Very nice overview of Bayes Theorem and Historical Jesus

[_EAllusion]

Let me decide in advance how likely it is something will happen by spitballing and then tell you how it is effectively impossible. I'll dress it up with impressive looking symbols and my blue-whale-size, fragile ego. I'll tell you how many merit badges I earned in Boy Scouts and share irrelevant details about my sexcapades for no extra charge.

I had no idea what this referred to as I, apparently, haven't been paying attention. I read up on this to get a sense of what you were talking about.

Wow.

Carrier has turned into quite the piece of work.

[_Bret Ripley]

Acts could have been written decades after Paul's death, and then ended the way it did because that is when the person writing it ran out of paper or died himself.

The grail is in the valley of ahhh.

[_Philo Sofee]

Hi Analytics,

Seems like Bayesian reasoning is just spitting out what your own judgment has already come to. I just don't see where it objectively demonstrates anything the critical method doesn't already provide. The allure of its appearance towards more certainty seems obvious.

mikwut

Carrier demonstrates how Bayes gives us our own assumptions, and how to correct them. Historical criteria have failed to do this, as per their own admissions that the criteria are fatally flawed. Dale C. Allision, Jr is especially vocal about the problems of the subjective, ineffective criteria. Tha's one example.

[_mikwut]

Philo,

Give an example because so does critical reasoning and your yet to differentiate between them.

mikwut

[_Philo Sofee]

Mikwut:

Jesus is a Rank-Ragland Reference Class warranted in light of the early high Christology that recent scholars have demonstrated? Carrier answers none of the Jewishness arguments against his hellenization arguments.

Actually, on examining the evidence in Carrier, I find your argument misinformed on what he did. When using Bayesian probability, it is essential to include ***all*** background knowledge as we are able and of what we know into the probability. Carrier clearly did this using the Jewishness arguments as well as the Hellenistic background, from the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls 11Q Melchizedek document, and extra biblical Jewish materials, apocryphal and pseudepigraphic materials. He did not present a dichotomy of Jewish verses Hellenistic as you present, he included ***all*** known background, as is proper for proper reasoning and probabilistic calculating. I honest to goodness don't think you yet grasp his argument.

[_Philo Sofee]

Philo,

Give an example because so does critical reasoning and your yet to differentiate between them.

mikwut

Critical reasoning assumes the historicity criteria, all of which are logically flawed, and hence presents us with over 30 variegated and contradictory non-historically verified Jesus's. Bayes theoerm doesn't. Bayes theorem tests and then demonstrates how they are flawed. It presents the validity of ***WHEN*** there is enough material to assent to belief, historicity criteria fail at this threshold problem, as Carrier, had you read and understood him more clearly, demonstrated in both his books.

[_Philo Sofee]

Mikwut:

The traditional collection of methodologies and strategies historians use to understand the past. The criteria or tools historians use to understand the past. Historians simply speaking use evidential based reasoning, logic, critical evaluation of the known evidence, attempt to avoid bias, and weigh the evidence in the light most favorable towards the best explanation. In Jesus studies critical methodologies of form, redaction, and source criticism are used to best understand the text from the authors own time and culture based on the evidence available to us. Simply put it is how historians are taught to think and do their work. It is this method or criteria that Carrier and Philo believe has failed because we have a multiplicity of Jesus constructions by applying these criteria to the known evidence and therefore the emphasis on Bayes reasoning is emphasized to clarify this multiplicity.

And this is evidence directly that their assumptions and use of that methodology is flawed, else they could more easily bring coherence to Jesus studies. Instead they present vast amounts of contradictions and problematic readings of the evidences. They cannot use this method and explain why and when there is enough of evidence to warrant belief in ***their particular interpretation of their singularly arrived at Jesus, contrary to all other different Jesus's arrived at by all the other dozens of scholars.*** The threshold problem is fatal to the criteria, but not to Bayes Theorem. Bayes forces us to see our assumptions, AND take into account ALL OTHER CLAIMS. Jesus scholarship does not do this, hence the morass of contradictory conceptions, which, like it or not, demonstrate they have not arrived at any kind of even probable truth for any of the Jesus's yet. At most only oe can be right, and no one agrees which one that is. In other words, they are guessing. That isn't valid scholarship however. Bayes can straighten that out as Carrier has shown in over 1,000 pages of use on this exact problem of the historical Jesus.

If in mathematics we are told that using critical methodology for calculating the answer to the equation 2x-6 = 50, x was equal to 34, 1.2, 76/3, 88,880, 3.14149, 45.34343434, and 108, we would absolutely see the downfall and incoherent non-usability of math, and would simply *have* to find a better way that gives coherence. I think the same can and ought to be said of historical Jesus scholarship. If the methods worked, they could not give us so many grossly problematic answers which contradict reality all over the place. And this doesn't even touch theological interpretation yet either! It is the complete lack of coherence that destroys historical Jesus scholarship as valid using their fatally flawed methods. Bayes theorem can straighten this out is what Carrier maintains. He uses enormous amounts of examples to show how.

