Amaleq13

But it literally means "God's Salvation" which particularly apt given the nature of the task the Son is to perform. Perhaps this "name" is really just another title bestowed upon the Son?

DramaQ

This may be a minor point in all this, but I still have to bring it up:

I thought Doherty cited early Christian writings that do not even mention a “Jesus� when describing its “Christ�.

Is a “Christ� cult considered a CHRISTIAN cult without it also being a “Jesus� cult? If not, then when is it?

Can I outline it like this?

1. Development of Messianic Expectations.
2. Development of Messianic cults
3. Divergence of Messianic cults. (How “Christian� are THESE anointed ones?)
4. Innovation of “Christological� version of the Messiah. (Is this the so-called BBC?)

At this point either:

5a. This innovative Christ Cult quickly branches into whole NEW variations
6a. These variant Christ cults later merge BACK together under one umbrella

or

5b. Those already diverse proto-Christ/Messianic cults slowly find a common link and merge.

Seems to me this “Big Bang� could be that innovation without it forming from a singularity. (In which case “Big Bang� is indeed inaccurate). But surely it didn’t come about in a vacuum.

Nor does it require a HJ.

dq

GakuseiDon

If you start at Phil 2:5, you can see that the progression: he starts as "Christ Jesus", comes in the likeness of men as "Jesus", and is resurrected as "Lord Jesus Christ".

Phil 2:5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,
7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.

Here are some other places where Paul refers to the name of Christ:

Romans 1
3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, 4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. 5 Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name, 6 among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ

1 Cor
2 To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord

1 Cor
10 Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing

Then compare with the end of that passage of Phil. If you remove Phil 2:10, you can see who Phil matches with Romans 1:

8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, ... and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

If Paul had an adoptionist view, then it flows nicely.

NOGO

In fact I believe that the name in question is "Son of God".
See Romans 1 and Hebrew 1.


Romans 1:4
who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord,


Hebews 1:4-5
having become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.

For to which of the angels did He ever say,
"YOU ARE MY SON,
TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU"?
And again,
"I WILL BE A FATHER TO HIM
AND HE SHALL BE A SON TO ME"?

spin

That's a no chance situation. mashiach has such a clearly defined significance in Hebrew that it wasn't going to get used as a name in Jerusalem.

Naaa.


spin

youngalexander

Peter Kirby (PK) writes in #239
Fair question. I followed your link and found the original post sed “Big Bang Jesus� which is not the same thing, but does explain the multiple Jesus definitions. This is not what I was referring to as BBC. Indeed the thrust of my previous post #238 was that the propositions of Jesus and Bangs should be kept independent for methodological reasons. Thus the answer to the question is that if you mean a BBC which is linked to a HJ, then I did not use such a BBC.

I may take the opportunity to point out that I did not and am not saying that we cannot or should not define J and B together. I was simply arguing that if we did it would lead to a more difficult path than a reductionist approach.

I shall return to the multiple Jesi later, but first to answer the question, as posed again at the end of #239.
The tart answer would be, the same as a BBC with a HJ. However, to answer properly we first must define what is meant by BBC. I take it to mean a single event from which what came to be known as Christianity began. Not BBC requires multiple events. There is nothing about HJ or ~HJ in the definition. There is not even a definition of Christianity, altho we would require one to progress any further. The point is that BB means unary whereas ~BB means multiple. The actual event does not matter. Whether we regard it as a HJ, a resurrection, Cephas’ reaction to whatever or Cephas (or Paul or whoever under some other definition of Christianity) conceiving of a MJ along the lines of Doherty’s Mythical Theory, the BBC means a single event from which Christianity originated. That is all that it means.

Now, let us turn to the proposition of a HJ. Yes, it is a catchall. Depending upon the level of analysis we wish to indulge in we can certainly entertain various definitions. We could no doubt do the same for MJ, but perhaps there would be little point. In fact we can go further in such subdivisions as Amalech13 points out in the post following PK’s original cited above.

Where does it all end? No worries folks, salvation is at hand – the weighted mean!!

