My review of Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus"

[MrMacSon]

Tim, I find your reviews of Proving History and OHJ, posted in the OP of this thread, to be very hard to read (tl;dr). I think if you're trying to critique or understand Carrier's application of Bayes Theorem, or propose a simpler (non-compound) application of it, it would seem better to start with first principles and without some presuppositions you seem to have.

Zbykow posted this

~h is a subset of ~H, period. A guy said to be living in a supernatural realm (~h) is by definition, mythical (~H); however there are other variants of myth which don’t involve this (still ~H but not ~h). -- http://vridar.org/2016/04/15/what-does- ... ment-77670

and this in reply to your reply -

~H is not what ~h and ~H have in common, in any sense, ~h is.

... if you understand the reasons and disagree then you should argue them directly instead of reinventing the wheel.
http://vridar.org/2016/04/15/what-does- ... ment-77674

then this

What you really need is two runs of BT, one H vs. ~H, another ~h vs. what’s left of ~H, you could even combine them in one formula if you will, I’m not gonna bother.

But this still ends up equivalent to what Carrier did, unless you find some evidence supporting some other variant of ~H (like a conspiracy to invent fleshy JC from day one).

Notice that whatever happens to ~h, it still doesn’t look any different for H(istoricity), and that seems to be what everybody is interested in.

You & Zbykow started that sub-thread with a discussion about Rank-Raglan classes -

... Rank-Raglan criteria alone are hardly presented as sufficient to establish non-historicity.

Reference classes work fine, we don’t normally believe in existence of RR heroes, unless there’s some evidence to the contrary, and this evidence is exactly what historicists fail to provide thus far. http://vridar.org/2016/04/15/what-does- ... ment-77514

You then seem to have a hang-up about Rank-Raglan b/c of an apparent red-herring about Josephus - the implication seems to be that, b/c Josephus texts mention Jesus (or other RR heroes?), then you don't think Rank-Raglan reference classes can be used??

Now RR is important information itself. See, there’s no physical evidence, all we got is claims, so, the real question is, how credible are these claims?

What RR says is that, at the place and time people often claimed, ..fictitious characters with the specific set of attributes 'existed'.

http://vridar.org/2016/04/15/what-does- ... ment-77524

You subsequently say

...how do we know that Jesus belongs to the RR reference class? To say that Jesus belongs to the Rank Raglan reference class is to say he was born of a virgin, that he was attempted murdered as a baby, that he meets a mysterious death, etc. etc. These things are known from the Gospels. So when we condition on the Gospels, we condition on the information that places Carrier in the RR reference class.
http://vridar.org/2016/04/15/what-does- ... ment-77571

Did you mean

• "information that places Jesus in the RR reference class"??

or

• "[something] that Carrier places on the RR reference class??" -- eg. [something] = 'emphasis'?

Moreover, re "conditioning on the Gospels" and -

We would have to say that all the biographical information the Gospels supposedly provides us about Jesus is irrelevant ...

born of a virgin: Historically very significant. --http://vridar.org/2016/04/15/what-does- ... ment-77571

- you seem to be presupposing the Gospel are biography and 'born of a virgin' is biographical.

[timhendrix]

Hi MrMacson,

Well, I was actually trying to fix some of the errors Andrew Criddle pointed out yesterday and there are definitely sections that could do with a re-write. Regarding your comment:

I think if you're trying to critique or understand Carrier's application of Bayes Theorem, or propose a simpler (non-compound) application of it, it would seem better to start with first principles and without some presuppositions you seem to have

.

I am not trying to propose an alternative application.. that would be far to ambitious and I know too little about the subject; asides, I have quite strong reservations if this type of numerical application to history even makes sense.

I am not sure what you have in mind when you mention "some presuppositions". On the Vridar thread, the main things I keep referring to are the basic rules of probability and textbook definitions of for instance reference classes, so I am not sure what you have in mind? Is it related to the quotes you provide by Zbykow?

Regarding the quotes, what happened in the discussion was that Zbykow says that we can just introduce a new proposition ~H (bare mythicism) and write a new Bayesian computation that used both ~h and ~H and this would solve certain issues I brought up with respect to the RR hero class. I asked Zbykow about what that computation was and I think he ducked the question a bit. I then tried to show how I believed that keeping ~h and ~H around (along with some other factors Zbykow had hinted should be in the computation) resulted in a very complicated expression. As part of that I defined:

~h = ~H . M

(where M is the additional elements of Carrier myth theory). Zbykow replied that the computation was wrong:
Your calculations look all kinds of wrong.
M is not difference between ~H and ~h, its what they have in common.

