30 March 2026, Writing - part xxxx368 The Novel, Historical-Legal Tests, Internal Witness
Announcement: I
still need a new publisher. However, I’ve taken the step to republish my
previously published novels. I’m starting with Centurion, and
we’ll see from there. Since previously published novels have little
chance of publication in the market (unless they are huge best sellers), I
might as well get those older novels back out. I’m going through Amazon
Publishing, and I’ll pass the information on to you.
Introduction: I wrote the
novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21st novel
and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that
included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other
general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the
metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the
way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire
novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.
I’m using this novel as
an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel
published. I’ll keep you informed along the way.
Today’s Blog: To see the steps in
the publication process, visit my writing websites http://www.sisteroflight.com/.
The four plus two basic
rules I employ when writing:
1. Don’t confuse your readers.
2. Entertain your readers.
3. Ground your readers in the writing.
4. Don’t show (or tell) everything.
4a. Show what can be
seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage of the novel.
5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.
6. The initial scene is the most important scene.
These are the steps I use to write a novel
including the five discrete parts of a novel:
1. Design the initial scene
2. Develop a theme statement
(initial setting, protagonist, protagonist’s helper or antagonist, action
statement)
a. Research as required
b. Develop the initial
setting
c. Develop the characters
d. Identify the telic flaw
(internal and external)
3. Write the initial scene
(identify the output: implied setting, implied characters, implied action
movement)
4. Write the next scene(s)
to the climax (rising action)
5. Write the climax scene
6. Write the falling action
scene(s)
7. Write the dénouement
scene
I finished writing my 31st novel,
working title, Cassandra, potential title Cassandra:
Enchantment and the Warriors. The theme statement is: Deirdre and
Sorcha are redirected to French finishing school where they discover difficult
mysteries, people, and events.
I finished writing my 34th novel
(actually my 32nd completed novel), Seoirse,
potential title Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment. The
theme statement is: Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at
Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately,
Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.
Here is the cover
proposal for the third edition of Centurion:
|
Cover Proposal |
The most important scene
in any novel is the initial scene, but eventually, you have to move to the
rising action. I am continuing to write on my 30th novel,
working title Red Sonja. I finished my 29th novel,
working title Detective. I finished writing number 31,
working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior. I just
finished my 32nd novel and 33rd novel: Rose:
Enchantment and the Flower, and Seoirse: Enchantment and the
Assignment.
How to begin a novel. Number one thought,
we need an entertaining idea. I usually encapsulate such an idea with a
theme statement. Since I’m writing a new novel, we need a new theme
statement. Here is an initial cut.
For novel 30: Red Sonja, a Soviet spy,
infiltrates the X-plane programs at Edwards AFB as a test pilot’s
administrative clerk, learns about freedom, and is redeemed.
For Novel 32: Shiggy Tash finds a lost girl
in the isolated Scottish safe house her organization gives her for her latest
assignment: Rose Craigie has nothing, is alone, and needs someone or something
to rescue and acknowledge her as a human being.
For novel 33, Book girl:
Siobhàn Shaw is Morven McLean’s savior—they are both attending Kilgraston
School in Scotland when Morven loses everything, her wealth, position, and
friends, and Siobhàn Shaw is the only one left to befriend and help her
discover the one thing that might save Morven’s family and existence.
For novel 34: Seoirse is assigned to
be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses
and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.
For novel 35: Eoghan, a Scottish National
Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem in Loch Lomond and
The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and accidentally
releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires
a new life and perhaps love.
Here
is the scene development outline:
1.
Scene input (comes from the previous scene output or is an initial scene)
2.
Write the scene setting (place, time, stuff, and characters)
3.
Imagine the output, creative elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and
develop the tension and release.
4.
Write the scene using the output and creative elements to build the tension.
5.
Write the release
6.
Write the kicker
Today: Let me tell you a little about writing. Writing
isn’t so much a hobby, a career, or a pastime. Writing is a habit and an
obsession. We who love to write love to write.
I want to start with these definitions as
a premise for writing.
1. Write to entertain
2. Write using the
common outline for a novel
3. Develop a telic flaw,
a protagonist, an antagonist, and plan to resolve the telic flaw.
4. Start with an initial
scene.
5. Develop and define a
modern protagonist: you get a telic flaw, a potential protagonist’s helper, and
a potential initial scene from the development.
6. Write to reveal the
protagonist.
And here is the scene:
1. Scene input (comes from the previous
scene output or is an initial scene)
2. Write the scene setting (place, time,
stuff, and characters)
3. Imagine the output, creative elements,
plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and develop the tension and release.
