Very nice overview of Bayes Theorem and Historical Jesus

[_Analytics]

The crazy luantic who created that website needs to update his web design.

Having seen this a few times before from mysterious sources, I must say that I bet you anything people culturally influenced by Mormons as a group drastically overestimate their sense of the prior probability the Book of Mormon is "true," even if they pick a low starting number. I worry that people may come away thinking teh maths proves their poor intuitions right.

Crazy lunatic is right, lol.

The real point of the calculator is to raise awareness of the possibility that just because the book has a character named Moroni making a promise doesn't mean the promise is real or a valid way to evaluate the truthfulness of the book.

[_EAllusion]

The crazy luantic who created that website needs to update his web design.

Having seen this a few times before from mysterious sources, I must say that I bet you anything people culturally influenced by Mormons as a group drastically overestimate their sense of the prior probability the Book of Mormon is "true," even if they pick a low starting number. I worry that people may come away thinking teh maths proves their poor intuitions right.

Crazy lunatic is right, lol.

The real point of the calculator is to raise awareness of the possibility that just because the book has a character named Moroni making a promise doesn't mean the promise is real or a valid way to evaluate the truthfulness of the book.

I know the intent. But then I think of people who would believe themselves reasonable in thinking the Book of Mormon is a default 50/50 proposition (that nutball even defaults that in the field) and I am more hestitant. The correct answer is that it is so unlikely that it is near impossible to put a number on it.

This matters when people put a big number in the second field and a little one in the third.

[_Philo Sofee]

And he also explains that his definitions of some words he uses such as crucifixion are exactly the way the Ancients themselves were using those words. To me that seems to be historically responsible scholarship.

I get that point and don't disagree with it, but I always get nervous when people's arguments depend upon generalities about "the ancients."

I agree but Carriers arguments do not rely on the generalities of an ancient history in general. He gets into seriously beautiful specifics as you well know in his book. He is trying to be clear about what he means about definitions of certain words is all he's doing when he discusses crucifixion.

[_Philo Sofee]

For Symmachus,. I understand that you don't think Bayes theorem adds anything to the already used historical process but this is incorrect. Richard Carrier demonstrates conclusively I think anyway, in both his books that Bayes theorem solves the threshold problem for when evidence is enough or when it is good enough for us to believe a claim. How much evidence is enough and when is evidence good enough? Is 1 item sufficient, 2 items, 3 items? Etc The historical research methods of Jesus scholarship can't answer that question but Bayes theorem can with a likely probability.

And how good does the evidence have to be how do we decide when evidence is good enough to use or ignore? Issues like this is what Bayes theorem is used for. And what are the relative merits of different kinds of evidence? Is all evidence of the same value if not how do we determine how much more or how much less valuable one piece of evidence his as opposed to another. This is what Bayes theorem is used for. It's what the historical Jesus Scholars methods can't deal with. Not in any probabilistic way. It's always based on their own subjective interpretations of why they like the evidence in one case but don't like the evidence in another . But that has caused immense confusion. Bayes theorem is designed to solve that kind of confusion.

And if that probability is disagreed with then that means someone else has a different probability and they have to have Justified reasons for having that different probability. They must have valid reasons for disagreement based on our background knowledge and the evidence in any particular claim. That's where discussion comes in. But Bayes theorem definitely does something that the traditional Historical Method cannot do. Carrier is not attempting to end the discussion as he knows he is attempting to begin the discussion with aligning all of our knowledge that we know about the ancient world and the evidences for Jesus with all claims being put on the table. No one gets to subjectively determine their evidence is better than anyone else or that their view is better than anyone else without solid sound reason. They also have to demonstrate with evidence and the background knowledge that their claim is more probably true then all the other claims. This no historical Jesus scholar has yet done.

What Bayes theorem is best against guarding against is confirmation bias. The problem we have in historic Jesus studies is that everyone is continually creating Jesus in their own background scholarly biased images. Bayes theorem helps us objectively, at least as objectively as we can, evaluate how good they are biased claims are against other biased claims, but all claims must be examined and tested. The historical Jesus methodology of historical criteria don't do that. That's why we have dozens of contradictory variegated Jesus's. This makes me wonder if there's any actual reality behind any of it or are we continually creating God Jesus after our own image after all even up to our own day.

