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

[Giuseppe]

It's curious that Carrier thinks the exact contrary: for him, the epistles reflected a world (still) without dogma, while later the gospels fixed a dogma on Terra firma. But can you call dogmatic a gospel when the gospel, any gospel, could be utilized to say all and the contrary of all by his intrinsic (allegorical) nature? Because this I think that the first gospel preceded the first epistle. The caos preceded the order.

[Blood]

But there is a variety of beliefs to be expected, in this case. Why did the II CE epistles mention only a gospel-pocket here or there? Why did these II CE historicists seem so dogmatics (as opposed to natural) when repeating only and uniquely a resume of the gospels?
There is another explanation for the fact that, even when mentioning gospel episodes, they are very concise and semi-silent: the gospels had a bad fama preceding them, in virtue of their clearly allegorical (if not heretical, hence controversial) nature. The true historicist view had to enter gradually in the minds of their readers, possibly not so soon via dubious gospels.

Yes, all of the epistles -- not just Paul's -- are deliberately vague about "the historical Jesus." You would figure at least one of them would say something like, "I was there at the Sermon on the Mount and the crowd was silent listening to this unbelievable genius," but they never do. I assume that the anonymous authors of these texts simply didn't conceive of the epistles as even needing to comment on or reference "the historical Jesus."

[GakuseiDon]

Neither minimal mythicism nor minimal historicism include an assumption that Romans was written by a historical Paul.

Perhaps if I word it an "unstated assumption"? The point is that the odds that Romans was written by a historical Paul has no weighing factor in Carrier's calculation of the strengths between miminal mythicism and minimal historicity, since it is granted on both sides.

What you could be doing is criticizing Carrier for using lots of unestablished assumptions in his book that are in agreement with mainstream views.

I wouldn't criticize Carrier for that. His book would have to be ten times larger to include everything. But unestablished assumptions do eventually need to be nailed down. One of the problems on the historicist side is the use of what appear to be unestablished assumptions.

[GakuseiDon]

Yes, all of the epistles -- not just Paul's -- are deliberately vague about "the historical Jesus." You would figure at least one of them would say something like, "I was there at the Sermon on the Mount and the crowd was silent listening to this unbelievable genius," but they never do. I assume that the anonymous authors of these texts simply didn't conceive of the epistles as even needing to comment on or reference "the historical Jesus."

One thing I always point out is that the epistles (and not just Paul's) are vague about ALL historical details, not just on a historical Jesus. They tell us very little about the early church, etc. Paul at one point writes how the early church is performing healing miracles and making prophecies, but he gives no details about them. Some passages:

• Romans15:17 Therefore I have reason to glory in Christ Jesus in the things which pertain to God.
  18 For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed,
  19 Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.
  
  1 Cor 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.
  28 And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues.
  29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? 31 But earnestly desire the *best gifts.

Would it be reasonable to argue that Paul should have given more historical details about the early church, more specific details about the healings, prophecies? Or is there only the expected amounts in Paul's letters? And how does this affected our expectations about what we see in Paul with regards to details about a historical Jesus?

Though there are more such details in the Gospels, even they seem to fall into the same pattern. Was Jesus short or tall? Married or single? Was his ministry one year or ten? Even fictional people can be tall/short, single/married, have long/short ministries.

[GakuseiDon]

And while we do find plenty of evidence for both parts in mythology (no I'm not bothering to hunt it down--exercise for the reader right there), what we don't find plenty of evidence for is the part excluded at the start--the location ("above the earth"). It's the location posited by Carrier and Doherty that tends to make the whole complex much harder to spot in ancient literature and myth.

Doherty would say that this was a new philosophical and theological trend that owed something to Platonism (and the development of it--Middle Platonism, later neo-Platonism, etc.). But we don't have to follow him on that; it's just one possible explanation.

On the other hand, we should also do some inquiry about location alone, without restriction about what kind of thing we are looking for at those locations. For example, there were apparently ongoing battles between angels in the lower heavens, but that doesn't fit into any category if we're only looking for incarnated killed celestial beings. We're going to get nowhere fast if we just construct little categories that leave us blind when trying to investigate how people were thinking back then.

