spamandham

...and the only Jesus legends we have are the ones preserved by time. As I see on this subforum frequently, "99% of all ancient texts have been lost". There's very little difference in that regard.

An approach must first prove its salt. I've already demonstrated an example where that approach fails miserably. Name a few highly legendary figures that this approach was applied to and yielded solid historical insights.

My goal in this is example is not to pick the most mythologized, but rather, a well known character oft referred to by historians that is slightly mythical. Any ancient emperor will do.

We both seem to agree then, that the approach of subtracting obvious myth from legendary stories is not generally valid?

That was the entire point! The Arthur legends depict Arthur in less mythical terms than the Jesus legends depict Jesus. Yet historians (rightfully) recognize that the approach applied to Jesus is nonetheless invalid in regards to Arthur.

I'm discussing the approach, using examples scattered throughout history. In every case where we can test the approach, it fails. It is not a valid approach.

Rick Sumner

That's fine. But if you want to take a look at a specific Santa legend, and look specifically at what we can use to reconstruct, we'll see how well your analogy works. Right now it's a hypothetical.

So by all means, let's take a look. Let's suppose that our sources are preserved by a group called "Santaists," and that a specific collection of sources have survived. Their common thread needs to be that they are advantageous to the "Santaists" interests. History, after all, is preserved by the winners, not the most convenient.

So let's get a list together of what those sources might be, and see what we end up with. I'm not interested in what you suggest we "might" conclude from them, let's take a look at what we do conclude from them.

You named one where the approach might fail miserably. And only if we eliminate most of our information.

Well, following your lead with Santa Claus, if everything about Augustus was lost except the songs of the lyricists and some art, we'd get a lot wrong (as we agree below). I'd still conclude he was the first emperor. I might conclude he was a great military leader, which would probably give him too much credit, and be wrong (though he was viewed as one). I might not be able to tell if he ushered in a golden age or not, but the widespread belief that he did would tell me he was very charismatic. I'd probably conclude that he was in fact, the son of Julius Caesar.

No doubt I would conflate him a lot with Alexander. And Augustus was certainly not at all like Alexander, except in the minds of the artists.

I'd get some things right, and some things wrong, but Augustus wouldn't be entirely lost to history.

And, of course, I already provided the example of the contemporary Charles Manson. We'll never know exactly what happened on the Spahn Movie Ranch. that doesn't mean that we have no idea whatsoever.

But if your intent is to show that they would be entirely lost to history--that there is no merit to using biased or inconsistent sources--then no emperor will do. They all point against you.

History isn't science. We're probably never going to get everything right, and we're never going to know with 100% certainty what we get right and what we don't.

So if your criticism is that we can't obtain 100% certainty, that we're going to get some things wrong, and that we can demonstrate our efforts will fail at times, well, so what?

I don't think "subtracting myth" in and of itself has anything to do with what anyone is considering reconstruction here.

So sure, you can't do just take the myth away and get a story. Which means nothing, and has nothing to do with what anyone is suggesting we do with our sources. If you take every third word out you won't get a story either.

"More" and "less" are meaningless terms here.

You can scatter them as far as you want. The problem is that once you scatter them phrases like "more" or "less" mythical become meaningless.

And it doesn't fail in every case. In fact, we haven't seen that it fails in any approach.

The rest of this isn't directly relevant to the current discussion, but I think it should be said anyway:

I'm not suggesting that it will get the right answer every time. I'm quite comfortable with the knowledge that it won't. But that doesn't mean it gets it wrong every time either, and if it gets it right some of the time, or even much of the time, that's good enough.

I think methodologies in general are silly here. And it doesn't matter to me if that effort is Doherty's rigorous application of the AfS, or Crossan's rigorous application of multiple attestation. When we put too much trust in them, and pretend we aren't doing something inherently subjective, we're working blindly.

So if a method or criteria fails sometimes it might hurt those whose case relies more intently on them. It doesn't hurt me any. I'm after plausibility. Not certainty, and think quests for the latter are misguided.

