(March 11, 2015 at 10:02 pm)Nestor Wrote: In consideration of the many embellishments, and the obvious intention of the New Testament authors to disregard actual fact for mythological history, it would that seem that what's regarded in the texts as probable or relatively certain by standard criteria is automatically lower than what one can expect to encounter in a secular or humanistic document, where only the common mistakes of recollection, agendas, and biases must be taken into account.
We could say this about most ancient sources. The idea that there are any ancient sources which would fit the description of "secular or humanistic documents" is pretty problematic. Suetonius? Only if you consider a source that says Augustus was conceived when Atia was visited by Apollo in the form of a serpent. Tacitus? Even he has statues groaning as portents of defeats and Vespasian healing the blind and the lame.
As I keep saying, if we try holding these texts to standards that simply don't apply to ancient texts, we are setting the parameters in a way that simply makes no sense. Yes, it would be nice if we had some "secular or humanistic documents". But in ancient history, we usually never do. So we have to make do with the sources we do have and just treat them with the right kind of care, caution and scepticism.
