A while ago I posted a case for the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation referring to two of the leaders of the second Jewish war, or the Bar Kochba war of 132-135 CE. (Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D). For most of us who have been long immersed in the view that ancient Christianity must always have opposed violent Judean rebels against Rome, the view that the two witnesses could possibly refer to Simon Bar Kochba himself and the high priest at the time must seem outrageous. In partial defence of the possibility of that interpretation I would point to certain divisions among Christians at that time: some were very pro-Judean, pro-Old Testament, pro-Torah, while others appear to have been opposed to any form of “Judaizing” and Torah observance. Christians were not a monolithic identity; but nor were Judeans before the rabbinic era.
A prominent rabbi at the time of the Bar Kochba war was remembered in rabbinic literature as holding views that are strikingly similar to those we associate with Christianity. I refer to a “Son of Man” dispute. Who was the “Son of Man” one reads about in the Book of Daniel?
One verse reads: “His throne is sparks of fire” [Dan. 7:9] and another [part of the] verse reads, “until thrones were set up and the Ancient of Days sat” [Dan. 7:9]. This is no difficulty: One was for him and one was for David.
— As we learn in a baraita [non-Mishnaic tannaitic tradition]: One for him and one for David; these are the words of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Yosethe Galilean said to him: Akiva! Until when will you make the Shekhina profane?! Rather. One was for judging and one was for mercy.
— Did he accept it from him, or did he not?
— Come and hear! One for judging and one for mercy, these are the words of Rabbi Akiva. (BT Hagiga 14a)(Boyarin 140)
Rabbi Akiva is better known for having entered rabbinic tradition as a contemporary of Bar Kochba and as a leader who (erroneously) proclaimed Bar Kochba to be the Messiah. Another of this rabbi’s “mistaken views” (according to later rabbinic teachings) was his claim that the Book of Daniel’s image of one like the Son of Man amidst clouds of heaven approaching the Ancient of Days pointed to a heavenly Davidic King with a throne beside God’s. That is, Daniel’s image was of David as the Messiah and “Son of Man” who sat at the right hand of God. The same rabbinic tradition quickly disputes Akiva’s view, condemning Akiva for daring to think a man could also be a divine figure. The rabbis left on their record that Akiva eventually changed his mind and was restored to “orthodoxy”.
A modern Jewish scholar, Daniel Boyarim, alerts us to a similar claim being put in the mouth of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark:
The crux is his identification of David, the Messiah, as the “Son of Man” who sits at God’s right hand, thus suggesting not only a divine figure but one who is incarnate in a human being as well. “I am [the Messiah] and you shall see ‘the Son of Man’ sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62). Hence, his objector’s taunt: “Until when will you make the Divine Presence profane?! Rabbi Akiva is seemingly also projecting a divine human, Son of Man, who will be the Messiah. His contemporary Rabbi Yose the Galilean (perhaps a more assiduous reader of the Gospels) strenuously objects to Rabbi Akiva’s “dangerous” interpretation and gives the verse a “Modalist” interpretation. Of course, the Talmud itself must record that Rabbi Akiva changed his mind in order for him to remain “orthodox.” (140)
The rabbinic record does not explicitly say that Akiva equated Bar Kochba with the “Son of Man” messiah of Daniel 7. It only tells us that Akiva proclaimed Bar Kochba as the messiah; it elsewhere records that Akiva identified Daniel 7’s heavenly Son of Man figure with a Davidic Messiah.
I find this little datum interesting. Perhaps of related interest, too, that it is a Galilean rabbi (Joseph) who is made to refute Akiva.
