Ok ok. Now lets try this. How about you tell me.......
what makes something historic
secondly how many artifacts or plots or jars, or grounds need to be uncovered for something to be historic?
thirdly, how far away from the date of the occurrence should the history be placed. In other words if I found a manuscript 1000 years after the fact, is this historical or not?
because of the only historian you mention tacticus, I believe the first known copy of that text was written at least 500 years after the fact, maybe even 1000.
4thly,
Here is my test for any ancient piece of literature to see if it's historic....
The Bibliographical Test (corroboration from textual transmission)
The bibliographical test seeks to determine whether we can reconstruct the original New Testament writings from the extant copies at hand. We have 5,300 Greek manuscripts and manuscript portions, 10,000 Latin Vulgate, and 9,300 other versions, plus 36,000 early (100-300 A.D.) patristic quotations of the New Testamentsuch that all but a few verses of the entire New Testament could be reconstructed from these alone.5
Few scholars question the general reliability of ancient classical literature on the basis of the manuscripts we possess. Yet this manuscript evidence is vastly inferior to that of the New Testament manuscripts. For example, of sixteen well-known classical authors (Plutarch, Tacitus, Seutonius, Polybius, Thucydides and Xenophon, etc), the total number of extant copies is typically less than ten, and the earliest copies date from 750 to 1600 years after the original manuscript was first penned.6 We need only compare such slim evidence to the mass of biblical documentation involving over 24,000 manuscript portions, manuscripts, and versions, with the earliest fragments and complete copies dating between 50 and 300 years after originally written.
Given the fact that the early Greek manuscripts (the Papyri and early Uncials7) date much closer to the originals than for any other ancient literature, and the overwhelming additional abundance of manuscript attestation, any doubt as to the integrity or authenticity of the New Testament text has been removed. Indeed, this kind of evidence is the dream of the historian. No other ancient literature has ever come close to supplying historians and textual critics with such an abundance of data.
Dr. F. F. Bruce, the late Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, asserts of the New Testament: "There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament."8 Professor Bruce further comments, "The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical writers, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning. And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt."9
Further, Dr. Rene Pache remarks of the great Princeton scholar B. B. Warfield that he "goes on to say that the great bulk of the New Testament has been transmitted to us without, or almost without, any variations. It can be asserted with confidence that the sacred text is exact and valid and that no article of faith and no moral precept in it has been distorted or lost."10
It is this wealth of material that has enabled scholars such as Westcott and Hort, Ezra Abbott, Philip Schaff, A. T. Robertson, Norman Geisler and William Nix to place the restoration of the original text at better than 99 percent.11 Thus no other document of the ancient period is as accurately preserved as the New Testament.
Horts estimate of "substantial variation" for the New Testament is one-tenth of 1 percent; Abbotts estimate is one-fourth of 1 percent; and even Horts figure including trivial variation is less than 2 percent. Sir Frederic Kenyon well summarizes the situation:
The number of manuscripts of the New Testament... is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or another of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.
Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text of the principal Greek and Roman writers whose works have come down to us, of Sophocles, of Thucydides, of Cicero, of Virgil; yet our knowledge depends on a mere handful of manuscripts, whereas the manuscripts of the New Testament are counted by hundreds and even thousands.12
In other words, those who question the reliability of the New Testament must also question the reliability of virtually every ancient writing the world possesses! How can the Bible be rejected when its documentation is one hundred times that of other ancient literature? Because it is impossible to question the worlds ancient classics, it is far more impossible to question the reliability of the New Testament.13
In addition, none of the established New Testament canon is lost or missing, not even a verse, as indicated by variant readings. By comparison, the books of many ancient authors are filled with omissions: 107 of Livys 142 books of history are lost, and one-half of Tacitus 30 books of Annals and Histories. For Polybius, only five complete books remain from the original forty. Finally, the Gospels are extremely close to the events which they record. The first three can be dated within twenty years of the events cited, and this may even be true for the fourth gospel. This means that all four Gospels were written during the lives of eyewitnesses, and that abundant opportunity existed for those with contrary evidence to examine the witnesses and refute them.
The Gospels, then, passes the bibliographical test and must, by far, be graded with the highest mark of any ancient literature we possess.
above excerpt from
The Historical Reliability of Scripture
beat that with Thucydides
