The Jesus Myth Part III

[dastardly stem]

I hope you don't think you are alone in "push[ing] the normative narratives a bit" because most of us landed on the board by the very same process. We pushed the "normative narratives" a bit. Moreover, some of us were probably considering and reading about mythicism before you discovered it. I was a fan of Robert M. Price for quite some time, and he is considered pretty fringe in mainstream New Testament scholarship. Even if you don't believe that I "push the normative narratives a bit," surely you would agree that Analytics has shown plenty of capacity to do so, and indeed has done so.

The thing is, what you call moving forward is not necessarily always moving to the conclusions you like. I have certainly moved forward in the way I see Paul and the stories about angels incarnating as human beings. I have learned quite a bit about that. This has not convinced me that there was never a historical Jesus, but maybe embracing that conclusion too hastily would not be "moving forward" but backward.

My apologies. I was trying to express myself and not suggest no one else here wants to push boundaries. I didn't say that. Certainly didn't intend it. Also I apologize for any misunderstanding I caused about moving forward. I'm. Old Testament saying no ones moving forward.

In antiquity it is very often the case that the first author you see telling a story was not the first author to tell the story. The author is usually telling his or her version of a story that others have told before. Many times the earlier tellers are oral tellers, not writers. It is almost certainly the case that "Mark" was not the first person to tell the Jesus story. He provides us our first extant written account. You really need to factor in these variables when you comment on why it is that scholars believe there was a Jesus who actually lived. Couple this with the fact that "Mark" wrote only four decades after Jesus died, and now a reasonable historian allows for a higher probability that there were living people who remembered Jesus in "Mark's" day.

I acknowledge all of this. There certainly are possibilities. But we don't hear from anyone else. We don't see marks story of Jesus before Mark. While certainly it could have been. It could have been written down. The issue is, we don't have it or see it.

These things really must be factored into the statistical likelihood of Jesus' actual earthly existence, as well as your estimation of the reasonableness of the people you disagree with. Not a few of these people are trained ancient historians with real PhDs and peer-reviewed books and articles under their belt. That does not make them right, of course, but you could try a little harder to recognize that your stubborn interlocutors actually have real reasons to be stubborn. We have been around the block a few times, dude.

Ok

[dastardly stem]

Treating Mark as a historian in any sense is also problematic, and yet some have been doing that.

What does it mean to you to be a historian in the ancient world, and to what extent should texts that are not history, technically speaking, be dismissed as being of no historical value whatsoever? When Cicero writes epistles that contain historical data, do we reflexively dismiss the data because the letters are "not history"?

I don't think so. My apologies for the way I said that.

[dastardly stem]

I don't think the Linda problem applies here at all. It only appears to, stem, because of the way you chose to word the two hypotheses.

If we're going to evaluate evidence, I think we have to compare:

1. If the story of Jesus is that of a mythologized real person, what should we expect the evidence to look like?

2. If the story of Jesus is that of a mythical figure that never existed, what should we expect the evidence to look like?

I'm not a historian, so I have to defer to folks like Kish who know what the evidence looks like for category 1. If I'm understanding what he's saying about the evidence, what we find looks much more like 1 than 2. For example, if Jesus were in category 2, we would not expect to find details in the story that tie him to a specific place and time.

Kish is probably as good a shot as I'll ever get as far as what the evidence should look like in either case. The only axe he seems to have to grind is a defense of doing history right, which is a perfectly acceptable axe in this case. I've always found this issue interesting, although of no real importance, but I find myself persuaded that the odds favor a real guy Jesus.

Thanks for chiming in res ipsa. The Linda problem isn't intended as applied here to compare the two hypotheses. The use of the Linda problem goes like this. Marks story is like the preamble for Linda. Then we consider: Is it more likely the story of Jesus is myth or is it more likely the story of Jesus is myth and there is a real person behind the myth? It's a conjunction fallacy to think the added proposition is more likely than the other. Given the story there is as Steven j Gould suggests "I know that the [conjunctive] statement is least probable, yet a little homunculus in my head continues to jump up and down, shouting at me" ‘but he can’t just be a myth; read the description.’

The question of did Jesus live and the answer as per people's opinion doesn't really matter to me. I would just like to understand why.

[Res Ipsa]

I don't think the Linda problem applies here at all. It only appears to, stem, because of the way you chose to word the two hypotheses.

