Gatocamera wrote: maiden's virus wrote: Gatocamera wrote: 49th Grandson, I too believe Jesus existed. It would be a bit ridiculous not to.
Anyhow, you know, you can believe in a creating God without being a Christian.
seriously?

Of course. I never said I thought he was the son of God, but there is a pretty good chance that Jesus did exist. There is more proof for his existence than against it.

AFAIK most historians tend to agree that Jesus, as a historical person, did exist. There are other persons in mentioned in the Bible that are of a more dubious nature. E.g. king David apparently has not existed at all, or if he did exist, he was not the king the Bible claims him to be, but a village chieftain IIRC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David#Historicity_of_David

Also, king Solomon is a character of dubious nature, as there hasn't been found any conclusive evidence to support the claims of his existence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon

Combichristoffersen wrote: Gatocamera wrote: maiden's virus wrote: Gatocamera wrote: 49th Grandson, I too believe Jesus existed. It would be a bit ridiculous not to.
Anyhow, you know, you can believe in a creating God without being a Christian.
seriously?

Of course. I never said I thought he was the son of God, but there is a pretty good chance that Jesus did exist. There is more proof for his existence than against it.

AFAIK most historians tend to agree that Jesus, as a historical person, did exist. There are other persons in mentioned in the Bible that are of a more dubious nature. E.g. king David apparently has not existed at all, or if he did exist, he was not the king the Bible claims him to be, but a village chieftain IIRC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David#Historicity_of_David

Also, king Solomon is a character of dubious nature, as there hasn't been found any conclusive evidence to support the claims of his existence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon
1 advice though: for historical correct answers, don't use wikipedia

If it is properly sourced, there are few problems with Wikipedia.

49th Grandson wrote: If it is properly sourced, there are few problems with Wikipedia.
and there's the catch, because everybody can add to it, you never know.
besides, if it is properly sourced, then it means there are better/bigger sites out there.

maiden's virus wrote: Combichristoffersen wrote: Gatocamera wrote: maiden's virus wrote: Gatocamera wrote: 49th Grandson, I too believe Jesus existed. It would be a bit ridiculous not to.
Anyhow, you know, you can believe in a creating God without being a Christian.
seriously?

Of course. I never said I thought he was the son of God, but there is a pretty good chance that Jesus did exist. There is more proof for his existence than against it.

AFAIK most historians tend to agree that Jesus, as a historical person, did exist. There are other persons in mentioned in the Bible that are of a more dubious nature. E.g. king David apparently has not existed at all, or if he did exist, he was not the king the Bible claims him to be, but a village chieftain IIRC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David#Historicity_of_David

Also, king Solomon is a character of dubious nature, as there hasn't been found any conclusive evidence to support the claims of his existence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon
1 advice though: for historical correct answers, don't use wikipedia

Wikipedia is a double-edged sword, I'd say. A lot of the information there is factually correct, but a lot is also utter bullshit ("Dave Mustaine died in the studio", anyone? ), so it is hard to separate fact from fiction, but overall, I think Wikipedia is quite good at providing factually correct information.

maiden's virus wrote: 49th Grandson wrote: If it is properly sourced, there are few problems with Wikipedia.
and there's the catch, because everybody can add to it, you never know.
besides, if it is properly sourced, then it means there are better/bigger sites out there.

That's what I said. Check the sources and things are gonna be fine.

maiden's virus wrote: Анорфосэкс wrote: maiden's virus wrote: Анорфосэкс wrote: maiden's virus wrote: not really.
it would have been if we had the original or something even close to the original. the bible as we know it today is a translation of a translation of a translation of a .....
so we actually have no idea what really was in the bible before it was translated and probably adjusted to what the church thought was good.

Even though this is going pretty far from the where we began, the crux of the issue, then what you're describing is a historical value in itself. Showing us what the church wanted people to believe gives it historical value.

In the same way, a Neo-Nazi article denying the Holocaust is valuable. I never said it was accurate, but it has value.
even the sun(paper) has it's value, but when doing historical research its historical value is 0.