4. Write the scene using the output and
creative elements to build the tension.
5. Write the release
6. Write the kicker
I’m going to move into a more technical
subject this time. I’ve addressed this
subject before, but I haven’t in a while, and most of the time, I’ve looked at
it in the context of other writing ideas.
This is the subject of technology.
Why is technology important? The most critical point, in my mind, is
accuracy from the standpoint of the time and place of the novels we write. I’d say, technology is perhaps the most
important compared to history. Why is
that?
The obvious answer for the modern era is
the change of technology. If you write a
novel set in the 1990, and every character has an iPhone, you have done a great
harm to your technology and the historical and technical accuracy of your
novel. The iPhone was first introduced
in 2007. There are a lot of these traps
especially for the young and inexperienced who didn’t live through these
times. In other words, to a person who
spent their entire life with an iPhone (or other, so called, smart phone), the
idea of not having one is almost impossible to imagine. Likewise, the aircraft was invented in
1903. If you have an heavier than air
aircraft in your novel before about 1910, you are breaking an historical
fact. Now, you could be like some of the
creepy and silly movies and novels written in the modern era that have all
kinds of impossible historical technological anomalies. For example, one of the latest Sherlock Holmes
movies in the last ten years has an aircraft in the late 1890s or so. Now, it could be late Sherlock in about 1920,
but it’s hard to tell with the way movies are produced, and who can tell what
time they are really in. In any case,
these types of craziness defy reality and technology, but it gets worse. These are easy examples from the centuries of
knowledge and documentation. What about
the very early times in history and prehistory?
This is something I’d like to explain and
explore. My real expertise is in early
languages, cultures, and societies especially those that are early
Mediterranean and early British. These
are some of the times I’ve written about and that I use in my writing. Plus, I translate Anglo-Saxon and Athenian
Greek. These are both dead languages so
they aren’t going anywhere.
Here's my plan. I’m going to start with early technological
history like the seven basic machines and other major technologies and apply
them to writing about history. We’ll investigate
foods, cooking, warfare, agriculture, horses, husbandry (farming and animals),
crops, furniture, architecture, and so on.
The point is to begin to understand the past and past technology so we
can write historically correct and enlightening novels. In addition, we will eventually move to the
modern eras and then to science fiction.
Science fiction is all about predicting and extrapolating
technology. We’ll make a sweeping study
of technology such that we can write realistic and historically correct
fiction.
I have to include this example for
you. With one of my first published
novels, Aegypt, the publisher’s editor asked about my use of a lighter
in the novel. I had researched this, the
lighter was invented about the time of the aircraft, and was used extensively
as the eternal match or as trench lighters in World War One. My protagonist, an officer and soldier from
World War One who smoked cigarettes, would have had at least a trench lighter
and also an eternal match. My novel was
set in 1926, well into the period of the early lighters. Case closed and technology not incorrectly
used in a historical context. This is
how every such story should end?, begin?, be?
Thus we will start in the past and look at
the history of technology so we can write better and correct novels. I should mention, as an aside, many times the
climax or the telic flaw resolution (same thing) of our novels depend on
technology, especially new technology.
Let’s keep it all historical and reasonable, shall we?
What about the past? I tell my classes all the time, the things
that didn’t get recorded in history are those we really want to know—the
mundane and the extraordinary. The
mundane didn’t get recorded because of the cost of writing and materials. I’ll get to that. The extraordinary didn’t always get recorded
because everyone knew it. Why record
what everyone already knew. So much for
history.
For historical knowledge, we have to look
at the literature, the archeology, other ancient societies and cultures we see
in the modern era, and interpolation with a little reverse extrapolation. I should write this as a list:
1. Writing
2. Archeology
3. Modern cultures and
societies that reveal ancient practices
4. Interpolation
5. Reverse extrapolation
What about writing? Writing from the ancients can be trusted as
long as it passes the bibliographical tests.
In fact, we use the bibliographical tests for all things historical to
prove their veracity. If they pass the
tests sufficiently, we can trust them as documents of history (artifacts of
history). This is technically called the
historical-legal method because it is used in a court of law to determine
witness and to prosecute criminals. We
also use the exact same methods to determine the witness of history. So what are the bibliographical tests:
1. Document (number and
state)
2. Internal
3. External
The document (number and state) is the
first test. Before the printing press
(even after the printing press) all documents were handwritten. This went on until about 1450 AD. What is important to note is that we have no
original documents from before about 600 AD—that means every one we have was
hand copied from either another copy or the original. That doesn’t mean these documents are not
verifiable or not accurate. It simply
means we need to use the historical legal method to determine their veracity. The first test is the number of copies we
have of the document.
