mountainman

I made a simple mistake when i wrote "I think the following three might be added" and then labelled them 3a, 3b and 3c when I had in mind just adding a complex third to the first two.

Leeway is expected in a process of Drafting. You will note that these drafts all relate to the second hypothesis of chronology, to which everyone in this forum, with a few exceptions perhaps, might answer with either a 1 or a 2 or perhaps both 1 and 2. (It obviously relates to the century of authorship of the canonical books of the new testament)


What I am describing/exploring is a very simple theory generator, using admittedly high level postulates.
The postulates are quite capable of being generated from a YES/NO question.

(1) The first is Was Jesus historical? YES = HJ, NO = MJ

(2) The second asks Which century? 1, 2, 3 etc

;;;

(3) The 3rd postulate relates to how the theorist views Eusebius's influence in the chronological postulate #2 above, and also how the theorist rates the competency of Eusebius as a reliable source.

Doug Shaver

Someone with a proven ability to think rigorously can be excused for a bit of rhetorical carelessness.

Toto

Pete, this is such a mess of confused thinking I don't know where to start.

If you are looking for postulates, I think that historical research in general is based on a few postulates: that human society and psychology in the past was very similar to what we have today, that ancient documents are not good evidence, but may be some evidence, and that miracles do not happen.

Ideally, the historical (or mythical) Jesus is not a postulate, but a conclusion drawn from the evidence, properly evaluated.

If historicists and mythicists started with different postulates, we might as well give up. There would be no way of persuading anyone of anything.

Vorkosigan

Mountainman, I think you are trying to describe a methodology, and you are starting with the conclusions.

Start with a set of criteria, which are easier to think about. For example, some at random:

1. Methodological naturalism
2. The most difficult reading is more likely to be the original
3. The genre must be known before a historical assay can be made.
4. Where text A is dependent on text B, text B is older.
....

Huon

5. Do not forget that texts A and B can be combinations of pieces of various dates.

6. The discussions about the NT concern texts about which we do not know what happened to them before the 4th century. At best, the papyrii bring infos about what they contain, nothing more.

mountainman

Thanks for the leeway Vork, and for the items 1 to 4 on a list that you label criteria but which in the end we want to see as carefully stated postulates. I will first establish how I think all BC&H Theories are methologically established, and then I will introduce another methodology for comparison and discussion, that I unsuccessfully described above as a "modelling by Reverse Engineering the methodology of all existing theories".


First - how I think things work ....


The Black Box of BC&H Theory Generation

Here is a diagram on how I see things working.

If anyone sees a problem with the process let me know.





Description of Process:

Evidence is listed with provision for new evidence and/or reclassification of existent evidence in a series E1, E2, E3, ...... En.

Postulates are listed with the requirement that they are not refuted by the existing evidence with provision for new postulates, and modification and/or removal of existing postulates .... Series P1, P2, P3, ... Pn

The evidence and the postulates are fed into a theory generator (black box)


The output is a list of theoretical conclusions C1, C2, C3, ... Cn. (e.g. C1. The answer is 42 )


OBSERVATION on working of "Black Box"

If the above summary holds to be reasonable we may say that the black box of BC&H Theory generation is essentially yielding a number of antithetical conclusions. When some people operate this black box the theoretical conclusions might be (1) Jesus was historical and (2) the historical action of christian origins went down in the first century. OTOH when other people operate this black box the theoretical conclusions might be (1) Jesus was not historical and (2) the historical action of christian origins went down in the second century.

Hence I see the all important necessity of getting the postulates out in the open because these MAY BE also being used (in part) to evaluate the evidence itself (inside the black box).


Draft Listing of Postulates

I will make a list of the criteria as if they were to be considered as postulates, to start the list. These are:

P1. Methodological naturalism
P2. The most difficult reading is more likely to be the original
P3. The genre must be known before a historical assay can be made.
P4. Where text A is dependent on text B, text B is older.

From Huon ....

and from Toto ...


Some of these are a reasonable start to a list of postulates.

Are there any lists of postulates anywhere relevant to this process?
Feel free to massively copy/paste .....

What are these additional things you dont assume, and what things do you assume?
Please elaborate.

mountainman

Ideally you may be right.


If the postulates are never formally openly listed, then how will anyone ever know whether they are different or the same? And have you ever seen the postulates of any party formally listed?



Precisely.

J-D

Why? Why can't somebody start without postulates?

mountainman

Richard Carrier in his PDF entitled “Bayes’ Theorem for Beginners: Formal Logic and Its Relevance to Historical Method — Adjunct Materials and Tutorial” presents an example List of Popular Historicity Criteria.

He states that
We may log these on to the list of postulates which were at least at one time held to "hold some water". I think Carrier deconstructs these criteria, but they deserve to be identified on a draft list of postulates. These 36 entries can be indexed from P101 to P136, the first 17 as follows:


Some additional postulates (ok, criteria) used by HJ theorists


P101 - Dissimilarity - dissimilar to independent Jewish or Christian precedent
P102 - Embarrassment - if it was embarrassing, it must be true
P103 - Coherence - coheres with other confirmed data
P104 - Multiple Attestation - attested in more than one independent source
P105 - Contextual Plausibility - plausible in a Jewish or Greco-Roman cultural context
P106 - Historical Plausibility - coheres with a plausible historical reconstruction
P107 - Natural Probability - coheres with natural science (etc.)
P108 - Explanatory Credibility - historicity better explains later traditions
P109 - Oral Preservability - capable of surviving oral transmission
P110 - Fabricatory Trend - isn’t part of known trends in fabrication or embellishment
P111 - Least Distinctiveness - the simpler version is the more historical
P112 - Vividness of Narration - the more vivid, the more historical
P113 - Crucifixion - explains why Jesus was crucified
P114 - Greek Context - if whole context suggests parties speaking Greek
P115 - Aramaic Context - if whole context suggests parties speaking Aramaic
P116 - Textual Variance - the more invariable a tradition, the more historical
P117 - Discourse Features - if J’s speeches cohere in style but differ fr. surrounding text
P118 - etc
......
P136 - etc


While the above series appears to be used only by HJ theoriests, can anyone suggest any other postulates used by today's theorists in this field? How many postulates Pn do you think there might be if they were listed out in any sort of comprehensive fashion?

mountainman

Here is a series of postulates for HJ and MJ theories from the archives.

See MJ Theories - what are the postulates?

List of possible postulates for MJ Theories


(nb: "stories" refers to "Gospel Stories")


1) the Jesus stories are mythology, itself a "transformed earlier myth"
2) Story characters are arbitrarility ficitious or historical
3) christianity grew organically without founder, later invented a story
4) stories are based on Hebrew scriptures (not an HJ)
5) Paul and his letters are "historical" (eg: Doherty's MJ)
6) stories are "mythical" created by an historically unknowable "storyteller(s)".
7) stories are "mythical" created by an historically knowable "storyteller(s)".






List of postulates for HJ Theories


1) Sufficient historicity - the actual history of the time can be recovered in sufficient detail to have some assurance that one obscure person existed.
2) HJ Core (assumed as an unexamined postulate).
3) Evidentiary - because "of the fact" that christianity exists, it may be concluded that some HJ, or charismatic founder, or "NRM personality" started it.
4) Textual core written records are historical evidence of an HJ.

5) Source Language: the New Testament was written in Greek
6) Transmission: the critical Westcott-Hort transmission is correct
7) History: the christian historiology written c.314 is true and correct
8) Apostlic lineage: the apostle Paul wrote something preserved to us
9) Paul and his letters are "historical"