romansh

You don't know how funny this statement sounds to an agnostic.

So which bits are actually plausible and how are they more so?

By your logic, historical texts written today are less accurate than those written 200 y ago..... interesting?

__________________
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ........... Douglas Adams

tommi atkins

Historical texts have more direct resources availible to them, and indeed all modern texts will be referencing them.
Writing about the battle of Zama, a Roman could talk with the soldiers there, with the returning army, take accounts from them and with a certain flourish and spin, present the account as trufax.

200 years afterwards, a Carthaginian could draw upon a few surviving documents and come up with the basic fact that they were defeated, yet it was a hard struggle and that the main reason for the defeat was treachery.

2300 years later, to write a fresh account on Zama, a historian will draw on all the old histories ,be severly lacking in many of the original material and simply cobble together their best effort along their original bias.

In a nutshell, and rather neatly, nobody really knows the trufax on anything.

romansh

Agreed up to a point

but..... which would be more accurate/inclusive ...... a text written more or less at the time of the event, or a later text that has available the original text plus other texts that were not available to the older historians?

Admittedly some ofthe original texts that might have available to the early historian, might not be available in later times.

__________________
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ........... Douglas Adams

tommi atkins

I know where you are coming from, but twenty mins ago i was sat on the bog reading a history of WW2 written in 1948,(as i invariably do) and marveling at the reporting of operation Barbarossa. The periodical waxed lyrical about Huge german losses, cunning russian tactics and lucky german so-called-victorys.
This was written 7 years after the event about the most comprehensive defeat ever suffered by any nation in the entirety of history.

It was indeed Napoleon who said history is written by the victors. The contemparyness of a source is in no way a measure of validity.A non-partisan position is the safest veiw to read.
The bible is a self licking ice cream cone.

romansh

are you from Britain?

__________________
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ........... Douglas Adams

tommi atkins

Umm, yeah, why dosnt evry nationality read on the bog?

romansh

I'm sure they do
It's just your quaint turn of phrase
and if I may say so a certain eccentricity - reading, on the bog, fifty-year old accounts of Barbarossa?........

__________________
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ........... Douglas Adams