Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Ted Hoffman · 09-09-2005, 03:53 AM

Peter,
I think you are onto something and I think I love it.

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Since we can't examine the writings of all people who accept or accepted a human Jesus, we will have to get a 'representative sample' of sorts. So I will take suggestions for the authors that should be on that list. The cutoff limit should probably be the mid 18th century, around which time we see the first mythicists who come from a different, rationalist perspective (if indeed there are mythicists before then).

18th century? Which Christians do you have in mind?
Remember, these criteria are designed to examine Christian texts and the manner in which they present Christianity. In other words, we dont really care much what the non-Christians thought.

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Now, will Pr( C | H ) turn out to be zero? Will there be no cases, or at least no known cases, of human Jesus authors who satisfy the criteria? The very first criterion might seem to suggest so.

Why do you say that?

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Consider, for example, an author who is living today and somehow managed to satisfy most of the criteria. We ask her, 'do you believe in a man named Jesus?' She says, 'yes.'

Our purpose is to demonstrate that there were early flavours of Christianity that lacked a HJ. And consequently use that to argue that Christianity did not start with a HJ, but that a HJ was aninvention that was later supplanted into the religion.

That is to say that we do not care much about what Christians think today: we know what we need to know about today. It is the obscure past that we need to uncover.

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What my idea is, then, is this. The typical early Christian epistle is about 2000 words long, with a high end of about 10000 words. I suggest splitting the works of these H people into chunks of about 2000 words.

Sounds good.

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Then the criteria are applied to each chunk. Then a kind of statistical or combinatorial analysis happens, either by hand or (better) by computer. The kind of analysis I currently have in mind is to take all the possible selections (this example is for a hypothetical author with about 20000 words): selections of 1 chunk of 10 (10 possible), selections of 2 chunks of 10 (45 possible) ... selections of 8 chunks of 10 (45 possible), selections of 9 chunks of 10 (10 possible), and a selection of all ten chunks (1 possible). If any of the given chunks within a selection satisfies the criteria, then that selection has a value of 1; if none of them do, that selection has a value of 0. Average the values of the selections, and you get a fraction, a probability value based on that one author. Do this for a dozen authors (authors that are not cherry picked of course), averaging each author's probability value, and you have something substantial that you are working with.

Okay. Lesee.... is it going to be a keyword search? What will constitute this "combinatorial analysis"?
How will it escape the kinds of potholes posed by, for example, Epistle of Barnabas, who alludes to earthly events that we dismissed as ahistorical on epistemic grounds?

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My hunch is that this will turn out well for your criteria, but I'd rather have more than a hunch.

I think this may be very useful for the criteria. If you point me the right way, I will be all over it.

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(I welcome any corrections to the above by those who may be more able at this kind of thing. Also, if anyone has a better idea, I would like to hear it.)

Thanks Peter. I find your formulation of Bayes' formula sort of "summarized" I need to review my understanding of it.

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Originally Posted by clivedurdle

Why is there any relationship between number of words and assumptions about HJ or not?

Because, say clivedurdle says "Presidents can be very difficult"
Then someone asks: "Does clivedurdle like President Bush?"
We will say "clivedurdle doesn't say". Of course, the more clivedurdle speaks about presidents, the more he is likely to indicate whether he likes Bush or not. So, the more ink a Christian writer spills, the more he lets our regarding what he believes regarding Jesus.

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Originally Posted by clivedurdle

We are not agreed on the meaning of individual words - "flesh" for example!

That only affects Paul. And it is not flesh but the meaning of kata sarka.

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Originally Posted by clivedurdle

We do not know how representative the existing "fossils" are - we do know there are huge gaps, and large chunks were deliberately caused, unlike fossilisation where the gaps and survivals are not deliberate.

Tough luck. We have to use what we have.

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Isn't there a major problem that everyone has assumed an HJ because that is the party line, and the odd gnostic or mystic who got accepted were allowed because sometimes it is useful some people to stray slightly from the straight and narrow.

There is. But only for those that toe the party line.

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Originally Posted by clivedurdle

Isn't the reality of xianity that it hasn't actually put that much emphasis on the living Jesus? The mass does not for example, it is very mystical. Look at xian current practice - even the fundies talk of a personal relationship with Jesus - not a human but a spiritual being.

That is different. But I have explained this in my response to Kirby above.

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Originally Posted by clivedurdle

Is trying to identify xianities without an hj actually asking when and where and why did the hj concept became dominant?

That is very closely related to this quest, yes.

Clivedurdle · 09-09-2005, 05:43 AM

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That is to say that we do not care much about what Christians think today

But my pont was that as I understand it xians today start from the mythicist position, and then drag around a load of hj baggage and propaganda that is not, using Ockham, required for their beliefs.

We have in the Gospels various points at which Jesus might have become God - at conception, at his baptism, at his death, at his resurrection, at his ascension. The rest of the New Testament has other variations - from eternity for example. There is no agreement about the central point!

Xian beliefs today are actually very strong evidence for mythicism.

Ted Hoffman · 09-09-2005, 07:30 AM

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Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

But my pont was that as I understand it xians today start from the mythicist position,<snip>

Huh? Why do you say this? What do you mean by "mythicist position"?

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Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

... and then drag around a load of hj baggage and propaganda that is not, using Ockham, required for their beliefs.

We have in the Gospels various points at which Jesus might have become God - at conception, at his baptism, at his death, at his resurrection, at his ascension. The rest of the New Testament has other variations - from eternity for example. There is no agreement about the central point!

Xian beliefs today are actually very strong evidence for mythicism.

Answering the above may help me understand your comments.

freigeister · 09-09-2005, 08:04 AM

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Originally Posted by Peter Kirby

Since we can't examine the writings of all people who accept or accepted a human Jesus, we will have to get a 'representative sample' of sorts. So I will take suggestions for the authors that should be on that list. The cutoff limit should probably be the mid 18th century, around which time we see the first mythicists who come from a different, rationalist perspective (if indeed there are mythicists before then).

Who are these mythicists of the mid-18th century? Wikipedia identifies Bruno Bauer [1809-1882] as the first scholarly proponent of the Jesus-Myth idea. Or are you muddying the waters by using the term "mythicist" for those who do not deny Christ's historicity, but do reject or question mythical elements in the Bible accounts?

Clivedurdle · 09-09-2005, 10:16 AM

I'm in favour of using probabilities. I have been using fossil analogies deliberately as another way to look at the data. Are there other techniques?

A key understanding of fossils is obtained by studying existing species.

This is why I do not want to put in any arbitrary cut off points, say in the eighteenth century, because I think there is clear evidence of the mythical Jesus in current church practice.

An example "Christ is Risen". A very important part of various church services. Strange, it does not require an HJ!

My gut feeling is that xianities are originally without an HJ, and that HJ is the imposition, with loads of editing and insertions of mission statements like born of a virgin, suffered under Pilate.

A quick and dirty count up giving the HJ view more weight than it deserves will easily show the strength of the MJ position. I would include modern statements and creeds as well, because even those actually have clear weaknesses about an HJ.

Peter Kirby · 09-09-2005, 10:25 AM

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Originally Posted by freigeister

Who are these mythicists of the mid-18th century?

I was being generous; their writings appear in the late 18th century, after the French Revolution. C.F. Dupuis wrote Abrege De L'Origine Des Cultes, 1791; a couple years later Volney surfaces; and Van Voorst notes that some disciples of the English Deist Bolingbroke were spreading the idea that Jesus did not exist, an idea to which Voltaire replied in 1785 that it is "more ingenious than learned."

kind thoughts,
Peter Kirby

Ted Hoffman · 09-09-2005, 10:37 AM

Cliverdurdle,
I think you are looking at the "Christ is risen" thing from one side only. He is risen from the dead. His rising implies that he died and hence was flesh and blood. For Christians, Christ is a superman of sorts. That is not the same as a mythical Christ.

Ted Hoffman · 09-09-2005, 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Kirby

I was being generous; their writings appear in the late 18th century, after the French Revolution. C.F. Dupuis wrote Abrege De L'Origine Des Cultes, 1791; a couple years later Volney surfaces; and Van Voorst notes that some disciples of the English Deist Bolingbroke were spreading the idea that Jesus did not exist, an idea to which Voltaire replied in 1785 that it is "more ingenious than learned."

kind thoughts,
Peter Kirby

But I hope you get my point above: we are interested in early Christian writings. If we had, say 300 years later, people who believed that Christ was an image that was beamed to our brains through some advanced technology, that would have no bearing on the nature of the birth of Christianity.

