roachboy

problem is, irate, that if you travel backward in time it becomes even more difficult to do anything with your claim--back it up, think about it in relative terms--the idea of "their age" doesnt mean anything analytically--unless you are referencing hegel. in which case there are all kinds of other problems.

it is better to think in terms of ex post facto influence. it does not really matter if the writers of ot/nt texts were minor intellectuals writing from a social backwater in historical terms--what would matter is the influence their texts have subsequently had---for particular communities (not universally, not in any cosmic sense--history is always particular, like it or not) in which case, you loop back into ways of thinking that i tired to talk about (in which i was echoing stuff that had been said before here in slightly different terms)--the texts are only a "valid source" if you are looking at how they operate/influence particular communities at particular times.
or if you are yourself part of such a community and you are trying to explain something of your own beliefs.
apart from that, the bible is just another collection of novellas [an anachronistic term used here for argument's sake] which frame their fictions with a particular kind of truth claim.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite