josephus says.


Midrash is not necessarily on a scale of fiction. As I said, it is a manner of explanation... through illustration. What it deals with can be fiction or not.


I constructed a simple chiasmus for you with regard to Columbus. Does it make Columbus any less historical??


Again, you are manipulating ordinary language:

1 An act or instance of lying; an intentional false statement; an untruth. OE.
b Something that deceives; an imposture. M16.
2 A charge of falsehood. obs. exc. in give the lie to below. L16.
3 An anecdote, a tale, a tall story. Orig. & chiefly Black English. M20. - NSOED

The first two indicate intent. The third is not standard.


This didn't follow from what it ostensibly comments on.


If Boadicea was a doll, then yes it probably was fiction, but I'm happy to see that you'll stop and make a bit of room in your theory for a bit of other input.


For most people this still won't work. Is Robin Hood fictional? I don't mean the TV or film character, but the figure referenced in records from Plantaginet era England. You cannot verify the truth of Robin Hood, so is the figure fiction? For most people, Robin Hood is in the too hard to handle category because there just isn't enough information. It is only you with your weird view of fiction that can meaninglessly decide.


One doesn't even have to assert fact, you fail through lack of information.


There are quite a lot of assertions that still may be true, though unverified. If someone asserts that Origen had a brother, do you say that is fiction because you lack a means to verify it?


No. Verification makes a claim definite, be it positive or negative.


Except your idiosyncratic view of fiction.


As I said, fiction is not a genre. Mystery is a genre of fiction. If a person knows the word "genre", they will have no difficulty understanding my last assertion.

Genre regarding the gospels must be brought up. We see simplistic views stated on the issue of what the gospels are from both believers and non-believers. If you don't know why an author wrote texts, you have more difficulty interpreting them. If the writers were working from what they considered to be veracious sources, thy may have been attempting to present the information to the best of their abilities. They might have been writing fluent garbage in doing so. Try reading Lucian of Samosata's "How (Not) to Write History" to understand some of the ancient problems in presenting history.


I'm glad you don't assume your conclusions.

I guess you aren't interested in what the writers were doing because you already know that what they were doing is irrelevant. It's all fiction according to you wide-sweeping definition. Net that are too wide usually catch too much.

People in the real world will know that my position is not one of belief, they will know that I don't support a HJ or a MJ approach. They'll know that I whinge about good methodology, which doesn't allow you to go beyond the evidence. That means that I allow myself fewer conclusions than the committed person. But then, most things that I accept are usually fairly hard to argue against logically.


spin

Originally Posted by patcleaver

[Fiction is anything that is false or presented as truth that cannot be objectively verified to be true.

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

So you imagine Peter and James were not thinking about the debate before offering their responses?

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

Rejecting your interpretation of the offered compromise as indication of prior conflict as unfounded certainly does not constitute glossing over or ignoring it. James offers a compromise so that must mean he was in prior conflict with the Pharisees as well!!

Since I have only pointed out a single error on your part, your "agreement" rings quite hollow though I do appreciate the frustration that is showing. You have yet to indicate that you truly do understand that, contrary to your claim, Acts does not depict Paul in conflict with James or Peter. Instead, you dodge and duck and play games. Boring.

Originally Posted by patcleaver

Words don't have exact meanings. Dictionaries disagree. Some words mean different things in Pittsburgh and New York. Some words mean different things in 1950 then they did in 1970.

Lexographers collect examples of how a word is used and analyze the examples to determine a few abstract (approximate) definitions for the word. Its not magic - its just the lexographers best guess (opinion) about how a word is generally used. Words can have dozens of subtly different uses so a few definitions in a dictionary are at best, approximations.

A word/statement/communication means what the author thinks he means when he says it.

Lie and mistake are synonyms, but like almost all synonyms their most likely meanings are slightly different.

In response to some author's false statement, If I say they are mistaken, then that probably infers that I think its just an error and that they are not being irresponsible (e.g. "Atlanta is east of Pittsburgh" is just a mistake).

In response to some author's false statement, If I say it is a lie, then that probably infers that I think its original source is dishonest and that the author may or may not be morally responsible (e.g. "Hitler was an atheist" is a lie from some apologist web site).

Saying that something that someone says is a lie is not the same thing as saying that someone is a liar. However, it does raise the issue.

In fact, people often respond to statements, that they know are false, by saying that they are lies instead of calling the author a liar, just because they are not sure whether the author is being deceitful or not.

I don't think that someone is a liar unless they are in some way morally responsible for the falseness of what they are saying.

If someone is a liar and you call them a liar, then they are likely to be highly offended, but you should offend them anyway, unless its too dangerous to do so e.g. your wife or mother-in-law.

Originally Posted by patcleaver

[Fiction is anything that is false or presented as truth that cannot be objectively verified to be true.

Originally Posted by Gamera

This is of course circular since history is textual. The categories of "true" and "false" are dubious when applied to history, which are always narratives and always constructed, not mere mirror images of some preexisting truth in history. Texts make history, through narrative.

Originally Posted by DevilsAdvocate

A false statement is not necessarily a lie, is it?

Does not lie imply the intent to deceive. Lies can be filled with true statements, but structured to deceive.

Originally Posted by DevilsAdvocate

No. I expect they were at least contemplating.

Originally Posted by Gamera

This is hopelessly naive.

Originally Posted by Gamera

"Intent" of an "author" are both constructs of the reader, as Foucault has shown, or rather result from a relationship between reader and text. See "What is an Author?"

Authors are constructed by readers and don't exist in reality -- they aren't the guys who wrote the text, since that whole process has passed into history. Text create authors, not vice versa.

Accordingly, the author's intent is a construct of the reader, and has nothing to do with some putative process of some person's mind. Intent is an artifact of discourse, not something we have access to directly.

Originally Posted by DevilsAdvocate

You have the most fascinating positions. I would truly like to see the justification or a source for it.