Which brings us back to the issue of what exactly people mean by these terms. Traditionally, the two terms have been used interchangeably. More recently, historians have tended to avoid the term "Dark Ages" because it's loaded with outdated and largely erroneous nineteenth century value judgements. British historians do still use it, but apply it very specifically to the poorly documented centuries directly following the withdrawal of Rome from Britannia, up to perhaps the eighth century at the latest. Generally, historians now divide the Middle Ages (c 500-1500 AD) into two broad sub-periods: the Early Middle Ages (c 500-1000 AD) and the Later or High Middle Ages (c 1000-1500 AD). Almost all of the technologies I mentioned were either invented, developed or put into much more widespread and effective use in the Early Middle Ages. It was only the last group, which I mentioned separately as later developments thanks to the economic booms enabled by the earlier technical advances (i.e. "eye glasses, effective gunpowder weapons, complex mechanical clocks and the printing press") that are the products of the Later Middle Ages without any earlier medieval antecedents.
@TimONeill, I'm not going to waste my time going point by point over your comments, because I have more important things to do, but I will say that I found your critique of Nixey's book before I ever posted this thread. I also found it rather shallow. Nixey makes no claims about writing an academic work, she states quite clearly that she's trying to give folks a broad introduction to the concepts. Sort of like how A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn gives a different view of American history than is commonly presented, but one would be hard-pressed to consider it an absolutely authoritative work. What's really weird is that you showed up here. There are two possibilities as to why you decided to visit this particular armpit of the interwebs: 1.) Somebody decided to let you know about it. This seems unlikely to me but is possible. 2.) You have a Google Alert for any mention of Nixey. The first seems unlikely, the second seems to be the most probable. Especially if one looks over your website. You seem to have a nearly religious zeal for ensuring that people subscribe to your version of history. This I find a bit odd. And here's why: You seem to think that the various flaws in Nixey's work mean that it should be tossed out completely. This isn't necessarily an unreasonable view. She admits, after all, that she's not aiming for an academic work, but for something that will engage the masses. There are bound to be "mistakes" and over-simplifications in such a view, but it doesn't mean that it's entirely wrong. I do have to wonder if you'd go after someone for using the phrase "tongue lashing" with the same vitriol you have for Nixey's use of the word "flaying" when it comes to Hypatia. After all, no matter how one might object to a tongue lashing, it doesn't at all compare to being whipped. Additionally, and this is really key, you seem to think that because Nixey isn't 100% correct, her writings on the subject should be discarded, yet if I were to suggest that because of the various fabrications in the New Testament (of which both of us will agree there are many) the idea that we should accept there really was a person who could be identified as Jesus (even if he didn't perform the various miracles ascribed to him) is bullshit, you'd vehemently disagree. Now, I know that you'll be more than happy to point to scholars like Bart Ehrman as an atheist expert who doesn't doubt that Jesus was a real person. My response to that is Bart Ehrman has done the most to convince me that the figure of Jesus is an amalgam of both fictional creations and real individuals. Take a listen to this interview with Bart. In it, you'll hear him talking about how he assumed that the stories of the empty tomb were embellishments of what actually happened, only to discover that under Roman law, there was literally no way for an individual who had been crucified to be interred in a tomb. If you were crucified, this meant that your remains were allowed to stay on the cross until they rotted and fell off. Hmm. If the New Testament got that wrong, then what else did it get wrong? You want to convince me that Jesus was real? Then start from the premise that the New Testament is considered absolute fiction by many and try to disprove that. Schliemann upended European thought by finding Troy. You want me to accept that there really was a person named Jesus who inspired a religious movement? Find me the kind of proof Schliemann did. Otherwise, don't expect me to toss out what Nixey has to say based on your comments. If her stuff's absolute bullshit, then so is the entirety of the New Testament, and the idea that there was a person we can identify as Jesus (rather than being a figure who is an amalgam of both fictional and real people).
Wait, have you identified @TimONeill as the author of the History for Athiests blog? I'd wondered that he might be.
He posted a link to it, and said that it was his, so.... unless he's someone else that's lying it would seem reasonable to me that he is the same Tim O'Neill.
Hey, @Tuckerfan, out of curiosity, do you believe that the historical Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, actually lived and existed?
