rlogan

Not at all. The statistical approach is to identify a source for a passage, and thus it has been explained. I have not clarified this to non-statisticians. What is left over after a model has explained something is called a "residual". The one with the smallest residual is the winner of the models that compete against one another.

To the non-statistician the better way to explain it is that you are building up mountains of explaining, and the one with the greatest amount of explanation wins. I realize you reject this whole approach, no big deal.

I just wanted to clarify the misunderstanding about me wanting to end up with "nothing" and change that to "nothing unexplained".

I thought I was arguing the same thing.

I can see that you don't. It seems to be the position that extrabiblical material doesn't matter. Please do not take offense at whatever I say here, I have no interest in pissing you off.

A strawman there, buddy - the historicists are not asserting "nobody" Jesus'. They are asserting one that is historically notable. Josephus lists the various towns where battles were fought with the Romans. Were anyone to allege a town where a major battle was fought, and it was absent in Josephus' Wars of the Jews, there were no other sources mentioning it, no archaeological evidence - then I would say it didn't happen. Rather, the source of the story is literary rather than real.


Pilate's wife did not allegedly perform miracles and become such a politically dangerous figure as to warrant execution and have her new religion spread like wildfire across the Greek sphere of the Roman Empire.

So the assertion that she did loses statistically against the assertion that she was "pilate's wife" and no more. This doesn't mean anything to you, obviously. So we just agree to disagree, that's all.


"Merely" is an interesting term for a decisive statistical test over the debate that has raged on here since long before I ever arrived.

Cheers. My regards to your cat. I have a new puppy.

spin

If I send you a full spittoon, do you think that you can look into it and apply statistics to you being able to say who made which spit?

It's all spit to me.

Not "nothing", "functionally nothing"! Nothing of consequence. But I don't understand what you mean by "nothing unexplained" rather than "nothing".

It's not that it doesn't matter; it's that there is no way to relate the information meaningfully.

I was actually dealing with the problems of not having a useful window into a past that is not well documented. Josephus is one of our few sources for the period and much of his material is uncorroborated. He obviously gives us a small viewing window to the past, leaving out much, such that what he does tell us doesn't allow us to know how representative of that past world his information is. Does the fact that he only mentions a few hundred villages in Galilee make the others known from archaeology disappear? You should be able to see the absurdity in making generalizations on insufficient data.

Nice swerve. Again, I'm pointing to the lack of information, easy information, that should drive back those brewing certainties.

A better argument makes pretense to greater explaining power. One witchdoctor can can have greater explaining power than another.

Aaah, a kiddy distraction, right? Little Bob Jnrs go chasing puppy and Bob Snr gets his concentration back for a while. Devious.

aa5874

Spin's "black hole" is irrelevant for the quest for HJ. It is just absurd that because little is known of Pilate that little must be known of the Jesus character.

It is in fact the complete opposite. We have more writings attributed to writers of antiquity about Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Savior than probably ALL persons of antiquity combined.

See http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

Jesus Christ is mentioned over a THOUSAND times.

See http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/

Again, Jesus Christ is mentioned over a thousand times.

Perhaps only God is mentioned more times than Jesus Christ in antiquity.

We have a vast amount of writings from antiquity--thousands of writings- about Jesus of Nazareth and can very very easily deduce that he was a product of Jewish, Greek and Roman mythology.

The Jesus cult was NOT at all embarrassed to declare and document that their Jesus was born AFTER his mother was made pregnant by a Holy Ghost and that when he was baptised a Holy Ghost bird descended on him.

In fact, a "thousand" times, it stated publicly and circulated in the Roman Empire since at least the 2nd century that the heavens were WELL PLEASED that the Holy Ghost bird descended on the Son of God at baptism.

There is NO black hole of history for Myth Jesus.

We know when the Myth character called Jesus was conceived and when he ascended in the clouds. We have "thousands of myth fables" of Jesus Christ--far more than Romulus, and Apollo and perhaps all the Myths of antiquity combined.