While I agree, Carrier's minimal mythicism position is that a celestial Jesus incarnated and was killed above the earth. While Carrier does state that such a Jesus could have been killed elsewhere (for example, under the earth), it's not what he argues in his book. The lack of such examples in ancient thinking -- and I would go further and say that the concept of a being incarnating in the firmament and getting crucified is against any known ancient thinking -- is enough to refute Carrier's theory, at least as it stands. If I am right, then we can start look at other mythicist theories that are consistent with ancient thinking, like GA Wells.

[GakuseiDon]

Peter, thanks for comments.

The only problem here is that you don't seem to understand the concept of "a fortiori."

The whole point of it is to grant less-than-fully-reasonable premises in favor of the opposite conclusion and then make an estimate that way.

When that estimate comes back as still not in favor of the opposite conclusion, the actual conclusion is confirmed as being more probable than not.

I do understand the concept of arguing a fortiori. If Carrier had granted the historical existence of Moses and the OT Joseph because mainstream scholarship had that view, even though Carrier himself disagreed, I would have had no problem. Carrier's 'minimal historical Jesus' is grounded in mainstream views, and it is the mainstream view that Carrier is questioning.

But to count Moses and Joseph as historical persons because of the views of fundamentalists? It makes no logical sense AFAICS. I can't see this as doing anything other than confusing the odds.

Let's use an example. Let's say that we were arguing over whether the earth is at least 6000 years old.

So we want to show that the hypothesis that it is older is more probable.

Let's say that there were some people that didn't like any sort of radiometric dating. Let's say that the mainstream scientific community says they are wrong. Let's say that there are only a very few people in the world with any credential at all who would jump on that bandwagon. But let's say that we're going to enter the debate anyway and engage this controversy.

One way to do things would be to attempt to resolve the issue, on the basis of evidence, as "dead" as it may seem to most people. Or to declare it resolved and to tell the people who don't like radiometric dating to take a hike. As logical as these approaches may be, they both (a) burden the entire presentation with additional positions, assumptions, and necessary tangents and (b) narrow the number of those who might follow the train of thought to the end and find the whole convincing (i.e., anyone who finds the part about radiometric dating unconvincing can then find the whole of it unconvincing).

But it's not really necessary to do this, logical as it may be. It's also valid to sidestep this issue. That's the whole point of the "a fortiori" approach. The way you do this, is that instead of attempting to prove that radiometric dating is valid, you do something much simpler and much more likely to gain universal consensus. You simply attempt to prove that the validity of radiometric dating will improve the odds of an "older" earth and decrease the odds of a "younger" earth. This is completely trivial to do.

Then, for the purposes of simplification, you no longer have to consider both horns of the dilemma (the validity or non-validity of radiometric dating). That's good because having lots of unresolved variables will end up complicating and burdening the analysis very quickly (exponentially, even). All you have to do is to consider the likelihood of an older earth under the horn of the dilemma that is worse for it: the non-validity of radiometric dating.

This is because you are not attempting to find the actual value of the probability of an older earth; you are attempting to find a lower bound on the probability of an older earth. Once you have found that lower bound, you instantly find out that every other unsolved dilemma (set aside temporarily) would actually improve the probability of your conclusion (above that "lower bound") if you had taken the other horn of that dilemma.

Which means that you can show that the conclusion is more probable than its negation without even going into all these other issues. If the conclusion is more probable than not even when burdened with all these unfavorable assumptions (resolving dilemmas that you don't want to go into, in the favor of the dialectical opposition), it's going to be more probable than not... 'no matter what'.

There's no need to bog one's self down in the other issues or to fall back on stiff proclamations of 'consensus' about the other things. That's the beauty.

Thanks for explanation Peter. I've looked over it a number of times. I'm always wary about arguing a point through analogies, since the argument tends to become about the analogy than rather about the real thing.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that by adding additional figures (Moses and OT Joseph) into the 'historical' count of the R-R scale, Carrier is creating an upper boundary for 'minimal historicity' for his prior probability, and it doesn't matter that those arguing for 'minimal historicity' themselves wouldn't include those figures. And this is to show that, even with this, it shows that non-historicity is more likely than not?

