Freethought & Rationalism Archive

J-D · 11-16-2011, 04:38 PM

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by J-D

You seemed to be saying that anybody who takes a position about when or how Christianity originated must have reached that conclusion by first adopting it as a postulate. This is not correct. If you reach your conclusion by first postulating it, then your reasoning is circular and worthless. Any chain of reasoning that has any value about the origins of Christianity--or about anything else--must have a conclusion which was not included among the postulates. If somebody reaches a conclusion that (for example) Jesus was X, Y, or Z, the process of investigation and reasoning is valueless if a postulate was that Jesus was X, Y, or Z. Just because somebody reaches such a conclusion, you are not justified in saying that it must have been one of their postulates.

If I ask you your view about some topic (the origins of Christianity or anything else), and you say A, B, or C, and I then ask you 'What makes you think so?', and you respond that it's because you postulated A, B, or C (as the case may be), then your reasoning is worthless. You suggest that it's appropriate to treat everybody as if they're reasoning this way, and that's flat wrong.

I think you are missing one key point in that the postulates are being formulated with very careful examination of the evidence itself with the ramification / understanding that they are then going to be accepted as provisionally true for the sake of plugging them in to the theory generator to produce conclusions which are based on the provisional truth of those postulates.

If you read through the exchanges concerning the forumulation of postulates that might be made with respect to the Pauline letters for example, you will see the presence of "hidden postulates" that needed to be seen as such and explicated -that is made explicit.

Where postulates are implied and not explicit then people claim things like "I am not assuming the historicity of "Paul" but infering it from the evidence" and then make conclusions about the historicity of Paul - I see this as a primary example of circular reasoning that we are all guilty of in one way or another. Everyone has their own conceptual framework and possible agendas and these are generally visible in the postulates, with explicit postulates being more visible than implicit postulates.

We all have unstated assumptions, but you seem to be saying that all our conclusions are straightforward one-to-one transpositions of our unstated assumptions, which is not true. Having unstated assumptions is one thing, and circular reasoning is another and quite different one.

mountainman · 11-16-2011, 05:11 PM

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by mountainman

We often meet with historical theories of christian origins which Hector Avalos (see recent thread) describes in the following terms:

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Originally Posted by HA

So how is it that most Christian academic biblical scholars never see anything that Jesus does as wrong or evil? The answer, of course, is that most Christian biblical scholars, whether in secular academia or in seminaries, still see Jesus as divine, and not as a human being with faults.

The answer is of course they are starting with their postulates.
And their postulates are a "Jesus of Faith". Historicity 80% and above perhaps.

These sorts of postulates OBVIOUSLY need to be made quite explicit.

One method of achieving this is to have a general rule such as:

There must be at least one postulate per evidence item which relates to
a stated measure of either positive or negative historicity assessed against that evidence item

That may be a possible rule, but it's a stupid one, for several reasons.

Firstly, a physical object like a potsherd, a ruined wall, a mosaic, a piece of jewellery, or what-have-you, may sometimes be considered by historians as an item of evidence. What could it possibly mean to say that such a physical object has a positive historicity of 80% or a negative historicity of 30%? Here your suggested approach produces only useless gibberish.

Firstly all these physical objects may have been fabricated, but lets examnine the piece of jewellery or even a physical object such as the "James Ossuary". If in the assessment of the physical object, the investigator considers it to be genuine then this implies positive historicity.

However if the investigator susupects the object to be of a non-genuine and fabricated nature then this implies negative historicity.

The range from 0 to 100 of positive historicity permits a gauge to be placed on the relative sense of genuineness of the object. Converserly the range from 0 to -100 of negative historicity permits a gauge to be placed on the relative sense of fabricated nature of the object. In some cases invetigators may return an assessment which is small either way, in other cases some investigators may consider the same object to be either quite genuine or quite forged.

Investigators are entitled to disagree with each other over what they allocate to this measure of positive or negative historicity. We have seen plenty of examples of this in this forum. The purpose of a reserved postulate to reflect an EXPLICIT measure of +/- historicity is to enable easy comparison of investigators' positions on any one given evidence item, or over a range of evidence items. These may vary considerably between investigators, and we need to know in a very simple way how each investigator assesses each and every item of evidence. It's a simple tool to do this, that's all. I think it assists in analyses, etc.

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Secondly, if the item of evidence being considered is the contents of a text, of what value is it to say that it has historicity of 80% or 30%?

Here is a brief table for the "TF", for example.

Positive and Negative Historicity Spectrum of the "Testimonium Flavianum"

+100 = The "TF" is a completely and deliciously genuine testimony for Jesus ("It's an apple!")

