mountainman

I'd like to discuss postulates used in ancient history, since it appears to me that that all theories of christian origins which are compatible with the field of ancient history must start with postulates or hypotheses.

It also appears to me that unless the postulates are contravened and refuted by the evidence, in the judgement of the theorist and peers (in which case the postulates have to be revised by the theorist in accordance to the evidence) then the theory itself is simply a development of the postulates introduced.

The problem of course is identifying the postulates and hypotheses that any one theorist puts forward in a book or an article or a discussion post for that matter. It is also a well known fact that many people are in fact not consciously aware of the postulates that their theory (or theorizing via discussion) is introducing, and as a result it's common that people have not really examined one, or even more, of what might be termed unconscious or subconscious postulates because they are not really aware of them.

At any rate, my explorations have made me aware that it is important to try and identify all the postulates that are associated with any one theory or opinion concerning the historical theories of christian origins.

The classic postulate is that Jesus was an historical figure is one of the oldest, but we have all seen the introduction of the antithetical postulate - that Jesus was not an historical figure.

Proponents of both these postulates have then developed detailed theories firmly based on their respective postulates, and happily argue the merit of their findings with respect to the judgement of the evidence. Needless to say the judgement of the evidence is most often conditioned by the postulates held by the theorist, but not in all cases, such as when the nature of the evidence is such that it compels the theorist to relinquish certain postulates, previously assumed.

So it seems, unless we find our postulates refuted, then all theorizing is the exploration and confirmation of our original postulates, whether they are consciously known to us, or whether they are not explicated consciously. Would you agree with this?

dalehileman

Intuition strongly figures in

Doug Shaver

Best described by whom? I have never seen it so described in anything I have read in the literature of either science or philosophy.

aa5874

The histiorical Jesus is NOT oldest postulate. The OLDEST Postulate is the Jesus of FAITH, Jesus the Child of a Holy Ghost and Mary.

People ARGUED AGAINST the Jesus of FAITH.

A very early argument AGAINST the Postulate of the Jesus of Faith, that Jesus was born of the Holy Ghost, was in the writings of Justin Martyr.

There is NO KNOWN Postulate from any Christian source or even Skeptics that there was a man named Jesus who was NOT born in Bethlehem and did hardly did or said anything found in the Gospels.

The HJ theory REJECTS the NT.



No credible evidence has been produced for HJ iof Nazaererth.

Please remember that HJ of Nazareth CONTRADICTS the Canon.

It seems people here think whatever they imagine or speculate is a theory or whatever an "experts" says is evidence but without DATA there can be NO real theory.

HJ is NOT really a theory because it was "postulated" WITHOUT credible DATA.

When a theory is EXPOSED the DATA should be RELEASED simultaneously.

When a man is CHARGED with a Crime the Police MUST have DATA at the time of the Charge.

HJ was EXPOSED WITHOUT Data.

The HJ postulate is even a PHANTOM.

Sheshbazzar

Yeah, but back then it was taken for granted that gods, angels, demons, ghosts, spirits, goats, donkeys and whatever else, could knock-up a women, and cause them to give birth to various types of monstrosities, such as the Nephilim giants.

Men were likewise thought be in danger from night visits by the 'succubus's' who could drain their 'spirits' from their bodies (most likely their foolish explanation for their 'wet dreams' and nocturnal emissions)
With this kind of a religious and 'scientific' background these ancient people were wide open to believing all kinds of stupid horse-shit and taking it dead seriously.

They had no problem at all with the idea that a 'holy ghost' humping young Mary's bones could actually produce viable physical offspring.
The idea would never have even been thought of as being made up out of myth to these primitives, but just another real fact of their daily lives.

We read their elaborate and sophisticated sounding NT religious works, and often tend to forget just how ignorant, how uneducated, how superstitious, and how primitive most of this ancient society really was.

