When it comes to history, how do we know the truth?

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Mintaka said:
The problem is that Ehrman spends most of his time in that book pulling all kinds of unscholarly tricks. He quotes selectively. He tells straightforward stories as if they are secrets or hidden, and he radically simplifies complicated things. Sometimes he says something that’s an outright lie. It gets worse in his later books.

If you look on patristic and Biblical scholars’ websites (and I particularly encourage you to look at the atheist ones’ websites), you will see that Ehrman’s “popularizations” are constantly being reviewed poorly because he lies to his readers who don’t know enough to call him on it. He used to have a good reputation which is he is now trampling down.

Christianity was a fairly lively group of people who were Jewish followers of Jesus, who was both God become man and the Messiah. Since they were famous for doing miracles and driving away demons, they attracted a lot of people who were occult-hungry as well as a lot of normal people. Many of the occult-hungry people went off to do their own occult thing, dressed up in fashionable Christian clothing. Others wanted a simpler, less Jewish Christianity and came up with “reasonable” ideas, like dropping most of the OT and NT, or believing that Jesus was a standard issue hero who wasn’t really divine, or a standard issue god who wasn’t really human.

But even at the time, everybody knew who was Catholic, and who was a weird offshoot. That’s why the weird groups usually had to appeal to “secret teachings,” or say that the ordinary Bible books didn’t count at all. That’s also why most offshoot groups didn’t have any martyrs. (To be fair, there were some. But most Gnostic groups didn’t hold with that messy death stuff, and certainly the Docetists didn’t.)

The only time you get serious cases of “other Christianities” that rival the Catholic Church is when there are schisms, which tend to start rather late; when we get to the Arians who also came along rather late; and the the few odd cases when heretical groups got somewhere first (which is mostly the Arians, again).
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Gnostics and Arians. Thought so.

Ed
 
oldcelt said:
One of my great joys has been the ability to interview dozens of WWII vets. Are their memories 100% reliable…probably not. But it is their story, and I let them tell it. If something conflicts with well-established knowledge, I simply leave it out of my final draft.

BTW, I intend to reassemble all the stories I wrote if you would ever like the info. One Bataan Death March Survivor, Airborne members, Marines, surface Navy, sub crewmen and so on. I’ll be more than happy to share if you think it will be of any value to your work.

John

John
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Thank you for your offer, John. I specialize in really obscure technical aspects. My dad was a World War II vet and it was the same story with most of his vet friends. They did their duty, went home or to another country, and put the war behind them. And they rarely talked about what they saw.

For example, the Germans had various types of radar in operation during the war. Only one book in my collection offers a comprehensive look and includes a few surprises. I’ve managed to acquire a handful of technical intelligence reports written shortly after the war with very limited distribution - say 40 to 100 copies. Plus a handful of obscure books covering technical subjects. I hope to put together the information I have on one aviation project but it’s “only” 80% done.

Best,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Thank you for your offer, John. I specialize in really obscure technical aspects. My dad was a World War II vet and it was the same story with most of his vet friends. They did their duty, went home or to another country, and put the war behind them. And they rarely talked about what they saw.

For example, the Germans had various types of radar in operation during the war. Only one book in my collection offers a comprehensive look and includes a few surprises. I’ve managed to acquire a handful of technical intelligence reports written shortly after the war with very limited distribution - say 40 to 100 copies. Plus a handful of obscure books covering technical subjects. I hope to put together the information I have on one aviation project but it’s “only” 80% done.

Best,
Ed
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My father as well…310th Signal Operations Battalion, Headquarters Company. He talked more toward the end of his life…one time as we stood at artillery emplacements at Chancellorsville, VA was particularly good. Da**, I miss that man.
 
kingsan said:
How do we know that what we are reading and what we are being told is the truth? For example, you have a history book authored by this “scholar” and what he says in it is, according to him, the truth of the subject. And then another “scholar” shows up and says the opposite. Confronted now with two conflicting ideas, how do we know the truth in what we are studying?
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Again, “truth” in history is completely subjective.

