How do we know X existed?

[neilgodfrey]

If the only evidence we have is that a passage in a gospel is a rewriting of a fictional story and there is no independent evidence that the passage is derived from a "true event", then I don't know how we would justify any decision except to treat the passage as fiction -- or at least as if the content of its narrative has no historical basis.

We don't know whether or not there's a historical basis. That's the question (often), not the normative answer. You proposed Occam, fine, or it would be fine if there were something "simpler" about writing fiction than writing non-fiction. Or writing, full stop, without authorial commitment whether the raw material is factual or not.

Yes, it is true that it is just as simple to imagine an author writing fiction as it is to imagine the author writing non-fiction. No difference.

But historians are doing something different. They are seeking the hypotheses that best explain the data they see in front of them. They have rules. The rules are that they have to explain the data by means of evidence.

They are not allowed to sit back and imagine what would be the simplest explanation that requires no evidence. The one rule of the game is that a piece of data has to be explained by reference to evidence in front of them.

That's how historians work.

Compare:

They are not allowed to introduce an explanation for an event if there is no evidence for that explanation. They cannot say that God poured down ash from his heavenly bowls onto Vesuvius from heaven if there is no evidence for God doing that but that there is evidence that a volcano destroyed Pompeii. They cannot even say that God caused the volcano to destroy Pompeii because there is no evidence that he did, even though it might be "simpler" to say that "God did it" than to appeal to all the geophysics involved in the eruption of a volcano.


Compare:

I see evidence that narrative A (Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days) is sourced from narratives B (Israel was in the wilderness 40 days). Everyone can see that same evidence and agree that narrative A is based on narrative B.

There is no evidence that narrative A is derived from source C [that Jesus really went into the wilderness for 40 days].

Now it might have been the case that Jesus really did go into the wilderness for 40 days but without any evidence that he really did so we cannot say that he did -- at least not in our reconstruction of history. We can say he did, but we would have no evidence that he did. We would be making an evidence-free claim. But we do have evidence that an author created a story about Jesus based on an OT story.

The simplest evidence-based explanation of the gospel story is that it was inspired by the OT story.


Compare:

We can see the evidence from fossils that creatures evolved.

It is more complex to introduce the notion that aliens engineered our evolution because there is no evidence that they did.

Therefore the simpler explanation -- the one requiring the fewer hypotheses -- is that we evolved without alien intervention.


Compare:

We have a biblical story of a world-wide flood and another, earlier, Mesopotamian story of a world-wide flood, and we have no evidence of a real world-wide flood.

It is simpler -- meaning we need fewer hypotheses for the explanation -- that the biblical story borrowed from the Mesopotamian story than that it also borrowed from a historical memory of a world-wide flood.

And FWIW, we cannot observe that one text rewrites another. That is an inference. We can observe (when combined with information about which came first) that a text was influenced by some earlier text.

Example (from a different art) It's easy to find images online of artwork depicting George Washington being welcomed into heaven (or Olympus, or whatever exalted afterlife setting). For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apoth ... Washington

Obviously, the whole composition restates motifs from earlier artwork. So what of the focal figure? No problem - we have other sources telling us he's a real man who actually lived. Suppose we didn't. The assumption that he wasn't real is as much of an assumption as that he was. There is no difference between them in "simplicity."

Exactly. It would in that case, the case where we had no sources to demonstrate that Washington was real, be an assumption that he did exist. In a world that had no evidence for Washington's existence it would be an evidence-free claim to say that he did exist.

Historians cannot justify claiming that Washington did exist if they have no evidence for his existence and only evidence for his mythical associations.

That is quite correct.

But if our methods are such that we want to make evidence-based statements, then we can only say that all the evidence we have for Washington is that picture, and nothing else, then it is more likely -- the simpler explanation in that it requires the fewer hypotheses to explain the data that we do have -- that Washington was believed to be a god.

Historians are are looking for the simplest explanation to explain the data in front of them by means of evidence.

[neilgodfrey]

Historians themselves have said that the methods are different. Some NT scholars have said they are not different but one only has to read and compare to see that they are indeed different.

Fair enough. You and I seem to agree that the standards are different. Those NT scholars who said otherwise should be corrected.

Let's be clear here about what those differences are.

Most historical Jesus scholarship has relied upon "criteria of authenticity" to make a particular case about the historical Jesus. Most, when pressed to answer how they know Jesus existed, will even in that instance resort to the same criteria. The criterion of embarrassment is said to establish his historicity. (e.g. The idea of a crucified messiah was an embarrassment that no-one would have made up so it had to be historical.)

No mainstream nonbiblical scholar, and none of those I quoted in the earlier post, uses such a method to establish the historical existence of a person who is then studied in research.

Nearly all historical Jesus scholarship has relied upon the assumption that oral tradition passed on memories of the historical Jesus until it was written down in the gospels. There is no independent evidence at all, only an assumption, for that oral tradition.

More recently some HJ scholars have decided to either minimize or reject entirely the criteria of authenticity approach and have turned to memory theory. Again, that method rests entirely on the assumption that there were historical events to be remembered and passed on orally. Yet there is no independent evidence for those events.

External controls are not used by NT scholars to establish the historicity of Jesus and his life. See, for example, the criticism of one classicist of a particular approach to HJ studies: https://vridar.org/2017/10/31/an-ancien ... generally/

The methods set out in the quotations of historians in that earlier post are all about independent controls to corroborate evidence. In the list of persons found in ancient historical records that I posted above, in every case where there are independent or external controls there is reasonable, corroborated evidence-based confidence in the historicity of the person.

There is no evidence-based corroboration of the historicity of Jesus in either their use of criteria of embarrassment or of their use of memory theory. There is no independent evidence to support the assumption that there were communities or individuals passing on memories about Jesus until they were written in the gospels.

(It was also assumed that form criticism can be used to establish the historicity of certain sayings in the gospels and by extension the historical basis of Jesus' teaching, but it is now more widely recognized that form criticism cannot carry such a heavy burden. At best it can point towards an earlier form of a saying but it cannot of itself demonstrate it was spoken by a historical Jesus. It could, in theory, have originated with anyone in the "community".)

[Paul the Uncertain]

"God did it"

There's a lot wrong with that quasi-explanation. While it earns full marks for parsimony, it lacks adequacy, it fails to explain anything (it merely restates "it happened") and lacks specificty, it is unable to explain why things that might have happened didn't (God can do anything).

