avi

a. I am unsure that they were a monolithic bloc prior to Constantine....

b. Why should we assume that feedback from the proletarians influenced the authors of the ever expanding fairy tale in the mid second century CE?

Was Babe the Blue Ox added to the story of Paul Bunyan, because that was what the masses wanted, or because an inventive story teller made it up?

c. How would you expect the gentiles to have any knowledge of Hebrew scripture?

avi

avi

Thanks for that, Toto.

I haven't yet investigated his web site.

Does he comment on the appropriateness, or lack thereof, associated with employing Bayes' theorem to an examination of probabilities addressing questions raised upon reading one of the many different bibles in existence....?

avi

jgoodguy

May I suggest that the inventive story teller's story would have to be popular with the proletarius to survive and whatever was popular would prompt more invented stories. Something unpopular would not survive. Feedback in the nature of suggested storylines would not come from the proletarius, but feedback in the form of popularity and donations would.

Which if I am reading the wiki correctly exactly how the story of Paul Bunyan developed. Someone told a story and someone made it better because no one wants to hear the same old story all because of audiences.

avi

And, maybe I am completely wrong about this, jgoodguy, but to me, dog-on's argument makes no sense.

He is asking what the earliest Christians would have thought about the concept that JC's persona is described in the ancientmost Hebrew scriptures, and I am arguing that it is utterly irrelevant to the earliest Christians---> almost all of whom were illiterate Greek speaking pagans, and heathens, not Jews.

The existence or non-existence of a reference to JC in the old testament is important to Jews, it is irrelevant to all christians. For them, the focus is not on God, "the father", at all, but rather, on his son, JC, or more precisely, on the DEATH of JC, and JC's subsequent resurrection, AFTER death, and consequent ascent into Heaven.

The folks pumping money into the coffers of the earliest church had zero interest in whatever was written in the stodgy old testament. They wanted to learn more about this heaven business, and how much it would cost them to attain paradise for themselves, their families, and their camels.

dog-on is wearing rose colored lenses, thinking that jews from ancient times would have thought this, or that, regarding JC's appearance or absence in the ancient hebrew scriptures. Those documents were both unavailable out in the hinterlands, and not needed to conduct the business at hand: gaining an admission ticket to paradise, at the earliest possible moment....

avi

mountainman

Hi Toto and others,

I dont think that Apostate Abe is presenting Carrier's Bayesian ideas in an informed manner. AFAIK these theorems are probabilistic. Somewhere AA complained that there was no "less than" or "greater than" and this is erroneous according to what I understand, because the whole purpose of forming a probabilistic statement is that in theory it adds to one.

The entire purpose of the Bayesian approach AFAIK is to present a series of probabilistic statements which can be allocated a range of values, and the entire system can therefore be used as a model in which the values of each statement can be slightly altered and modified, one at a time, so as to test the relational dependencies of the individual terms with each other against the entire theory addressing the evidence. (The terms in the statement represent evidence, weighted variously, and amenable to analysis).

The system - like every other system - is susceptible to GIGO = garbage in garbage out. The benefit of the system AFAIK is its ability to examine the weighting of an extendible series of items of evidence, and the relational nature that exists between various elements of the evidence.

From what I have read here, Carrier's first book will be to establish the use of Bayesian theory in the field of ancient history as a valid tool of analysis. It will be interesting to see how this is presented and received.

Best wishes


Pete

Doug Shaver

The same thing is wrong with your thesis as what is wrong the the historicist thesis. It doesn't fit the evidence.

You say so. Like the historicists, you have yet to produce an argument that doesn't assume its conclusion.

Doug Shaver

To what revolution in messianic thinking are you referring? What evidence do you have that such a revolution occurred?

Doug Shaver

I cannot say what most folks here know about those topics, but I know enough about both to discuss them intelligently.

Carrier has put online an explanation of Bayes' theorem for the uninitiated and, for anyone who disagrees, a defense of its use in historiography: http://www.richardcarrier.info/CarrierDec08.pdf.

[Edited to add: Apologies to all. I posted before reading to the end of the thread.]

ApostateAbe

I will be convinced when Richard Carrier uses Bayes' Theorem to resolve even the simplest of New Testament disagreements.

aa5874

The people who are trained in Jewish religion perhaps do NOT believe the Jesus story. According to certain Christians Jesus Christ was the SON of the JEWISH God and was the WORD of the JEWISH GOD.

In fact, Christian writers of antiquity claimed Jesus CREATED heaven and earth as found in Genesis.

It is what Christians thought of Jesus that counts and virtually ALL Christian writers BELIEVED or wanted people to BELIEVE Jesus was PREDICTED by the PROPHETS of HEBREW Scripture.

Examine "Dialogue with Trypho" Regardless of your training, Jesus BELIEVERS and Christian writers of antiquity claimed their Jesus was found in Hebrew Scripture and did VEHEMENTLY argue their BELIEF using Hebrew Scripture.