For most of antiquity, the number of
documents is about 1 for a text. Having
more than one is automatically a great boon.
I should point out some of these works in history and I will, next.
|
Author |
Written |
Earliest Copy |
Time Span |
Number of Copies |
|
Catallus |
54 BC |
1550 AD |
1600 |
3 |
|
Pliny the Younger (History) |
61-113 AD |
850 AD |
750 |
7 |
|
Plato (Tetralogies) |
427-347 BC |
900 AD |
1200 |
7 |
|
Euripedes |
480-406 BC |
1100 AD |
1500 |
9 |
|
Caesar (Gaelic Wars) |
100-44 BC |
900 AD |
1000 |
10 |
|
Aristotle |
384-322 BC |
1100 AD |
1400 |
49 |
|
Sophocles |
496-406 BC |
1000 AD |
1400 |
193 |
|
New Testament |
50-99 AD |
130 AD |
80 |
24,633 |
|
Matthew |
70-90 AD |
200 AD |
130 |
|
|
Mark |
50-70 AD |
225 AD |
175 |
|
|
Luke |
70-90 AD |
200 AD |
130 |
|
|
John |
90-99 AD |
130 AD |
40 |
This is just a short example of some works
that compare the number of manuscripts and the time span between the earliest
copy and the original. I’ll get to that
soon.
As I wrote, there are no originals for any
document from antiquity (about 600 AD).
The main way we begin to look at the veracity of any document in
antiquity is by the number of copies we have.
The greater the number of copies, the greater the chance we know what
the original writing actually was. How’s
that?
The greater number of copies allows us to
compare the copes and determine the possible textual differences. You must understand this about ancient
documents. They are all mnemonics. They are meant to be memorized and the text
is used to remember and know the exact verbiage in it. There are no spaces between the words, no
sentences, no paragraphs, no punctuation, no chapters, no breaks. In some cases dependent on the language,
there are no vowels. Only the Greeks and
the Koreans invented vowels, thus the other earlier languages that are written
hove zero vowels. This makes reading
without prior memorization almost impossible.
The ultimate point is that all these
ancient scrolls (there are no books until about 300 AD), were never meant to be
read cold. They are read like Torah
scrolls today. The reader memorizes the
text and uses the text to recite the exact words when they are read. Also, in antiquity, all reading was done out
loud. People did not read on their own
or silently. The purpose of reading was
an active and potentially an entirely public concept. That’s not to say some scholars might not
read alone, but the very idea was nearly impossible. We’ll look at the history of the scroll, but
I need to get back to the historical-legal means of proving the veracity of the
text.
With the number of copies, we can
accurately say we have the original text.
One isn’t enough, but it’s good.
Many are great because we can compare the differences in the text from
one copy to another and ensure we have the accurate and correct text. That’s when we apply the second part of the
bibliographical test of the accuracy of the transmission of the text. This is the span between the original and the
earliest copy. I’ll get to that, next.
I should mention that the main reason the
number of copies of a document in antiquity is so important is that it tells us
how accurate the copies and the overall document is.
Because there was no dictionary until
Samual Johnson in Britain and Webster in America, American and British English
spellings were not standardized. No one
imagined standardizing spellings in the ancient world. This is the main difference we see in ancient
works and copies—the spellings and many times the verb tenses are
different. With a single text, we know
we have some copy and possibly an accurate one.
With multiple copies, we can compare them and determine what the
original most likely said. Now, to span
of time.
When we write about span of time, we mean
between the original and the copies or copy.
I listed some in the chart. I
intentionally chose documents that have multiple copies and shorter spans. If you notice, the average or normal span of
time for almost every document in antiquity is around 1000 years or more. There are a few oddities like Pliny at around
750, but most are 1000 years or older. In
documents in antiquity, 1000 years plus is the norm, and only one set of
documents are found closer than this.
I’ll get to that later.
By the way, this is also true of non-Western
documents which tend to be in much worse shape from a historical-legal
standpoint.
Now, about span of time. It should be obvious that the time span
between the original and the copy will indicate the accuracy of the copy. The shorter the span, the more accurate the
copy. The reasons for this should be
obvious. With a shorter span, the observers
or readers of the original might be alive and able to accurately guide the
copy. Also, those who lived in the times
or remembered the times might write either a rebuttal or a confirmation. We find these rarely in ancient literature
except in Christian texts. In fact,
Christian apostolic fathers confirm not just Christian texts, but also secular
texts. Plus, many secular texts provide
incite into the times especially of the Christin sect. I’ll explain some of that later, but what is
most interesting in ancient writing is the means of propagation. I’ll move on to the internal tests soon, but
I want to mention how people wrote and read texts in the past.
Our picture of the ancients and literature
is like our approach to literature today.
This is one of the greatest myths caused by technology and cultural ignorance. As I wrote, the texts of the ancient world
had no spaces between the words, no sentences, no paragraphs, no chapters, no
punctuation, many times no vowels (dependent on the culture: Greek of Korean
only had vowels). What this means is
that the entire texts were mnemonics.
This means the reader previously memorized the entire work and used the
text to remember and guide the actual “reading.” Because reading was out loud and usually to a
group, reading itself was a very different occupation than in the modern world. How can this be, and how did one memorize the
text?
I’ll start with the idea of
memorization. A scroll costs about
$50,000 in modern USA dollars. My class
tells me I should recompute this number to be higher due to inflation. Perhaps.
The cost point of view comes from the current cost of a Torah scroll
(five to make a complete Torah at $50,000 each) which is about $50,000 times 5. The ancient costs can be found, usually in
ancient monetary units, but usually the term equal to a 40 acre farm is
provided in a few French and early Medieval texts. Not long ago a 40 acre farm in the USA was
worth about $50,000, but my classes have pointed out that this is too low a
number for a modern 40 acre partial. In
any case, let’s use the $50,000 for a normal scroll cost.
When you bought a scroll, a scroll slave
came along with it. I’ll go there, next.
We perceive the world through our cultural
blinders—I want you to put on your himation for a little and use the mind of
the Greeks or at least the mind of the ancients. Imagine a world where literacy is based almost
entirely on mnemonics. Where the point
of writing is to remember exactly what a text or specifically a person didn’t
necessarily write but instead created with their mind. What does that mean?
In the ancient world, when I wanted to
write a letter or a scroll or anything I would all for the librais. A librais would come to my house or business
with writing materials. They would give
me a choice of which kind of substrate: parchment or papyrus and the quality as
well as the ink, from high quality to low quality. With the cost of a Torah scroll at about
$50,000, you can imagine the cost of a letter or any other document.
I would tell the librais what I wanted to
say, or my thoughts and the librais would put my words into the best Greek he
knew as will as into the classical Greek form of logos to unstated telos. I’ll explain this later, but this is critical
to understanding especially ancient Greek, but also other languages.
The librais would put my words into
classical Greek and the logos to telos form.
The librais would read back my thoughts and make corrections then take
the manuscript back to his “office.” Back at the office, the librais or a librais
in training would make three copies of the scroll. The librais would then bring back the three
copies for approval. Any corrections
would be made by the librais and one copy would go to the author, one copy to
the librais, and the final copy would go to the target of the letter or the
document. Just like the New Testament
letters and Gospels, a missive or a scroll in the ancient world always has some
target. In the ancient times, the
address or subscription would be on the opposite side of the scroll, and this
is why we find so few in the copies we have.
The copiers didn’t see any point in recording the back side of the
scrolls. They words of the scroll were
enough and because the copiers were so close to the times, events, and people,
they knew the sources and the targets.
They knew everything about the documents—that’s why they were copying
them. There was no reason for additions
or subscriptions because they knew.
Further, when I sent a copy of the
document to the target or the recipient, I sent a scroll slave. A scroll slave came with every scroll sold in
the marketplace. The scroll slave
memorized the contents and “read” them to the target of the letter or
scroll. The scroll slave would remain
with the scroll until the recipient had memorized the text—then they
returned. In some cases, if the writer
could not afford a scroll slave, they would deliver the work themselves and read
it and teach it to the recipient. This
is accountably rare, although a writer might send a scroll (letter) along with
a traveler who had memorized the text.
Paul recount this about some of his letters—they being hand delivered by
some traveler or friend or compatriot.
The point is that for all documents in the ancient world, they were hand
delivered and read out loud for the purpose to memorization of the
recipients. We know this about the Torah
and Tanahk documents as well.
The librais method is one of those
concepts I mentioned that I tell my classes about what information got recorded
in the ancient world. Information about
the mundane or common was not recorded, but we see all kinds of evidence of it
in the documents. When Paul writes about
his copies of his letters, we know he means the copies the librais gave
him. We see this in a couple of
places. When Paul writes to Timothy to
tell him everything recorded by writing is worth study, we know he means that
anything a person was willing to spend thousands of equivalent dollars to
record must be worthwhile for study. The
cost of making a scroll and literature was so great that everything written, in
the minds of the ancients must be worthwhile.
