Session 35 - Abraham Lincoln Walk-In - Wrong Date!

[Steppingfeet]

I think I can partially reconcile this, or at least muse for a bit about something I've been pondering lately since I'm something of a history geek.

 
Though I don't have even 2% the breadth of knowledge I would like to have regarding history, we are kindred spirits.
 
 
 

More or less, I think our history is becoming less probabilistic as technology advances.  It's really only in the last 200 years that we've developed technologies - photography, audio recording, film, and now digital recordkeeping - which allow a truly permanent record of times go by.  And because we now fill our lives with artifacts proving our own past, it makes it all but impossible for anyone to seriously believe that Truman didn't drop the bomb.  We have a bazillon pictures of the Manhattan Project and the Enola Gay and Hiroshima and shadows laminated to walls and all that.  It's effectively undeniable.
 
And since reality is largely consensus-based, that means our recent history has basically become fixed.  It can't be fluid because we've developed systems which prevent it from being fluid.

 
An interesting and creative proposition.
 
 

But if you go back much further than the 1800s, and suddenly things start getting fuzzy, really quickly.  And once you go back before the invention of printing presses, history really does start getting probabilistic, at least from our point of view.  Actually getting what records exist to actually line up in some sort of comprehensible way is ridiculously difficult.  Even the birth and deaths of incredibly major figures in history are often questionable.

 
Why would this not simply be a case of paucity of documentation? Does the partial or complete absence of recorded media necessarily mean that the past is probabilistic?
 
 

Ricdaw brought up Jesus, who lived during the Roman times, and the Romans loved bookkeeping.  But historians can't even agree on whether he lived at all, much less when and which of the Biblical accounts are correct.  They pretty much just play the odds.  Even though most believe there was a Historical Jesus of some kind, what he "actually" did is almost totally up for grabs.  For that matter, it's the same with the prophet Mohammed.  The early Arabs\Muslims were INCREDIBLY obsessed with keeping records of things, and there are even a few mentions of Mohammed in writings from various other groups around that time...  but we can't seem to get the dates to quite line up.  Other historians point at documents which suggest he may have lived a few decades later than traditionally thought, or may not have even originally lived in the Mecca area.

 
Great example.
 
So here was have a case where the documentation is either lacking, or conflicting, or fabricated, or confused.
 
Yet, Ra takes a moment to say that our records of what transpired in one particular moment of this entity's life do not capture what actually happened. Pointing to a fixed past:
 
 

75.14 The “Hosanna,” as it is termed, and the following “Benedictus,” is that which is the written summation of what was shouted as Jehoshua came into the place of its martyrdom. The general acceptance of this shout, “Hosanna to the son of David! Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” by that which is called the church has been a misstatement of occurrence which has been, perhaps, unfortunate for it is more distorted than much of the so-called Mass.
 
There were two factions present to greet Jehoshua, firstly, a small group of those which hoped for an earthly king. However, Jehoshua rode upon an ass stating by its very demeanor that it was no earthly king and wished no fight with Roman or Sadducee.
 
The greater number were those which had been instructed by rabbi and elder to make jest of this entity, for those of the hierarchy feared this entity who seemed to be one of them, giving respect to their laws and then, in their eyes, betraying those time-honored laws and taking the people with it.

 
 

Between the problems with accurate timekeeping at the time, the problems of dating documents we find, the fuzziness of people's eyewitness accounts, and the propensity of historians of the past to lie through their teeth for political reasons, the vast majority of history prior to 1500 or so is basically a big foggy cloud with only occasional patches of visibility.

 
That is most assuredly true! And well said. 
 
 

Same day, but we have utterly conflicting memories of how it happened.

 
Now you raise a whole new question: is APeacefulWarrior unknowingly practicing teleportation?