Is turnabout fair play?
Michael W. Fisher mwfisher@cts.com
Wed, 9 Sep 1998 13:09:01 -0700 (00905389741, 001101bddc2d$af972840$9d495ecc@mwfisher.cts.com)
Matthew Bell sent: Wednesday, September 09, 1998 8:54 AM
<snip a bunch to get to the juicy part>
M.BELL
So Josephus recorded this as it was happening like your above
analogy? Or was it several years after the event? In thirty odd
years time do you think things will be so clear in people minds
and there will be a consensus of opinion on what happened?
Also, was Josephus an eyewitness to the things he records,
as we are through the media etc.?
ELF
Were the gospels contemporaneously recorded with the events they describe,
or were they written several years after the event? In 30 odd years time do
you think things would have been so clear in the gospel writers minds, or
that there would be a consensus of opinion on what happened? Were the gospel
writers eyewitnesses to the events they recorded?
Hey wait!
That argument has been made numerous times, more or less eloquently.
And the Xtians tell us none of it matters (if not in so many words).
Yet now, when its Josephus under discussion, suddenly the same arguments are
rolled out against Josephus??
Tch, tch, tch.
You have to smile, since one of the major reasons Christians refer to
Josephus is to help overcome the very logic Matt is using except as applied
against the gospels.
Ciao!!
Michael Fisher, aka Elfish Chimera, San Diego, California
"If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously,
vigorously, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your
divine part pure, as if you were bound to give it back immediately; if you
hold to this, expecting nothing, but satisfied to live now according to
nature, speaking heroic truth in every word which you utter, you will live
happy. And there is no man able to prevent this."
--Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and Stoic, from
his MEDITATIONS, III, 12.---