The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

[Paul the Uncertain]

Neil

No, we cannot lower or modify a valid method if we don't have enough material from which to arrive at supportable answers.

Quite correct. If we don't have the prerequisites to use something, then we don't use it, because we can't. It doesn't follow that we do nothing, or that by doing something else that is adapted to the reality of the inference problem that faces us, we need to change academic or professional fields.

We have to accept that we don't know, and that there are some things we'll never know. OK, I've accepted the obvious, now what? There is nothing "lowering" about a resolution to do as much as possible with the materials that are actually available.

What we do instead may resemble some other method, or it may not. Some methods have the property referred to by the adjective "anytime." Anytime methods apply the same operations to whatever amount of resources are available to the user of the method. Bayes rule is an anytime inference method, for example.

Do you mean that hypotheses are not assumptions? If so, it seems to me that the sort of hypotheses you are talking about are untestable, and if so, merely pointless speculation.

Yes, I mean hypotheses are not assumptions.

Your follow on: how do you know what is "untestable?" Untested so far, fine; you personally can't figure out a test that's acceptable to you right now, that's fine, too. Untestable? Apart from logic-puzzle hypotheses ("This hypothesis is false," referring to itself, for instance), potential for testing is contingent, and not properly a property of the hypothesis, but rather a relationship among the hypothesis, the world, and the cleverness of the community that might attempt a test.

Explanations (hypotheses) require some verification, substantiation, from the data being investigated or they are mere speculation and not serious inquiry.

The language of necessity ("require") has little place in contingent reasoning. You use that language a lot.

Explanations can only be improved by some verification, substantiation, from data. In the meantime, they may well be the subject of serious inquiry (including the effort needed to locate data, which effort may be guided by attending to the more promising of the proposed explanations). The alternative to certainty most certainly is not speculation.

There is a spectrum of justifiable confidence, and the role of data is to move hypotheses along the spectrum. O Happy Day when there is enough data to move one hypothesis to the Promised Land of Godfrey-approval. For most things, though, there is only more or less, and with that, a fair amount of disagreement among persons about which is more and which is less.

[neilgodfrey]

Historians form hypotheses that are subject to falsification by the specific evidence they are actually working with. A hypothesis concerning "why Mark created/named certain characters" has to be tested within the narrative itself or with external data that can be demonstrated to have a direct link or explanation to those characters. I think it goes without saying that there is no such external data, which leaves us with the data within the narrative itself as our means of testing. And if we can't do it even then, then the hypothesis is mere speculation and adds nothing to our understanding of the gospel or any of its characters.

[Paul the Uncertain]

Neil

Historians form hypotheses that are subject to falsification ...

Falsification is at most half the job of uncertainty management. I was about to comment on Popper's anti-Bayesianism, but you can't mean Popper, because the point of his false analogy to modus tollens was to misdefine the scope of science, as opposed to other fields. Ancient history is an other field vis a vis science.

A hypothesis concerning "why Mark created/named certain characters" has to be tested within the narrative itself or with external data that can be demonstrated to have a direct link or explanation to those characters.

Like any other hypothesis, it has to be formulated first. You and I seem to part company right there, before we get to what you think ought to be done after formulation of something which is seriously possible.

then the hypothesis is mere speculation and adds nothing to our understanding of the gospel or any of its characters.

Your understanding, you mean. My understanding of any uncertainty is added to by the development of a more nearly complete serious possibility set.

A speculation would be a hypothesis that lacks foundation. The foundation in the present case is that Mark mentions three people by name, two of whom have no role in the story (not even by being related to the man who does; they may not even exist yet). That's remarkable in any text. Mark in particular is parsimonious with bandwidth even for things that do make a difference to the story (like, what is Pilate's job?). It is reasonable to develop seriously possible hypotheses about why two people are mentioned who don't do anything, but who are positioned by the author to acquire information about a critical story point, information that would thus be available a generation after the events.