[_Analytics]

I get that point and don't disagree with it, but I always get nervous when people's arguments depend upon generalities about "the ancients."

I agree but Carriers arguments do not rely on the generalities of an ancient history in general. He gets into seriously beautiful specifics as you well know in his book. He is trying to be clear about what he means about definitions of certain words is all he's doing when he discusses crucifixion.

True enough. I can confidently say I agree with his methodological approach, and I can also say that I find his arguments quite persuasive. But on the other hand, I want to temper my support by pointing out I don't really understand most of the evidence he's describing, and thus am not in a position to say whether he's describing it in a fair and accurate manner or not.

That gets back to what is so frustrating about his critics (e.g. Ehrman). They will quickly make their cases for why they believe in a historical Jesus, but the evidence is so sparse and their analyses so simple (simplistic?) that it can't fill a book. So, they create a whole bunch of filler where they make appeals to their own authority and to the majority. And then rather than actually engaging with Carrier's arguments, they'll simply say that Carrier believes what he does because he "desperately" wants(!) there not to have been a historical Jesus, as if there was a reason--any reason, good or bad--to desperately want such a thing.

If Carrier is wrong, why not demonstrate it by engaging his arguments?

[_Philo Sofee]

Precisely Analytics precisely. I too have felt that same frustration. It's been three to four years now since Carrier produced his information on how to apply Bayes theorem to historicity. And no one seems to even take notice. Instead they focus on him being fringe or being an atheist or not being an expert when in fact he's written thousands of pages on early Christianity and the historical Jesus. So I keep reading all the historical Jesus Scholars and noting where they're making their assumptions so that when they begin to engage in the conversation if they ever do I will at least not be totally lost. Lol!
One thing I have discovered that is quite fascinating for me personally is how many scholars have begun discussing the issue of intertextuality in the New Testament using Old Testament texts to build their stories on. Carrier is the one that turned me on to that idea but one of the very finest Scholars on this is Thomas Brodie. It really amazes me that Dale Allison Jr, also a very solid Biblical scholar, has written an entire book on "The intertextuality of Jesus: Scripture in Q". It is a most amazing text showing the Carrier is not just fringe and out to lunch, but mainstream scholars also see the evidence which they also adduce the evidence and they show that this really is one of the main factors of gospel composition.

[_Symmachus]

Not in any probabilistic way. It's always based on their own subjective interpretations of why they like the evidence in one case but don't like the evidence in another . But that has caused immense confusion. Bayes theorem is designed to solve that kind of confusion.

By "historical Jesus problem" you seem to mean something other than most scholars do, for whom it is largely a cluster of interpretive (that is, subjective) questions. Was Jesus an apocalyptic prophet? What he a social reformer? Was he anti-Roman? Was he indifferent to the Roman system? Was he in favor of marriage, or opposed to it, or neither? Did he see himself as a Messiah? How do his Jewish contexts inform his logia? These are kinds of questions that the overwhelming majority of scholars working in the field ask. These are 100% subjective unless you can give a 100% objective definition of what any of these terms mean (e.g. how do you quantify "apocalyptic prophethood" as opposed to "Messianic reformer"?).

And why do you see this as immense confusion? I mean, people are going to look at different things in different ways. And they'll argue about it. Is Barack Obama a transformative or a typical president? Some people will see the latter and others the former, each with their reasons in argument. Some arguments will be more persuasive than others to different sorts of audiences, but I don't think that's confusion unless you believe these are questions of objective, measurable fact.

I just don't know enough about Bayesian probability to see how it helps. Analytics says that formalizes the reasoning processes that we're already using. That makes sense, but I don't see why I really should to bother with it as a historian, then. You say that it adds more objectivity, and that I simply don't see. How does it inject objectivity into the messiah vs. apocalyptic prophet debate? What are the objective criteria for determining messiahship anyway? I understand Analytics's basic point that it helps order uncertainty in a logically valid way. I'm not sure most questions about the historical Jesus are really questions of uncertainty, though. These are interpretive questions.