If we're going to evaluate evidence, I think we have to compare:

1. If the story of Jesus is that of a mythologized real person, what should we expect the evidence to look like?

2. If the story of Jesus is that of a mythical figure that never existed, what should we expect the evidence to look like?

I'm not a historian, so I have to defer to folks like Kish who know what the evidence looks like for category 1. If I'm understanding what he's saying about the evidence, what we find looks much more like 1 than 2. For example, if Jesus were in category 2, we would not expect to find details in the story that tie him to a specific place and time.

Kish is probably as good a shot as I'll ever get as far as what the evidence should look like in either case. The only axe he seems to have to grind is a defense of doing history right, which is a perfectly acceptable axe in this case. I've always found this issue interesting, although of no real importance, but I find myself persuaded that the odds favor a real guy Jesus.

Thanks for chiming in res ipsa. The Linda problem isn't intended as applied here to compare the two hypotheses. The use of the Linda problem goes like this. Marks story is like the preamble for Linda. Then we consider: Is it more likely the story of Jesus is myth or is it more likely the story of Jesus is myth and there is a real person behind the myth? It's a conjunction fallacy to think the added proposition is more likely than the other. Given the story there is as Steven j Gould suggests "I know that the [conjunctive] statement is least probable, yet a little homunculus in my head continues to jump up and down, shouting at me" ‘but he can’t just be a myth; read the description.’

The question of did Jesus live and the answer as per people's opinion doesn't really matter to me. I would just like to understand why.

Thanks Stem, but why aren’t the two propositions:

1) Jesus is a myth and based and a real person; and
2) Jesus is a myth and not based on a real person.

[dastardly stem]

Thanks Stem, but why aren’t the two propositions:

1) Jesus is a myth and based and a real person; and
2) Jesus is a myth and not based on a real person.

Jesus is myth [period] is the second option. Linda is a bank teller is the minimal option. Adding conjunctions to it dilutes the probability. That's the dilemma.

I know what you're driving at but I'm introducing the dilemma here not because I know Jesus never lived. Nor due to my agreement that he probably did not. The burden still rests on the person making the claim of an actual person who preached and gained a following, who was later mythologized. There's no conjunction in saying mark wrote up a myth. I'm suggesting if we take Mark as the story we see myth. Adding "and he's a real person" is the conjunction. Leaving it as "myth" [period]. Is the higher likelihood. Adding he's not a real person is just repetitive. Bigfoot a myth and he's not a real creature is not a conjunction, or at least doesn't invoke the dilemma. It's just repeating your initial part of it. It's already stated. Bigfoot is a myth and there was a real creature behind the myth is a conjunction that complicates the story.

Let's just say (since it's late and I should be asleep) there's a myth in a small town in Montana. Bigfoot comes out of the mountains once a year and terrorizes the town. We shoot him and he doesn't die, no matter how much we do so. He breaks through every cage we put him in. He throws cars like our biggest farmer throws his hay bails. Every year they have a festival on the day the myth suggests he appears.

Is it more likely :

Bigfoot is a myth.

Or

Bigfoot is a myth and is based on an actual creature that came out of the mountains and ate their cows?

If one says the latter is more likely then he is wrong. Because the conjunction adds an element that complicates.

[huckelberry]

Thanks Stem, but why aren’t the two propositions:

1) Jesus is a myth and based and a real person; and
2) Jesus is a myth and not based on a real person.

Jesus is myth [period] is the second option. Linda is a bank teller is the minimal option. Adding conjunctions to it dilutes the probability. That's the dilemma.

I know what you're driving at but I'm introducing the dilemma here not because I know Jesus never lived. Nor due to my agreement that he probably did not. The burden still rests on the person making the claim of an actual person who preached and gained a following, who was later mythologized.

Stem, I think you are missing something in the Linda problem.

It would be closer to ask which is more probable, 1 there are mythical pieces in Mark,2 there are mythical pieces and there was no real Jesus.

You see you add complications if you say no real Jesus for the story or if you say there is a real Jesus. Either view of Jesus is more complicated than the proposal that there are myth like images in Mark.

I do not think you take seriously the complications created for the story of Christianity starting if there was no real person Jesus. I can see that it not impossible to imagine it if you allow strange conspiracy theory type twists and turns.

[honorentheos]

What stem is doing wrong with the Linda problem is pretending the myth-only postulate is Prob=A and not Prob=A+B. But it is and he demonstrates it in the thread every time someone points out why the narrative descriptions of Jesus, though mythologized, fit a historical context.