+50 = The "TF" is a minor "Partial Interpolation" ("It's not a lemon, it's an orange!")

+25 = The "TF" is a major "Partial Interpolation" ("It's not a lemon, it's an orange!")

+5 = The "TF" cannot be reconstructed but may in the end prove to be genuine.

================================================== ===
ZERO = The fence upon which to balance .....
================================================== ===

-5 = The "TF" cannot be reconstructed but may in the end prove to be fraudulent.

-25 = The "TF" is an "Interpolation" by later scribes ("It's a lemon!")

-50 = The "TF" is "A rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too", ("It's a lemon!").

-99 = The "TF" was forged by Eusebius Pamphilus of Caesarea for his "Boss", Connie. ("It's a lemon!")

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The important thing is not trying to figure out how much of it historically accurate, but figuring out which parts are historically accurate. A percentage doesn't help. (Here again by contemplating the possibility of a negative value your approach enables the production of useless gibberish.)

It is also IMHO very important to figure out what parts are fabricated in a negative sense. The percentage helps in dealing with the degree of suspicion.

All is very well in an investigation that discloses no evidence of fabricated evidence, and the investigators are happy. However if in an investigation evidence items in reasonably large numbers start turning up as better assessed as forgeries, fabrications, frauds, etc, then it is imperative that the fabrications be explained in addition to the normal positive authentic stuff. An objective investigator should not sweep them under the carpet, since they represent evidence in the investigation. Hence it is critical as a separate process to review and explain all the negative evidence that the investigation has revealed as a separate exercise. In some investigations, especially of fraud and forgery, most of the evidence is of the negative variety.

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Thirdly, .....

Let's just see if we can reach agreement in 1 and 2. If we can it may not be stupid to proceed to 3.

J-D · 11-16-2011, 05:41 PM

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by mountainman

We often meet with historical theories of christian origins which Hector Avalos (see recent thread) describes in the following terms:

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Originally Posted by HA

So how is it that most Christian academic biblical scholars never see anything that Jesus does as wrong or evil? The answer, of course, is that most Christian biblical scholars, whether in secular academia or in seminaries, still see Jesus as divine, and not as a human being with faults.

The answer is of course they are starting with their postulates.
And their postulates are a "Jesus of Faith". Historicity 80% and above perhaps.

These sorts of postulates OBVIOUSLY need to be made quite explicit.

One method of achieving this is to have a general rule such as:

There must be at least one postulate per evidence item which relates to
a stated measure of either positive or negative historicity assessed against that evidence item

That may be a possible rule, but it's a stupid one, for several reasons.

Firstly, a physical object like a potsherd, a ruined wall, a mosaic, a piece of jewellery, or what-have-you, may sometimes be considered by historians as an item of evidence. What could it possibly mean to say that such a physical object has a positive historicity of 80% or a negative historicity of 30%? Here your suggested approach produces only useless gibberish.

Firstly all these physical objects may have been fabricated,

All of the ones I mentioned must have been fabricated: none of them grow on trees.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

but lets examnine the piece of jewellery or even a physical object such as the "James Ossuary". If in the assessment of the physical object, the investigator considers it to be genuine then this implies positive historicity.

However if the investigator susupects the object to be of a non-genuine and fabricated nature then this implies negative historicity.

There is no absolute distinction between 'genuine' and 'non-genuine' objects. Objects are what they are, and if they exist then they exist. A distinction between 'genuine' and 'non-genuine' is meaningful only in the context of a previously adopted evaluative framework, and you haven't said, in this case, what yours is.

Once the evaluative framework has been made clear, the distinction between 'genuine' and 'non-genuine' will also be clear, but I don't see what you gain by adding the unnecessary terminology 'of positive historicity' when 'genuine' conveys the meaning.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

The range from 0 to 100 of positive historicity permits a gauge to be placed on the relative sense of genuineness of the object. Converserly the range from 0 to -100 of negative historicity permits a gauge to be placed on the relative sense of fabricated nature of the object.

I can only interpret these numbers as meaning 'probability that the object is genuine'. If that's not what you mean, you have not made clear what you do mean. But if that is what you mean, probabilities can only be positive. There are no probabilities less than 0.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

In some cases invetigators may return an assessment which is small either way, in other cases some investigators may consider the same object to be either quite genuine or quite forged.

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Secondly, if the item of evidence being considered is the contents of a text, of what value is it to say that it has historicity of 80% or 30%?

Here is a brief table for the "TF", for example.

Positive and Negative Historicity Spectrum of the "Testimonium Flavianum"

+100 = The "TF" is a completely and deliciously genuine testimony for Jesus ("It's an apple!")

