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

[Giuseppe]

About the possibility B (a mythical Jesus on the Earth and not in sublunar realm) that would be the view that Paul had (according to Roger Parvus).
If I remember well, in a brief note of OHJ (I go to memory) Carrier recognizes that possibility as a specific sub-option of the possibility named C by Andrew.
But maybe Andrew means as B the possibility that a mythical Jesus lived an ENTIRE life on Earth and was considered historical. Correct?

[timhendrix]

Let's try to break this down. Firstly, do you agree with the following way of approximating a probability using a reference class?:

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

(if not, what is the correct way?)

I wondered if I needed to read Proving History, OHJ, and re-read reference texts on Bayes Theorem before answering but, in the absence of having done that (yet), I think something along the lines of the discussion prompted by Andrew Criddle's post (on this of this thread) ie. break up the components more than Carrier seems to have done..

What I have been trying to say so far is as far as I can tell 100% consistent with what Andrew wrote, we are just using different notation . The question is much simpler than breaking up the equation, it is how (on Carriers view or on yours, whichever you are interested in) we are supposed to approximate a conditional probability using a reference class. If we want to use reference classes in any capacity (whether on propositions that has been broken up or not) we need an answer to that question. I think PH assumes the above idea but I do not think it states it explicitly. You can read more about reference classes here:

http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/people-defau ... em_too.pdf

[Giuseppe]

What I have been trying to say so far is as far as I can tell 100% consistent with what Andrew wrote, we are just using different notation

So Carrier writes about the possibility named by Andrew as B (''Let B be the probability that Jesus was believed to have lived and died upon earth but didn't. (i.e. there was no historical Jesus and no belief in a Jesus who lived and died in the lower heavens'') :

The original 'revealed' death and burial could have been imagined as occurring on earth and still be (from our perspective) mythical, if, e.g., the passion sequence was 'revealed' to have occurred somewhere like the Garden of Eden, a place no one knew the actual location of and thus where no ordinary witnesses could have been available (of course, the earliest Christians thought even the Garden of Eden was in outer space: 2 Cor. 12.2-4; see Element 38).

(p. 563, note 67)

Therefore the priors probability taken by possibility B is < = the priors probability of C.

B is a subset space of possibility of C :

Let C be the probability that Jesus was not originally believed to have lived and died upon earth. (Richard Carrier's preferred option)

If I am right, then dr. Carrier is right in adding to C the priors probability of B, too.

[Giuseppe]

Note that the mythicist Dave Fitzgerald (who shares the same paradigm Doherty/Carrier) writes so about the equivalence, de facto, between B and C (in Andrew's legend):

No matter whether Paul and his generation thought that their Jesus had lived and died on earth some time in the past as an unknown figure (in order to fool the demonic archons of our world) or thought that he was a figure born in the shape of a man and crucified on a higher level of heaven (like the Jesus of the Ascension of Isaiah), or even from pure allegory or mythology, it seems very clear that the early believers got all their information about him from scriptural exegesis - since they are constantly telling us that Jesus performed everything according to the scriptures.

(my bold)
http://www.davefitzgerald.blogspot.it/2 ... rt-ii.html

[timhendrix]

Giuseppe:
A phrase such as: "according to the scriptures." is found in (I assume) the Gospels and (perhaps also) Paul. If we follow Richard Carriers computation, these sources are considered as evidence, thus when we discuss the prior probability we should do it in the absence of the the evidence i.e. Gospels and Paul and therefore we cannot be informed by such a phrase. For that matter I think the Ascension of Isaiah also goes into the evidence and thus also has to be disregarded at this point.
It is a hugely counterfactual statement because if we remove all this information very little remains, but it is the type of thought-experiment Carrier suggests we carry out.

[MrMacSon]

.
Let's try to use terminology that is defined & seems to be applicable to what we might want to do with information or data around Jesus.

This from wikipedia seems applicable -

.
Introduction to Bayes' rule

Formal

Bayesian inference derives the posterior probability as a consequence of two antecedents: [1] a prior probability and [2] a "likelihood function" derived from a statistical model for the observed data.

Bayesian inference computes the posterior probability according to Bayes' theorem:

• • -----------------------------------------_P(E|H).P(H)
    P(H|E) = ------------------------
    --------------------------------------------------P(E)

where

• | denotes a conditional probability; more specifically, it means given.

• H stands for any hypothesis whose probability may be affected by data (called evidence below).
  
