Quid est veritas? Perhaps the most provocative question of all time translates from Latin into English to query, "What is truth?" According to John 18:38, Pontius Pilate asked this of Jesus prior to his crucifixion. Some people believe that Jesus was only a man. Others believe Jesus never even existed. And there are also people like me believe the story told in the Gospel of John is basically accurate, and that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and Son of God. Now I can confess that I believe the previous statement is true, but I can't claim to know it is true. Get the difference? Not everyone believes that Shakespeare wrote his own plays. A movie called Anonymous asserted that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote and published those famous plays like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet using the pseudonym of William Shakespeare. Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe have also been credited with the work of William Shakespeare, but there is no way to conclusively prove beyond all reasonable doubt  that William Shakespeare did not write his own material. We might even be able to back up our speculation with tantalizing bits of evidence, but we cannot establish something as a fact when we don't have proof. However, every person on Earth believes they possess absolute knowledge when in fact, we all have beliefs based on reasonable assumptions. Beliefs that are easily confused and twisted to the point where something probably real, or true has been accepted as a false, or a forgery...for example, the Shroud of Turin. Quid est veritas? What is truth? Is the … [Read more...]