Price, Carrier, Ehrman, Wright: Jesus Mythicism Again

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_Res Ipsa
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Re: Price, Carrier, Ehrman, Wright: Jesus Mythicism Again

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Huckleberry, I think your formatting went askew. Everything through the Carrier quote was originally posted by Lemmie. Everything after that was posted by me.

Don't all strains of monotheism think their God is a bit of a one off? ;-) From a purely secular standpoint, the story of the Jesus of the gospels underwent a significant degree of mythifying in a fairly short amount of time. Is that evidence that there was a real guy, or that the whole thing is an invented myth? Why is it easier to believe that just the supernatural stuff was made up than to believe the whole story was?
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

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_Lemmie
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Re: Price, Carrier, Ehrman, Wright: Jesus Mythicism Again

Post by _Lemmie »

huckelberry wrote:Res Ipsa, I added a bit more of Carrier statement from your link. I was trying to get a better idea of what he was comparing Jesus to. Other heros of a folk lore type present in a body of literature I see. The others in his selected group are not historical figures. I think that is interesting but I think it does not provide enough clarity of parameters to make a reasonable probability measurement.

Like it or not Jesus is a bit of a one off. He has a bunch of followers who believed he was raised from the dead after execution by Roman authorities. Whether or not that happened the fact that the people telling stories about him believed it would influence the way stories were told. They would come to fit hero types because the tellers of the story believed he was the hero of heros. That would apply both to writers of the Gospels and the people telling stories for the 30 years before the written versions.

That's one of the points that troubled me as well, huckelberry. Carrier, as far as I can tell, simply asserts that it is sufficient to base this particular prior probability on matching or not matching the group story-telling characteristic. He is very specifically having to ignore the unique features you mentioned in favor of a group generalization, in order to justify the use of that prior. It's not a sound method.
_Res Ipsa
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Re: Price, Carrier, Ehrman, Wright: Jesus Mythicism Again

Post by _Res Ipsa »

Lemmie wrote:
huckelberry wrote:Res Ipsa, I added a bit more of Carrier statement from your link. I was trying to get a better idea of what he was comparing Jesus to. Other heros of a folk lore type present in a body of literature I see. The others in his selected group are not historical figures. I think that is interesting but I think it does not provide enough clarity of parameters to make a reasonable probability measurement.

Like it or not Jesus is a bit of a one off. He has a bunch of followers who believed he was raised from the dead after execution by Roman authorities. Whether or not that happened the fact that the people telling stories about him believed it would influence the way stories were told. They would come to fit hero types because the tellers of the story believed he was the hero of heros. That would apply both to writers of the Gospels and the people telling stories for the 30 years before the written versions.

That's one of the points that troubled me as well, huckelberry. Carrier, as far as I can tell, simply asserts that it is sufficient to base this particular prior probability on matching or not matching the group story-telling characteristic. He is very specifically having to ignore the unique features you mentioned in favor of a group generalization, in order to justify the use of that prior. It's not a sound method.


I agree that this may be a problem with this application of the method. The classic example of the benefit of using Bayes reasoning is the HIV screening test. I was thinking about this last week because my health provider is recommending an HIV test for everyone getting bloodwork. Suppose the test came back positive. How worried should I be? The answer is that I shouldn't be, based on my demographic and behavioral characteristics: white, male, 50s, never had sex with a man (sorry, Shulem), never used IV drugs, etc. As a result, the odds of a false positive on the test are much, much greater than my odds of actually having HIV. But that's based on lots of different specific attributes -- not on a broad generalization. And 14 examples seems uncomfortably low as a basis for any broad conclusions.

On the other hand, I haven't seen the numbers Carrier puts on this prior, so I'm not sure whether tries to account for these factors.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
_huckelberry
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Re: Price, Carrier, Ehrman, Wright: Jesus Mythicism Again

Post by _huckelberry »

Res Ipsa wrote:Huckleberry, I think your formatting went askew. Everything through the Carrier quote was originally posted by Lemmie. Everything after that was posted by me.

Don't all strains of monotheism think their God is a bit of a one off? ;-) From a purely secular standpoint, the story of the Jesus of the gospels underwent a significant degree of mythifying in a fairly short amount of time. Is that evidence that there was a real guy, or that the whole thing is an invented myth? Why is it easier to believe that just the supernatural stuff was made up than to believe the whole story was?

Res Ipsa, sorry about the format problems. I plead the only words for Lemmie introduced the Carrier quotes so hopefully not too much confusion.

The one off aspect of the Jesus situation was not the singularity of the divine as much as the peculiar bit about raised from the dead. You observe a good bit of myth making in a short time. Considering that observation I do not see it giving much clarification one way or the other as to whether Jesus was a real person or a fictional character. I am left with the sense that making a probability measurement at that point is guessing only.
////
I thought I should clarify. By one off I was referring to Jewish teachers who are said to be raised from the dead not stories of gods or demigods and their supernatural events.
_honorentheos
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Re: Price, Carrier, Ehrman, Wright: Jesus Mythicism Again

Post by _honorentheos »

I base my opinion of Carrier's argument on the debates I've watched and limited reading of richardcarrier.information where he appears to post blogs that respond to specific criticisms of his methods or conclusions.

