What if another view of George Washington came to light?
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Imagine this fictional scenario: Timeworn documents are discovered in a vault, deep within a government office. Astonishingly, the documents paint a much different picture of George Washington than the one that we know. Written by an army officer, the mysterious documents claim that Washington was promiscuous, stole government money and never personally led troops into battle. In short, they tell a completely different story to the history we know of Washington.
Unlikely, sure, but if something like that were found how would we approach such documents? It would be na?ve to take the document’s claims at face value, ignoring all of the other historical evidence. It would be equally na?ve to dismiss them out of hand. So how would we assess their validity? Perhaps we would begin by asking questions like these:
- When did this person write in relation to the events and people they describe? The shorter the gap between the events and the writing, the better chance that their writing can be trusted.
- What do we know about the person who wrote it and their motives for writing? A person’s motives do not mean what they are writing is untrue, yet it may help us to understand why they wrote in they way that they did.
- What evidence does the author provide to back up his assertions? Anyone can make claims, but what evidence do they give?
- Why should we trust this anonymous author? If their work has survived in only one poorly maintained manuscript, and no other copies, why trust it instead of all of the other historical data we have?
If these questions are appropriate to the fictional George Washington situation, shouldn’t they be asked about other unusual new claims, such as those made in Dan Brown’s novel, or Michael Baigent’s new book, ‘The Jesus Papers’? What sort of criteria should we use to evaluate the claims Baigent or Brown make?
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I guess it depends if it fits your presuppositions. If you happen to be Dan Rather, you might not worry too much about sources if it discredits people you may not like.