Great Historians

Adnan (balboa19@idt.net)
Thu, 08 May 1997 13:16:35 -0700

(TILL Wrote)
By the way, does it seem strange to any one else that the world's greatest
historians, archaeologists, and writers that Walid keeps referring to
happen also to be Bible believers? We are to understand, of course, that
if a writer doesn't accept a fundamentalist view of the Bible, he just
doesn't qualify to be a great historian, archaeologist, and writer. As I
will perhaps show later
when I can find time, Walid's standards would prevent Edward Gibbon from
being considered a great historian.

(JK Response)
>Is hatred for Christianity a prerequisite for being a great historian,
>as was the case with Gibbon?

(My Response)
Why do you use the word "hatred"? Is it not possible that a scholar might
not have any "hatred" at all and yet reach a conclusion about Bible which
Christians might not like to see? Or are you trying to say that every
scholar who disagrees with fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible must
have "hatred" with no objectivity?

(JK response)
No, there are scholars who are relatively objective which are not Christians.
But it is quite obvious from a number of things that Gibbon was very
anti-Christian and this has colored a number of his chapters and articles.
I don't remember anymore where I read about it, so I can't back it up
currently, but I read this in a review of certain books and a comparison
among them.... Gibbon had a very anti-Christian bias.

(Adnan)
Is this so? Did Gibbon had "Anti-Christian" bias? and cannot be called
great historian as he is claiming?