I have heard a NT studies grad student, Ian Mills, explain "methodological naturalism." He seems to believe that God does things, but he accepts methodological naturalism in is scholarship, and prety much for the right reason: it can be invoked whatever happens, therefore it cannot explain why anything in particular happened and other things did not.

Or more secularly, "God did it" is interchangeable with "stuff happens" (for which there is plenty of evidence, so that's not the big problem with God did it). Both terms are a fairly read as "I have no explanation," rather than being explanations.

Everyone can see that same evidence and agree that narrative A is based on narrative B.

I can't. I see influence in the form of expression. "40 time intervals" is a formulaic way of saying "several time intervals" in the Jewish Bible. Mark read the Jewish Bible, and picked up this turn of phrase there. So what? Good writers borrow; great writers steal. Mark is at least a good writer.

I could go on but evidence is what you observe, ultimately with your senses. How you interpret what you've perceived is inference, hypothesis, conjecture, opinion ... but not evidence.

The simplest evidence-based explanation of the gospel story is that it was inspired by the OT story.

Maybe. Many fields allow trade-offs among simplicity, specificity and adequacy. If history doesn't ... well, speaking of evidence, I'll wait for evidence that it doesn't.

But back to Washington for just a moment,

Historians cannot justify claiming that Washington did exist if they have no evidence for his existence and only evidence for his mythical associations.

But they could conceivably justify claiming his existence to be the best explanation of whatever evidence they had, where "best" is understood in terms of simplicity, adequacy, specificity and inherent plausibility. It is not obvious that "mythical associations" throughout the evidence ought to disqualify hypotheses from being evaluated that way in light of that evidence.

We can't pursue this hypothetical very far, because there are too many distinct "states of the evidence" and specific hypotheses for us to evaluate all the many possibilities. It is a cautionary tale, not likely to develop into a "worked example."

One down, one to go

(e.g. The idea of a crucified messiah was an embarrassment that no-one would have made up so it had to be historical.)

Not the sort of argument I'd make (to me, it reeks of the speaker projecting their own tastes onto other people, to name one difficulty). Nor you either, I suspect.

But I also read bible scholars criticizing those criteria. I'd at least consider the possibility that the field is simply less mature than academic history, as well as less generously provisioned with bearing evidence on the problems that define each field.

No mainstream nonbiblical scholar, and none of those I quoted in the earlier post, uses such a method to establish the historical existence of a person who is then studied in research.

OK, but we have a "$100 bill lying on the sidewalk" problem. If the people you quoted really had methods that reliably produced better results in the same problems with the same evidence as NT scholars work with, then why aren't some of the army of unemployed history PhD's taking over NT studies? Why is the $100 bill still there on the sidewalk?

Nearly all historical Jesus scholarship has relied upon the assumption that oral tradition passed on memories of the historical Jesus until it was written down in the gospels. There is no evidence at all, only an assumption, for that oral tradition.

Again, what I read is a developing and even developed awareness that whatever the gospels are, they are not historical records. If it hasn't already, then eventually it will occur to somebody that the crucial assumption about oral traditon being linked to historicity is that true stories would somehow fare better than false stories.

That's not the impression I get from Mark's gospel, and it seems less tenable as corresponding stories evolve from one gospel to the next.

As to memory theory, I'm no expert in it, but it doesn't seem to predict that true stories will fare better over time and space than false ones, either.

Anyway, perhaps we agree that drawing strong conclusions from weak evidence is inherently difficult. I have confidence that if historians can do better, then soon enough they will do it.

As Carrier demonstrates, ironically and in spite of himself, even Bayesian methods aren't going to settle the HJ-MJ uncertainty until and unless there's more and better evidence. Bayes and near-Bayes are about doing as much as you can and as well as you can with the available evidence, not going beyond what that evidence could possibly support.

[neilgodfrey]

"God did it"

There's a lot wrong with that quasi-explanation. . . . .

Instead of assigning responsibility to God I could have used any other figure or name there. The point is that we have no evidence apart from the physical evidence of the volcanic eruption.

The point being--- we need to base our conclusions on evidence. We can't just imagine that there are other sources for which we have no evidence. That would be against the rules of historical reasoning or methods -- as historians themselves have written in their books and articles.

Everyone can see that same evidence and agree that narrative A is based on narrative B.

I can't. I see influence in the form of expression. "40 time intervals" is a formulaic way of saying "several time intervals" in the Jewish Bible. Mark read the Jewish Bible, and picked up this turn of phrase there. So what? Good writers borrow; great writers steal. Mark is at least a good writer.

Well you can't see what I think most Bible scholars can see and acknowledge in the many publications about that influence. You are the lone outlier.

Even most Christian scholars, those who acknowledge their faith in their publications, in all of the books and articles I have read by them on such points as those influences, can see them and acknowledge them.

I could go on but evidence is what you observe, ultimately with your senses. How you interpret what you've perceived is inference, hypothesis, conjecture, opinion ... but not evidence.

Now that is simply not so at all. I use my sense of sight to see the relationships between textual narratives.

And yes, when I see clearly similar narratives I draw inferences. Like when a detective sees a body lying on the floor with a bullet in its head and hears witnesses saying they heard a gunshot and saw someone with a gun race off in a getaway car soon afterwards, the inference from the information that comes through his sense of sight and hearing is that the body on the floor was shot by someone who did not wait around to be caught.

Information via senses is processed.

Everyone who reads Homer's epics and then reads Virgil's Aeneid can see that one was based on the other. Except maybe you?

The reason is the pervasive similarities in structures, motifs, themes, language -- all discernable through the sense of sight or hearing.

Can you find me any biblical scholar who denies the same kind of influence of OT narratives on gospel narratives? I doubt it.

The simplest evidence-based explanation of the gospel story is that it was inspired by the OT story.

Maybe. Many fields allow trade-offs among simplicity, specificity and adequacy. If history doesn't ... well, speaking of evidence, I'll wait for evidence that it doesn't.

That's fine. And we all do that. All knowledge is provisional. We are all open to new evidence coming along and changing our views.

But until that day comes it is legitimate to accept that our given state of knowledge does not allow us to speak of any independently corroborated evidence for Jesus.

But back to Washington for just a moment,

Historians cannot justify claiming that Washington did exist if they have no evidence for his existence and only evidence for his mythical associations.

But they could conceivably justify claiming his existence to be the best explanation of whatever evidence they had, where "best" is understood in terms of simplicity, adequacy, specificity and inherent plausibility. It is not obvious that "mythical associations" throughout the evidence ought to disqualify hypotheses from being evaluated that way in light of that evidence.

We can "conceive" of anything we want. But if we want to play by the rules of academic historians we need independently corroborating evidence for any claim we make about what actually happened in the past. That's why good history books are filled with copious footnotes demonstrating that each point is based on corroborated sources.

Just because an event is plausible doesn't allow a historian to say it happened. There needs to be corroborating evidence, too. Many things are plausible. Many more things are conceivable. But there are rules historians work by.

We can't pursue this hypothetical very far, because there are too many distinct "states of the evidence" and specific hypotheses for us to evaluate all the many possibilities. It is a cautionary tale, not likely to develop into a "worked example."

You can come up with a million possible explanations for how and why someone might think Washington in the mythologizing painting was historical but unless any of them can appeal to evidence they are not historically justifiable.

You are setting up a world that is not ours, but a make-believe world where there is no evidence for a historical Washington. In that world Washington is indeed a myth. The only evidence you have allowed in that imaginary word is the painting of him associated with mythical figures.

It is simply not credible by any standard to seriously argue a case that that Washington in your imaginary world was historical.

(e.g. The idea of a crucified messiah was an embarrassment that no-one would have made up so it had to be historical.)

Not the sort of argument I'd make (to me, it reeks of the speaker projecting their own tastes onto other people, to name one difficulty). Nor you either, I suspect.

I am pointing out the methods of many HJ scholars. What you would argue is beside the point and doesn't change what many HJ scholars do in fact argue.

But I also read bible scholars criticizing those criteria. I'd at least consider the possibility that the field is simply less mature than academic history, as well as less generously provisioned with bearing evidence on the problems that define each field.

1. We all know the criteria approach as been criticized sharply in the field.
2. We also know that some scholars have defended the criteria approach in a limited or modified fashion in the light of those criticisms.
3. Biblical studies are older in universities than modern historical studies that really did not get under way till the nineteenth century. So what excuse for "less mature" do those biblical studies have?
4. The fact that "biblical studies" are "less generously provisioned with evidence" relating to the questions they discuss is the whole point we are discussing this question of method in the first place. Classicists do not resort to "less mature" methods to make allowances for the comparative paucity of evidence in their field. They tailor the questions they ask to match what the data will allow them to ask and answer.

No mainstream nonbiblical scholar, and none of those I quoted in the earlier post, uses such a method to establish the historical existence of a person who is then studied in research.

OK, but we have a "$100 bill lying on the sidewalk" problem. If the people you quoted really had methods that reliably produced better results in the same problems with the same evidence as NT scholars work with, then why aren't some of the army of unemployed history PhD's taking over NT studies? Why is the $100 bill still there on the sidewalk?

Surely the answers are obvious to anyone who knows the first thing about professional guilds.

The NT scholars (the ones we are implicitly talking about -- because I have the highest respect for many of them) are very happy with their current methods, answers and debates.

Historians who do do things differently are smart enough to keep clear of where their work and methods will not be welcome -- not even publishable. The $100 bill is found in the departments where their work and methods are welcome.

Nearly all historical Jesus scholarship has relied upon the assumption that oral tradition passed on memories of the historical Jesus until it was written down in the gospels. There is no evidence at all, only an assumption, for that oral tradition.

Again, what I read is a developing and even developed awareness that whatever the gospels are, they are not historical records. If it hasn't already, then eventually it will occur to somebody that the crucial assumption about oral traditon being linked to historicity is that true stories would somehow fare better than false stories.

HJ scholars have known for generations that many of the stories in the gospels are not historical. What is the "problem" with their methods, as I see it, is that they assume that those mythical tales were told about Jesus because he left such a strong impression on his followers. The problem is that this reasoning begs the question: it assumes that myths were generated by an impressive person in history but there is no independent corroborating evidence for that person. The evidence we have before our sense of sight is that the myths were another of the many forms of re-written OT stories.

Anyway, perhaps we agree that drawing strong conclusions from weak evidence is inherently difficult. I have confidence that if historians can do better, then soon enough they will do it.

The primary evidence for Pythagoras is "weak" insofar as it relies upon a late but credible report of a poet contemporary with Pythagoras. But that is still better than a report long after P's time that does not cite any contemporary evidence. If the latter is all we had we would have no evidence for P's existence that would stand the test of what historians require to be found in their evidence (as the quotations demonstrated).

I admire your confidence. If only that was how the real world worked!

[mlinssen]

No mainstream nonbiblical scholar, and none of those I quoted in the earlier post, uses such a method to establish the historical existence of a person who is then studied in research.

OK, but we have a "$100 bill lying on the sidewalk" problem. If the people you quoted really had methods that reliably produced better results in the same problems with the same evidence as NT scholars work with, then why aren't some of the army of unemployed history PhD's taking over NT studies? Why is the $100 bill still there on the sidewalk?

Because the pay is so ridiculously low in biblical academic that only zealots will take the job.
And anyway, what amount of work is there to do for a historian in biblical studies? That's like sending a cheerleader to a bingo evening

As Carrier demonstrates, ironically and in spite of himself, even Bayesian methods aren't going to settle the HJ-MJ uncertainty until and unless there's more and better evidence. Bayes and near-Bayes are about doing as much as you can and as well as you can with the available evidence, not going beyond what that evidence could possibly support.

There's no HJ-MJ uncertainty at all: there is no evidence for a historical Jesus, case closed. Yes of course there are tons of desperate religiots ready to abuse their academic standards in order to claim that their Geewsus existed - but that is something quite different.
Oral and memory studies serve only one purpose: to establish a no man's land in between the two parties, an escape from taking sides; it's a deliberate action aimed at creating a stalemate, thereby postponing their acceptance of the inevitable conclusion that has already been drawn

There's only one essential point to all of this: name me just one other academic field that has established its own Department of History because they refuse to accept the blindingly clear and well argued verdict of their professional, learned, academic and scholarly colleagues

[neilgodfrey]

Here are some more quotes from historians explaining how they "know about the past". The first is from

• Day, Mark. The Philosophy of History: An Introduction. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008.

The ‘primary source’ is . . . the only building block . . . essential for . . critical history. (p. 27)

What is a primary source?

