Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

MrMacSon:

Carrier introduces b as follows:

I must set out all the aplicable background knowledge that will affect our estimates of prior and consequent probability for these hypothesis, first from the established history of Christianity and its origins (Chap­ter 4), and then everything else pertaining to its historical context and comparable phenomena in other contexts (Chapter 5).

...it takes up about 179 pages and all conclusions drawn in OHJ are conditioned on it. I suppose if we must itemize the 179 pages to have a discussion about OHJ then that would be a bit of an obstacle.

"As, I said it - the figure - might be (arbitrarily) 66% --but - (...) throw in incarnation and I'd say its 95%."
Well, thanks for answering the question, I think we simply have a difference intuition about what conclusions can be supported from the Gospels.
As a side note, the probability of the first proposition (i.e. without "incarnation") should be considered as least as high as with "incarnation". This is because P(A,B) = P(A|B)P(B) and so P(B) >= P(AB). Accordingly, the probability that Jesus simply died, was buried and resurrected in the supernatural realm cannot be lower than the probability he was incarnated, died, was buried and resurrected in the supernatural realm.

timhendrix wrote: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.

If I understand correctly, Carrier believes that using a reference class of "Josephus-mentioners" (or something else) and putting the Rank-Raglan data in the consideration of conditional probabilities, or doing the reverse and putting the "Rank-Raglan reference class" as the benchmark for prior probability and using the "Josephus-mentioning" data in the consideration of posterior probabilities... would be roughly/exactly (I think he assumes exactly) equivalent when it comes to the resulting posterior probability calculation.

Carrier discusses this where he considers the arbitrariness of reference class selections, if I remember correctly.

Did you notice such a discussion? Did you interact with it in your own review? (I haven't had time to finish it - the review that is.)

I agree that we could benefit from an outline of your review's principal objection(s), if that wouldn't take too much time of course.

timhendrix wrote: ... As a side note, the probability of the first proposition (i.e. without "incarnation") should be considered as least as high as with "incarnation". This is because P(A,B) = P(A|B)P(B) and so P(B) >= P(AB). Accordingly, the probability that Jesus simply died, was buried and resurrected in the supernatural realm cannot be lower than the probability he was incarnated, died, was buried and resurrected in the supernatural realm.

I appreciate that the mathematics might say that, but the addition of incarnation to the consideration of the equation does, to me at least, add another dimension to the issue of claim or counter-claim of humanity or perceptions of it. Another view is this: an 'entity' with so much supernatural narrative in the largely theological texts about 'it', when we currently perceive those texts to be Paul's celestial entity first, the Gospels and other books later, and when there is hardly, if any, any valid extra-textual (ie. extra-biblical) information anywhere about that 'entity' as a person, such an entity is hardly likely to be human and is only 'preserved' to this day and touted because of the overwhelming theological narrative. If Jesus has a human dimension, it is so small as to be insignificant.

timhendrix wrote:MrMacSon: Carrier introduces b as follows:

I must set out all the applicable background knowledge that will affect our estimates of prior and consequent probability for these hypothesis, first from the established history of Christianity and its origins (Chap­ter 4), and then everything else pertaining to its historical context and comparable phenomena in other contexts (Chapter 5).

...it takes up about 179 pages and all conclusions drawn in OHJ are conditioned on it. I suppose if we must itemize the 179 pages to have a discussion about OHJ then that would be a bit of an obstacle.

Surely b has a one-line or one-paragraph definition?

Peter Kirby wrote: If I understand correctly, Carrier believes that using a reference class of "Josephus-mentioners" (or something else) and putting the Rank-Raglan data in the consideration of conditional probabilities, or doing the reverse and putting the "Rank-Raglan reference class" as the benchmark for prior probability and using the "Josephus-mentioning" data in the consideration of posterior probabilities... would be roughly/exactly (I think he assumes exactly) equivalent when it comes to the resulting posterior probability calculation.

Carrier discusses this where he considers the arbitrariness of reference class selections, if I remember correctly.

Cheers Peter.

MrMacSon wrote: we currently perceive those texts to be Paul's celestial entity first, the Gospels and other books later

Who is "we"


Academia look sat Pauline text as based on a crucified man who died and who currently lives in heaven. NO solely as an celestial entity. Correct?

And while academia does look at the gospels as later products, they also claim the traditions existed prior to compilation. Correct?

If I understand correctly, Carrier believes that using a reference class of "Josephus-mentioners" (or something else) and putting the Rank-Raglan data in the consideration of conditional probabilities, or doing the reverse and putting the "Rank-Raglan reference class" as the benchmark for prior probability and using the "Josephus-mentioning" data in the consideration of posterior probabilities... would be roughly/exactly (I think he assumes exactly) equivalent when it comes to the resulting posterior probability calculation.