+50 = The "TF" is a minor "Partial Interpolation" ("It's not a lemon, it's an orange!")

+25 = The "TF" is a major "Partial Interpolation" ("It's not a lemon, it's an orange!")

+5 = The "TF" cannot be reconstructed but may in the end prove to be genuine.

================================================== ===
ZERO = The fence upon which to balance .....
================================================== ===

-5 = The "TF" cannot be reconstructed but may in the end prove to be fraudulent.

-25 = The "TF" is an "Interpolation" by later scribes ("It's a lemon!")

-50 = The "TF" is "A rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too", ("It's a lemon!").

-99 = The "TF" was forged by Eusebius Pamphilus of Caesarea for his "Boss", Connie. ("It's a lemon!")

And, as I said, of what value is that table? It looks like gibberish to me.

I can understand the question 'Is the so-called Testimonium Flavianum part of the original text of the document in which it was found?' I can also understand somebody being unwilling to commit to a definite answer but being prepared to make some rough estimate of the probability of a positive answer (or, correspondingly, of a negative one)--although other investigators may pose the question and confess inability even to make an estimate of probabilities. But I can't see what meaning or value the numbers in your table are supposed to have.

(Also, Connie is the principal of my daughter's school. She has nothing to do with this. I don't know why you're dragging her into the discussion. It just makes you look stupid.)

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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The important thing is not trying to figure out how much of it historically accurate, but figuring out which parts are historically accurate. A percentage doesn't help. (Here again by contemplating the possibility of a negative value your approach enables the production of useless gibberish.)

It is also IMHO very important to figure out what parts are fabricated in a negative sense. The percentage helps in dealing with the degree of suspicion.

First, if X% (and only X%) is accurate then, by definition, (100-X)% is inaccurate. Or, if only X% is confirmed as accurate and only Y% is confirmed as inaccurate, then, by definition, there is (100-X-Y)% for which the question is undetermined. Still none of those numbers can be negative.

And there is no way you can arrive at those percentages first and then apply them to elements of the text afterwards. The only way you can arrive at those percentages in the first place is to begin by trying to reach conclusions about the different parts of the text. By the time you get to the percentages you've already formed your views, so I still don't see how they help you.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

All is very well in an investigation that discloses no evidence of fabricated evidence, and the investigators are happy. However if in an investigation evidence items in reasonably large numbers start turning up as better assessed as forgeries, fabrications, frauds, etc, then it is imperative that the fabrications be explained in addition to the normal positive authentic stuff. An objective investigator should not sweep them under the carpet, since they represent evidence in the investigation. Hence it is critical as a separate process to review and explain all the negative evidence that the investigation has revealed as a separate exercise. In some investigations, especially of fraud and forgery, most of the evidence is of the negative variety.

Obviously in any context where there's a clear standard by which to define 'fraud' and 'forgery', it's important to remember that those are possibilities. I never doubted that. What does that have to do with the point the discussion had reached? If the object is to detect fraud or forgery, postulating the answer to that question is the wrong methodology.

(Also, in the context of an investigation of fraud or forgery, 'negative evidence' would mean evidence of the absence of fraud or forgery; in that context evidence of fraud or forgery would be 'positive evidence'. There can't be such a thing as 'negative evidence' in an absolute sense: in an absolute sense, all evidence is positive evidence or something. The only thing that can make it 'negative evidence' is evaluation by the standard of whether it tends to support a particular conclusion or to do the reverse.)

J-D · 11-16-2011, 05:43 PM

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by J-D

So which are your postulates, and which alternatives are you using for your comparative evaluation?

As summarised in the schematic I am looking at this in general and am therefore open to all possible postulates and thus conclusions which can be drawn from an examination of the evidence. I am not discussing any one theory or its postulates, I am examining the process itself.

After some years of research it occurs to me that despite the diversity of all modern theories, with few exceptions, are coming up with the same (sometimes dogmatic ) theoretical conclusions C1, C2, C3 .... etc

When we look at these conclusion they are of the general form, in very simple terms, like this:

C1: Jesus was an important historical figure and religious leader.
C2: The originating century of christian origins was the 1st century.

another series of conclusions might read ....

C1: Jesus was an embellished historical figure, and cant be reconstructed.
C2: christian origins covers the 1st and 2nd century.

another series might read ...

C1: Jesus was not an historical figure, legends have been embellished.
C2: The originating century of christian origins was the 2nd century.

These three sample conclusions are simplifications of course, but the point is that they represent the bulk of all theories on the matter.

