mountainman

In BC&H the term "Historicity" often means the quality of being part of history as opposed to being a historical myth or legend. We have seen endless debates between the historicity of Jesus for example, and in the past I have frequently supported the estimation of a measure of historicity as a positive (percentage) number between 0 and 100. One of the reasons for this is that it is generally admitted that history involves probabilities. Richard Carrier for example will be publishing a book about Bayes Theorem and the historical method that directly relates to the analysis of the probabilities involved in all historical theorizing.

Historicity calculated or estimated as such as a probability is thus always being treated as a postive number. The problem with this approach is that how does it deal with cases of forgery. For example, if we consider the problem of associating a "historicity value" to the Letter exchange between Agbar and Jesus, or between Paul and Seneca, what value can be placed on the historicity of these forgeries. From all the foregoing I would have in the past argued zero historicity, but it appears that there may be a better approach.


In a post somewhere back a while (I cant find it at the moment) ApostateAbe introduced an alternative estimate which allowed a range between -100 through to zero through to +100, and at the time I argued against this, rather strongly. However in thinking about the idea, I have since changed my mind and find it is actually -- possibly -- a better framework of allocating or estimating a measure of historicity.

Here's why ....


Examples of Negative Historicity

The above two forged letter correspondences perhaps are better rated with a historicity of -100 (assuming all people agree these are forged manuscripts). Another example of negative historicity might include the TF, where while some people may allocate a postive value to its historical authenticity, other people may allocate a negative value (representing forgery at the worst case scenario, and misappropriation as a lesser crime).


Applying this to the HJ

The range of possible values is therefore defined as:

Positive and Negative Historicity Spectrum of Jesus


+100 = Jesus was historical and God of the Universe inside Hubble linmit

+50 = Jesus was an important historical religious leader

+25 = Jesus was an oscure historical itinerant guru

+5 = Jesus cannot be reconstructed but he existed in history.

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ZERO = The fence upon which to balance .....
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-5 = Jesus cannot be reconstructed but he did not exist in history.

-25 = Jesus was not historical but a vision of "Paul" embellished by scribes

-50 = Jesus was not historical but was formed by the misappropriation of various extant legends, astrotheology and people.

-90 = Jesus was not historical, but was piously forged for political purposes

Comments?

Sheshbazzar

All of the below above

mountainman

An investigator of a crime scene has to deal with what might be very loosely called positive and negative evidence. Take for example the ongoing case of the Israeli Police Dept against Oded Golan. The prosecution has found very little of what appears to be positive evidence for the authenticity of the ossuary box in question, and a few truckloads of negative evidence (in the process of becoming positive) on the rooftops, and in-progress.

At the end of the day we have a balance sheet with both positive and negative figures, and common sense tells us that both totals need to be addressed. If there is an assessment of the presence (over much of the evidence items) of substantial negative historicity (i.e. fabrication and/or pious forgery etc) then this must be examined and prosecuted for the crime that it represents. It also follows that the more negative historicity is perceived amidst the items in the overall pattern of the evidence, the more suspicious the investigator must become of the entire investigation.


In this investigation the OP is dealing with "Early Christian Origins" aka "the HJ ect in BC&H"




Here is a brief table for the "TF"

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!")