Now, think about the idea of literature
and writing in the ancient world and what that meant to the people. It isn’t at all what we think about
writing. I’ll get into that, next.
In the ancient world, the people did not
read the text of a scroll as much as they memorized the text and used the text
in the scroll to remember what they had memorized. This is really different than our view of
writing and of literature. If you
remember, a scroll slave or a letter carrier/reader came with every scroll and
letter. Every letter was a small or
short scroll. The carrier had memorized
the text. Now, before you get in a tizzy
about the memorization, remember this about the text.
The text of a scroll was considered
mnemonics. You were able to read the
text because you had heard and remembered it.
The power of this for the reader and the hearer was that you also got
the inflections, pronunciations, emotions, and other factors from the
reader. A reader didn’t just read the
text, they articulated the text as they had heard it. They didn’t need punctuation or sentences or
spaces or paragraphs because they had heard the original writer or the scroll
slave’s rendition of the text.
This gave much greater understanding to
the hearer than even our punctuation and writing can do today. As an aside, or as an adjunct to the
technology of writing and the change to how we view it today, think training
texts. In training texts, the Greeks and
especially the Romans wanted to educated their youth in reading and
writing. Reading more than writing. Writing was a librais job, and not fit for
the noble or wealthy. It was a
secretarial type work in the ancient world.
Important, but not noble. However, every Roman and Greek wanted their
children to be literate. To learn texts
without a scroll slave required spaces between the words. These teaching texts were used extensively to
train young minds about reading. As the
costs of scrolls and writing decreased the cost, technical, and cultural burden
of no spaces became acceptable to the educated.
The moment spaces were acceptable, all scrolls suddenly had spaces. With spaces, the reader could read a text
without a scroll slave and the cost of literacy went down by a great
amount. Remember, this was a cultural
and societal change as well as a technological and economic change. People who were used to no spaces as an intellectual
concept had to be convinced, plus the owners, trainers, and sellers of scroll
slaves went quickly out of business.
The next stage in writing was to introduce
punctuation as well as paragraphs and sentences to the text. You can see these changes in the manuscripts
of the Bible as they gained spaces, then punctuation, finally chapter breaks
and verses much later. In Jewish texts,
you see the addition of vowel pointlets based on the Aramaic into the Hebrew
texts. These were Masoretic additions
around 900 to 1000 AD. The addition of
vowels to the Hebrew made reading possible when reading without memorization of
the text before was impossible. This, by
the way, is one of the evidences in history that proves beyond a shadow of a
doubt that early texts were all mnemonics.
If a text could not be read and understood without memorization, as is
true for modern Torah scrolls that the rabbis allow to be “read” in the
synagogue—then the text is all mnemonics.
As I wrote, this is how writing began and to be very specific, a text
generally could not be read without a scroll slave or other person who had
already memorized the text. I want this
to be clear because it is a critical piece of information about the ancient
world.
Back to the bibliographical tests of the
historical-legal method. The number of
copies of a scroll we have means we are more certain that we have the actual
text of the original. For example, we
are about a magnitude more confident we have the entirety of the original words
of the New Testament documents than of all other texts in antiquity. This is just a comparison, but puts an
important perspective on the accuracy and authenticity of the works in
antiquity and of the New Testament specifically.
The span between the original and the
earliest copy we have is also an important measure. This tells us just how accurate the document
that we have is. If the earliest copies
are similar to the later copies we can conclude they are authentic and their
history is accurate. For span, the
documents of the New Testament are again over a magnitude better than other
documents in antiquity. This is
significant.
Now, just because you know the document
was the same or very similar to the original doesn’t mean the work is
historically verifiable. There are other
tests we can use to prove the verifiability of the witness. By the way, if these other two tests:
internal and external pan out, the bibliographical tests are accentuated. We will look at the internal test, next.
The main reason we use the bibliographical
tests first is to establish the authenticity and the quality of the texts. A document with many manuscript copies and a
short span between the original and the copy is automatically considered an
authentic source for historical use.
This is the problem for many works in antiquity as opposed to the New
Testament documents. Most documents in
antiquity have only one copy and the span is usually greater than 1000 years,
but that’s what we have to work with.
Once we have established the authority of
the text in terms of it’s authenticity in history, we then look at the internal
tests.