Which is a odd statement since M is just what I have defined it to be (or rather, the definition can be found in OHJ; it is Carriers own additional mythical elements found on p.55 of OHJ). Since my argument is just applying this definition and the rules of probability theory I can't see where the remark is supposed to take us. I tried pointing this out, and we went on a bit of a wild goose chase where Zbykow re-formulated the argument to be about sets (which one can!) and appeared to assume we had been talking about sets all along (OHJ and my review are formulated as being about logical propositions). In this light, he found a way to interpret what I had said as being wrong (I am not sure if this was intentional or if it is because Zbykow is confused about the two types of notation). None of this could affect the actual argument I gave which was about logical propositions and basic probability theory...
At any rate, I tried to explain this to Zbykow and get us back on track --why was my argument "all kinds of wrong" and what was the right argument-- but that was not possible at this point.

Regarding this comment by Zbykow:
What you really need is two runs of BT, one H vs. ~H, another ~h vs. what’s left of ~H, you could even combine them in one formula if you will, I’m not gonna bother.
I am simply curious about what that would look like exactly. My original post (above) was intended to show what I see as certain problems one gets into and why I think this computation is very different from what is in OHJ. To say that it is wrong and "I am not gonna bother" to show why or how it is done correctly is in my view quite lazy.
Even if Zbykow has decided it is not worth offering any arguments in support of his position I think as a minimum he should be prepared to state it. To simply say that one really need two runs of BT (which?) and then combine them (how?) is in my view simply failing to even state what one believes to be true.

Zbykow:
Reference classes work fine, we don’t normally believe in existence of RR heroes, unless there’s some evidence to the contrary, and this evidence is exactly what historicists fail to provide thus far.


You then seem to have a hang-up about Rank-Raglan b/c of an apparent red-herring about Josephus - the implication seems to be that, b/c Josephus texts mention Jesus (or other RR heroes?), then you don't think Rank-Raglan reference classes can be used??

Well, I am not launching an all-out attack on reference classes based on a pet theory or presupposition. I am pointing out that it is well-known that the use of reference classes involves arbitrariness (the reference class problem) and then I have raised certain specific issues with Carriers use of reference classes which is what is under discussion. To begin a reply with: "reference classes work fine" and a general remark about about RR heroes is not addressing the argument. To just state one of the issues again:

When we estimate the probability of p(A|B) based on reference classes, what we have in mind is the computation:

p(A|B) = (Number of elements that satisfy A and B)/(Number of elements that satisfy B)

Thus, when A = ~h, which includes being buried, and resurrected in the supernatural realm, this gives:

p(~h|RR) = (Number of heroes who satisfy the RR criteria AND did not exist AND died, was buried and resurrected in the supernatural realm AND …) / (Number of heroes who satisfy the RR criteria).

However what Carrier computes is this:

p(~h|RR) = (Number of heroes who satisfy the RR criteria AND did not exist) / (Number of heroes who satisfy the RR criteria).

In my opinion that's a pretty obvious issue and so far I don't think Zbykow has really addressed it..

Regarding Josepheus and the red herring, I assume you are referencing my review because I do not think I have discussed it yet on Vridar. My point was certainly not that because Josepheus mentions Jesus that invalidates the RR criteria. I do agree that the RR information is important and to my mind it plainly shows the Gospel writers were prepared to make up at the very least parts of the Gospels, or were writing down something others had made up.
My point was to illustrate what happens if we apply reference classes similarly to how it is done in OHJ but to another reference class, namely "Mentioned in our surviving Josephus manuscripts" (emphasis on "surviving"). I deliberately choose this class because it is very silly (OHJ argues that the passage is fully a modern interpolation and I assume this is true for this argument), but to my mind many of the arguments advanced in OHJ in defense of the RR hero class can be applied to the (silly) Josepheus class and I think this severely weakens the arguments. If you notice I write this several times in the review.

Regarding your second comment, of course I meant Jesus and not Carrier, thanks for pointing out this mistake! . It should be: "information that places [removed: Carrier] Jesus in the RR reference class". I don't want people to think I am advancing a Carrier-mythicist theory!
However I suppose that now where we have one written source who says Carrier satisfy the RR criteria (albeit possibly accidentally; however we can conclude this rarely happened for historical people, see p244 of OHJ for why this is a valid argument) I suppose an argument similar to OHJ would imply this is information that should be taken into account when computing the prior probability Carrier existed .