The man we know as Christ was actually a disenchanted time traveler from 1970 named Carl Glogauer, who discovered the real Jesus was a congenital imbecile incapable of speaking anything but his own name, and stepped in.
That's a very eloquent post, but if I understand it correctly, I have trouble accepting its conclusion. Perhaps I am getting your point wrong, but it seems to me that you are saying: (1) There are many reasons to doubt the claims made in the New Testament. (2) There are similar reasons to doubt the claims either made by Nixey, or taken by Nixey from similarly wobbly historical sources. (3) Yet many people still use the New Testament as a source. (4) Therefore, it should be ok to argue with Nixey as a source as well. But that would just leave us with two potentially bad sources. If the NT is a bad source, don't use it; if you do want to use it, show that it is a good source. If Nixey is a bad source, don't use her; if you do want to use her, show that she is good. You shouldn't say that because some people think there are reasons to trust the NT while you don't, we should trust Nixey even though we have no good reason to do so.
@Federal Farmer, you have homework. Look up Medieval Lives by Terry Jones on YouTube and report back with a 500 word essay, ese.
I haven't read this thread entirely through, or fully the contributions of Mr. O'Neill, so apologies if this post is redundant. But I have to say I have always approached the New Testament as being an serious of myths and legends built upon a framework of historical events. It records confirmed historical events and much of it was authored within living memory of those events, such as the Pauline contributions. I'm not sure anyone can claim "absolute work of fiction" or conclusively that Jesus did or did not exist. For that reason any discussion of the existence of elements of religion like Jesus can never be completely conclusive either way. One has to examine third party, contemporaneous evidence at the very least before trying to draw a likelihood as opposed to a declaration of fact. Nixey, however worded, is just the next in a long line of commentators trying to do this among other things, no? As presumably is Mr. O'Neill who, ultimately seems to rely on historians that offer him his own personal confirmation bias, if his linked blog is anything to go by.
Don't know. The same could be said of Confucious, who was a contemporary of the Buddha (both lived about 500 years before Jesus, assuming any of them were real) and both of them didn't have their stories written down until long after they were said to have died. There are, BTW, huge commonalities between the stories of the conception, birth, and lives of all three figures, leading some people to conclude that they're all inspired by the same myth.
My point is that if you're going to toss out Nixey completely, because you think that she makes mistakes, then you have to do the same with the New Testament. If you're going to say that there's a kernel of truth to the New Testament, such as there really was someone named Jesus, who inspired the New Testament, even if he wasn't a supernatural being, then you can't toss out Nixey's work because she gets a few minor details wrong. Now, so far as I've been able to tell, and I'm willing to admit that I'm wrong about this, all Tim O'Neil has been able to show about Nixey's book is that she's gotten some minor details wrong. Sort of like how some people will argue that the Civil War in the US ended slavery, while other folks will point out that many African-Americans experienced conditions similar to slavery long after the war ended. So while it might be correct to say that the Civil War ended slavery, that doesn't mean that African-Americans were treated as equal to whites after the war. Were I to hold Bart Erhman to the same standard that O'Neill holds Nixey, I'd have to discard all of Ehrman's work, because he has made what some would call a minor mistake (though others would say they were major ones). If you were to ask me who might be the figure(s) that inspired the story of Jesus, I'd have to go with Antigonus II Mattathias and they enigmatic founder of the sect at Nag Hammadi. Mattathias claimed to be the king of the Jews and wound up getting crucified for it, while the leader of the sect at Nag Hammadi was certainly a charismatic individual who apparently taught many of the same things as Jesus did, long before Jesus is thought to have lived. One might as well try and point to who really was King Arthur or the first emperor of China (the Qin Dynasty is the first that we can actually document, but Chinese mythology is filled with others who came before him).
Neither of those comparisons seems apt to me, because several (not all) of the false claims in Nixey are easily avoidable factually false statements. If a current scholar of history produced a book as vague as the Gospels, they would be immediately dismissed. If we do use the NT as a source, we do so because we have very few better sources from their time on their subject. That is not the case with Nixey at all. Nor is most of the criticism the same as arguing about when slavery ended. The two positions you present about the Civil War agree on material fact, just not on its evaluation. That is a good comparison for some of the points, such as the quisquilia about what constitutes flaying. But many of the other false claims in Nixey (*) are more similar to someone trying to make a second order argument about the Civil War while getting several of the basic years and places completely wrong. (*) Assuming she actually does make those claims; I'm believing the critics on that count for now.
