Layman

As I've said before, there are excellent reasons to view the practice of law as a less than stellar example at how to arrive at material true. This is one of them.

But, I should add, the opposing attorney will be quick to make the same point I have made (if they are any good). One mistake should not offset the credibility of a witness to a number of issues. Especially when that witness is credibly accurate in many other details.

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: Layman ]</p>

leonarde

Posted by Starboy: At last: we agree.

Cheers!

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]</p>

mfaber

No. I wondered why you asked and when I looked back at my post, I realized that I had failed to give proper credit to Paul Tobin, as should have been done.

lpetrich

There is even a name for this principle:

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus

Latin for

"False in one thing, false in everything"

And I notice that some apologists have claimed that the Gospels would hold up very well in court. But when some legal principle goes against them, they claim that courtroom standards are inappropriate.

Starboy

More bible thumping leonarde?

leonarde

I agree that of the Gospel narratives, the part
that is least likely to be historical is
the nativity story. But the same is true of the
tales of a divine origin for Alexander.
Moreover we can say why this is so: the nativity
events, whatever they were, go back 30 to 35 years
or so earlier. Probably Jesus' mother Mary was the
only one alive circa 30 AD who could say anything
definitive about those nativity events: the apostles were probably around Jesus' age. Certainly nothing indicates that any of them were
20 or so years OLDER. So those apostles and close
disciples could not report first hand (ie
as eyewitnesses) on those events: they had known
Jesus as an adult, not a new-born infant.

Cheers!

Toto

I'm not scared of ghosts, holy or profane

The "Holy Ghost" refers to an earlier theory of Biblical Greek. Since the Greek of the Bible was so different from the classics, many western scholars in the 19th century assumed that the language was a special "holy ghost" language, dictated by the holy ghost, and/or that the differences between Biblical Greek and Classical Greek were due to "semitisms". This theory was abandoned after a find of ancient papyrus written in Koine Greek, containing ordinary shopping lists and letters from ordinary people to each other, as linguists realized that the language of the Bible was just the ordinary colloquial Greek of its day. (There is some background <a href="http://www.ewz.com/projects/philology.htm" target="_blank">here</a>).

It appears that Turner has not completely let go of that old theory.

Edited to add: Turner's linguistic theories are discussed <a href="http://www.ewz.com/projects/philology.htm#schturner" target="_blank">in this section</a>, and his position is described as "extreme."

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: Toto ]</p>

Bede

Nogo/Toto,

It seems that you are not sure how to refute my points. You have both tried to contrast the material and situation of Alex and on Jesus but got it wrong.

Toto, an Alex Myther would simply claim that the fragments of eye witness accounts are fabricated in the three centuries or so before being used by the later accounts we have. We have names of eye witnesses? So what, they can easily be made up. You admit mythicists are allowed to declare any inconvenient document fiction. Why treat the Alex sources differently from Mark? And remember, there are three hundred years between Alex's death and the accounts we now have of his life - much longer than the less than a hundred years for the Gospels (less that fifty for Mark).

Nogo, it would be dead easy to make up stories on Alex which indeed was almost immediately done. 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. How? Well, they have to legitimise their conquests and they do this by turning Alex into a God and hence infalible. If the conquests were divine they should stand as they were the will of the Gods. So the motive for inventing a divine conquerer was simple - hang on to power by legitimising it. And as the Greeks are in charge, who is going to question them? <a href="http://www.bede.org.uk/jesusmyth.htm" target="_blank">Here</a> is another parody of Jesus Myth logic showing Hannibal never existed.

The more I look at it the more I realise that Alex is an almost complete rebuttal of the Jesus Myth. If you believe the JM you cannot do history at all. OK, you might believe Alex existed, but you would know nothing whatsoever about him because you have thrown out historical method and replaced it with your ultra scepticism. You use Turton's fallacy - if you can make up a story that fits explains a document you can disregard the documents plain reading.

So as historians, you are screwed and as literary critics you are boring.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

mfaber

Critique of John Warwick Montgomery's Arguments for the Legal Evidence for Christianity, by Richard Packham

<a href="http://home.teleport.com/~packham/montgmry.htm" target="_blank">http://home.teleport.com/~packham/montgmry.htm</a>

Packham is an atheist and retired lawyer who took Montgomery's arguments apart.

Amen-Moses

Certainly whacky! You do know why Alexandria is so named don't you?

Amen-Moses