One of the conditions that makes a source "primary" in the literature, Day points out, is that it is contemporary or "temporally proximate" with the event to which it refers. But he gives as one example of a document that is generally considered a primary source for the "daily lives of the Catalan peasants" in the early fourteenth century: the document is the Inquisition Register of the bishop of a region in southern France but it was written "some eighteen years after the events reported". So does it really qualify as a "primary source" for the daily lives of the peasants eighteen years earlier?

With this case in mind, Mark Day prefers to define primary sources as "those which are evidentially reliable". (p. 29)

Bayes again

Mark Day has a chapter addressing two types of "historical reasoning". One is Bayesian reasoning, the other is what he calls "explanationism".

Day acknowledges the high value of Bayesian reasoning (this is written before Carrier's Proving History) but he draws short of Aviezer Tucker's view that Bayesianism at some level reflects almost all historical reasoning:

Whether Bayesianism can provide a sufficient model for understanding historical reasoning of course depends on what kind of understanding we want, and what precisely we want to understand. Perhaps no Bayesian has claimed that all aspects of historical reasoning are comprehensible solely in Bayesian terms, though Aviezer Tucker comes close: ‘Bayesian analysis can explain most of what historians do and how they reach a ... consensus on determined historiography (2004: 139). The best way to challenge this claim is to present an alternative: inference as explanation. (p. 37)

(See below for other quotations from Tucker.)

Another type of historical reasoning

Day refers to Peter Lipton's Inference to Best Explanation:

In judging which of two explanations is the ‘best’, we may choose the ‘likeliest’ explanation, or the ‘loveliest’ explanation (Lipton 2004: Chapter 4). The likeliest explanation of E is that which is most probably true; the loveliest explanation ofE that which would, iftrue, provide the most under­ standing of E. If the explanationist jumps straight to the former notion, it will be difficult to claim that anything but decoration is added to a straightforward Bayesianism. But to move first to lovely explanations, and to then infer the likely from the lovely, accords a substantive role to explanatory consideration.

Lovely explanations are those which embody explanatory virtues. (p. 42)

Those virtues are (1) consilience:

To turn to historical reasoning: we initially value a hypothesis (or sugges­tion) to the extent that it is consilient. A (more) consilient account is one which unifies evidence by relying on fewer independent elements (than other competing hypotheses). The line of best fit requires an equation with fewer independent terms. The historical hypothesis also accounts for evidence with fewer independent elements, often through the device of so-called ‘colligatory’ terms: ‘Renaissance’, ‘Industrial Revolution’, ‘Hapsburg expansion’ (a category of historical language that receives specific attention in Chapter 10). Contrast a consilient historical account with one that manifests the opposite vice: such a history would be disconnected —wherein each piece of evidence is explained separately - and ad hoc - such that explanatorily independent principles are introduced on a case-by-case basis. (p. 43)

and (2) precision:

More substantively, an explanationist approach to evidential likelihood sug­gests the relevance of the virtue of precision. A precise explanation is, compared to its competitor(s), more complete - fewer gaps in the causal history - and more accurate. Typically in historical reasoning . . . . one would prefer a detailed narrative of evidential provenance from the hypothesis. . . . To illustrate with a toy example: compare the more precise hypothesis ‘there were four Cathars in Montaillou in 1310’ with the more general ‘there were a few Cathars in Montaillou in 1310’. In terms of statistical likelihood alone, there is no potential evidence that is more likely given the former than the latter, but plenty of potential evidence that is more likely given the latter than the former. Yet, intuitively, we could imagine evidence which would make us prefer the former over the latter. To account for that preference, we need to recognize the additional virtue of precise explanation. (pp. 43f)

Rules of historical reasoning

The New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham has argued that a historian should give the benefit of the doubt to any testimony. That is a fine starting principle when one needs to get along with neighbours and colleagues, but few nonbiblical historians would agree that it applies to the sources from long ago.

Mark Day:

If we are deciding whether to believe a witness or documentary source, the hypothesis is that the source is true. The Bayesian equations would therefore have us consider which makes the testimonial evidence more likely: that the source was true, or that it was not. That decision might be based on knowledge of the particular case. . . . Where a witness has a proven track record and we have no reason to doubt their word, we would conclude the opposite. Finally, the judgement might be based on corroborating testimony. (p. 45)

Day has a section headed "Rules of historical reasoning". I'll quote from it:

So what is the methodology that historians typically take to govern their practice?

Before describing the rules of historical reasoning in more detail, a brief note on my methodology. By examining what is recommended, praised and criticized, we can arrive at an approximation of the rules which govern the production of historical writing. For while one can’t infer a norm simply from observing what is and is not done - since people get things wrong ignorantly, negligently, and deliberately - the inference of a norm from others’recommen­dations and responses to what is and is not done is more plausible. I have used ‘historiographical manuals’ - those books written for the student of history, and in particular postgraduate or PhD students of departments of history4 to elucidate the method of source criticism. I have used peer review of profes­sional historiographical monographs to investigate wider rules governing the practice.

From historiographical manuals we gain the appreciation that the historical practice has, at its heart, the Rankean method of source criticism. All historio­graphical claims should be based on the sources. . . . What follows are five points concerning the use of sources, each of which is consistently emphasized by pedagogical material of the above kind.

(1) In common with Ranke’s approach, the historian should prioritize primary sources, though should nonetheless be critical of these sources.

(2) Criticism of sources is two-fold; not only with regard to the claims of those sources concerning their intended topic, but with regard to the implicit claims of those sources concerning themselves. The second sort of criticism is the investigation into the document’s authenticity, established by asking whether the author could have written it, whether they could have been where they claimed to be, whether the paper, authorial style and handwriting permit the truth of the self-proclamation of the author. (So far we have not departed from critical SAP.)

(3) Source criticism is extended beyond the establishment of the identity of the author, to so-called ‘internal’ features of the source: the author’s aim, their ideological background and their intended audience. It is assumed that knowledge of these facts will aid the historian’s use of the source. (Exemplification of this point has already been suggested, in the case where the historian would be wise to find out whether the author had reason to lie, and why they might have done so.)

(4) Source criticism should also trace the path connecting the source with the historian, asking why it has survived and in the form that it has. . . .

(5) The historian is warned not to depend too much on a single document, but rather to utilize a wide range of evidence. This warning is to some extent implicit in the demand for source criticism, since it is obvious that no serious source criticism can proceed without employing knowledge gained from other sources.

Historiographical manuals tend to emphasize the rules of source criticism. Peer reviews tend to emphasize different rules that govern historiography. We can suppose that the former are regarded as more basic, in terms of both difficulty and perhaps importance.

I was going to add more from Eric Hobsbawm but will leave a link instead to where I have listed quotations about his sources and methods on my blog: https://vridar.org/2011/08/16/how-moder ... obin-hood/


I think the above complements the quotations I presented earlier and that I copy again below:

The case I have presented in the OP for how historians "know what happened" in the long-gone past was based on my reading of works of historical research and noting how historians justified their "fact" claims. I think the methods used are so ingrained in students of history from their earliest grad days that they tend to become second nature and easily become as unnoticeable as the air we breathe. It takes a little conscious effort for the lay reader to check to see how "facts" are determined. (I'm addressing the "facts" of the past, not theories or hypotheses to explain those facts or events of the past.)

But there are some discussions that do make that method explicit.

Here are some extracts from Aviezer Tucker who, like Carrier, says all historical reasoning can be described in Bayesian terms. But as mentioned above, I think in everyday research the historian does not consciously think in Bayesian steps but adapts to the "air" she or he breathes:

From

• Tucker, Aviezer. Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography. Reissue edition. Cambridge University Press, 2009. p. 121f

Historians usually exclude evidence written by authors that were separated by time or space from the events they describe, unless there is evidence for a credible causal chain that could have transmitted information from events to evidence. Historians may assess the fidelity of some types of evidence without evidence for a causal-information chain if other independent sources consistently agree or disagree with the information conveyed by particular authors, sources, or institutions. For example, though Diodorus and Pausanias are both sources for ancient Greek history who were separated by centuries from the events they described, Pausanias is valued as having a higher fidelity than Diodorus because other testimonies and material evidence confirm much of what he wrote (Kosso, 2001, p. 120).

That statement has significance for Christian origins studies, obviously. The "causal chain" most often proposed between the events of Jesus and the gospels is "oral tradition", and Q. Unfortunately, both of those "causal chains" are hypothetical. There is no evidence for them. That's not to say that oral tradition or now-lost texts did not exist. But if other explanations can be found for the sources that do not need to rely upon the hypothetical links then, all things being equal, one would expect those other explanations to have priority.

Now, never let an author get away with an unchecked citation, I have learned. So here is the relevant section of Kosso cited by Tucker:

• Kosso, Peter. Knowing the Past: Philosophical Issues of History and Archaeology. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2001. p. 120

These historical accounts [by Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch] might be thought of as direct references in that they mention cleruchies [i.e. types of Athenian settlements outside Attica] explicitly, but it would be misleading to regard them as direct information about events in the past. This is infor­mation that has been passed along by the historian, via his sources and with his writing, through time. There is work to be done in securing the credibility of these ancient writers on this particular subject. Diodorus and Plutarch, after all, were describing events that had taken place centuries earlier and their evidence is acceptable only insofar as we can keep track of how they would know about these things. Diodorus, in fact, is often inaccurate in his tales of ancient Greece, underscoring the need for justification of his particular claims about cleruchies. Pausanias, also writing centuries after cleruchs had come and gone, likewise makes explicit reference to the cleruchs sent to Euboea and Naxos, and Pausa­nias enjoys a good reputation for accuracy. This is due largely to his fre­quent description of landscapes and monuments, features of the land and culture that are preserved today and can be checked against his account. Here again, archaeology, the study of the material record, is used in accounting for historical evidence.

Again, this is a point that has arisen in other discussions here. We have sources for events that were written long after the events themselves. That does not mean they are useless, but it does mean that we look for the sources those authors used. If they are known to have used sources that go back to the time being discussed, then we have reason to believe that we are looking at the use of a primary source. Other questions will also arise and authenticity will still be sought, but the point being made here is one important principle of verification.

Continuing with Tucker, p. 122

Historians search assiduously for primary sources because they have higher fidelity than secondary sources. A major part of the education of historians consists of learning to distinguish primary from secondary sources. Historians usually agree on the classifications of sources. Still, the abstract definition of primary sources is more challenging. Marwick suggested first that “primary sources are sources which came into existence during the actual period of the past which the historian is studying, they are those relics and traces left by the past, while secondary sources are those accounts written later by historians looking back” (1993, p. 199). However, some primary sources come into existence long after the events the historian is studying; for example, later copies of ancient manuscripts such as the Greek classics.

Let's turn to a later edition of that work by Marwick:

• Marwick, Arthur. New Nature of History, The: Knowledge, Evidence, Language. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001. pp. 26f

Manifestly, one cannot travel to the past by ship or plane, or even through e-mail or the internet. This is a very serious point: the only way we can have knowledge of the past is through studying the relics and traces left by past societies, which I have already mentioned. Primary sources, as it were, form the basic 'raw material' of history; they are sources which came into existence within the period being investi­gated. The articles and books written up later by historians, drawing upon these primary sources, converting the raw material into history, are secondary sources (pedants insist on pointing out that secondary sources may become primary sources for still later historians, but this is a matter of such triviality as scarcely to be worth bothering about). The distinction between primary and secondary sources is a critical one, though no historian has ever pretended that it offers a magic key to the nature of historical study, or that primary sources have a necromantic potency denied to secondary ones. There is always some excitement about being in contact with a genuine primary source, but one will not learn very much from a single source. Reading through an edited selection of excerpts from primary sources will have the salutary effect of bringing one in contact with the thinking and language of past generations, but it will not amount to research. If the ordinary reader, or history student, wants to learn quickly about the role and status of women during the Renaissance, or about the causes of the First World War, they will be well advised to go to the secondary authorities, a knowledge of the principles of history being useful in separating out the more reliable from the less.

But if you are planning to make an original contribution to historical knowledge, you are unlikely to make much of a stir if you stick strictly to other people's work, that is, the secondary sources - to which, it should be stressed, the research historian will frequently return throughout all stages of research and writing. The difference is critical in that strategy which all historians, in one way or another, devise in embarking on a new research project. It is through the secondary sources that one becomes aware of the gaps in knowledge, problems unsolved, suspect explanations. It is with the aid of these secondary sources, and all the other resources of the profession, that one begins to identify the archives in which one will commence one's researches.

Primary sources, numbingly copious in some areas, are scarce and fragmentary in others. Much has to be garnered indirectly and by infer­ence. Historians do not rely on single sources, but are always seeking corroboration, qualification, correction; the production of history is very much a matter of accumulating details, refining nuances. The technical skills of the historian lie in sorting these matters out, in understanding how and why a particular source came into existence, how relevant it is to the topic under investigation, and, obviously, the particular codes or language in accordance with which the particular source came into being as a concrete artefact.