Does that make it unfalsifiable? Well, I suppose it does. And I'm okay with that too, because every position is unfalsifiable, barring truly profound evidence. It's just the nature of the subject. At least I'm not carrying on pretending I'm a scientist.

I'm with Vermes; the best we can do is sort of muddle through.

spamandham

'History' has already been preserved by the winner in the case of Santa. The most interesting versions of the story are the ones that get used for follow-on stories. The 'Santaists' are the writers who profited from the legend. We don't need a hypothetical group of Santaists.

....completely comparable to what we have in the case of Jesus. 99% of all information has been lost by the ravages of time, as I see oft pronounced here.


I think you're missing the point. Virtually all ancient emperors (and probably most modern leaders too) are recorded in history as somewhat legendary. We'll call this the lower end of the mythical scale. On the highest end of the mythical scale are figures such as the Tooth Fairy.

Low degree of myth <---------------------------------------------------> High degree of myth

Julius....Augustus.....Joan of Arc....Arthur.....Jesus, Appolonius, Santa....Great Pumpkin

On the low end of the scale where we find figures such as Julius Caesar, I think we can validate that the general approach of subtracting the mythical fluff will indeed get us pretty close to real history - not as much for Augustus. On the high end of the scale, that approach is completely invalid. There is no historical Great Pumpkin. The approach degrades in between to the point that it is pretty much useless by the time we reach Arthur.

Jesus appears to me to lie to the right of Arthur, and historians have already conceded that the approach is invalid for Arthur.

:notworthy:

Sadly, that's true.

But real historians, such as Stark, are trying to change that. Why should we put up with any less? Science is perfectly capable of dealing with uncertainty

100% certainty is not the standard. Objective measures of uncertainty are the standard, and if that isn't possible for lack of information, then validation of technique is the bare minimum. There is no reason anyone should take seriously anything an expert says that is not rooted in validated techniques.

Rick Sumner

First of all, I've never said anything of the sort, so it really doesn't matter what's "oft pronounced."

But I'll give you 99% destroyed. You need to have a 1% that is preserved for consistent reason. We can't run your excercise if we don't determine what sources the excercise is going to run with.

I'm not convinced your analogy will work. There's the gauntlet. Give me the sources, and a reason they exist, and we'll find out.

The Augustus example I gave, for example, works because what is preserved is recorded in song. Things that enjoy a wide audience and frequent repetition.

You're just picking your Santa sources by convenience. That's not how it works. I'm not going to let you hand pick them. I don't get to hand pick my sources, you don't get to hand pick yours.

ETA
Just to head off the response of offering Christmas carols for Santa, they don't work here. Songs work for Augustus because they developed in his lifetime. It's easy to explain how they came to be, and why they survive. Your Santa evidence needs to fit that same criteria.

No, I get your point just fine. You just aren't seeing why it's arbitrary.

By what right do you put Augustus below. . .well, anyone on the list? He scores higher on Rank's scale, and has more in common with Campbell's archetypes than anyone on the scale, with the possible exception of Jesus. Indeed Richard Carrier put Augustus as Jesus' peer in terms of "mythologizing," and views Augustus as a great exception, while discounting the likelihood that exception would occur twice (though he initially confused Augustus for Caesar as well).

If you think Augustus is less "Mythical" than King Arthur, it's because you either don't understand myth, or don't know anything about Augustus. Myth flourished about and surrounding Augustus during his lifetime to an extent and with such widespread that is probably unparalleled by any living figure in history. The difference between Augustus and other figures is that we have a wealth of good information. It has nothing to do with the nature of our mythologized information, which by all appearances you haven't read.

You can't use "more" or "less" when you're comparing such diverse myths, unless you have some sort of "mythic scale." But on the only scales that exist, you're wrong. I just happen to think those scales are wrong too, because they're every bit as arbitrary.

No, they haven't. Historians debate vigorously who the historical King Arthur was, or what the basis of the story is. That goes back to how you're discussing a subject you aren't familiar with. Even after I showed you evidence of the vigor of that debate, you still don't realize it exists.