Out of interest, I'm copied Carrier in context on this below. I've bolded what I see as key words below. From page 243 in OHJ:

• Counting as the Rank-Raglan reference class all heroes who score above half the total criteria, we have fourteen members (besides Jesus, who makes fifteen); we can ascertain that those are the only members (or at least, there are no other known his­torical persons who are members; and adding mythical persons would only make the ensuing argument stronger, by reducing the prior probability that any member of the class was historical); and we can conclude with reasonable certainty that none of those fourteen members were ever historical persons-all of them are mythical. That means a historical Jesus is lit­erally unique among all Rank-Raglan heroes. So to assume he was the sole exception in human history would be a rather extraordinary claim. But since we cannot assume Jesus is nonhistorical, the probability that he is must be based on the law of succession from the uniform experience of the other fourteen persons in the same class, which is (s+l)/(n+2) (0+1)/(14+2) 1/16 = 0.0625, or barely 6%. [14] That would be my lower bound for the prior probability that Jesus existed.
  
  Of course, fundamentalists would refuse to accept that Moses and Joseph are mythical (two of the fourteen in that class); but that they are not histori­cal is accepted by almost all secular experts in biblical antiquities and even most religious experts (Jewish and Christian), and is pretty hard to deny on the evidence we have (Element 44). Nevertheless, because I want to pro­duce a prior probability as far against myth as I can reasonably believe it to be, so as to produce an argument a fortiori to my eventual conclusion, I will 'grant' the fundamentalists their unwarranted assumption, even against our background evidence, and count Moses and Joseph as historical persons. [15] Since it would be special pleading to assume that only Jewish heroes are 'special' that way, we should balance the scales and say that up to two of the pagans on the list may be historical as well (I am fairly certain that's not true, but again, I'm arguing a fortiori; and since only the count mat­ters, it doesn't matter who the two are). That gives us 4 historical persons out of 14, which means the 15th member has a prior probability of being historical of (s+1 )/(n+2) (4+1 )/( 1 4+2) == 5/16 == 0.31 25, or around 31%. I'll be additionally generous and just bump that up to an even 33% (1 in 3), the same probability I came up with from the coincidence of Jesus Christ's name. I cannot reasonably believe the prior probability is any higher than that, nor do I think anyone else can reasonably believe that. And so that is my upper bound, which I will use as the prior probability that Jesus existed as a historical person from here on out.
  
  Again, even if we started from a neutral prior of 50% and walked our way through 'all persons claimed to be historical' to 'all persons who became Rank-Raglan heroes', we'd end up again with that same probabil­ity of I in 3. For example, if again there were 5,000 historical persons and 1,000 mythical persons, the prior probability of being historical would be 5/6; and of not being historical, 1/6. But if there are 10 mythical men in the Rank-Raglan class and 5 historical men (the four we are granting, plus one more, who may or may not be Jesus), then the probability of being in that class given that someone was historical would be 5/5000, which is 1/1000; and the probability given that they were mythical would be 10/1000, which is 1/100. This gives us a final probability of 1/3, hence 33%.16 No matter how you chew on it, no matter what numbers you put in, with these ratios you always end up with the same prior probability that Jesus was an actual historical man: just 33% at best.

Perhaps where I am getting stuck is Carrier comment about counting figures in order to grant "fundamentalists their unwarranted assumption". Maybe if he'd just chucked in an additional four figures without using that reason it wouldn't have struck me the way it did. But even if he did that, it still seems an unreasonably subjective method to establish his upper boundary. Something I'll mull over.

[Peter Kirby]

And while we do find plenty of evidence for both parts in mythology (no I'm not bothering to hunt it down--exercise for the reader right there), what we don't find plenty of evidence for is the part excluded at the start--the location ("above the earth"). It's the location posited by Carrier and Doherty that tends to make the whole complex much harder to spot in ancient literature and myth.

Doherty would say that this was a new philosophical and theological trend that owed something to Platonism (and the development of it--Middle Platonism, later neo-Platonism, etc.). But we don't have to follow him on that; it's just one possible explanation.

