Clivedurdle

As this is obviously history

Amaleq13

I guess you'll never know until you actually read them.

Meanwhile, you'll remain willfully ignorant of the context necessary to render an informed conclusion on the subject.

It was a simple question but your response here indicates the answer is that you are still offering nothing but more uninformed personal speculation.

It is irrelevant to the OP and irrelevant to our discussion.

It is nothing but an attempted distraction from your refusal to read the relevant data so that you might offer an informed opinion related to the OP.

I will leave you to clenching your eyes shut and plugging your ears so that you can continue to pretend you know how ancient authors wrote.
Easier than actually using your brain, I guess. :wave:

Solo

It's obviously Heilsgeschichte.

Jiri

Clivedurdle

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...#ref=ref368325

This is not history as we understand it now!

(And maybe this is an example that EB should allow wiki type editing - this is a very personal essay!)

rlogan

Hi Amaleq13

I don't see anybody doing that. Every discussion we have on every other matter is brought to bear on a specific subject at hand.

Likewise I doubt your position on historicity is based strictly on the logic that "some documents thought of universally as historic have elements of myth in them...the bible has myth in it...therefore the bible is historic"


It is tedious of course to bring to the table every position we have on every issue.


And as a matter of fact I do see an enormous difference between Josephus' two works that I am familiar with and the bible. My lord there is no comparison at all. And they are used exactly as you would expect them to be, and as they are intended. One is read as a liturgical device in religious ceremonies and the other as history.

If someone has a tract for me to read that is generally considered history, but is chock full of biblical-style miracles and the like, I would be more than happy to look at it as a serious matter.

I don't mean one lonely passage. I mean something actually biblical in size and scope of the tales.

We'd have already seen it here posted as an example though, so I really do not expect one.

But am open-minded to it.

Cheers!

aa5874

And further, historical figures are not confirmed through fiction.

There may be fictional elements in every biography of real persons, ever since biographies were written, but the fictional elements cannot be used to secure or cause an assumption of historicity.

Now if it is found that virtually all information about a character is fictional and implausible then it can be reasonable assumed the character is fictional until further information is found to contradict the reasoned assumption. It was for this very reason that Achilles can be reasonably assumed to be fictional or mythical. There is virtually nothing about Achilles that is considered true.

dog-on

Ok. Please point out one example. I'll take a look...

rlogan

Someone brought up Joseph Smith a while back and I thought it was done in such a way as to minimize the strategic play he made.

Smith took very conscious advantage of contemporary events and ideas. He had since youth been making up stories about the ancient indians, and it was an important question of the time: how did they get here? The idea of a lost tribe of Israel was not Smith's. It had been published contemporaneously and had gotten considerable traction. Smith had practiced his ideas for many years, seeing what worked with people and what didn't.

Smith was a con man by profession. It was how he made his living, with two court convictions for exactly that: using "seer" stones and visions to fleece people with promises of locating buried treasure & etc.

When the age of revivalism stormed into his region, Smith saw what a powerful effect it had upon people. He observed religious creeds were competing with one another and how it didn't matter whether it was methodist or baptist or whatever: everyone coming to a tent city got infected with the fever. There was an engine of faith he could harness and what he needed was to weave enough answers to contemporary questions into it that it would strike a chord of relevance into potential dupes.

One of the persistent themes in these revivals was that the children of God had "lost their way". Sheesh what an ancient play on dupes! People were literally asking for it.

So there was Smith's field to exploit. People predisposed to revivalist fever. Preying on the almost innate idea we have been misled and only await the messenger to set us straight. It answers how the Indians got here, along with numerous other social questions at the time, something not very well known about what Smith did.

He also had two runs on the writing he had done. The first was stolen and destroyed. It allowed him to remove objectionable elements and enhance those that worked well.

Yet, despite being so laughably amateurish, people of faith will buy anything. God speaks to Joseph in King James verbage.

We just have to admit something about basic human nature. Despite now having a record of Smith's 90 or so concubines, repleat with notes he wrote to fathers instructing them to bring their daughters down to the corn field for a little shagging action -

people are not only willing, but committed to ignoring plain facts on the desperate faith of an afterlife. Willing to excuse their icon for just about anything.


There are some important clues indicating that Smith made his play almost by accident, but decided to run with it because it was going so well. He had come home with a sack that the family was curious about. He snowed them with a story that ultimately became the whole Moroni B.S. with the golden tablets & etc.

He passed on to a friend at the time his family had actually believed the absurd story that he told, so he was going to see how far he could run with it.

What does an unemployed con-man do when he starts with what is more or less a joke and before long neighbors are worshipping at his feet?

He can have their money, their daughters, and men will form an army to march with him wherever he goes if he plays things right. So he did.

The upshot is that Smith did a hell of a lot more than just relate visions he had to other people. He was a professional con man that practiced and perfected a set of skills he used to exploit a basic weakness in human nature. He was interested in money, sex, and power - and he got all of them through religious fraud. (Heh, as if there were any other kind!)

Hubbard, the founder of scientology did the same thing. Science fiction writer that even stated beforehand what he would do. To accululate wealth and power.

Jim Jones had an elaborate system of fraud he used to dupe people into believing in healing and etc. - at the root of it was Money, power, and sex.


I don't think these tracts are any exception at all. Just another example of the rule. People came up with these tracts to further their own ends of money, power, and sex. Marcion battled with his opposition, both of which fabricated their own pedigrees.

I don't mean to say this is exclusive, but to view biblical literature without attention to such motivations is just really naiive. Even if it starts as a play that was commandeered, the result we have before us in terms of canon are the political result of a power struggle.




I enjoyed the discussions about clues provided to see Jesus as a con man. Pretty cute. Ironic.

Amaleq13

Howdy my 907 brother!

Have you read this thread?

It looks to me as though that is precisely what dog-on is doing.

It is certainly how I have been responding to his position and he's never mentioned that it wasn't what he really thought. Instead, he has continued to defend it. :huh:

It could very well be that the entire story is fiction but jumping to that conclusion from the fact that some portions are quite clearly fiction or borrowed is logically flawed as well as reflecting ignorance of the practices of other ancient authors (despite being given specific references).

Amaleq13

If you haven't bothered to check them yet, I have no reason to think you'll do so now. I'm still not interested in doing your homework for you. Reread this thread, A matter of methodology: Ancient biography and fiction., and The historicity of Apollonius of Tyana. and, this time, pay attention to the specific references given. Or beg Ben to give you the references again. I don't care. Just stop making this horrible argument.

:wave: