gstafleu

Biblical Scholars vs Physicists: Quarks, Leptons and the Historical Jesus.

The idea for this posting came to me via the coincidence of another thread on this forum
and my reading of Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics. The conclusion I draw is that Biblical scholars and theoretical physicists aren't all that different when it comes to defending cherished theories in a methodologically unsound manner.

In the thread, KrisK10 revives the old idea that the Historical Jesus was, at the time, sufficiently insignificant so that he didn't leave a historical footprint. This then explains why we see so little evidence of the Historical Jesus. The problem with this hypothesis is of course that it is non-falsifiable, and hence not valid as a hypothesis. I always thought that forming a hypothesis with built-in non-falsifiability was something to which biblical scholars in particular were inclined, as opposed to, say, hard-nosed physicists. This turns out not to be the case.

Smolin's book addresses the problems that fundamental physics currently (i.e. in the past 30 years) has in coming up with a unified theory of the universe. Unification is in important principle that physics strives for. Typical, successful, examples are the unification of electricity and magnetism by Maxwell (into the theory of electromagnetism) and gravity and the geometry of space(time) by Einstein (into general relativity). The problems that physics is having in formulating and overall unified theory can apparently be simply summarized: it isn't working.

Biblical scholarship has been taking a unification of its own, that of the Jesus of Faith with a historical person (IOW: there was a Historical Jesus) more or less for granted for some time now, at least since the reformation. But any good unification has consequences that should be experimentally observable. For example, Einstein's unification of gravity with geometry predicts that light will bend in a gravitation field, something previous theories did not predict. And indeed, this can be observed during a solar eclipse (stars that should be hidden by the sun are in fact visible), thus validating general relativity.

The prediction that the unification of the Jesus of faith with a historical person (known in this forum as HJ theory) makes, is that we should find historical evidence of said Jesus. Such evidence is rather scarce, which has prompted some HJ theorists to posit a historically undetectable, but still existing, Jesus. This saves HJ theory, but at the expense of now being non-falsifiable and hence invalid.

Interestingly, it is not just biblical scholars who fall into this trap. In the following I will use some terms from particle physics, but don't worry, you don't have to understand the physics (I don't understand much of it either) in order to see the symmetry with the historically insignificant Historical Jesus. Particle physics distinguishes two classes of fundamental particles: Quarks and Leptons. What these are doesn't matter here, the only important thing for us is that it would be a Good Thing for physics if these could be unified into one theory, just like electricity and magnetism got unified into electromagnetism. This strived-for unification even has a name (though it hasn't been done yet): grand unification.

Many grand unifications have been posited, and the most promising one got the inspiring name of SU(5). It was very elegant, it unified everything that needed unifying, and it even made some new predictions (like general relativity predicted the bending of light). One of the predictions was: protons undergo a radioactive-like type of decay. Until SU(5) protons were not supposed to do that. This prediction is testable: build a huge vat with ultra pure water, put it in a deep mine (to protect it from cosmic radiation), surround the vat with detectors and wait for signals of the decay.

People have been waiting for 25 years now, and no decay has been observed. This meant the end of SU(5). But you can get around this. You can easily change SU(5) such that the decay would be so rare as to be effectively unobservable. This should ring a bell of reminiscence with the historically undetectable historical Jesus. Let me quote Smolin on the matter:
However, physicists didn't do that, so three cheers for the hard-nosed physicists who clearly win the methodological day from the biblical scholars, right? Not so fast.

After the failure of SU(5) many physicists apparently retreated for a while from fundamental theory to everyday experimentalism, but a few die-hard theorists decided to up the ante rather than admit defeat. They proposed an even grander scheme, called Supersymmetry, which unified two other types of particles, fermions and bosons (never mind what they are). After a while this idea caught on. Like SU(5), it predicts something new that should be experimentally verifiable. In this case: new particles which should be observable in particle accelerators. However, you guessed it, so far these particles have not been observed.