  • Often there are competing hypotheses, from which one chooses the most probable.

• the evidence E corresponds to new data that were not used in computing the prior probability.

• P(H), the prior probability, is the probability of H before E is observed.
  
  • This indicates one's previous estimate of the probability that a hypothesis is true, before gaining the current evidence.

• P(H|E), the posterior probability, is the probability of H given E --i.e. after E is observed.
  
  • This tells us what we want to know: the probability of a hypothesis given the observed evidence.

• P(E|H) is the probability of observing E given H.
  
  • As a function of H with E fixed, this is the likelihood.
  • The likelihood function should not be confused with P(H|E) as a function of H rather than of E.
    
    It indicates the compatibility of the evidence with the given hypothesis.

• P(E) is sometimes termed the marginal likelihood or "model evidence".
  
  • This factor is the same for all possible hypotheses being considered. (This can be seen by the fact that the hypothesis H does not appear anywhere in the symbol, unlike for all the other factors.) This means that this factor does not enter into determining the relative probabilities of different hypotheses.

Note that, for different values of H, only the factors P(H) and P(E|H) affect the value of P(H|E).


As both of these factors appear in the numerator, the posterior probability is proportional to both. In words:

• (more precisely) The posterior probability of a hypothesis is determined by a combination of [a] the inherent likeliness of a hypothesis (the prior) and the compatibility of the observed evidence with the hypothesis (the likelihood).

• (more concisely) Posterior is proportional to likelihood times prior.

Note that Bayes' rule can also be written as follows:

• • ---------------------------------------_P(E|H)
    P(H|E) = -------------------. P(H)
    -------------------------------------------P(E)
  -----------------------_P(E|H)
  where the factor -------------represents the impact of E on the probability of H
  -------------------------P(E)

[Secret Alias]

Since when did MrMacson stop pretending he was an imbecile? Remember the time he became a lot smarter when Carrier's Philo was being trashed at the forum? Dumb people don't pick fights over mathematics. And its always a defence of Carrier. McMacson is another Carrier sock puppet. One of many out there apparently ...

[MrMacSon]

Let H = the hypothesis be "that MrMacSon is Carrier"

Let P(H) - the prior probability (before said new evidence) - be 0.05

Let E be the supposed new evidence that MacSon is Carrier: let P(E) be 0.5

let P(E|H) - the probability of observing E given H - be 0.75

P(H|E) - the probability that MrMacSon is Carrier given it is observed that MacSon presents as Carrier's sockpuppet -

• = 0.75 x 0.04 / 0.5 = 0.06

[Kapyong]

Gday iskander,

Thanks for your reply

http://kapyong.5gbfree.com/Carrier/Elements.html

Element 1. The earliest form of Christianity definitely known to us originated as a Jewish sect in the region of Syria-Palestine.

Element 1 is the explanation of the origins of Christianity. What is the earliest form of Christianity definitely known to us?

I can ask this question in your website, away from the noise, if you prefer that.

Let's discuss here, where others can contribute.
(Seems like this is the premier place for Mythical Jesus discussion.)

Firstly, here is Dr Carrier's section on Element 1, in its entirety :

The earliest form of Christianity definitely known to us originated as a Jewish sect in the region of Syria-Palestine in the first centuries CE. Some historians would challenge this, but their theories have yet to survive peer review or persuade anything near a consensus agreement among experts. Rather than prove it true here, I will simply state it as a given fact of our background knowledge, to be revised only if it clearly disproved.

I'd say Paul is the earliest form of Christianity known to us, (not sure whether I would classify the later Gospels as part of that same earliest form, or a new form)

Anyway -
It seems clear that it originated as a Jewish sect, from Paul's interest and arguments about Jewish vs gentile customs, and the dependence on the Tanakh in many early works.

Did it originate in Syria-Palestine ?
On the face of it - yes.

(Although by the time of G.Mark it seems to have spread quite far already, considering his poor knowledge of the region.)

I don't think Dr Carrier has gone out on a limb here.


Kapyong

[timhendrix]

MrMacSon: I am not questioning Bayes theorem (see also the appendix to the review). However Bayes theorem is a consistency requirement and not a way of computing/approximating probabilities using reference classes which is what I am asking about here.
Perhaps we can get this far: Without an answer to that question (how conditional probabilities are approximated from reference classes), we cannot say that the way Carrier does it is sound?