On the other hand, we should also do some inquiry about location alone, without restriction about what kind of thing we are looking for at those locations. For example, there were apparently ongoing battles between angels in the lower heavens, but that doesn't fit into any category if we're only looking for incarnated killed celestial beings. We're going to get nowhere fast if we just construct little categories that leave us blind when trying to investigate how people were thinking back then.

While I agree, Carrier's minimal mythicism position is that a celestial Jesus incarnated and was killed above the earth. While Carrier does state that such a Jesus could have been killed elsewhere (for example, under the earth), it's not what he argues in his book. The lack of such examples in ancient thinking -- and I would go further and say that the concept of a being incarnating in the firmament and getting crucified is against any known ancient thinking -- is enough to refute Carrier's theory, at least as it stands. If I am right, then we can start look at other mythicist theories that are consistent with ancient thinking, like GA Wells.

I don't know. I have a distrust of any argument that requires examples of very particular individual historical phenomena.

It's the same thing with the argument, "Carrier is wrong because he didn't prove that the pre-Christian Jews had a concept of a crucified Messiah."

Tack on enough and you're guaranteed a gotcha: hey, how many crucified, killed, incarnated, Jewish, in-the-sky, first century celestial Messiahs can you prove existed in the ancient literature? Not a one? Ha! Gotcha!

I know that you're including the Christian literature on this (and the epistles of Paul), but if we don't even know where Paul's Jesus was, is it fair to use it as evidence for anything in this particular regard? After all we could just turn it around and say we don't know of any crucified, incarnated, Jewish, on the ground, first century, from the sky Messiahs. Gotcha?... Meh.

(I guess we do... but they're from a later time period than Paul... obviously we do have that in Justin Martyr et al... so have I gotcha or not? ...)

History is very particular, so the absence of parallel is not a problem by itself. This is essentially an (under-commented) informal fallacy of "inverse parallelomania"--without known examples, it is ruled out for that reason alone. But that's not sufficient.

What we need to close the loop and cinch the argument is a demonstration that we'd have those examples, if. That's a tough argument to make, but it's what we would need to do. It can't just be assumed. It's the missing major premise in the whole argument, which is being assumed without even being enunciated, let alone defended.

Or we could tackle it from the other direction and make a positive argument based on what we know somehow. I'm not sure exactly how we'd do that either. Ancient history is spotty, and people are various, so our deduction might be applicable to groups other than the one we are interested in. In this particular argument, we'd love to have more evidence on the mystery religions. A little more on Hellenistic Judaism and on Middle Platonism too, for that matter. But especially those mystery religions.

Theological beliefs in particular tend to be very particular. It's particularity (theology) within particularity (history). Often an example-free zone. You can go from nobody having a Trinity to suddenly it's the hottest thing, because. Examples? We don't need no stinkin' examples! (Yes, the Christian idea of a Trinity benefits from survivor bias... we know it well... but what about those beliefs that do not, from our perspective in history? In a hypothetical alternate Arian timeline, the evidence for Trinitarianism could be spead very thin, to the point of near-non-existence. Some people might even wonder whether it was really ever a thing. And ask for clear examples.)

It would be a shame if all the reasons for thinking that "Doherty" or "Wells" are correct get transmuted into reasons for thinking "Wells" is correct ... on this 'technicality' if you can call it that ... then we all die and end up in Deist heaven and find out that Doherty was right after all... gotcha!

[Peter Kirby]

Thanks for explanation Peter. I've looked over it a number of times. I'm always wary about arguing a point through analogies, since the argument tends to become about the analogy than rather about the real thing.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that by adding additional figures (Moses and OT Joseph) into the 'historical' count of the R-R scale, Carrier is creating an upper boundary for 'minimal historicity' for his prior probability, and it doesn't matter that those arguing for 'minimal historicity' themselves wouldn't include those figures. And this is to show that, even with this, it shows that non-historicity is more likely than not?

