I will have to chec out Elaine Paigels. I have a scholarly side and thinnk some of the academic type stuff is interesting. For instance, the old documents are dated by people called paleographers, who study old handwriting. That would not be as boring as it sounds (to me) if I got a call from some group like National Geographic inviting me to Europe to study an old document!

This fits into the larger question of, how do we know anything we think we know? But I can't find an answer to that one.

So in that context, I might add that I think as Blake said, God is a concept. So to know what God wants in a book is to know what concept is being used to define God. Besides, one idea is that this document on little Jesus was more theological tha historical. Well weren't they all?

HI again I state, whatis in the scipture is exactly what God wanted there.

My previous Quote

Quote:


alan

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Jesus has got to be splitting his sides laughing right now...

love, blink

Justin
I have thought about how to address your comments and I'm not sure how to. I don't think the people were in to kindness the way I would mean it today. On the other hand, it is not possible to group everyone together; there are always individual differences. but I have known kind Christians, Jew, Muslims, Bhuddists, atheists, and I have known jerks in all those groups, so it seems absurd to say there were no early Christians into kindness. However, the ones doing the writing were probably not writing about kindness. I really think that recorded history from that time was in some way qualitatively different than what we do today. (...hopefully no one from the distant future who finds Bart Simpson tapes thinks they were meant to be hostorically accurate..   : )  ).

I just wonder, what were these people like that they wrote this stuff about the young Jesus? And knowing the answer to that, how should we read the other stuff written from this time?

So Don, I happen to like Da Vinci Code. it is fun. I don't care whether it is historically accurate, and besides even if it isn't today, tomorrow someone might uncover some evidence that it is. I also enjoy the traditional historical approach. I think your assessment of people's understanding..due to scholars not explaining where stuff comes from...is accurate. The "trouble" with me is that I have enough experience, for example, in science to both enjoy the science and enjoy the science fiction, and go back and forth. I was stunned to hear that life threats had been made on Dan Brown. Like, if you don't like his ideas, walk away! Or maybe what I'm really used to is people arguing over the meaning of bits of data, so that I don't take anyone's claim of accuracy as 100% true. I am entitled to my own interpretation of the data as is the other person. I guess that is a rule of intellectual engagement and discourse that I forget not everyone follows.

I also have read about secret meanings in material that was produced in the Middle Ages into the Renaissance. Some books by Amelia Frances Yates. And a friend who while at Indiana had a friend writing about the secret meaning of some poetry from I think the Middle Ages (written in French). Even the Annotated Mother Goose, if I recall correctly, talks about political messages hidden in rhymes sounding like they were written for children. And then in our own country, there's the whole "Follow the Drinking Gourd" tradition. I think we have a fascination with hidden meaning and secret codes!

Alan I don't want an argument but I probably don't believe the same concept of god that you do. So to me there is no God sitting there saying...OK this one goes in the Bible, this one doesn't. But it's OK I grew up going to church and I can deal with other ideas.