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i got this from a audio clip featuring dan brown..author of 'The DaVinci Code'

How do historians balance contrary accounts of the same event??

here is what someone said:

When we read and interpret, we are not interpreting the histortical events themselves, we are interpreting written accounts of those events. in essence we are interpreting peoples interpretations

Since the beginning of recorded time, history has always been written by the winners, by those societys and belief systems that have conquered and survived.
Despite the obvious bias in this accounting method, we still measure the historical accuracy of a given concept by examing how well it concurs with our existing historical record. i shud add that many historians now belive that engaging the historical accuracy of concepts. we shud ask ourself a far more deeper question..how historically accurate is history itself?
In most cases we may never know the answers, but that should not stop us asking the questions.

also: We can no longer afford to measure "truth" by the popular opinion of the media who have been hoodwinking the public throughout this 20th Century. The majority of people have only been exposed to the "censored" but "authorized" textbooks which simply print "the blanket of the truth" to maintain and manage the social, economic and political nature of the established order. We are now awakening to the awareness that history has been carefully "managed" with a concerted effort to discredit, reject adn eradicate any person who advocates any unpopular, "alternative" versions of history - whether it be regarding politcis, economics, religion, medicine, energy or any other topic.

how much false history is there? how much manipulated history?

The world is a big place and now more and ever there is enormous danger in believing we are infalluable,that our version of the truth is absolute and that everyone who does not think like we do is wrong and is a enemy.
This is humanitys trouble.

this is why when you see a conspiracy theory posted by me or that you have seen elsewhere..you dismiss it so so so easily beacuse you THINK its bullshit, whos told you that? you or someone else?

It’s fascinating to observe, as your mind expands and the cell door creaks open, how the issues and concerns that occupy our minds, screw us up, and give us a bad sense of self, simply don’t matter. We are just conditioned to think they matter and so we expend our energies and wind up our emotions worrying about things that others programme us to believe are important. Are we too fat? Are we too thin? Are we too tall? Are we too small? Are our breasts big enough? Are our willies big enough?
Are we losing the hair on our heads? Do we have too much hair on our
bodies? Are we wearing the latest uniform (sorry fashion) that someone
we have never met has decided is “in”? We are deluged by advertisers
and the television “programmes” funded by advertisers which tell us
how we should be, look, and feel. You’ve got a wrinkle on your face?
Oh, my dear, your life is over. It’s the end of the road. Unless, that is,
you buy this super-duper face oil named after somewhere that sounds
exotic. It will save your life. Hey, look at this curvy, sun-tanned, blonde
we paid vast sums to show her bum on a beach. Buy our oil and that
could be you.

Man... this shows such an appalling ignorance of how historians work that I wonder for your sanity...

You are about 100 years too late in imagining the way that history is viewed is the way you suggest.

"how historically accurate is history itself?
In most cases we may never know the answers, but that should not stop us asking the questions."

Which are questions we have been asking for so long we are amazingly bored with them. Historical research has actually moved PAST this very basic question which kids learn about in Secondary school as a part of the very basics of the study of history- attacking the source and working out how well its provenance can be viewed.

All this is just to back up some more half-thought and and totally outlandish conspiracy theory of yours. As ever, not one iota of intelligence or sense behind it.

And you say 'existing Historical Record' as if we have it all put in one big book that everyone agrees with.

Seriously, this entire question is scarily ignorant.

depends on the source.

Is it contemporary or written years, decades, centuries later?

Is the author reliable, qualified, biased?

Of course it's about interpretation. You need to have a scooby or you could end up believing that WTC were flattened by something other than a couple of massive aeroplanes and some big fires.

Also, it's handy for Dan Brown to muddy historical waters because he makes a good living writing books about dodgy/unlikely/improbable historically related stuff.

Absolutely. History is all about interpretation. Lackiong a time machine, it is an attempt to make a best guess about what the past is like making use of evidence which is, inevitably, always flawed and/or biased. No-one ever said it was easy.

And hence history is being re-interpreted all the damn time. To try and make out that there has been one version of history simply forced upon us is ludicrous. Like any academic area, trying to define history is a warground between various views and different ideas, continually changing.

So hence again, the basic premise of this thread is nonsense. And the answer to the question of the thread is- "Not very, that's why history is a skilled subject."

I agree, a lot of ppl have no idea of how historians works

I always thought they used souped up DeLoreans.

You learn something new every day I guess.........

*shakes head*
boy boy boy... trying to get a conspiracy out of this

come on, if you have any idea about how historians work, you wouldn't say such things

A - Author
B - Bias
C - Content
D - Date

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

i forgive you all

Originally posted by Deano
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

i forgive you all
Err...I think this is intended to work a little bit different.

explain..

Lets give Deano what he wants a conspiracy bases around the "Davinci Code". I love it when a plan comes together. "Holy blood and Holy grail" is the book Dan Brown rips off it in turn is based on a con.

http://petragrail.tripod.com/hoax.html

Originally posted by Deano
explain..