My studies have led me to another item I think will be of a wider interest: a hypothesis to explain the origin of a “heavenly Christ” myth. It is from Christoph Markschies’ Valentinus Gnosticus? (1992). Valentinus, Marcion and “proto-orthodox” Christian leaders migrated to Rome after the Bar Kochba war and engaged in discussions and debates over their respective interpretations of Christianity1. For those of us who have been familiar only with the literal readings of the gospels we cannot help but wonder how such dialogue could have taken place. Were not Marcion and Valentinus “gnostics” who taught a non-human Jesus? How would “orthodox” teachers have enough in common to discuss anything with them? Well, Markschies offers an explanation. Here is a translation of the key passage:
. . . . We therefore ask first which person is here designated by the name “Jesus,” since the Valentinians are known here to differentiate: they distinguish Jesus, the Savior born of Mary, who effects the διορθώσεις [= the restoration] of this world (τὰ ἐνθάδε) [= the things in this world; these are Plato’s words], from two other figures called “Jesus Christ”: from that Christ who restores the outer Sophia and then takes his place in the Pleroma, and a third, the consort of the outer Sophia. “Εἰσὶν οὖν κατ’ αὐτοὺς τρεῖς Χριστοί.”⁵⁹ . . . . . the Jesus described [in a third century fragment] is only an image of the actually important Christ figure . . . . [translation of pp 92f]
A third “crisis-point” of Valentinus’ theology was probably Christology. . . . The uniqueness and historical contingency of the “Christ-event” posed serious problems. A theory which Valentinus presented at the decisive points of Christology was, for the educated of late antiquity, a contradictio in adiecto: the Logos could not suffer a slave’s death. The students, if they wished to make theology accessible to the “educated” among their hearers, had to remove the offense that the crucified cult-founder represented. Here too, as in the question of the fall of sin, they once again hypostatized the historical processes in order to move away from the actual historical Christ-event onto the archetypal level of the world of ideas, into the aeonic world—so that the emergence of the three Christ-Jesus figures [see side box] can be understood on the three levels of the cosmic drama. The decisive act does not take place on this earth (and thus on the historical level), but already in the “ideal cosmos,” in the realm of the Aeons. The “actual” Christ acts (outside Sophia) and then takes his place in the aeonic world, in which the other Christ figures are his images and perform on other levels exactly what their prototype has already done.
This thesis concerning the emergence of Valentinian gnosis from Valentinus’ theology proves itself when one can answer a further important question: why is it that among the students there arises, relatively consistently, such a mythical intensification of theology, whereas myth still seems to play no role at all for Valentinus himself? First, one must make clear what function myth had in this period: in Valentinus’ lifetime a whole series of philosophical schools promised initiation into the mysteries of God, soul, and immortality with the help of myth. Nothing would be more unhistorical than to want to separate philosophy and theology here by means of our modern distinctions. The introduction of myth made—however paradoxical it may appear today—the teaching of the Valentinians attractive in the first place for certain philosophically interested circles: “ἦλθε καὶ ὁ φιλόσοφος ὡς ἐπίσκοπος, πῶς ἐστίν. [Quote from Aristotle, = “Then the philosopher also came as a bishop—what is he like?”] At the same time, myth increased the orienting function of the theory, since through it, on the one hand, matters became more vivid, and on the other hand even the “unutterable words” (ἄρρητα ῥήματα = [unspeakable words]) concerning the highest principles were illustrated and thereby became “sayable.” The deterministic tendencies of this displacement onto the level of principles simultaneously relieved human beings in their everyday decisions. The myth of the pupils of Valentinus offered the greatest possible relief, since everything that happens in this world is already predetermined by the processes in the world of ideas. I am ready—provided I am a pneumatic—to be so; the human being is thereby largely relieved of ethical responsibility⁷³. Valentinus’ theology evidently did not yet possess this high degree of relief and orientation.
Markschies then explains how the pupils of Valentinus apparently came to expand and elaborate on his own original teachings, thus producing the quite complex gnostic system discussed at length by Irenaeus.
There is nothing here about a “crucifixion in heaven”, as some suggest (and as I have sometimes wondered) was the original meaning in certain passages in Paul’s letters. But it seems to me that according to Markschies the spiritual meaning of the crucifixion was taught through the myth relating to Sophia. Where this hypothesis fits in relation to passages in Paul such as his claim that the cosmic powers crucified Jesus I can only speculate.
Continuing Markschies ….
Between the highly interesting precision based on Plato’s Timaeus at a high philosophical level—which elevates him above many contemporaries . . . .—and the somewhat helpless-comic solution he offers for the problem of the suffering Jesus, there exists a contrast and indeed a difference in level. If one interprets this contrast against the background of the engagement with Hellenistic philosophy within theology—which shapes the entire history of the early Church—one will have to agree with A. v. Harnack, who described as the main problem that of “premature scientification”: Valentinus had already developed certain approaches to solving the classical problem-fields, but—as far as the fragments allow this judgment—no consistent theory; in some areas he perhaps even performed genuine theological pioneering work. In this deficiency lies the inner reason for the transition into the “mythological heresy” of the pupils. They develop their theology of mediation already with an (implicit) method, namely that of consistent (popularizing) Platonization.
. . . .
Naturally, the interpretation presented here of the inner reasons for the development from Valentinus to the Valentinians remains a hypothesis. But it best explains, in my view, a historical finding that clearly reveals continuities between Valentinus and his school and at the same time equally clear discontinuities.
This explanation is the reverse of Earl Doherty’s view that the crucifixion narrative was a product of neoplatonic ideas and later “mythologized” into an earthly story.
One might assume that the Markschies view presupposes a historically “true” narrative, but I would not rush to that conclusion. We need to keep in mind that all of this suddenly breaks into the scene in the wake of the Bar Kochba War and Trajan’s massacres preceding that. The Gospel of Mark Jesus is clearly (to me at least) a personified figure of Israel, a “son of man” figure from Daniel placed in a narrative with a theological meaning. Marcion’s Jesus is a clear antithesis of the Judean god. These are all theological figures. Historical origins cannot be assumed.
1 “‘Christian'” teachers and schools emerge in Rome around the mid-second century ce, after the Bar Kokhba revolt, and as a consequence of it.” (Livesey 200), and “In my study on Marcion I have pointed out that, prior to the end of the second Jewish war of the years 132–135, we do not know of early Christian teachers who sojourn, live, or teach at Rome. From what early Christian authors tell us, it was the disaster of the Bar Kokhba war that moved people and made them re-locate from Palestine and Samaria to Asia, and further to Greece and Rome.” (Vinzent 96)
Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Markschies, Christoph Johannes. Valentinus Gnosticus? Untersuchungen zur valentinianischen Gnosis: mit einem Kommentar zu den Fragmenten Valentins. Mohr Siebeck, 1992.
Vinzent, Markus. “Orthodoxy and Heresy: Misnomers and Misnamers.” Forum: Foundations and Facets. Third Series 10, no. 1 (2021): 91–108.
Bronze head of Hadrian found in the River Thames in London. Now in the British Museum. – Wikipedia
I’ve come across more items of a more general interest in the course of my formal studies these last few days: a very old and a very publication favourably arguing that the “abomination of desolation” can only refer to a statue set up in the Jerusalem temple by Hadrian in the 130s CE.
Some readers here will be aware of Hermann Detering’s proposal that the “abomination of desolation” that was to be “standing where it ought not” referred to the time of the Bar Kochba War, 132-135 CE, and the Roman emperor Hadrian’s supposedly setting up of a statue of Jupiter/Zeus in the Jewish Temple. See Little Apocalypse and the Bar Kochba Revolt.
Well, Hermann Detering’s name and the article I discussed in the above link appeared recently (2024) in a footnote of a book chapter by Étienne Nodet, “Destructions du Temple de Jérusalem”. But what was most interesting was that Nodet was pointing out that the same view (that the prophecy in Mark 13 and Matthew 24 refers to Hadrian erecting a pagan statue in the Jerusalem temple) was made as early as 1845 by none other than the great, pioneering New Testament scholar, Ferdinand Christian Baur! New Testament scholars have followed a good many of Baur’s leads but this particular one fell between the cracks.
Nodet introduces an alternative possibility that the statue erected in the temple was actually a statue of Hadrian himself. In the light of Thomas Witulski’s research there is probably no major difference between Jupiter and Hadrian: see the post, Hadrian the God.
I have translated Nodet:
Finally, one must mention a collection of ancient traditions entitled Chronicon Paschale, which indicates that Hadrian destroyed the Temple, which had been rebuilt⁴². Taken in isolation, such information would carry little weight, but it combines with a statement by Jerome: he affirms that an equestrian statue of Hadrian was erected at the site of the Holy of Holies and that it is none other than the “Abomination of Desolation” prophesied by Jesus (In Matth. 24:15); this must evidently be connected with the statue erected by Apostomos⁴³.
. . .
Étienne Nodet
In Luke’s version, without profanation, the prophecy may refer to the war of 70, but in Matthew–Mark, the “Abomination of Desolation” of Daniel signifies a formal profanation of the Temple, alluding to the idol erected by Antiochus IV mentioned above. To situate the prediction of Jesus, one must eliminate the attempt of Caligula to have his statue placed in the Temple, since his death at the beginning of 41 interrupted this project⁴⁶, as well as the assault of Titus and the fire of 70, since that was not strictly speaking a profanation. One must therefore return to Jerome’s interpretation of a prophecy of Jesus, which had already been proposed by F. Baur in 1845, but, like modern scholars, he rightly considered that it had been composed after the fact⁴⁷. The consequences for the dating of the Gospels are obvious, but little used.
42 Cf. L. Dindorf, Historici graeci minores, Leipzig 1870, vol. I, p. 474. The sources on the causes of the Bar Kokhba revolt are sparse, but there was certainly a profanation of the Holy of Holies, cf. E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People, vol. I, pp. 535–542, hence an analogy with the Maccabean revolt.
43 There are good reasons to think that shortly after the foundation of Aelia Capitolina an equestrian statue of Hadrian was erected in the Holy of Holies or in its place; see D.-M. Cabaret, La topographie de la Jérusalem antique: essais sur l’urbanisme fossile, défenses et portes, du 2e s. av. au 2e s. ap. J.-C., Louvain 2020, pp. 260–288. [my note: Apostomos was the name given in rabbinic records to Hadrian]
. . . .
46. The affair, recounted by Philo and Josephus, is presented in detail by E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People, vol. I, pp. 394–397.
47. See F. C. Baur, Kritische Untersuchungen über die kanonischen Evangelien, ihr Verhältniss zueinander, ihren Charakter und Ursprung, Tübingen 1851, p. 122; he was little followed, no doubt because of his personal discredit, but one should note the detailed study by H. Detering, “The Synoptic Apocalypse (Mark 13 par.): A Document from the Time of Bar Kokhba,” Journal of Higher Criticism 7 (2000), pp. 161–210.
F. C. Baur
Here is Baur’s discussion, again translated. For Baur, Matthew was living at the time of the Bar Kochba war and wrote of what he understood to be the culmination of the tribulations before the end, while Luke wrote of the first war, 66-70, and the beginning of sorrows.
If Jesus cannot have spoken as the evangelist has him speak in chapter 24, then the question deserves all the more to be considered whether the event which is here presented as the sign of the Parousia is in fact the destruction of Jerusalem at all.
According to the presentation, the discourse of Jesus is connected with the destruction of Jerusalem, which is yet to occur; but the discourse itself does not intend to give a description of that destruction, but rather to set forth only the signs of the Parousia, which takes place only after the destruction of Jerusalem and presupposes it.
If one now asks whether the phenomena indicated in relation to the sign of the Parousia fit the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, one must almost throughout give a negative answer. The commentators unanimously observe that before the destruction of Jerusalem neither false messiahs nor significant wars among nations, such as are meant in vv. 6 and 7, can be demonstrated. Nor is anything more precise known about persecutions of Christians through which many Christians might have been led into apostasy.
