mountainman

The Dog in the Night-Time: Negative Evidence in Social Research - George H. Lewis and Jonathan F. Lewis
The British Journal of Sociology; Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 544-558



I also provided citation to the following article:

Negative Evidence - Richard Levin
Studies in Philology; Vol. 92, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995) (pp. 383-410)





Did Josephus write the "TF"?
Did Jesus write the Agbar letter?
These are events which did not occur.
They continue to remain as examples of negative evidence.



Yes it is. I have demonstrated that evidence can be viewed in terms of being positive or negative. This corresponds to the core historical principle that sources may be corrupted or forged.

I have consistently used the term negative historicity to represent negative evidence as distinct from the more general use of the term "historicity" (which I see as positive histority - as a measure of the authentic and genuine nature of the evidence).


Summary of Claims

The core historical principle that any given source may be corrupt there implies, using this terminology, that for each item of the evidence (this includes the identities of people) only one of the following hypotheses can be true at once:

(1) Historically Genuine/authentic: positive evidence; positive historicity
(2) Historically Forged/corrupt: negative evidence; negative historicity

This is a core historical principle. There are no preferences handed out at admission. It does not matter if we ask this question of Karl Popper, Bilbo Baggins, Alexander the Great, Jesus Christ or the Apostle Paul because no one identity is any different from any other as far as this principle of historical methodology is concerned.

Toto

Your sources define negative evidence as the dog that didn't bark, not the neighbor who tried to fool the police by playing a recording of a barking dog.

Someone forged a passage in Josephus and a letter from Jesus to Agbar. These are positive events of forgery, not negative evidence.

What your sources call negative evidence is otherwise known as an argument from silence.

Do you claim that the fact that there is a forged passage in Josephus strengthens the case for the nonexistence of Jesus? If so, on what basis

Your terminology is so confused I don't know where to start. You have demonstrated nothing about positive or negative evidence.

This is not a core historical principle. It is trivially true that a piece of evidence may be genuine or forged, but a forged letter is not evidence against historicity. I ask again if you are trying to claim that a forged piece of evidence is evidence against historicity, and why?

For example, if there are sources about Alexander the Great which have been forged, do those forgeries count against the historicity of Alexander?

Someone might have forged a check with my name on it - does this make it unlikely that I exist???

mountainman

The definition was "Events that did not occur".


It really just depends upon your perspective. If the letters had been genuine the evidence would have been treated as positive, and it would be provisionally accepted as true that Josephus authored the TF etc. Earl Doherty appears to allude to the same terminology:

From here:

This seems to indicate that Earl Doherty is content to use the term negative evidence with respect to the TF.

I think it includes arguments from silence, but it also provides a general description of fabricated or forged evidence.


Yes. On two bases. Firstly if there are 1001 possible positive evidence items supporting the historical existence of Jesus, and the TF is one, previously claimed to be positive (authentic) evidence, it thus contributed one part in 1001 parts towards the positive assessment of JEsus's historicity. However when the TF is treated as negative evidence, then there are now only 1000 possible positive evidence items left to contribute. You get the drift .....

Secondly, it seriously weakens the case that Eusebius has any integrity whatsoever, and (aside from the NT) it is essentially Eusebius alone upon whom we rely for any information about Christian origins before Nicaea.

In both cases the case for the existence of Jesus is diminished in a relational sense, and correspondingly the case for the nonexistence of Jesus must be increased.




Historical_method#Core_principles




It can add nothing positive toward (positive) historicity.


I am claiming that a forged piece of evidence is itself negative evidence and not positive evidence. It therefore cannot contribute any positive historicity to the entire investigation. We move on the next item of evidence ....



If we had 1003 items of evidence that have been claimed to support the (positive) historicity of Alexander the Great, and we suddenly find that three of them are forgeries, then these 3 items of evidence no longer contribute to the positive historicity equation for Alexander, and we move on to the remaining 1000 evidence items.


Assuming this someone wanted to draw cash in your name as the DRAWER, from the cheque, it makes it quite likely that you do exist, or the bank would not honor the forged cheque. OTOH if they forged your name as the PAYEE ....

Doug Shaver

It would depend on context. I would expect that in most contexts, the plural would be formed adding apostrophe-s: IX's.

You're suggesting that all acronyms are Greek. Where did you get that notion?

The answer to your question depends on whether you're using "acronym" to refer to a certain category of words or as a generic reference to initialisms.

Of Aramaic, more likely.

No, it should not. But even if it should, that would not justify changing "-us" to "-i." That is not a Semitic spelling rule. It is a Latin rule applying to Latin nouns of the second declension (and only those).

I have no idea, but it doesn't matter. The notion that all English words ought to be pluralized as they were in their original languages is a baseless superstition.

If you'd like to learn a little bit more on this topic, you may wish to watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk.

Toto

No no no. Earl is famous for his arguments about "the Sounds of Silence." By negative evidence he is referring to his well developed argument that there are no references to a historical Jesus in the early Christian epistles.

You think on what basis?

I get the drift that you don't know what you are talking about

Actually, the case for agnosticism is increased. The case for nonexistence is not changed.


How would that be any different?

tanya

1. Doug, you criticised mountainman for sloppiness in forming the plural of the Latin word, Jesus.

2. I suggested that it is not easy to understand how one forms the plural of Greek acronyms, like I X, where both I and X have a superscript bar across, signalling employment of those symbols to represent the Greek names Iesous Christou.

3. I further inquired from forum participants how one should form the plural of such Greek acronyms.

4. Your rejoinder above, is, in my view, a non-sequitur, for I at no time, introduced the notion of forming the plural of an ENGLISH word. I X is not an English word:

Works for ordinary masculine Greek nouns, but what about acronyms of proper names, like I X ? Even an indirect suggestion of multiple instances of I X would have lead to allegations of heresy, for which people were hastily murdered--> Marcion business....

J-D

No, that's not correct. Doug Shaver, as I did before him, criticised mountainman for the way he formed the plural of the English word 'Jesus'. None of us were writing in Latin.

J-D

Your two sources mean different things by 'negative evidence'. I might perhaps sum up the difference by saying that the Lewises are talking about evidence which is negative in form, while Levin is talking about evidence which is negative in tendency, although that way of putting it may not be much help to somebody who hasn't already grasped the point. If you don't understand the difference, confusion is bound to result.

mountainman

No no no. The context was the "TF", the essential fiction of the gospels and this is being described as negative evidence. That Josephus wrote the TF is an event which did not happen. That anyone wrote anything about Jesus outside the NT in the 1st century are events which did not happen.

Doug Shaver

No, I didn't.

Your suggestion was irrelevant, since "Jesus" is not an acronym, either in Greek or in any other language.

Why not? That's what I was talking about in the post to which you responded.

No, it doesn't. It works for ordinary English renderings of characters being mentioned without usage.