Like you can't just forgive your enemies for nothing.....forgive them either if you beat them fair and squarte that they even started fighting you...or forgiving for cruel acts they did....

Deano, I worry for your mental health.

Originally posted by mechmoggy
Deano, I worry for your mental health.




im mentally and physically fine

its the others who are not..

Originally posted by Bardock42
Like you can't just forgive your enemies for nothing.....forgive them either if you beat them fair and squarte that they even started fighting you...or forgiving for cruel acts they did....

its ok ..i forgive you...

How historically accurate is Deano?

Originally posted by Deano
its ok ..i forgive you...

.....you see now you got it

Deano this conspiracy is real just not the one you wanted

As his vehicle to power, Plantard casts his eyes upon a nearby mountain called "Sion" and decides to call his tiny group of followers the "Priory of Sion" . A year later, unsucessful, Plantard revises his plan , much as Hitler had done after his early setbacks. Casting his gaze beyond the local Sion, Plantard next devises a grand scheme of unprecedented chutzpuh:

Pierre Plantard begins to stake a claim that he is a biological heir of the Messianic throne of Jesus . He changes his name to Pierre Plantard St. Claire and produces an impressive series of forged genealogies to link himself to Jesus and Mary Magdalen .

None of it is true, of course. Plantard forges the documents and fabricates the history . He has recruited a couple of people to help him, but the entire thing (except for two 19th-century texts ) is a hoax, as he will eventually admit under oath in a French court in 1993 .

You see conspiracies in EVERYTHING, Deano. Can't you just accept that maybe things actually are as they seem?

And you should know that if you post stuff that clearly shows very little understanding of something (like this thread) you're going to get called out as being wrong.

Originally posted by Lana
You see conspiracies in EVERYTHING, Deano. Can't you just accept that maybe things actually are as they seem?

And you should know that if you post stuff that clearly shows very little understanding of something (like this thread) you're going to get called out as being wrong.

im not afraid of being wrong

Originally posted by Deano
im not afraid of being wrong
That is good....cause you are

Deano this conspiracy is real just not the one you wanted, its all made up including the Priory of Sion. reposted due to being at the bottom of the page.

As his vehicle to power, Plantard casts his eyes upon a nearby mountain called "Sion" and decides to call his tiny group of followers the "Priory of Sion" . A year later, unsucessful, Plantard revises his plan , much as Hitler had done after his early setbacks. Casting his gaze beyond the local Sion, Plantard next devises a grand scheme of unprecedented chutzpuh:

Pierre Plantard begins to stake a claim that he is a biological heir of the Messianic throne of Jesus . He changes his name to Pierre Plantard St. Claire and produces an impressive series of forged genealogies to link himself to Jesus and Mary Magdalen .

None of it is true, of course. Plantard forges the documents and fabricates the history . He has recruited a couple of people to help him, but the entire thing (except for two 19th-century texts ) is a hoax, as he will eventually admit under oath in a French court in 1993 .

Originally posted by Bardock42
How historically accurate is Deano?

99.9%

Originally posted by Bardock42
That is good....cause you are

prove to me..

Originally posted by Deano
im mentally and physically fine

its the others who are not..

A little paranoid perhaps?

I told you being a Wolves supporter is bad for your health...

Originally posted by mechmoggy
A little paranoid perhaps?

I told you being a Wolves supporter is bad for your health...

being a supporter of any team can be bad for your health

Heres the truth

Article by Joe Nickell sums it up well


The record bestseller, Dan Brown’s 2004 The Da Vinci Code, has renewed interest in the quest for the Holy Grail, restyling the medieval legend for a public that often gorges itself on a diet of pseudoscience, pseudo-history, and fantasy.

Unfortunately, the book is largely based on obscure, forged documents that have now deceived millions.

The adventure tale begins with Paris police summoning Robert Langdon, an Indiana Jones type, to the Louvre to view the corpse of curator Jacques Saunier. Saunier has been murdered in bizarre circumstances. Soon Langdon and beautiful cryptanalyst Sophie Neveau lead readers on a page-turning treasure hunt across France and England, propelled by a series of puzzles and clues. Along the way, the pair search for a hidden "truth" that challenges mainstream Christianity. Brown drew heavily on the 1982 bestseller, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln (1996), with Lincoln as the conceptual author.

Brown’s novel is predicated on a conspiracy theory involving Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Supposedly the old French word sangreal is explained not as san greal ("holy grail" but as sang real ("royal blood". Although that concept was not current before the late Middle Ages, Holy Blood, Holy Grail argues that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, with whom he had a child, and even that he may have survived the Crucifixion. Jesus’ child, so the "non-fiction" book claims, thus began a bloodline that led to the Merovingian dynasty, a succession of kings who ruled what is today France from 481 to 751.

Evidence of the holy bloodline was supposedly found in a trove of parchment documents, discovered by Bérenger Saunière, the priest of Rennes-le-Château in the Pyrenees. The secret had been kept by a shadowy society known as the Priory of Sion which harked back to the era of the Knights Templar and claimed among its past "Grand Masters" Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Victor Hugo.