How perfectly, on the other hand, does all this fit the Jewish war under Hadrian! At that time it was that Bar Kokhba was generally regarded by the people, who flocked to him in crowds, as the Messiah who was to free them from the yoke of Roman rule, and rabbis such as Akiba gave every support to belief in him. Not only in Palestine did a general uprising of the Jews occur—which the Romans were able to suppress only with the greatest exertion in a war that seems to have lasted several years, in which Jerusalem had first to be reconquered (around the year 134)—but the spirit of unrest spread everywhere where Jews were in the Roman Empire and broke out in secret or open attacks on the Romans; and the support which Bar Kokhba received alone must prove how deeply the nation was involved in his undertaking. “Almost the whole world,” says Cassius Dio (LXIX, 14), “was set in motion by the uprising of the Jews.” Münter, Der jüdische Krieg unter den Kaisern Trajan und Hadrian (1821), p. 66.
What the discourse of Jesus contains about persecutions of Christians also receives thereby a new light. Bar Kokhba treated the Christians, who did not wish to take part in the uprising against the Romans, with the greatest cruelty, as is reported by Justin Martyr (Apol. I, 31), Eusebius of Caesarea (H.E. 4.6), and others; and according to the assertion of the Talmudists, many at that time are said to have denied the Christian faith. Münter, ibid., p. 55.
Still more remarkable, however, is how in this connection even the βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως (“abomination of desolation”) first seems to receive its proper meaning. The interpreters who think only of the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus have not yet succeeded in taking the expression in a sense corresponding to its precise wording.
Baur then addresses the arguments of those who attempted to place the prophecy in the time of the first destruction of Jerusalem (70 CE):
If, according to Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, the phrase refers generally to the abominable devastation on the temple site which historically occurred through the Romans at and after the conquest of the temple, then one may rightly say with Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette that the term does not fit this at all. But if, with de Wette following Hugo Grotius, one thinks of the Roman army with its standards, which were an abomination to the Jews, then Meyer can object that the words contain nothing pointing to this. Nor is it clear why precisely the standards should be singled out as something so especially abominable, and even in this way the expression is not exhausted, since one cannot assume that the Roman standards remained planted on the temple site after its destruction.
But only the events of Hadrian’s time can make sense of the prophecy, Baur continues….
The expression receives its adequate meaning only through the report that Hadrian, precisely at that time, during the aforementioned Jewish war, either before or after it, set up the statue of Capitoline Jupiter on the place where formerly the temple of Solomon had stood (εἰς τὸν τῷ θεῷ τόπον ναὸν τῷ Διΐ ἔθηκεν, Cassius Dio LXIX.12; Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 1.2: ubi quondam erat templum et religio Dei, ibi Hadriani statua et Jovis idolum collocatum est), from which Jerusalem also received the pagan name Aelia Capitolina.
How striking, then, is the expression used by the evangelist if the statue of the pagan god stood as a permanent monument on the very site where formerly the true God was worshipped! This was the truly abominable aspect of the devastation already accomplished, with which for the Jew and Jewish Christian everything was connected that made paganism as such abhorrent. This extreme, the worst that could happen, is therefore highlighted by the evangelist as the most evident signal of the catastrophe now fully unfolding.
To grasp the discourse at its central point, one must place oneself entirely on the standpoint of the event as presented by the evangelist. The form of prophecy brings it about that everything spoken of here is presented as something still future. Yet it cannot have been purely future, since what had already happened determined him to direct his gaze into the future and to perceive in the present the future developing within it.
But where, one must ask, in his presentation does what has already happened separate itself from what is yet to happen? Since he places the Parousia, which comes at the end of all things, in such an immediate relation to the θλῖψις (tribulation)—as v. 29 proves—and since he expressly says (v. 22) that for the sake of the elect the days of this tribulation were shortened, then at the time of composing this discourse the μεγάλη θλῖψις (“great tribulation”) cannot yet have run a long course; accordingly, that βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως can scarcely yet have been set up in the holy place.