No, it is not 0. An extremely unreliable source can still have some value, even if it is very limited. For example, the Sun might show what information a large portion of the British public received about a particular event. An article in the Sun about Tony Blair shows what information the British people were being presented with, and might help to explain why their reaction was whatever it was. A speech by George Bush about Iraq is valuable. It may not be accurate, but it does tell us what message the Bush administration wants to give out to its citizens.

Saying the Bible has zero historical value is a ridiculous statement which will simply not pass.
sure, yo go ahead and use the sun as historical source in a uni paper
pls let me know how bad you failed

Funny guy, eh? I hope you didn't study history at university, judging by what you know about value when relating to historical sources. Otherwise the Belgian education system is gonna lose a lot of the respect I have for it. It's also telling how you try to crack jokes rather than actually answering the issue at hand.

You can't judge a source and say "It's very valuable" and that's it; neither can you go "It's got zero value." The value depends on what you're trying to figure out. Propaganda, for example, has very little value in finding out what exactly happened in a particular event, but has a lot of value in showing what a Party wants the people to believe about it.

Of course the Sun is pretty much useless and you would hardly use it for historical research, but it's a ridiculously extreme example that you pulled out (and comparing the Sun to the Bible as a historical source is pretty far-fetched, even with all the limitations of the Bible). I was just trying to demonstrate what little value something like the Sun could possibly have.

Анорфосэкс wrote: maiden's virus wrote: Анорфосэкс wrote: maiden's virus wrote: Анорфосэкс wrote: maiden's virus wrote: not really.
it would have been if we had the original or something even close to the original. the bible as we know it today is a translation of a translation of a translation of a .....
so we actually have no idea what really was in the bible before it was translated and probably adjusted to what the church thought was good.

Even though this is going pretty far from the where we began, the crux of the issue, then what you're describing is a historical value in itself. Showing us what the church wanted people to believe gives it historical value.

In the same way, a Neo-Nazi article denying the Holocaust is valuable. I never said it was accurate, but it has value.
even the sun(paper) has it's value, but when doing historical research its historical value is 0.

No, it is not 0. An extremely unreliable source can still have some value, even if it is very limited. For example, the Sun might show what information a large portion of the British public received about a particular event. An article in the Sun about Tony Blair shows what information the British people were being presented with, and might help to explain why their reaction was whatever it was. A speech by George Bush about Iraq is valuable. It may not be accurate, but it does tell us what message the Bush administration wants to give out to its citizens.

Saying the Bible has zero historical value is a ridiculous statement which will simply not pass.
sure, yo go ahead and use the sun as historical source in a uni paper
pls let me know how bad you failed

maiden's virus wrote: but pls, go on throwing insults

If you classify that as an insult, then maybe you should apply the well-known phrase "Practice what you preach" - read the first two lines of your post. You basically replied with the exact same "insult" I used. Anyway I'd rather not get caught up in that; let's move on to the actual topic.

maiden's virus wrote: wtf is your problem eh?
i doubt you know anything about historical research, cause that's what it seems like.
historical research is bound to some pilars and questions about how real, how original, how reliable etc a source is.

My problem is that you assert yourself in discussions like this as if you're a great expert (such as you did in the argument on scientific proof - this is why I tend to stay out of economic and political discussions, since I don't feel I know enough) when it would serve you well not to be so overconfident, and look at the discussion with an open mind so that you can realize your mistakes.

Historical research is indeed bound to some of the things you described, but there's much more to it. You seem to have great difficulty in distunguishing between two important terms in historiography: value and accuracy, which are two different properties. Accuracy is one of the properties that gives a source value, but it does not work in the other direction. This demonstrates it perfectly:

maiden's virus wrote: the bible almost fails at all criterias and thus has verry verry little value for historical research.

This statement is not debatable, it is simply wrong. You cannot say a source has very little or absolutely no value for historical research when it clearly does. The thing is, sources have different levels of value for investigating different things. Here's a simple example:

Source: Official figures on the amount of people that died in the famine in China between 1959-60 from the Chinese government. This source has very little value for finding out the truth; ie. how many people died.

