the new new testament???

A modern historian undoubtedly knows more about the First World War than an illiterate peasant who was in the trenches.

We're not talking about feelings. We're talking about events. Yes, a historian 2000 years from now will most likely know much more about the causes and events of our world wars than anybody who was there. They don't though. William L. Shirer didn't ask a bunch of Nazis what went on in Germany. He went to the documents and he decided which ones were more reliable than others. That's why he knew more about what happened in Germany than the people who were there.

On the contrary, what's ludicrous is to take what was written as a given when the very existence of the authors is questionable. So at a crime scene, you would take the word of the alleged perpetrator over the word of an impartial observer? After all, he was there. You wouldn't even consider the possibility that he had an adgenda to spin the "truth" in his own favour?

Seek and you shall find. Don't seek and you're less likely to find. That's why people seeking 2000 years later are more likely to find the "truth" than people who aren't looking for it. One of the greatest tragedies of the human race is that people think they have "the truth" so they don't bother to learn anything. They didn't refer to every book in "the" canon either. You might as well say that Japan didn't exist because neither Jesus nor the apostles mentioned it.

Josephus knew who the alleged characters John, James, etc. were but neither he nor anybody else had any actual evidence that they existed. History didn't stop at Josephus. The point here is that historians have been studying the evidence for the past 2000 years, which puts them in a better position than Josephus to determine who existed, who did what, etc. If a guy comes to my door to read the water meter, it isn't up to me to prove he's an imposter. It's up to him to pony up his ID. Clearly I didn't say any such thing. I asked if you would take the word of the alleged perpetrator - who might put his own interests above the truth - over the word of an impartial observer.Edited by ringo, : Selling.

Neither Josephus nor anybody else should be thought of as a "reliable historian". His individual statements are "reliable" if and only if they can be confirmed by other evidence. My "purpose" has no significance in the face of corroborating evidence. Someone three thousand years later with access to the police records and court records would certainly be better able to determine the facts than I, who was there but didn't have access to any documentation. It doesn't matter. That's why evidence is collected at a crime scene and taken away to a laboratory where it can be analyzed by experts. That's why evidence is preserved so it can be re-examined at a later date if necessary. Distance and time have a tendency to reduce partiality and let the evidence speak for itself.The only one here who is evading is you. You claim that somebody who was at the scene is best able to give reliable evidence but you refuse to answer the simple question: At a crime scene, would you take the word of the alleged perpetrator as reliable, as "gospel"?

Roman Catholic monks, by the way. No doubt there was a conspiracy to preserve only the most pro-Catholic texts.

Yes, that's how scientific research and historical research works. All evidence needs corroborating evidence. Neither Josephus nor Pliny nor anybody else forms an absolute basis of unassailable truth from which we can start.And no, that doesn't mean it's "turtles all the way down". You can think of knowledge as a geodesic sphere with every datum attached to other data. If your datum is only attached on one end, even if it is to Josephus or Pliny, it isn't very secure. And when you find that Josephus himself is only attached at one end.... Don't you read your own posts? Sure we are. Lying is one possibility. Making up fiction to make an honest point is another. Simply being mistaken is another. And yes, being truthful and reliable is another possibility.The point is that we can't just assume one of those possibilities like you are doing. Exactly. A liar would have better knowledge - but the question here is whether or not he would tell you the truth. All we have here is what he told us, not what he actually knew.Of course, the same principle applies to the other possibilities. Somebody who was mistaken will tell you what he thought he saw, not what actually happened. Somebody who was writing fiction might honestly believe that you would understand it as fiction. I have no doubt that a lot of the cheers I get are for style rather than substance. Can you provide a valid reason from Treasure Island why I should not believe Long John Silver?

At least two - but they have to be independent lines of evidence, not just two people repeating the same rumour. Well, it's also a Biblical principle:

quote:

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Deu 19:15 One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.

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The Levites understood that individual witnesses are not reliable.And there's a whole commandment against false witness. There would be no point in devoting ten percent of the legislation to false witness if witnesses were individually reliable. What you're assuming is that there are no alternatives to reliable testimony. In fact there are alternatives, so your assumption renders your conclusions invalid. You have to address the alternatives. We have several different lines of evidence for the Bounty story: the Admiralty records, Captain Bligh's personal journal, the subsequent discovery of the surviving mutineers on Pitcairn's Island, etc. People do question the facts of the Bounty story because there are discrepancies. "The facts" are what is left after the unreliable parts of the testimonies have been weeded out. I haven't said that anything "bothers" me about the NT documents (presumably you mean the canon of the King James version). The topic is about whether or not we should include some other "apocryphal" documents whose validity and accuracy have been established in the same way. The discussion between you and me has been about clearing up your misconceptions about how that validity is established.

