Posted: May 09, 2015 6:13 am
igorfrankensteen wrote:Agrippa:
First let me correct you there. Agrippa was my father, I'm his daughter, Agrippina, but on this forum, most people call me "Aggie" you may do that if you prefer.
I appreciate what your post tried to do, but you said some things which are on the wrong side of things, I think.
Which then leads to an examination of what evidence there is. As there is no evidence for the existence of people wandering around the desert for 40 years, it may be assumed that it didn't happen. This is where assumption and deduction come in.
Error. Assuming something didn't happen because you've found no support for it yet, isn't scientific, and doesn't demonstrate good Historical research practice either. The correct way to handle such things, is to say simply that there is no evidence to support such and such a Biblical claim. "Assuming" is NOT a recommended, or respected act by any disciplined Historian.
OK so say I come across a shard of pottery, and it has what I think looks like a Greek pattern on it, and it looks really ancient, and is a little fragile. Would I be correct in assuming it might be ancient Greek pottery and then would I be right to take it to a museum for clarification, or should I just toss it away because "assuming is not recommended?"
I don't want to wander into the pits of discussing the reality of Jesus, there's a thread for that, so I won't talk about it.
We do know that the Romans ruled over Palestine. We have the Roman records, and their records demonstrate absolute obsessiveness with keeping records. This is science,the records are still in existence. What there is no record for is for the trial of Jesus and his crucifixion.
Another common error for non-Historians. First, though it is true that the Romans did keep a lot of records, they did not keep 100% complete records.
I didn't say they kept 100% records of everything. I said they were obsessive about record keeping, but we know that even obsessiveness doesn't work 100% of the time.
To assume that all records were complete, and to assume as well that after the fall of the Empire, that it's conquerors carefully preserved all of those records, is silly, as soon as one actually looks at it.
That's not what I said. And people make mistakes, even people who quibble about the volumes of records make mistakes, note your error above with my name. Mistakes are easy to make, being obsessive means that you're inclined to make fewer errors than the people who aren't as meticulous about record-keeping. For example, if you had been entering my name in a census record, and 1000 years later someone came across that record, they would question why the male form of my name was used, rather than the female one since all the other evidence tends to demonstrate that I was a woman. Yes, I know you made a mistake, but that's the point, people make mistakes all the time.
It's a bit like the assumption some people have, that every creature who ever existed, became a fossil after the appropriate amount of time, and therefore that if we don't have a continuum of skeletons showing each bit of evolution, that therefore evolution didn't occur after all.
That's not what I said. Read it again. I said that the Romans were obsessive record-keepers and that if there had been a really important event such as described in the NT, it would've been recorded. However, we are now 2,000 years down the line, even if they did keep a record of every single event in their history, after this amount of time, hardly any of those records will have survived. I am also only too aware of how records disappear, how they are falsified, and how sometimes not all the information is recorded.
You are quite right in several other "off the top of your head" items, such as the recent to do about Richard III. Hard science is one of the tools that Historians use as a part of following the discipline.
DEDUCTIONS are a part of writing good History, not ASSUMPTIONS. And even deductions need to be identified as such.
Of course they are. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be made and that they shouldn't be entered into the historical record, if only so that future historians can use those deductions as a starting point to look for further clues.
Peer review is an interesting subject area. It does take place to a degree, but as we've begun to notice recently in the Hard Sciences world, we can't deduce from the fact that there is SOME peer review going on, that therefore the discipline can be trusted implicitly. Since History is NOT something which can be "replicated experimentally" for the most part (yes, one can verify evidence some of the time, other times not), there is a limit to what even rigorous peer review could accomplish.
Indeed. And there is also personal opinion, which can be used to explain historical events, from the historians point of view. Even though that's not reliable, and is purely anecdotal in some cases, it is nevertheless valuable. For example, I grew up in Apartheid South Africa. I have first-hand knowledge of what life was like under the system, and even though it's personal experience and not science, my observations, opinions, experiences, and what I witnessed are valid when recording the personal experiences of people living under Apartheid.
In fact, there is an entire aspect of History which is one of the absolutely MOST fascinating ones for me: it is called "Historiography." it is the study of how the telling of History itself, is affected by everything from present day (of the particular Historian under scrutiny) politics, to fads in the telling of History itself. Even though the past )( so far as can be determined) cannot be changed, what we THINK happened in the past, changes all the time. Sometimes owing to honest reappraisals, but even more commonly to serve the newest authorities, or would-be authorities.
Yes, which is why my experience of Apartheid is important to explain the system to people who weren't alive at the time, it's why I wrote an autobiography for my grandchildren to be able to use when they study the history of the 20th century in South Africa.
This is why, to really "do" History well, one must do much more than read old documents and records. One must study the general nature of the people who created the documents, and what may have influenced them to do so.
Yes, and any solid objects they left behind, such as possessions, letters, photographs etc. We don't have enough of those for the Ancient World so we have to rely on archaeology, numismatics, and documents such as engravings, stelae and so on.
It is very possible, for example, that the reason why the Crucifixion of Jesus resulted in no record being kept by the Romans, is that the people who killed him didn't see him as important enough to warrant a record. I don't want to get into Jesus directly either, but you did bring it up after saying you didn't want to. We're both silly self-victimizers in that way, I guess.
That deduction is important because if no record was kept, nowhere, not in Rome and not in Judah, it is an indication that he was a small fish, if he was a fish at all. If he was the important figure people make him out to be then there would've been at least a court record, or something said in Pontius Pilate's or the governor's records. Sedition was a huge issue with the Romans, look what happened to Spartacus, his revolt launched a civil war. If Jesus was as big a rabble-rouser, there would have been something more than some nonsense written by brain-washed followers 50 years later. But as I said, I don't want to enter into that debate here, except to say it's possible he was a real person and that's all I think he was, nothing more, certainly not a seditionist that caused the Jews to abandon their Passover rituals about.