Really? Okay, so can you walk us through how a detailed, carefully referenced, 12,000+ word critique that tackles each of Nixey's main arguments in turn could possibly be "shallow". It's "shallow" how exactly? Is there some key argument that I didn't address? Is there some argument that I did address that I only skated over? Because I'm afraid I can see that I've done either. Given that my review has been highly praised by several leading historians of the period, including Levi Roach, Tim Whitmarsh and Dame Averil Cameron and given that it has been included in the required reading material for a university course, I really can't see how it is "shallow". So please explain. I was not under the impression she was writing an academic work or that she was writing anything comprehensive. But I'm afraid the fact she wrote a popular treatment of the subject does not absolve her from the basic requirements of objectivity, balance and taking account of other interpretations. She fails at all three, which is why her book is so poorly regarded by those who know the period well enough that we can see her shifty footwork. There is nothing remotely "weird" about having a blog platform that tracks and lists traffic statistics and trends, hits and referring links on my site and occasionally visiting those links to see what people are saying about my work. Like most bloggers, I do these entirely normal and totally not-weird things. So I'm afraid your "two possibilities" are both dead wrong. If I have an entirely non-religious "zeal" for anything, it's for people to be objective, balanced and well-informed in their analysis, taking into account the relevant expert scholarship as they do so. Nixey does not do these things. There are plenty of people who do do these things and who hold some different views and come to different interpretations to me on all kinds of historical questions. You won't find me bothering with them much. My blog is aimed at people who have an ideological bias and so present badly skewed versions of history as a result. Nixey falls squarely into that category. You keep falling back on the this stuff about Nixey writing a popular non-academic work, as though this somehow excuses her distortions of history. It doesn't. And I have no idea what that strange stuff about about "flaying" or "tongue lashing" even means. I had to read this confused sentence several times to try to work out what on earth you're trying to argue here. I was completely stumped, but you have since made it in a slightly clearer if no less logically incoherent form: This strange argument makes no sense at all, for a number of reasons: (i) To begin with, as I've explained to you in detail at least once, the problem is not that Nixey she "makes mistakes". In fact, she makes very few outright errors of fact. The problem is that she presents a distorted interpretation of those facts by cherry picking examples, projecting exceptional events as normal, uncritically accepting sources when they suit her agenda while being hypercritical of them when they don't and neglecting to tell her readers about alternative interpretations (let alone addressing them), contrary examples or relevant contexts when it suits her. She tells half the story - the half that suits her a priori conclusion - and pretends it is the whole. That's why her conclusions need to be rejected - they are based on selective evidence, presented in a highly melodramatic fashion and dressed up as some radical new perspective. (ii) Comparing Nixey's book to the New Testament texts is not comparing apples to apples. Nixey's book purports to be a popular history that presents interpretation of relevant source material and other data to tell the story of the end of Classical paganism and the rise of Late Roman Christianity. The New Testament texts are a range of first-early second century documents of various kinds produced by early Christian writers and used by critical scholars to determine what these writers believed about Jesus and what this may tell us about how those beliefs arose. The two are nothing like each other. So the problem is not that Nixey merely makes "mistakes" or "gets a few minor details wrong" and the conclusion that a historical Jesus most likely existed is nothing like Nixey's warped and inadequate conclusions. You are mightily confused here. That's nice, but largely irrelevant. And I can't see how Ehrman could have convinced you of a position that he does not hold. He doesn't believe that Jesus is that kind of "amalgam" and I fail to see how reading any of his stuff could lead you