Criteria of Authenticity are Unique to the Study of Jesus

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
perseusomega9
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Re: Criteria of Authenticity are Unique to the Study of Jesus

Post by perseusomega9 »

mlinssen wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 2:18 am

It is typical of biblical academic to have e.g. a fairly proper analysis of data, only to be followed by a very predictable and formation Conclusion that has nothing to do with any of it.
Exactly. I don't know how many time I've read the concluding chapter to a biblical studies book and thought that doesn't follow from the previous six chapters. Or something interesting in a footnote stating this is the sole use of that word and its unattested for the next 100 years. Or the concluding chapter is some mealy-mouthed justification for the previous devastating critique is important to the Christian life and this is how it can be applied even though it completely undermines doctrine and tradition.
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mlinssen
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Hurtado's footnotes, full of lies

Post by mlinssen »

perseusomega9 wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 5:41 am
mlinssen wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 2:18 am

It is typical of biblical academic to have e.g. a fairly proper analysis of data, only to be followed by a very predictable and formation Conclusion that has nothing to do with any of it.
Exactly. I don't know how many time I've read the concluding chapter to a biblical studies book and thought that doesn't follow from the previous six chapters. Or something interesting in a footnote stating this is the sole use of that word and its unattested for the next 100 years. Or the concluding chapter is some mealy-mouthed justification for the previous devastating critique is important to the Christian life and this is how it can be applied even though it completely undermines doctrine and tradition.
Yup, I forgot about the footnotes!
When I'm really bored I go footnote surfing, and actually look 'm up. Often they lead to nothing but someone else's opinion that is entirely unsunstantiated... save for a footnote that the book will have. Which leads to another opinion, etc

A live sample of a story like that is my looking up of the tares / zizanion upon the bequest of the (administratively) late Ben C. Smith who dropped it as his usual distraction, only to distract from the distraction as usual a little later on

The story of the Zizanion on the Apocalypse of Moses
dbz
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Re: Criteria of Authenticity are Unique to the Study of Jesus

Post by dbz »

The idea of formulating certain “criteria” for an evaluation of historical sources is a peculiar phenomenon in historical-critical Jesus research. It was established in the course of the twentieth century . . . and it does not, to my knowledge, appear in other strands of historical research. (pp. 51–52)
--Schröter, Jens (2012). "The Criteria of Authenticity in Jesus Research and Historiographical Method". In Keith, Chris; Le Donne, Anthony. Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity. A&C Black. pp. 49–70. ISBN 978-0-567-37723-4.
The growing consensus now is that this entire quest for criteria has failed. The entire field of Jesus studies has thus been left without any valid method. (p. 11)
--Carrier, Richard (2012). Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-61614-560-6.
ABuddhist
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Re: Criteria of Authenticity are Unique to the Study of Jesus

Post by ABuddhist »

neilgodfrey wrote: Wed Mar 15, 2023 8:27 am
ABuddhist wrote: Wed Mar 15, 2023 5:35 am But Nattier, if I recall correctly, used the criterion of embarrassment to try to reconstruct the situation which the author(s) of the Ugraparipṛcchā were dealing with - related to tensions between Mahayana and non-Mahayana Buddhist traditions.
Which sounds similar to the example of Horsfall's use of the criterion as shown us by Andrew Criddle: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10524 .... On which, see my reply: viewtopic.php?p=151120#p151120
So, I reread today Jan Nattier's book about Mahayana Buddhism "A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā)" [University of Hawaii Press; New edition (May 31 2005), and I report the following. Nattier uses the term "principle of embarrassment" and refers to the term as "commonly used in New Testament studies" on page 65. She claims that she was introduced to the term by David Brakke. Nattier describes the "principle of embarrassment" as useful for three categories of things in Buddhist studies

1. for assessing the reactions of non-Mahayana Buddhists to the claims made in Mahayana Buddhist scriptures. Thus, Nattier takes the admission in the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines that many Buddhists asserted that the Perfection of Wisdom literature was not authentic Buddhist Scripture and the claim in the Lotus Sutra that some Buddhists stood up and walked away when the Lotus Sutra's teaching was first preached as reflecting genuine skeptical reactions by Buddhists to Mahayana Buddhist scriptures' teachings.

2. For assessing the accuracy of a story in the Mahavagga section of the Vinaya in which some Buddhist monks argue with each other so severely that they strike each other and refuse to accept Shakyamuni Buddha's offer to mediate. Nattier accepts this story as evidence that during Shakyamuni Buddha's lifetime, there were diputes and fights within his following of mendicants.

3. For assessing the accuracy of a tradition in Vinaya I.101-102 in which Shakyamuni Buddha's followers are criticized by lay people for not assembling on full and new moon days in order to preach to the lay people. Shakyamuni Buddha is portrayed as convoking such an assembly when invited to by King Bimbisara, but in the first such meeting the Buddhist mendicants only sat around resembling livestock. In response to further criticism by lay people, Shakyamuni Buddha implemented biweekly recitation of monastic rules and preaching to lay people. Nattier accepts that this story reflects an incident or series of incidents in which Buddhist monastics adjusted to public norms because of public pressure. Nattier even says (at p. 66), "Such a story - in which Buddhist monks are described as falling short of social expectations - would hardly have been viewed as flattering to the Buddhist community, but was presumably too widely known to be denied."

Criticisms of such reasoning can be made, but it is reasoning found outside studies about Jesus.
Last edited by ABuddhist on Sun Apr 23, 2023 4:38 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Criteria of Authenticity are Unique to the Study of Jesus

Post by neilgodfrey »

ABuddhist wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:47 am Criticisms of such reasoning can be made, but it is reasoning found outside studies about Jesus.
Thanks for the update.
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Re: Criteria of Authenticity are Unique to the Study of Jesus

Post by ABuddhist »

neilgodfrey wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 1:29 pm
ABuddhist wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:47 am Criticisms of such reasoning can be made, but it is reasoning found outside studies about Jesus.
Thanks for the update.
No problem. If you were to make a Vridar blogpost about it similar to what you did for "Authenticity of the Early Buddhist texts", then I would be fascinated with that.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Criteria of Authenticity are Unique to the Study of Jesus

Post by neilgodfrey »

ABuddhist wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 1:35 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 1:29 pm
ABuddhist wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:47 am Criticisms of such reasoning can be made, but it is reasoning found outside studies about Jesus.
Thanks for the update.
No problem. If you were to make a Vridar blogpost about it similar to what you did for "Authenticity of the Early Buddhist texts", then I would be fascinated with that.
I'd love to, but I only have one life-time which, I have discovered, is not nearly long enough to bring myself up to speed with Christian and Jewish texts, let alone Islamic ones which I have endeavoured to do in vain ..... before I start on the Buddhists!
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Criteria of Authenticity are Unique to the Study of Jesus

Post by Leucius Charinus »

neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2023 1:22 am
ABuddhist wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 1:35 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 1:29 pm
ABuddhist wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:47 am Criticisms of such reasoning can be made, but it is reasoning found outside studies about Jesus.
Thanks for the update.
No problem. If you were to make a Vridar blogpost about it similar to what you did for "Authenticity of the Early Buddhist texts", then I would be fascinated with that.
I'd love to, but I only have one life-time which, I have discovered, is not nearly long enough to bring myself up to speed with Christian and Jewish texts, let alone Islamic ones which I have endeavoured to do in vain ..... before I start on the Buddhists!
Maybe one can take a shortcut to Buddhism through the Nag Hammadi library? The stuff in there is arguably neither Christian or Jewish as asserted by (biblical) mainstream studies. Sethians? Valentinians? Hermetica? Gnostics? Archeology? The Christian stuff is not necessarily Christian stuff. Thomas is not Christian. Philip is not Christian. Often the stuff appears as Platonic and sometimes as Plotinic. At the moment I see it as the last voice of Hellenism. It has some correlation to Buddhism. Nonduality is featured. The NH library was probably produced in a monastic environment. Shortcut?
dbz
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Re: Criteria of Authenticity are Unique to the Study of Jesus

Post by dbz »

Ehrman gets around to discussing the Method of Criteria (starting around minute 18:50), claiming that it’s the same method used in other fields of history. That isn’t true. You won’t find hardly any of this elsewhere. It was almost all contrived for Jesus studies. Even when there are parallel methods across fields (like things comparable to the Criterion of Embarrassment), they are constructed and deployed differently. And this is a real problem. My entire book, Proving History, especially Chapter 5, surveys that problem, finding that literally every other formal study of these methods in Jesus studies that has ever been made agrees it’s a problem. Jesus historians are actually conspicuously avoiding the actual methods used in other fields of history (just compare what they do, with actual surveys of real historical methods: I provide a bibliography). And I suspect one reason for this is that real methods don’t get any results they want. For example, in no other field are “hypothetical sources” contrived, used, or relied on in the way we find in Jesus studies. Nor is any principle like “simpler versions of a story are earlier” (real historians well know abbreviation, truncation, and paraphrase are ordinary).
[...]
Ehrman stacks up questionable assumptions as if they were established facts, to get “information” about a historical Jesus. The problem is that this is what he has to do. If the historicity of Jesus were a securely establishable fact, we should not have to resort to this. And yet, take away every premise conjured this way (every time he just declares an unevidenced assumption, or even a counter-evidence assumption, as a fact), and he has no arguments for a historical Jesus. This should worry you. Because the fact that this is the only way Ehrman can get from the data to a historical Jesus is itself evidence that we should doubt the historicity of Jesus.

--Carrier (23 April 2023). "Did Jesus Even Exist? Bart Ehrman's Latest Take". Richard Carrier Blogs.
  • "Did Jesus Even Exist?". YouTube. Bart D. Ehrman. 18 April 2023. "The (considerable) vitriol directed against Bart by theologically conservative Christians is (easily) matched by what he gets from critics on the opposite end of the spectrum --"mythicists" who insist not only that the New Testament is filled with legendary material but that Jesus himself was, literally, a myth: he never existed. In this episode Bart will explain why -- whatever else you might want to say about Jesus of Nazareth -- historians of all stripes do not doubt that at the least Jesus was a first-century Jewish teacher who was crucified by the Romans. Are the mythicists -- intent on disproving Christianity -- simply shooting themselves in the foot by taking their skepticism too far?