WHAT-IF

To what extent are these conclusions reflective of the postulates? Some but not all of the theorists are explicit and deal with the postulated related to their conclusion. The explicit postulate to the theoretical conclusions above would be for the first two "It is reasonable to assume that Jesus was an historical figure", while for the last one the hypothesis would have to be the antithesis of this. Namely "It is reasonable to assume that Jesus was not an historical figure".

Therefore it appears to me that the entire field can be summarised by taking as postulates the answers to the following two questions ...

(1) Are we to assume that Jesus was an historical figure?

YES implies that "Jesus was historical" becomes our postulate.
NO implies that "Jesus was not historical" becomes our postulate.

(2) In which century did Christianity originate?

Pick a box: 1st century, 1st and 2nd centuries, 2nd century, etc

This simulates the conclusions of all theories in the field.

Does it therefore follow that every theory in the field must in some manner either explicitly or implicitly follow the above simple process? It seems to me that every theory in the field are each making theoretical conclusions that are reflected entirely by their postulates.

In some cases it happens, of course, that people's conclusions are just their postulates. In history, as much as in other field, these people are engaging in circular reasoning, assuming what they are supposedly attempting to demonstrate, a procedure which has no value.

You seem to be saying that the only way to arrive at a conclusion is to postulate it, that all reasoning must be circular. That is not correct.

The schematic represents a one-way process starting with the formulation of reasonable postulates about each item of the evidence, and other general postulates, all of which are the subject of "processing" to arrive at hypothetical conclusions or theoretical conclusions.

However the same one-way process may be reiterated over and over again by continually adjusting the statement of the postulates, and then reprocessing them, which is one mechanism by which theories evolve.

In another discussion group I received as part of a response to this OP the following which I will post for further discussion, since I think it is a very thoughtful and very insightful response to many of the basic questions permeating these issues.

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History's method is quasi-scientific; more exactly, it is as scientific (rigorous) as it can possibly be, given its particular circumstances.

Given that strict scientific methodology (i.e. up to double blind controlled trials plus metanalyses) is inherently impossible for History, the postulates of the historical hypotheses (often miscalled "theories") are subject to what is often called "mental experiements", in a nutshell rigorously controlled "what-if" speculation.

The traditional scientific methodology is reversed in one critical point; the results of the "mental experiment" (i.e. the present conditions of the issue at hand) are known in advance; it is the "methodology" of such process which is trying to be logically induced from such results.

In fact, the results are essentially the only potentially truly objective part of the process; ergo, extreme rigor is required for recording such results.

The process as a whole is superficially similar to pure philosophical research, given the ostensible relevance of logical reasoning (actually shared by any scientific discipline).

The critical difference is that, contrary to pure philosophical research and analogous to any scientific discipline, the method of History is restricted by the regular rules of evidence; the core falsifiable criteria of Popper are required too.

Even if in principle any past may be considered "History" in practice it is regularly restricted fundamentally to the study of the recorded (basically written) development of humankind; ergo, it is no surprise that the History method so often tends to overlap with the methodology of several other Humanities, notably anthropology and sociology.

My bolding.

I don't see how that is in any way relevant to the point I was making.

You seemed to be saying that anybody who takes a position about when or how Christianity originated must have reached that conclusion by first adopting it as a postulate. This is not correct. If you reach your conclusion by first postulating it, then your reasoning is circular and worthless. Any chain of reasoning that has any value about the origins of Christianity--or about anything else--must have a conclusion which was not included among the postulates. If somebody reaches a conclusion that (for example) Jesus was X, Y, or Z, the process of investigation and reasoning is valueless if a postulate was that Jesus was X, Y, or Z. Just because somebody reaches such a conclusion, you are not justified in saying that it must have been one of their postulates.

If I ask you your view about some topic (the origins of Christianity or anything else), and you say A, B, or C, and I then ask you 'What makes you think so?', and you respond that it's because you postulated A, B, or C (as the case may be), then your reasoning is worthless. You suggest that it's appropriate to treat everybody as if they're reasoning this way, and that's flat wrong.

Further to the above: you acknowledged previously that a comparative evaluation of alternative postulates is methodologically essential. So, if you treat the different views about the origins of Christianity to which you refer as alternative postulates, how do you do your comparative evaluation of them?

mountainman · 11-16-2011, 06:25 PM

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by mountainman

We often meet with historical theories of christian origins which Hector Avalos (see recent thread) describes in the following terms:

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Originally Posted by HA

So how is it that most Christian academic biblical scholars never see anything that Jesus does as wrong or evil? The answer, of course, is that most Christian biblical scholars, whether in secular academia or in seminaries, still see Jesus as divine, and not as a human being with faults.