Corroboration is what I have referred to in other posts as "external controls". Obviously, to avoid circularity, a corroborating or supporting source needs to be independent of the source it backs up, as is made clear in the quotations that follow:

Here is a key point that has been raised with the question of the evidence for the historicity of Pythagoras. Again Tucker, p. 123

Historians cannot transcend the evidence to check its reliability against history. They must bootstrap their evaluations of the fidelity of particular evidence by other evidence. Historians use independent sources to evaluate each other’s fidelity. Independent sources testify to the fidelity of a source or provide information on what the author could and could not have seen or known, as well as information on the information causal chain that may or may not have connected an event or a document with the evidence (Kosso, 1993, pp. 3–4). This is the fundamental practice of historians, which is taught as part of the historiographic guild’s right of passage (Evans, 1999, pp. 16–17). This is also the great success story of modern historiography as its countless exposures of forgeries may attest.

That's why I said in another thread that we only need one primary source for the existence of a person to establish that person's historicity -- if that primary source is backed up in some way. A quote below from Kosso expands on this point. An example of the birth certificate was once given. The birth certificate might be considered a single source, but it is not. There is the name entered in the certificate and there is the stamp or other markings that we are given reasons to believe authenticate the name in it.

Let's check out more from Kosso, this time from

• Kosso, Peter. “Historical Evidence and Epistemic Justification: Thucydides as a Case Study.” History and Theory 32, no. 1 (1993): 1–13.

Our knowledge of the past, like much of our knowledge of the present, is based on evidence, the informational link between the observable and the interesting. But evidential claims must themselves be justified, and a thorough epistemology of history or of science must describe both the role of evidence as supplier of justification and the need by evidence to be justified. . . . . The goal is to understand and evaluate how textual information of the distant past comes to be deemed accurate and reliable. . . . .

. . . .The guiding question here is not, as the historian initially asks, Is Thucydides believable? or even the less tendentious, What in Thucydides is believable? It is rather the methodological and epistemological question, What are the available standards for evaluating the credibility of Thucydides?

pp. 1f.

and

Thus, when Pausanius’s written description of architectural monuments and natural terrain of ancient Greece agrees with present observations of the material remains, both archaeo­logical evidence (claims about dates and uses of objects, for example) and the textual evidence in Pausanius receive a measure of justification.

Mutual corroboration can also occur between texts if different authors make references to the same or to related things. To the degree that their accounts are consistent and of explanatory relevance to each other, each gains credibility. They can function, in other words, as accounting claims for each other. But there is epistemic benefit in their agreement only if they are independent sources of information in the sense that neither uses the other as a source. This is a concern, for example, in noting the agreement in accounts of Diodorus Siculus and Thucydides. Much of what Diodorus says may well be lifted from Thucyd­ides, thus building in from the start the consistency between the two, and thereby making the comparison no test for either. Since neither source of evidence is epistemically privileged (neither, that is, brings a special status of justification into the comparison), epistemic benefit derives only from their being indepen­ dent. Comparison to an independent source is a genuine risk, and hence agreement is a genuine accomplishment.

Another kind of accounting claim occurs when one text refers to another. For example, one text may refer to the author of another, thereby providing a description of how the evidence was produced. Claims about authors could be general claims about their methods, for example, descriptions of their skills as observers and reporters. They could also be more specific accounts of their access to particular events. This kind of information contributes to our under­standing of how the textual record was formed, since it provides background information on the transfer of information from historical events to witnesses, from witnesses to the original texts, and from the original texts to the versions of the texts that are available today. Textual claims about authors, their methods, and the preparation and subsequent treatment of texts, are very much like the middle-range theories used to account for the archaeological record. Just as the middle-range theories, mostly archaeological claims themselves and both general and specific in content, are used to describe the formation of the present material record and thereby give it meaning and credibility, so textual accounting claims within history can often be found and used to similar purpose. In both cases, and as before, there is epistemic value in using independent claims in this role of accounting. The middle-range theory must be independent of any theory for which the sponsored evidence is a test. This is to block the circularity of a theory accounting for its own evidence, a circularity that would make the testing vacuous. For the same reason, a textual source of information about some particular textual evidence must be independent of that evidence. The author of the accounting claims, for example, must not be a sycophant of the historian being described, but must have an independent source of credibility. This suggests that the structure of justification of historical knowledge will be one of coherence rather than foundational, since claims that function to account for evidence are themselves evidence in need of justification.

Three kinds of accounting claims for historical evidence have been described so far, beginning with the most external source of support and moving to a more internal. The fourth and final category is the most internal of all, that is, the use of information in textual evidence to account for itself, to aid its own interpretation and credibility. In this case we look to claims made by the author, for example Thucydides, rather than about the author, for indications of justi­fication. An author might, for example, explicitly discuss his methods of obser­vation and recordkeeping. He might mention his own sources and even details of their access to events in the narrative, showing care to distinguish eyewitness reports from hearsay. And there are less direct features of the writing that might also contribute to the case for credibility. Consistency in the account is at least a necessary feature of accuracy. Attention to detail, vivid writing, and explanatory coherence are all features of a text that can be evaluated on a careful reading and that might be used as indicators of accuracy and credibility. A balanced presentation of two sides to the issues might suggest that the author is objective in reporting events. But the ice is clearly getting thinner, and the epistemological question to press at this thoroughly internal level of accounting is whether any of these features of the text itself can reliably distinguish the truth from clever fiction.

pp. 3f.

And Evans, . . . who is one of my favourite historians and I could quote much more but let's confine this to Tucker's reference:

• Evans, Richard J. In Defence of History. London: W. W. Norton, 1999.

Whatever the means they use, historians still have to engage in the basic Rankean spadework of investigating the provenance of documents, of inquiring about the motives of those who wrote them, the cir­cumstances in which they were written, and the ways in which they relate to other documents on the same subject.

pp. 16f

Amen. Now, what happens when we apply all of the above to the evidence we have for Christian origins? Start with the Evans' quote and doing the "basic Rankean spadework". Keep in mind we are looking for evidence, not theories or hypotheses. if the evidence does not exist, shelve the source data for a moment and do the next check box. Then return to what had to be shelved and see where we are.

[Paul the Uncertain]

Instead of assigning responsibility to God I could have used any other figure or name there. The point is that we have no evidence apart from the physical evidence of the volcanic eruption.