The internal tests look at the claims of
the document as well as it’s pedigree in time and place. This is where we begin to use the primacy of
evidence like what we would expect for historical-legal. After all the historical-legal method is used
specifically in a court of law to establish guilt or innocence. It is very important to note that a document
with a very high pedigree from the bibliographical tests is always considered
more accurate than one that is of lower pedigree. For example, any of the New Testament
documents with their over a magnitude of copies and span difference would be
automatically considered at the highest pinnacle of authority and any other
document of lower pedigree would not compare.
However, we then go to the internal tests to see what the historical
veracity and claims are.
Here is an outline of the internal tests:
n
Lack of internal contradictions
n
Cohesiveness and comprehensible
n
Degree of the witness
n
Primary, secondary, tertiary
n
Geographically
n
Chronologically
n
Historical claims
n
Myth
n
Fiction
n
Opinion
The bibliographical tests can only tell us
how well the document text has been passed down to us from antiquity—the
internal tests begin to look at the internal claims in the documents. Of primary concern is the lack of internal
contradictions. This is not in
comparison to any external factors or other documents. This is completely
internal.
I’ve
studies perhaps the entire corpus of documents in antiquity and I can assure
you, many are crazy filled with internal contradictions. Just look at the Egyptian Book of the Dead
in its many (5 known) varieties. The
very idea of spells crafted for the dead to use after death should immediately
serve as an internal warning signal.
Further, the major texts defining religious subjects from the past are
all similar—perhaps not as bad as claims to be spells for use after death, but
of equal value in terms of contradictions from reality. For example, the Zoroastrianism Zend-Avesta
and Pahlavi Texts are both revelations from beyond the grave and human
world that explain the ideas and lands of the gods. These are very typical of most religious
texts from antiquity. I could list
hundreds for you to compare and provide many examples. The internal contradictions are awe
inspiring. That is claims to be
revelations from beyond death or outside of the known universe, but within
these bounds, we simply need to look at the cohesiveness and comprehensibility
of the texts. I could provide examples,
perhaps a little from the Bundahis.
“0.
In the name of the creator Aûharmazd.
1.
The Zand-âkâs ('Zand-knowing or tradition-informed), which is first about
Aûharmazd's original creation and the antagonism of the evil spirit and
afterwards about the nature of the creatures from the original creation till
the end, which is the future existence (tanû-i pasinö). 2. As revealed
by the religion of the Mazdayasnians, so it is declared that Aûharmazd is
supreme in omniscience and goodness, and unrivalled in splendour; the region
of light is the place of Aûharmazd, which they call 'endless light,' and the
omniscience and goodness of the unrivalled Aûharmazd is what they call
'revelation.' 3. Revelation is the explanation of both spirits together; one is
he who is independent of unlimited time, because Aûharmazd and the region,
religion, and time of Aûharmazd were and are and ever will be; while Aharman in
darkness, with backward understanding and desire for destruction, was in the
abyss, and 'it is he who will not be; and the place of that destruction, and
also of that darkness, is what they call the 'endlessly dark.' 4. And between
them was empty space, that is, what they call 'air,' in which is now their
meeting.”
You
can read this text over and over—it’s not a bad translation although I’m not an
expert in this language. Keep reading it
over and over—if you find this cohesive and comprehendible, I salute you—you
may be the only person in the world.
Perhaps you could qualify as a priest of Zoroastrianism. I’m being facetious. I don’t mean to be completely dismissive of
these types of texts, but such ideas are not comprehensible or cohesive. A simple reading or a complex one will tell
you that immediately. By comparison,
documents, especially in the Greek which do claim to be historical accounts are
positively easy to understand and completely internally cohesive. I will need to explain about Greek writing
eventually, but we will get there. The
important point is that we can look at the basic document and see if it is
understandable and internally contradicting.
We don’t look at any external knowledge or source at this point;
however, we do need to look a the degree of witness.
I’ll
get to the degree of witness, next.
The degree of witness is a critical
element in the legal-historical method.
We identify three basic degrees of witness: primary, secondary, and
tertiary. I like to add a fourth that is
tongue in cheek, quatriary which is no witness at all. I’ll get to that.
A primary witness is a witness of the
actual events recorded in the text. Thus
a primary witness heard and saw the events during a specific event or in a
place. I like to use the example of
Lincoln’s assassination as an example.
Licoln’s wife sat right next to him during the assassination—she is a
primary witness to the events. In a
court of law, her witness would be considered acceptable and reasonable. That is a primary witness.
