leonarde

About this "false in one thing, false in all":

1)I think that what is important is intentions:
if it becomes clear that a witness fudged/exaggerated/outright lied knowingly
then there is a good chance he would do it more
than once. Witnesses in court, cognizant of this principle, frequently say stuff like "as far as I remember", "to the best of my recollection" etc.
If the witness isn't trying to be accurate/honest then his testimony MAY be (semi?) worthless.

2)If we are absolutists in the "false in one thing, false in all" principle, we have to throw
out the baby with the bathwater: Herodotus and
Thucydites become worthless as well. Again (a la
point 1)) Herodotus, frequently called the father
of modern history, often (but not always)
tried to distinguish between what he knew
fairly certainly and that which was mere rumor.
When he gives his account of different ethnic groups, where they live and what they are like,
one can make out concentric circles of (un)reliability: the closer to the region(s) where
Herodotus himself had been, the more likely the
depiction was accurate. The farther away, the more
likely the depiction was a distortion-via-rumour
or just legendary account.

Cheers!

NOGO

"Motives? I can hardly believe you can ask such a naive question. The Greeks have conquered the entire world with a small army and now need to control it."

Let's see,
"the Greeks conquered the entire world"
So that is not contested. Right?
They must have had a leader.
Nothing unusual or incredible about that.
His name was Alexander.
Nothing unsual or incredible about that either.
Bede, I am done. The thing that is hardest to fabricate is the conquests themselves.

As usual, Bede, you dance around on the fringe of the absurd. I stated that it was not easy to invent a story of Alexandre the Great not just his deification. Your answer simply missed the target altogether.

Let's say that we are in 200 BCE and I want to create a story about Victorian the Great who conquered all of North Africa, the middle east and parts of asia all the way to Iran. I say that this is an impossible task. However, if I want to fabricate a story of a humble peasant who did all sorts of miracles that only a small group of people have seen and who are also part of a fanatical religious sect then the task is much easier.

On the subject of motive.
I was talking about the motive in creating the character himself rather than just deifying him.
Are you saying that the motive for deifying Caesar and Alexandre is the same as for Jesus?
I see a big difference.
Kings and rulers of the ancient world legitimized their power by claiming divine status. They did not claim to be the God who created the whole world. It would be rather difficult to convince anybody of that.

Now look at Jesus.
Son of God
Anointed of God
Lamb of God
Son of David
King of Israel
God himself creator of the world

Disciples of the new sect were not trying to legitimize Jesus' position since he was dead.
It seems that to convince people it became necessary to pour on the titles.

When Alexandre's empire fell apart so did his divine status, a practical tool which was no longer needed. Contrast that with Jesus.

Your comparison is totally bizarre.

[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Give me even a single example of me doing this, child. Or apologize.

Turton

MortalWombat

Funny, that's what I thought Christians do when faced with inconsistancies and errors in the bible.

Metacrock

</strong>


Meta =&gt; Those are not the major critieria that historians would use. You amatures always crack me up. Historians accept as historical all kinds of things and people that invovle supernatural cliams. They just read b between the lines of the cliams.


Meta =&gt; What makes the geneologies "obviously fictional?" Just because you don't like them.There is nothing there that would make them fictional, or that would disprove them. One is Jo and one is Mary, Given that,there's no problem with them.

As for the idea that we don't Jesus' mother's name, that's a fantastic claim since one ever in any kind of literature disputes that it was Mary. The Jews recorded it as Mary, the Christians did, all over the place. There's no reason to doubt it. You guys crack me up. your one and only trick is to go "there's no evidence cause all that evidence is stuff I dont' accept." With that all I have to do is say I don't accept Alexander evidence.


Meta =&gt; First, not true. The 6th century accounts of which you speak are second century. Two publicans claimed to have seen him and describe him. Besides why is that a big criterion? Historians don't go by that. And finally why should I accept any of your Alexander evidence? That's just Alexandrian propaganda. That's pretty much the way you reason about our evidence.

We don’t know anything about Jesus’ training or background. We don’t know if he was literate or not. But we have the names of Alexander’s tutors.

Meta =&gt; We don't know anything about Alexander's background, because there's no evidence. There are only statments form the Alexandrian biased propaganda people.

We have no indication that anything was written about Jesus when he was alive. Apologists like to speculate that there was oral transmission of eyewitness accounts, but there are no facts to support this.


[b]Meta =&gt; Of course there are! That's so absurd. All scholars know this. Helmutt Koster proved that the easriest wirtting was from 50 AD. It's absurd to think that that was the first mention. Bultmann proved from form criticism that these were oral testimonies.[b]

In contrast, we know that official court records were kept for Alexander, and things were written about him during his life. None of the documents from his lifetime have survived intact, but there are fragments that testify to their existence, which were quoted or used as sources in later biographies that have survived.


Meta =&gt; There are fragments that testify to the existence of early new testament writtings.

<a href="http://www.pothos.co.uk/alexander.asp?ParaID=99" target="_blank">Eyewitness accounts of Alexander</a>

Some of the documents:
Callisthenes, the official court historian, wrote “Deeds of Alexander” during his lifetime

Onesicritus, who was Alexander's chief helmsman, a Cynic philosopher and a pupil of Diogenes, wrote “How Alexander was educated” shortly after Alexander's death

Also records by
Ptolemy, commander in Alexander's army and later successor king of Egypt, founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty that ended with famous Queen Cleopatra in 30 B.C., and

Aristobulus, a member of Alexander's staff of engineers; (he had an humble rank and is attested for the assigment to restore Cyrus' tomb at Pasargadae)

<a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hca/classics/alexsources.htm" target="_blank">more sources</a>

Shortly after Alexander’s death, a romance (historical novel) was written about him, full of fantastic events, and was continually rewritten and improved on for centuries. If this were our only source, we would not know if Alexander were history or legend. But it is not.

This is not to say that every detail we have is completely reliable. Undoubtedly the portraits were flattering, and the court chronicles as biased as any official history. But you can still have confidence that there was a real person who commanded armies that conquered the classical world. In fact, it would be difficult to explain Greek influence in the ancient world without Alexander; in contrast, the rise of Christianity can be explained very well without a human Jesus.[/QB][/QUOTE]

Meta =&gt; Hey how about that? No evidence for Alexander!

Metacrock

Of course there is! Because Cesar ran an empire and Jesus was in the sticks. But your whole argument is based upon an informal fallacy. Just because there's more evidence for one thing, doesn't mean that the think with less evidence is unporven.

that's like saying there's more evidence for the existence of Lee Harvy Oswald--we have him on film--then for George Washington, therefore, Washington didn't exist.

Metacrock

But there's no evidence for Alexander. Not one single spec. Because anything you present to prove that he existed is part of our biased world of apologetics. So I ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist. God (or lack of God) forbid that I should evaluate it critically!

Metacrock

paul met those who knew Jesus and his doctrines were accepted by the Jerusalem chruch. He had to have some reason for this conversion; you act like it was just a plot, what did he get out of it? beheaded.

Metacrock

Meta =&gt;"when read litterally." There's your little game. You're hatred of God trip is so bording! You can't even evaluate historical evidence by common sense because you are so anxious to destroy what you fear.

There are no historical problems when you take a realistic view and don't worry inerrency. And there is not a serious historian anywhere who doubt doubts that Jesus existed.

Metacrock

yea really, he's only got 2 billion followers 2000 years after his death! You're belief (that is the belief of Toto and the gang) is unimportant, it's important a priori.