On an objective question (at least one that seems objective) like whether or not anyone named Jesus corresponds historically to the figure depicted in the gospels and the degree to which that correspondence is recoverable—this seems to be you mean by historical Jesus research, although it's really very few people who doubt some correspondence—I do think those who are more adept at Bayesian probability than ancient languages and texts are massively underestimating the difficulty of interpreting ancient texts.

The Bayes approach is to look at all of the evidence, and then evaluate how consistent it is with competing hypotheses. That's what a competent analysis would do anyway--expressing it in Bayesian terms just formalizes the reasoning.

Well, it's hardly that simple. That "evidence" doesn't speak for itself and one has to make judgements of some kind about what it is doing and saying in its own context before you can start deciding whether some hypothesis conforms to it or not. There is an interpretive rehearsal that goes on before the show can even begin (see Kish's examples above). We know that the same processes of thinking were at play in thinking about Augustus and about Hercules. How do you account for that in selecting what constitutes "evidence" without already making a judgement that one is historical and one is not? Let's not forget ancient rhetoric, which was as much about epistemology as it was about language in Greco-Roman antiquity. Rhetoric was the means by which reality was expressed—nothing could be accepted as true unless it was couched in the right kind of rhetoric—and since every historian we have worked largely within the assumptions of ancient rhetoric, one really can't even begin to evaluate their evidence without thoroughly understanding their rhetorical theory. Even "objective" evidence like coins and inscriptions are highly rhetorical. Mastering these fields takes deep study over years, and I would think any competent evaluation of the evidence would involve such mastery.

A point of comparison would be helpful in making the case, Philo. For example, I'd love to see a Bayesian analysis on the historicity of Hercules, because you'd have to take account of archaeology (e.g. cultic shrines that were accepted as sites of his historical activity), in addition to literary evidence from rather sober-minded writers like Strabo and Ammianus Marcellinus (provided one reads them superficially, especially Ammianus), to say nothing of poetry, which likewise could be considered historical evidence of a kind. Note especially Livy's preface, where poetry as a historical source is discounted not because it is either true or false but, basically, because they served a different function that was not within the goals of his history. Or compare Herodotus's opening paragraph and the primary reasons he gives for his historical work, both of which are essentially Homeric in their outlook. Should we read everything that comes after as nothing but a prosaic Homer?

The examples that I've seen cited from Carrier's work where he uses typological similarities between some stories in the Odyssey and the gospels left me thinking that he really doesn't get the way people in antiquity thought about the past or how they constructed it. People believed the Odyssey was historical (copious evidence, even archaeological, supports that ; or just think of what Pausanias is doing). Using these topoi was a way of grounding historical composition in the past—which is to say, showing that it was true. The way to deal with that is not say, though, that any use of topoi we find in myth should be discarded as unhistorical. The presence of them throughout the gospels doesn't prove that the gospels are mostly mythology, only that they are ancient Mediterranean texts. Such tropes are so thoroughly pervasive that even historical events that we can corroborate through archaeology will be couched in them.

One thing I have discovered that is quite fascinating for me personally is how many scholars have begun discussing the issue of intertextuality in the New Testament using Old Testament texts to build their stories on. Carrier is the one that turned me on to that idea but one of the very finest Scholars on this is Thomas Brodie. It really amazes me that Dale Allison Jr, also a very solid Biblical scholar, has written an entire book on "The intertextuality of Jesus: Scripture in Q". It is a most amazing text showing the Carrier is not just fringe and out to lunch, but mainstream scholars also see the evidence which they also adduce the evidence and they show that this really is one of the main factors of gospel composition.

But don't miss the point. Just because the compositional mode is imitative of traditional stories doesn't mean that we can assume the composition is fiction. That's a modern, not an ancient distinction. And intertextuality is again part of this process (cf. the way that Amminaus is plainly using Caesar in his Gallic excursus in Book 15...does that mean that Julian didn't fight a battle against the Alamanni in 357?). That would be to massively misunderstand the way the past was conceived and conveyed in Mediterranean antiquity.