to that conclusion. Quite a bit. Again, I fail to see the relevance of any of this, given that Ehrman does not take the gospels at anything like face value and neither do I. That's not actually how this stuff works. But your challenge is pretty easy to meet. Jesus' brother James is clearly attested as a historical person by Paul, who met him, and by Josephus, who was a young man of 26 when James' death caused a political upheaval in Josephus' home town and who records this death and its important political consequences in Antiquities XX.200. So the gospels are not "complete fiction" - we can establish that Jesus existed because non-existent figures don't have flesh and blood brothers who can be solidly attested by two contemporaries. And what all this has to do with Nixey's distortions of history I have no idea. This is pretty silly. Schliemann established that a city called Troy most likely existed at around the right time. Cities are rather easier to establish by archeology than individual early first century preachers. Feel free to "prove" to me any other early first century Jewish preacher, prophet or Messianic claimant existed using archaeological data. Good luck. This argument is a total non sequitur. Nixey's stuff is bullshit, for the reasons I've give you above and gave you once before, not because she "gets a few minor details wrong". And the idea that if the conclusion that Jesus most likely existed is not sustainable (it is, but anyway ...) therefore we have to accept Nixey's book makes no sense at all. Neither does this: There are actually only a few such commonalities and far more differences between the teachings of all three. As for the stories of their "conception, birth, and lives" - the parallels there are few, vague and/or not very compelling. Any similarities are largely because humans often tell stories of significant figures in similar ways. This tells us very little about whether these figures were historical or not, given that they tell these kinds of stories about both historical and purely mythical figures. We have a miraculous conception story about Augustus, signs and portents stories about the births of Muhammad and Genghis Khan, stories of Vespasian healing the blind and lame and an ascension into heaven after death story about Julius Caesar. All these people existed. So any people who think that the stories of Confucius, the Buddha and Jesus are "all inspired by the same myth" don't seem to have thought things through very carefully. Then we get this: Two sources say Antigonus II was beheaded, not crucified, and that includes Josephus, who is most reliable on Jewish affairs compared to later Roman sources. His career as politician, aristocrat and military leader who unsuccessfully fought for kingship over the Jewish people with Herod bears absolutely no resemblance to that of a peasant preacher or anything at all reported about Jesus. And there is no evidence he founded any "sect". There is no such thing as "the sect at Nag Hammadi", which is a site in Egypt that contained some Christian and Gnostic texts that date to centuries after Antigonus' time and are not Jewish. You seem to be getting confused with the Qumran texts, which are Jewish but have no connection to Antigonus at all and only reflect Jesus' reported teachings in that both come from a Jewish context. Otherwise they are markedly different. You seem to be someone who knows just enough to get your ideas highly tangled but not enough to realise you're doing so.
She is a journalist who relies on other historians and some of her own reading of the sources. Unfortunately her "examination" ignores what most actual historians who specialise in the period say, skips over evidence that doesn't suit her agenda, doesn't even mention other interpretations, let alone engage with them, cherry picks what she does present and then puts the spin on her selective evidence that seems, to those who don't know the material and can't see what she is doing, to make it all perfectly clear. That's nonsense. I don't "rely" on just some historians on the subjects I tackle - make a point of reading widely in the work of the leading scholars on the relevant subjects, including those who hold positions I don't entirely agree with. And on most of those topics I also know the source material they are working from extremely well. Finally, I tend to generally go with the consensus position of relevant scholarship. So no, your presumption above is wrong. I'm also intrigued as to what this "personal confirmation bias" you refer to might be. "Bias" toward what, exactly?
