Freethought & Rationalism Archive

jgoodguy · 06-06-2011, 10:53 PM

Hoffmann critiques Carrier's attempt to use Bayes’s Theorem to determine probability in new testament writings.

Quote:

Carrier has claimed on a number of occasions that his approach is revolutionary, a tour de force and essentially over the heads of New Testament scholars. Apart from the naivety of saying anything like this in a field littered with the corpses of dead theories and “discoveries,” this is scarcely where you’d want a revolution to be fought.

There are numerous critical issues attached to using a theorem that is primarily about probability to assess material that isn’t. It is, however, a common feature of forensic (i.e. controversialist) approaches to the Bible on both the fundamentalist side and the atheist side to engage the material on a literal level. This is so because both sides have to meet on the field at that point where literal claims about the text are being made, if not with the claim that the texts themselves are designed to propose facts–though most biblical literalists would say that they are, and most of their opponents would say that they are defeasible at this level.

Quote:

Debaters like Carrier have suggested that the critical methods developed for dealing with the Bible in the nineteenth and twentieth century are insufficiently rigorous. But that is simply not the case. In fact, the methods grew in tandem with evolving perceptions of what the character of the text actually was, how it was formed, and what its creators thought about the world. In the language of an older school of criticism, what its “life situation” was. They continue to evolve and to adapt in an organic way. Only if the sole question to be answered is whether the description of an event corresponds directly and generically to “what really happened” (if it were possible to answer that question, as it isn’t in many cases) would the modality of a forensic approach be useful, and its usefulness would still depend on prior questions.

Quote:

What is true of myth, moreover, is true of the other “forms” (literary and historical genres) that exist within the Bible and the New Testament especially. So much of the Jesus story is myth, in the sense of μυθογραφία (writing of a fabulous story), that I have no objection to the phrase “the Jesus Myth.” –But a great deal to object to in the sentence “Jesus ‘was’ a myth,” implying absolute non-historicity and a method designed simply to document his irreality. In Sources, this is the subject of two essays, one of which (“On Not Finding the Historical Jesus”) suggests that the gospel writers bore no interest in the “question” of the historical Jesus but had a profound interest in his reality.

Quote:

In my view, this is an impoverished way to approach the Bible since the book (taken as a kind of religious artifact rather than an accident of editorial history) was not construed to answer such questions and the methods that have been devised to explore it have been driven by different phenomena and concerns: what communities believed; how they understood society; how they manipulated history and politics religiously to provide social coherence; why ideas like salvation and redemption gained ascendancy in the first century and how they evolved to become something quite different in the second. Put flatly: the questions asked by the forensic approach are not primary questions at all because they do not arise from the text.

Quote:

The fatal flaw in Carrier’s missue of the theorem therefore is that the “real world conditions” he finds described in the gospels are not real world conditions. Thus its application does not flow from axioms designed for its use. The gospels are the complex record of the reactions of communities to conditions that are extremely difficult to assess. Even though Carrier may know and accept this premise, he finds it unimportant to address its consequences.

It appears to me that Hoffmann is saying that: There is a Christ Myth, but it is important to discover the history behind that myth and saying that Jesus was a myth is not sufficient . That literary analysis is not amiable to scientific analysis.

discordant · 06-06-2011, 11:22 PM

From his student:

Is this insistence [Carrier] of trying to invoke Bayes’ theorem in such contexts a manifestation of some sort of Math or Physics envy? Or is it due to the fact that forcing mathematics into one’s writings apparently confers on them some form of ‘scientific’ legitimacy?

Whatever the merits of Carrier's solution, he doesn't invoke it for what it "apparently confers". No, it's a manifestation of his frustration with current methodology. I thought that was obvious.

jgoodguy · 06-07-2011, 12:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by discordant

From his student:

Is this insistence [Carrier] of trying to invoke Bayes’ theorem in such contexts a manifestation of some sort of Math or Physics envy? Or is it due to the fact that forcing mathematics into one’s writings apparently confers on them some form of ‘scientific’ legitimacy?