Perhaps you should read a bit on King Arthur, and a bit on Augustus, before you proclaim how "Mythical" stories about either are?

And historians who, for example, debate the motivations for alexander's wedding aren't "real" historians? Yet their views on history are just as subjective as those that exist here. That Alexander got married is, for all intents and purposes, a fact. Why Alexander got married is another matter entirely.

I'm not saying "religious" history is subjective. I'm saying *all* history is subjective. And calling those who are endeavoring to do otherwise "real" historians while ignoring the rest is nothing more than an ill-fitting bed, Procrustes.

"Validated" doesn't mean "always gets it right," when you're dealing with possibilities, it means "sometimes gets it right." And they do.

spamandham

That's fine. I'm not interested in a complete analysis of a Santa analogy. It seems to me a waste of time. There are always limitations to analogies regardless of how far you take it. But if you really want to go there, start with The Night Before Christmas and all works loosely based on it, but don't consider anything prior to that or alternative traditions. Assume the rest is part of the 99% lost to time. Further, assume that there is a Santa religion with a tradition that The Night Before Christmas is a historical record.

What we have about Augustus comes to us from many sources, including archaeological artifacts. We could have concluded he was a Roman Emperor, where he ruled, and when, from coins alone even without any textual references. Yet in spite of the relatively massive contemporary documentation of Augustus, we both agree that the legends make it difficult to sift reality from fantasy.

...we are missing all that with Jesus, and the little we do have is 10x more legendary in nature than what we have in regard to Augustus.

Fair enough. Ignore Santa completely, and just present the scholarly papers that demonstrate the validation of the technique.

It doesn't matter where Augustus goes. The point is, that *Julius* is on the left end, and that's why he's a good example *for the left end*.

Wonderful, but archeology has unearthed *contemporary* artifacts which allow us to build up basic facts regarding Augustus even without a single text. We even know what he looked like!

We don't have anything even remotely like that in regard to Jesus. To say that the record of Augustus is similar to Jesus is just plain silly.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...OctAugusto.jpg

Where are the archaeological records for Arthur? Without any texts at all, we would still know Augustus was a real person. Even with texts, we do not know that Arthur was a real person. There is no similarity at all in the degree of myth.

Much of the subjectivity is due to an unwillingness of historians to approach their art as a science. This isn't my charge, it's Stark's, and a few others of his peers who have begun to realize that we can indeed apply the scientific method to history. How silly to think that we can't!

Like I said, the standard is not 100%, nor is it "always getting it right". Stop with that silly strawman already, I've never said anything that implied such an absurd standard.

The standard is knowing how well you know something.

Rick Sumner

Your analogy is that we would reach false conclusions if we did not have all our sources on Santa Claus. I think you're wrong. We haven't gone anywhere with it yet, you've just declared it true. I'm declaring it false. Let's see who's right.

Good start. I'll probably challenge your starting point, since it needs to rise out of a vacuum, but we'll worry about that later.

Your analogy, your work. What are our sources? I'm not doing the research to see if your point holds. Either defend it or withdraw it.

If you'll recall, this initiated when I said it was a silly analogy. You declared that it wasn't. So you should have no problem making it an actual analogy rather than your own arbitrary declarations about what historical criticism would tell us. Unless, of course, it is a silly analogy. And while I suspect you're beginning to realize that, I doubt you're going to concede it.

Are we having the same discussion?

You said we would get everything wrong if we lost our sources on Santa Claus: The method is invalid.

I said we would get things right if we lost most of our sources on Augustus: The method is valid.

You say "We have other sources on Augustus!"

I say "Non sequitur"

Now, with that brief refresher, can we get back to the excercise at hand?

Why do I have to keep reminding you of your own analogy? The entire point of the excercise is to see if we can do it without other sources.

And if you think the sources I proposed--the work of bards on Augustus are 10 fold less legendary than Jesus, I can only conclude--once again--that you haven't read them.