The answer is of course they are starting with their postulates.
And their postulates are a "Jesus of Faith". Historicity 80% and above perhaps.

These sorts of postulates OBVIOUSLY need to be made quite explicit.

One method of achieving this is to have a general rule such as:

There must be at least one postulate per evidence item which relates to
a stated measure of either positive or negative historicity assessed against that evidence item

That may be a possible rule, but it's a stupid one, for several reasons.

Firstly, a physical object like a potsherd, a ruined wall, a mosaic, a piece of jewellery, or what-have-you, may sometimes be considered by historians as an item of evidence. What could it possibly mean to say that such a physical object has a positive historicity of 80% or a negative historicity of 30%? Here your suggested approach produces only useless gibberish.

Firstly all these physical objects may have been fabricated,

All of the ones I mentioned must have been fabricated: none of them grow on trees.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

but lets examnine the piece of jewellery or even a physical object such as the "James Ossuary". If in the assessment of the physical object, the investigator considers it to be genuine then this implies positive historicity.

However if the investigator susupects the object to be of a non-genuine and fabricated nature then this implies negative historicity.

There is no absolute distinction between 'genuine' and 'non-genuine' objects. Objects are what they are, and if they exist then they exist. A distinction between 'genuine' and 'non-genuine' is meaningful only in the context of a previously adopted evaluative framework, and you haven't said, in this case, what yours is.

The "James Ossuary" is a suspected forgery.
The case is still be prosecuted by the Israeli Police Dept.

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Once the evaluative framework has been made clear, the distinction between 'genuine' and 'non-genuine' will also be clear, but I don't see what you gain by adding the unnecessary terminology 'of positive historicity' when 'genuine' conveys the meaning.

But I am not doing that at all, but in fact doing the opposite. I am adding the necessary terminology of negative histority to denote forgery because the word "genuine" does not do justice to the meaning.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

The range from 0 to 100 of positive historicity permits a gauge to be placed on the relative sense of genuineness of the object. Converserly the range from 0 to -100 of negative historicity permits a gauge to be placed on the relative sense of fabricated nature of the object.

I can only interpret these numbers as meaning 'probability that the object is genuine'. If that's not what you mean, you have not made clear what you do mean. But if that is what you mean, probabilities can only be positive. There are no probabilities less than 0.

That is not necessarily true. See Negative probability

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Originally Posted by mountainman

In some cases invetigators may return an assessment which is small either way, in other cases some investigators may consider the same object to be either quite genuine or quite forged.

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Secondly, if the item of evidence being considered is the contents of a text, of what value is it to say that it has historicity of 80% or 30%?

Here is a brief table for the "TF", for example.

Positive and Negative Historicity Spectrum of the "Testimonium Flavianum"

+100 = The "TF" is a completely and deliciously genuine testimony for Jesus ("It's an apple!")

+50 = The "TF" is a minor "Partial Interpolation" ("It's not a lemon, it's an orange!")

+25 = The "TF" is a major "Partial Interpolation" ("It's not a lemon, it's an orange!")

+5 = The "TF" cannot be reconstructed but may in the end prove to be genuine.

================================================== ===
ZERO = The fence upon which to balance .....
================================================== ===

-5 = The "TF" cannot be reconstructed but may in the end prove to be fraudulent.

-25 = The "TF" is an "Interpolation" by later scribes ("It's a lemon!")

-50 = The "TF" is "A rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too", ("It's a lemon!").

-99 = The "TF" was forged by Eusebius Pamphilus of Caesarea for his "Boss", Connie. ("It's a lemon!")

And, as I said, of what value is that table? It looks like gibberish to me.

I can understand the question 'Is the so-called Testimonium Flavianum part of the original text of the document in which it was found?' I can also understand somebody being unwilling to commit to a definite answer but being prepared to make some rough estimate of the probability of a positive answer (or, correspondingly, of a negative one)--although other investigators may pose the question and confess inability even to make an estimate of probabilities. But I can't see what meaning or value the numbers in your table are supposed to have.

They permit the postulates of all parties to be registered with the provision that the evidence may not in fact be "historically authentic" (i.e have positive historicity).

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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The important thing is not trying to figure out how much of it historically accurate, but figuring out which parts are historically accurate. A percentage doesn't help. (Here again by contemplating the possibility of a negative value your approach enables the production of useless gibberish.)

It is also IMHO very important to figure out what parts are fabricated in a negative sense. The percentage helps in dealing with the degree of suspicion.

First, if X% (and only X%) is accurate then, by definition, (100-X)% is inaccurate. Or, if only X% is confirmed as accurate and only Y% is confirmed as inaccurate, then, by definition, there is (100-X-Y)% for which the question is undetermined.

