Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

to timhendrix, P(Jesus existed) > 1 - P(s1 is iid AND s2 is iid AND s3 is iid) which I think is your starting point but I am actually not sure that is the case. Could you perhaps clear that up? If there is no derivation of your result (i.e. it is simply postulating an equation and plugging numbers ...

Hi Bernard, I don't think we are making a lot of progress here. In order to get anywhere, we have to figure out which equations we are using and then we can check if they can actually be derived from probability theory. In my previous post I derived the relationship P(Jesus existed) > 1 - P(s1 is ii...

to timhendrix, I based my understanding on your equation : P(Jesus existed) > 1 - P(s1 is iid AND s2 is iid AND s3 is iid) = 87.5% because we have 8 combinations: 000, 001, 010, 011,100, 101, 110, 111 but there is only 1 combination out of 8 (111) where si, s2, s3 are all iid That's why I concluded...

Hi Bernard, Just to be absolutely clear going forward, I think we agree this equation is always true: P(Jesus existed) > 1 - P(s1 is iid AND s2 is iid AND s3 is iid) So all our discussion can be limited to the term: P(s1 is iid AND s2 is iid AND s3 is iid) ? With regards to your post, I am not sure ...

to timhendrix, Which is where I got the 28% from. Does that also seem okay? I will get to numerical results in the next post if this seems okay to you. Just for convenience, could you post your estimate of the probability Jesus existed assuming we only use 3 of the 15 points and the 78%? That I can...

to timhendrix I am utterly confused about your math and I am afraid you consider the 28% as implying Jesus was NOT historical. But this 28% are about NOT implying Jesus was historical because of the possibility of interpolation, (other) interpretation or dependence (on gospels). That's very differe...

Well where this would leave us is: P(Jesus existed) > P(At least one of s1, ... s15 is NOT iid) = 1-P(all of s1, ... s15 ARE iid) which is equivalent to: P(Jesus existed) > 1-P(s1 is iid & s2 is iid & ... & s15 is iid) and where we know P(s1 is iid) = 28% P(s2 is iid) = 28% ... P(s15 is ...

I think we can get some of the way now. This will be a bit tedious but I think it is important and I want to get it over with before we get to the more controversial part. To simplify things I am going to label your statements as s1, s2, ... s15. For instance: s1) Descendant of Abraham (Gal 3:16) s2...

because in this case, the 72% (which then would mean only that the phrase was original and therefore not including "interpretation") should be increased. Because I included all IID in the 28%. If "interpretation" is taking out, the 72% becomes higher. I think the simplest thing ...

Hi Bernard, Okay just to spell it out: P("The phrase 'Descendant of Abraham (Gal 3:16)' is not IID") = 72%? (I am not trying to throw away the part about: "therefore implying the historicity of Jesus", however, I think it is difficult to include in the above probability and more ...