Whatever the merits of Carrier's solution, he doesn't invoke it for what it "apparently confers". No, it's a manifestation of his frustration with current methodology. I thought that was obvious.

A bit of sarcasm is being apparently conferred. However a rough translation is that Hoffmann is accusing Carrier of using Bayes’ theorem as a means of implicit authority(Appeal to authority?) which otherwise cannot be obtained. I.E. My theory is correct because it is mathematical.

IMHO Carrier is frustrated with current tools and trying something else. I am not convinced that a mathematical analysis can be done on literature from several sources with different agendas that was subsequently redacted by different agencies with different agendas.

dog-on · 06-07-2011, 12:10 AM

As most history deals, at it's core, with what "probably" happened, Hoffman's arguments seem a bit off the mark. However, I do appreciate the fact that, without the preferred tool of the NT Scholar, also known as special pleading, Hoffman and his colleagues would be out of a job. That said, perhaps a couple grains of salt are appropriate...

discordant · 06-07-2011, 12:31 AM

Also from his student:

Simply put, plug in different values into the theorem and you’ll get a different answer. How does one decide which value to plug in?

I'm a little sceptical myself of the usefulness of Bayes' theorem, but I think people miss something when they say the theorem doesn't eliminate subjectivity. Obviously it doesn't, but if it causes the user to make a clear statement of what assumptions he is plugging into the theorem, this is a step in the right direction, away from the glut of arguments from personal credulity/incredulity. At the very least, Carrier is sparking debate over methodology. Which is good.

jgoodguy · 06-07-2011, 01:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by discordant

Also from his student:

Simply put, plug in different values into the theorem and you’ll get a different answer. How does one decide which value to plug in?

I'm a little sceptical myself of the usefulness of Bayes' theorem, but I think people miss something when they say the theorem doesn't eliminate subjectivity. Obviously it doesn't, but if it causes the user to make a clear statement of what assumptions he is plugging into the theorem, this is a step in the right direction, away from the glut of arguments from personal credulity/incredulity. At the very least, Carrier is sparking debate over methodology. Which is good.

The problem with the HJ methodology of the Jesus Seminar was that it could predict many different Historical Jesuses based on assumptions. If the Bayes' theorem does the same thing what then?

mountainman · 06-07-2011, 01:25 AM

Carrier has some free stuff relevant to the discussion here:
http://www.richardcarrier.info/jesus.html

Quote:

Bayes' Theorem for Beginners (PDF 2008)
Tutorial on improving our methodology in the Quest for the Historical Jesus, using the logic of Bayes' Theorem. I also provide a Bayesian Calculator.

In that document Carrier provides a number of examples of often used Christian rhetorical approaches, such as appeal to:

Quote:

The Criterion of Embarrassment : “Since Christian authors would not invent
anything that would embarrass them, anything embarrassing in the tradition must be
true.”

Multiple Attestation : “If a tradition is independently attested in more than
one source, then it is more likely to be authentic than a tradition attested only once.”

The Criterion of Dissimilarity : “If a saying attributed to Jesus is dissimilar
to the views of Judaism and to the views of the early church, then it can confidently be
ascribed to the historical Jesus”

These are 3 of very many of Popular Historicity Criteria that have been used in the presentation of ideas about the HJ.

We still see hopeful posters appealing to these relics as authoritative. No names.

I think it is vitally important for these so-called Popular Historicity Criteria to be exposed as shams for a start, and that appears to be precisely what Carrier does in his beginners approach to Bayes. AFAIK Carrier has consistently advertised that he is presenting a two-step project - the first covering Bayes Theorem, and the second applying it to the question of the historicity of JEsus.

Therefore if this is the case, critics of Carrier are too early, and may also be unaware of Carrier's introductory treatment in exposing these popularly used "historicity criteria" as remnants of rhetoric.

Here is the list provided.

Quote:

Example List of Popular Historicity Criteria

Incomplete List (names often differ, criteria often overlap – here are 17; there are two or three dozen):

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

discordant · 06-07-2011, 02:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgoodguy

The problem with the HJ methodology of the Jesus Seminar was that it could predict many different Historical Jesuses based on assumptions. If the Bayes' theorem does the same thing what then?

Then he can try something new, and we can pre-judge his efforts again

ApostateAbe · 06-07-2011, 05:58 AM

I think Hoffmann is on the mark with many of his objections--the inapplicability of Bayes' Theorem and the misguided forensic approach to history.

He loses me on the points discouraging literal interpretations of the texts. If we could make good sense of the texts through a metaphorical interpretation, then that is what we do. If we can make better sense of the texts through a literal interpretation, then that is what we do. That doesn't mean we have to believe the texts literally. But, much of the time, we really do need to interpret them literally, because that is very often the way they were seemingly intended.

Steven Carr · 06-07-2011, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

I think Hoffmann is on the mark with many of his objections--the inapplicability of Bayes' Theorem and the misguided forensic approach to history.

Hoffman praises the methods used by Biblical historians and slams the forensic approach to doing history which is about the bizarre task for historians of finding out 'what really happened.'

'‘Only if the sole question to be answered is whether the description of an event corresponds directly and generically to “what really happened” (if it were possible to answer that question, as it isn’t in many cases) would the modality of a forensic approach be useful, and its usefulness would still depend on prior questions’

Only a naive person, lacking knowledge of the sophisticated methods used by New Testament historians would ever dream of using their methods to find out 'what really happened.'

That is left to historians in other fields, fields which lack texts where 'where the general mythological character of much of the material is almost taken for granted….’

06-06-2011, 11:22 PM	#2
discordant Junior Member Join Date: May 2011 Location: Perth Posts: 57	From his student: Is this insistence [Carrier] of trying to invoke Bayes’ theorem in such contexts a manifestation of some sort of Math or Physics envy? Or is it due to the fact that forcing mathematics into one’s writings apparently confers on them some form of ‘scientific’ legitimacy? Whatever the merits of Carrier's solution, he doesn't invoke it for what it "apparently confers". No, it's a manifestation of his frustration with current methodology. I thought that was obvious.

06-07-2011, 12:31 AM	#5
discordant Junior Member Join Date: May 2011 Location: Perth Posts: 57	Also from his student: Simply put, plug in different values into the theorem and you’ll get a different answer. How does one decide which value to plug in? I'm a little sceptical myself of the usefulness of Bayes' theorem, but I think people miss something when they say the theorem doesn't eliminate subjectivity. Obviously it doesn't, but if it causes the user to make a clear statement of what assumptions he is plugging into the theorem, this is a step in the right direction, away from the glut of arguments from personal credulity/incredulity. At the very least, Carrier is sparking debate over methodology. Which is good.

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06-07-2011, 12:10 AM	#4
dog-on Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 3,397	As most history deals, at it's core, with what "probably" happened, Hoffman's arguments seem a bit off the mark. However, I do appreciate the fact that, without the preferred tool of the NT Scholar, also known as special pleading, Hoffman and his colleagues would be out of a job. That said, perhaps a couple grains of salt are appropriate...

06-07-2011, 05:58 AM	#9
ApostateAbe Contributor Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: MT Posts: 10,656	I think Hoffmann is on the mark with many of his objections--the inapplicability of Bayes' Theorem and the misguided forensic approach to history. He loses me on the points discouraging literal interpretations of the texts. If we could make good sense of the texts through a metaphorical interpretation, then that is what we do. If we can make better sense of the texts through a literal interpretation, then that is what we do. That doesn't mean we have to believe the texts literally. But, much of the time, we really do need to interpret them literally, because that is very often the way they were seemingly intended.

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