Put most simply, my impression is that Carrier views the writings of Paul as being the most accurate information we have regarding the nature of Jesus. Or better said, he views a certain interpretation of Paul's writings as being the most accurate information we have about Jesus. He either ignores or avoids the use of other historically investigative methods such as higher criticism or text criticism to contextualize Paul's writings and the gospels in favor of a much more simplistic chronological approach to the texts.

There is a reasonable argument to be made that this is the same approach one takes when looking for clues regarding the development of Christian beliefs over time. But while Paul's view of Jesus and his significance is dominant in the development of Christianity as we recognize it today, Paul's views also obscure and competed with the views held by the original disciples described in Paul's writings. Setting aside whether or not Paul viewed Jesus as a purely heavenly person or not, he clearly has conflicting views of the significance of Jesus compared to the Jerusalem disciples yet we are asked to prioritize his view, assign his metaphysical relationship with Jesus the highest priority when investigating the historicity of Jesus whom he clearly never met in the flesh but only claims to have seen in vision after his death. One then has to deal with the fact Paul can only speak of Jesus as a person he met in vision, and his writings are based on this and are also addressed to an audience coming to Christian belief after Jesus was executed. By necessity he will often be writing about a non-corporeal Jesus whether or not he viewed Jesus as a physical being at some point in the past. Carrier avoids this in his debate and blog posts, again prioritizing Pauline descriptions of how to relate to Jesus as definitive regarding the nature of Jesus. When this may be contradicted by something in Paul, Carrier argues we should prefer readings of the Greek that support the a priori argument Paul believed Jesus was only a celestial or heavenly being. This often requires accepting an obscure reading of the Greek over a more common usage. It often requires ignoring basic literary devices in favor of assuming Paul, the great orator, wrote literally. If he compares Adam to Jesus, for example, it's clear Paul means the reader to understand every aspect of the comparison to be taken literally to an absurd degree. If Paul, a great orator by reputation, expands on a point it is the readers' obligation to ignore the use of literary hyperbole in favor of assuming Paul means every comparison made be taken literally. But if Paul uses an expression exclusive for the apostle James that describes him as the brother of the lord, we are to ignore this unique identifier and assume it as a literary device Paul intended to describe other disciples all in the adoptive family of salvation in Christ. Even though Paul does not do so in his writings. Carrier's chronological approach leaves the gospels as evidence for a late attempt to create biography for Jesus, not to be examined using other investigative means available to the historian.

His approach ignores the historical context in which the historical Jesus would have lived. He seems uninterested in contextualizing Paul and his writings within the tension of theological views Paul himself describes between Paul and the Jerusalem disciples. His debates and blog responses favor readings or interpretations of the manuscript evidence that support the conclusion of Jesus not being a historical person regardless of the probability of that being the most likely reading or interpretation. In most cases, it seems he favors less probable readings over more probable readings that are assumed because he argues they are possible readings and collectively support the view Paul was not describing a real person but a divine person.

Perhaps Bayes has something to say about the question and could be a useful tool. But the way Carrier uses evidence brings to mind early geometry class. If the change in Y is 0, doing the math to find the slope isn't a mark of intelligence. "His willingness to do the math shows a commitment to transparency we should applaud." Yeah, Screw you.
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_Physics Guy
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Re: Price, Carrier, Ehrman, Wright: Jesus Mythicism Again

Post by _Physics Guy »

Using Bayes properly in non-obvious problems often requires such an awful lot of work in pinning down all your probabilistic ingredients carefully that the final application of Bayes's theorem itself is a comparative afterthought, which hardly deserves so much credit for the conclusion. Bayes's theorem is a powerful tool for analyzing evidence in the way that "put the ball in the basket" is a powerful basketball tactic.

If Bayes is less helpful in proper use than one would like, however, it is undeniably powerful in misuse. Even if you don't work hard to pin down all your probabilities correctly, a Bayesian calculation will still give you an impressively quantitative conclusion.

Here for amusement is an example of how easy it can be to misuse Bayes.

We're in a sports bar watching a live boxing match. Shortly before the starting bell for Round 10, this other guy in the bar says, "Hey pals, guess what. The champ's about to go down." And lo, ten seconds later the champ is KO. What's the probability that this other guy is a mobster?

Suppose for argument that the following probability estimates are all accurate. The prior probability that a guy in this bar is a mobster is 1%. The probability that if the mob fixed this fight, it would do it with a dive by the champ in Round 10, and that this particular mobster would know all about it, is another 1%. And the a priori chance that the champ would get KO'd in Round 10 is also 1%.

So taking A as the hypothesis that this guy is a mobster, and B as the evidence we've seen and heard in the bar, we might conclude that P(A|B) = P(B) P(B|A) / P(B) = (1/100) x (1/100) / (1/100) = 1/100. Huh: that prediction of the champ going down seemed impressive, but when we take into account that boxing is so full of chances that the chance of the champ going down in Round 10 isn't really so low, and that the chance of this guy actually knowing about this fix even if he were a mobster isn't so high, we find that the evidence still leaves it 99% likely that this guy is just a lucky drunk, not a mobster in the know.

"Thanks be to Bayes," I say, "for saving us from being taken in by a seemingly impressive fluke."

"Wait a minute though," you say to me. "A 1% chance of being a mobster is what we agreed this guy had a priori, just for being here in this bar. Now we've just seen him predict the champ's fall, and yet somehow our conclusion is that the chance he's a mobster is still ... only the same 1%?"
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