First, you are intruducing this concept of "accuracy" with your own definitions of it. I have put forward a measure of historicity. Examine the tables provided. This is not about accuracy but about the postulation of some measure of historical authenticity and/or historical fabrication.

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Still none of those numbers can be negative.

See above

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Originally Posted by mountainman

All is very well in an investigation that discloses no evidence of fabricated evidence, and the investigators are happy. However if in an investigation evidence items in reasonably large numbers start turning up as better assessed as forgeries, fabrications, frauds, etc, then it is imperative that the fabrications be explained in addition to the normal positive authentic stuff. An objective investigator should not sweep them under the carpet, since they represent evidence in the investigation. Hence it is critical as a separate process to review and explain all the negative evidence that the investigation has revealed as a separate exercise. In some investigations, especially of fraud and forgery, most of the evidence is of the negative variety.

Obviously in any context where there's a clear standard by which to define 'fraud' and 'forgery', it's important to remember that those are possibilities. I never doubted that. What does that have to do with the point the discussion had reached? If the object is to detect fraud or forgery, postulating the answer to that question is the wrong methodology.

My point is that one must not eliminate the use of the postulate that in any one case of evidence we are dealing with an ietm of fabricated evidence.

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(Also, in the context of an investigation of fraud or forgery, 'negative evidence' would mean evidence of the absence of fraud or forgery; in that context evidence of fraud or forgery would be 'positive evidence'. There can't be such a thing as 'negative evidence' in an absolute sense: in an absolute sense, all evidence is positive evidence or something. The only thing that can make it 'negative evidence' is evaluation by the standard of whether it tends to support a particular conclusion or to do the reverse.)

What are the standards used by the Israeli Police Dept in the case against the genuine assessment of the "James Ossuary".

Doug Shaver · 11-16-2011, 11:05 PM

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Originally Posted by J-D

One among the many possibilities is that the various writings attributed to Paul were in fact written by different people, and that the writer of epistle X may have put the name 'Paul' on it to create the false impression that it was written by the same person as the earlier epistle Y, already circulating under the name 'Paul', and it does not necessarily follow from this that the author of epistle Y (whether or not his real name was 'Paul') was known for anything else apart from the attribution of epistle Y.

If I cannot think of as many possibilities as you can, that probably says something unfavorable about my imagination. I don't think it says anything at all about who was the likely author of those letters.

aa5874 · 11-16-2011, 11:33 PM

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Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

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Originally Posted by J-D

One among the many possibilities is that the various writings attributed to Paul were in fact written by different people, and that the writer of epistle X may have put the name 'Paul' on it to create the false impression that it was written by the same person as the earlier epistle Y, already circulating under the name 'Paul', and it does not necessarily follow from this that the author of epistle Y (whether or not his real name was 'Paul') was known for anything else apart from the attribution of epistle Y.

If I cannot think of as many possibilities as you can, that probably says something unfavorable about my imagination. I don't think it says anything at all about who was the likely author of those letters.

Your statement is mere rhetoric.

In the NT, it is NOT really known who wrote any book or epistle and it is NOT really known when any book or epistle was written.

Apologetics sources have CONTRADICTED one another about the time the Pauline writings were written.

It is accepted that gLuke was written After the Fall of the Temple yet the Church claimed Paul died BEFORE the Fall of the Temple but was AWARE of gLuke.

It is accepted that the Canonical Gospels were written and considered as Scripture AFTER the Fall of the Temple yet Paul was AWARE of Christian Scripture when he should have been ALREADY dead.

It is most likely that the writings that are claimed to be early in the NT Canon are really late.

J-D · 11-17-2011, 02:21 AM

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Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

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Originally Posted by J-D

One among the many possibilities is that the various writings attributed to Paul were in fact written by different people, and that the writer of epistle X may have put the name 'Paul' on it to create the false impression that it was written by the same person as the earlier epistle Y, already circulating under the name 'Paul', and it does not necessarily follow from this that the author of epistle Y (whether or not his real name was 'Paul') was known for anything else apart from the attribution of epistle Y.

If I cannot think of as many possibilities as you can, that probably says something unfavorable about my imagination. I don't think it says anything at all about who was the likely author of those letters.

I wasn't arguing for any particular conclusion. I was pointing to a flaw in your line of reasoning. If your line of reasoning is flawed (whether through lack of imagination or for any other reason), then you haven't given good reason to accept your conclusion and the point at issue is, to that extent, wider open than you suggested.