<i>- you seem to be presupposing the Gospel are biography and 'born of a virgin' is biographical.</i>
Oh, I most certainly do not do that!

ps.: Sorry this reply was so long.

[Secret Alias]

MrMacson = Mrhorse (look at his avatar)

[MrMacSon]

I am not trying to propose an alternative application..

I realise that. But you give that impression.

asides, I have quite strong reservations if this type of numerical application to history even makes sense.

I'd say all views of aspects of history, especially ancient history, have probabilities as to the certainty of veracity of the claims about them.

I am not sure what you have in mind when you mention "some presuppositions". On the Vridar thread, the main things I keep referring to are the basic rules of probability and textbook definitions of for instance reference classes, so I am not sure what you have in mind? Is it related to the quotes you provide by Zbykow?

No, it's not related to the quotes by Zbykow that I provided. I think you seem to be operating at levels beyond the basic rules of probability, and you seem to let extraneous things cloud definition and application of reference classes.

[MrMacSon]

Regarding Josepheus and the red herring, I assume you are referencing my review because I do not think I have discussed it yet on Vridar. My point was certainly not that because Josepheus mentions Jesus that invalidates the RR criteria. I do agree that the RR information is important and to my mind it plainly shows the Gospel writers were prepared to make up at the very least parts of the Gospels, or were writing down something others had made up.

My point was to illustrate what happens if we apply reference classes similarly to how it is done in OHJ, but to another reference class, namely "Mentioned in our surviving Josephus manuscripts" (emphasis on "surviving").

I don't understand why you try to complicate things, and arbitrarily so. Why

'..deliberately choose this class because it is very silly'

???

but to my mind many of the arguments advanced in OHJ in defense of the RR hero class can be applied to the (silly) Josepheus class and I think this severely weakens the arguments.

Does OHJ mention such a 'Josepheus class'??

Regarding your second comment, of course I meant Jesus and not Carrier, thanks for pointing out this mistake! . It should be: "information that places [removed: Carrier] Jesus in the RR reference class". I don't want people to think I am advancing a Carrier-mythicist theory!

Cheers.

[timhendrix]

Hi again,

No, it's not related to the quotes by Zbykow that I provided. I think you seem to be operating at levels beyond the basic rules of probability, and you seem to let extraneous things cloud definition and application of reference classes.

Well, I don't really see what this could refer to. Could you perhaps give examples of where I go beyond the basic rules of probability and where I use a clouded definition of a reference class?

Re. The examples with Josepheus:

I don't understand why you try to complicate things, and arbitrarily so. (...)Does OHJ mention such a 'Josepheus class'??

It is certainly not my intention to complicate things. The reason I use the Josepheus class is as an illustration. Let me give an example: I am sure you are familiar with Anselms argument ("God is a being than which none greater can be imagined ..."). There is a famous parody of the argument where instead of God one uses "the greatest island". The purpose of that argument is to show that the premises in the Anselm argument cannot be considered universally true and uncontroversial because otherwise they would also demonstrate that the "greatest island" existed. Similarly, I want to point out difficulties in the use of reference classes in OHJ by means of an illustration.

I wonder how you would answer this question: As I see it, it is a direct consequence of Carriers numbers in OHJ (e.i "the most realistic estimate") that there is no less than 93.75% chance that Jesus was thought to have undergone a death, burial and resurrection in the supernatural realm given only the information in the Gospels and background information*. Do you find this number reasonable?

* The argument: Carrier defines the hypothesis of non-historicity ~h to include death, burial and resurrection in the supernatural realm. Then he says that p(~h|b) = 93.75% and the probabilities of the Gospels satisfy p(Gospels|~h.b) = p(Gospels|h.b). Combining this gives:

p(~h|Gospels.b) = p(Gospels|~h.b) p(~h|b) / [ p(Gospels|~h.b) p(~h|b) + p(Gospels|h.b) p(h|b) ] = p(~h|b) = 93.75%.

[MrMacSon]

Hi again,

No, it's not related to the quotes by Zbykow that I provided. I think you seem to be operating at levels beyond the basic rules of probability, and you seem to let extraneous things cloud definition and application of reference classes.

Well, I don't really see what this could refer to. Could you perhaps give examples of where I go beyond the basic rules of probability1 and where I use a clouded definition2 of a reference class?

