Gamera

I don't know, rob, this seems like a subtle point not easy to verify from the texts themselves. It's clear that Luke has a religious agenda or he wouldn't have written the gospels (he admits that right up front so it's not a hidden agenda). But I'm just having trouble with your conclusion that that leads to falsified history, while the political agendas of a Herodotus or Suetonius or Tacitus leads to "real" history.

Yes, Luke is a theologian referencing history, and Tacitus is an aristocratic politically connected official referencing history, and Thucydites was an Athenian partisan referencing history, and Josephus was a Jewish partisan under house arrest and writing to save his life, and so on.

I'm sorry; I just don't see the difference. If anything, a religiously driven writer like Luke is perhaps less likely to engage in blantant propaganda since whatever his biases, they don't seem to be political. He doesn't seem to have a motive to traduce one emperor over another or one petty Roman official over some Greek petty official, because he's a universalist and finds all worldly power distiguishable from "spiritual" power. Seems to me political biases are the most corrupting, since they involve raw power.

Steve Weiss

It is a truism that the farther back into time one looks the greater the possibility or even probability that the reported history departs from the facts. In fact, we often don't know what the facts are. Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone in assassinating JFK? Was Marilyn Monroe murdered? How accurate were Vietnam War body counts of enemy dead? Was there actually an attack on an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin that was the basis for the U.S. escalation of the war? LBJ was very unsure of the event itself and acted for political reasons. These are examples of recent history that are of questionable accuracy.

When it comes to the bible (of which there are numerous versions even today) it is properly classified as fiction. The authors are unknown, and the events related are beyond reality. No amount of first-hand, eye-witness testimony could verify the stories related in either the OT or the NT, so there is no point using terms that apply to real events to those concocted out of whole cloth in the bible. The bible is neither true nor false. It is arbitrary and fanciful fiction aimed at a gullible audience for which the truth is not an issue.

Koyaanisqatsi

If by that you mean we can and should automatically excise any referrencing of divine intervention as if an actual, real life phenomenon from all classical histories, I agree. So, if, for example, Seutonius stated something along the lines of "And then the Lord God spoke to this man and he...." it should be removed or discarded. Iff Seutonis stated something along the lines of "And this man claimed that a god spoke to him and as a result of this he" then you've got "legitimate" (if irrelevant) color commentary on an historical event.

As rob117 correctly pointed out, using historical events such as a crucifixion to create a passion mythology, however, is not the same as reporting that a certain individual was crucified because he was "an enemy of the glorious Roman Empire."

That's the bias that leads one to either use the phrase "terrorist" or "freedom fighter" and that's not at all what we're talking about with the NT.

The NT is a Stephen King novel. Just like King, the NT uses actual, real world places and groups of people (if not necessarily actual people) to tell particular mythologies; the difference being, of course, that King uses those familiar things to "ground" his stories, whereas the NT authors used those familiar things to evidence their veracity; i.e., "This is true because it happened here and to these people..." or the like.

That is snake oil salesmanship; not history.

:huh:

It's not a "double" standard; it's the same standard properly applied. If you have an historian with a known or discernable political bias, then you can fairly easily excise/gauge such bias. When you have fiction writers using history as a means to trick people into thinking their fiction is actually non-fiction, then you can also fairly easily excise/gauge such "bias," but you should just throw it out entirely as fiction. Why wouldn't you?

For the passion narrative, for example, that would mean that all we would have left is, at best a seditionist local leader of a radical, fanatical "movement" (most likely an insurrectionist movement) was crucified by the Romans, though at least two of his followers inexplicably blamed their own people ("the Jews") for his death.

And that's pretty much it.

True and irrelevant, since the NT authors were only "historians" in the way that Stephen King can be considered an "historian."

Just because you call the authors of the NT myths "historians" based on the fact that they have concocted their myths around historical places and people, this does not make them "historians" in the classic sense.

I believe the phrase is, "You can put a silk hat on a pig, but it's still a pig."

Since a "religious one" cannot be based in fact and has historically resulted in people either deliberately lying and rationalizing those lies so long as they serve what they consider a "higher calling" (i.e., Paul), or, worse, believing they've "received" information from a mythical creature in a "vision" or a dream and then present that information as the unquestionable truth, I would say you're dead wrong.

IOW, to say someone has a "religious agenda" is to say their writings are all but worthless; historically speaking, or not.

Koyaanisqatsi

Well stated.

spin

Sue + Toni = us

Gamera

Explain to us why a political agenda of Tacitus or Thucydites doesn't result in a false history but a religious agenda of Luke does.

Be specifiic and provide support, rather than assume your conclusion

Otherwise, you're just ranting.

Gamera

Well, it's a narrative, like all historiography. Hence it follows the rule of narratives not the rules of empirical experience. See Hayden White's work on the narrative nature of historiography.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_White


In this the bible isn't any more fictive than Herodotus, who also tells a narrative and has his own agenda to make.


To confuse a narrative text about an event with experience an event suggests a great deal of epistomological naivety.

Steve Weiss

A narrative is a story, and narratives are either factual and tell us about actual events and people, or they are fictional and do not purport to tell the truth about events and people. In the case of religious documents we are dealing with blatant propaganda and deception designed to manipulate people into accepting that which rational minds would reject out of hand. The relating of hearsay in the format of historical fiction is at best misleading, but if done knowingly with a hidden political agenda in mind it is genuine deceit. The fact that this is done in the name of a would-be sacred god for allegedly moral "reasons" compounds the perfidy and perversion. File the bible under fiction and detestable, immoral fiction at that.

Gamera

Steve, Herodotus's works are narratives. Thucydides' works are narratives. Tacitus works are narratives.

And they are all blatant propaganda with a political point to make. Are you really that naive that you think Tacitus is an aloof scholar researching the truth. No serious historian agrees with you. All these "historians" have been deconstructed.

You're arguing against yourself. You just want to privilege the propaganda you like over the propaganda you don't like. That's hardly a sound basis for arging against the historicity of the events in the Christian scriptures.

rob117

That might be too far; we can still try and deconstruct the gospels to get some of the bare probable historical events around which the mythology developed- as you said, local cult leader gets crucified for pissing off the authorities. What makes the gospels not works of history is not their lack of accuracy, it is their intent. If I were to write a biography of David Koresh with the intent of convincing you of his divinity, that would not make it a work of history, even if I was an eyewitness to many of the events- it would be a work of advocacy, which is what the gospels are.

Note that Josephus still qualifies as a historian when writing Jewish War because, although he is writing with a purpose (to vindicate his betrayal of his own people), that is not the only focus of his work; he still gives an account of the war as a whole and what led up to it, and only becomes an advocate when dealing with himself or his accusers in the work. Against Apion, in contrast, is purely a work of advocacy- Josephus is literally acting as a defense attorney for the Jews against Apion's prosecution. The difference is this- Jewish War deals with the whole war and its causation; Against Apion only deals with historical events so far as they relate to the issue at hand and can be used as evidence for a position- again, propaganda. The gospels, like Apion, only reference history as it relates to their main subject- the person of Jesus and his identity as the messiah.