Out of interest, I'm copied Carrier in context on this below. I've bolded what I see as key words below. From page 243 in OHJ:

• Counting as the Rank-Raglan reference class all heroes who score above half the total criteria, we have fourteen members (besides Jesus, who makes fifteen); we can ascertain that those are the only members (or at least, there are no other known his­torical persons who are members; and adding mythical persons would only make the ensuing argument stronger, by reducing the prior probability that any member of the class was historical); and we can conclude with reasonable certainty that none of those fourteen members were ever historical persons-all of them are mythical. That means a historical Jesus is lit­erally unique among all Rank-Raglan heroes. So to assume he was the sole exception in human history would be a rather extraordinary claim. But since we cannot assume Jesus is nonhistorical, the probability that he is must be based on the law of succession from the uniform experience of the other fourteen persons in the same class, which is (s+l)/(n+2) (0+1)/(14+2) 1/16 = 0.0625, or barely 6%. [14] That would be my lower bound for the prior probability that Jesus existed.
  
  Of course, fundamentalists would refuse to accept that Moses and Joseph are mythical (two of the fourteen in that class); but that they are not histori­cal is accepted by almost all secular experts in biblical antiquities and even most religious experts (Jewish and Christian), and is pretty hard to deny on the evidence we have (Element 44). Nevertheless, because I want to pro­duce a prior probability as far against myth as I can reasonably believe it to be, so as to produce an argument a fortiori to my eventual conclusion, I will 'grant' the fundamentalists their unwarranted assumption, even against our background evidence, and count Moses and Joseph as historical persons. [15] Since it would be special pleading to assume that only Jewish heroes are 'special' that way, we should balance the scales and say that up to two of the pagans on the list may be historical as well (I am fairly certain that's not true, but again, I'm arguing a fortiori; and since only the count mat­ters, it doesn't matter who the two are). That gives us 4 historical persons out of 14, which means the 15th member has a prior probability of being historical of (s+1 )/(n+2) (4+1 )/( 1 4+2) == 5/16 == 0.31 25, or around 31%. I'll be additionally generous and just bump that up to an even 33% (1 in 3), the same probability I came up with from the coincidence of Jesus Christ's name. I cannot reasonably believe the prior probability is any higher than that, nor do I think anyone else can reasonably believe that. And so that is my upper bound, which I will use as the prior probability that Jesus existed as a historical person from here on out.
  
  Again, even if we started from a neutral prior of 50% and walked our way through 'all persons claimed to be historical' to 'all persons who became Rank-Raglan heroes', we'd end up again with that same probabil­ity of I in 3. For example, if again there were 5,000 historical persons and 1,000 mythical persons, the prior probability of being historical would be 5/6; and of not being historical, 1/6. But if there are 10 mythical men in the Rank-Raglan class and 5 historical men (the four we are granting, plus one more, who may or may not be Jesus), then the probability of being in that class given that someone was historical would be 5/5000, which is 1/1000; and the probability given that they were mythical would be 10/1000, which is 1/100. This gives us a final probability of 1/3, hence 33%.16 No matter how you chew on it, no matter what numbers you put in, with these ratios you always end up with the same prior probability that Jesus was an actual historical man: just 33% at best.

Perhaps where I am getting stuck is Carrier comment about counting figures in order to grant "fundamentalists their unwarranted assumption". Maybe if he'd just chucked in an additional four figures without using that reason it wouldn't have struck me the way it did. But even if he did that, it still seems an unreasonably subjective method to establish his upper boundary. Something I'll mull over.

It doesn't have to be about the analogy. The analogy is just to prime the understanding.

Mathematically, it is very simple. But the analogy may be easier to understand anyway.

There is a Probability( X ) that is debated and is the center of debate.

There is also a Probability( Y ) that is disputed, at least by one person or with some kind of shadow of a doubt. We might (or might not) think we know it is closer to 1--i.e., Pr( Y ) > 0.5--but some others might think it is closer to 0--i.e., Pr( Y ) < 0.5.

What everybody knows and agrees upon is that resolving Pr( Y )--as having a value of 0 or a value of 1--will affect the eventual Pr( X ).

And of course a Pr( Y ) of 0 is equivalent to a Pr( ~Y ) of 1, since that's what the negation symbol means.