Brown seizes on Leonardo—borrowing from "The Secret Code of Leonardo Da Vinci," chapter one of another work of pseudo-history titled "The Templar Revelation." This was co-authored by "researchers" Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, whose previous foray into nonsense was their claim that Leonardo had created the Shroud of Turin—even though that forgery appeared nearly a century before the great artist and inventive genius was born!

Among the "revelations" of Picknett and Prince, adopted by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, is the claim that Leonardo’s fresco, Last Supper, contains hidden symbolism relating to the sang real secret. They claim, for instance, that St. John in the picture (seated at the right of Jesus) is actually a woman—Mary Magdalene!—and that the shape made by "Mary" and Jesus is "a giant, spreadeagled ‘M,’" supposedly confirming the interpretation. By repeating this silliness, Brown provokes critics to note that his characterizations reveal ignorance about his subject.

Alas, the whole basis of The Da Vinci Code—the "discovered" parchments of Rennes-le-Château, relating to the alleged Priory of Sion—were part of a hoax perpetrated by a man named Pierre Plantard. Plantard commissioned a friend to create fake parchments which he then used to concoct the bogus priory story in 1956. (See Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel, The Da Vinci Hoax, 2004.)

Of course, Dan Brown—with the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation—was also duped by the Priory of Sion hoax, which he in turn foisted onto his readers. But he is apparently unrepentant, and his apologists point out that The Da Vinci Code is, after all, fiction, although at the beginning of the novel, Brown claimed it was based on fact. Meanwhile, despite the devastatingly negative evidence, The Da Vinci Code mania continues. Perhaps Brown should go on his own quest—for the truth.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(this is just a general note, not an attack on anyone in particular)
if you can't get that a book is fiction, especially the Da Vinci Code, there is a good right that people worry about your mental health

Read "the rough guide to the Da Vinci Code", it rips to pieces a lot of Langdon's (or Brown's, depending on how you view it) theories.

most of the book is half fact half fiction

Originally posted by Deano
most of the book is half fact half fiction


no

Yes...

Most of the things in the book can not be proven and are just theory's but a lot of historians agree that they are very possible theory's. I had a very long discussion about this book in my history class and although we didn't reach a real answer we did come to the conclusion that there is absolutely nothing real to suggest that the book is fake or real for that matter.

We do know that the church was lying on several things that are mentioned in the book and looking at things logically you could come to the conclusion that what Brown claims is true. On the other hand you could just think the biblical story is true, or find yourself hanging somewhere in the middle having no idea what is true.

Fact is however history is written by the victor, and most of our history comes from the church, what are they going to do make themselves look better or tell the truth?

Originally posted by Fishy
Yes...

Most of the things in the book can not be proven and are just theory's but a lot of historians agree that they are very possible theory's. I had a very long discussion about this book in my history class and although we didn't reach a real answer we did come to the conclusion that there is absolutely nothing real to suggest that the book is fake or real for that matter.

We do know that the church was lying on several things that are mentioned in the book and looking at things logically you could come to the conclusion that what Brown claims is true. On the other hand you could just think the biblical story is true, or find yourself hanging somewhere in the middle having no idea what is true.

Fact is however history is written by the victor, and most of our history comes from the church, what are they going to do make themselves look better or tell the truth?


Psion is a fake it was admitted in court.

Its rubbish, a rip off of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which was also rubbish and based on fakery

Originally posted by whirlysplat
Psion is a fake it was admitted in court.

Its rubbish, a rip off of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which was also rubbish and based on fakery

Priory of Sion is indeed most likely fake. Strange is however there have been a few shows on TV here about people who have researched the same things and they talked about it as if it was real.. Very strange, also admitting to it being false had no real purpose to the people that created it. Maybe morale purpose but thats about it. Still the Priory is far from the most important thing that is claimed in the book if you ask me.

Who cares about people that could be the descendent's of Jesus, what is is important is the question if Jesus was truly the son of god, if Jesus was married or not things like that. Who cares about grandchildren. Its not like we learn about the possible descendants from Julius Caesar that could be alive now either, they aren't really important.

No but the grail is (its not real) sorry

Jesus (can he be proved) sorry

etc etc etc.

I think there is ony one important thing here and that's to follow jesus's teachings of loving your neighbour and not if he was the son of (a) god

But were they his teachings or written by others?Originally posted by yerssot
I think there is ony one important thing here and that's to follow jesus's teachings of loving your neighbour and not if he was the son of (a) god

that's not the point, the point is that if you follow them, the world would be a better place

Originally posted by yerssot
that's not the point, the point is that if you follow them, the world would be a better place

Fair point with most moral teachings, the same could be said for Buddha etc

indeed, it's the teachings, not the person that counts

Originally posted by yerssot
indeed, it's the teachings, not the person that counts

I agree with you totally.

However back to the thread he is speaking of things extrapalated from the bible as historical fact, you have to agree this is silly.