(edited for clarity and grammar)

[_richardMdBorn]

Assuming that there is something to the historical Jesus, which existed first, the oral stories of Jesus told by eyewitnesses or the Pauline epistles? Were the gospels written based on myth or the fact that the eyewitnesses were dying off and the early Christians wanted to preserve their stories.

If there was a historical Jesus, then of course the oral stories began as the historical life of Jesus began to unfold. "Wow! Did you hear what he just said! Wow, he just healed that guy!" etc.

But its odd that nobody that we know of would have thought to write anything down until decades later when the actual witnesses were dying off.

What do you think about the theory of a written document Q that the synoptic gospels used as a source (I know, you'll pounce on the word theory). And of course a the theory you're affirming depends on the gospels being late. If Mark and Luke both predate the destruction of Jerusalem, your argument has much less force.

[_mikwut]

HI Analytics welcome back,

Regarding what you said above, Carrier's point isn't that the "traditional historical method is malarkey," but rather that it was incorrectly applied in this particular case. In general, his Bayesian approach is a clarification of the traditional historical method--not something contradictory.

Oh yes, I quite agree. I flippantly wrote too generally and should have specified. As I pointed out with a book reference to Philo above I just don't buy Carrier's bias toward the academy that includes atheist, agnostic, jewish and Christian scholars that conclude very unflattering pictures of Jesus to a believer but a mythical Jesus, that could in fact comport better to a believing paradigm, is not taken seriously and the traditional method is somehow abandoned in that narrow undertaking. It is just absurd.

More specifically, he's simply claiming that all of the evidence and background information needs to be considered. Then, two questions need to be asked: 1- if the historicity hypothesis is true, what's the probability it would have produced the sum total of all of this evidence? 2- if the mysticism hypothesis is true, what's the probability it would have produced the sum total of all of this evidence? In principle, this doesn't contradict the "traditional historical method", does it?

No not at all, and what you just stated is the traditional historical method. He just doesn't apply all the evidence, which isn't surprising given his lone wolf status.

Symmachus makes an excellent point in regards to this:

Well, it's hardly that simple. That "evidence" doesn't speak for itself and one has to make judgements of some kind about what it is doing and saying in its own context before you can start deciding whether some hypothesis conforms to it or not. There is an interpretive rehearsal that goes on before the show can even begin (see Kish's examples above). We know that the same processes of thinking were at play in thinking about Augustus and about Hercules. How do you account for that in selecting what constitutes "evidence" without already making a judgement that one is historical and one is not?

a good example of what Symmachus eloquently points out in Carrier, and respecting what you found appealing from Doherty is in regards to the silence in Paul. Carrier finds this silence 'bizarre' and since it is bizarre Carrier concludes that it is unexpected, infrequent and therefore historically improbable. (page 515 On The Historical Jesus)

But the wider literature doesn't bear this out. What Carrier finds improbable, and infrequent isn't so, it appears in a large number of other letters, going well into the Second Century, by what are historicist writers. Graham Stanton further points out that this is not just something unique to Christian writings, but that also '[p]recise historical and chronological references are few and far between in the numerous Jewish writings discovered in the caves around the Dead Sea near Qumran'. (Stanton, Graham. The Gospels and Jesus, Second Edition, Oxford Bible Series, 2002, page 144)

The silence of the second century writers is nearly identical to the silence found in Paul, but Carrier himself agrees to the historicist nature of those writings. So how can Paul's silence be improbable but writings agreed to be historicist after the rapid mythicism was turned to historicism had taken place not evaluated with the same improbability? I assert Symmachus is dead on, Carrier's evidence doesn't just speak for itself.

A main driver of his point is that in Roman Judea 2,000 years ago, there were in fact mysticist religions that were strikingly similar with the teachings of Paul. These religions featured saviors, sometimes named Jesus, that descended from the seventh level of heaven to the firmament in order to be crucified by demons and then resurrected. These mysticist religions aren't hypothetical--they really existed.