But even this assumption is not necessary. According to Cassius Dio (ibid.), the great uprising of the Jews broke out precisely because Hadrian had already begun to carry out his plan to rebuild the destroyed city as a Roman colony and to erect the image of Jupiter in place of its temple. The uprising intervened, but it was foreseeable that after its suppression what had already been decided would be carried out all the more decisively—as indeed, according to Eusebius (H.E. 4.6), the founding of Aelia followed immediately after the end of the war.
What if, then, we assume that the author wrote in the midst of the uprising? Only thus do we fully understand how he could point with such emphasis to the βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως as the decisive turning point of the catastrophe now unfolding. As certainly as he, as a Christian, could regard Bar Kokhba only as a false prophet, so certainly could he not doubt the victory of the Romans; but as a Jewish Christian he could see in the profanation of the holy place by a pagan idol only the worst that could yet happen. If it comes to that, then there can no longer be any doubt that now the μεγάλη θλῖψις begins, upon which the Parousia immediately follows.
It is clear to see how, from this point, his entire conception of this great catastrophe is shaped. It divides for him, through the erection of the βδέλυγμα, into two periods: the one being the ὠδῖνες (“birth pangs,” v. 8), the other the θλῖψις μεγάλη itself. As he proceeds from definite phenomena given in reality, so in the second period the same fundamental conception appears again, only in its highest intensification. The general flight, in which each thinks only of saving himself, can only be a time of unrest and wars like the first period; and just as that period has its driving principle in belief in a false Messiah, so in the second period the most characteristic feature is that ψευδόχριστοι and ψευδοπροφῆται (“false Christs and false prophets”) seek to lead all into error and delusion.
This feature stands out so clearly in the description of the two periods that, if one must choose between the time of the first destruction of Jerusalem and the time of Bar Kokhba, one can only decide for the latter.
Admittedly, Luke in the parallel passage (chapter 21) can only have meant the first destruction of Jerusalem. But what does that prove for the explanation of Matthew? At this point we perceive only the different standpoint of the two evangelists, partly in relation to belief in the Parousia, partly in relation to the events then occurring in Palestine. For the non-Palestinian writer these events could not have had the same interest in themselves; moreover, he saw the expectation of the Parousia fulfilled only in the still-future βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. And just as for him the increasingly universal inclusion of the Gentiles belonged essentially to this kingdom, so for him the first destruction of Jerusalem had all the more the significance of a divine judgment (21:23), which, in the same measure that it testified to the rejection of messianic salvation by the Jews, guaranteed the inclusion of the Gentiles in the kingdom.
While Luke thus had the interest of fixing the beginning point of the great catastrophe—whose course extended from the destruction of Jerusalem to the Parousia—for the author of the Gospel of Matthew everything in his conception was concentrated at the point where the tribulation, whose pressure he felt keenly in the immediate present, could end in its highest intensity only with the Parousia of Christ.
If the interpretation of Matthew 24 attempted here is correct—as I do not doubt—then we would thereby have a very definite date for the composition of our canonical Gospel of Matthew: it would fall in the years 130–134, and I would not know what could be objected against this assumption.
If, according to this assumption, even the oldest of our canonical gospels—which the others already presuppose—cannot be placed any earlier, then it also provides a standard for the age of the others, and one can all the less be surprised that the data for determining the time of their origin do not reach further back.
Baur, Ferdinand Christian. Kritische untersuchungen über die kanonischen evangelien, ihr verhältniss zu einander, ihren charakter und ursprung. With Internet Archive. Tübingen, L.F. Fues, 1847. http://archive.org/details/kritischeuntersu0000baur. — pp 605-609
Nodet, Étienne. “Destructions du Temple de Jérusalem.” In Aux Origines Judéennes Du Christianisme Études En L’honneur De Simon Claude Mimouni Pour Son Soixante-Quinzième Anniversaire, edited by José Costa, David Hamidović, and Pierluigi Piovanelli. Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses. Brepols Publishers, 2024. — pp 467-486
Bayesian reasoning is already used explicitly in some historical sciences such as phylogeny (Felsenstein 2004, 288–306), archaeology (Buck et al. 1996), cosmology (Hobson 2010), and historical linguistics (Greenhill et al. 2020) to justify inferences of probable knowledge of history. In the historiography of the human past, Richard Carrier (2012, 2014) attempted to apply Bayesian reasoning to inferences from the texts of the New Testament. In the philosophy of the historical sciences, Elliott Sober (e.g. 1988), has applied Bayesian probability for understanding phylogenic reasoning, as Wallach (2018) applied for understanding inferences in archaeological science.
