Foxy,

Do you call LNP deviancy normal?

I don't. And I don't think Jen would either.

Mr O,

Why are you singling out the LNP?

Foxy,

It's all over the news.

I'm just doing what everybody else is doing.

Nothing better than a good old fashioned name & shame.

Plus I think what the LNP deviants have been up to is really quite sick and deserving of derision.

Mr O,

Once again you are being narrow in your
assertions. To fix the culture in Canberra
we need to fix the power imbalance which
can leave employees vulnerable to bullying
and abuse with nowhere to turn. However this
discussion should not be diverted.

This discussion is about the reason for the
holiday season. We can discuss Canberra and
male privilege on my discussion - and how to
fix the problem. It's not just a LNP problem.

Paul wrote: "Gary Habermas, who appears to be an Evangelical Christian..."

Yes, and for that reason I was reluctant to post him as an example of the new research. But his lecture best addressed the issue that you raised so I went with it. But, as I said, it was just one example of that new research and it does contain references to other authors, both Christian and non-Christian, who have come to see the Gospels in an historic context - people like Bart D. Ehrman.

The lecture does draw comparison between other history and the Biblical histories. It is very true that all we know of Alexander, Tiberius, Octavian or even Hannibal was written decades or even centuries after the events in question. While there are examples of contemporary histories such as Thucydides and Xenophon, they are the exception. Students of ancient history are very familiar with the techniques used to decipher the truth from non-contemporary sources. So the points raised in the lecture about doing the same with the Gospels were very familiar to me and rang very true.

While its is true that the Gospels were written decades after the events, what Habermas et al point out is that the various letters of the apostles and Paul were much more contemporaneous being written only a few years after the events in question and yet are compatible with the Gospel tales.

While its true that people like Irving write unhistoric tripe, it is also true that there are any number of books and articles written showing how Irving is wrong. Nothing of that sort exists concerning any of the historic writings of the New Testament.

One book that caused great controversy a few
years back was Prof. Barbara Thiering's,
"Jesus The Man." Despite the outrage and the
controversy it did proved new insights into
Christianity in the context of the Modern
World.