Toto

You appear to misunderstand. Earl Doherty does not assume Paul's historical existence. He is demonstrating why it is reasonable to conclude from the evidence of Paul's letters that they were written by a historical person who calls himself Paul.
No. This whole exchange is about concluding from evidence that Paul was a historical figure.

Earl does not start with the hypothesis that Jesus was not a historical figure. He starts by examining the evidence. McGrath also claims to be working from the evidence, or claims that others have examined the evidence and come to a reliable conclusion that Jesus existed.

You only add confusion by describing this as based on a different hypothesis.

mountainman

You appear to misunderstand in general that the historical conclusions of all investigators are provisional and hypothetical, and are based upon those provisional hypotheses which they have formulated in regard to their representation of the source evidence.



Between the hypothetical conclusion and the evidence stands the hypotheses either in explicit mode or implicit mode.

N/A



These antithetical conclusions demonstrates my point. Two investigators working from the same evidence come to diametrically opposite - in fact antithetical - hypothetical conclusions - how can this scenario arise (day after day after day ....)? Obviously they must be provisionally making slightly different hypotheses about the evidence, just before they make their hypothetical conclusions. Now if we only knew what those hypotheses were, we could see how their hypothetical conclusions diverge from one another.

The evidence in Christian Origins is much like gazing intently into a crystal ball. People "see" different things. Its quite confusing when they do not make their hypotheses explicit, but instead leave them in an implicit form.



You must be joking! The entire field is conclusively already in confusion without any real answers to the investigation of christian origins. Either at the conclusion level OR the hypothesis level the statement "Jesus was a historical figure" is true OR the statement that "Jesus was not a historical figure" is true. Both cannot be logically true.

It should be obvious even for novices that Earl Doherty and James McGrath are running with the same evidence, but NOT running with the same hypotheses for Jesus. Specifically those hypothesis which can be formulated in respect of the historical existence of Jesus.

J-D

It makes some sense, but seriously muddled thinking is evident. If we take seriously the suggestion that the content of the epistles is evidence for the real existence of the author, it appears to imply that it's possible for the contents of a document to be evidence for the document's having no real author, which wouldn't make sense. Every document is evidence for the existence of some author. I think I have an inkling of what Doherty was getting at, but it's not clearly expressed--and your version does not make it clearer, but rather the reverse.

J-D

The meaning of those statements has not been clearly articulated enough to justify that conclusion about them. As they stand, neither of them is a potential answer to any question about Christian origins.

Toto

I agree that historical conclusions are provisional. This is not inconsistent with the point that I made. But you have yet to demonstrate that different conclusions derive from different hypotheses, as opposed to either defective reasoning or different weights given to different pieces of evidence, or some other factor.



Or one of them (say McGrath) could just be wrong. He elevates the idea of scholarly consensus to a point of dogma. He reasons by analogy.


I regard McGrath as exhibiting Mythicist Derangement Syndrome. I do not think that he has provided a coherent argument for a historical Jesus. He seems to have started with the assumption that his fellow scholars are competent and have examined the question of the historicity of Jesus, so the scholarly consensus must be right and anyone challenging that consensus must be a weirdo.

But it is still possible for different scholars to look at the fragmentary evidence for early Christianity and come to different conclusions - because the evidence is not conclusive, and different people will make different decisions about the probability of different explanations for the evidence.

mountainman

Any instances of defective reasoning within the "Black Box Theory Generator" (refering to the diagram prepared above) will be immediately detected very quickly by the process of peer-review, and the theory will be required to be adjusted and republished. In this instance nothing changes about the hypotheses, but the conclusions are generally modified.

Different weights given to different pieces of the evidence is achieved by the forumulation of appropriate hypotheses about the different pieces of evidence separately, item by item, according to the authorship of the investigator. The weightings are able to be placed on any attribute of the evidence, and an example of the this discussed in this thread is the allocation of a weighting for historicity as a number between 0 and 100 representing a positive authentic historical existence (eg: Bob Marley) , or a number between 0 and -100 representing a degree of negative - fabricated and inauthentic - historical existence (eg: a known fabricated figure such as Bilbo Baggins). Weightings can be applied to anything, but they are applied by graduating the hypotheses associated with each evidence item, as I have been consistently arguing.