Most practicing historians undoubtedly have never heard of Bayes’ rule, know little about probability theory, and therefore have not considered whether or not they have been practicing Bayesian methods. Nevertheless, most historians usually follow Bayes’ rule tacitly, without being aware of it. The relation between the inferences historians make and Bayes’ rule is comparable to the relations between natural speakers of languages, who have not studied them, and the rules of grammar they usually follow tacitly, without being able to articulate them. If somebody violates the rules of grammar, other speakers would notice it, and could correct the mistake, without necessarily being able to articulate the grammatical rules they enforce. (Tucker 2025, 20)
Earlier, Tucker wrote of Bayes’ theorem being used to evaluate hypotheses:
The Bayesian model is still the best explanation of the actual practices of historians. When there is sufficient evidence to determine a particular common cause hypothesis, historians evaluate the prior probabilities of competing particular common cause hypotheses that characterize the common causes of a variational group differently, according to whether the hypotheses are coherent with established historiographic beliefs, the laws of nature, as well as internally coherent (Kosso, 1993, p. 5). (Tucker 2004, 120)
A hypothesis in history might propose an explanation for certain past events, or it might propose an estimate of the impact of certain persons or events in history. One can validly use Bayes to judge between competing hypotheses that seek to explain President Kennedy’s assassination, but one does not need Bayes to determine if there was a historical President Kennedy in the first place. There are much simpler ways to check that datum. One does not need Bayes to decide if everything we read in the Bible is true. Tucker also explained (in his review of Richard Carrier’s use of Bayes):
I do not think it is necessary to resort to heavy Bayesian artillery to demolish literalist soft targets. A more economical solution is to dismiss literalism on the grounds of misunderstanding the evidence. . . . It is more parsimonious to interpret the evidence as a metaphor. (Tucker 2016, 134)
Tucker continues by addressing the same confusion I have posted about elsewhere — Carrier’s confusion of hypotheses with the sources/data/evidence. Carrier approaches history the way positivists used to do in the olden days, approaching it like an empirical science that differs only from other sciences insofar as it has comparatively less data to work with. Again, Tucker:
Richard Carrier understands historiography as a historical science like “geology, cosmology, paleontology, criminal forensics” (105). Historical sciences use evidence to support hypotheses about historical events such as the Big Bang, the origins of the solar system, asteroids hitting the earth, the evolution and disappearance of species, and who committed a crime. Historical sciences rely more on observations than on experiments and infer particularities more than generalities. In Carrier’s view, science and the historical sciences are not identical but are continuous and mutually dependent with a quantitative difference: in his opinion, historiography has less data and so is less reliable. (Tucker 2016, 130)
Most historians learned long ago that history is not like a science at all, and would not be like a science even if it had mountains more data. No, it is better to simply treat Jesus as an unknown quantity, as a figure who is only attested in writings that are independently attested long after he was supposed to have lived, with most of those writings presenting him as a theological figure or a figure of second and third hand beliefs. There is no evidence at all for the historical Jesus of the kind we have, say, for the historical Alexander or Julius Caesar. We no more need Bayes to determine the existence of Julius Caesar or Alexander or the ancient city of Rome than we do to determine the historicity of President Kennedy, as mentioned above. In those cases we have information that can be determined to have originated in the life-times of those persons. Historical Jesus scholars have had to rely on hypotheses and trust in very late corroborated sources to argue that their information can be traced back to a historical Jesus. That is not the case with the likes of Alexander or Julius Caesar — or President Kennedy.