Clivedurdle · 09-09-2005, 11:21 AM

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Originally Posted by Ted Hoffman

Cliverdurdle,
I think you are looking at the "Christ is risen" thing from one side only. He is risen from the dead. His rising implies that he died and hence was flesh and blood. For Christians, Christ is a superman of sorts. That is not the same as a mythical Christ.

Not necessarily! Note it says Christ - ie Messiah, not Jesus! Christ is risen is perfectly compatible with a spiritual sacrifice and resurrection in heaven, a type of Abraham and Isaac, and my point is that Jesus is superman - i e - fiction! It's identical to a mythical Christ!

I think any use of the term "Christ" by itself is symptomatic of mythicist roots.

Have you noticed how prayers have changed over the years? They used to be very formal, now you get all sorts of mixtures of Lord, Jesus, Father, as if they are unclear who they are praying to, even in one prayer! I'm sorry, that is real evidence that they are making it up, because they do not even get their lines straight! There is also no consistency in the various liturgies!

Solution=myth!

Peter Kirby · 09-09-2005, 11:44 AM

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Originally Posted by Ted Hoffman

I think this may be very useful for the criteria. If you point me the right way, I will be all over it.

I tried to come up with a so-called representative sample, one which isn't designed to come up with a particular result to our question, though of course it has its biases: most of the writers are major thinkers, and hence (the primary selection criterion) they have a large volume of writings on the Internet in translation. All these writers are H people (accept a human Jesus), as that's the test of Pr( C | H ). The list is,

(2nd) Clement of Alexandria
(3rd) Tertullian
(3rd) Origen
(4th) Eusebius
(4th) Athanasius
(4th) John Chrysostom
(4th) Ambrose of Milan
(5th) Jerome
(5th) Augustine
(5th) Leo the Great
(6th) Severus of Antioch
(8th) John Damascene
(9th) Photius of Constantinople
(11th) Anselm
(12th) Abelard
(13th) Aquinas
(16th) Martin Luther
(16th) John Calvin
(17th) Samuel Rutherford
(18th) Jonathan Edwards
(18th) John Wesley

I will accept additions but not subtractions. The minimum criteria for an addition are that the writer must clearly be H and that he or she must have a sizeable corpus of writings in translation online.

Once we have a good list, of writers whose writings are available online, I will consolidate their writings on a website and divide them into 2000 word chunks. Then I will ask for help in deciding whether these chunks meet the primary criterion, that of exhibiting a historical Jesus with detail. After the chunks have been tagged by hand as either exhibiting an HJ or no, I will do the computations required and share the result.

(I am assuming as a baseline that your criteria don't apply to writings shorter than 2000 words. If you think they do, we may need to use smaller chunks.)

kind thoughts,
Peter Kirby

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09-09-2005, 10:16 AM	#35
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	I'm in favour of using probabilities. I have been using fossil analogies deliberately as another way to look at the data. Are there other techniques? A key understanding of fossils is obtained by studying existing species. This is why I do not want to put in any arbitrary cut off points, say in the eighteenth century, because I think there is clear evidence of the mythical Jesus in current church practice. An example "Christ is Risen". A very important part of various church services. Strange, it does not require an HJ! My gut feeling is that xianities are originally without an HJ, and that HJ is the imposition, with loads of editing and insertions of mission statements like born of a virgin, suffered under Pilate. A quick and dirty count up giving the HJ view more weight than it deserves will easily show the strength of the MJ position. I would include modern statements and creeds as well, because even those actually have clear weaknesses about an HJ.

09-09-2005, 10:37 AM	#37
Ted Hoffman Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: "" Posts: 3,863	Cliverdurdle, I think you are looking at the "Christ is risen" thing from one side only. He is risen from the dead. His rising implies that he died and hence was flesh and blood. For Christians, Christ is a superman of sorts. That is not the same as a mythical Christ.

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