EarlDoherty

I very much look forward to a properly presented case that Jesus never existed. But I think one nuance here needs to be pointed out. If it is true that one cannot prove a negative, there are other ways of approaching the question. One can demonstrate that certain writers and sectarian groups could not have known that an historical Jesus existed, and that has been my basic position. (1) I have no hesitation in claiming that I have provided such a demonstration, that the epistle writers do not show knowledge of an HJ and even exclude such a possibility, nor do they need him. (2) I would also claim, with only the slightest of hesitations, that no HJ lay at the root of Q. (3) And I would claim, again with no hesitation, that I have demonstrated that almost the entire body of second century apologists subscribes to no HJ (the Apology of Aristides is also disposed of in my new book), while Minucius Felix's rejection of the worship of a crucified man leads logically to rejecting that the Christian movement started on that basis.

Gakusei Don has failed for years in disproving No. 3. As for No. 1, neither he nor anyone else has even attempted to respond to my analysis of Hebrews 8:4 which tells us that Jesus was never on earth, and a similar analysis of passages like 1 Cor. 15: 35-49 also stands firm. (Only spin made an attempt on the latter and he was continually backed into successive corners until he finally had to appeal to Pinocchio to try to prop up his forced reading of 15:45.) Jiri thought to tear down No. 2, my analysis of Q, but failed to address any of the detailed examination of the reconstructed document which demonstrates my conclusion. (Of course, he is one of those who rejects its existence.) And so on.

I provided a coherent scenario which takes into account all of the evidence. I handily disposed of Josephus (both references), Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and the Siamese twins Thallus and Phlegon, with Mara bringing up the rear. Leaving not a shred of external evidence for Jesus existing. And leaving no reason not to opt for the strong probability that he never did.

Now, I don't know what a "proper" case of demonstrating that fact might constitute, but I have a high regard for Carrier's knowledge and intelligence, so I seriously look forward to his efforts. The best thing would be that they do NOT follow the same lines as my own and prove mutually supportive.

Earl Doherty

EmmaZunz

Earl,

Richard's recent response to my question on his blog asking for clarification of his assessment of your theory.

EZ

EarlDoherty

Thanks for calling my attention to that. His comments are more or less in line with what he has said in the past and with his evaluation of me as, technically, an amateur. The one exception I take is to his earlier (in that page) comment that Jesus: Neither God Nor Man is "90% speculative digression." I couldn't disagree more. The extra material (and it is considerable over The Jesus Puzzle) is anything but speculation or digression. It spends its time (a) dissecting the Christian texts to a degree I did not do in my earlier book with carefully derived conclusions from that dissection--for example, my analysis of Hebrews in general, or 8:4 in particular, covers many pages, but there is hardly a speculation in the lot, it is all logical analysis of the text and its implications; (b) providing background material in greater depth (such as of the mystery cults or Jewish sectarian mythology and pagan philosophy) to support my case, which does not constitute "digression"; and (c) exhaustive examination of key texts such as Josephus and Tacitus. Carrier may have found it challenging to the average reader's attention span (especially historicist scholars with anything but sympathy toward mythicism), and I admit that, but that particular description of it I would consider anything but fair.

But then, one can neither predict nor control other people's reactions. You just do what you think best (as Carrier himself is doing) and let the chips fall where they may.

Earl Doherty

LegionOnomaMoi

Tucker goes into the subject in some detail in Our Knowledge of the Past (Cambridge University Press, 2004). By itself, apart from formalizing a historiographical argument, it doesn't seem particularly useful. Neither bayesian models nor the available estimation algorthims are really suited for non-numerical data, and although in general I would say that a central criticism of a bayesian approach (the injection of subjectivity into the modeling process) is erroneous, it would be far more problematic here. However, the use of any formal language to assess an argument is useful in that it simplifies the argument and makes it easier to follow its logic and spot errors. Even without numerical values (or with very rough estimates) bayesian logic could be useful. This is especially true given the recent research on more robust fuzzy bayesian techniques (see e.g., Fuzzy Probability and Statistics by Buckley or Fuzzy Expert Systems and Fuzzy Reasoning by Siler & Buckley for information and references). After all, Zadeh designed fuzzy set theory to deal with imprecise non-numerical information, and it's now widely used in neural networks for data mining and pattern recognition (which also adopted bayesian methods).

In any event, I don't see how the presentation of a formal (i.e., symbolic) argument alongside the more extensive standard linguistic one is a problem a priori

outhouse

welcome to the forums LOL

outhouse

Earl, I do love your work and think you have made great contribution's to the legend of jesus/yeshua

I started out using yours and others work in the myth camp so to speak, but went the way of HJ rather quickly after work in this field. Holding a slim 60% to 40% margain that he did exist as a person.

One can make a case both ways for this, equally.


I find that hard to believe due to the oral tradition spreading from the few followers that the HJ might have had among the jewish circles.


And why would they know him?

We are talking about what amounts to jesus enemies getting a hold of his followers teachings and realizing it made sense for gentiles as well as jews.


They didnt need him i'll give you that, but the fact that romans are following the teachings of a poor peasant teacher/healer, tax evader, is a pretty serious embarrassment. His teachings were hellenized and in fact evolved differently in different circles.