A secondary witness is one who recorded
the events from the witness of a primary source or witness. Thus, the reporter or committee who
interviewed Mrs. Lincoln after the fact, would be a secondary witness. Any secondary witness in a court is
considered hearsay and is usually not allowed in a court of law. Only primary witness is usually allowed in a
court. I will note that it has become
more and more normal for secondary and worst witness to be allowed in the
courts—this is entirely contrary to normal Western Law and considered an
abomination by those who understand this issue.
If you allow hearsay (secondary witness) in a court, you are becoming
worse than the Salem witch trials or the Soviet trials (when they had a
trial). Newspapers are usually
considered a secondary witness because they are written by journalists who
interviewed the primary source and then wrote down their words and observations—we
hope. You can see where the problem with
a secondary witness can be—in modern journalism, the penchant for making the
story fit a trope narrative idea is way too common, so the actual truth in the
account may be completely the opposite of what the journalist heard or the
events that happened. Typically a modern
type of propaganda. This is why hearsay
is not allowed in a normal courtroom and why in history, it is considered much
lessor than a primary witness.
Tertiary witness is everything that isn’t
primary or secondary. A tertiary witness
is all the history books you are forced to read in school or your classes. They are the masticated opinions of their
authors and may or may not give you an accurate view of the events or the
history. They might include quotes and quotations
from other sources, which is great; however, the real indicator is that no real
historian would ever use a tertiary source as any kind of historical source
unless no other primary or secondary source existed. You can’t learn actual history from anything
except an eyewitness to the history. If
you don’t have an eyewitness, you are forced to go to a secondary source, and if
you don’t have a primary or secondary source, you might have to go to a
tertiary source.
I’m writing about writing here, but you
might ask—what about archeology or painting or perhaps other media like
photographs and videos. I’ll touch on
all that because we need to look at the chronographical and geographical basis of
the witness. In writing, the chronographical
and geographical basis are easy to define, but not necessarily as easy to determine. Chronograhical is the time of the writing,
while geographical is the place of the writing.
Both are very important and have a lot to do with other media
witness. I’ll give a quick explanation
and then write more about this, next.
For writing, we want to know if the
witness is contemporary with the times and place of the events and people
mentioned. For example, Josephus was not
alive during any of the times he wrote about.
He was geographically placed, but not chronologically placed. In other words, Josephus, who is the secular
worlds greatest basis for the history of the first century levant didn’t not
observe any of the history. His witness
is, at best, secondary and most assuredly tertiary. That puts a real kabosh on his historicity
and witness. More interesting is Herodotus
whose writing is contemporary chronologically with the times, but his
geographical presence has been questioned in the modern era. In other words, Herodotus lived in the times,
but was not present in the places he claimed to be during those times. Both of these bring into question the witness
of the writing. As I wrote, I’ll look at
this and the differences in media and witness (there is none really) as well as
quatriary witness, next.
Witness is the most important and first
point about the internal test. As I
wrote, we look for primary (eyewitness) sources, and except for unbelievable
biases in our historical community, this is what we are suppose to base our
knowledge of history on. I’ll write
about this at some point.
Perhaps the most important part about
degree of witness is that we, as historians, are supposed to assume the higher
the degree of witness (primary is highest) the better the source and the higher
the veracity of the source. Likewise,
for documents that are chronologically and geographically authentic, the degree
drives the veracity of the source.
Veracity, in this case, means the authenticity and the acceptability. Thus a primary source document chronologically
and geographically placed with a high degree of bibliographical support trumps
any other document of lower degree or support.
So, this means that the better a document passes the bibliographical
tests, we assume it is authentic and to counter the claims of that document,
you must provide a document of better authenticity and of a higher degree. If we had two documents of equal authenticity
(bibliographical acceptability) and unequal degree, the primary degree
(eyewitness) document would always be considered of higher veracity than the
lower secondary or tertiary degree document.
This is why, except for historical prejudice, the documents of the New
Testament are to be considered the highest veracity of all historical documents
in antiquity. They are all primary
source documents to some degree chronologically and geographically placed with bibliographical
authenticity that is literally magnitudes above any other document in
antiquity. Thus a class studying the
first Century levant should pull out the documents of the New Testament, but
for prejudicial reasons, the professors always give you Josephus which is a
tertiary and potentially a secondary degree source at best with much lower authenticity
although Josephus is much better than many other documents in antiquity. It was caught up the New Testament fervor for
historical information. That’s likely enough
on this subject, however, this should help cement the basis for historical
documents in antiquity and the internal test.
