rationalskepticism.org

igorfrankensteen wrote:Agrippina: sorry for my poor eyesight, and for letting my Historians' existing recognition of the name Agrippa, to cause me to see that, instead of what was written.

No problem, it was only to make a point later that I mentioned it.

some responses to what you said:

agrippina: 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?"

No, you would not ASSUME it was ancient Greek pottery, you would SUSPECT that it is, and check, as you describe. The difference in those two words is very important.

Think of this: there is an important practical difference between acting on an ASSUMPTION, and acting on a suspicion, or a still evolving deduction. An ASSUMPTION results in the door to further weighing of facts being closed.

Maybe. But for me the door is never closed. I'll hear an argument even when someone else might close a door.

Many mistakes have been made in the study of the past, precisely because of people making false ASSUMPTIONS about what they were looking at.

People make mistakes even when the evidence showing the mistake is presented to them. Humans aren't infallible.

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.

Yes. But the reason you said that, was to imply that because they were obsessive (which, by the way, is an opinion, and not something that you or anyone else can prove), that the lack of a record about a specific person, can be used as proof that he either did not exist, or was not who others claimed he was. Aside from the fact that the characterization of the Romans as being "obsessive" about record keeping isn't born out by archaeology or existing libraries, even if it were true, the reasoning from that, does not support any suggestion that "lack of proof equals proof of lack."

I don't know if it is mere opinion. There is so much writing about them in existence still today that demonstrate just how assiduous they were at recording their history. And we know that we have only a small percentage of what was actually recorded.

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.

As I pointed out above, you only made the note about fanatical attention to detail, in order to support the idea that a lack of records which we know of, allows us to positively conclude something about what we see no records of. That is what I was trying to say to you, which YOU didn't get.

I did get it. I still maintain that there are records lost that will make my point that they were a little "obsessive" (or meticulous, or careful - it's all the same to me) about record-keeping.(I think obsessiveness is in the eye of the beholder. One person might call another "obsessive" for making their bed every day). To me, in the ancient world, that they kept amazing records of the sort that would've made the heads of subsequent generations spin, sounds like obsessiveness.

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.

" if there had been a really important event such as described in the NT, it would've been recorded."

The same logical error repeated, based on the same ASSUMPTION about Roman record keeping. Is there a chance that you are yourself suffering from a very common Historians' syndrome, wherein we don't notice that since the bulk of what we have studied from our peers, makes a general assumption about someone or something, that the assumption is accurate?

I don't call it an assumption. Having spent the last almost twenty years reading mostly books about the ancient world, my conclusion is that they were obsessive about record-keeping compared with other people who lived at the same time and after them, is valid. They had to rely to putting their records on paper, and storing them in places that weren't secure as our record vaults are today. For instance the emperor Claudius spent most of his life writing about his family, yet after he died all his notes and recorded history was lost. His work was the source for subsequent historians.

This sounds reasonably obsessive to me, given that the "historical method" as we understand it today hadn't been developed.

In Roman Egypt, for instance, every provincial capital had a central record office known as a demosia bibliotheke where officials were required to deposit certain records relating to census, tax, land and other official transactions. These record offices were open to the public who could come and inspect the records.

http://www.unesco.org/webworld/ramp/html/r9008e/r9008e03.htm

This sort of record-keeping disappeared after the Fall of Rome, and was only equalled by that of the Germans, before the late 20th century saw the introduction of computers which makes record-keeping fairly simple.

In my own daily life, making my near poverty living as a service technician, I am confronted almost every day by people who think that because THEY don't carefully count how many screws or connectors are included in a given machine assembly, that I am a "fanatic record keeper" because I do. Similarly, the fact that most businesses count every penny they have in their cash registers at the beginning of the day, and at the end of the day, does not mean that they are "obsessive record keepers." If they WERE "obsessive record keepers," they would also take notes on what every clerk was wearing, how many customers walked into the store and how many rode in on wheelchairs, how many times someone sneezed, and so on.

Maybe the Romans didn't write down about their uniforms, but they did make drawings. Wait, someone did write it down.

Vegetius, 4th-century author of De Re Militari, describes the equipment he believed had been used by heavy and light infantry earlier in the empire. The names of some weapons have been changed from the Latin to the Greek forms and Greek names have been preferred, for unknown reasons, perhaps because the center of Roman military power had shifted from Rome to Constantinople. Vegetius says in translation:

The infantry (armatura) was heavy, because they had helmets (cassis), coats of mail (catafracta), greaves (ocrea), shields (scutum), larger swords (gladius maior), which they call broadswords (spatha), and some smaller, which they name half-broadswords (semispathium), five weighted darts (plumbata) placed in the shields, which they hurl at the beginning of the assault, then double throwables, a larger one with an iron point of nine ounces and a stock of five and one-half feet, which was called a pilum, but now is called a spiculum, in the use of which the soldiers were especially practised, and with skill and courage could penetrate the shields of the infantry and the mail of the cavalry. The other smaller had five ounces of iron and a stock of three and one-half feet, and was called a vericulum but now is a verutum. The first line, of hastati, and the second, of principes, were composed of such arms. Behind them were the bearers (ferentarius) and the light infantry, whom now we say are the supporters and the infantry, shield-bearers (scutum) with darts (plumbata), swords (gladius) and , armed just as are nearly all soldiers today. There were likewise bowmen (sagittarius) with helmet (cassis), coat of mail (catafracta), sword (gladius), arrows (sagitta) and bow (arcus). There were slingers (funditor) who slung small stones (lapis) in slings (funda) or cudgel-throwers (fustibalus). There were artillery-men (tragularius), who shot arrows from the manuballista and the arcuballista.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_military_personal_equipment

The fact that we have more Roman records available for study today, does not support the characterization that they were "obsessive record keepers."

You're quibbling about the word "obsessive." Let's use meticulous, assiduous, careful, rigorous, diligent, detailed... any of those will do as well.
It's almost as if you want to bring the Jesus story in here. I'm not getting drawn into that argument, so drop it. Please.

The Greeks too used to keep records. Not perhaps in the same way the Romans did, I can't find anything off-hand to support that but given that the Romans' Empire lasted a lot longer than the Athenian one, it's not a terribly fair comparison.