Yes, you could have, and I did ("stuff happens"). The evidentiary component of the divine quasi-explanation's defects is not so much that there isn't evidence (as shown by: the interchangability with the well-evidenced "stuff happens") but rather the dim prospect that there ever will be bearing evidence.

That defect is shared by the fact-claim "nobody would have made up a crucified messiah." Yes, it is a prioristic claim (offered for its perceived inherent plausibility, not its evidentiary foundation - such offerings are normatively permissible, even routine) but it's troublesome because the kind of evidence needed to examine the claim is unlikely ever to be available . Basically, we need psychological evaluations of anonymous people who've been dead for almost 2000 years. That's never going to happen, not really.

(And it is perceived plausibility. From a depth psychology perspective, Christ Crucified is the very model of a story that people might invent, and transparently analogous to other stories that fascinate people = draw them into the freak show tent to confront their worst nightmares in a safe setting.)

That would be against the rules of historical reasoning or methods -- as historians themselves have written in their books and articles.

Not just the rules (you mean something like norms, right?) of history, but far more generally than that.

As a hypothesis to explain some of the dependence among the synoptics "Q" is admissible (unless there's something wrong with the hypothesis "Luke copied Matthew," too). IF somehow Q could be shown to have existed as a separate work very early on, THEN whatever was shown about Q probably would be useful evidence, but as a thoroughly hypothetical document it can't play the role of evidence.

FWIW, I think part of the problem is langauge usage. Many NT scholars seem to me to conflate "hypothesis formation" with "drawing conclusions." maybe because both involve "advocacy" for the candidate hypothesis. I don't know.

It is normatively untroubling to explore the set of possible worlds in which there is a Q document that was mined by both Luke and Matthew, or even to argue that there are other, less likely sets of complementary possible worlds (you don't have to plant any trees to judge the species by their fruits - up to a point).

OK, that much done, Q is an admissible hypothesis, and not the worst admissible hypothesis. In normative uncertainty management, that's a lot closer to the beginning of an investigation than to the conclusion phase.

You are the lone outlier.

Seriously? That's a mighty strong claim. I would think "avoid unevidenced sweeping generalizations" could be found somewhere among those "rules of historical scholarship" you're so keen about. Oh wait, is this one of those "do as I say, not as I do" moments?

But that's OK, we can easily see the hitch in the giddy-up:

Even most Christian scholars, those who acknowledge their faith in their publications, in all of the books and articles I have read by them on such points as those influences, can see them and acknowledge them.

I didn't deny influence. What part of "Good writers borrow, great writers steal" needs explanation?

It is breathtakingly obvious that Mark had read the Jewish Bible, and that he used tropes, turns of phrase, even bodily quotations from that source. That is what falls within the scope of evidence: observation and bearing.

Your claim was that the stories in gMark were "based on" the Jewish Bible in the sense of lacking any foundation (influence from) real events or even scuttlebutt about what the speakers considered to be possibly real and remarkable events. Even if you are correct, it is an inference rather than an observation, and therefore it is not evidence.

I use my sense of sight to see the relationships between textual narratives.

You didn't see Mark composing the text, however. You don't who he is, that he is a single person and not a team, ... you don't know anything about the guy, not even which of the 11K or so words attributed to him are actually "his." Pardon me, then, if I mention that you don't know in any detail how Mark used the Jewish Bible, you just know that he did use it enough for you to see that he made some use of it.

We are all open to new evidence coming along and changing our views.

No, not all of us (what is with the sweeping generalizations?). Bart Ehrman, at least for a time, professed certainty about Jesus being a real man who actually lived. That is the antithesis of openness to new evidence coming along and changing our views. On information and belief, Bart Ehrman is not the sole outlier with that viewpoint, either.

But until that day comes it is legitimate to accept that our given state of knowledge does not allow us to speak of any independently corroborated evidence for Jesus.

Fine. But the more urgent issue is whether it is legitimate (reasonable?) to accept that Jesus was (repsectively, was not) a real person who actually lived. Yes, it is (either way as the person is disposed), and so, too, to decline to accept either of those alternatives. Apparently that's your position. Good for you.

But if we want to play by the rules of academic historians

And if we aren't and don't aspire to be academic historians, then we may well decide to play by other rules, maybe even rules better suited to the investigation of questions of more interest to us than to them, with resources of a kind, quality and quantity typical for us and atypical for them.

Kumbaya.

There needs to be corroborating evidence, too.

There you go. So, the academic historians can leave the room, and anybody who wishes can stay behind while the rest of us work out what can be done with the evidence we do have (even realizing how meager that is, and how unlikely it is that that situation will ever much improve).

You are setting up a world that is not ours, but a make-believe world where there is no evidence for a historical Washington.

I set up a world where the evidence about Washington would be analogous to the evidence about Jesus in the real world, with emphasis on an aspect of the real evidence that apparently carries far more weight for you than it does for me.

All analogies have their limits, and this one is further limited (for me) by design. It has either illustrated its intended point, or else it has not, but either way, we have extracted the juice from this lemon.

3. Biblical studies are older in universities than modern historical studies that really did not get under way till the nineteenth century. So what excuse for "less mature" do those biblical studies have?

Secular-respecting Bible academic scholarship is about the same age as modern historical studies. Even if it weren't, what difference would it make whether or not any field could "excuse" its level of maturity compared with that of a different field?

I thought we were trying to advance Biblical scholarhip by constructive criticism and suggesting alternative ways forward. "You have some growing up to do" is constructive as a reasoned diagnosis of a problem, but unhelpful as an accusation which the target is expected "to excuse."

Classicists do not resort to "less mature" methods to make allowances for the comparative paucity of evidence in their field. They tailor the questions they ask to match what the data will allow them to ask and answer.

Great, then we can conjecture "academic fields may usefully be defined by the questions that they collectively try to answer." That sounds promising. It seems to align seamlessly with the conjecture "academic fields adopt standards suited to the questions they ask and the means available to pursue answers."

NT Studies is a different field than Classics, and both are different fields from Ancient History, which is a different field from Archeology. Yup, different questions pursued by different means. All is right with the world.

Historians who do do things differently are smart enough to keep clear of where their work and methods will not be welcome -- not even publishable. The $100 bill is found in the departments where their work and methods are welcome.

I was talking about the legions of those who haven't found employment in their home field, and yet (by hypothesis) are credentialed experts in methods that allegedly would improve NT scholarship. They don't have departments. Maybe they wait tables, or drive Uber, or went into marketing.

