Family Man

Haran,

No one is saying "Hey, reject everything that isn't certain as impossible." If you look at the two examples I gave the authors were saying that perhaps the history as recorded is correct. But given the problems noted by the authors, they can't be taken as certain history.

Nor is Bywater giving Homer the benefit of the doubt. He is suggesting a possible solution; he is not saying that this is a historical fact that we can rely on. Historians speculate all the time; they don't claim their speculations to be factual, however.

That is the problem with this "benefit of the doubt" thing. It isn't used by professional historians when deciding what historical facts we can rely on. It is only used by Christians to puff up claims in the NT to a level that they don't deserve to be. Which is why they frequently worry about rejecting things that "may be true" than they are about accepting things that may be false. Horrors it might be if what was written in the NT isn't true.

Clearly, it does matter than Aristotle is talking about poetry than history. Your example doesn't support the point you're trying to make. Speculation about historical events is not the same as saying a historical event is true.

Haran

Family Man,

We're not that far off. For, after rewording Aristotle's "dictum", Montgomery says the following: "...one must listen to the claims of the document under analysis, and not assume fraud or error unless the author disqualified himself by contradictions or known factual inconsistencies."

However, you know as well as I do that many here start with the assumption that the Bible is false and in error. They seem to think that any seeming contradiction (think SAB here), is an error, regardless of possible explanations.

As a matter of fact, if a Christian were to suggest a possibility to explain a seeming contradiction in a Biblical text (as Bywater did for Homer), he/she would be laughed at and accused of "mental gymnastics".

Finally, the example from Aristotle is perfectly valid in this case. I'm sorry you do not see it, and I'm afraid we'll just have to disagree. Other excellent scholarly thinkers like Bruce Metzger and probably others do see it...

Vorkosigan

That's because the resolutions are usually untenable. So of course we laugh at them. You can't help laughing when intelligent people work with great earnestness to engage in doublethink on a galactic scale. Religion is simply methods and attitudes for coping with cognitive dissonance, and nothing brings them out clearly like some inerrantist nut attempting to resolve contradictions.

There are good reasons to doubt the NT accounts of things, which is why not a single serious scholar accepts them in their entirety. Think about that; the disagreement is over how much and what fiction there is. It is not over whether there is fiction in the NT. Metacrock's "hermeneutic of suspicion" is in fact the scholarly way of doing things; the text needs to have its tires kicked and its doors slammed, so that we can make sure it is really telling us history. And in this case, the texts are not telling us history, but theological and political stances.

Vorkosigan

trillian

Again Aristotle is talking POETRY here, not history. Montgomery restates Aristotle poorly when he uses the words "facts" and "document". Aristotle never said anything about "facts" and "documents" here. He's talking about plot, characters, and words in the artistic sense. A better rewording might be

"One must listen to the poets' words as he wrote them, and not assume he made a mistake in the plot or wording, but look for other possible meanings".

Aristotle is saying that an artist (ie a poet or storywriter) is given the benefit of the doubt.
It has nothing to do with the validity of a historical document.

If Aristotle read the Bible, he might give it the benefit of the doubt as a poem or story, but certainly not as a historical document any more than the stories of legend in his own time (which he didn't believe either!) An author should be able to use a 5-headed monster in his work if it benefits the plot, but it doesn't mean that we all should think that such a monster ever existed. He says:
"With respect to the requirements of art, a probable impossibility is to be preferred to a thing improbable and yet possible." So should we apply that to history as well?

The claims by Christian here using this dictum not only take it out of the context of a book about poetry, but change the entire meaning as well!!!
Maybe we should all give Aristotle the "benefit of the doubt" and read what he "actually " said not what later "critics" reinterpreted from him!

Trillian

John/nyc

Ari was just asking us to suspend disbelief in order to be entertained. Sorta like goin to a Godzilla movie.

In law, though, there is the "Parole Evidence Rule" which gives gives the benfit of the doubt to documents (read contracts) over oral testamony to the contrary. Maybe thats where the benefit of the doubt argument originated.

Family Man

I'm with Vork on this one. Not all speculations are created equal. If I suggest that Jimmy Hoffa was killed by the mob, most people would find that a reasonable and likely (if unproven) explanation. If I suggest that space aliens from Betelgeuse kidnapped him, however, I would be guilty of mental gymnastics. A lot of Christian "explanations" tend to bend towards the more credulous and fantastic variety, such as when the conflict between the genealogies is explained away by arbitrarily assigning Luke's genealogy to Mary. A far more likely explanation is that the genealogies were fiction to begin with.

I studied history as an undergraduate. I'm not an expert, but I am aware of how historical texts are analyzed. They are not given the benefit of the doubt; they are viewed with a very critical eye.

Clutch

Really? The whole thing? Every word? Wow... I think you'll have to supply some links. Because that sounds like a whiny strawman. Well, let's think about this. Contradictions are logically false. So if it seems to be a contradiction, then it seems to be logically false. Which means, yes, some explanation will be owing for why the appearance is misleading.

Now, here's a thesis of mine: It is possible to give defective -- even risible -- rationalizations of apparent contradictions.

Given this thesis, such rationalizations have to be evaluated on their individual merits. So, for example, one account says only Judas was hanged. Another says only that he fell in a field and burst open. So the rationalization that the latter account just explains what happened to the hanging body when it fell is knee-slapper material.

If you want to claim that there are people here who reject any explanation for absolutely any purported biblical contradiction, you'll have to argue it with links. I think what you have in mind are the thorough spankings delivered to some of the more intellectually shameless such rationalizations. Since these were entirely warranted, though, it's hard to see what your legitimate complaint might be.Argument from Counterfactual Non-Sequitur? The reason I can't think of a reasonable explanation is because you wouldn't believe me even if I did? Again, a groundless generalization in any case. If you can defend specific cases, do it. If you can't, blaming this inability on those who recognize it seems a bit odd.