That, however, does not mean the source is not valuable. It's not accurate, sure - the Chinese government is probably lying. However, if you're not trying to find out how many people died, but rather, are looking for evidence to show what kind of regime the Chinese Communist government is, then this source is valuable, because it shows that they greatly downplay the results of their economic failures. It demonstrates how the Chinese government is unwilling to give realistic figures that would make it seem like it had failed.

The same could be said about the Chinese government's official report on the events in Tiananmen Square, 1989 - they are inaccurate and not valuable for revealing the true sequence of events, but they are valuable for demonstrating how the Chinese government acts and controls information. You have to look at and assess each source as much more than just whether it is an accurate representation of the event it describes.

I never said the Bible was historically accurate. Historical accuracy is a one-dimensional property that can be illustrated on a scale from 1 to 100. Historical value is not. Historical value depends on the subject of the investigation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIwiPsgRrOs

Gatocamera wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIwiPsgRrOs





great!

Jesus lived with his parents till 33

Анорфосэкс wrote: maiden's virus wrote: but pls, go on throwing insults

If you classify that as an insult, then maybe you should apply the well-known phrase "Practice what you preach" - read the first two lines of your post. You basically replied with the exact same "insult" I used. Anyway I'd rather not get caught up in that; let's move on to the actual topic.

maiden's virus wrote: wtf is your problem eh?
i doubt you know anything about historical research, cause that's what it seems like.
historical research is bound to some pilars and questions about how real, how original, how reliable etc a source is.

My problem is that you assert yourself in discussions like this as if you're a great expert (such as you did in the argument on scientific proof - this is why I tend to stay out of economic and political discussions, since I don't feel I know enough) when it would serve you well not to be so overconfident, and look at the discussion with an open mind so that you can realize your mistakes.

Historical research is indeed bound to some of the things you described, but there's much more to it. You seem to have great difficulty in distunguishing between two important terms in historiography: value and accuracy, which are two different properties. Accuracy is one of the properties that gives a source value, but it does not work in the other direction. This demonstrates it perfectly:

maiden's virus wrote: the bible almost fails at all criterias and thus has verry verry little value for historical research.

This statement is not debatable, it is simply wrong. You cannot say a source has very little or absolutely no value for historical research when it clearly does. The thing is, sources have different levels of value for investigating different things. Here's a simple example:

Source: Official figures on the amount of people that died in the famine in China between 1959-60 from the Chinese government. This source has very little value for finding out the truth; ie. how many people died.

That, however, does not mean the source is not valuable. It's not accurate, sure - the Chinese government is probably lying. However, if you're not trying to find out how many people died, but rather, are looking for evidence to show what kind of regime the Chinese Communist government is, then this source is valuable, because it shows that they greatly downplay the results of their economic failures. It demonstrates how the Chinese government is unwilling to give realistic figures that would make it seem like it had failed.

The same could be said about the Chinese government's official report on the events in Tiananmen Square, 1989 - they are inaccurate and not valuable for revealing the true sequence of events, but they are valuable for demonstrating how the Chinese government acts and controls information. You have to look at and assess each source as much more than just whether it is an accurate representation of the event it describes.

I never said the Bible was historically accurate. Historical accuracy is a one-dimensional property that can be illustrated on a scale from 1 to 100. Historical value is not. Historical value depends on the subject of the investigation.
Did you really type this? If so I applaude you.

I think I understand what doxxie is saying and I have to agree with him. To say anything that exists has zero value is hyperbole in the first place, and those examples make clear to me just how historical inaccuracies can be of value. At the very least, deliberate deceptions exist for some reason, i.e. the creator supplied it for some percieved benefit to his own cause and that in and of itself is important to recognize. A historical economist would find it to be useful, for sure, and many historians are savvy to research techniques used by historical economists these days, according to a good friend of mine who happens to be a historical economist.

Shad wrote: Анорфосэкс wrote: maiden's virus wrote: but pls, go on throwing insults