Roger Pearse

It is perfectly possible to maintain in theory that every document is or may be a lie. But of course no-one can live like this. So in fact if we profess this, we end up accepting documents which we would reject on these grounds in a moment if they were inconvenient. At this point any idea of scholarship has been abandoned in favour of convenience.

I don't see that this is something we need to refute here. The universities are full of people who will be willing to discuss this issue.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

gstafleu

I thought a quote from God Is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens might be useful here (p143-144):
This is of course the well-known "newspaper story effect," which I'm sure many will recognize from first hand experience. While this does not mean we therefore automatically discard any (ancient) document as good for nothing but kindling, it is still wise to keep it in mind. Certainly in case of the bible, which has suffered from quite a few "sub-editors."

Gerard Stafleu

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Roger Pearse: Why do you believe that God inspired the Bible writers to write the Bible? In other words, what you you believe that God wants to accomplish with the Bible?

It is my position that it would be quite odd for a loving, rational God to use written records as a primary means of communicating with humans. If you have children, would you have considered raising them with written records and never showing up in person to be with them?

Would you like to make a case for Christianity in a new thread using only the Bible and no extra-Biblical sources? How much do you depend upon extra-Biblical sources?

Minimalist

I strongly disagree, sir. People base their lives (and deaths) on lies all the time. For someone who wishes to critically use historical documents it is very necessary to attempt to ascertain the particular bias of the writer and push back against it. This is even more true when it comes to religious documents. For example, there is a lot of back and forth on this board about "what did "Paul" mean when he said x" or "why did "Paul" use this word instead of that one?"

Excuse me, but Paul is a man who admits he had visions. Today, a person like that would be locked up for 72 hours for evaluation. For all we know, everytime "Paul" opened his mouth to speak he was chased out of town under a barrage of rotten vegetables.

There is a problem with ancient history and even archaeology. Both tend to overvalue what they have found simply because they have found it. There is no solution to that problem but it is something to keep in mind when evaluating a document or an artifact. Archaeologists love finding ancient garbage middens....but they are still digging through someone else's garbage.

Sauron

1. Which imposes absolutely no obligation upon me. If you spout nonsense, then I'm going to point it out and dissect it for the audience. If you put me on ignore and thereby make a choice to not defend your position, I'm under no obligation to ignore your comment. I'm going to address your unsupported claims, and whatever loss to your reputation results is your own problem. As for me, all I can say is that I wish I had *more* opponents who didn't fight back - it makes my job much easier.

2. Lest anyone think the issue is with me personally -- the objections I'm raising to Roger's claims are the same objections raised by other individuals posting here. Yet Roger fails to address those objections, pretty much regardless of *who* raises them. So the issue isn't me; it's Roger and his unwillingness to defend his peculiar claims.

Yes, it is. But apparently you didn't actually see what Herodotus said, Roger.

1.Herodotus does claim to have *personally* seen the bones of such creatures:

On my arrival I saw the back-bones and ribs of serpents in such numbers as it is impossible to describe: of the ribs there were a multitude of heaps, some great, some small, some middle-sized. The place where the bones lie is at the entrance of a narrow gorge between steep mountains, which there open upon a spacious plain communicating with the great plain of Egypt.

2. Roger also fails to realize -- or intentionally dodges -- the greater point here which afflicts all such ancient manuscripts. To repeat:

the fact that Herodotus was reporting what others told him uncritically puts him square in the middle of the usual practice of antiquity. The question of whether we accept his testimony without questioning it -- or the testimony of whomever Herodotus interviewed -- still stands. And of course, it has parallel implications for similar claims in the bible (i.e., I don't think even bible literalists believe that Moses was around to see the advanced lifespan of Methuselah);


When someone is so enamored of ancient manuscripts as Roger is, it's hardly surprising that are reluctant to admit this problem. Their blind spot undermines their objectivity.
One usually has to *read* the references before worrying about verifying them, Roger.

Sauron

False dichotomy again, Roger. The choices are not:

1. every document is a lie; or
2. we have to accept the documents at face value

There is a whole spectrum of choices between these two extremes. Moreover, you ignore -- deliberately -- the fact that we can easily rank the claims of ancient documents on a gradient of reliability. We do this based upon how well they comport with science, archaeology, biology, etc. In fact, a cross-disciplinary approach is the only solid way to conduct history.

But alas, that requires an investment of time, self-education, and hours of investigation. But suppose a person comes from a religious background that emphasizes the infallibilty of ancient texts. If they have grafted that same suspension of disbelief onto the study of manuscripts, it's unlikely that they would feel the need to look beyond manuscripts. In fact, such a person might inflate the historical value of manuscripts to the point where they trusted them implicitly, and ignored contradictory or missing evidence from other disciplines.

Sound familiar to you, Roger?

Nonsense, as demonstrated above.

Johnny Skeptic

Will Christians please state what they believe God's purpose was in inspiring the writing of the Bible?

Nor is anyone trying to. Nor is anyone trying to maintain in theory that EVERY document is or may be TRUE, since we already know for a fact that every document is not true. This thread is about the usefulness of ancient records. I started this thread with the intention of showing that no rational God would ever depend to any great extent upon written records because of the great harm that it would cause, at least the way that the Bible was written. Even Christians themselves have killed each other over disputes regarding interpreting the Bible.

Minimalist

Johnny, archaeologists can learn more from a simple account list of goods in a warehouse than they can from philosophical treatises. Using such lists they can trace trade routes and patterns. They can determine what was and what was not produced in a given area and when. These are "records" like last month's invoices. Useful for the month in question but gradually becoming more and more unimportant as time marches on. For the archaeologist they provide a snapshot of what was happening in a given culture without any mumbo-jumbo about gods or the king's ego or who is or is not kissing his ass.

There is a very famous trove of letters found at Amarna in Egypt. Written during the 18th Dynasty they reflect common diplomatic correspondence between Canaanite vassals and Egyptian overlords. They tell us a lot about Canaan in the 15th century BC.

And they don't make any mention of "Israel", either.

(Sorry, had to get that shot in there!)

andrewcriddle

Herodotus presumably did see a large number of bones.

His interpretation that these bones were the remains of flying serpents is presumably based on what other people told him.

Herodotus is (here and in other places) clearly gullible but there seems little reason to regard him as dishonest.

Andrew Criddle

Sauron

Right. I never said Herodotus was dishonest. But what we have here is an ancient text with a clearly nonsense claim. Out of that reality, two immediate truths emerge - and both truths have implications for anyone trying to prop up the value of ancient texts as the sina qua non standard:

1. We can safely say that taking ancient manuscripts at face value is not a scholarly way to conduct historical research;

2. We can feel perfectly justified in rejecting fantastic or extraordinary claims in ancient manuscripts, based upon what we know from other lines of evidence.

Roger seems to have problems with both #1 and #2.