What everybody also knows and agrees upon is the following -- the truth of Y will improve or have no effect on the odds of X:

Pr ( X | Y ) >= Pr( X )

Likewise the falsehood of Y will tend to decrease or have no effects on the odds of X:

Pr( X | ~Y ) <= Pr( X )

But we're trying to demonstrate X, and, specifically, we're trying to demonstrate that Pr( X ) > 0.5 (or some other figure)... "in reality" (with the actual truth value or probability of Y, etc.). So what we're going to do is a simplification trick. Instead of working with one ( ~Y ) and working with the other ( Y ), we'll work with just the one.

If we're going to use this "simplification trick," we're going to need to do it by assuming ~Y, even though we may think Y is likely to be true. The reason?

Pr( X | Y ) >= Pr( X ) >= Pr( X | ~Y )

If we went the other way, we'd be using numbers that could be over-estimated. And so even if we showed that Pr( X | Y ) is better than 0.5, the value of Pr( X ) could be anywhere south of that... what good is that?

So, when we do this, we're going to get a value or estimate for the figure Pr( X | ~Y ). The value of Pr( X ) can only be higher.

The validity of the procedure is strictly tied to the truth of Pr( X | ~Y ) <= Pr( X ), whether ~Y either has no effect upon or decreases the likelihood of X.

The actual probability or truth of Y does not change the validity of the procedure itself...

(But, yes, it is kind of pointless to take the opposite tack on something like "the sky is blue." Then you're just showing off, pointlessly... )

[maryhelena]

<snip>
While I agree, Carrier's minimal mythicism position is that a celestial Jesus incarnated and was killed above the earth. While Carrier does state that such a Jesus could have been killed elsewhere (for example, under the earth), it's not what he argues in his book. The lack of such examples in ancient thinking -- and I would go further and say that the concept of a being incarnating in the firmament and getting crucified is against any known ancient thinking -- is enough to refute Carrier's theory, at least as it stands. If I am right, then we can start look at other mythicist theories that are consistent with ancient thinking, like GA Wells.

• Can we trust the New Testament?: thoughts on the reliability of Early Christian Testimony. (2003)
  
  By George Albert Wells
  
  Page 50
  
  The summary of the argument of The Jesus Legend (1996) and The Jesus Myth (1999a) given in this section of the present work makes it clear that I no longer maintain this position (although the change is perhaps not as evident from the titles of those two books as it might be). The weakness of my earlier position was pressed upon me buy J.D.G. Dunn, who objected that we really cannot plausibly assume that such a complex of traditions as we have in the gospels and their source could have developed within such a short time from the early epistles without a historical basis (Dunn 1985,p.29). My present standpoint is: this complex is not all post-Pauline (Q, or at any rate parts of it, may well be as early as ca. A.D. 50); and – if I am right, against Doherty and Price – it is not all mythical. The essential point, as I see it, is that the Q material, whether or not it suffices as evidence of Jesus’s historicity, refers to a personage who is not to be identified with the dying and rising Christ of the early epistles.

my bolding

It is not all mythical - that is the argument of Wells against Doherty. Unfortunately, so many ahistoricists/mythicists have fallen for the Doherty approach. While, to my mind, Doherty closed the door to a historical investigation into early christian origins - Carrier has locked the door. The Doherty/Carrier version of the ahistoricist/mythicist position has reached a dead-end. It has nowhere to go except reverse out of the cul-du-sac of it's own making....

Of course, this is not to say that Well is correct in all that he writes - but he has left the door open to further the investigation into early christian origins.

----------------------------------------

side note:

Richard Carrier's latest blog post - back to the euhemerism issue......

Euhemerization Means Doing What Euhemerus Did

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/8161

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earlier thread on euhemerism....

Gospels as "euhemerized" stories about Jesus?

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=411&hilit

[Giuseppe]

If Paul existed then the debate as Carrier wants it is basically correct.
But if Paul didn't exist, it would be impossible to resolve the question and all the possibilities are worth of investigation.
In any case, I would revalue the conspirationistic views of a Joe Atwill about the creation of the first Gospel Jesus insofar as:
1) the first gospel was proto-heretic (see Klinghardt 2015)
2) the heretics had any reason to deal with the Jews more or less at the same way as Atwill describes the presumed reasons of the his conspirator 'Romans': to give a different Messiah to debunke the previous nocive and fanatic messianism.