J-D · 11-17-2011, 02:41 AM

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by mountainman

We often meet with historical theories of christian origins which Hector Avalos (see recent thread) describes in the following terms:

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Originally Posted by HA

So how is it that most Christian academic biblical scholars never see anything that Jesus does as wrong or evil? The answer, of course, is that most Christian biblical scholars, whether in secular academia or in seminaries, still see Jesus as divine, and not as a human being with faults.

The answer is of course they are starting with their postulates.
And their postulates are a "Jesus of Faith". Historicity 80% and above perhaps.

These sorts of postulates OBVIOUSLY need to be made quite explicit.

One method of achieving this is to have a general rule such as:

There must be at least one postulate per evidence item which relates to
a stated measure of either positive or negative historicity assessed against that evidence item

That may be a possible rule, but it's a stupid one, for several reasons.

Firstly, a physical object like a potsherd, a ruined wall, a mosaic, a piece of jewellery, or what-have-you, may sometimes be considered by historians as an item of evidence. What could it possibly mean to say that such a physical object has a positive historicity of 80% or a negative historicity of 30%? Here your suggested approach produces only useless gibberish.

Firstly all these physical objects may have been fabricated,

All of the ones I mentioned must have been fabricated: none of them grow on trees.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

but lets examnine the piece of jewellery or even a physical object such as the "James Ossuary". If in the assessment of the physical object, the investigator considers it to be genuine then this implies positive historicity.

However if the investigator susupects the object to be of a non-genuine and fabricated nature then this implies negative historicity.

There is no absolute distinction between 'genuine' and 'non-genuine' objects. Objects are what they are, and if they exist then they exist. A distinction between 'genuine' and 'non-genuine' is meaningful only in the context of a previously adopted evaluative framework, and you haven't said, in this case, what yours is.

The "James Ossuary" is a suspected forgery.
The case is still be prosecuted by the Israeli Police Dept.

You say that as if it somehow contradicts my point. It doesn't.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Once the evaluative framework has been made clear, the distinction between 'genuine' and 'non-genuine' will also be clear, but I don't see what you gain by adding the unnecessary terminology 'of positive historicity' when 'genuine' conveys the meaning.

But I am not doing that at all, but in fact doing the opposite. I am adding the necessary terminology of negative histority to denote forgery because the word "genuine" does not do justice to the meaning.

IF what you mean is 'forgery', I don't see what you gain by adding the unnecessary terminology of 'negative historicity', when 'forgery' conveys the meaning.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by mountainman

The range from 0 to 100 of positive historicity permits a gauge to be placed on the relative sense of genuineness of the object. Converserly the range from 0 to -100 of negative historicity permits a gauge to be placed on the relative sense of fabricated nature of the object.

I can only interpret these numbers as meaning 'probability that the object is genuine'. If that's not what you mean, you have not made clear what you do mean. But if that is what you mean, probabilities can only be positive. There are no probabilities less than 0.

That is not necessarily true. See Negative probability

The article refers to the meaning that can be given to negative probabilities in specified mathematical contexts. You have not explained what a negative probability could mean in the present context.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by mountainman

In some cases invetigators may return an assessment which is small either way, in other cases some investigators may consider the same object to be either quite genuine or quite forged.

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Secondly, if the item of evidence being considered is the contents of a text, of what value is it to say that it has historicity of 80% or 30%?

Here is a brief table for the "TF", for example.

Positive and Negative Historicity Spectrum of the "Testimonium Flavianum"

+100 = The "TF" is a completely and deliciously genuine testimony for Jesus ("It's an apple!")

+50 = The "TF" is a minor "Partial Interpolation" ("It's not a lemon, it's an orange!")

+25 = The "TF" is a major "Partial Interpolation" ("It's not a lemon, it's an orange!")

+5 = The "TF" cannot be reconstructed but may in the end prove to be genuine.

================================================== ===
ZERO = The fence upon which to balance .....
================================================== ===

-5 = The "TF" cannot be reconstructed but may in the end prove to be fraudulent.

-25 = The "TF" is an "Interpolation" by later scribes ("It's a lemon!")

-50 = The "TF" is "A rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too", ("It's a lemon!").

-99 = The "TF" was forged by Eusebius Pamphilus of Caesarea for his "Boss", Connie. ("It's a lemon!")

And, as I said, of what value is that table? It looks like gibberish to me.

I can understand the question 'Is the so-called Testimonium Flavianum part of the original text of the document in which it was found?' I can also understand somebody being unwilling to commit to a definite answer but being prepared to make some rough estimate of the probability of a positive answer (or, correspondingly, of a negative one)--although other investigators may pose the question and confess inability even to make an estimate of probabilities. But I can't see what meaning or value the numbers in your table are supposed to have.