What is history? It is the culmination of 3 things:
  1. an event
  2. a chronology of related events
    3)historiography - the narrative (and opinion) of the Who, What, Why, When, and How of the event and/or chronology.
The event is the most objective part of history…What precisely (not why, or how, or by whom…just WHAT) took place.

The chronology can be objective, but often more and more is added to the chronology over time, because other significant events may not have been considered, or even known, when the historiography was being written.

Historiography is the subjective element of history. Historiography changes over time as more and more evidence and data concerning the Event and the Chronology are uncovered.

And, this changing Historiographical view, is often referred to (erroneously) as “Revisionism” or “Revisionist History”…The first element of History is not changing, the chronology might be fined tuned, but the historiography certainly changes…but not HISTORY, because, again, “history” is the sum of several components.

A prime example of changing Historiography, without changing Events is the American dropping of the A Bombs in Japan at the close of World War II.

The Event is undeniable. An Atomic Bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and on Hiroshima. That was a fact in August of 1945, and it remains a fact today.

The Chronology leading up to the dropping of the bombs has expanded over the decades since the war. Evidence seems to indicate that the Soviet Union was poised to join in on the war against Japan, and had they, the USSR would have stood to gain an influential foothold in Asia, just as they had in Eastern Europe following their contribution to the fall of Nazi Germany.

Historiography changed, in that at the close of the war and for at least 2 decades, the historical narrative gave the reason for dropping the bombs as to avoid a bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland, at great cost of American and Japanese lives. Later evidence seems to point that the numbers of prospective losses may have been inflated, merely to hurry the dropping of the bombs and forcing surrender before Russia could get involved and stake a claim to Asia.

Which historiography is “truth”? One is probably no more truthful than the other, especially if kept in the context of when the historical interpretations were written.
 
Neofight said:
Again, “truth” in history is completely subjective.

What is history? It is the culmination of 3 things:
  1. an event
  2. a chronology of related events
    3)historiography - the narrative (and opinion) of the Who, What, Why, When, and How of the event and/or chronology.
The event is the most objective part of history…What precisely (not why, or how, or by whom…just WHAT) took place.

The chronology can be objective, but often more and more is added to the chronology over time, because other significant events may not have been considered, or even known, when the historiography was being written.

Historiography is the subjective element of history. Historiography changes over time as more and more evidence and data concerning the Event and the Chronology are uncovered.

And, this changing Historiographical view, is often referred to (erroneously) as “Revisionism” or “Revisionist History”…The first element of History is not changing, the chronology might be fined tuned, but the historiography certainly changes…but not HISTORY, because, again, “history” is the sum of several components.

A prime example of changing Historiography, without changing Events is the American dropping of the A Bombs in Japan at the close of World War II.

The Event is undeniable. An Atomic Bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and on Hiroshima. That was a fact in August of 1945, and it remains a fact today.

The Chronology leading up to the dropping of the bombs has expanded over the decades since the war. Evidence seems to indicate that the Soviet Union was poised to join in on the war against Japan, and had they, the USSR would have stood to gain an influential foothold in Asia, just as they had in Eastern Europe following their contribution to the fall of Nazi Germany.

Historiography changed, in that at the close of the war and for at least 2 decades, the historical narrative gave the reason for dropping the bombs as to avoid a bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland, at great cost of American and Japanese lives. Later evidence seems to point that the numbers of prospective losses may have been inflated, merely to hurry the dropping of the bombs and forcing surrender before Russia could get involved and stake a claim to Asia.

Which historiography is “truth”? One is probably no more truthful than the other, especially if kept in the context of when the historical interpretations were written.
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It’s a bit more simple than that, going back to my World War II studies. For reasons unknown, there were Allied cameramen on the beaches at Normandy filming troops falling over dead. Other photographic evidence often supports the facts concerning who was there, the physical layouts of the landing areas and even photos of specific individuals. The more information, the better. We certainly do know the who, what, why, when. How things turned out as they did can be known with some certainty. Many after-action reports and intelligence reports were written by all sides if for no other reason than to determine current losses, supply needs, enemy strength and specific objectives taken and when. You also had Killed in Action lists, Wounded in Action lists, Missing in Action lists, and POW lists. Hundreds of aerial reconnaissance photos were taken of the actual landings and additional flights by other recon aircraft for bomb damage assessment purposes or just to assess the general destruction in a given area, not to mention target acquisition.

