One claim I've frequently heard is that the canonical gospels were largely written within living memory of the life of Jesus. Is this true? Do we have copies that are that old? If not, what are the oldest copies? Can we reliably date a document like a gospel to be written earlier than an oldest known copy for any reason?

(Sorry for my English.)

Many people say that his works are classics but there are many articles which say the opposite.

A friend of mine described him as a "pre-Jared Diamond": no hard evidence, dated, generalizing all the time etc.

My prof says that don't waste my time with him.

So, AskHistorians, what's your opinion?

What were they trained to do, were they members of the paratroopers or real pilots, or infantry? Were they volunteers or failures from flight school? Were they trained to fly or just land? What did they do after they landed during a battle? Were they evacuated from the battle? Bomber crews flew 25 missions, how many missions did the glider pilots have to "fly?" What was their survival rate?

In terms of consistent degradation or changing of occupation during the war.

I mean saber fighting specifically, also have their been any modern attempts to revive it? What are the differing styles? How are they different?

Nowadays we count we year Jesus is said to be born in as year 0, but what did the romans and other cultures use before that?

Edit: Fail in the title, damn.

The general explanation that I'm aware of for the causes of the war is that Kaiser Wilhelm II, after taking power, got rid of Bismarck and decided to follow an agressive foreign policy: he began to pursue his colonial ambitions and expanding his navy (eventually threatening the UK), allowed Germany to alienate from the alliances that Bismarck had made with the UK and Russia, and allowed France to ally with them. The eventual spark was the assassination of austrian Archduke Frank Ferdinand, with Germany backing a military action against Serbia.

From this explanation, I'm led to believe that the war happened precisely because of Kaiser Wilhelm's ambitions. The questions I have are: what am I missing, and, if Bismarck's policies continued to be followed, would a war in such a scale still be a possibility?

I mean initially someone had to sell them all the guns so they could fight the revolutionary war. Was it Britain who sold them and they then they revolted with those very guns?

I imagine it would occasionaly freeze.

I really just want to know what the historians think who he is

It seems like decorative and flashy armor was used throughout human history up to before world war 1. Think Greek hoplites, winged hussars, and Napoleon's cavalry. Why did it stop?

The The Night Battles by Carlo Ginzburg is a fascinating book, a microhistory of the folk custom of the Benandanti in 16th and 17th century Friuli, whose members were persecuted as witches by the Inquisition. In the book, Ginzburg makes two very interesting arguments. The first is that the Benandanti represented the remnants of a pre-Christian, pagan fertility cult that had survived until the early modern period and had incorporated Christianity into their practices. Based on a couple additional case studies, Ginzburg also argues that the Benandanti were just one part of a continent-wide tradition that covered central Europe and as far east as Livonia. How widely accepted are Ginzburg's arguments? Was there a pan-European agrarian cult descended from pre-Christian fertility rituals?

when one side is loosing the battle was surrendering as drafted peasant and/or soldier an option ? how did the winning side stop their own force ? i guess they just didnt keep chasing the enemy forever. how did the loosing sides officers deal with fleeing peasants of their own army ? how much effort into capturing "cowards" ?

after the battle was there effort into looting enemy arms and armor and make it useful for your own troops ? was that organized or everyone picks what he needs ? what about injured people ? how to get rid of the dead ? care about the dead at all ?

I have heard numerous reasons for the Sino-Soviet split, ranging from ideological evolution to personal animosity between Mao and Khrushchev. How much of this was a macroscopic divergence between two nations with differing needs from their ideology, and how much of this was interpersonal between Communist leaders? Is there any chance a split could have been avoided, and the two largest Communist nations stayed allied?

We always hear/talk about the natives during the conquering of the new world as being subject to the diseases from Europe which (many believe) was the primary reason for their fall. There had to have been diseases in america in which the Europeans weren't custom to, right? Why don't we ever hear about them being affected? Did they have better medical means to prevent/cure them?

Sorry if it's the wrong place (I don't think it is) or a poor question, I only explore this sub every now and again. I learn a lot here though, so thanks!

I have a research paper due in almost two weeks and I'm having trouble finding references, other than a few websites. Does anybody know of good books and/or trusty websites where I can read up on the Kapp Putsch? It was an uprising that happened in Weimar Germany in the '20s. Thank you for your help!

I'm studying liberalism and conservatism for my AS level, and I'm really interested in why the radical MPS -many of whom such as Cobden were pseudo pacifists - were prepared to flock to a liberal banner with the illiberal palmerston at its head? Was it merely opportunism, or do I have a skewed view of just how liberal palmerston himself was? Furthermore, do we have any primary sources from radical MPs in the 1846-68 period? My school studies haven't brought any examples to the fore. Thankyou in advance!

I've been reading about prominent people of the late middle ages, such as Martin Luther, Albrecht Dürer, and Leonardo DiVinci, and all of them seem incredibly mobile. I'd been under the impression that most people pretty much stayed in the town they grew up in until pretty recently. I expect that, like today, economic means determined how much a person could move, but to what extent? Once serfdom started crumbling, could an average person just pick up and move to a different city if he or she wanted to? How far could they go? What sorts of restrictions did women face?

Thanks!

Hours have always been 60 minutes. Minutes have always been 60 seconds. But the current definition of a second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. I doubt that's how a second was measured 800 or 900 years ago.

And besides time, how were weights and measures standardized? I remember a documentary about the physical weights that all others are based off of. Like there was a small metal weight that was one ounce, and it was guarded in a room with other standard measurements. Is that generally how it has always been done? Or were weights and measures a lot less accurate historically?