1 – Agenda
2 – Temporal Proximity
3 – Witness Proximity
4 – Corroboration
5 – Transmission

I agree that they can be applied to any source, but I disagree that they provide even a ballpark for admissibility.

For example, if I tell you that a particular document has:

1 – A moral agenda
2 – Written ~300 years after the events
3 – Tertiary with some original material of uncertain origin
4 – Corroborated by several other sources with similar temporal and witness proximity
5 – Relatively reliable, some material may be missing

or:

1 – A religious agenda
2 – Written at most 70 years after the events
3 – Secondary
4 – Corroborated by several other sources of similar proximity which may also be sources
5 – Relatively reliable, a few passages may be uncertain

One can compare the properties relatively and maybe get a feeling for which one is more reliable than the other. However, just observing these properties does not obviously imply admissibility or inadmissibility. Looking at them, one might get a feel for admissibility, but that would be based on a seperate criterion, such as a distrust or religious sources, considering material written centuries later as somewhat questionable, etc.

The questions that I asked of the gospels, those can be applied anywhere such as Alexander.

It is an interesting question, a large and complex one that would take us far from the matter at hand I think. I would rather stick to a more narrow topic for now, at least until I have a better impression of how you evaluate; and to save us from approaching dissertation size essays :D

"I just noticed…"

Cheers, hopefully not too boring ;)

I don't see this as a digression, but the core of our discussion. For the most part, we seem to agree that historical evaluation is largely subjective. My terminology may have obscured my objective somewhat, but basically all I am trying to do is force us to dig deeper into what it is we base our subjective evaluation on. :)

To be honest I don't see this talk of 'consistent, methodical approach etc' as anything beyond a severe digression from the topic. We would be essentially sidestepping the problems — as I see them — with Jesus to become bogged down in a debate over how historical inquiry should be made. I think the existing methods are more than adequate for our purposes. So what I will not be doing is entering into any discussion on overall methodology; I think it best if we just stick to the case of Jesus for now.

We can certainly discuss this in terms of "levels of confidence" if either of you would wish to present a definition and criterion for such levels. However, most of our discussion so far has centered not on statements of confidence levels, but claims which are believed to be reasonably acceptable (Jesus was probably a historic person, Jesus was probably not a historic person). That is also why, when stating a brief criterion for admissibility, I accepted the most likely or most probably premise, not a proof of certainty.

This is similar to your professor's statement regarding good and bad historical claims. Also, your distinction between good and bad answers is similar to what I'm looking for with regard to an admissible criterion.

I do not contend that you did not make a case against the gospels and the claim of Jesus’ historicity. You definitely brought up arguments which need to be addressed and I will address them when I reply to that post. However, what I am trying to do is look beyond individual arguments for a consistent, methodical approach to historical evaluation that digs a little deeper than examining a set of properties and making some specific arguments along those lines.

This is the reason I brought up Alexander. Certainly, the existence of Alexander does not affect the existence of Jesus. Indeed, the evidence for the individual claims is independent to each case and none of our conclusions actually affect actual historic events at all. However, how one evaluates the evidence for Alexander in order to conclude that his existence is an admissible historic claim should be similar to the method we apply to the claim of Jesus’ existence. Therefore, while Alexander himself and the specific arguments related to his historicity are largely irrelevant to our focus, which is the existence of Jesus, how we evaluate both claims ought to be related.

To be perfectly clear, when I say consistent, methodical approach, I do not mean something quantitative or certain. I do mean a consistent standard that is more concrete than an undirected look at all the arguments and then performing a "smell test" based on a general feeling for the arguments. For example, looking for a well-reasoned approach, based on evidence and rational argument rather than an approach that leaps to unjustified conclusions and force fits the evidence to fit the theory. A better criterion might be one which relates specifically to examinable properties, such as, reasonably close, reliable, and consistent evidence and a theory which best fits a particular claim with other, related, admissible claims while providing acceptable answers to perceivable problems.

Such a criterion clearly includes a level of subjectivity, as we would expect, but clearly delineates what we expect from an admissible claim. It also provides clear grounds for contesting statements concerning historical claims beyond simply saying “that’s your subjective opinion, I disagree”. One can either point to the author’s stated criterion and argue that the criterion is actually met by the data or argue that the criterion itself is flawed. For this reason, it seems to me that this is a critical issue in this discussion.

My brief evaluation in addition to other sources has led me to view the gospels as inadmissible in a historically accurate context, those failings I highlighted would have to be reasonably countered.

"What I see is you working through this list of properties and then out of the blue making the subjective pronouncement that the Jesus claim is inadmissible while the Alexander claim is admissible."

Alexander has absolutely nothing what so ever to do with whether Jesus really existed or not and was never claimed as such. I can't see how to make it any clearer than it has been made already.

Clearly, one of us does not understand something. It could be me, but I still don't see what you think I am missing. I'll try again to explain what I think you are missing again:

When I asked for a criterion, I asked for a criterion for accepting a claim, not a criterion of general evaluation. What that means, is I asked for a formal mechanism for dividing historic claims into two groups: admissible (accepted) and inadmissible (rejected). For a criterion to fit in this category, it must clearly indicate a bar, above which, a claim is admissible and below which, it is inadmissible.

Your criteria, as best as I can tell, does not meet this definition. Rather, your criterion represents a set of properties over which a claim may be generally evaluated. However, merely examining each of these properties and observing various strengths and weakness over them does not clearly distinguish claims into admissible and inadmissible claims. Furthermore, it is not a set of fields which a claim can "fail to meet". For example, the claim that Jesus was a historic person can be evaluated over your enumerated properties. It's relative strength or weakness is irrelevant to observations over the list you presented (but not irrelevant to a subsequent evaluation, which is what I'm looking for).

Let's return to the water quality example. If you asked me what makes water good, and I replied temperature, chemical composition, and aeration, I haven't really answered your question. I've told you what properties of water need to be observed, but I haven't given you a way of telling the difference between good and bad water. Even bad water has these properties, but with different values than good water. However, if I proceed to tell you that the temperature needs to be within a given range x, the chemical composition should be about y and the aeration rate should be at least z, now you can tell between good water and bad because I have given you a clear criterion which divides good and bad water.

When I look at your article, all I see is the first part, the properties, but not the admissible criterion. I'll be specific this time and tell you exactly what I see you presenting as your criteria. What I see you give is roughly the following list of questions or properties to examine about a claim:

1 – Agenda
2 – Temporal Proximity
3 – Witness Proximity
4 – Corroboration
5 – Transmission

My terms might be a bit different than you would name them, but lets not quibble over name and number. The point is that your criterion consists of a set of properties similar to those above. Any claim has these properties to a greater or lesser extent, but merely listing the properties does not divide between admissible and inadmissible claims. If you believe that you presented something fundamentally different or went beyond such a list to provide the kind of criterion I am asking for, I apologize in advance for being so dense, but I just don't see it. What I see is you working through this list of properties and then out of the blue making the subjective pronouncement that the Jesus claim is inadmissible while the Alexander claim is admissible. I do not mean that you do not go over evidence related to your property list. You do. But your ultimately conclusion seems to flow more from a subjective conclusion in your head than from any explicit criterion presented in your article.

– My criteria —

I'll try to include a more detailed criterion in my response to your recent post. However, I am not a historian by trade and it appears that even those who are don't really have a concrete criterion in this area either. As such, my basic method is, as far as I can tell, pretty much the same as yours: I look at the evidence and subjectively determine what I think is reasonably likely. Exactly what it is that gives me this "feel" of the evidence is not particularly straight forward to tease out.