A number of American Generals were against using the A-Bomb. Articles appeared in popular magazines within the year of the end of the war. They stated their reasons. The Japanese were thoroughly beaten. The main islands were running out of supplies and yes, when it was known the Russians were coming, it was time for surrender. But the US ignored their air superiority and conventional bombing in favor of combat drops of a type of weapon that has not been used since, and which only reappeared in more powerful versions, like the H-Bomb. They needed to take Japan out of the Soviet sphere of influence. We wrote a new constitution for the Japanese.

At the end of the day, the best data enters history even if new data is discovered later. And I’ve been collecting both old, contemporary data, and comparing that to newly released and newly discovered/declassified information, even about relatively trivial things.

Ed
 
Mintaka said:
But even at the time, everybody knew who was Catholic, and who was a weird offshoot. That’s why the weird groups usually had to appeal to “secret teachings,” or say that the ordinary Bible books didn’t count at all. That’s also why most offshoot groups didn’t have any martyrs. (To be fair, there were some. But most Gnostic groups didn’t hold with that messy death stuff, and certainly the Docetists didn’t.)
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Bart Ehrman admits that most of these books that were suppressed were forgeries. But he points out that some forgeries also got into the Bible. For example, most scholars believe that some of the letters supposedly written by Paul weren’t actually written by him. Even the Catholic scholar Raymond Brown says in his Introduction to the New Testament (p. 668) that “about 80 to 90 percent of modern scholars would agree that the Pastorals * were written after Paul’s lifetime, and of those the majority would accept the period between 80 and 100 as the most plausible context for their composition.” Most scholars call these “pseudonymous” writings, but Ehrman is more forthright in calling them forgeries.*
 
Thorolfr said:
Bart Ehrman admits that most of these books that were suppressed were forgeries. But he points out that some forgeries also got into the Bible. For example, most scholars believe that some of the letters supposedly written by Paul weren’t actually written by him. Even the Catholic scholar Raymond Brown says in his Introduction to the New Testament (p. 668) that “about 80 to 90 percent of modern scholars would agree that the Pastorals * were written after Paul’s lifetime, and of those the majority would accept the period between 80 and 100 as the most plausible context for their composition.” Most scholars call these “pseudonymous” writings, but Ehrman is more forthright in calling them forgeries.*

The time period may be true but it is established that the writing of the Catholic Bible and which books to include or exclude, were guided by the Holy Spirit. The word forgery is only an opinion. Hundreds of years of Biblical scholarship, again, with God’s help, attests to our understanding of the Bible to be as it is because God intended it to be so. Even if these writings were written somewhere in the time period claimed does not mean that they were not copies of originals. Men wrote the Bible but its writing was guided by God.

Ed
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edwest2 said:
The time period may be true but it is established that the writing of the Catholic Bible and which books to include or exclude, were guided by the Holy Spirit. The word forgery is only an opinion. Hundreds of years of Biblical scholarship, again, with God’s help, attests to our understanding of the Bible to be as it is because God intended it to be so. Even if these writings were written somewhere in the time period claimed does not mean that they were not copies of originals. Men wrote the Bible but its writing was guided by God.

Ed
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Nothing that you said is “established”…it is a matter of faith. You just happen to believe it.
 
Back to the misnamed “Patriarchal Revolution.” This is Gnosticism, which is simply satanic revolt against all God reveals about Himself and His will. So Gnostics do anything and everything the opposite of what God says. If God says let the Man approach the Woman in marriage for her approval; and let Woman prosper her seed; with her Man, her spouse servile unto death protecting them; they do the opposite, profane marriage, etc.

So rebels enslaved the orthodox Man, seized lands inherited through the Woman by throwing down the landmarks–very taboo–that were portraits of the Woman–and establish kings. Mom is made a ritual prostitute servicing strangers and her children are put to death while orthodox dad is enslaved by the king system God warned us about. This is played out in the life of Sargon the Great, whose mother was an EN, “woman of grace” and who declared his daughter an “EN.” EN-Heduanna, his daughter, is persecuted by the evil priest from UR OF/CITY OF THE CHALDEES, Lugalan, who attempts to rape her to claim all that is hers as king-consort.