That's also how I understand Carrier. I don't want to hedge everything I write, but the argument depends on how we compute probabilities from reference classes so I will return to that later.
The part of the argument I think is uncontroversial is that if we re-write the probabilities with the product rule so we for instance have a term like: p(h|"Josepheus-information") or p(h|"Rank-Raglan-information") then the result is guaranteed to be consistent as statements about unknown probabilities
This changes when we estimate the probabilities from for instance reference classes or guess them or what we choose to do. The way I understand a reference class to work I don't think this in itself is such a big deal (in itself) if we use sensible reference classes.

This brings me to the issue of how reference classes work to approximate probabilities. If I was going to use reference classes I would go with the simplest solution and just say:

P(A|B) = (elements that matches A and B) / (Elements that matches B)

Where I disagree with OHJ is that I think it deviates from the above in two important ways. First, that when we re-write probabilities (like use the Josepheus prior or the Rank-Raglan prior) we have to do it with the product rule and keep track of the various terms.. as I see it the terms we arrive at are complicated (not formally of course, but in terms of actually assigning numerical values) and this issues should at least be acknowledged.

The second issue is that I think Carrier deviates from the simple way of computing probabilities from reference classes. Carriers estimate of the conditional probability is:
p(~h|b) = (1 + RR heroes that exist) / ( 2 + RR heroes).

I think this deviation is significant because ~h is Carriers hypothesis of myth which is defined to include specific pieces of information such as "incarnated, died, buried and resurrected in the supernatural realm". Put bluntly, when Carrier says that 15 Rank-Raglan heroes counts towards ~h, to my mind that must imply they match ~h and therefore that for instance Moses (who are amongst the Rank-Raglan heroes) died in the supernatural realm. Then there is also the issue of how b is contracted to be only the information that places Jesus in the Rank-Raglan hero class. This is not the end of the story.. the discussion is partly complicated because Carrier do not explicitly state how we compute a conditional probability from a reference class in general and so some guesswork is involved.

outhouse wrote:

MrMacSon wrote: we currently perceive those texts to be Paul's celestial entity first, the Gospels and other books later

Who is "we"

Academia. The world.

outhouse wrote: Academia look sat Pauline text as based on a crucified man who died and who currently lives in heaven. NO solely as an celestial entity. Correct1?

And while academia does look at the gospels as later products, they also claim2 the traditions existed prior to compilation. Correct?

1. a. No. There is no biography in Paul.
.........b. He is also portrayed as resurrected & then ascending. And providing 'revelation'.

2. Claims yes. ('traditions' yes, lol) --Substantiated, No!

MrMacSon wrote: Surely b has a one-line or one-paragraph definition?

Yes, it is the "background information". That background information is fleshed out over more than 170 pages and includes details about politics, ancient religion, etc. etc.

timhendrix wrote: The second issue is that I think Carrier deviates from the simple way of computing probabilities from reference classes. Carriers estimate of the conditional probability is:
p(~h|b) = (1 + RR heroes that exist) / ( 2 + RR heroes).

I think this deviation is significant because ~h is Carriers hypothesis of myth which is defined to include specific pieces of information such as "incarnated, died, buried and resurrected in the supernatural realm". Put bluntly, when Carrier says that 15 Rank-Raglan heroes counts towards ~h, to my mind that must imply they match ~h and therefore that for instance Moses (who are amongst the Rank-Raglan heroes) died in the supernatural realm. Then there is also the issue of how b is contracted to be only the information that places Jesus in the Rank-Raglan hero class. This is not the end of the story.. the discussion is partly complicated because Carrier do not explicitly state how we compute a conditional probability from a reference class in general and so some guesswork is involved.

Rank-Raglan is a 'Hero' scoring system based on certain attributes. Not all entities scored by Rank Raglan have the same score b/c they don't have the same attributes, right? Raglan himself scored Moses at 20 (but he did not do Jesus, to my knowledge). I'm not sure whether the specific point about whether one entity out of the several scored on that scale - Moses - died on the supernatural realm or not is that pertinent.

This site scored Jesus - http://department.monm.edu/classics/cou ... ropattern/

Carrier says

I am very particular in the limited way I employ it, and I am carefully rigorous in that application, in a way others in the past have not been (advocates and critics alike). All of this is explained in chapter 6 of OHJ. I discuss the mythotype itself in chapter 5 (Element 48), but not the validity of its application. That is addressed in the following chapter. (It should also be noted that I adduce other applicable mythotypes in Elements 46 and 47.)
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/6840

And here's some more critiques & commentary of Carrier's use of RR -

http://christthetao.blogspot.com.au/201 ... or-is.html

http://ronnblom.net/is-jesus-a-rank-raglan-hero/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2014 ... nk-raglan/