Flann 5 wrote:The astrotheologists take Peter,John and the apostles to be invented allegorical personifications of signs of the zodiac, but this is palpable nonsense in the light of passages like these where they are unquestionably real historical people

Might want to read this book: The Gospel and the Zodiac by Rev. Bill Darlison

“The claim that the 12 tribes of Israel were identified with the 12 signs of the zodiac is spelled out clearly by the ancient Jewish writers Philo and Josephus, during the first century. During the first century BCE, Diodorus Siculus identified the 12 tribes with the 12 months.

“See Exodus 39:9-14: "...they made the breastplate... And they set in it four rows of stones... And the stones were according to the names of the children of Israel, twelve...according to the twelve tribes.”

As Josephus says (Antiquities, 3.8): “And for the twelve stones, whether we understand by them the months, or whether we understand the like number of the signs of that circle which the Greeks call the zodiac, we shall not be mistaken in their meaning.” (Josephus/Whiston, 75.)

Earlier than Josephus, Philo (“On the Life of Moses,” 12) had made the same comments regarding Moses: “Then the twelve stones on the breast, which are not like one another in colour, and which are divided into four rows of three stones in each, what else can they be emblems of, except of the circle of the zodiac?” (Philo/Duke, 99.)”

– Christ in Egypt, 261-2

Malachi 4:2

“…the sun was worshipped by the Israelites, who associated it with their tribal god Yahweh. Like Father, like son, and the connection between Jesus and the sun is first evidenced in the OT book of Malachi (4:2), which immediately precedes the New Testament and in which the author refers to the “Sun of Righteousness” who will “arise with healing in his wings.” This scripture, which is in the last chapter before the Gospel of Matthew, sounds much like the winged solar disc of Babylon and Egypt.”

“This scripture in Malachi is perceived as a reference to the coming messiah, Jesus Christ. In this regard, this clearly solar appellation “Sun of Righteousness” is repeated many times by early Church fathers as being applicable to Christ.”

For more information: Jesus as the Sun throughout History

The Astrotheological Origins of Christianity
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... =16&t=4414

Star Worship of the Ancient Israelites
http://astrotheology.net/star-worship-o ... sraelites/

Zodiacs on the Floor of Synagogues
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/vie ... =21&t=4148

2,750-year-old solar-aligned temple discovered in Israel
http://freethoughtnation.com/2750-year- ... in-israel/

Stone Age Zodiac by National Geographic




Who are the "Many" in Luke's prologue?:

Flann 5 wrote:Luke's prologue is very clear and anyone reading it would certainly understand it as being the intention of the author to convey historical biographical information

"The fact that Luke is superseding "many" narratives also fits in with the idea that his gospel was composed at the end of the second century, as there were many gospels by that time.2 Trying to fit Luke into the middle or end of the first century, however, is an endeavor rife with problems, including that there certainly were not "many" gospels in circulation or even in existence by that time. This suggestion also presents us with some clarity on the tradition beginning in the late second century that Luke's gospel supposedly had been corrupted by Marcion during the middle of the second century. In reality, it seems the author of Luke may have based his gospel on Marcion's "Gospel of the Lord," rather than vice versa. Furthermore, in determining which texts Luke may be referring to, a number of Church fathers, including Origen, Epiphanius and Jerome, as well as other Christian authorities such as the Venerable Bede (8th cent.), evidently named books from authors of the second century such as the Gospels of the Egyptians and the Twelve Apostles, as well as the writings of the Gnostic-Christian heretic Cerinthus.3"

- Who Was Jesus? (2007), pages 73-4

[13] Waite notes that the German critic Schleiermacher determined Luke's gospel to have been compiled from 33 different manuscripts, and he shows the very divisions upon which these are delineated (Waite, 379-380). According to Waite's survey of Church fathers and other Christian authorities, "It is the universal conclusion, that the author of Luke does not here refer to any of the canonical gospels." (385)

When Were the Gospels Written?

"We don't have the originals! We have only error-ridden copies..."
- Bart Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies

"The Gospels are neither histories nor biographies, even within the ancient tolerances for those genres."
- Dr. John Dominic Crossan, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies

"...there are very few sources for knowledge of the historical Jesus beyond the four canonical Gospels. Paul and Josephus offer little more than tidbits. Claims that later apocryphal Gospels and the Nag Hammadi material supply independent and reliable historical information about Jesus are largely fantasy. In the end, the historian is left with the difficult task of sifting through the Four Gospels for historical tradition."
- John P. Meier, New Testament professor

Jonah and the Whale is an ancient SUN myth

As pointed out by Earl Doherty:

"Why is it that no individual scholar or group of scholars has undertaken a concerted effort in recent times to discredit the mythicist position? (The brief addresses that have been made to it in various publications are outlined in my Main Article "Postscript".) In the heyday of the great mythicists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a few valiant efforts were offered. However, both mainstream scholarship and the mythicist branch itself have made dramatic leaps since then. Biblical research has moved into bold new territory in the last several decades: unearthing a wealth of ancient documents, arriving at a new understanding of elements like Q, the sectarian nature of early Christianity, the Cynic roots of the great Gospel teachings, and so on; an almost unprecedented "critical" dimension to New Testament scholarship has emerged.

And yet the mythicist position continues to be vilified, disdained, dismissed. We would condemn any physicist, any anthropologist, any linguist, any mathematician, any scholar of any sort who professes to work in a field that makes even a partial bow to principles of logic and scientific research who yet ignored, reviled, condemned largely without examination a legitimate, persistent theory in his or her discipline. There are tremendous problems in New Testament research, problems that have been grappled with for generations and show no sign of getting closer to solution. Agreement is lacking on countless topics, and yesterday's theories are being continually overturned. There is almost a civil war going on within the ranks of Jesus study. Why not give the mythicist option some serious consideration? Why not honestly evaluate it to see if it could provide some of the missing answers? Or, if it turns out that the case is fatally flawed, then put it to rest once and for all.

Doing that would require one essential thing: taking it seriously, approaching the subject having an open mind that the theory might have some merit. Sadly, that is the most difficult step and the one which most critics have had the greatest difficulty taking. It is all in the mindset, whether of the Christian believer whose confessional interests are overriding, or of the professional scholar who could never consider that their life's work might be fatally compromised."

Mythicism and the PhD: A Brief History

Hi JohanRonnblom,

JohanRonnblom wrote: I did read enough of this Tim Hendrix document to conclude that he is either dishonest, or unable to read English. He is claiming flaws in OtHoJC that clearly are not there, even claiming Carrier omits to explain things that are fully stated inside quotes that Hendrix provide in this very document.

I would be very interested in hearing which flaws you are referring to here. My review contains one mistake that I am aware of, namely when I summarized Carriers work I wrote that Carrier was comparing a specific scenario for historicity against a specific scenario for mythicism and not a generic scenario for historicity against a specific scenario of mythicism as Carrier in fact does.
This is a mistake in my summary of Carriers case and has absolutely no effects on any of my arguments on OHJ as they only relate to Carriers actual, specific theory of mythicism and how Carrier computes it's probability (you can simply check that for yourself). Furthermore you should be aware that Carriers response to my review contains flatly false statements and inaccuracies.

JohanRonnblom wrote: My criticism of Hendrix' criticism is that he appears to have no idea what he is talking about as regards to Carrier's methodology or writing.

You mean that I say something wrong about BT or other aspects relating to probability theory? I would be very interested in knowing what.

JohanRonnblom wrote: In addition, Hendrix' logic appears quite flawed, when he brings up an example of what he thinks is a flaw in Carrier's use of BT, he is really attacking any use of BT, and using a thought example that is simply absurd.

Can you please specify what you are referring to here?. My specialty is exactly Bayesian methods and if you are taking anything I write as a dismissal of all applications of Bayes theorem you are very mistaken. What I try to point out is that in an analysis such as Carriers the application of BT is very different than in other applications and will suffer from certain deficiencies. For instance, it will be very strongly affected by even very slight bias one way or another.

JohanRonnblom wrote: It's very possible that Hendrix is competent in some area of mathematics, but there is so much that is simply wrong in his critique that I can't be bothered to read through all of it.

Well, okay. I am glad you leave the option open. I would recommend you to read my review before dismissing it as fully erroneous, and I think it is worth nothing your critique of my work has not relied on any specific accusation I could actually discuss.

JohanRonnblom wrote: He does at some point list some bullet points, which is helpful, and as far as I can determine they are all invalid, either because Carrier does not do what Hendrix claims, or because Hendrix' logic is flawed.

I would like to see examples of which bullet points are invalid. If we just take those relating to the first section on the numerical stability of BT can you briefly explain why they are invalid?

This is just a fucking comedy. No longer even interesting. I'm out. I don't know who any of you fucking are and I don't fucking care. This is supposed to be a goddamn book fucking review and not a big dick fucking contest. Start another fucking thread and get the fuck out of here. Assholes.

DB Roy wrote:This is just a fucking comedy. No longer even interesting. I'm out. I don't know who any of you fucking are and I don't fucking care. This is supposed to be a goddamn book fucking review and not a big dick fucking contest. Start another fucking thread and get the fuck out of here. Assholes.

What's the matter with you D.B.? This chapter is on prior probability and Carrier's use of Bayes theorem and probabilities is central to this.

Tim Hendrix critiqued Carrier's use of probability for determining the historicity or otherwise of Jesus and Johan disputed the validity of this critique. It's completely relevant to this subject as to whether Carrier is using Bayes Theorem accurately or not, and Tim is entitled to ask for clarification from Johan on what he specificallly finds wrong with his critique.

Relax D.B.!

They're critiquing each other not Carrier. I don't care what their methodology is. Get on topic. They can debate each other somewhere else.

DB Roy:

I think JohanRonnblom and I disagree exactly about Carriers OHJ and it is that disagreement I am trying to have a discussion about. I can't see why that is off topic given this thread is dedicated to discussing OHJ.

I had to go back to the beginning of the thread to see if recent posts are terribly off topic. I could be wrong, but talk of BT doesn't seem out of place. Send a private message if things get too far off track, and stop with the f bombs. Thanks!

Tim Hendrix wrote: You mean that I say something wrong about BT or other aspects relating to probability theory? I would be very interested in knowing what.

Thanks for joining the discussion. Have been terribly busy, I'll follow up on some other issues later but I'll address some main points to keep the debate going. No, I'm not really saying that you say something wrong about BT, but rather about Carrier's use of it. His argument is not what you seem to think it is.

Since there is so much, I'll start with this:

Tim Hendrix critique of Carrier wrote: If we only focus on mythicism, a difficulty Dr. Carrier does not address in On the Historicity of Jesus is the basic hypothesis of historicity is conflated with a particular theory for historicity and so it is not clear exactly what the basic theory of historicity or mythicism is.

This is incorrect. Carrier is very clear on this. In fact, he addresses this in the very text that you quote from him in your report on page 7! A possible objection to these definitions, that I believe you make somewhere in your document, is that it does not cover all cases for historicism. But Carrier addresses this too, cited at the start of the same page in your report:

Richard Carrier wrote:As I argued there, the latter two classes of hypothesis, even collectively, consume a vanishingly small piece of the prior-probability-space (certainly less than a one in a million share). They can therefore be ignored."

From a mathematical point of view we could update the Bayesian formula with arguments supporting this. But we can also view it as an assertion: given that this assumption is correct, we only have to consider the possibilities included by Carrier. Of course, someone could challenge this and make a case for an historical Jesus not covered by Carrier. You will find, however, that a lot of people don't find such an argument very interesting, and you should be aware that Carrier is primarily writing for an audience that agrees with him that these other possibilities can safely be ignored.

But now on to the first major flaw in your critique: you make a comparison with someone in a gameshow who is tasked with guessing the weight of an apple, and you then claim that Carrier's method is to guess the combined weight of the apple, a teddy bear and a box of crayons, then of the box of crayons, and of the teddy bear, and subtracting this from the total.

This is a completely inaccurate and absurd model of Carrier's argument. For this parallel to make any sense, you must assume that the 'apple' corresponds to the question of whether Jesus is historical, while the other objects are evidence for Jesus. You would then have to argue that it is somehow possible to 'directly' assess whether Jesus is historical (without considering the evidence).

In fact, the corresponding gameshow task would be to guess the combined weight of all the objects. Carrier is then guessing the weight of the apple, the crayons and the teddy bear, and adding them up. Because these objects have different density and shapes, we can make more accurate guesses of each object than for all of them combined (which you seem to agree with). The same is true for various pieces of evidence for or against Jesus' historicity.

Richard Carrier wrote: I would like to see examples of which bullet points are invalid. If we just take those relating to the first section on the numerical stability of BT can you briefly explain why they are invalid?

Because they describe a scenario in which BT is used in a very weird way, but that is simply not how Carrier uses BT. This is why I wrote that it seems as if you are arguing against BT in general: if you believed that BT would always lead to numerical instability, then BT would be useless. But it does not if employed correctly. Given what you write above I'm convinced that you do not believe that. However, I would say that Carrier is using it correctly, at least nitpicking aside (nitpicking being objections that have no major effect on the outcome of a corrected calculation).

At the end of the day, the usefulness of BT in OHJ (or history) is, in my opinion, not to get extremely accurate mathematical calculations, but to get clarity in the discussion. Which evidence is most consequential? Which disagreements on facts and arguments are most important?

There is, I would add, one point where I agree with you: Carrier's application of a reference group for prior probability is a little odd and in my opinion not convincing for several independent reasons. There appears to be no obvious reason to choose that group, which leaves open the possibility that it was chosen out of thousands of possible reference groups simply because it happened to give numbers Carrier liked. There is no obvious causal reason for why being in this group would make Jesus unhistorical, which makes the conclusion seem spurious especially given the very small data set. Perhaps we could do this if we were dealing with a very large medical trial, even where we had no theoretical understanding of how a cure worked, but we would still be suspicious. And, as I have argued extensively, I do not believe that Jesus fits all that well into the chosen reference class. But this is not a flaw in Carrier's use of BT, but in the quality of his argumentation. Because he uses BT, we see exactly what the consequences are if we do not agree with him on the prior. That is something that speaks in favour of Carrier and his use of BT, not against it. I would also note that Carrier seems to have de-emphasized his use of Rank-Raglan in his later argumentation, whether because he started to doubt it or just because he noticed others did not find it convincing I don't know.

Hi JohanRonnblom,

Regarding the first quote, the specific vs. general hypothesis of historicism, that's exactly the one mistake I agree is in my review: I summarized OHJ falsely by assuming Carrier compares a specific theory of historicity vs. a specific theory of mythicism and not the general idea Jesus was historical vs. a specific hypothesis of mythicism (as he does). However, the difficulties I highlight regarding comparing specific or general theories of historicity/mythicism obviously still stands as does everything I say following this as all my arguments relate to Carrier's specific theory of mythicism. In fact, had I noticed the above quote, it would have simplified some of my arguments. In other words, I agree my review is imprecise at this point, but it does not affect any of my conclusions or arguments.

You then write:

JohanRonnblom wrote: But Carrier addresses this too, cited at the start of the same page in your report:

Richard Carrier wrote:As I argued there, the latter two classes of hypothesis, even collectively, consume a vanishingly small piece of the prior-probability-space (certainly less than a one in a million share). They can therefore be ignored."

From a mathematical point of view we could update the Bayesian formula with arguments supporting this. But we can also view it as an assertion: given that this assumption is correct, we only have to consider the possibilities included by Carrier.

The context of this quote, the two other hypothesis that can be ignored, are these two hypotheses (p. 30 of OHJ):
"Jesus was a historical person not mythicized' (triumphal)"
and
"'Jesus was a mythical person not historicized' (postmodern)"

I will happily accept these two options as being irrelevant, however, that is unrelated to the discussion of a specific vs. general theory of mythicism which these quotes do not touch upon and which is what I am talking about. When I am talking about a specific hypothesis for historicity I am talking about Carriers specific, five-point scenario which falls into the general class of ahistoricity (the general class of ahistoric theories is the negation of "Jesus existed"). If you read my summary of Carrier's case that should be evident.

JohanRonnblom wrote: you make a comparison with someone in a gameshow who is tasked with guessing the weight of an apple, and you then claim that Carrier's method is to guess the combined weight of the apple, a teddy bear and a box of crayons, then of the box of crayons, and of the teddy bear, and subtracting this from the total.

This is a completely inaccurate and absurd model of Carrier's argument. For this parallel to make any sense, you must assume that the 'apple' corresponds to the question of whether Jesus is historical, while the other objects are evidence for Jesus. You would then have to argue that it is somehow possible to 'directly' assess whether Jesus is historical (without considering the evidence).

In fact, the corresponding gameshow task would be to guess the combined weight of all the objects. Carrier is then guessing the weight of the apple, the crayons and the teddy bear, and adding them up.

I have to disagree on several points. Regarding your second point that I stack the deck against Carrier by assuming the gameshow involves guessing a difference rather than a sum, I deliberately choose the difference because I think it is more accurate. To see why, if you look at a generic application of BT it has the form:

P(Y|X) = P(Y|X) P(X) / P(Y)

If you take the logarithm it becomes:

log P(Y|X) = log P(Y|X) P(X) - log P(Y)

Thus estimating P(Y|X) from the other probabilities is, in my opinion, more accurately represented as a difference if we are in the business of coming up with crude illustrations.

Regarding your first point, "You would then have to argue that it is somehow possible to 'directly' assess whether Jesus is historical (without considering the evidence)", it is Carrier not I who makes the assumption it is possible for us to guess complicated probabilities with high fidelity. If we assume this is not possible, well, there goes Carrier's entire project.

More importantly, I think you miss the point of the section, namely the numerical stability of BT. If you don't like the gameshow just look at the graphs that are structured as Carriers actual calculation. I think you will agree that the overall conclusion holds, that a computation such as Carriers can be inverted by assuming a bias of just a few percent in the (subjectively guessed) probabilities.

Notice Carriers way of treating this problem is simply to say, in one form or another, that he is aware of his biases and believe he has handled them adequately. The problem is that I simply don't think his estimate of the range of probabilities would correspond to what other, reasonable historians might assign. For instance, I think it is very likely that Ehrman or other NT experts believe that (say) the Gospels are more to be expected on historicity than on mythicism.

Let's take another example. Consider the case of who will win the election tomorrow, how accurately do you think we can know the probability Hillary will win at this time? There must be at least an interval of a handful of percent that probability falls within. However this probability is based on a simple question (Hillary wins or not) for which we have a ton of data (polling results) and experience from past elections. In Carriers case he too has to estimate probabilities, but they are probabilities of very complicated events (That Pauls letters say such-and-such) and where we don't have known past outcomes (past elections) or indirect estimates of the probability (the polls). What is a reasonable estimate of our uncertainty in that case? Well, in most cases Carrier just says he can be absolutely certain that the probabilities have ratio 1, i.e. no uncertainty at all...

JohanRonnblom wrote: This is why I wrote that it seems as if you are arguing against BT in general: if you believed that BT would always lead to numerical instability, then BT would be useless. But it does not if employed correctly. Given what you write above I'm convinced that you do not believe that. However, I would say that Carrier is using it correctly, at least nitpicking aside (nitpicking being objections that have no major effect on the outcome of a corrected calculation).

Well, if it seems like that I think it is because you are not aware of how Carrier's way of using BT differs from common statistical practice:
Under normal circumstances, BT is applied in situations where we have a well-defined model and data, nearly always in the form of repeated observations of some form, which relates to the parameters of the model. A simple example might be a model of a coin where the parameter would be the probability the coin comes up heads and the data are a sequence of coin flips.

In this case, the probabilities have a well-defined meaning and the presence of actual data means the posterior density of the parameters will converge (assume the model is well-specified). Furthermore, we can (and should!) test the model. That is NOT the case in Carrier's work. His probabilities are all guessed (or for the prior, based on an obvious misapplication of reference classes) which is why we should be very concerned about numerical stability and ask what happens if we are slightly biased. To make matters worse, nothing can be checked or validated. Thinking about numerical stability in this situation is just common sense and I find it astonishing Carrier dismisses this concern as he does and describe his practice as "proving history".

JohanRonnblom wrote: At the end of the day, the usefulness of BT in OHJ (or history) is, in my opinion, not to get extremely accurate mathematical calculations, but to get clarity in the discussion. Which evidence is most consequential? Which disagreements on facts and arguments are most important?

There is, I would add, one point where I agree with you: Carrier's application of a reference group for prior probability is a little odd and in my opinion not convincing for several independent reasons. There appears to be no obvious reason to choose that group, which leaves open the possibility that it was chosen out of thousands of possible reference groups simply because it happened to give numbers Carrier liked. There is no obvious causal reason for why being in this group would make Jesus unhistorical, which makes the conclusion seem spurious especially given the very small data set. Perhaps we could do this if we were dealing with a very large medical trial, even where we had no theoretical understanding of how a cure worked, but we would still be suspicious. And, as I have argued extensively, I do not believe that Jesus fits all that well into the chosen reference class. But this is not a flaw in Carrier's use of BT, but in the quality of his argumentation.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on this point. The typical response would be that this prior probability is "only the prior" and it is therefore not such an important concern. I believe (as I also express in my review) that this step should give us every reason to be concerned: Carrier is not simply using his reference class to assign the probability Jesus did not exist, but the probability Jesus did not exist and fit his 5 point hypothesis. That is relevant because his 5-point hypothesis is quite specific (i.e. a-priori unlikely) and fits the evidence like a glove, i.e. it will serve as to introduce bias in favor of mythicism which connects this point to the above discussion about numerical stability: It is after all much more difficult to explain why people wrote about Jesus as existing in the Gospels some 40 years after his supposed existence if you assume Jesus just did not exist (general hypothesis of mythicism), than if you assume he did not exist but people later believed he did (implied in Carriers 5-point hypothesis). Carrier has several arguments in Chapter six to explain away this move, none of which I think works and can easily be abused in other, similar situations.

Regarding your first remark about not using a specific calculation I will happily repeat myself from my review and say I don't want to dismiss BT as being irrelevant as a means of structuring a historical argument. My objections are with regards to the specifics of Carriers approach. I can't help thinking that if you had read my review before forming an opinion about it then you would have noticed we seem to agree on more points than set us apart.

Tim Hendrix wrote:When I am talking about a specific hypothesis for historicity I am talking about Carriers specific, five-point scenario which falls into the general class of ahistoricity (the general class of ahistoric theories is the negation of "Jesus existed").

As Carrier explains in great detail, a 'theory' such as 'Jesus existed' is completely useless. There are at least 50 people called Jesus living in my city, Stockholm, right now. Probably hundreds of thousands, even millions, of historical Jesuses have existed. Unless you somehow specify who this historical Jesus would be, in such a way that he is identifiable, you will achieve nothing.

Now, you may not agree with Carrier's specification. Maybe you think that a mythical Jesus that does not fit his minimal description is more likely, or that an historical Jesus that does not fit his description existed. That is not a problem for Carrier. His calculations are obviously only relevant if the reader agrees that his hypotheses are sound and that any other Jesuses are sufficiently unlikely as to be irrelevant.

If you want to argue for another Jesus, go ahead and do that. But do not complain about Carrier's use of BT, because it is completely unrelated to that.

Tim Hendrix wrote: Regarding your second point that I stack the deck against Carrier by assuming the gameshow involves guessing a difference rather than a sum, I deliberately choose the difference because I think it is more accurate.

You may think so but note that you are now making up an absurd Bayesian argument, then proceeding to show why this argument is absurd. It is not Carrier's argument that you criticize, but a complete straw man of your own making.

Again, it seems as though you are arguing not just about Carriers use of BT, but against BT in general. Let me ask you, do you believe that it is possible - in general - to use BT to combine several pieces of evidence for or against a proposition, in such a way that the combined accuracy increases, rather than decreases, with the number of available pieces of evidence?

Tim Hendrix wrote: it is Carrier not I who makes the assumption it is possible for us to guess complicated probabilities with high fidelity. If we assume this is not possible, well, there goes Carrier's entire project.

Do you likewise doubt that it is possible to estimate the probability that Caesar existed? That Abraham Lincoln existed? That Tim Hendrix exists? It does seem that you are getting very close to the philosophical position of radical skepticism, where nothing can be known.

Tim Hendrix wrote: More importantly, I think you miss the point of the section, namely the numerical stability of BT. If you don't like the gameshow just look at the graphs that are structured as Carriers actual calculation. I think you will agree that the overall conclusion holds, that a computation such as Carriers can be inverted by assuming a bias of just a few percent in the (subjectively guessed) probabilities.

This is completely unrelated to Bayes Theorem. Yes, if someone is wrong in all her arguments, then the conclusion will be wrong. This is true for every historian and every Jesus scholar out there. The use of BT, however, allows us to see what someone ranks as her strongest argument. We can then focus our energy on that argument, until we reach an agreement, or at least arrive at reasonably close estimates. And so on for the other arguments.

In addition, we can see that if someone is making a very complex argument that she admits has uncertainty, then it may follow that a series of conclusions reached from those arguments will have increasingly diminished certainties, until they become so uncertain that they are clearly meaningless. I would argue that this is what pretty much every other Jesus scholar out there is doing, and if they were using BT, this would be exposed.

Tim Hendrix wrote: The problem is that I simply don't think his estimate of the range of probabilities would correspond to what other, reasonable historians might assign. For instance, I think it is very likely that Ehrman or other NT experts believe that (say) the Gospels are more to be expected on historicity than on mythicism.

That is possible, but then let them make that argument. This only shows why using BT is a good idea, not a bad idea.

Tim Hendrix wrote:Well, in most cases Carrier just says he can be absolutely certain that the probabilities have ratio 1, i.e. no uncertainty at all...

I can't find any single instance of him making such an assumption. Can you give me an example where he does this?

Tim Hendrix wrote: In this case, the probabilities have a well-defined meaning and the presence of actual data means the posterior density of the parameters will converge (assume the model is well-specified). Furthermore, we can (and should!) test the model. That is NOT the case in Carrier's work. His probabilities are all guessed (or for the prior, based on an obvious misapplication of reference classes) which is why we should be very concerned about numerical stability and ask what happens if we are slightly biased. To make matters worse, nothing can be checked or validated. Thinking about numerical stability in this situation is just common sense and I find it astonishing Carrier dismisses this concern as he does and describe his practice as "proving history".

That is just how history works. How would this be any better for Ehrman or any other? I think Ehrman is massively biased. The only thing to do about that is to examine the arguments and hopefully our assessments can gradually converge, at least on some issues.