Stem's B is that someone put in a ton of work to make the myth fit a historical context decades in the past from when the mythologized accounts we can access were codified. Stem isn't arguing that it's more likely that Jesus is myth only. Stem is arguing that Jesus is myth only, AND this myth was evolved from a detached celestial being into a mortal that fits a specific place and time in history. Symmachus really gave us a master class on the problems with this in one of the first threads.

At the end of the day I'm reminded of discussions with stem a decade or so ago when he was still a faithful member of the church. The more anyone debated with him, the more entrenched he became. Yet here he is today. I'm inclined to image ten years from now the argument for historicity will have snapped into place for him, but it won't be due to argument on this thread. It will just take the time it takes.

[Res Ipsa]

What stem is doing wrong with the Linda problem is pretending the myth-only postulate is Prob=A and not Prob=A+B. But it is and he demonstrates it in the thread every time someone points out why the narrative descriptions of Jesus, though mythologized, fit a historical context.

Stem's B is that someone put in a ton of work to make the myth fit a historical context decades in the past from when the mythologized accounts we can access were codified. Stem isn't arguing that it's more likely that Jesus is myth only. Stem is arguing that Jesus is myth only, AND this myth was evolved from a detached celestial being into a mortal that fits a specific place and time in history. Symmachus really gave us a master class on the problems with this in one of the first threads.

At the end of the day I'm reminded of discussions with stem a decade or so ago when he was still a faithful member of the church. The more anyone debated with him, the more entrenched he became. Yet here he is today. I'm inclined to image ten years from now the argument for historicity will have snapped into place for him, but it won't be due to argument on this thread. It will just take the time it takes.

I think you’ve identified the Linda problem problem very clearly. There’s an equivocation in the meaning of “myth” in stem’s two hypotheses.

[Kishkumen]

What does it mean to you to be a historian in the ancient world, and to what extent should texts that are not history, technically speaking, be dismissed as being of no historical value whatsoever? When Cicero writes epistles that contain historical data, do we reflexively dismiss the data because the letters are "not history"?

I don't think so. My apologies for the way I said that.

I was asking you sincere questions, stem, not trying to elicit an apology.

[dastardly stem]

Hey all, I'm enjoying the discussion that's continuing.

I'm surprised to see the misunderstanding regarding the Linda problem but I also see my set up was quickly explained and that's likely the culprit.

Honor says:

Stem is arguing that Jesus is myth only, AND this myth was evolved from a detached celestial being into a mortal that fits a specific place and time in history.

That's a complete misunderstanding of the Linda problem as I applied it. I said if Carrier's mythicist argument doesn't work, if we can ignore it then the situation remains that the burden for a real life Jesus still needs to be resolved. So, no. Indeed, the point raised on the Linda problem is an interesting one, but it likely won't hit those who are feeling settled on our overall question.

Honor:

What stem is doing wrong with the Linda problem is pretending the myth-only postulate is Prob=A and not Prob=A+B.

It should be clear I m not pretending anything. That's not the case. Also, it just so happens everyone's agreed myth is prob=A. The result of Mark is a mythologized character. I haven't seen anyone dispute that.. there's no plus to that point. Keep in mind on this point I'm dropping the argument for mythicism as argued by Carrier and am strictly focusing on mark's gospel. Marks gospel gives us a myth. Based on Mark as preamble it simply is more likely Jesus is myth than Jesus is myth plus was a real person. That's simply how the conjunction dilemma works. Everyone wants the homunculous who's shouting in our heads to be right.

Now if you want to complain that marks mythicsl Jesus and the myth argument from Carrier can give us a conjunction dilemma, fine with me. But that's really beside the point I raised.

Admittedly I don't know what I did or what happened for honor to hold onto something from 10 years ago but I'm sure I did plenty wrong. I apologize and hope we can move on from that. If he's just generally saying he's upset with me and remembers being upset 10 years ago about something, I say, let's not hold on to such things hoping to use it to demean each other. And, sure, I like disagreeing on topics that are interesting. I like the exploration more than the personal jabs and I realize being very clear about my points help me and hopefully everyone learn and grow. This to me is less about whatever he's upset about regarding me and whether I'm too stubborn, in my mind, but far more about can I learn from this.

Res ipsa:

There’s an equivocation in the meaning of “myth” in stem’s two hypotheses.

I was fairly clear when initially it was presented, but hopefully my explanation here clears that up. I think it's clear this mischaracterizes things. There's no equivocating the meaning of myth.

I'll get back when I have time.