I have not read Nixey's books so I would not presume to be able to judge it against general opinion or say that your factual analysis is necessarily incorrect. But when I talk of bias it seems to me you have your view of what is right and correct and will choose which historians to cite to support that, also cherry-picking as you go. After all, isn't that when you're doing in your blog post? I have searched for a review as critical as yours and have failed to find one. Are you saying every single person who has reviewed the book is ignorant except you? I read your credentials, and note that while you do down Nixey an being just a journalist, ignoring her Cambridge education in the classics and career as a teacher, you yourself have scarcely better credentials and I also note have your own critics. You admit that you are not a historian and your mission is arrogantly described as being one of correcting other atheists. However, basic common sense suggests that neither you or the historians upon which you rely will always be correct on everything, even when there are events and "facts" that are generally agreed upon. I note that you even state on your blog that you are happy to patronise and talk down to others with the use of sarcasm if you think they are ill informed. In fact the page I got that from amusingly ends with "I likely know The Bible better than anyone who reads this blog". How pompous. I also note that you say you pick and choose when to cite an authority and when not. Don't get me wrong. I am not attempting to suggest Nixey is in any way correct. But your blog comes across as that of someone who has formed his own opinions of the "truth" and, even if they are better informed than Nixey's, it ultimately still boils down to another person seeking to tell the public what he thinks is correct, picking and choosing which scholarly sources reinforce his views of what he thinks is the most likely to be fact and dismissing any opinion that is contrary (and I note you shy away from debate on there). While your aim to be fair and as accurate as possible historically is an honourable one, and I personally generally veer towards your views if your little breakdown of your main challenges is anything to go by, if you are going to assume that anyone who reads your blog isn't as informed as you, and if you are someone who doesn't really boast academic credentials vastly superior to Nixey's, aren't you at the end of the day also exploiting the presumed ignorance of your readers by insisting to them that you are right on everything or most of what you write? Doing that same as Nixey in other words? Your mission is to essentially set the facts straight as you see them, but even though I have little doubt you are well researched on the various subjects you tackle, I cannot believe that every respected scholar will necessarily agree with all of your opinions and declarations of fact, on what is a highly broad range of areas of research and debate, often where evidence is not always completely conclusive. At the end of the day you have taken a position on what you think is historically accurate, based on your own research and that of others you agree with, and your blog seeks to reinforce that by offering your opinion while citing the sources that support your view, no?
There is a difference between having an informed and considered position on a topic and being "biased". My position is backed by the leading current historians of the relevant period and subjects, whereas Nixey relies on long dismissed antiquarian stuff from centuries ago (especially Gibbon) or refers to parts of current works from people who don't actually support her thesis (e.g. Frend, Reynolds and Wilson, Watts) who she quotes from with curious selectivity or simply misrepresents. The only modern scholar who she uses who leans toward her thesis is Rohmann, who not surprisingly she uses extensively and whose own book has been criticised by other scholars. Unlike Nixey, however, Rohmann is much more careful about using words like "maybe" and "perhaps", whereas Nixey goes full steam ahead with bold statements of fact. So if you want to back up your rather sneering accusation above, you have some hard work to do. You will need to demonstrate that I am "cherry picking" and produce all the modern experts in the relevant subjects that I ignore and that, strangely, Nixey herself also missed. Good luck. No. Most of those reviews are by journalists who, unsurprisingly, are not well read on Late Antiquity and Post-Constantinian Christianity. Most of the rest were by pop history writers (Jones, Snow) who also have no background in the relevant period and subjects or historians of other periods (Thonemann, Wilson, De Groot) who don't have a detailed knowledge of it. But when we get to the reviews by people who actually do have a specialisation in or knowledge of this period (Roach, Cameron, Daintree) they are far more critical and point out the very problems I note. So yes, actually, many of the people who reviewed her book are pretty ignorant of the relevant material compared to me, given that I have been studying this period for over 30 years. Others who are expert in the period and who know far more than me agree with me and have praised and endorsed my critique. So what does that tell you? Anyone who has expressed an opinion on the internet has their critics. And I have never presented myself as being any kind of professional historian, though I have rather superior qualifications to Nixey. But what I am saying is supported by the consensus of modern specialists in the relevant period. What she is saying is not, and hasn't been for about 150 years at least. These are facts. Why is that "arrogant", exactly? And I note that I am only correcting some other atheists - the ones who mangle history and present fringe theories or outdated ideas that are rejected by modern historians. I'm afraid I can't see why you would have a problem with that or what would make it "arrogant". All historians and students of history above high school level realise that. This doesn't mean that therefore any and all positions on the interpretation of the past are therefore equally valid. They aren't. Context is your friend. That humorous comment was made in response to the kind of solicitation I get from a certain type of fundamentalist Christian of a kind who tries to convert me via email. And I know from many decades experience that I DO know the Bible better than they do. I can read the NT in Greek to begin with, which they almost never can. You need to stop claiming that without substantiation. See above. Oh good. That my blog articles are my opinions is a comment without much insight - of course they are. The fact is that I only write on subjects I have studied in detail for many, many years. And I substantiate those opinions with reference to the evidence and to the consensus of modern experts on the relevant subjects. But you keep making this "picking and choosing scholarly sources" claim without substantiating it. This is the third time you've done this. You need to back that up or stop making a claim which is wrong. I strongly suspect you don't have a clue about the scholars I do use and have no idea if I am "picking and choosing" at all (I'm not, as it happens) so are just throwing this out as a weak little attempted slur. But if you really can substantiate this accusation, let's see you do it. No - see above. I'm not "assuming" the positive reviewers of Nixey don't have a sufficient grasp of the period - that's clear from they way they breathlessly repeat her position uncritically and from the fact they have no background in Late Antiquity. And I can assess this because I have studied that period for decades. This is why my critique has been endorsed by several leading experts in that period and has even been set as required reading for a university course. No. No. As I keep telling you, I almost always go with the scholarly consensus. Not just with those scholars who agree with me, but with the positions that are agreed to by the majority of professional scholars in the relevant field or on the relevant topic. I even get criticised by fringe theorists for doing this - as though keeping to the consensus of experts is somehow a bad thing. So I've let you repeat this "cherry picking" and "picking and choosing" slur several times now, but I won't any longer. Either you back that accusation up with substantial examples and evidence that stand up to critical scrutiny or withdraw it and apologise. Over to you.