Therefore, unless you can present some other factor(s), I have demonstrated above that the different conclusions must arise from different sets of hypotheses that each investigator is provisionally employing (quite often implicity and not explcitly) against each item of evidence.



His hypotheses are thus quite fixed and regimented in their association to all the evidence items, and it seems fair to say that he assumes Jesus and Paul both existed in history. Note that he does not have to openly and explicitly say so (although he might do this), it may be by implied statements, as simple as "Paul spoke of Jesus". I hope you understand what I mean by this.





I agree with this, although I am compelled to try and state the same thing in a different manner in order to make my point. McGrath is running with a mainstream view of the evidence and thus hypothesizes that not only are the manuscripts authored by an historical Paul, who wrote about an historical jesus, but also the stories contained in the gospels etc are ostensibly true historical accounts. All these things are being established at McGrath's hypothesis level VIEW of the evidence (quite implicity and loosely on occassions). The scholarly concensus that he refers to is basically the fact that many mainstream HJ promoters are happy to run with an over-riding hypothesis (about all the foundational elements of evidence) - that its *mostly* all true according their edication and their Diploma at Theological College.



I would still strongly insist, especially as the evidence about Christian origins is so fragmentary, it should become quite obvious that the different conclusions being derived are as a result of the hypotheses that each investigator is bringing to the party. The Mythicists for example are able to be categorized on the basis of the hypothesis that they wish to explore regarding the historical jesus. Whereas traditionally it was accepted (implicitly or explicity) that "Jesus was historical" (the hypothesis), the Mythicists are challenging this hypothetical paradigm by exploring the antithetical hypothesis that "Jesus did not exist". Of course they are an entire spectrum of theories for both the HJ and the MJ because the story of Christian origins is not just about one item of evidence called "Jesus", but a myriad of items.



On the formalisation of stating and listing hypotheses
used in theories about the "History of Christian Origins"

I agree that the field of (biblical) history is not one in which it is traditional to start with a formalised and exhaustive list of hypotheses (such as is the case with Euclid for example). It is simply rarely if ever done. I understand this. My point however is that if you read the reports (i.e theses and theories etc) despite the fact that the hypotheses are not explicit, it soon become quite clear and open that hypotheses are being used implicity. An analysis of the statements made in regard to the evidence is able to quickly illicit these implied hypotheses.

The key one may be the hypothesis about the historical existence of Jesus, and most of the consensus runs with the positive, while a few radicals like Earl run with the negative. We may move through each of the 12 apostles, and then Paul and other figures, either allocating hypothetically that they were or were not historical.

Various hypotheses need to be made in regard to the authenticity of each of the gospels. At a more detailed level hypotheses are made in regard to specific verses and specific words within these texts. Any other evidence to be introduced is then introduced along with the hypotheses which the investigator formulates in representation.


It is for this reason that I made the point earlier, which we disagreed over, that the evidence is ever only ever represented by its hypotheses, and it is the hypotheses alone which will get stacked up and entered into Carrier's Bayesian equations (in representation of the evidence).


This fact has been obscured by the old practice that it was tradition simply to accept everything as being true - either explicity or implicity, and therefore none of the hypotheses representative of the evdience would be anything other than the very standard positive "This is true", "This is true", "This is true", etc, etc, etc.

Toto

You are too optimistic.

That's not how it works.

For example, a key item is the claim by historicists that early Christians would not be likely to invent the idea that their savior was crucified. We know that a lot of people were in fact crucified, so this is not an unlikely claim. How you weigh that is subjective, and has nothing to do with the hypotheses that the investigator starts out with.

Or take the claim that the reference to James as the brother of the Lord is some sort of evidence. How you evaluate this does not depend on the hypotheses that you start out with.

I think you are wrong. It might help if you gave a specific example of how your hypotheses would work.

To say this is to insult all of these scholars. Maybe you mean to do that.

mountainman

You wish to correct Detering's thinking, and now Earl's thinking?





I expressed the above in a schematic.
It it not clear?


N/A

J-D

Why not? Would you have a problem with that?No.

J-D

You've said all this before; it's been pointed out what's wrong with it before; and you've ignored the demonstration of your errors before, and now you're doing it again. You don't repair a damaged case by repeating it.