Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus

292 Pages·2012·2.52 MB·English

by  Richard Carrier

Published 2012 by Prometheus Books

Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Copyright © 2012 by Richard C.
Carrier. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carrier, Richard, 1969–

Proving history : Bayes's theorem and the quest for the historical Jesus / by Richard Carrier.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–61614–559–0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978–1–61614–560–6 (ebook)
1. Jesus Christ—Historicity. 2. Bayesian statistical decision theory. I. Title.
BT303.2.C365 2012
232.9'08—dc23

2011050577

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Preface
1. The Problem
2. The Basics
3. Introducing Bayes's Theorem
4. Bayesian Analysis of Historical Methods
5. Bayesian Analysis of Historicity Criteria
6. The Hard Stuff
Appendix
Common Abbreviations
Notes
Index
This book is the first of two volumes examining a daring question: whether there
is a case to be made that Jesus never really existed as a historical person. The
alternative is that Jesus originated as a mythical character in tales symbolically
narrating the salvific acts of a cosmic being who never walked the earth (and
probably never really existed at all). Later, according to theory, this myth was
mistaken for history (or deliberately repackaged that way) and then embellished
over time. The present book does not test that claim (as the next volume, On the
Historicity of Jesus Christ, will), but rather begins the inquiry by resolving the
central problem of method: How does one test a claim like that? Indeed, how do
we test historical theories of any sort whatever? As a result, this book is of
interest to all historians, even those who have no interest in the Jesus question.
For here I shall explore and establish the formal logic of all historical argument.
All historians have biases, but sound methods will prevent those from too
greatly affecting our essential results. No progress in historical knowledge, in
fact, no historical knowledge at all, would be possible without such methods.
Hence, the aim here is to develop a formal historical method for approaching this
(or any other) debate, which will produce as objectively credible a conclusion as
any honest historian can reach. One need merely plug all the evidence into that
method to get a result. That's a bold claim, I know; but the purpose of this book
is to convince you, and if in the end you are convinced, provide the background
necessary to implement the method I propose. All I ask is that you give my
argument a fair hearing.
You may still want to know what my biases are. I am a marginally renowned
atheist, known across America (and many other corners of the world) as an avid
defender of a naturalist worldview and a dedicated opponent of the abuse of
history in the service of supernaturalist creeds. I am a historian by training and
trade (I received my PhD in ancient history from Columbia University) and a
philosopher by experience and practice (I have published peer-reviewed articles
in the field and am most widely known for my book on the subject, Sense &
Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism). I have always
assumed without worry that Jesus was just a guy, another merely human founder
of an entirely natural religion (whatever embellishments to his cult and story
may have followed). I'd be content if I were merely reassured of that fact. For
the evidence, even at its best, supports no more startling conclusion. So, I have
no vested interest in proving Jesus didn't exist. It makes no difference to me if he
did. I suspect he might not have, but then that's a question that requires a
rigorous and thorough examination of the evidence before it can be confidently
declared. Believers, by contrast, and their apologists in the scholarly community,
cannot say the same. For them, if Jesus didn't exist, then their entire worldview
topples. The things they believe in (and need to believe in) more than anything
else in the world will then be under dire threat. It would be hard to expect them
ever to overcome this bias, which makes bias a greater problem for them than for
me. They need Jesus to be real; but I don't need Jesus to be a myth.
Most atheists agree. And yet so much dubious argument has appeared on both
sides of this debate, including argument of such a technical and erudite character
that laypeople can't decide whom to trust, that a considerable number of atheists
approached me with a request to evaluate the arguments on both sides and tell
them whose side has the greater merit, or whether we can even decide between
them on the scanty evidence we have. That's how my involvement in this matter
began, resulting in my mostly (but not solely) positive review of Earl Doherty's
The Jesus Puzzle. My continued work on the question has now culminated in
over forty philanthropists (some of them Christians) donating a collective total
of $20,000 for Atheists United, a major American educational charity, to support
my research and writing of a series of books, in the hopes of giving both
laypeople and experts a serious evaluation of the evidence they can use to decide
who is more probably right. The first step in that process is to assess the methods
so far employed on the subject and replace them if faulty.
Though this is a work of careful scholarship, the nature of its aims and
funding necessitate a style that is approachable to both experts and laypeople. By
the requirements of my grant, I am writing as much for my benefactors as my
fellow scholars. But there is a more fundamental reason for my frequent use of
contractions, slang, verbs in the first person, and other supposed taboos: it's how
I believe historians should speak and write. Historians have an obligation to
reach wider audiences with a style more attractive and intelligible to ordinary
people. And they can do so without sacrificing rigor or accuracy. Indeed, more
so than any other science, history can be written in ordinary language without
excessive reliance on specialized vocabulary (though we do need some), and
without need of any stuffy protocols of language that don't serve a legitimate
purpose. As long as what we write is grammatically correct, accurate and clear,
and conforms to spoken English, it should satisfy all the aims of history: to
educate and inform and advance the field of knowledge. This very book has been
written to exemplify and hopefully prove that point.
The support I received for this work has been so generous, I must thank
Atheists United for all their aid and assistance, and all those individual donors
who gave so much, and for little in return but an honest report. No one (not even
Atheists United, who provided me with the financial grant in aid, nor any donor
to that fund) was given any power to edit or censor the content of this work or to
compel any particular result. They all gave me complete academic freedom. That
also means I alone am responsible for everything I write. Atheists United wanted
to see what I came up with, and trusted me to do good work on the strength of
my reputation and qualifications, but they do not necessarily agree with or
endorse anything I say or argue. The same follows for any individual donors.
And more particular thanks are in order for them, who made this work
possible. Benefactors came not only from all over the United States, but from all
over the world—from Australia and Hong Kong to Norway and the Netherlands,
even Poland and France. Not all wanted to be thanked by name, but of those who
did (or didn't object), my greatest gratitude goes to the most generous
contributors: Jeremy A. Christian, Paul Doland, Dr. Evan Fales, Brian
Flemming, Scott and Kate Jensen, Fab Lischka, and most generous of all,
Michelle Rhea and Maciek Kolodziejczyk. Next in line are those who also gave
very generously, including Aaron Adair, John and Susan Baker, Robert A. Bosak
Jr., Jon Cortelyou, Valerie Mills Daly, Brian Dewhirst, Karim Ghantous, Frank
O. Glomset, Paul Hatchman, Jim Lippard, Ryan Miller, Dr. Edwin Neumann,
Lillian Paynter, Benjamin Schuldt, Vern Sheppard, Chris Stoffel, James Tracy,
Stuart Turner, Keith Werner, Jonathan Whitmore, Dr. Alexander D. Young,
Frank Zindler, and Demian Zoer. But I am grateful even for the small donors,
whose gifts collectively added up to quite a lot, including the generosity of
David F. Browning, David Empey, Landon Hedrick, Gordon McCormick, and
many others.
This book would never have been written without all their support. It's very
rewarding to present this book to those who respect and enjoy my work enough
to keep me employed just to educate themselves and the public about what many
consider an obscure issue, and who, above all, have patiently waited so long for
the payoff. Special thanks also go to David Fitzgerald (author of Nailed: Ten
Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All), Earl Doherty (author of
The Jesus Puzzle and Jesus: Neither God Nor Man), and Evan Fales (author of
the forthcoming Reading Sacred Texts: An Anthropological Approach to the
Gospel of St. Matthew), for their particular assistance and perspective. I often
don't agree with them, but their work did influence me, even if not always in the
direction they may have hoped.
Apart from fundamentalist Christians, all experts agree the Jesus of the Bible is
buried in myth and legend.1 But attempts to ascertain the “real” historical Jesus
have ended in confusion and failure. The latest attempt to cobble together a
method for teasing out the truth involved developing a set of criteria. But it has
since been demonstrated that all those criteria, as well as the whole method of
their employment, are fatally flawed. Every expert who has seriously examined
the issue has already come to this conclusion. In the words of Gerd Theissen,
“There are no reliable criteria for separating authentic from inauthentic Jesus
tradition.”2 Stanley Porter agrees.3 Dale Allison likewise concludes, “these
criteria have not led to any uniformity of result, or any more uniformity than
would have been the case had we never heard of them,” hence “the criteria
themselves are seriously defective” and “cannot do what is claimed for them.”4
Even Porter's attempt to develop new criteria has been shot down by unveiling
all the same problems.5 And Porter had to agree.6 The growing consensus now is
that this entire quest for criteria has failed.7 The entire field of Jesus studies has
thus been left without any valid method.
What went wrong? The method of criteria suffers at least three fatal flaws.
The first two are failures of individual criteria. Either a given criterion is
invalidly applied (e.g., the evidence actually fails to fulfill the criterion, contrary
to a scholar's assertion or misapprehension), or the criterion itself is invalid (e.g.,
the criterion depends upon a rule of inference that is inherently fallacious,
contrary to a scholar's intuition), or both. To work, a criterion must be correctly
applied and its logical validity established. But meeting the latter requirement
always produces such restrictions on meeting the former requirement as to make
any criterion largely useless in practice, especially in the study of Jesus, where
the evidence is very scarce and problematic. The third fatal flaw lies in the entire
methodology. All criteria-based methods suffer this same defect, which I call the
‘Threshold Problem’: At what point does meeting any number of criteria warrant
the conclusion that some detail is probably historical? Is meeting one enough?
Or two? Or three? Do all the criteria carry the same weight? Does every instance
of meeting the same criterion carry the same weight? And what do we do when
there is evidence both for and against the same conclusion? In other words, even
if meeting the criteria validly increases the likelihood of some detail being true,
when does that likelihood increase to the point of being effectively certain, or at
least probable? No discussions of these historicity criteria have made any
headway in answering this question. This book will.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF FAILURE

The quest for the historical Jesus has failed spectacularly. Several times.
Historians now even count the number of times.8 With the latest quest
(numbered “the third”) and its introduction of criteria, the concept of Jesus we're
supposed to believe existed is actually getting more confused and uncertain the
more scholars study it, rather than the other way around. Progress is supposed to
increase knowledge and consensus and sharpen the picture of what happened (or
what we don't know), not the reverse. Instead, Jesus scholars continue
multiplying contradictory pictures of Jesus, rather than narrowing them down
and increasing their clarity—or at least reaching a consensus on the scale and
scope of our uncertainty or ignorance. More importantly, the many contradictory
versions of Jesus now confidently touted by different Jesus scholars are all so
very plausible—yet not all can be true. In fact, as only one can be (and that at
most), almost all must be false. So the establishment of this kind of “strong
plausibility” has been decisively proved not to be a reliable indicator of the truth.
Yet Jesus scholars keep treating it as if it were. This has left us with a confused
mass of disparate opinions, vast libraries of theories and interpretations
essentially impossible to keep up with, and no real efforts at improving or
criticizing the worst and gathering the best into any sort of coherent, consensus
view of what actually happened at the dawn of Christianity, or even during its
first two hundred years.9
I won't recount the whole history of historical Jesus research here, as that has
been done to death already. Indeed, accounts of the many “quests” for the
historical Jesus and their failure are legion, each with their own extensive
bibliography.10 Just to pick one out of a hat, Mark Strauss summarizes, in
despair, the many Jesuses different scholars have “discovered” in the evidence
recently.11 Jesus the Jewish Cynic Sage.12 Jesus the Rabbinical Holy Man (or
Devoted Pharisee, or Heretical Essene, or any of a dozen other contradictory