And this isn't unknown to traditional historians. Carrier's use of the Rank-Raglund scale in respect to this as background is nearly cartoonish. He also tweaks things to go his way which is certainly unscientific. Here is a good read respecting that http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/201 ... 8023.shtml

o here is the question: how do we know Paul wasn't a mystic? It's easy to assume he was talking about the Jesus described in the gospels if you read four gospels before you read his epistles. But if you were familiar with mysticism rather than the gospels, would you just as easily assume he was talking about mysticism? That being the case, what was Paul really talking about?

Well how do I unpack this in a post or a few? How about this, why just ask that question? Plenty of mythicist's outside of Carrier believe Paul himself never existed and give plenty of historical reasoning for doing so. But Carrier has to rely on traditional historians and method for his assertion that Paul was historical. Why wouldn't the traditional method fail here?

That's basically the way Carrier phrases the question. It's conceivable that a historical Jesus was embellished with supernatural abilities and accomplishments. Likewise, it's conceivable that a mystic Jesus was embellished with an earthly history. In light of all of the evidence, which of those two conceivable hypotheses is more likely?

Currently the former. The reasons are manifold.

The novelty of a mystic Jesus is intriguing to me. Carrier is a bit of an arrogant prick and I don't particularly like aligning myself with him. But I find his arguments worthy of consideration.

I'm not adverse to using Baye's theorem in the manner you outline for specific and appropriate historical issues and if it helps historical research all the better. I do think your falling for Carrier's smuggling of Baye's to appear more credible but I have deep concerns there as well. My criticism is that Baye's cannot be used properly if its results are so radical from decades and decades of Jesus scholarship from all over the world.

I am yet to read a mathematician or statistician speak highly of Carrier's application and use of Baye's either. If you find one I love to read it. Respecting Carrier's use of Baye's Luke Barnes who criticised Christian William Lane Craig's historical use of the theorem pretty harshly also blasts Carrier's use of the theorem:
https://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2 ... er-part-1/

Atheist Jeffery Jay Lowder, the co-founder of Internet Infidels reviewed the exchange between Barnes and Carrier he sometimes agrees with Carrier in some points but concludes Barnes' criticisms of Carrier's use of Bayes is a "a prima facie devastating critique". http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularout ... ne-tuning/

Just think how many one time events happen in history - how is that translated into probability sufficiently? I just see no way out of the subjectivity nightmare with Bayes used in the manner Carrier advocates. Philo can speak all he wants of the background and "all" the evidence, that doesn't change it.
mikwut

[_Kishkumen]

However little value it adds to the thread, I want to voice my agreement with everything Symmachus said in his last post. It is mind-boggling to me that Carrier could be so oblivious regarding certain key aspects of ancient intellectual history as he apparently is--such awareness being absolutely crucial to understand the place of the Gospels and writings of Paul as evidence. Symmachus has stated the case more lucidly than I could. My problem with Carrier is precisely this: his failure to understand his ancient sources and their context adequately, and simultaneous insistence that what he doesn't understand or can't reconcile with his surface sense of reality must indicate a narrative utterly divorced from historical realia.

I admit that I have not read his books, but when I have seen him demonstrate his reasoning in talks or on his blog, the fairly obvious deficiencies scream at me. Which deficiencies? See Symmachus and mikwut above. No, the evidence does not interpret itself, and a 21rst century man using Bayes without a deep mastery of the intellectual history results in fatally compromising errors in judging prior probability.

The odd thing here, almost inexplicable in fact, is that Carrier is well familiar with the history of ancient science. What he seems to be lacking is a true appreciation of the pervasiveness of rhetoric--precisely as Symmachus points out.

On an objective question (at least one that seems objective) like whether or not anyone named Jesus corresponds historically to the figure depicted in the gospels and the degree to which that correspondence is recoverable—this seems to be you mean by historical Jesus research, although it's really very few people who doubt some correspondence—I do think those who are more adept at Bayesian probability than ancient languages and texts are massively underestimating the difficulty of interpreting ancient texts.

What a beautiful post. Thank you, Symmachus.