In examining early Christian writings and the claims that non-canonical discarded tomes were actually authentic, one notes the lying, anti-female hallmarks of Gnostic/Satanic rebels. Therefore not Christian but doubtless preceded Christianity. This was confirmed in a book I found at Rockhurst University that noted one specific pre-Christian Roman school of philosophy–PS Paul’s “forgery” is authentic as from the “School of Paul”–that incessantly railed against Gnostic types that–and still do–forge “ancient” documents, hate women, and generally lie.

The cult of liars as satanic is old. Wearing a feather in one’s cap in ancient Egypt meant you were a truth teller. Fast forward to the Plains natives of America wearing a single feather and their blue-eyed ancestors and Sammi clothing from Norway and their claim they came across the Atlantic on spongy islands…Humans REALLY get around. The Great Pyramid of Egypt was to be Adam’s reliquary constructed by a hero later painted as a demon by the liars, Shem or the School of Shem. Shem is linked by Jewish tradition with the mysterious (as a wanted man slated for death by the liars) Melek-zedek to whom Abraham gave an offering of bread and wine. Nothing new under the Sun. God hasn’t changed.

For WW II-flavored lies, check out LYME DISEASE AND THE S.S. ELBRUS for “frenemy” Russia advancing German biochemical warfare. The bullet we dodged was a German rocket full of poison; the one we took is Lyme disease and other tick-borne illness spread by Russia through tainted furs dumped on us by Armand Hammer, who gifted Senator Gore, Sr. with Occidental Petroleum for getting him off treason charges. And of course as Our Lady of the Rosary warned at Fatima, Russia started WW II with her non-aggression pact with wildly bellicose Germany & Japan. Dad’s WW II loot includes a book in German about Japan’s “reich” and shows a map splitting America in two between them.

One incursion of the “Patriarchal Revolution” was that of the opportunistic Arya into India that displaced the monotheists. Northern India particularly was wracked by earthquakes, volcanic gas discharge, river shifting, tsunamis and attendant floods that brought chaos to settled cities preyed upon by the master looters, the Arya. The centuries-long natural disasters and Aryan pests that introduced the caste system and human sacrifice into India drove the monotheists into Europe and the Middle East, the Indo-Europeans.

So Brahma/Abraham & Sarasvati/Sarah are fleeing the same UR OF THE CHALDEES/Kaul Deva/Holy Kaul bad guy Arya who originally took over their ancestral home in India, guys who had also earlier pestered the monotheist female Woman & Seed lineage of King Sargon and his daughter EN-Heduanna.

The Gnostics/Satanists/Arya have nothing, and the nature of the cultus of the “Father of Lies & Murder” is to play off of that revealed by God and contradict it. It is totally reactionary. If God says, “Tell the whole world the Good News” the bad guys have secret societies. If God says, “All souls are equal yet I chose to bless My elect” they create elitism/caste system. If God says “Woman & Seed” they create the king system/dictator/oligarchy of women and children last. If God leaves an elaborate prophetic system to verify His message, they have angels–fallen–who have contradictory revelation as Paul warned us. Or the School of Paul…🙂

May the Most High enlighten the eyes of our hearts and grant us hearty appetites for the Truth because “those that have not the love of the truth will have cause to believe a lie.” “God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart” as the “only” means to a period of peace. That’s good sacred history, and future history shown in Apocalypse 12 says the persecution of her “other children” will occur and then Christ will return. “Even so, come Lord Jesus.”
 
I think historians have a few pretty good tools to evaluate historical records. Some is archeological- some guy named Octavianus supposedly takes over Rome, and suddenly we see coins that say AVGVSTVS on them. There’s also comparative records- Homer would have us believe that Greek demigods fight Trojan demigods in a truly titanic battle in Anatolia. Yet, other regional powers don’t seem to concerned with Troy, including those that kept meticulous records (the Hittites)- thus we might question just how big such a fight could have been.
 
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