If there are faults, we ought to find them. The main fault, of course, is that you have "different" sources citing each other. You miss my point. I'm pointing out that you accept the Bible as reliable and yet you denigrate the principle of multiple sources, which is a Biblical principle.Your position is self-contradictory. Knot at all. We have the Admiralty records, which reflect the Admiralty biases. (The Admirality records were used to build a replica of the Bounty for the 1930s movie, so there is external corroborating evidence not directly related to the mutiny.) We also have the testimony of Captain Bligh who was biased against the mutineers and the testimonies of (some of) the mutineers who were biased against Bligh.If you had the records of the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate's personal diary, you'd have the equivalent. It's not a question of believing anybody. It's a question of comparing the conflicting accounts and deciding which parts of which testimonies are most likely to be accurate.In your case, all you have is the testimony of some guys who claim to be "Godly men". You have no alternative viewpoint(s) to compare their testmony with. No sensible person accepts anything without question.

You don't have independent sources. You have gospel writers who were all on the same side. Where do you have the other viewpoints represented, the viewpoints of the Jewish leaders and the Roman leaders? Call it a "flaw" if you prefer. Lack of information is a flaw in any reasoning process and can produce flaws in the conclusions. When you said, "Your principle only has application where you want it to apply. Its a type of intellectual evasion and dishonesty." in Message 81 it sounded like you were refering to the principle. I see that you may have meant my supposedly unequal application of the principle. I have shown that I apply the principle equally to the gospels and the mutiny on the Bounty but the gospels by themselves do not meet the standard. There are no opposing viewpoints. How can you say that Bligh and the mutineers are not independent sources? Bligh wanted the mutineers hung. They weren't likely to confirm anything he said. They had good reason to give a biased viewpoint. Yet we don't believe eveything Bligh said and we don't believe everything the mutineers said. We have to try to figure out a compromise about what actually happened and there are some details that we can never be sure whose version was more accurate.As I said, you don't have the records of the Sanhedrin or of Pontius Pilate. All you have is what Jesus' followers said about them. There is always reason to doubt. Without doubt, we have no check on the wildest stories that pople can make up. Smart people doubt plausible stories and implausible stories exactly the same. I'm closer to the Bounty events in that the Admiralty records still exist whereas Pilate's records and the Sanhedrin records (of Jesus' trial) don't. I'm not really concerned about any miraculous content in the gospels. Even if the non-miraculous parts were as reliably documented as the Bounty story, that would say nothing about the reliability of the miraculous parts. After all, you can't document a miracle, can you? You can only document claims about a miracle.

A house can not be a witness.

What a bizarre phrase. We are not only "allowed", we are required to consider all of the evidence.And you're still not addressing the point. I'm asking you for the equivalent of the evidence that we have for the Bounty story. Where's the antagonistic vewpoint in your evidence?To recap: In the Bounty story, we have three main threads of evidence: the accounts of the mutineers, the account of Captain Bligh and the official Admiralty records. You only have one thread: the account of Jesus' followers, the equivalent of the mutineers. Where's the account of the people who accused Jesus of a crime, the equivalent of Captain Bligh? Where are the records of the overseeing justice system, the equivalent of the Admiralty?You have NOT produced the equivalent evidence. All you've produced is the mutineers' account and people quoting the mutineers' account.Objectivity requires an alternate viewpoint. Where's the alternate viewpoint?

You seem to have lost the plot. I'm not rejecting "Josephus, Pliny, Eusebius and others". I'm saying that their evidence isn't enough. I'm not trying to indict the lack of belivablity of Josephus, Pliny and Eusebius. The onus is on you to establish their believability. But as I've said, even if they were completely believable, they're not enough. No, you do not. You do not have any alternative viewpoint. All you have is the viewpoint of Jesus' followers.The standard I am asking for, the standard that we have in the Bounty story, has three separate threads. You have one. Different people saying the same thing do not automatically constitute independent witnesses.Where's the account from the viewpoint of the Sanhedrin? Where's the account from the viewpoint of Pontius Pilate?Edited by ringo, : Removed superfluous double-quote character.

No. I'm not rejecting the type of evidence that you present. I have said that we have to look at all of the evidence.What I'm doing is refusing to accept that evidence as sufficient to establish the facts. The testimony of the accused is not sufficient to determine the facts of the case. Neither is the testimony of the accuser. You need both. Of course I haven't demonstrated that human testimony is an absolute requirement. I have said, I think, that it is second-rate evidence. Physical evidence is superior because it doesn't have an agenda. If a case could be made entirely without human testimony, that would be ideal. For example, if you had the official records of Jesus' trial, that would be worth more than the testimony of legions of his followers. Once again, it is not about rejecting Josephus. Josephus presents one point of view just fine, the point of view that you advocate. But where does he present the opposite point of view? Where does he report that Jesus was a charlatan or a madman or anything else but what you believe he was?Captain Bligh said that the mutineers were the bad guys; the mutineers said that Captain Bligh was the bad guy - two diametrically-opposed point of view. That's the rule of evidence that I'm using. Where's the equivalent in Josephus?