Since it is a hypothesis, and we know nothing but guesses if it existed in papyrus or oral tradition. Nothing can be traced to a HJ.

But like anything else, it is a opinion.

I follow that oral tradition from jesus follower's, carried it into a roman audience, if it had made it to papyrus, i dont know.


And why would they?

They are dealing with a hellinized deity by that point.

Not a poor peasant teacher evading taxes, covered up by jesus direct enemies due to his hatred of romans and what he though was a perverted jewish government due to a roman infection in the temple or house of god.

tanya

Whenever I read "neural networks", in a comment by someone trained in the social sciences, humanities, and foreign languages, I sense foreboding. I am especially nervous when encountering the expression in a discussion led by folks without credentials in natural science or medicine--disciplines characterized by analysis of genuine "neural networks".

Here was my question to Andrew, in response to his comment earlier in this thread, post 27:
n.b. "real probabilities"

Here's my point: we don't need fuzzy anything to resolve this question: which version of Mark 1:1, if any, represents the original ink flowing from the quill of "Mark"? See the article by S.M. Taheri and J. Behboodian.

On the contrary, writing that there is an xyz percentage probability that version A was the forerunner, followed by B, then C, last, BECAUSE application of Bayes theorem, (with or without Fuzzy Logic) suggests this liklihood, represents a certain path to confusion.

No amount of Bayes' manipulation, or probability, statistics, or massage of the abacus, is going to answer this question.

We need to uncover an ancient, unadulterated copy of Mark. Our oldest extant copy of Mark 1:1 is Codex Sinaiticus. We need to find one written two centuries earlier....

aa5874

Name a single unadulterated COPY of any text of antiquity. It must be remembered that all texts were hand-copied and there were no means to record live dialogue except by memory or hand written notes.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Tanya,

I am also somewhat skeptical of applying mathematical theorems to history. However, I do see a possible way of doing it.

Here's an example. Take the event that happened last month on Feb 21st at Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral. A female punk rock band interrupted the Church Service. . Here is the video . We can definitely say that this was an historical event and we can pinpoint the day that it happened based on videos and hundreds of newspaper and internet accounts. We could also find official police records of the arrest. Thus we have perhaps a good historian could find perhaps a thousand documents proving that this event happened on this day...

A few days later, on February 26, 2012, in Jos, central Nigeria, a radical Muslim group bombed a church during a church service. Again, the historian would have no trouble showing this was an actual historical event.

On May 17, 2011, Pro-Palestinian protestors interrupted a Pro-Israeli Church service in Texas. Here's the video of that interruption. Again a good historian could gather hundreds of documents verifying this event.

On Dec. 19, 1989, a pastor interrupted a church service in Hoboken, New Jersey because a gay man was being ordained as a priest:
As we go back in time our evidence for church interruptions becomes more problematical. There are fewer newspaper reports and more anecdotal evidence. For example we know that Black Churches were attacked from the very beginning in the United States:

But note this from a book written in 1888, by Reverend James Simms, "The Reformed Preacher":
The first source gives the whippings as happening before 1788. The second book gives the whippings as happening sometime in 1789 or 1790. If historians are not certain about the year that this important event took place in, how can we even be sure of its actual or historical nature?

Georgia probably had a few dozen weekly newspapers then, but it is doubtful that any of them recorded the whippings or interruption of services in one of the first Black Churches in the United States.

It is apparent that as we go back in time we start to lose precision in dates. This makes it harder to say with certainty that these events happened. If we go back another hundred years to the 1600's before the time of newspapers, the situation becomes worse. Go back another one hundred years, before the invention of the printing press and historical events become much more difficult to separate from rumors and legends. Probably there are just a few reports written decades after the fact that talk about these disruptions.

Now, think about how much more difficult to verify Jesus' attack on the Jerusalem Temple's customs of allowing money changers/bankers inside the Temple. Even those who believe in an historical Jesus and rely on the New Testament Gospels give dates varying from 29 to 36 for the date of the disruption.

If we could measure the rate at which we lose certainty and sources as we get further back in the past, one could perhaps make some kind of statistical judgement on the possibility of certain types of events being true.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

LegionOnomaMoi

Perhaps because you have no idea what "social sciences" covers. "Neural networks" are a product of psychological research (a social science). My field of research is cognitive science, which is a broad field and involves computer science, psychology, linguistics, and A.I. research (among others). Neural network theory was founded by social scientists. So unless you have any idea about the work done since the McCulloch-Pitts model, as well as how completely and fundamentally intricate my field (cognitive science) is tied with not only neural networks but learning algorithms, computer science, bayesian models, etc., your "sense of foreboding" is baseless.


Which just goes to show you have absolutely no idea concerning the algorithms (and what led to their development) which in one way or another are integral to virtually all learning algorithms (not to mention the evolution of artificial neural networks). If you want to attack, ridicule, or otherwise smear my knowledge of ANNs and probability theory, I REALLY hope you have a strong foundation in dynamical systems, cognitive science, A.I. research, probability theory, multivariate calculus, abstract algebras, and the other fundamentally related areas. Because I REALLY don't like people mocking me when it comes to the fields I'm actively researching/working in.