Ted Hoffman

Hi Solo,
I haven't read the entire paper. I think I will be in a better position to respond once I do so. Cheers.
Ted

Steven Carr

Justin Meggitt will be publishing a book explaining that the Romans thought Jesus was a deranged lunatic.

Add another Jesus to the list of historical Jesus's. How many Jesus's are there now?

Ted Hoffman

Twenty six and a half.

Solo

This one, alas, is not new. Mark tells us Jesus' family thought him acting like a deranged lunatic.

Jiri

lpetrich

I've never heard of that one before. Any official announcement?

And I'll try my hand at explaining Bayes' theorem.

It essentially says that if you know the probabilities of various hypotheses and the probabilities of their producing various data values, then one can find the probabilities of those data values implying those hypotheses, a reversal in direction.

More formally,

P(H if D) = P(D if H)*P(H)/P(D)

for hypothesis H and data value D. One calculates P(D) by summing
P(D if H)*P(H)
over all hypotheses H.



Richard Carrier wants to do something like this, I think:

Find P(HJ if NT) and P(MJ if NT)
where
HJ = historical Jesus, MJ = mythical Jesus, and NT = New Testament
The probabilities of Jesus Christ being historical or mythical, judging from what the New Testament says about him.

With Bayes's theorem, he would find

P(HJ if NT) = P(NT if HJ)*P(HJ)/P(NT)
P(MJ if NT) = P(NT if MJ)*P(MJ)/P(NT)

where P(NT) = P(NT if HJ)*P(HJ) + P(NT if MJ)*P(MJ)

So he needs:
Overall probabilities of a historical and a mythical Jesus Christ
The probability of a historical JC getting the NT's description of him
That probability for a mythical JC

This analysis can be extended to multiple HJ and MJ hypotheses, if desired.

I don't know if Richard Carrier intends to try to get some numbers or if he wants to handwave his way through with less precise indications of probability. Here is how such an analysis might work:

If P(MJ) = 0 (JC cannot be mythical), then P(HJ if NT) = 1 and P(MJ if NT) = 0

But if JC is just as likely to be mythical than historical, without considering the NT, then the overall probabilities become P(HJ) = P(MJ) = 1/2.

If the NT's accounts of JC are much more plausibly generated by a mythical JC than a historical one, then P(NT if MJ) >> P(NT if HJ). Combining that with a historical and a mythical one having similar overall probabilities yields P(MJ if NT) >> P(HJ if NT), thus implying that JC was very likely mythical.



Now for some examples, inspired by Wikipedia's example. Let's say that you are at a party with 40% boys and 60% girls, while 100% of the boys wear pants, but only 75% of the girls, the rest of them wearing skirts. You notice someone there wearing pants; what's the likelihood of that person being a girl?

P(boy) = 40%
P(girl) = 60%
P(pants if boy) = 100%
P(pants if girl) = 75%

P(girl if pants) = P(pants if girl)*P(girl)/P(pants)
where P(pants) = P(pants if girl)*P(girl) + P(pants if boy)*P(boy)

Working out the numbers gives P(girl if pants) = 52%

If only 25% of the girls are wearing pants, then P(girl if pants) = 27%

If 50% of the boys are wearing kilts, then P(girl if pants) = 69%

If both those conditions are true, the P(girl if pants) = 60%

If only 40% of the people are girls, then P(girl if pants) = 33%

Notice how P(girl if pants) moves around under various changes of input data: P(girl), P(pants if girl), and P(pants if boy).

mountainman

Dear lpetrich,

The actual application of Bayes' Theorem is emminently susceptible to the GIGO Law. The GIGO Law is a sort of surrogate Occams Law in the field of computational processing which states that if your initial conditions are garbage, then your end state results are also going to be garbage.

I am impressed with Carrier's tutorials on the subject matter nevertheless and I also look forward to various future applications of the theorem to issues related to ancient history, specifically a logical and objective computational assessment on the historicity of Jesus as represented in the canonical New Testament literature, and other sources. (Carrier has elsewhere defined measures of "historicity" and "ahistory").

