mountainman

There is substantial claimed evidence in the literature of the church fathers for the historical person named "Paul". Do you want me to cite it? There is also evidence from the Gnostics, such as the following physical description of "Paul"

J-D

Surviving writings of the church fathers and of the Gnostics--indeed, all surviving writings whatever--fall within Carrier's definition of 'evidence', as they are actually existing documents. I do not know whether you are suggesting that the particular writings you mention are evidence relevant to the question currently at issue, and whether you are making that suggestion or not I don't know whether it's right. It is possible that those writings, or some parts of some of them, may provide evidence relevant to answering the question. But, as I said before, the definition of the question is the same whether the writings you refer to provide relevant evidence for answering it or not.

Scotsguy44

At the end of the day it doesn't matter too much whether or not one is speaking about postulates, or hypothesis or other such starting points because whatever is postulated/hypothesised eventually has to be evaluated by evidence and rational analysis. To me it's more a discussion about words rather than substance.

Thanks
Matt

mountainman

Hi Toto,

At least one of us does not understand how Carrier intends his use of Bayesian equations to represent the evidence. I dont mind admitting that I have not understood this, if that is the case.


He is also discussing how evidence is represented WITHIN a Bayesian equation.


Think about it. All evidence to be addressed by the Bayesian equation must be represented to it, and it is represented by statements, sometimes very simple statements, that are essentially hypotheses about the evidence item.

The method Carrier uses is also a tool to demonstrate the ineptitude of some investigators' hypotheses.



He shows it to be a hypothesis, equal in provisional estimated ranking to MANY MANY OTHER HYPOTHESIS.
Carrier also lists the antithetical hypotheses ~h.



But we are not just dealing with the Pauline Epistles (which was but one example) we are dealing with all the evidence when we are considering hypotheses and theories that are designed to produce theoretical conclusions about the history of christian origins.

The evidence which Carrier refers to as e is an enormous set of physical and conceptual items. One element of that evidence is the Pauline Epistles and one element of that evidence is the author, a human being, a person (for whom we do not a cadaver, or bones - but there may be claims I have not checked!) who's name is attached to the "Pauline Epistles".



If this is the case, then explain to me how (without using statements - hypotheses) the Pauline Epistles are represented within the Bayesian equation.




How then is Paul, a presumed AUTHOR of antiquity, of at least perhaps the Pauline epistles to be represented within a Bayesian equation without the production of common hypotheses (statements) about the author "Paul"?




You appear to have been strenuously arguing against this proposition to date.





And this is precisely how ancient history works. The hypotheses have to be disconfirmable. Popper gets involved.





Voila! You have just made my entire point in discussion to date! Doug's hypotheses implicity assumes that one of the first two hypotheses must be the correct one.




Dont worry. Be happy. The answer has been elucidated immediately above. There are no problems with the explicit hypotheses such as 1 and 2. There is really no problem with hypothesis 3 from Doug et al except that its implied reliance upon hypotheses 1 and 2 is not explicit, but implied. This is OK, but needs to be seen as such.




If I am wrong I will offer you (and other forum members) an apology.

If you are wrong then I will expect the same from you.


Ask Carrier the question by email.


Best wishes



Pete

J-D

You appear to be treating 'statement' and 'hypothesis' as synonyms. They are not. Some statements are hypotheses; others are not. In the context of this discussion (and referring to what Carrier wrote), for example, the statement 'the stories about the discovery of an empty tomb were recorded because an empty tomb really was discovered' is a hypothesis; the statement 'stories are recorded about the discovery of an empty tomb' is not. If you treat 'statement' and 'hypothesis' as synonyms, you may misunderstand what Carrier is saying.

In my exchange with Doug Shaver, I set out, in general terms, all the different possible explanations I could think of the existence in the Pauline epistles of attributions of authorship. Those were more examples of statements which are hypotheses. Doug Shaver responded by with a summary comparative evaluation of those hypotheses, ending by stating which of them was (for the reasons given in the evaluation) to be preferred. That is another example of a statement which is not a hypothesis. The statement 'out of the list of hypotheses you have presented, I prefer number X' is not itself a hypothesis.

The Pauline epistles are evidence: they are actual surviving documents. This evidence includes the attributions of authorship incorporated in them, which are thus part of the evidence. Statements about the author found in actual surviving documents are part of the evidence. But the author is not part of the evidence. As you correctly point out, we do not have a cadaver, or bones. We accept (or at least I accept) that the epistles must have been written by some human being or human beings because of its consistency with the normal pattern that documents are composed by human beings and the absence of any plausible alternative. If you have some alternative to offer, and reason to think it more likely than human composition, please tell us about it; until that happens, I will continue to accept that the Pauline epistles are the product of human composition. But the human being or human beings who composed them is not or are not available to us as evidence, and it is a mistake therefore to say that 'a is or they are part of the evidence.

mountainman

All hypotheses are expressed as statements. This I think is Carrier's point and the requirement of the formalisms introduced via Bayesian analysis. Physical evidence does not get shipped from the museum or library or the Vatican directly into a Bayesian equation. The only input into the Bayesian equations are our hypotheses (statements) about, and representative of, the evidence. Hence the necessity of examining (and re-formulating where appropriate for testing purposes) each of these hypotheses as clearly and objectively as possible.

J-D

You're still making the same mistake. All hypotheses may be expressed as statements, but not all statements are hypotheses.

mountainman

I have reread this exchange.


