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Historians have found little evidence that Manuela Beltrán existed
- felideon 3y agoThe Santander region (department) of Colombia, where Socorro is located, is beautiful. Incidentally, Santandereans are very prideful of their region, so it's no surprise they'd have knee-jerk reactions against these findings.
- pmarreck 3y ago[flagged]
- bllguo 3y agothere are untold numbers of fictional heroes, this hardly needed proof though there is no debate among scholars about whether Jesus existed, so you chose a poor example
- permo-w 3y agoI think it’s worth questioning that consensus outside of inherently untrustworthy Christian sources, Jesus is mentioned by Tacitus, Josephus and possibly Suetonius. but who maintained and copied those books over the years? would you trust the records kept by a cult about their hero-figure over 50 years? how about 1500? how about if that cult monopolised literacy over most of that period? what if there were known examples of interpolation and forgery in the cult’s records of that figure? Tacitus’s potential reference—which is regarded as the most trustworthy—survived in a single manuscript copied a thousand years later by a Christian scholar. Josephus’s reference is regarded to have been fraudulently embellished at least, and Suetonius’s reference to a Jew “Chrestus” is fairly tenuous I think there’s a tendency to assume that earlier people were not as smart or capable as we are and couldn’t possibly have pulled off such a massive forgery. I would question that, especially when the means, motive and opportunity are so clear this isn’t to say that Jesus wasn’t a historical figure; he probably was in some form, but I’m extremely loath to trust records kept on Jesus by his followers, and that’s almost all we have
- lazide 3y agoFrankly, it’s a lot easier if they’re imaginary/unreal as then there are far fewer facts in the way of whatever narrative the storyteller is attempting to tell. Few things are more irritating when telling a story than having to deal with inconvenient reality.
- tasuki 3y agoWhat do you mean by "unvalidated"? There is a wide consensus among historians that Jesus existed and was an influential figure.
- soperj 3y agoSure, but that doesn't make him the son of god born to a virgin.
- melling 3y agoHe didn’t say that. We’re doing that thing where we make sharp turns into the weeds. “Yeah but…” The person simply claimed that he was a historical influential person. We’ve got another person complaining about America’s historical figures being “whitewashed “ How about we all be specific instead of making sweeping statements?
- gweinberg 3y agoWell, it's almost certainly true that there was somebody existed who could in a sense be referred to as the historical Jesus. But if he bore almost no resemblance to the Jesus of the Gospels, didn't say most of the sayings attributed to him, and wasn't named Jesus, it wouldn't necessarily be completely false to say "Jesus never existed".
- soperj 3y agoAccording to the Bible he says that he's the son of god a number of times.
- InCityDreams 3y agoHero to who (or whom, i can never remember)?
- kbelder 3y agoWho is a hero to whom? Who for the subject, whom for the object.
- dang 3y agoPlease do not take HN threads into religious flamewar. Last thing we need here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pmarreck 3y agoI mention a figure and that automatically assumes "flamewar"? EDIT after reading comments: Well, sir, that's the quality of the people making the impolite discourse here, not myself!
- dang 3y agoObviously what you posted was religious flamebait. This isn't a borderline call. If you set off a flamewar in which other people behave badly, the primary responsibility lies with you. (I don't mean you personally, of course - I mean any of us posting here.) It's not as if these outcomes are hard to predict. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22expected%20value%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- pmarreck 3y agoSo no matter how objectively or rationally true something is, if it triggers people, it is flamebait? I'm not a fan of Trump but if I merely mention his name and it sets off a flamewar, then the primary responsibility lies with me? Really? Honest question as it was literally 100% not my intent so I'm just a little surprised. It's like I said Santa Claus doesn't exist and that triggered a bunch of children, so it's my fault... I fail to understand. I can think of just 1 example where everyone agrees that simply speaking a truth is wrong and that is "spoilers," but in that case it's because it is objectively ruining the enjoyment of people. I don't know what exactly I'm "ruining" here
- dang 3y agoYes, in the same way that if you drop a lit match in a dry forest, you're responsible for the resulting fire, whether you intended that result or not. Intent doesn't communicate itself and isn't what determines outcomes. We have to moderate by effects, not intent. It isn't enough for a statement to be true—besides which, you may feel something to be true and yet others may intensely dispute it. In case it helps at all, here are past explanations on that point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31996470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31996470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32697044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32697044 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20infinitely%20many%20facts&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- aprao 3y agoJudith the Iconoclast
- boomboomsubban 3y agoAs an American, the legends of the "founding fathers" are so embellished and whitewashed that they may as well be complete fabrications. It's the kind of thing that seems inevitable with such events. I highly doubt Romulus and Remus were actually children raisedby wolves that founded Rome, but that's what the history books will say.
- Analemma_ 3y ago> I highly doubt Romulus and Remus were actually children raised by wolves that founded Rome, but that's what the history books will say. This is a weird example to prove your point. There are absolutely no current historians seriously claiming Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus, and even contemporary Romans didn't really believe the story (sort of: Roman beliefs about their own history were a delicate balance of keeping a few different, mutually contradictory, ideas in mind simultaneously, but it's safe to say that a lot of them didn't think the story of Romulus and Remus was literally true).
- boomboomsubban 3y agoEvery history of Rome I've seen details the story, though they usually do call it a "legend." And presumably in centuries closer to the founding, it wasn't called a legend but passed off as the actual founding of Rome. My point is that over the centuries every founding story becomes a "legend" that basically can't be considered true, like the founding of Rome. Eventually people should look back on it and say "that's highly mythologized nonsense."
- localplume 3y ago[dead]
- joenot443 3y agoIs the legend of the founding of Rome really comparable to the founding of America, though? I feel as if one is relatively well recorded and historically agreed upon, save the minor details, while the other is quite literally a legend from ancient times. I don't think there will ever, or should ever, be a time when people look back and doubt the rough narrative behind the founding of the US.
- thriftwy 3y agoRevolutionary heroes have tendency to be nonexistent. Soviet historiography has invented a whole Russian revolutionary worker movement (Russian Social Democratic Labour Party), which contains surprisingly few people who were either ethnically Russian or were employed as workers for more than a few months. No shortage of revolutionaries in it, though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tysam_and 3y agoI have not seen a HN thread this filled with grey and flagged comments before.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWe have exactly the same kind of icon in American history: Sybil Ludington. Wikipedia has typically had a difficult time admitting that she never did any such thing as was claimed and was invented out of whole cloth, over 100 years after the Revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_Ludington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_Ludington