Finally, all must agree that in the very first place, at those initial conditions (as the butterfly flaps its wings) it is the nature of those hypotheses themselves which is paramount. We all know Murphy's Law may apply here in that if we have any choice in selecting between a number of hypotheses then we are likely to select the wrong set. If we are working with the wrong set of hypotheses then we are not going to get very far very quickly.

Hence the value of testing all available hypotheses right up front, and discarding those which do not appear to be bearing fruit -- such as the hypothesis that there was an historical jesus who commanded a fig tree not to bear fruit in the first century of the common era. Was there in fact on Earth in the 1st century a simultaneous two-faced god of sparrows and fig trees?

I understand that it is extremely difficult (if not impossible) for certain researchers to "let go" of the HJ hypothesis as part of the set of hypotheses for their own application of Bayes theorem to the probabalistic ground of Ancient History, and not for Christ's sake either New Testament "history" or Biblical "history".) We have been conditioned - many from early childhood - into accepting the HJ postulate into the model of our world, whereas in fact, the HJ postulate might be garbage. If we honestly want to test it, then we have to be prepared to let it go --- if only temporarily --- in order to test other patterns and combinations of hypotheses for the initial conditions. Understandable is this great resistance, through conditioned behaviour, to insist on the retention of the HJ postulate(s). Objectivity insists that other alternative hypotheses - such as the MJ Mythical Jesus and/or the LJ Legendary Jesus (See Philosopher Jay's recent post) be given a fair hearing, sample test runs against the "standard model", etc.


Best wishes


Pete

Jeffrey Gibson

The question really is, why wouldn't she care what you think. I know for a fact, having spoken with her, that she is very much open to , and very encouraging of, sound criticism of he work and her claims, no matter who these criticisms come from. And your criticism is a sound one, is it not?

How nice of you. But since you haven't yet shown that what she wrote is what you say it is, let alone that April wants or needs to cling to anything, or would somehow be destroyed psychologically or in any other way if what she allegedly "clings to" was taken away from her, I see your "explanation' for not writing to April (or posting on her blog) as a confession that you have no confidence that your criticism is sound. It's also a way of protecting yourself from the possibility of your being shown by one of the very people you constantly (but from the safety of this forum) criticize for their naivete and keep telling us are in need of being brought to see the light, that you don't know as much as you want to believe you do.

When did the issue become what I want?

Jeffrey

Toto

I think my criticism is sound. I mean it seems blazingly obvious to me. But DeConick has posted an intimidating bibliography, and it appears that in order to engage with her, one would have to start by finding and reading all of those books and articles, many of which are outside my interests, and then master a new vocabulary of academic jargon.

I see that she did screw up the name of one of those books. Memory in the Bible and Antiquity is available on Google books.

Memory Distortion (or via: amazon.co.uk) is available. But how will she find a historical figure by using a technique that shows how memory is unreliable?

I'll put it on my to do list.

But in other news, James Crossley joins the Jesus Project.

Crossley weighs in.

Tom Verenna on Chilton and Crossley

Jeffrey Gibson

Why this is relevant if your criticism of her position is indeed sound is beyond me. After all, her position is either right or wrong, and your criticism is either sound or not, no matter how many books on the subject she''s read (and you haven't).

In any case, if your criticism isn't sound, don't you want to know why? Or are you reluctant to find this out because you want to have a straw to cling to so that you might persist in your belief that scholars don't deal with the lack of evidence adequately because of how they'd be hurt if they actually did so?

Jeffrey

Toto

Hi Jeffrey - you are attributed all sorts of motives to me that I do not hold. I have no idea what Deconick's motivations are, or if she has a personal or emotional stake in the existence of a historical Jesus. I can only observe that she seems to want to keep the possibility open that Jesus existed in spite of what she recognizes is dodgy evidence. This may just be a matter of keeping options open, or keeping her discipline viable, or some other reason that is perfectly valid.

My primary motivation now is my own time and the necessity of doing some paid work.

Scholars, on the other hand, are paid to do this sort of thing, and seem to be paid more if they can make the subject more complex.