A zombie living-dead Jebus would not have been all that remarkable, as their ancient religious texts, and their sages/shaman had plenty of tales about dead people coming back to life, along with many promises that they also would, thus they were fully primed and inclined by both their religion and superstitious traditions to receive such information (and urban gossip) as being factual.

And when such was promulgated by erudite and respected religious 'Holy' authority figures such as the apostles or 'Paul', it was accounted as being of the 'sacred' mysteries, and 'Holy' facts beyond any hard-working, pious, right-thinking common man or woman's right to question.

They simply could not realize that they were being fed a line of woo. Because this type of woo was integral to their primitive culture, those cultural paradigms that they had been fully indoctrinated into right from infancy.

Even the peddlers of the woo actually believed it. 'Visions', 'dreams' and 'interpretations were required of their 'Holy men', and they honestly worked at producing them.
They didn't know any better, and couldn't think 'outside of the box' of their primitive culture and its social norms.

They simply did not, -and could not- critically think in the manner that we in the modern world now take for granted.
(excluding those fundamentalist that are attemting to practice 'old time religion', and now have to work really hard at remaining as dumb as rocks)

It would have been taboo to even ask those questions, or raise such challenges to the prevailing system, as we would now think of as being rational and logical.
Doing so would have resulted in total social ostracism, if not a quick death penalty for committing blasphemy.

Religion by its very nature tends toward the retrograde, hell, there are fundamentalist religious ding-a-lings out there that are still attempting to influence genetics or gender by means of stripped and spotted sticks.
We've even had them on this site, still trying to defend this asinine practice as being effective and 'scientific'.

It is always necessary to keep in mind that these primitive societies were literally stupid and extremely naive, and sorely lacking in 'street-smarts' by our modern standards.
The dumb shits, most of who were unsophisticated illiterate laborers and farmers were inclined to believe damn nearly anything that came down the pike.
Convincing 'visionaries' and preachers like Paul with a good line, could suck them in by the hundreds to listen to these 'visions', 'interpretations' and amazing tales and promises of eternal life. And they were dumb enough to believe it and to buy it hook line and sinker.
Some still are. If you think not, just pick up any Jack Chick tract.




.

mountainman

The context for this statement is a discussion of postulates used in ancient history, and specifically in theories which are addressing the history of christian origins.

In this thread I seek refutation for the argument that all theories of the history of christian origins may be summarised as consistent in essence of two basic postulates, and the "Theory" is an exploration of those two postulates, providing greater refinement and precision. I will provide reasons for this below, but the basic reason is that these postulates are also being used to assess the evidence. People see the evidence in different lights dependent upon their postulates.



The Two Postulates in all historical theories of Christian Origins....

(1) The First Postulate is about the existence (or otherwise) of an historical Jesus figure. (HJ or MJ)

For example, some people work with the postulate of the existence of the historical jesus. Other people work with the postulate that there was no historical jesus - that jesus was myth.


(2) The second postulate concerns chronology - specifically the century when "most of the action the theory discusses" takes place.


For example some people postulate the action of the history of christian origins took place in the 1st century, while others postulate that that the second century was when it all happened.


Now some people here will object to the above on account of the fact that it appears to them that both (1) and (2) are not postulates but CONCLUSIONS of the theory. The question I would ask to this objection is this: how do we tell in an objective fashion whether this is the case or not? What changes? For example, some might argue that these things (1) and (2) are derived from an examination of the evidence itself. How many times have we seen this being argued by two people as if they see it supports both antithetical theories at the same time? Obviously, we must acknowledge that the postulates are also used to examine and judge the evidence, and therefore we must state some postulates for this process.

When I refer to evidence above, I mean:

* the canonical books of the new testament
* all other sources
* etc


SUMMARY

The dominant mass of theories about the history of christian origins can therefore be defined by these simple two postulates. SOme will follow the HJ and othes the MJ. Some will prefer the 1st century, some will prefer the 2nd century, while others may prefer both. With these two postulates all the following theories are simulated:

All HJ theories with all the action in century 1

and all combinations to ...