    -When we’re trying to determine whether a person actually existed, we have to rely on historical data - what data do we have from the ancient world concerning Jesus?

    -How much of a problem is it that we don’t have contemporary sources?

    -How far can we trust the gospels as historical sources? For example, Matthew and Luke give two conflicting reports of Jesus’ birth, so how do we decide which is closest to historical fact?

    -One of the things historians look for when trying to understand an historical event, is multiple sources that talk about it. Do we have that for Jesus’ existence?

    -Given that we have such few sources, which date to several decades after Jesus’ death, don’t always agree with each other, and are a little light on details…what can we actually say with certainty about the life of Jesus?

    -Is it odd that we don’t have any contemporary references to Jesus? Even if most people were illiterate, if there was an itinerant preacher wandering around and causing unrest, would we not expect the Roman authorities to write about him?"
dbz
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Re: Criteria of Authenticity are Unique to the Study of Jesus

Post by dbz »

Comments per "The Backwards and Unempirical Logic of Q Apologetics". Richard Carrier Blogs.
  • TA. M. February 2, 2022, 7:27 am
    Yes, but the primary purpose this criterion seems to serve (as least from what I’ve read) is to provide a narrative scaffolding scholars can use to support their pet theories.
    Thus, it often seems to be used to establish to primary events 1) the baptism by John—that is, the beginning of Jesus’s ministry—and 2) the crucifixion under Pilate (unless that was under Antipas, of course …)—that is, the end of his career.
    Once you have those two things in place, you can fill in whatever you like between ‘em—Jesus the social revolutionary, the apocalyptic prophet, the shaman, the Davidic royal claimant, the Zealot—whatever you like.
    And, of course, the embarrassment factor is doubtful in either case. The baptism by John was surely meant to incorporate a rival prophet into the “Jesus movement” and probably also to win over some of his followers. To do that, you’d have to provide a somewhat flattering portrait of John, even if it meant placing him in a temporary position of advantage over Jesus (that only lasted until the good old holy pigeon came swooping down, anyhow). Crucifixion might seem pretty embarrassing, but the greater the degradation, the more impressive the eventual elevation to glory, so one might that this is no more than a plot twist.
  • Richard Carrier February 7, 2022, 3:52 pm
    That’s basically Fred’s point: there is a kernel of a method used across history in there (they just don’t call it “the criterion of embarrassment”), but the way Biblical studies formulates and applies it corresponds to no other field of history’s application. They misapply the concept to cases it does not meet, and disregard the actual correct formulation of the principle. I cover both points in extensive detail, with examples, in Proving History, index, “Criterion of Embarrassment.”
  • Fred B-C February 14, 2022, 1:31 pm
    Yeah, as Richard notes, that doesn’t mean the method is illogical. It means they are using it illogically because they have a woobie to want to get at other theories. When someone tells you something embarrassing, you don’t know what motivated them to do that without more evidence. Maybe they are the kind of person who likes to be embarrassed? Maybe they are using the fact that you will trust them after such an admission to set up a con, a very common tactic that con artists and grifters use? (For example, the “I was such a bad man before Jesus” trope is such a cliche, and you would only trust them that they were in fact such a bad man if you hadn’t yet heard their sales pitch, because then you have an answer for why they had that embarrassing material). Maybe they’re incompetent? (I’m reminded of the utterly creepy way that David Wood went off about how because he was an evolutionist he was basically a sociopath, talking in such a way that confirmed that, actually, no, man, you still are a sociopath, you’ve just sublimated it with God talk). And that’s assuming that it was embarrassing to either them or their target audience. You may be importing your anachronistic assumptions “cringing” on their behalf when that was never on the table.
    In particular, every statement against interest argument proceeds from the assumption that “This information they gave is embarrassing, therefore they must value telling the truth more than the embarrassment”. But that only works if you have good reason to think the source is trustworthy. Because the only thing you know is that the person who said the embarrassing thing was more motivated to have you believe X than not believe the embarrassing fact Y. They may want you to believe X for some deeper reason. This happens all the time in politics: Someone apparently making an argument out of their normal worldview is very often them setting up for something else. Like when a crypto bro tells you that, no, despite their market libertarianism they actually don’t believe in intellectual property rights (a remarkable claim apparently against interest)… because they want to mint their new coin based off of a copyright-protected IP (which makes the previous admission no longer very remarkable).
    But one would never say that a statement against interest is somehow an irrelevant piece of information. it just doesn’t mean what one might naively think it does. I find it funny how Richard pointed out that legal scholars would take Biblical studies to task for basically having a pre-scientific rube’s idea of how embarrassing statements work. It shows the utterly infantile state of the field in basic methodology, which is your point.
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