I made an empirical point about "the guild" last weekend. Admittedly a small one: an engineer can compete and obtain a polite hearing at a guild meeting. A small meeting to be sure, but proof of concept all the same. If a putzer like me can do it, and academic historians are so vastly superior to me in uncertain reasoning, and surely some of them go to (or respectively emphatically refuse to go to) church regularly, meaning there must be some questions about the Bible that interest them -

Well, there's the $100 on the sidewalk. Why isn't it in somebody's pocket? Some of them have nothing to lose but their cab. (Didn't Thompson paint houses, but end up the toast of the senior common room?)

The problem is that this reasoning begs the question: it assumes that myths were generated by an impressive person in history but there is no independent corroborating evidence for that person.

No, it doesn't beg the question. It states a hypothesis. Neither of us is pleased with the level of confidence displayed in the hypothesis, but unless the credal agent misrepresents the evidence (claims that there is corroborating evidence, e.g. refuses to acknowkledge that Q is only hypothetical) or does something else objectively wrong, then de gustibus non disputandum, or different strokes for different folks.

I don't question the overall descriptive adequacy of your presentations. But I have yet to see anything of much prescriptive merit = a reason for NT studies to change radically what it's doing (which evidently does already include having some openness to new methods, perspectives and range of scholar with which it will engage). Every field, every human enterprise, could do better than it does, of course. Not much specific follows from that.

One post at a time ... later today, if all goes well, @mlinssen

[neilgodfrey]

Your claim was that the stories in gMark were "based on" the Jewish Bible in the sense of lacking any foundation (influence from) real events or even scuttlebutt about what the speakers considered to be possibly real and remarkable events. Even if you are correct, it is an inference rather than an observation, and therefore it is not evidence.

Try to grasp the point I am making. If there is no evidence for X then there can be no justification assuming X as if it were a fact. If there is no evidence that the gospel narratives were based on some historical events there is no justification for assuming that there was some historical core behind the narratives. At least that's according to what the various quotes by historians that I have posted here have to say.

You can imagine the possibility of a historical core behind the gospel narratives but the fact will remain that we have no evidence for that historical core so cannot speak of a historical core in any serious reconstruction of how the gospels came into existence.

I use my sense of sight to see the relationships between textual narratives.

You didn't see Mark composing the text, however. You don't who he is, that he is a single person and not a team, ... you don't know anything about the guy, not even which of the 11K or so words attributed to him are actually "his." Pardon me, then, if I mention that you don't know in any detail how Mark used the Jewish Bible, you just know that he did use it enough for you to see that he made some use of it.

Come now. I am trying my best to have a serious conversation. It would make no difference at all if I had seen Mark at his desk writing his gospel. What I can see and the only evidence that counts is the clear links between what he wrote and the stories in the OT.

We are all open to new evidence coming along and changing our views.

No, not all of us (what is with the sweeping generalizations?).

Apologies for trying to be gracious to us all in a conversation with you.

But until that day comes it is legitimate to accept that our given state of knowledge does not allow us to speak of any independently corroborated evidence for Jesus.

Fine. But the more urgent issue is whether it is legitimate (reasonable?) to accept that Jesus was (repsectively, was not) a real person who actually lived. Yes, it is (either way as the person is disposed), and so, too, to decline to accept either of those alternatives. Apparently that's your position. Good for you.

I was speaking of the nature of our evidence. That's not likely to change any time soon. What's with this nonsense about "my position"?

But if we want to play by the rules of academic historians

And if we aren't and don't aspire to be academic historians, then we may well decide to play by other rules, maybe even rules better suited to the investigation of questions of more interest to us than to them, with resources of a kind, quality and quantity typical for us and atypical for them.

Kumbaya.

There needs to be corroborating evidence, too.

There you go. So, the academic historians can leave the room, and anybody who wishes can stay behind while the rest of us work out what can be done with the evidence we do have (even realizing how meager that is, and how unlikely it is that that situation will ever much improve).

The rules are not complicated or hard. But many NT scholars are already doing what you seem to want to do: play another game that does not require primary sources, does not require external controls or independent corroboration, that allows circularity and question-begging as starting positions in an inquiry, that allows totally evidence-free hypotheses to be treated seriously, that does not require normative methods of dating, that allows for made-up provenances of sources, that creates imaginary evidence from hypotheses instead of creating hypotheses from real evidence.

The problem is that this reasoning begs the question: it assumes that myths were generated by an impressive person in history but there is no independent corroborating evidence for that person.

No, it doesn't beg the question. . . .

Yes it does. . (And it is not understood as a hypothesis, either. It is stated by many NT scholars as "a fact".)

[Paul the Uncertain]

@mlinssen

Because the pay is so ridiculously low in biblical academic that only zealots will take the job.

Well, we're talking about people who invested in a humantiies PhD. And it's indoor work, no heavy lifting, short hours, no weekends or late nights, summers and every seventh year off with pay ... and be it ever so penurious come payday, it still just might beat Uber.

And anyway, what amount of work is there to do for a historian in biblical studies? That's like sending a cheerleader to a bingo evening

Sounds like you've never been to an American bingo night.

There's no HJ-MJ uncertainty at all: there is no evidence for a historical Jesus, case closed.

Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier agree that HJ is seriously possible, but differ as to the odds by about as much as two people can. Case open, game on.

Oral and memory studies serve only one purpose: to establish a no man's land in between the two parties, an escape from taking sides; it's a deliberate action aimed at creating a stalemate, thereby postponing their acceptance of the inevitable conclusion that has already been drawn

I think the stalemate is pretty much there anyway, perhaps more between the academy and the substantial portion of the public (= those who pay for the academy) who view Jesus Studies as a field whose subject matter doesn't exist (as many people view theology already). Maybe not so much within the academy, where Jesus Denier is pejorative and a career blocker.

There's only one essential point to all of this: name me just one other academic field that has established its own Department of History because they refuse to accept the blindingly clear and well argued verdict of their professional, learned, academic and scholarly colleagues

Not my circus, not my monkey. There are people who know how the various academic departments carve up the many possible areas of specialized inquiry among themselves. I am not one of them.

@Neil later today, good Lord willing and the water don't rise.

[mlinssen]

Maybe not so much within the academy, where Jesus Denier is pejorative and a career blocker.

Thanks Paul! I'll leave it at that. It sums it all up, and it is perfectly concise - Thomas would approve