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Old 21st February 2008, 04:05 PM
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I never cease to be amazed at the arguments over the scholarship of who wrote what, and when. No doubt these are interesting historical questions, but they most often crop up (outside of scholarly circles) in arguments aobut religion, not history. In my own view, such arguments answer little or nothing about the religious questions that usually generate the heat.

For example, let's bring up a slightly more recent example. Much has been written about Joseph Smith, his life, his works, where he went, who he knew, what he did and said. But all of that work doesn't answer one fundamental question for me:
Quote:
Did he find tablets, were they inscribed with something so-far unknown in all the world called "reformed Egyptian," and did he use a "seer stone" or "urim and thummim to translate this so-called reformed Egyptian into English? Or did he just make it all up?
We can argue forever and a day about what was written and when, but what we cannot resolve is the truth of what was written. Someone may be able to prove that I wrote the statement "no elephant known weighs more than 11 pounds," but the proof that I wrote it does not constitute proof of the statement itself.

Thus, the literal truth of statements about the rent veil in the temple, corpses rising from their open tombs, the sun standing still for any period of time, etc. must all remain, at the very best, unanswered. And this must also be the case for the religious "truth" about the existence of God or the spiritual resurrection of Christ.

I guess, if somebody invents something out of whole cloth, or even if they recast some other religious ideas into a more acceptable framework for a different culture, what difference does it make who copies it down, and when, and how accurately? Or even if there was interpolation or forgery? None of it answers the underlying question which is at the heart of most such discussions outside of the rarified atmosphere of historical scholarship.
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