First we need to bring in TedM #240
To which PK replies quite correctly #241,
and to which TedM agrees #242.
In the first place since I did not introduce the multiple Jesi, and most especially since my BBC has nothing to do with them, I do not have to answer the question. However, if we were discussing the HJ, then I might offer the following suggestion. I suppose that it would be possible to estimate probabilities for these Jesus various, altho I do not think the database would make for a statistically reliable result. We might then develop whatever models of HJ that took our fancy, and do with them as we may.

Why not follow the Jesus Seminar lead and develop a weighted mean? That way everyone gets to have an input and while nobody is totally disappointed by the result, nobody is satisfied either. Developing a more formalistic approach (as opposed to voting with coloured balls) we could estimate the probabilities suggested by TedM and use them to develop a HJ such that
HJ = [P(SN) x SN] + [P(F) x F] + [ P(G) x G] + [P(E) x E]

What the devil does this mean? Perhaps consensus??

To return to TedM’s original statement. Yes, all “potential ‘event’s� must be weighed and without venturing down the dreaded structuralist road again, such weighing is subjective. Fortunately humankind has found a way around this, it is called consensus of opinion. Sometimes it works extremely slowly. For instance, this particular subject has been discussed for 2000yrs, and we have not as yet reached a consensus. As to the question, I think that the answer is – probably not.

youngalexander

In post #244 Ted Hoffman (TH) wrote
1. [P(~H/B) = 1 – P(H/B)] The definition for P(~H/B) is taken directly from Richard Carrier’s (RC) #196(4) post.
Comparable events for P(H/B) are Big Bang events exclusive of BBC events.
Thus RC #196(4)
2. Presumably one can obtain the frequency from the known historical evidence.
RC again #196(4)
3. The “frequency of causes for comparable events� is the background evidence.

TH #244
Yes.

Ted Hoffman

You wrote:
I asked:
And you answered:
Do you see the contradiction? Or is it the case that you do not regards “competing factions and several different beliefs about Jesus� as "historical evidence"?

youngalexander

TH#258 wrote
I do not see the contradiction because there is none. Yes, I do see “competing factions and several different beliefs about Jesus� as "historical evidence". However, not as applied to P(H/B).

E = Historical Evidence
H = BBC Hypothesis
B = BB background information

P(H/E&B) = P(H/B) x P(E/H&B) / [P(H/B) x P(E/H&B) + P(~H/B) x P(E/~H&B)]……....(1)

where
P(H/E&B) is the probability of H given both E and B
P(H/B) is the prior probability of H “without reference to evidence for the specific case at hand, but is derived from the frequency of causes for comparable events.�
P(E/H&B) is the “probability of all the current evidence existing as it is on the hypothesis that BBC� or the probability of E given both H and B.
P(~H/B) is the prior probability of not H
P(E/~H&B) is the probability of E given both not H and B

The prior probability P(H/B) of the hypothesis BBC is
1. “without reference to evidence for the specific case at hand�. Ie., without reference to Christianity, ie. without reference to “competing factions and several different beliefs about Jesus�.
2. “derived from the frequency of causes for comparable events�. Ie., with reference to “causes of novel religious movements throughout history�, ie. religious movements other than Christianity.

What does “competing factions and several different beliefs about Jesus� as "historical evidence" apply to? It applies to P(E/~H&B) the “probability of all the current evidence existing as it is on the hypothesis that ~BBC� or the probability of E given both ~H and B. It also applies to P(E/H&B).

P(H/B) is factual evidence, ie. “when we have access to the evidence needed to know�. If a professional historian of antiquity such as Richard Carrier (RC) tells us that P(H/B):P(~H/B) is approximately 2:1 then we would require very good and relevant factual evidence to dispute it. Also notice that prior probabilities P(H/B) and P(~H/B) are complements. That is P(H/B) + P(~H/B) = 1 and thus as one increases the other decreases.

On the other hand you might very well dispute the estimate of the probabilities P(E/H&B) and P(E/~H&B). I accepted RC’s estimate in my post #238 but that was merely for the purposes of the exercise. RC’s values were P(E/H&B) = 0.9 and P(E/~H&B) = 0.25. Notice that these do not sum to unity. Each can range b/w 0 and 1. If they were both large it would mean that the evidence as it exists could be produced by both hypothesis. If they were both low, it would mean that the evidence as it exists appears to have little to do with either hypothesis.

