[jimbob]

Fyron: As to whether or not a person is willing to accept the claim that the writers of scripture were predicting (or more accurately from a Judeo-Christian-Islamic perspective were given knowledge of) the future:

Many ask that proof be provided to show that the predictions were written down prior to the unfolding of events, and may insist that this is the only way of validating that the prediction event occurred. Unfortunately this demand of proof is (IMHO, in the humble opinion of western legal process, in the humble opinion of scientific method) to be borne not by the author, but rather the critics of the author must bear the burden of proof. That is to say, unless you have a good/solid reason to claim the author was fraudulent, you just can't call him a liar! (i.e. if the scripture in question was written three decades ago as proven by carbon dating, but claims to profess an event that happened 1000 years ago, then you can claim that the scripture is fraudulent - or is a copy of an earlier document).

Then, to impose that a document meets todays' standards of veracity is unfair and somewhat modernist/arrogant. The reality is that most ancient documents were not immediately transcribed, but were often (in most cases?) carried by oral tradition for centuries with incredible accuracy. Have you read the Odessy? Iliad? These were regularily recited verbatim and in their entirety from memory by Greek performers, sans mistakes, due to i) good memories that didn't use print as a crutch, ii) poetic mechanisms and meters that were self correcting, and iii) a public knowledge of the material that would correct any luckless bard who was unfortunate enough to mess up on the story during a public performance. Written copies of these plays were created, but the written word was not the repository of knowledge - peoples brains and corrective devices were!!!

just my couple of cents

[ March 05, 2003, 23:55: Message edited by: jimbob ]