aa5874

If you read my post, you will notice that I mention no such absolutist regime. I clearly state that if historicity cannot be confirmed, then 'probality of existence' is the next option, which you refer to as 'probability of historicity'.

If a person claims that Abraham Linlcoln was a president of the USA, or that slavery was rampant in the Caribbean during the 18th century, would that person be 51% or 100% certain?

Is it rational for me to claim that you 'moutainman' is 54% authenthic?

Historicity is confirmed, in my opinion, with hard evidence, which may include, artifacts, legal documents, newspaper clippings (depending upon the era), archaelogical findings and to some extent oral tradition. And if historicity is determined, then it is certain, that is, the person is considered to be 100% real.

So, in my opinion, Gallileo either existed or he did not. I claim that he existed, is that being absolutist? Jesus Christ either existed or not, I claim he did not, is that being absolutist?

I have done some research on Galilleo and Jesus Christ, the former I give 100% historicity, the latter I give 0% historicty, with absolutely no probability of being real.

Of course, there are people that I cannot determine whether or not they actually existed but I cannot give them a number, except maybe a 50-50 chance, whatever that means.

gstafleu

I think I see what you are after: a relative measure of historicity. You can develop several of those, then apply each of them to that list you gave, and see in what order the items appear. You then get results like "Using historicity criterion X, we see that Alexander is more historical than Jesus, and by this amount." If we use criterion Y we might get a different answer. By figuring out which criterion gives, say, Jesus the highest score, we might learn something about how people perceive historicity when it comes to religious figures.

Yes, that might be interesting. There are similarities with the methodology of cluster analysis in pattern recognition here. There are lots of ways to compute the (dis)similarity between objects (Euclidean distance, correlation coefficient, cityblock distance...). All these give different values for similarity and looking at the differences and correspondences the various criteria produce can be useful.

Gerard Stafleu

mountainman

YES, it is IMO. An absolutists position leaves no room for doubt.

This is an absolutists position in an absolute sense.
It is either back or white (0 or 100), and cannot be supported.

The relativists postion would be that there is a small chance
that Galilleo was not historical, and a very small chance that
Jesus was historical. This position basically says that we can
never know the absolute truth of history, we never know the
black and white (we can all but know them however) - all we
know are the shaded of grey between the two extremes of
black (0%) and white (100%), that is between 0.01 and 99.99%.

Everything without exception is probabalistic.
Certainty and absoluteness of position is not achievable.
In the post above this, gstafleu restates the principles.

It means that you have a shade of grey. You cannot be certain.
You can never be absolutely certain anyway. I will allow 99.99%.
Therefore everything is a percentage probability. This is known
as the "historicity index".

The point may be made in your final example above. The 50-50.
You must have some set of criteria by which you gauge the
authenticity of the history. I have outlined 5 above. By using
some algorithm combining with some weighting the net results
numerically for these 5 criteria, one arrives at 50%.

This tells us that, by using these 5 criteria in the weighting therein
specified (by your own algorithm) you have arrived at a situation
where the person looks to be 50% authentic. As I said earlier,
this in itself has very little meaning, however, if you were then
to turn around and apply these same criteria and algorithm to a
totally separate "purportedly historical person" and arrive at the
figure of only 25% or indeed only 10%, then you are entitled to
claim, on the basis of all the above postulates, that this second
person is either twice or five times as inauthentic as the first (50%).

Do you get my drift? Take the results 0 and 100 out of the ball-park.
They do not exist in reality, everything is a shade of grey. If you
want to get the adrenalin rush of being "absolutely certain" then
I suggest you substitute 99.99% for 100 and 0.01% for zero, and
then try and find the criteria and the algorithm (ie: the weightings
of each criteria in summation towards the 100%) to achieve a
figure of either 99.99% or 0,01%.

You will find yourself in the end always without exception dealing
not with certainties, but with probabilities.

Best wishes,



Pete

mountainman

Spot on gstafleu! Thanks for taking the time to make
this restatement and clarification!

I think the corollary is also important.

That is, any standalone "set of criteria to measure historicity" when
applied to only one person, (eg: Jesus alone) can never generate anything
of any consequence, simply because the figures only ever have any
meaning in the relative sense.