An interesting example of the latter is the hypothesis “Will Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the body of work known as the ‘Plays of William Shakespeare’�. I fear that the historical evidence for Will is not good and telling points against his authorship may be made. On the other hand the evidence that he did not write them is not good either, particularly those parts suggesting an alternative author. The problem is basically that there is insufficient evidence with which to make a reasonable estimate.

To return to Christianity, you should apply evidence for “competing factions and several different beliefs about Jesus�, etc. to P(E/H&B) and P(E/~H&B) not to P(H/B) or its complement.

Richard Carrier

I said my last June post would be my last here. Insofar as debating anything with spin or Hoffman goes, that remains true. They consistently ignore or misread what I say and constantly lose sight of what is actually being argued. Apparently it is too difficult to keep distinct "evidence for" from " proof of" and "might be" from "is" and so on. But since I have come to a major shift in my opinion, for reasons not connected with this thread, I felt it was my duty to report my change of position here since my position is sometimes used as a point of debate in this thread.

First, I must clarify my position vis-a-vis Nazareth, which remains substantially (though not entirely) the same, before getting to my major shift in position:

Most of what has been said in response to me on the question of Nazareth is irrelevant and continues to ignore everything I have said, particularly regarding the uncertainties involved and the fact that I am relying on the only primary sources there are (the archaeological reports).

For example, it has been noted that some scholars argue that structures throughout Judaea previously alleged to be 1st century synagogues were not. That is a theoretical dispute (which has by no means reached a consensus among experts) that has no bearing on the question of whether there could have been a calcite-columned structure in 1st century Nazareth. Perhaps one can still argue that synagogues did not exist in the 1st century, and these calcite columns belonged to a structure with some other purpose, or that they post-date that century, or whatever, and that Mark nevertheless precognitively anticipated a cultural and architectural development a century before the fact and even correctly invented the right word for this futuristic prediction, but I think we can all see that such a line of reasoning can carry little weight here, and even if it did, it is still just a theory, not a fact. In other words, what Mark meant by a "synagogue" and whether there could have been anything in 1st century Nazareth that qualified remains an unsettled question for anyone who wants to insist that Mark lied or fabricated. Therefore, no conclusion can be drawn here, one way or the other, which has been my consistent point every single time.

As another example (and I am only bringing up two examples here--these same or similar points could be extended to dozens of things said since my last post), it has been argued that Bagatti is incompetent and none of his work can be trusted. Even if that is so, then we have almost no primary sources to rely on at all and therefore nothing useful can be said about ancient Nazareth, pro or con any theory at all. And even if we grant that, I will reiterate what I said about this already: the fact that we have no evidence of X does not permit the conclusion that we know there was no X. This is all the stronger a point if "we have no evidence of X" means "we have no useful evidence pertaining to the question one way or the other because it is all unreliable or inconclusive."

It has been my point, consistently every time, that what is wrong here is to argue "Mark stated what was false about Nazareth" from the fact that "we have no useful evidence pertaining to the question one way or the other because it is all unreliable or inconclusive" or any comparably inconclusive fact about the archaeology of Nazareth or the vocabulary of Mark. And my pointing this out, once again, does not commit me to asserting that Mark was reporting any true historical fact. Hoffman again consistently ignores that point and still doesn't understand what I am saying, which is why there is no point in arguing with him.

Thus, nothing that has been said here since my last post contradicts or even argues against my conclusion that we cannot claim to know that Mark stated false things about Nazareth (much less stating falsely that Nazareth even existed!). Maybe he did say false things, maybe he didn't. So far, in this thread I have still seen no good evidence he did. Again, that this is so does not mean that I conclude Mark is recording any historical fact about Nazareth, or even that Jesus really came from there. Those who get what I'm saying will see why this ends the debate. Everyone else I care not one whit about.

Now for where I have changed position: as shall be made clearer below, I am even more certain than ever before that Mark neither intended to make such a historical claim (that Jesus was really born at a real Nazareth) nor would any such claim have been historically true--i.e. I am now more convinced than I was before that a Nazareth attribution more probably than not served a symbolic purpose. I will have more to say about this in the future, possibly in a published article, but more likely in a book I am planning to work on for the next two years.