All the MJ theory with all action in century 2


Objections

Again, I expect many will want to say, the existence or otherwise of the HJ and the century of action is something that arises through logical processes and is not a postulate. The logical processes however being refered to are being essentially constrained by the postulates (often UNSTATED) by the theorist. I am trying to get out into the light all these unpsecified processes that relate to the judgement of the evidence itself, and it has occurred to me that this is one pathway.


NOTE

Obviously postulates in their traditional operation on theories can be revised in the event of evidence that appears, but for the sake of this argument we will assume a static and not a dynamic scenario. Thus the postulates may be fixed. But what really are they? Very few poeple state up front "I am assuming an HJ" or "I am assuming an MJ". They instead like to present this as a conclusion of their research. I am asking what if they just said this up front as a postulate - what would change? Anything?





In additon to these main two postulates, I think the following three might be added:


Drafting Further Postulates

(3) Does the chronology used to nominate a CENTURY of action (at 2) in any way rely upon Eusebius?
If the answer to this is YES, see (3A). If the answer to this is NO, see (3B).


(3A) On a scale from -10 (totally untrustworthy) to 0 (neutral) to +10 (reliable trustworthy source)
how do you rate Eusebius?

(3B) Upon what non Eusebian evidence is your chronology reliant?
(e.g. new testament)


Comments?

mountainman

Is it reasonable to say that ahistoricists postulate the MJ while historicists postulate the HJ?



This tells us nothing about what is being assumed.
But obviously it is imperative to knw what is being assumed.

What is the real difference between an assumption and an unevidenced assumption, when the evidence is being judged by the same assumptions. I hope people can see the paradox.

Doug Shaver

I'm not sure that answers my question, unless that's your way of admitting that you're using a special definition of "theory" concocted for your own purposes.

Doug Shaver

Yeah, I have a comment. If you don't know the difference between a postulate and a question, you're hopeless.

mountainman

I am attempting to look very generally at the diversity of "theories" which have been discussed here in this forum related to the history of christian origins.

General Theory:

Starting with these postulates P1, P2, P3, .... Pn
We examine all this evidence E1, E2, E3, .... En
And arrive at a theory in which (1) Jesus is either historical or mythical
and (2) for which the century of the major action was either the 1st or the 2nd.

This is how most historicist or mythicist theories might be summarised, both in their modus operandi of construction and in their overall conclusions. If you disagree with this general summary assessment, then we can revise this.


Have you ever seen people list their postulates?

I think this is very rare. The statements about postulates are often very vague and given in some sort of general relative sense, such as what you wrote above:

We do not see either the historicists OR the mythicists getting specific about their list of postulates. What are their postulates? Of the entire set of postulates used by both groups, how many of the postulates are agreed to by both groups and how many are contested?

Postulates, and Arguments over evidence

Routine circular disagreements about the evidence items themselves are being perpetuated ad nauseum as a direct result of the proponents examining the evidence with differing postulates. If the postulates are known as stated this situation becomes a little clearer.

In the absence of these lists of postulates from both sides I have stepped forward and am suggesting that we can model this behaviour very simply by simulation.



Modelling by Reverse Engineering all existing theories

For the purpose of the simulation, we treat whatever conclusions each of the theories are putting forward as their explanation for the history of christian origins regarding both the HJ/MJ question, and the century of chronology question (1 or 2) as postulates.

For example, the historicists would have as their first postulate Jesus was historical, and as their second postulate that all the action was in the later 1st century. The mythicists would have as their first postulate that Jesus was not historical, and as their second that most of the action happened in the 2nd century somewhere.

All theorists from both sides would then commence to examine and discuss all the evidence items that their theory wishes to address as pertinent and relevant E1, E2, E3, ... En and arrive at a more detailed narrative conclusion which is consistent with their hypotheses and the evidence.







Exploring this simulated way of looking at things ....


The HJ and/or the MJ as the first postulate

Does anyone have a problem with this as the first postulate?



The Chronology as a Century

Does anyone have a problem with this as the second postulate?