(September 19, 2012 at 7:20 am)kılıç_mehmet Wrote: Can you be an *honest* historian without being an atheist(let alone be moslem, jewish or etc.), in your mind?
Obviously, your lecturer was a historian that preoccupied himself with ancient greek and roman history. I don't know where the authenticity of the Gospels or the existence of Jesus fit in here.
I would expect someone with a degree in history to know the basics of analysing manuscripts and knowing what to keep in mind when analysing them for historical content and reliability. If at my level of historical knowledge he had to resort to moving the goal posts then there's something fundamentally wrong with his justification for why the Gospels are reliable, even if he's not a Biblical scholar.
Bottom line is that at my skill level of history, that blunder shouldn't of happened on his behalf.
Answering your question: I don't know for sure, but my lecturer wasn't the best person to test my hypothesis with.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