Because it has a numeric output, which is a result of an algorithm,
of which the criteria and components are known, and adjustable, it
is likely that this process itself can make great inroads into the HJ
position. I would like to think that this process (of obtaining a number
of measures of relative historicity for a broad range of persons) is
a standard tool of an historian.

The problem for the HJ position will be the relative position of Jesus
(out of many historical figures) on the lists of relative historicity,
irrespective of the criteria used.

What will prove very interesting, and probably quite genuinely
fascinating, will be to allow and support christian engineered
criteria (that might be totally different from Richard Carriers)
such that Jesus scores well. But then applying these same
criteria to the rest of the "sample people list" and seeing the
relative position of Jesus by this unique christian criteria.


Best wishes,




Pete

aa5874

For practical purposes, it is of no advantage in stating that the probabilty of historicity for Jesus Christ is 0.0000001% of .0001%, since someone can claim that I am 0.01% in error.

And, if I state that Jesus Christ has absolutetly no probability of historicity, can anyone prove otherwise.

mountainman

Sometimes people like to see the workings of your assessment,
on why you find something 50-50 or indeed 1-99 or 99-1. For
practical purposes of communication, we require common ground.

I have no problem with your deriving a 0% historicity for Jesus.
Let's not argue over a 0.0000001% error. Instead, I want you
to show me how you arrive at 100%.

On a separate thread which was never answered at the time,
I have outlined a series of criteria and applied them to Jesus,
and at the same time a contemporary philopsopher/sage and
author Apollonius of Tyana.

In what I believe indicates a very generous assessment to JC
I ended up with the score of 21%. I would be quite surprised
if you can physically bend Carrier's criteria to end up with a
score for JC below say 5. Alternatively, you may of course
like to introduce other criteria to the five stated.

But the issue IMO is to show your workings. If you can show
me clearly how you arrive at 0% then I am interested to see
this --- have a go on the above thread.

Best wishes,



Pete

aa5874

This is like asking a juror for a number or percentage on the probability of guilt or innocence. When a juror makes a determination, there is no number, he/she has reviewed the data surrounding the case, and is reasonable certain of their decision.

My 0% historicity for Jesus is based on years of research and I have come away empty-handed, that is, I have nothing whatsoerver to show that Jesus Christ existed or could have existed. After going through the Gospels, the Epistles, the OT and reading extra-biblical literature, I have encountered erroneous information and what appears to be deliberate attempts to conceal the non-existence of the characters called 'the Christ'.

The story of Jesus has failed in all critical areas, and 2 very critical events that should help to determine a person's existence, namely their birth and death, has been completely bothched in the NT.

If we assume that Jesus was not in any way divine, that is not of the supernatural, the authors of the Gospels still could not determine his time of birth, although 2 different authors attempted to do so, these authors could not determine his genealogy and they could not determine where he lived as a child.

Now, if a person actually lived, his death is significant in determinig that he was actually a real person. The authors of the Gospels declare that they know that Jesus Christ died, they claim he was crucified on a cross, that this crucifixtion was done under Pontius Pilate, on a sabbath day. These authors claim that they even know the name of the person who buried his dead body, Joseph of Arimathaea. These authors write that the tomb was sealed and under guard by soldiers.

Now, in the most incredible fashion, these author write about witnesses that saw an empty tomb.

So, a sealed tomb, under guard, is empty that should have contained a dead body, that is, there was nothing whatsoever, zero, and the authors of the Gospels have witnesses.

Is it reasonable to think that there was never a dead body in the tomb, is it unreasonable to determine that the story is a hoax?


I find 0% historicity a very high probality for the existence of Jesus, therefore I would like to reduce that probabilty to 'infinitely less than 0%, so that those who believe he was an actual person will have a chance to refute my assesment.

mountainman

It is like asking 100 jurors to cast an independent vote.

This sounds like a very specialised version of determining "historicity"
explicitly reserved for the "jesus person". Your criteria as expressed
above are:

1) Authenticity of birth
2) Authenticity of geneology
3) Authenticity of early childhood.
4) Authenticity of death.

Carriers criteria are the following:

1) Were these people an author of writings?
2) Were they a subject of biographies or hagiographies?
3) Are there inscriptions, coins, statues or other
physical archeological evidence to substantiate their existence?
4) Are they the subject of, or mentioned by extant historians?
5) Are they the subject of, or mentioned by extant writers?


What do you have to say about the difference?




Pete