[clue-talk] How do CLUEbies vote?

[Jed S. Baer]

On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 12:28:56 -0600
Kevin Cullis wrote:

> From my History degree the one thing that I remember is the concept  
> of primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are first hand  
> accounts of something while secondary sources are writings about  
> primary sources. All of the Bible manuscripts are primary sources,  
> not secondary ones.

I'm afraid you'll have to do better than that, at least from my point of
view. Just to play advocatus diaboli, I'll point out that there are
extant many primary source accounts describing alien abduction. Simply
labeling something "primary" doesn't automatically impute veracity.

I'll quote David: For what it's worth, Mark probably didn't write verses
9 onward.

Hmm, well then, who was the author? If we don't know who the author was,
then how do we know whether he's a primary source?

I ran across a mention, in a treatise on Lutherans, that Martin Luther
himself stated unequivocably that Paul was not the author of the epistle
to the Hebrews. Same question.

When I think of primary sources, I think of things such as first-hand,
eyewitness accounts, e.g. battlefield reports from Gen. Patton. The
pentatuech is ascribed to Moses, but clearly, he wasn't present at
creation. Of course, I've also read that Moses didn't literally write the
pentatuech, but rather that is was oral history for a time before being
commited to clay or parchment or whatever was used. (Sorry, don't have a
source for that, it was probably in a commentary on the Torah or
Judaism that I came across at some point.)

jed