Posted: Feb 27, 2010 9:44 am
Monkey's Nephew wrote:Look - I'm not a historian,
Okay.
just a guy who knows a poor argument and poor evidence when he sees it.
If you say so.
Accepting for the sake of argument your assertion that historians follow this convention of accepting hearsay until evidence appears that it's false, that doesn't make it any less hearsay.
Sorry, but if historians were so insanely hyper-sceptical that they instantly doubted any reference to anyone in any historical source on no rational basis whatsoever, the whole field of history would have to pack up, go home and all historians would now be flipping burgers. The idea that we have to reject any reference to anyone , without any reason to do so, simply because it can be called "hearsay" is absurd. Sorry, but 99.99% of pre-modern history is based on what you call "hearsay". So unless you have good evidence that it can't be accepted, it is.
So now you have to present that evidence in this case.
Over to you. Make it good. Can you present that evidence or not?