The way around this should by now be familiar: adjust the theory so that the particles become effectively unobservable, just like our favorite religious particle, the HJ. It turns out that this is fairly easy. In practice every accelerator has an upper limit as to the mass of a particle you can detect with it. Supersymmetry can easily be adjusted to make the particles unobservable with existing accelerators. To quote Smolin:
So, it appears that even hard-nosed physicists are not immune to shaping their cherished beliefs into a theory that is inherently unfalsifiable. But they are still trying to find experimental confirmation, that is why you can find in the news the terms "Higgs Boson" and "Large Hadron Collider (LHC)" frequently mentioned together. The LHC is meant to be able to find these particles supersymmetry predicts. We'll have to wait and see if it does.

To conclude, the interesting thing here is the obvious human tendency to preserve cherished beliefs. We see this tendency active in two wildly divergent fields: biblical scholarship and fundamental physics. In both cases the tactic of making one's cherished theory unfalsifiable is used. But, to be fair, the physicists are still trying to confirm their theory experimentally, and, should the LHC not deliver the wished-for results, my guess is they will give up their theory. Of course many Biblical scholars are starting to do the same thing with the Historical Jesus. But, given that, supposedly hard-nosed, physicists show tendencies to cling to their cherished beliefs, we shouldn't be surprised when biblical scholars take their time in getting to a result that to many may seem obvious.

Gerard Stafleu

GakuseiDon

As much as I hate debating over analogies (since no analogy perfectly matches the actual situation that it is paralleling, so it is easy to find points where it doesn't match), I think this is a good point. But the part missing from your analogy is: The hypothesis regarding SU(5) is falsifiable because we would expect to be able to measure the results if it were true. What would we expect to see if a historical Jesus had existed?

Amaleq13

And what would we expect to see if Jesus was myth from the beginning?

gstafleu

We would expect to see historical evidence outside the system of legend, much like KrisK10 posits in the other thread. That evidence is rather scare, and some, KrisK10 for example, want to explain that by minimizing the historical footprint of the HJ. That is very similar to adjusting the constants of a unification theory in such a manner that any predicted, but unobserved, effects become unobservable.

Gerard Stafleu

GakuseiDon

True, it cuts every which way.

GakuseiDon

Hmmm... It's a valid point, but that doesn't answer the question of exactly what we would expect to see. For example, Honi the Circle-Drawer performed miracles. We don't see him in Roman literature AFAIK (not counting Josephus). SHOULD we expect to see him in Roman literature?

The problem is this: Jesus didn't kill anyone. He didn't raise an army. He didn't mint coins. Even if he was known as a miracle-working, I don't know how you can evaluate how that would be represented in the literature of the time. Trying to evaluate that is the tricky part.

Solo

Let's see ! Would that be Jewish heretics arguing he was not born of a virgin, that he did not have divine nature and that he, like some Jewish dignitaries, was exalted by God after death ?

Jiri

gstafleu

For the sake of argument, let's say that the answer is: we would expect to see nothing. That then still does not change the fact that the HJ hypothesis is unfalsifiable and hence invalid. We then still have to abandon it, even though it might be true. Similarly, SU(5) could be actually true, the proton decay rate could indeed be undetectably low, in which case we would expect "to see nothing." The hypothesis still will be abandoned--or at best kept on some dusty shelf until more evidence pops up.

Gerard Stafleu.

Solitary Man

The earliest documents reflecting that? Very often ancient roots. Spin's suggestion of created tradition works better than the "myth" theory, since most worshiped deities of pure myth have characteristics which allude to ancient roots, and those of men have normal names. Read Farnell's thoughts on Herakles.

Solitary Man

I think you miss out on circumstantial evidence, i.e. no direct traces but rather other areas affected. Christianity did not come from nowhere - it had to start somehow. All the evidence (affected) point towards a real human beginning the legends.

What's entirely unfalsifiable is the Jesus Myth. The basic premise of the Jesus Myth is that the Orthodox Christianity covered up all the evidence. How can you falsify that?