[_huckelberry]

Carrier demonstrates how Bayes gives us our own assumptions, and how to correct them. Historical criteria have failed to do this, as per their own admissions that the criteria are fatally flawed. Dale C. Allision, Jr is especially vocal about the problems of the subjective, ineffective criteria. Tha's one example.

checking Wikipedia for mr Allision I find,

He is a prominent defender of the view of the historical Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet expecting the imminent end of the age, and of the "thoroughgoing eschatology" of Albert Schweitzer. His views are laid out in his books Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet and Constructing Jesus: Memory and Imagination and History (which the Biblical Archaeology Society named best book relating the New Testament for 2009-2010). His view stands over against those of the Jesus Seminar and such scholars as John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, whose reconstructions of Jesus are largely free of apocalyptic elements. In recent years, he has been a critic of the standard scholarly means of authenticating sayings attributed to Jesus and events concerning him, and he has proposed an alternative approach that takes into account the modern scientific work on human memory. Allison is also associated with the claims that historians of early Christianity have much to learn from cross-cultural messianism as well as from the critical study of visionary experiences both within and without religious contexts.
''''''''''''''''''''
It does not sound like he throws up his hands over historical investigation. He clearly is of one party and would logically be critical of the opposing tendancies. The Jesus Seminar leaning folks and Crossan work out a system of weighting the trustworthiness of sayings. A number of people have observed that doing that has enough uncertainty that the resulting picture of Jesus takes on the colors of the selectors preferences.

All historical Jesus studies attempt to clarify and expand on the limited stories that we have. Doing this must have some uncertainty and will never reach a resolution. That is different than saying there are contradictory pictures suggesting no real one reference point.

[_huckelberry]

I feel some caution commenting about Bayes theorem, I have no serious understanding of it. I can assume it has its use. However even using quite simple math principals I cannot help considering that the accurcy of the result is significantly dependent upon the accuracy of the number plugged into the equationk, garbage in garbage out I have heard.

i cannot help but think that each element in the relationship turns into number only by way of historical assessment. If you have a piece of evidence , say a piece of writing called Hebrews, is it an example of a reflection of belief in a recent Jewish human or some divine angel dying? There are a few people who see the second. I do not. One of those few who see what I do not see, added that chumps like me don't read Greek. well I do not but there are thousands of people studying the writing who do. They do not see this mythic Jesus portrayed there so some sort of assessment is happening prior to considering how this piece of evidence is counted.

I am curious as to what clear examples of Christian writing can be found exist prior to the 20th century which describe a Jesus dying in the celestial realms as a divine figure come to us in a ritualistic portrayal .

[_Mary]

These appear to be the elements Carrier uses for his mythicist argument.

Element 2: When Christianity began, Judaism was highly sectarian and diverse. There was no 'normative' set of Jewish beliefs, but a countless array of different Jewish belief systems vying for popularity.Element 3: When Christianity began, many Jews had long been expecting a messiah: a divinely chosen leader or savior anointed (literally of figuratively 'christened', hence a 'Christ') to help usher in God's supernatural kingdom.Element 4: Palestine in the early first century CE was experiencing a rash of messianism.Element 7: The pre-Christian book of Daniel was a key messianic text, laying out what would happen and when, partly inspiring much of the very messianic fever of the age, which by the most obvious (but not originally intended) interpretation predicted the messiah's arrival in the early first century, even (by some calculations) the very year of 30 CE. This text was popularly known and widely influential, and was known and regarded as scripture by the early Christians.Element 8: Many messianic sects among the Jews were searching the scriptures for secret messages from God about the coming messiah, in both the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint.Element 11: The earliest definitely known form of Christianity was a Judeo-Hellenistic mystery religion.Element 15: Christianity began as a charismatic cult which many of its leaders and members displayed evidence of schizotypal personalities. They naturally and regularly hallucinated (seeing visions and hearing voices).Element 16: The earliest Christians claimed they knew at least some (if not all) facts and teachings of Jesus from revelation and scripture (rather than from witnesses), and they regarded these as more reliable sources than word-of-mouth.Element 17: The fundamental features of the gospel story of Jesus can be read out of the Jewish scriptures.Element 29: [W]hat are now called 'Cargo Cults' are the modern movement most culturally and socially similar to earliest Christianity, so much so that Christianity is best understood in light of them.Element 30: Early-first century Judea was at the nexus of countless influences, not only from dozens of innovating and interacting Jewish sects (Element 2, and 33), but also pagan religions and philosophies.Element 31: Incarnate sons (or daughters) of a god who died and then rose from their deaths to become living gods granting salvation to their worshipers were a common and peculiar feature of pagan religion when Christianity arose, so much so that influence from paganism is the only plausible explanation for how a Jewish sect such as Christianity came to adopt the idea.Element 32: By whatever route, popular philosophy (especially Cynicism, and to some extent Stoicism and Platonism and perhaps Aristotelianism) influenced Christian teachings.

Do, you agree with all those elements? I don't. If they are used to calculate the probability that Jesus either did or did not exist then they are flawed in my opinion. Rubbish in, rubbish out.



From

http://www.nobeliefs.com/Carrier.htm

And some quotes..

[W]e have no criticisms of Christianity of any sort until well into the second century, far too late for such critics to know the real truth of the matter, especially if Christians themselves had forgotten (or weren't telling). p. 5

He writes as if Christianity were one cohesive whole. It wasn't. Heck, Paul explicitly criticises the Jerusalem contingent. There was internal disagreement.