Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Carrier's comment on the procurator-prefect issue re Pilate in On the Historicity of Jesus , p. 345 However, we must dismiss the argument that Tacitus can’t have been citing government records because he gets the office of Pilate wrong, mis-identifying him as a procurator when in fact he was a pref...

History and historical fiction have much in common, as we've discussed. That doesn't imply that I hold that there is literally no difference ever between them, nor that all instances are unclassifiable. What are some instances that you do think are "classifiable"? How do you distinguish b...

Holocaust deniers do not usually question that these and other ugly events happened. IIUC they would mostly agree that hundreds of thousands of Jews were either directly killed by the Nazis or died as a result of ill treatment. What they (wrongly) deny is that the Jews were victims of genocide, del...

I was reporting on the policies of the opposition, you can speak for the government :) Not sure if you were addressing this to me, but if you read the bulk of the Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, not just a couple of paragraphs, you will see that the idea that history is merely educate...

"Good recovery"? You made a witty and artful answer to my objection against your imparting a genocidal perspective to a historical novelist's remark about an aesthetic aspect of history, which I had quoted with (smilied) approval. In American English, you were complimented for your art an...

iskander wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2017 8:33 am
NB. History is an educated opinion

You have not yet finished reading Richard Evans' In DeFence of History -- you have not read the last chapter, 8, "Objectivity and It's Limits"

But it is possible to write a fictional work in the style of a historical one. Indeed it is. Much of Herodotus is fiction even though it is mixed with "Histories". He appears to have fabricated some sources. So is Thucydides' description of the Athenian plague based on his imagination. Th...

Neil Good recovery. The fact remains that there was nothing about what I quoted to which the Holocaust was salient, and it was to that that your rebuttal was addressed. . . . I think we're talking past each other. I really don't understand your replies or where you are coming from. "Good recov...

Paul the Uncertain wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2017 3:47 am If put to proof, I can give examples of good fiction set against the Holocaust or European conquests

But if there is no difference between fiction and a real fact that actually happened.... if that is what you are arguing?

And while he urged ‘open discussion’ on the topic [let's say the topic is "What Makes a Writing 'Fiction' versus 'History'?] , he was unable to say how this could take place at all if there was no objective, over-arching principle of evidence or rationality to which we could appeal in order to...