I need to mention the last point about these documents and that is
claims. I’ll also circle back around to cohesiveness
and comprehensibility.
What does the document claim to be and
do? Herodotus and Thucydides as well as
other Greek historians claims to be producing historical documents from things
they saw and people they interviewed.
These are historical claims to be records of history. The Greeks invented the historical-legal
method about and before the time of Herodotus, in about 500 BC, thus the claims
to historical accuracy and history were a reference to the historical
method. It should be no surprise that
the New Testament documents follow this objectivity of claims about historical
authority—they are Greek historical-legal documents of mostly primary degree. This is not true of may documents in
antiquity.
Documents in antiquity many times make certain
claims that you can’t miss. For example,
the Egyptian Book of the Dead claims to be spells used by the dead while
dead. How these spells were discovered,
determined, tested, or even conceived is not explained. Many other documents in antiquity claim to be
myth or the stories of the gods and not historical at all. Many documents make no claims like the Odyssey
and the Iliad. The fact that a document from
antiquity does not make any claim at all usually points to myth or epic saga. There are plenty of epic sagas in Greek,
Anglo-Saxon, and a few other languages from the past. In this case, if we have contemporary writing
chronologically and geographically placed, we can make judgements concerning
the veracity and historicity of the document.
For example, although the documents of the Torah and Tanahk are both chronologically
and to some degree geographically isolated, the Greeks wrote extensively about
both as amazing antient accounts of the Hebrew people and great histories. The fact they were both translated as LXX
(the Septuagint) in the centuries before the first shows just how influential they
were in Greek culture and ideas.
As the Zoroastrianism documents, which
claim to be descriptions of the ideas and concepts of the gods show, these kinds
of claims are not to history at all, but to an arcane knowledge of something
outside of human understanding and the human world. That’s not to say such works are not
worthwhile as documents in history—they just aren’t documents of history, and
they don’t claim to be. They are exactly
what they claim to be—and from a historical standpoint, that is the ultimate
problem. For example, you can certainly
learn that almost every infraction of the code of Hammurabi will result in death
in his time and culture, but you won’t learn much else. Hammurabi’s code is great from a historical standpoint
as a type of legal code, but not great as history. There is little historical in it except it is
a legal code. The framework is missing,
but at least, it is historical and comprehensible. It is certainly not coherent from a
philosophical standpoint.
Back to claims. The code of Hammurabi simply claims to be a
code of laws. It is much less sophisticated,
descriptive, understandable, or farmed as well as the Torah of the Hebrews, but
it is an early code of laws—that’s it.
It is at the best a secondary, and perhaps a tertiary source—you can’ tell. It simply list the code from the courthouse. Who wrote it?
Hammurabi? Who knows? What is the reason for it? Who knows?
It is a code of laws, but at least it does have a great place in history—not
necessarily as history, but as an artifact frozen in time of the code of laws
for those people and their culture. On
the other hand, there are documents I describe as quatriary.
Quatriary documents claim nothing and
provide nothing in terms of historical information. They don’t give us any kind of historical
basis and most are incomprehensible. The
Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Zoroastrianism documents are just some
examples of quatriary documents. The Hindu
and Shinto documents are similar. Some
Hindu documents provide some degree of information about myth and stories of the
gods, like Greek myths, but they are worthless as histories. They do tell us something about the times and
cultures, sometimes, but most are spells and paeans to the gods. They relate magical solutions to real world
problems or not. Certainly, I hope you
aren’t memorizing the spells from the Book of the Dead for use after
death. I’m not sure they work, but you can’t
prove one way or the other. The Hindu
spells are somewhat more provable, but I suggest reading The Golden Bough before
you get too deeply into them as spells.
Check to see if the ingredients in their combinations will kill you too.
So quatriary documents (I use this term
tongue in cheek) are those that have been passed to use through antiquity but
do not provide any reasonable history except to perhaps understand the intricacies
of the lack of human understanding of the world. I’ll move on to the external tests, next.
There’s more.
I want to write another book based on Rose
and Seoirse, and the topic will be the raising of Ceridwen—at least that’s my
plan. Before I get to that, I want to write another novel about
dependency as a theme. We shall see.
More
tomorrow.
For
more information, you can visit my author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel
websites:
http://www.ancientlight.com/
http://www.aegyptnovel.com/
http://www.centurionnovel.com
http://www.thesecondmission.com/
http://www.theendofhonor.com/
http://www.thefoxshonor.com
http://www.aseasonofhonor.com
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