I hope @TimONeill sticks around. This has encouraged me to consider reading more of the different views on the topic. I do take exception to his dismissal of Gibbon. That strikes me as dismissing Newton because Einstein came along.
I have read the whole of Gibbon twice and own three copies of his Decline and Fall, including two antiquarian editions, so it's not like I'm not a fan. But my "dismissal" is shared by all modern historians of the period. And your Newton and Einstein analogy only works to a certain extent. Gibbon mapped the ground in pulling together many of the key sources, but it's his analysis that is considered wrong. Newton was not actually wrong, but Einstein built on and extended his physics. For your analogy to work, Gibbon would have to be considered right as far as he went, but with modern historians exploring topics and aspects he did not. That's not the case.
Apologise? Ha ha. "Substantial examples"? Take a running jump matey. Seems someone's nerves are a little touched. You signed up to a general debate forum, where people casually talk about things, because someone dared post something about a book you hated and then spout of as if you're the world's last word on the thread topic. As soon as someone does anything other than bow down to your greatness, instead questioning the nature of your approach, you start getting aggressive and demand they have spent as much time reading the subject as you. It's like a seven year medical student pitching up and demanding someone with skills in a different field be as well versed in medicine as they are and demanding their academic take on the best was to perform laparoscopic surgery. All this aggression is all despite the fact that the person you're now being rude to has not actually challenging your substantive opinions? Blimey. Heaven's knows what I'd get if I question any of that. It should be obvious to that grand mind of yours that most people here likely have not spent the years and time completely immersed on the subject matter, so demanding we compete with you is very silly and immature. In fact it is essentially a way of bullying the person you are responding to by attempting to play on them not having spent as much time and detail as you researching the subject matter. The also raises questions of why you signed up in the first place if your objective is simply to talk on this subject and bullying the thread starter and any other members. It also goes back to what I said above. You are playing on the ignorance of the reader. Your argument is now "I know more about it than you so shut the fuck up". Well that's weak sauce, especially since this is not a forum remotely dedicated to your field of study/hobby (obsession?). You cannot demand an apology on one hand on the assumption that the comment you object to was made by a person who was knew it was knowingly false while at the same implying they have inferior subject matter knowledge than you and don't have the requite expertise to compete with you and to know that their statement was knowingly false. Either it's one or the other. As someone who is likely not remotely as immersed in it all as you, you are basically expecting me to trust your conclusions unwaveringly because you say so and because you tell me it reflects the general consensus. That's the whole bloody point of what I am getting at. You already say on your blog that you have detractors and one must assume at least some of those detractors come from people who are more well versed in the subject matter than I or anyone on this board is ever likely to be. How do I know that your detractors aren't much more well versed than someone like Nixey and also start from the point of view of most of the general consensus like you do? They may well be. You are telling me I should trust you simply because you're going after someone that is likely to be widely off base. But how do I know that just because you are closer to the general consensus than Nixey is every aspect of what you say can be trusted? It is precisely because you have detractors, speak in an arrogant tone (something I am no stranger to myself, believe me) and seek to take advantage of those who aren't as well read that one cannot be sure you aren't possessing of an agenda or can be trusted, even if the content of your blog and opinions is generally more reliable than something like Nixey's book. That you get upset the second a layman asks questions of your approach (especially one just making a couple of passing comments) and aggressively demand that the layman reader trust your conclusions until or unless they themselves have spent the years on the subject gives, in my opinion, a questionable impression that engenders doubt. I should not have to be, or expected top be, an academic in the field to simply raise questions on a forum not remotely dedicated to the subject. At the end of the day, general consensus or otherwise, I refuse to believe that you unwaveringly agree with every single thing the general consensus says - and if you don't then that's where your choice to pick, choose and have an opinion comes in to play, hence your very telling use of the word "almost" in terms of scholarly consensus. Even in my profession there is much work done and argued on the basis of general consensus, but there is a reason the advice we give is called an opinion, and even though we are more knowledgeable on the subject matter than the layman, it doesn't mean our advice is not open to challenge and there aren't areas where we sometimes need to form our own view in the absence of indisputable law, opinions that are and should be open to question by both the layman and peers. Apologise? Either grow a thicker skin or bugger off to a place where you can lord it over your research contemporaries.