It is especially reasonable in the context of a larger inquiry into whether or not Mark wished to convey an impression that he had sources (which is how it did come up between us). The serious possibility that the reason why Mark mentioned the men is that he might have met them places an upper bound on the confidence that Mark gave no thought to a reader's concern for how he could possibly know about the events even if they happened.

In other contexts, you advocate acknowledging what we don't know when we don't. We don't know that Mark was silent about sources. We don't know that, in part, because he might have named some sources as possibilities, and been understood by his first readers as having done so.

[neilgodfrey]

In other contexts, you advocate acknowledging what we don't know when we don't. We don't know that Mark was silent about sources. We don't know that, in part, because he might have named some sources as possibilities, and been understood by his first readers as having done so.

I don't know any historian who works with such possibilities. Except some biblical scholars who call themselves historians.

[outhouse]

Historians form hypotheses that are subject to falsification by the specific evidence they are actually working with.

True

But your missing the fact no historian or scholar has ever been able to refute the current standing hypothesis that holds complete historicity for Jesus.

Every hypothesis ever brought forward for a mythical origin of jesus has failed miserably, to the point of absurdity.

Its why almost all scholars agree he existed

[Paul the Uncertain]

Neil

I don't know any historian who works with such possibilities.

Well, then it's about time they started using modern uncertainty management methods, just as Richard Carrier advises them to do. Well, maybe not just as he does, ... but the basic (Bayes-ic?) advice is sound.

Except some biblical scholars who call themselves historians.

Nice shot, very classy. But the more productive thing to do is to witness for better methodology.

Now, if the only better methodology you can come up with is something that cannot be applied to the amount and quality of evidence available to your advisee, then you would actually be advising them to quit. That may well be what you intend to advise them, but since your recommendation has no foundation in domain independent norms of uncertainty management, then it isn't on them if they do the sensible thing and look elsewhere for advice.

[neilgodfrey]

Historians form hypotheses that are subject to falsification by the specific evidence they are actually working with.

True

But your missing the fact no historian or scholar has ever been able to refute the current standing hypothesis that holds complete historicity for Jesus.

Every hypothesis ever brought forward for a mythical origin of jesus has failed miserably, to the point of absurdity.

Its why almost all scholars agree he existed

So true. So true. Only we are not talking about mythicism but historical methods. Why the fuck are you so obsessed with mythicism?

[neilgodfrey]

Now, if the only better methodology you can come up with is something that cannot be applied to the amount and quality of evidence available to your advisee, then you would actually be advising them to quit. That may well be what you intend to advise them, but since your recommendation has no foundation in domain independent norms of uncertainty management, then it isn't on them if they do the sensible thing and look elsewhere for advice.

I'm not advising anyone. I simply think that the normative methods of historical studies in nonbiblical fields should be applied to biblical studies. Some biblical scholars actually do that already. But not, as far as I am aware, with the study of Christian origins.

[neilgodfrey]

[

Except some biblical scholars who call themselves historians.

Nice shot, very classy. But the more productive thing to do is to witness for better methodology.

I'm serious. Most of them have no knowledge of historical studies as practiced by historians outside their narrow field of biblical studies. No knowledge of the history of the discipline, no idea of the philosophical questions related to history, no awareness of their methods. The occasional biblical scholar author will say as much, and then try to educate them by a smattering of Elton and White.

[outhouse]

Historians form hypotheses that are subject to falsification by the specific evidence they are actually working with.

True

But your missing the fact no historian or scholar has ever been able to refute the current standing hypothesis that holds complete historicity for Jesus.

Every hypothesis ever brought forward for a mythical origin of jesus has failed miserably, to the point of absurdity.

Its why almost all scholars agree he existed

So true. So true. Only we are not talking about mythicism but historical methods. Why the fuck are you so obsessed with mythicism?

Why are you so obsessed with the factual historicity jesus currently holds?

I agree all day long biblical scholars over attribute historicity, but that does not excuse how conspiracy minded mythicist evaluate the evidence that exist. It gets to lunacy when they make claims like John the Baptist did not exist or Paul did not exist and write in the mid 50's.