Historians with skew-mouths and skew-mouth historiography

---Imagine Karl Marx asked to write a history of democracy. That is Gill Valentine writing the history of Robert Pierson in his book Ostriches and Canaries.

---How will Marx write on Democracy? As President of the Drinking-Club in Berlin, it will be with a skew mouth. Negative. Not positive.

---Valentine set himself the task in his room in Riverside California to write about Robert Pierson.

https://www.adventistfaith.com/media/recorder/coping-or-not-with-change by Gilbert Valentine

---Over 400 pages were published. He has most of the data. His citations are correct. His reflections as historian, are skew.

---So how did this happen?

---It is the same with historian George Knight. It is the same with historian Arthur Patrick.

---Arthur Patrick is from Avondale and him and I had interaction with each other from about 2006 until shortly before his death. His 2008 online explanation of historiography opened my eyes to the concept of skew mouth.

---It was his idea that we should revise Adventist history by focusing on the opposition against Adventism, Conradi, Ford, Kellogg, to name a few.

---He felt that to use them as sources, we will have a better understanding of Adventism and progress to a better future.

---Take Edwin de Kock as a historian. He died the 14^th of December 2022. He wrote many books on the opponents of Adventism and the correct scholars in history affirming Adventist truth. His mouth is straight but when he spoke about the skew mouth Adventist historians, his mouth was skew against them.

---So what is the point? Either you are focused on truth or you are focused on something else, but not truth.

---Where is truth? Fundamentalism, Biblicism. That is where the pioneers had their eyes and that is where yours need to be if you do not want a skew mouth.

---How do we write a history of events in current situations? Like a current overview of Adventist history?

---The following recipe is essential:

1.    1.     Read online the book of John F. Hurst, A History of Rationalism 1864. Imperative. Mandatory. Summarized it and show me your summary before you talk to me.

 https://ia800706.us.archive.org/34/items/historyofrationa027452mbp/historyofrationa027452mbp.pdf

2.     Read online at Wikipaedia the biography of Julius Wellhausen. Please look what he said at his resignation at the Seminary. Copy it, print it out and put it above your computer to look at. About 1884. Very honest he was. But…

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Wellhausen

Julius Wellhausen resignation letter: I became a theologian because the scientific treatment of the Bible interested me; only gradually did I come to understand that a professor of theology also has the practical task of preparing the students for service in the Protestant Church, and that I am not adequate to this practical task, but that instead despite all caution on my own part I make my hearers unfit for their office. Since then my theological professorship has been weighing heavily on my conscience

3.     Read online the article of HCM and the Catholic view of it.

4.     Read Gerhard Hasel’s books on Current Issues in the Old Testament Debate. Current Issues in the New Testament Debate. Understanding the Word of God. Interpretation. 

---Now you are ready to write a history of Adventism in any period of Adventism.

---Like I told Arthur Patrick and he liked it, the following. I got it from Calvinist Philosopher Hendrik Stoker in his two volumes Oorsprong en Rigting (see online): the way you live (ontology) affects the way you think (epistemology) and the way you think affects your methodology and your methodology affects ultimately your deontology or products: talk, article, book, opinion, idea, sermon, speech, presentation, blog.

Source: https://archive.org/details/HGStoker1967OorsprongEnRigtingBand1

--Valentine did not do the readings. I am sure. Otherwise he is a bad reader or have alterior motifs?

---I cannot say how Gilo Valentine is living or lived to affect his brain? I know that Raymond Cottrell was divorced but I do not know if he was remarried? So was Canright in Ellen White’s days.

---Somehow every skew scholar had a problem. Correct?

---Charles Darwin wanted to hurt God for “killing” his young daughter 10 years old in a Spiritist Sanitorium in New York and he wrote the book the Origin of Species. We know he wanted to hurt God because the last appendix to the book had it in his own words.

Heyse-Moore L. Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) illness – the role of post-traumatic stress disorder. Journal of Medical Biography. 2019;27(1):13-25. doi:10.1177/0967772014555291

---So what we need is a NEWSTART intellect for proper history not so-called “progressive historiography”.

---Here is the view of William Miller about the Word of God called Bible:

April 10, 1833,

in writing to Elder Hendryx, and speaking of the evil of resorting to excommunication from the church for slight causes:

"In the same letter he thus expresses his regard for the word of God : 0 may the Bible be to us a rock, a pillar, a compass, a chart, a statute, a directory, a polar star, a traveler's guide, a pilgrim's companion, a shield of faith, a ground of hope, a history, a chronology, an armory, a storehouse, a mirror, a toilet, a closet, a prayer-book, an epistle, a love letter, a friend, a foe, a revenue, a treasury, a bank, a fountain, a cistern, a garden, a lodge, a field, a haven, a sun, a moon, a star, a door, a window, a light, a lamp, a luminary, a morning, a noon, an evening, an hour-glass, a daysman, a servant.

" It is meat, food, drink, raiment, shelter, warmth, heat, a feast, fruit, apples, pictures, wine, milk, honey, bread, butter, oil, refreshment, rest, strength, stability, wisdom, life, eyes, ears, hands, feet, breath; it is a help to hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling, understanding, forgiving, loving, hoping, enjoying, adoring, and saving; it teaches salvation, justification, sanctification, redemption, and glorification; it declares condemnation, destruction and desolation ; it tells us what we were, are, and shall be; begins with the beginning, carries us through the intermediate, and ends only with the end; it is past, present, and to come; it discovers the first great cause, the cause of all effects, and the effects of all causes; it speaks of life, death, and judgment, body, soul, and spirit, Heaven, earth, and hell; it makes use of all nature as figures, to sum up the value of the gospel; and declares itself to be the WORD OF GOD. And your friend and brother believes it.

" WILLIAM MILLER.

April 10, 1833.' (maybe from page 93 of James White’s biography of William Miller online?)

---Where does Gilo Valentine fit into this high view of the Word of God? Epistemology and lifestyle before which are feeding that thinking tank we call the “brain of the historian”. Correct?