Bible and Plagiarism

Can someone "plagiarize" a fact?If you tell me the sky is blue and I go tell Mary, is this plagiaism?If you publish a paper showing that the sky appears to be blue and I copy and present parts as my own work then, yes, this is plagiarism. Not plagiarism of any "fact" but plagiarism of your intellectual property ... your ideas.

I think the cold has gotten to you, ringo. First you say you can plagiarize a fact and then you say you cannot own, therefore protect from plagiarism, a fact. I agree you cannot own facts. Facts, as soon as they are known instantly become public domain. I can give a for-fee lecture pointing up the positions of all the stars (the facts) in your catalogue without any fear of copyright infringement. What I cannot do is sell your catalogue after the lecture without permission, as you say the expression of your work, the idea of your intellectual property.As for owning ideas ... all of patent and copyright law are built specifically to accomplish this very thing.[ABE] I yield to NoNukes.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Word games.You have plagiarized the intellectual accomplishment by taking credit for the feat (finding/discerning/describing the facts). The facts were there all along regardless and can never be owned by anyone. It is the intellectual feat, not the facts themselves, that has been plagiarized.As for the gospels, there is plenty of academic feeling that Mark and Luke were built upon Matthew and that John was built upon the other three with the last three books emphasizing and embellishing different aspects of the story and, especially in the case of John, different goals to achieve in the writing. There is still, however, not sufficient evidence to make this a firm conclusion. But, since it seems quite clear that none of the gospels as they appear today were written by, or solely by, their purported authors then the whole thing appears to be plagiarism layered upon plagiarism. Edited by AZPaul3, : spelin