Oh, okay. Ummm, hardly. It's just if someone spends a whole lot of words making an accusation that they don't bother to back up with examples and evidence, I find it's quickest and easiest to call their bluff and challenge them to do so. When they fail, everyone can draw the most obvious conclusion. I keep inviting others to back up what that say. That probably indicates that I'm pretty confident in my grasp of the subject, but doesn't support your claim above that I see myself as "the world's last word on the thread topic". Nor does the fact that my last post clearly referred to professional historians who "who are expert in the period and who know far more than me". So here we see another failed attempt at sneering. I'm detecting a pattern. More nonsense. You made a claim, repeatedly, about me "cherry picking" and "picking and choosing" scholars who agree with me. You could only make that claim with any credibility if you had a good grasp of the scholars in question. But the fact that (i) you've failed to actually back up that claim when challenged and (ii) you're now complaining that you haven't done the reading or have the knowledge to do so shows pretty clearly that your claim was just empty sneering. *pathetic whining deleted* I think most people could see that I wanted to correct some mistakes by the first poster and warn that Nixey is not an objective or reliable source of anything much. Again, you made a claim and I challenged you to support it. It's not my fault that you can't and all this whining won't change that. Next time, don't make sneering assertions you can't sustain. What? If I am presenting views that reflect the consensus of scholarship, I'm obviously not selectively "cherry picking". So your sneer was dead wrong. Given your track record with "assuming" things, I'd strongly suggest you stop doing that. Seriously? If that's the best you've got - some weak suspicion that maybe, perhaps, someone out there might agree with Nixey and could be sufficiently well-versed in this stuff - then I suggest you back off now. I'll stick with the leading historians of the period who agree that Nixey's book is sensationalist junk thanks. Perhaps you should have thought about that when you made your baseless sneer - the one you are now backpedaling away from at remarkable speed. If you don't know what you're talking about it's probably best you shut up. *chuckle* Translation: I can't back up my sneer so I'm going to bluster endlessly and hope no-one notices my failure. Hilarious. Learn your lesson - think before you sneer next time.
So, a complete post of rambling pointlessness that fails to address what I said - all because ickle Timmy the Expert doesn't like to be questioned. Thank you for charitably speaking to me oh wise one. Now sod off and patronise some other complete stranger. Tool.
No, because I don't sit back and let people make baseless sneers. You've failed to back up your "cherry picking" sneer because you know you can't. You've even admitted you can't and then whined about me challenging you to do so! And now you claim that I somehow fail "to address what [you] said". Really? I responded to basically every point you made. So - challenge time again! - back that claim up and show me what you said that I failed to address. You seem to be a sucker for punishment when it comes to this baseless sneering thing.
In my mind I have shedyuled a cagematch between @Asyncritus and TimONeill. ETA: apologies to Mr O'Neill for the insider joke (and I'm only allowed furtive peeking through the doorway). Async is our resident religion is real because logic. He's on sabbatical but if we say his name three times, who knows...
So that's two challenges to back up your sneering with substance dodged. Yes - a clear pattern is emerging. Let us know when you have something to contribute that has any kind of substance.
Don't hold your breath. This place has been devoid of rational discussion on any topic for at least a decade. Sadly.