Though this conclusion would be supported by a finding that Mark said false things about Nazareth (hence I would love to have such a finding), so far I have still not seen any good evidence justifying the conclusion that Mark said false things about Nazareth. That is, even if Mark was making up every single thing about Nazareth (as I think he was), what he made up so far does not definitively contradict any facts presently known to us about 1st century Nazareth, and so I cannot prove Mark was inventing these things by appealing to any known facts about 1st century Nazareth. I wish I could. But I honestly can't--because I have looked at all the relevant primary evidence available, and none of it supports the conclusion that Mark fabricated (though none of it argues against it, either). Instead, I believe I can argue that Mark fabricated this from a completely different line of evidence (along lines similar to Laupot's case and the general inferential argument I mentioned earlier).

Second, some clarifications:

This pertains to the BBCh theory, which is an unrelated thread from the Nazareth question, but I see here again that what I said about BBCh is being ignored--which is not to fault youngalexander, since everything else he said in that post, about applying Bayes to the question, I think is spot on and entirely correct (even if I might quibble about some small trivial issues or precise probability values). From that post I can say youngalexander gets what I was arguing. Except for one thing:

The theoretical model for "Historical Jesus and NOT Big Bang C" that I was suggesting (or at least one of them, since I never intended to suggest there was only ever one possible theoretical model for any of the categories youngalexander rightly distinguishes) is one where several mystic Jesus movements predate Christianity, and then a historical Jesus was assimilated to the ideas promoted by these mystic Jesus movements (by the actual Jesus or by his right-hand man Cephas / Peter and his cronies). "Christianity" is then the movement begun by Cephas / Peter under Pilate, has a real man named Jesus at its origin, and eventually recruited Paul, by arguing that a historical Jesus embodied the mythic Jesus everyone had already been talking about before.

In other words, a historicist BBCh theory does not necessarily have to deny Doherty's suggestion that this mystic Jesus idea was all over the place before, say, the reign of Pilate, since "Jesus movement" and "Christianity" can be distinguished by definition (in many different ways, depending on what theoretical model you develop). Likewise, a mythicist theory does not necessarily have to deny BBCh either. That was a point I kept trying to make. In actual fact, personally, I think Doherty is right about that, i.e. various ideas of a mythic Jesus were currency in pre-Christian Jewish thought, but he and I could be wrong about that and I do not want mythicists to chain themselves to this notion, because they don't have to and strategically should not, for reasons I think youngalexander explains even better than I tried to do.

I will try to recap anyway: the evidence for predecessor Jesus movements is weaker and different from the evidence for a mythic Jesus per se, and the latter can be established even for someone not convinced of the former, and therefore mythicism will more likely and more easily gain currency as a scholarly consensus if it is packaged only with the best and sufficient evidence and not shackled to a secondary theory that can potentially undermine support for the mythicist thesis.

Even though, once that secondary thesis is accepted, it will provide further support for mythicism, it is not necessary support. We must learn the value of strategically sticking only to what is necessary to challenge historicity--everything else can be left for later, or bracketed as non-essential. This is especially so, since there are multiple ways to construct the theory: e.g. was it that Jesus and Christ movements were separate and only later amalgamated, or were Jesus movements always Christ movements? Etc. The point is: there is no need to answer this question before we persuade scholars to agree historicity is dubious.

Related to this point:

I don't see why. The translation messiah (anointed) to christos (anointed) long pre-dates Christianity: it is all throughout the Septuagint (both the original Torah translation and all the supplementary books as well, including Daniel 9, the most clear messianic prophecy that set the model fit by a crucified Jesus). There is nothing "recent" about this translation of messiach to christos--it predates Christianity by at least a whole century--nor is it peculiar (both words mean essentially the same thing).

And this is relevant because:

The fact that a Christ is already a well-known Septuagint term, even for a person, clearly equated with the Messiah in every way, shape, and form, conjoined with the fact that Daniel predicted an innocent Christ (literally, i.e. "Christos") being executed shortly before the Roman destruction of the temple right around the time of Pilate (if you fudge by a few years either way), both suggest a high probability that the appellation Christ would be attached to Jesus very early indeed (whether he was historical or not).

I have no opinion on the obscure dispute over whether this amounted to a name or a title--I don't even know why such a dispute matters. But maybe one can see how the two facts above argue for (but do not prove) both mythicism and BBCh.

