"Truth is Stranger Than Fact"

That was a recurring line on the old "He-Haw" TV show, which demonstrates that wisdom can sometimes be found in unlikely places. I think that's the difference between you and I, all you care about is facts, while I am a seeker of truth. Those old myths and legends may be short on facts, but they tell you something about the people who lived in those days. Whether they come from Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece, or Rome, they demonstrate that all those people respected was raw power, with a dose of treachery thrown in for good measure. You don't find anything about love or mercy until Jesus came along. Perhaps He was a ahead of his time, and still is even unto this day.

I'm surprised hat you've never heard the myth that wolves have never killed anybody in North America.  I think I have read that Wiki reference you mentioned. If it's the same one, it got most of its information from newspaper accounts, which sounds like documentation to me. I wonder who gets to decide what constitutes documentation or confirmation of a story. If you or I write something on paper, it seems like that ought to constitute a document. If you and I both witness the same event and tell the same story about it, it seems like that ought to constitute confirmation. I don't think that's how it works though. I think you have to be somebody, like one of the cool kids in school. Either you're one of the cool kids or not and, if you have to ask, then you're certainly not. By the way, how did the experts who confirmed that cougar photo get a DNA sample from a photograph?

I read "Catch 22" back when I was in the army. The book came highly recommended, but I didn't think it was all that great. I found it to be just silly and sarcastic, not at all like the military life I was leading at the time. Call me old fashioned, but I have always believed that even a work of fiction should have a ring of authenticity to it. The old "Mash" TV show was like that, you knew it wasn't true, but you got the impression that something like that could happen in the real world. The only unauthentic thing I remember was the guys' hair. I know that the rules often go by the board in combat situations, but even civilians didn't wear their hair that long in the 1950s.

I am not familiar with the name "Donatists", but I am familiar with the story about how the Romans tried to get the Christians to make token sacrifices to their heathen gods. The Christians weren't the first people to resist the practice. The Jews raised such a fuss about it that the Romans finally gave them a special dispensation so they didn't have to do it anymore. It seems that the first Christians, who were mostly Jews, could have weaseled out of it that way. As for the Gentile converts, well the lions have to eat too, you know.