1 I said you seem to be operating at levels beyond the basic rules of probability, but what I essentially mean't was you aren't addressing the basics in your discussions. eg. here, in the post I am responding to -

* The argument: Carrier defines the hypothesis of non-historicity ~h to include death, burial and resurrection in the supernatural realm. Then he says that p(~h|b) = 93.75% and the probabilities of the Gospels satisfy p(Gospels|~h.b) = p(Gospels|h.b). Combining this gives:

p(~h|Gospels.b) = p(Gospels|~h.b) p(~h|b) / [ p(Gospels|~h.b) p(~h|b) + p(Gospels|h.b) p(h|b) ] = p(~h|b) = 93.75%.

• i. you do not elaborate on b in p(~h|b); and
  
  ii. in saying "Carrier defines the hypothesis of non-historicity ~h to include death, burial and resurrection in the supernatural realm", you don't fully define ~h for your readers.

2 I did not say that you "use a clouded definition of a reference class", I said 'you seem to let extraneous things cloud definition and application of reference classes' - I used 'cloud' as a verb/adverb whereas you use 'clouded' as an adjective.

• You seemed to be irked by the fact that Josephus mentioned Jesus and that because you seem to think most if not all entities mentioned in Josephus were real people, then you gave the impression you think that Jesus did not fit in the Rank Raglan reference class.

Another example of the way you seem to let extraneous things cloud definition and application of reference classes is, as the case with your references to Josephus, the use of red-herrings - ie. things that are not on-topic as with this -

It is certainly not my intention to complicate things. The reason I use the Josepheus class is as an illustration. Let me give an example: I am sure you are familiar with Anselms argument ("God is a being than which none greater can be imagined ..."). There is a famous parody of the argument where instead of God one uses "the greatest island". The purpose of that argument is to show that the premises in the Anselm argument cannot be considered universally true and uncontroversial because otherwise they would also demonstrate that the "greatest island" existed. Similarly, I want to point out difficulties in the use of reference classes in OHJ by means of an illustration.

I don't want to even digress to consider Anselms argument.

I wonder how you would answer this question: As I see it, it is a direct consequence of Carriers numbers in OHJ (e.i "the most realistic estimate") that there is no less than 93.75% chance that Jesus was thought to have undergone a death, burial and resurrection in the supernatural realm, given only the information in the Gospels and background information. Do you find this number reasonable?

I'd have to look more into what Carrier has said about that (I don't have a copy of OHJ), but I would think the Synoptics would make the death 'earthly'. I'd have to investigate & think more about how & where 'the burial' is portrayed (the post-resurrection witnessing in the Gospels is not sound). As for 'the resurrection': that almost certainly seems to be supernatural (given the absolute lack of any action, beyond the immediate post-resurrection interactions, until His [equally supernatural] ascension 40 days later (and 40 seems to be a theological number). So, arbitrarily, I give it a figure of > 66% (Mark 4 not withstanding)

[MrMacSon]

For general information -

5. Peter Riad says
April 19, 2016 at 12:15 pm - http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/arc ... nt-1059269

tim hendrix has a review of OHOJ out. Would you be responding to it?

• https://www.scribd.com/doc/305750452/Ri ... s#download

Richard Carrier's reply
April 21, 2016 at 5:00 pm
Oh wow! No one told me about that going up last month.
Yes, definitely!
It may take a few weeks (I’m still on tour, and moving soon, and I have two recent debates to blog about, plus else). But eventually.

and

12. Tim H. says
April 21, 2016 at 6:44 pm - http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/arc ... nt-1059286

Hi,
I am having a discussion with user “Zbykow” on this thread: http://vridar.org/2016/04/15/what-does- ... /#comments
Who out of the blue hinted he is in fact you:

• The issues you are struggling with are known and are addressed in the book, if you understand the reasons and disagree then you should argue them directly instead of reinventing the wheel. Thanks for the invitation, I’m not sure I feel like registering another account, but I’ve taken a look and noticed somebody already suspects I am Carrier. I’m not going to deny nor admit, but i guess that means my English doesn’t suck that bad after all.

I wonder if you could confirm if this is your account or not?

Richard Carrier replied -
April 22, 2016 at 3:50 pm
Nope. Not me.