The Daniel prophecy predicts a Christ arising in or "around" the very time of Pilate (that Daniel predicted something loosely like that was so widely known even Tacitus and Suetonius, as well as Josephus, allude to it, though only in connection with the War). This would provide the impetus to invent and launch a movement around that very fact. One of many pre-existing "cosmic Jesus" movements, perhaps one with Cephas / Peter as a member, may have latched onto a real Jesus who claimed or was claimed to be the earthly incarnation of this very cosmic Jesus, and so what we now call Christianity was born (and quickly evolved diversely, there being no hierarchy in place to prevent this). Hence we have historicism, BBCh, and a plethora of pre-existing Jesus movements. This is one possibility.

Or, and this I think is what I lean toward at present, the sect of Cephas that was eventually hijacked by Paul, took the same prophecy as predicting the final culmination of a "true" anticipated cosmic Jesus event under Pilate, which they then actually did or merely claimed to witness via communication with this cosmic Jesus, and then they tried to persuade (successfully or not) other Jesus movements (and beyond) that theirs was the definitive one, and this evangelistic effort is what evolved eventually into what we recognize as Christianity (in its many forms) in the Gospels and 2nd century (from the school of Tatian and Justin, for example).

But again, "which it is," whether either of the above or anything else, is a very different question from whether mythicism is more probably true or not, involving different evidence of different kind and quality, and so I am arguing that this should be bracketed and kept distinct from any general case for mythicism. One can use whatever theory you defend as additional support for mythicism, certainly, but it should never be held up as essential or fundamental to that theory, for all the reasons stated earlier and more.

Now to my general change of position:

I have long maintained a position of agnosticism about mythicism, which was quite a radical departure from my earlier belief in the probability of historicity, and my shift was entirely due to Doherty's excellent work, which I did not agree with entirely, but certainly enough to conclude that he might be right, even slightly more probably than the historicists. However, on examining further work on this subject (from Rank, Dundes, Price, and Fitzgerald, a presently-unknown scholar on this subject whose book will probably be released within two years; and my own further work on the narratives of Mark) I have come to realize that mythicism is significantly more probably true than historicity. This I consider as radical a departure from my previous agnosticism as my agnosticism was from my previous historicism.

I am still working out the details, and what follows is not meant to be a persuasive argument (it will not be even remotely comprehensive in treating all my reasons and evidence), but merely a summary of my reasoning. Those who are already convinced of mythicism will probably already see how the blanks could be filled in and a persuasive argument constructed from what mythicists like Doherty and Price have already argued.

But for now, just the skeletal outline:

First, an informal presentation:

I have recently completed notes that have led me to the conclusion that I can explain every detail of every verse of Mark's crucifixion and empty tomb narratives (including all the names of everyone who is mentioned by name in either) without appealing to a single historical fact--that in fact, most of those details are so obviously symbolic and metaphorical that they are almost certainly not historical nor intended to be. The single lone exception is Pontius Pilate, but his presence in the story is of the same order as the insertion of a datable historical figure or place in every hero's myth, and is explicable as an anticipated fact from Daniel's messianic prophecy which the Jesus of the story is clearly intended to fulfill (being executed despite his innocence, but also because of his talk of destroying the temple, which may have originally been symbolic but was later assimilated to the fact, with some chronological fudging).

Now, it occurred to me that if I can reconstruct the symbolic meaning of the entire crucifixion and resurrection narratives of Mark, and this reconstruction makes his story ten times more meaningful than it would ever be as historical narrative, and much of the narrative is so obviously mytho-symbolic, what reason is there to believe that the crucifixion of Jesus happened at all? That is, it is very improbable that it happened anywhere near like what Mark describes (almost certainly not on Passover, for example, much less with the exact hours stated, which correspond to the exact hours of the temple ritual that the crucifixion duplicates, and so on), so if there was a real Jesus behind this story, he was most probably crucified on some other day under some other circumstances, or perhaps not even really crucified but stoned and then hung, and so on.

Now, for all that, perhaps one can still cling to a historical Jesus who has become totally eclipsed by myth, but Doherty is right to declare that highly improbable.