They permit the postulates of all parties to be registered with the provision that the evidence may not in fact be "historically authentic" (i.e have positive historicity).

No, they don't. If you or I or anybody wants to make a list of postulates advanced by various parties, we do not need the permission of your unexplained numerical scale to register postulates on that list. The numbers add no meaning or value to the list of postulates.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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The important thing is not trying to figure out how much of it historically accurate, but figuring out which parts are historically accurate. A percentage doesn't help. (Here again by contemplating the possibility of a negative value your approach enables the production of useless gibberish.)

It is also IMHO very important to figure out what parts are fabricated in a negative sense. The percentage helps in dealing with the degree of suspicion.

First, if X% (and only X%) is accurate then, by definition, (100-X)% is inaccurate. Or, if only X% is confirmed as accurate and only Y% is confirmed as inaccurate, then, by definition, there is (100-X-Y)% for which the question is undetermined.

First, you are intruducing this concept of "accuracy" with your own definitions of it. I have put forward a measure of historicity. Examine the tables provided. This is not about accuracy but about the postulation of some measure of historical authenticity and/or historical fabrication.

But you don't have a system of measurement, only some numbers arbitrarily assigned by you.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Still none of those numbers can be negative.

See above

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Originally Posted by mountainman

All is very well in an investigation that discloses no evidence of fabricated evidence, and the investigators are happy. However if in an investigation evidence items in reasonably large numbers start turning up as better assessed as forgeries, fabrications, frauds, etc, then it is imperative that the fabrications be explained in addition to the normal positive authentic stuff. An objective investigator should not sweep them under the carpet, since they represent evidence in the investigation. Hence it is critical as a separate process to review and explain all the negative evidence that the investigation has revealed as a separate exercise. In some investigations, especially of fraud and forgery, most of the evidence is of the negative variety.

Obviously in any context where there's a clear standard by which to define 'fraud' and 'forgery', it's important to remember that those are possibilities. I never doubted that. What does that have to do with the point the discussion had reached? If the object is to detect fraud or forgery, postulating the answer to that question is the wrong methodology.

My point is that one must not eliminate the use of the postulate that in any one case of evidence we are dealing with an ietm of fabricated evidence.

You accepted earlier that comparative evaluation of postulates is an essential part of the process. A comparative evaluation of postulates must include the possibility of a result in which some postulates are preferred over others. It is one thing to say that all possibilities should be considered but it is another (much harder to justify) to say that no possibility should ever be rejected. If your investigation never rejects any possibilities then it will never lead anywhere.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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(Also, in the context of an investigation of fraud or forgery, 'negative evidence' would mean evidence of the absence of fraud or forgery; in that context evidence of fraud or forgery would be 'positive evidence'. There can't be such a thing as 'negative evidence' in an absolute sense: in an absolute sense, all evidence is positive evidence or something. The only thing that can make it 'negative evidence' is evaluation by the standard of whether it tends to support a particular conclusion or to do the reverse.)

What are the standards used by the Israeli Police Dept in the case against the genuine assessment of the "James Ossuary".

I do not know, and don't see how it's relevant to this discussion. One thing I'm sure of is that neither the prosecution nor the defence will ask the court to find in their favour on the grounds that they have postulated a finding (of 'guilty' or 'not guilty' respectively).

aa5874 · 11-17-2011, 05:30 AM

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

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Originally Posted by J-D

One among the many possibilities is that the various writings attributed to Paul were in fact written by different people, and that the writer of epistle X may have put the name 'Paul' on it to create the false impression that it was written by the same person as the earlier epistle Y, already circulating under the name 'Paul', and it does not necessarily follow from this that the author of epistle Y (whether or not his real name was 'Paul') was known for anything else apart from the attribution of epistle Y.

If I cannot think of as many possibilities as you can, that probably says something unfavorable about my imagination. I don't think it says anything at all about who was the likely author of those letters.

I wasn't arguing for any particular conclusion. I was pointing to a flaw in your line of reasoning. If your line of reasoning is flawed (whether through lack of imagination or for any other reason), then you haven't given good reason to accept your conclusion and the point at issue is, to that extent, wider open than you suggested.

In order to maintain that the Pauline writings were likely written by Paul one MUST employ FLAWED reasoning.

Flawed reasoning is not only employed by Doug Shaver but by well-known Experts and those of the Church to maintain the claim that there are authentic Pauline writings.

I get the impression that if the Pauline writings are found and ADMITTED to be fraudulent then the WHOLE Christian History will collapse.

Flawed reasoning is in effect the machinery that maintains FLAWED Christian "History".

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