Oral history is generally reliable within a three-generation callback time period

[Guno צְבִי]

just jesus.

his morality is completely ratonal.

even the animals cooperate.

cooperation works.

only you see a win/win as a negative.

Non Jews were never required to keep the law that was given to the Jews at mount Sinai

 

[Daylight63]

Non Jews were never required to keep the law that was given to the Jews at mount Sinai

And this was quite a contentious debate in the early Christian church. In many ways it makes Christianity Paul's invention since he advocated against the Jerusalem Church (some of whom presumably knew Jesus IIRC) who didn't necessarily want to "open it up" to the Gentiles without them doing what was necessary to become Jewish.

I've always found that bit of history of the church to be the most confusing. Why would someone who never met Jesus, for whom the faith is eponymous, get a "say" in how the faith was structured?

In many ways I think of Christianity as starting with Paul who took the pieces and parts of the Jesus story and built out a faith.

 

[Bai Lan]

Non Jews were never required to keep the law that was given to the Jews at mount Sinai

ok..

you're not required to keep it either.

 

[IBDaMann]

My OP says nothing about Jesus.

Irrelevant. My statement is true. You are trying to get hearsay about "Jesus" admitted as history, and to establish "Jesus" as an historical figure.

No, Herodotus is not a "first hand account."

Herodotus is a dead guy.

Herodotus was not a witness to the historical events he writes about.

The people for whom he scribed absolutely were first-hand witnesses.

Herodotus got his information by talking to eyewitnesses,

... and acting as scribe to document the first-hand account.

... interviewing people who knew the eyewitnesses, or from talking to people who knew the cultural oral tradition.

Nope. Only the eyewitnesses, i.e. first-hand accounts, were history once they were transcribed.

You're free to travel the country and demand universities shut down all research about ancient history.

You're free to travel your backyard wishing historians accepted hearsay as first-hand account.

Because without secondary sources and oral tradition, you might as well forget about learning about antiquity.

Correct. We don't have time machines and we cannot verify any beliefs about the unobserved past. All beliefs about the unobserved past are just that, beliefs, and those happen to be hearsay, beliefs and speculation, and they are neither knowledge nor history.

Without secondary sources we would be ignorant of Persian emperor Xerxes,

Nope. Those were all first-hand accounts.

 

[IBDaMann]

"All Scientists Should Be Militant Atheists"​

By Lawrence M. Krauss, physicist

That's right, you read it on the internet, therefore you have no choice but to assume that it is absolutely true.

 

[IBDaMann]

Pure communism was supposed to be a utopian society

... according to Marx. In such a Utopia, he would be in charge of the wealth redistribution. Marx would sit on his fat azz all day while others worked like slaves to provide for him. Of course he would refer to that world as "Utopia."

without the need for government or coercion according to Marx. Revolution was supposed to be transitory and ephemeral.

"Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. " - The Communist Manifesto

"In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat." - The Communist Manifesto

The core idea of Marx's program was to lift up the poor and oppressed, and for the rich and powerful to get a comeuppance.

Where do you see that? All I see is advocacy for the tearing down of the bourgeoisie world and forcing all the proletariot into slave labor for the benefit of those who control the redistribution of wealth.