We call this person the author of the manuscript before us. Your exchange mentions this in a couple of places. It is essentially a very general postulate that is held to be true for all manuscripts - that behind each of them was an historical identity who may or may not be identified by name. As a separate question and issue, this author's name may or may not be also associated with a (genuine and authentic) historical identity. See the schematic below.

I entirely agree. Human author. Person.

Two hypothetical counter-examples for the sake of it: (1) Pages selected from random production of text. EG: an entire zoo full of monkeys with typewriters who get a banana for every page of text they produce may extremely rarely produce a sensible page. (2) In the last few decades it is possible that a computer system may itself be responsibe for the authorship of stories and we add a new relationship to the manuscript/people relationship called "Programmer". (i.e. the author of the software)


History is about historical people, some of whom were authors (and other people related to the physical technological manufacture) of the manuscript before us (or a copy of a copy or a copy of a translated copy, etc). It is a mistake to say that these authors are not evidence of history, even if we cannot be absolutely sure who the author actually was in any one case.

People represent a category evidence, and I will put forward the following list of categories to support my case:

Categories of Ancient Historical Evidence


Part (1): The "Literature Traditions"

1.1 the speakers - authors (people, particularly "historians") and their estimable historicity.
1.2 the manuscripts - physical written source - original documents (codices, scrolls, papyri fragments)
1.3 the words - ancient texts: their literature, its philology, and its translations.




Part (2): The "Field Traditions"

2.1 architecture, buildings, monuments
2.2 inscriptions in stone and metal and mosaic - the epigraphic habit
2.3 sarcophagi, burial relics, funerary ornaments
2.4 coins (gold, silver and others)
2.5 art, paintings and graffitti
2.6 sculpture, reliefs, frescoes, ornamental works
2.7 archeological relics and other citations
2.8 cadavers
2.9 geographical, climatic and ecological data (on a regional basis)




Part (3): The "Analysis Support Traditions & newer technologies"

3.1 paleographic assessment and dating of original texts, papyrii and papyrii fragments
3.2 radio carbon dating and other scientific dating citations
3.3 multi-spectral imaging and other scientific "reading" technologies
3.4 collective and collaborative databases: epigraphic, numismatic, geographic, climatic, etc.
3.9 the historians - comments and analyses of the above by past and present ancient historians.

The influence of the "Literature Traditons" is strong in the field related to the ancient history of christian origins. It is therefore necessary to briefly discuss what these manuscripts are.


The relationship between 1.1 People (eg an author) and 1.2 Manuscripts (mss) - physical hand written source - original documents (codices, scrolls, papyri fragments) can be sketched. The following schematic shows that physical manuscripts may be presumed to have at least one author, as well as logical other relationships to other people. The manuscript may have had at least one separate publisher, at least one separate sponsor, at least one separate scribe, if the author (himself or herself) did not also perform these functions. Behind the attribution of authorship (and other) names there is the presumed possibility of an historical identity.





SUMMARY: New manuscript discovery ...

Supposing we find tomorrow a brand new manuscript X in which the name of a brand new author is found to be Y . One new evidence item in ancient history would be created to represent the physical manuscript X, and at the same time, another evidence item would be created to represent the physical historical person and author Y. The two evidence items are related by the relation of AUTHORSHIP, but they are not the same - they are different categories of evidence. As you see, and as Doug and yourself have clearly outlined in the exchange at post # 216, the existence of an evidence item with the category of manuscript (codex to papyri fragment) is also taken in general terms to also represent the existence of a separate evidence item that has the category of a person - the author.

It therefore follows that we must make hypotheses (which are statements) not just about the manuscript, but also separately about the author.

mountainman

I do understand that, but the OP is specifically about hypotheses (which I am treating as synonymous with "postulates"). Not all the statements made in your exchange with Doug are hypotheses, and it would be helpful to try and be more specific about such hypotheses.

However the point that I find myself having to constantly defend is that in all the foregoing statements by Doug and yourself and others (in which there may be hypotheses) many of them appear to combine statements about the manuscript and about the author in one statement, whereas these items are, as I have argued above, two separate and unique items. We therefore need in addition to hypothetical statements about BOTH items, hypothetical statements about EACH item - first the manuscripts "The Pauline Letters", and second the person "Paul" behind the authorship of the text of the ms.

I have prepared a list of sample hypotheses about "Paul":

SAMPLE HYPOTHESIS (1): "Paul was a genuine and authentic historical identity
SAMPLE HYPOTHESIS (2): "Paul was NOT a genuine and authentic historical identity.

J-D

A surviving document is a piece of evidence. Note: only surviving documents are evidence. If surviving document B quotes from document A, but document A does not survive, then document A is not a piece of evidence. In that case, document B is evidence that document A (once) existed. If documents B, C, D, E, and F all survive, and if each of them quotes from document A, then it's possible for each of them to be a separate piece of evidence that document A (once) existed, but if document A itself does not survive then it is not itself a piece of evidence.

If a document refers to where a building once stood, or where a river once flowed, then the document is a piece of evidence that the building or the river (once) existed, but the building or the river itself is only a piece of evidence itself if it's still there. A building or a river which is no longer in existence is not a piece of evidence. There may possibly be evidence for it, but it's not itself evidence.

If surviving documents were written by human beings, then those human beings once existed and may be considered part of history. But unless they are still around now, they are not evidence. There is evidence for the historical existence of Arnold Toynbee, but Arnold Toynbee is not himself a piece of evidence.