Returning to the past

Liberals contend that the Gospels are historically unreliable because they were written so long after the events. Of course, that’s a circular argument inasmuch as it presumes the liberal dating (and authorship) of the Gospels.

But it also overlooks the fact that older folks frequently remember earlier events more clearly and distinctly than later events. Here’s an interesting anecdote from Warnie Lewis, fourteen months after the death of his famous brother:

Oddly enough as time goes on the vision of J as he was in his later years grows fainter, that of him in earlier days more and more vivid. It is the J of the attic and the little end room, the J of Daudelspiels and the walks and jaunts, the J of the early and middle years whom I miss so cruelly. An absurd feeling, for even had he lived that Jack had already died. Perhaps it has been sharpened by the fact that I am reliving something of the middle years by going through our old walking tours in my diaries, and I can see him almost as if he was visible, on a path in front of me, striding along with a stick and a pack in his shapeless old fisherman’s hat…Not that I idealize those days for they too had their hard times; but then they were bad times shared with J and that made all the difference.

Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis (Harper & Row 1982), 255.