That line of reasoning has certain limitations (I am leaving out a lot that a historicist would argue for his case, for example), which is why it was never completely convincing to me until I formalized it. In fact, I was working on the following Bayesian formula before I learned of youngalexander's effort here in this thread:

Let H = The hypothesis that Jesus did not exist as an historical person but as a mythic hero-type.

Let E = All the known facts particular to the Jesus discussed in the NT.

Let B = All our background knowledge relevant to the issue.

From the above, Bayes Theorem entails:

P(H/E&B) = P(H/B) x P(E/H&B) / [P(H/B) x P(E/H&B)] + [P(~H/B) x P(E/~H&B)]

From B we learn that the frequency with which content like E is produced by circumstances like H is high (e.g. most salvific godmen who score high on Otto Rank's "mythic hero" scale and are written about in highly symbolic ways were not real people). Without trying to estimate a range of exact frequencies, I think it is fair to say "most" and for now just use a stand-in value below, which I do not claim is my final assignment here.

Therefore, I conclude that the prior probability that H on B must be higher than the probability that ~H. Even if we assume the least plausible difference, we must still have prior probabilities of 0.51 for H and 0.49 for ~H (even die-hard historicists must agree with that), and in actual fact the difference is certainly greater than that. I will say, without definite commitment, that P(H/B) is 0.7 and P(~H/B) is 0.3 (I don't think many honest and informed historicists would argue with that).

From E we learn that in the NT Jesus is a salvific godman written about in highly symbolic ways, and also outside the NT, and so on, among many, many other things (in and out of the NT) that are extremely peculiar on ~H but exactly what we would expect on H. Though there are some things in and out of the NT that are not exactly what we would expect on H (I will mention three paradigm examples below), these are not impossible on H and in some ways are partly expected on H or are at least not entirely unusual on H. But most of all, the difficulty-producing peculiarities in E are far more numerous and bizarre for ~H than the difficulty-producing peculiarities in E are for H, and I think most honest and informed historicists would agree with that--that is, even if such a person concludes that ~H is probably true, they will nevertheless agree that there are more peculiar difficulties in E for ~H than for H--even if he thinks he can advance ancillary theories or additional theoretical elements to explain those peculiarities away, he must admit then that someone could do the same for the peculiarities on H, and that when both completed the same exercise, one would have to add fewer and less challenging ancillary theories or additional theoretical elements to explain away the difficulties on H than is the case on ~H.

Therefore, whatever the probability of E is on H, it must necessarily be greater than the probability of E on ~H, no matter how high the latter is, or (conversely) how low the former is. I think all honest and informed historicists will agree with that (emphasis on informed--e.g. even some very great scholars I know for a fact are completely unaware of a lot of the evidence that has been gathered on this issue). So suppose you think the probability of E on H is low, because you think the few peculiarities there are are too unlikely to be explained away--let's say you make E only 0.20 likely on H. Even then, since there are even greater difficulties for ~H, P(E/~H&B) must be lower still, at the very least 0.19, and I would say it could reasonably be assigned to .15. But suppose you are like me and think the probability of E on H is nevertheless high, because you think the few peculiarities there are are not all that unlikely even on H--let's say you make E as high as 0.80. Even then, since there are even greater difficulties for ~H, P(E/~H&B) must still be lower, and can't be any higher than 0.79 and I would argue that the difficulties are so extreme as to require a value as low as 0.70 (I actually believe it is a lot lower, but for now let's be as generous to ~H as we can be).

Without adjudicating further, let's run some numbers:

P(H/B) = as low as .51 or as high as 0.70
P(~H/B) = as high as 0.49 or as low as 0.30
P(E/H&B) = as low as 0.20 (model A) or as high as 0.80 (model B)
P(E/~H&B) = as low as either 0.15 or 0.19 (on model A) or as high as either 0.70 or 0.79 (on model B)

[Note that for those unfamiliar with Bayes, P(H/B) and P(~H/B) must always sum to 1, but P(E/H&B) and P(E/~H&B) do not have to sum to 1]

P(H/E&B) = P(H/B) x P(E/H&B) / [P(H/B) x P(E/H&B)] + [P(~H/B) x P(E/~H&B)]

Therefore, best case scenario for ~H:

P(H/E&B) = 0.51 x 0.20 / (0.51 x 0.20) + (0.49 x 0.19) = 0.102 / 0.102 + 0.0931 = 0.102 / 0.1951 = 0.523 (rounding up)

That would constitute mythicism being slightly more likely than historicism--enough to justify agnosticism but not a definite belief in mythicism. All honest and informed historicists must agree with this conclusion, IMO. But I myself reject all the extremely favorable terms here for ~H, for I now believe the facts entail a worst case scenario for ~H:

P(H/E&B) = 0.70 x 0.80 / (0.70 x 0.80) + (0.30 x 0.70) = 0.56 / 0.56 + 0.21 = 0.56 / 0.77 = 0.73 (rounding up)

In other words, I think anyone who is aware of all the facts that I have so far become aware of, and who does not have any dogmatic commitments biasing their judgment on this particular issue (as I do not--since ~H does not include merely the absurd fundamentalist theory which I do have a commitment against, but also all other historicist theories, most of which are completely compatible with my worldview and some in fact which I once promoted), will agree with my assignments above, and therefore they must agree with my conclusion: that there is a 73% chance that Jesus never existed. I think we need at least 80% to assert something as a historical fact, but I also think 73% is sufficiently high to say in colloquial English, without need for further qualification, "though we can't be certain, probably Jesus didn't exist."

But I am leaning even farther than that. You can all, of course, plug your own values in here and debate amongst yourselves what is actually in E and B, etc. But I only wish to report where I am now: and I think P(E/~H&B) is much lower than I have generously allowed above. I think the evidence is so peculiar on ~H that E would be expected less than 40% of the time--maybe even significantly less, but I think I can confidently assert 0.40 and most reasonable people (and certainly all Doherty and Price defenders) would agree with me that it cannot be higher. This would yield:

P(H/E&B) = 0.70 x 0.80 / (0.70 x 0.80) + (0.30 x 0.40) = 0.56 / 0.56 + 0.12 = 0.56 / 0.68 = 0.82 (rounding down)

That breaks the mark: we are now above 80% and thus in the realm of credible historical fact. That does not achieve the level of scientific certainty (which would be at least 95%), but hardly any historical facts are that certain. Most historical facts, which historians will feel comfortable asserting as facts without thinking they need to state what small reservations they might have about their certainty, fall at 80% or above (I would say the same of philosophy, too). Though when pressed a historian might admit that "we could be wrong" about such facts, generally he or she will emphasize that it is still so probably true as to warrant actual belief until new evidence argues otherwise. And that is where I now am vis-a-vis mythicism.

This can be emphasized by showing where I think the credible limits for the relevant values are. I think the prior probabilities are fairly secure (at least 70% of salvific godmen written about mytho-symbolically were not historical persons) and I am convinced the probability of E on ~H can't be higher than 0.4 (and might even be less), since anything nearer 0.5 would mean practically or actually a 50/50 chance that ~H would produce E and I think it is clear now that E is so peculiar that it surely would be expected less than 50% of the time on any ~H. But I perhaps could be wrong about the probability of E on H, but I am sure that can't be lower than 0.6 for the same reason: the preponderance of the contents of E are exactly as expected on H and nothing in E is entirely inexplicable on H and therefore the odds that E would be produced by H must be notably better than 50/50. But even with that figure:

P(H/E&B) = 0.70 x 0.60 / (0.70 x 0.60) + (0.30 x 0.40) = 0.42 / 0.42 + 0.12 = 0.42 / 0.54 = 0.78 (rounding up)

That is so close to 80% as to warrant practically the same conclusion as above, with perhaps only some small qualification, a bit more overt expression of uncertainty. But since I am pretty sure P(E/H&B) is higher than 0.6 (in fact I think it is 0.8), I am no longer issuing such qualifications--though the uncertainty remains that always attends a proposition that is 82% likely to be true, that uncertainty is small enough that it shouldn't have to be stated among those who understand that a great many historical facts are already as uncertain as that.

Hence I can confidently assert that I am now a mythicist. That does not mean I endorse everything all other mythicists say or argue (whether Doherty or Price or Wells or what have you), but it does mean I am no longer an agnostic on the matter.

