Fallible Readers and Unreliable History

Jerry Friedman · 18 Jun 2001, 16:00 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Fallible Readers and Unreliable History
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 16:00:09
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0849 at digest.urth.net>
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--- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com> wrote:
...=20

> The question is not why a believer accepts the truth
> of the=20
> Gospels, or why an unbeliever doesn't. That is a
> fundamental
> choice. The question is this: no matter what stance
> one takes
> vis-a-vis the divinity of Jesus, what access, if
> any, does an
> informed and in-formed reading of the Gospels offer
> us to any
> actual knowledge of events that went on in and
> around Jerusalem
> in the first third-of-a-century AD? This question is
> actually
> independent of the question of "belief."
...

Yahoo's otherwise excellent e-mail truncates long
messages, so I can't combine this with your comments
about it not mattering so much whether Silk is a
character in Horn's story or Wolfe's (or I'm not
willing to do the cutting and pasting).  But I agree
with you about it not mattering that much--and I had
already read that comment when I said much the same to
Rostrum.

Here's the difference between reading the Whorl books
and reading the Gospels, imo.  If you could learn the
reality behind the Gospel narratives, you'd have the
answer to a question that's been crucially (pun not
intended but noticed) important to billions of people.
On the other hand, if you could learn the fictional
reality behind the Whorl books, all you'd have is
another story.

Jerry Friedman

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