Going against my History Professor

[cmacq]

Oh, one last thing from me:

do talk to the secretary of the Institute (if she's nice/gentle and talkative) and/or talk to elder students or "students representatives" (sorry, dunno the English technical term; in German: "Fachschaft[svertretung]").

Both should be able to give you more information about your Prof., given you act diplomatically. So, please don't tell them (especially the secretary) first: "I want to challenge Professor XYZ."

Gather information, be nice and place some "strategic" questions here and there. After some time (= days or weeks or even months), you can ask more directly questions. Try to gain some "academic merits" (like good homeworks or good exam results).

Well, to resume: be patient and advance step by step.

Yours,
Treverer

P.S. But never underestimate your talking partners intellectually, after all, you are at university. Some might discover your "slow advance" immediately.

Good idea.

Also...

Have you actually checked the Latin and/or Greek source texts in question? I mean the texts in their native language, not translations. My experience is that all translations have some errors, thats because of the nature of rendering one language into another. The question is, does a given translation have major errors that pertain to your argument.

You might just find that one side or the other has based their conclusions on an incorrect or spurious portion of a translation? I've seen translations that contain entire lines inserted, but not indicated, to explain what they understood to be an awkward word or phrase. Again, my advice is; keep your powder dry and always follow Roger's 30th rule; never take a chance you don't have to.