I will part with some hints for further debate:

For those who think P(E/H&B) on H must be low (unlike me), I have three examples of the kind of evidence they might appeal to: Mark's use of seemingly historical details that do not lend themselves to straightforward mytho-symbolic explanation (such as an origin at Nazareth, regardless of whether he accurately describes that town, since knowledge of an historical origin there does not entail acquaintance with the facts about that town--an example of the issue not being as black-and-white as some here want it to be); Paul's mention of details seemingly contrary to a cosmic being (such as that Jesus was born of a woman by the seed of David--I am excluding all appeals to supposed quotations of the oral sayings of Jesus, etc., since those can easily be shown to have derived, at least to Paul's mind, from mystic revelation, as in many cases he outright says so, and in others clearly implies it); and external references to Jesus by historians who (supposedly) ought to know better (mainly, Tacitus and Josephus, even after cutting out all material from the latter that can be ruled out as interpolation with an obviously high probability).

However, there are plausible explanations of all these facts and all other facts like them (and again this is by no means intended to be a comprehensive argument, but just some hints at where I am and why):

(1) Even such details in Mark can be given plausible mytho-symbolic meaning (IMO) and they are so few that the weight of inference is in favor of some such meaning even if we can't find it (e.g. since 90% of the apparent "facts" in Mark have such evident mytho-symbolic meaning, the inference is that the odds are 90% that any remaining facts also have such a meaning, even if we can't figure out what it is).

(2) Even such details in Paul are extremely generic (e.g. neither his father nor mother are named), which accords slightly more with mythicism than historicism (especially since it was so much the standard to identify a man by his patronymic, and yet Paul never calls Jesus "Jesus of Joseph," for example), and all such details are ritualistically required (e.g. the mythic dogma of this Jesus requires that he be born of a woman to the Davidic line, no matter how that was rationalized metaphorically, and we have precedent for such rationalizations not only outside Christianity, as in Philo, but even in Hebrews itself), and therefore cannot be said to be improbable on H, even if they are not 100% expected on H.

(3) All external references are not credible challenges to H--e.g. Tacitus could easily have his information from the interrogations conducted by Pliny (for a number of reasons too long to go into here, I think this conclusion carries a very high probability), which means it comes from post-Gospel Christians, and therefore all that data is simply unreliable. IMO, there is no good reason to believe Tacitus would bother "checking the facts" of this affair (since he would have no reason to doubt his information from Pliny--especially since it was so ignominious as to fully justify his disdain for Christians, and bigots are rarely inclined to check facts that already completely agree with their prejudice) and of course Tacitus never says he did check these facts in any way that we would credit (whereas we have a known example of his fact-checking in other subjects by simply asking Pliny for information, which is exactly the unreliable chain of evidence I am alleging here); likewise, I find it very improbable that Josephus ever mentioned a historical Jesus (the testimonium is almost certainly a complete forgery--even the best arguments that have been made for a minimalist reconstruction, as for example from the Arabic text, I find to be unsupportable; and the one reference to James "brother of Jesus who is called Christ" can be shown to be the plausible scribal interpolation of an interlinear note--that is, "the one called Christ" was probably a scribal note that was later accidentally interpolated, which I conclude for many reasons too numerous to go into here, but among the chief reasons is that the "Jesus" referred to is so obviously the Jesus already mentioned many times in that very narrative, and in fact the reference and even the mention of this James only makes sense if Josephus meant he was the brother of this other Jesus who featured in the narrative, who was clearly not the Christian Jesus; etc.)

That is a sample of the reasons I do not see P(E/H&B) to be low at all. In contrast, the challenging facts that complicate any argument for ~H are much harder to explain away, and much more numerous, and the weight of the relevant inferences is against such explanations in precisely the way they actually favor H instead. The bottom line is that H explains more of the content of E and makes more of the content of E likely than ~H does, and there is nothing in E that is significantly improbable on H, given especially what we know in B (e.g. the sloppy methods of ancient historians, the common use of patronymics, and so on).

Again, I am leaving out tons of evidence that, collectively, convinces me that I have the right values in the Bayesian analysis above. So I do not intend the above to be an argument for my position, but rather a sketchy summary explanation of why I now hold the position I do. One would have to add all the best facts noted by Price, Dundes, Rank, Doherty, and even additional things I have collected on my own, to fully understand why I am where I now am.