Let's get that one straightened out. Have you read them, or are you just hoping you get it right?

Well now, this is a rather silly request. When we have sources with which to validate, we don't employ the technique, so it's a bit of a tautology to suggest that such scholarly papers either don't exists or are, at best, at a minimum.

So why are you so reluctant to test the technique right here? We have three excellent opportunities in Santa Claus, Augustus and King Arthur. We'll hammer out what sources we have, and see what we come up with.

It does matter though, because you're suggesting some are "more" or "less" mythologized. You suggest, in fact, that this is demonstrable, but your scale is woefully inaccurate, fuelled by a woeful ignorance of your examples. Other than Jesus and the Great Pumpkin I'd venture you haven't read a word about any of them.

And here we go again. Try and remember what was being argued. Please. Because it's silly to have to keep reminding you of where you put the goalposts.

Once again, in our hypothetical, we have lost 99% of material on Augustus. In our hypothetical, we don't know what he looked like.

Our hypothetical construct is, by definition, different from the real state of affairs. And was constructed in response to your own hypothetical construct, the substance of which you seem to have forgotten.

Irrelevant. You were using Arthur as the line at which "historians agree" we can't employ critical techniques to gain insight. You were dead wrong, because historians do not agree on anything of the sort.

You might be interested to know that the suggestion that there is no historical basis, or that that basis is entirely irrecoverable, is a minority position. If you had done the legwork to back up your declarations you'd know that.

That was integral to your scale. I'm not letting you off the hook. You were wrong. Period.

Irrelevant as well. If you get to start determining who "real" historians are, well, I suppose I can do the same just as well. With "real" of course meaning "in agreement with me," much the way you're using the term.

You stated that the technique always fails, and that to show that it is valid i would need to show points where it didn't. It doesn't "always" fail with Augustus. I'm not convinced it will "always fail" with Santa Claus.

To get back to my initial analogy (which you never bothered to address, incidentally) it doesn't fail with Charles Manson. We'll never really know what Helter Skelter was, but we have a pretty good idea what happened on the Spahn Movie Ranch, despite the fact that our sources are absolute garbage. We even apply many of the same techniques (including embarassment even!) to the Manson sources.

12 people were convinced it worked beyond a reasonable doubt.

If you're not prepared to defend your analogies (or, for that matter, can't even remember what they are), then this is pointless. As we stand right now, you present no argument, just an arbitrary scale using characters you aren't familiar with, and your own declaration of validity.

I welcome the opportunity to pursue an investigation into any of the characters mentioned. So I suppose it's up to you whether or not you want to back up your pretense. Santa's your analogy, you bring the sources and the story behind their preservation. Augustus is mine, so I'll cover him. Arthur I don't think we really need to do much snipping, since the sources are all bad anyway.

spamandham

As far as I can tell, no, so I don't think further discussion is of any use.

Rick Sumner

Does that mean we're going to do away with declarations about what would happen if we lost 99% of our Santa Claus sources? Because if not I'm probably just going to point you back here next time.

spamandham

Probably not. It just means I'll be ignoring your references back to this as I continue to harp on the unvalidated quack methodology used to extract the HJ consensus from the gospels.

Rick Sumner

Well, hopefully you'll back up what you say next time, instead of declaring it true without doing any actual defense of it.

As an addendum to the above, and a fine example of historical-crit being validated which should have occurred to me earlier, one should also take a look at our understanding of Gnosticism.

Before the discovery of the NHL, our reconstruction was shaped almost exclusively by heresiologists and apologists. Untrustworthy sources if ever there were any.

With the discovery of the NHL we learned, of course, that such reconstructions got some things wrong, got other things right, and learned many things we had no idea even existed.

But our pre-NHL assessment wasn't entirely out to lunch either. We had, without actual, hard evidence of what they did, a pretty good idea of how Gnosticism functioned.

I suppose that's more "quack methodology" though, and nowhere near as useful as an allusion to Santa Claus, or reference to what "historians agree" on without reading any historians on the matter.