[timhendrix]

Hi MrMacSon:

I said you seem to be operating at levels beyond the basic rules of probability, but what I essentially mean't was you aren't addressing the basics in your discussions. eg. here, in the post I am responding to -

* The argument: Carrier defines the hypothesis of non-historicity ~h to include death, burial and resurrection in the supernatural realm. Then he says that p(~h|b) = 93.75% and the probabilities of the Gospels satisfy p(Gospels|~h.b) = p(Gospels|h.b). Combining this gives:

p(~h|Gospels.b) = p(Gospels|~h.b) p(~h|b) / [ p(Gospels|~h.b) p(~h|b) + p(Gospels|h.b) p(h|b) ] = p(~h|b) = 93.75%.

i. you do not elaborate on b in p(~h|b); and

ii. in saying "Carrier defines the hypothesis of non-historicity ~h to include death, burial and resurrection in the supernatural realm", you don't fully define ~h for your readers.

Look, I am simply using Carrier definitions. Carrier defines ~h as a list of propositions that include death, burial and resurrection in the supernatural realm. To quote Carrier: "this Jesus was originally be-
lieved to have endured an ordeal of incarnation, death, burial
and resurrection in a supernatural realm (OHJ, p.53)."

Secondly, I use b in the same sense Carrier defines it. Carrier spends 176 pages(!) to elaborate on what goes into b. Are you saying I cannot conclude what happens by applying the rules of probability theory to Carriers own symbols and numbers without including 176 pages of material?? (it would seem none of us could have any opinion on Carrier!).

I am a bit puzzled by this comment:
You seemed to be irked by the fact that Josephus mentioned Jesus and that because you seem to think most if not all entities mentioned in Josephus were real people, then you gave the impression you think that Jesus did not fit in the Rank Raglan reference class.

This might be your impression, but I never argued such a thing. A reference class is (simply speaking) just a well-defined set of entities. So it would not be logical to conclude that because we consider Jesus to belong to one class (and keep in mind I only use this class as a means of illustration!) he cannot be contained in another. In fact, "the reference class problem" exactly refers to there being a huge number of different classes one can consider for a proposition such as h.

<i>Another example of the way you seem to let extraneous things cloud definition and application of reference classes is, as the case with your references to Josephus, the use of red-herrings - ie. things that are not on-topic as with this - </i>
I think we simply have to agree to disagree if an illustration of a problem with an argument (which is clearly described as such!) is a red herring fallacy or not.

I'd have to look more into what Carrier has said about that (I don't have a copy of OHJ), but I would think the Synoptics would make the death 'earthly'. I'd have to investigate & think more about how & where 'the burial' is portrayed (the post-resurrection witnessing in the Gospels is not sound). As for 'the resurrection': that almost certainly seems to be supernatural (given the absolute lack of any action, beyond the immediate post-resurrection interactions, until His [equally supernatural] ascension 40 days later (and 40 seems to be a theological number). So, arbitrarily, I give it a figure of > 66% (Mark 4 not withstanding)

But what is your impression for all the propositions taken together? Please keep in mind I am not asking if just an individual element (such as the resurrection) has a probability of more than (say) 66%, but if it seems reasonable to your mind to conclude that all elements (died, was buried and resurrected all in the supernatural realm) can be established with a probability of no less than 93.75% given our background information and the Gospels? How do you imagine an argument for such a strong conclusion would run? What verse of the bible should make one go: "Oh, death by Crucifixion, clearly the death must have been in the supernatural realm"?

Just to itemize where the various points I use are coming from so that you got something concrete to agree or disagree with:
1) Can we agree Carrier claims (and uses in his computation) that p(~h|b) = 93.75% (see concluding chapter of OHJ or my discussion of the RR reference class)
2) Can we agree that Carrier claims (and uses in his computation) that p(Gospels|h.b) = p(Gospels|~h.b)?
3) Can we agree that it then follows from the basic rules of probability that p(~h|Gospels.b) = 93.75%
4) Can we agree that this is saying there is a 93.75% probability ~h is true given b and the Gospels?
5) ..and that ~h includes that Jesus was originally believed to have endured an ordeal of incarnation, death, burial and resurrection in the supernatural realm?

[MrMacSon]

..I use b in the same sense Carrier defines it. Carrier spends 176 pages(!) to elaborate on what goes into b.

So, what is b?

But what is your impression for all the propositions taken together?

As, I said it - the figure - might be (arbitrarily) 66% --but -

5) ..and that ~h includes that Jesus was originally believed to have endured an ordeal of incarnation, death, burial and resurrection in the supernatural realm?

throw in incarnation and I'd say its 95%.