Tucker, Aviezer. 2025. Historiographic Reasoning. Cambridge University Press.
———2016. “The Reverend Bayes Vs. Jesus Christ,” History and Theory 55 (1): 129–40.
———2004. Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography. Cambridge University Press
Here is another snippet from my studies research that also has a place here . . . .
Ian Mills has a newly published book, The Hypothesis of the Gospels: Narrative Traditions in Hellenistic Reading Culture, that explains one important facet of the literary culture in which the gospels were written. It is a distillation from his 2021 PhD thesis, Rewriting the Gospel: The Synoptics Among Pluriform Literary Traditions.
“Hypothesis” in the title is a transliteration of the Greek word used by ancient authors to describe a well-known basic story outline that could be taken up and rewritten with variations by other authors. Ancient poets and playwrights, for example, would sometimes write different accounts of a legendary tale or myth, and as long as they retained “the essential characters, settings, and events of a particular narrative” they were free to make any changes they saw fit. The “most basic elements” of a story were its “hypothesis”. Order of events might change; even “who did what” might change; scenes might be added; and so forth. It was understood to be a kind of literary competition. An author would attempt to write a better or more relevant version of a well-known story. In other words, the authors of our gospels belonged to a wider literary culture that was familiar with the practice of re-writing basic stories.
Plato and Xenophon wrote quite different biographies of Socrates, for example:
These rough contemporaries of Justin, Irenaeus, and Clement report the same basic reading of Plato and Xenophon. Overlapping accounts of Socrates, they agree, are evidence of literary rivalry between their authors. . . . These readers all share the assumption that writing a book on an established hypothesis is a conventionally competitive act. (155)
The gospels . . . reflect a certain competitiveness inherent in writing on an established hypothesis. (Hypothesis, 149)
How often have we heard or read that the differences in the accounts of Jesus are the result of authors being exposed to different oral traditions. Well, now we have a good reason to rethink that assumption. If an author felt confident enough to write a better account of Jesus for any reason, then we have our explanation for why different gospels sometimes changed the order of events, sometimes added or subtracted certain episodes, and so forth.
I did not see Mills make this implication of his study explicit in The Hypothesis of the Gospels but he did point out in his earlier thesis that there is no need to call upon oral tradition to explain what are clearly features common to the literary practices extant at the time the gospels were composed. The gospels are well-known for consisting of blocks of mini-anecdotes. There is no need to assume these encapsulate what had been passed on orally since authors of the day wrote like that in other narratives — including “biographies” of philosophers or teachers.
The episodic structure evinced in the gospels was a creative choice that grew increasingly popular across various genres in the first and second centuries CE. The organization of Jesus’ ministry into discrete pericopes, therefore, does not justify the form critical view of the gospels as compilations of independently circulating oral traditions. (Rewriting, 198)
There is one other point I would like to add to Mills’ study. If well known narratives could be rewritten to the extent we find among ancient authors, then surely it follows that those basic narratives were not “set-in-stone truths”. They were tales or myths or literary creations that were open to rewriting. Mills does say that even the genre of history in ancient times contained basic narratives that could be written but the examples he points to are the Trojan War and the Theban Cycle. My understanding is that those particular histories were so distant in time, stretching back to the “age of heroes”, that those tales were indeed subject to diverse version histories. I am not so sure more recent “real” histories would have been open to rewriting of that kind. The second century Lucian, for example, savagely mocked historians as potential liars. That’s something I would like to read a bit more about. Maybe I should start with this old post: https://vridar.org/2019/11/25/two-more-reasons-ancient-historians-fabricated-history/
Mills, Ian N. 2021. “Rewriting the Gospel: The Synoptics Among Pluriform Literary Traditions.” Ph.D., Duke University.
Mills, Ian N. 2025. The Hypothesis of the Gospels: Narrative Traditions in Hellenistic Reading Culture. Fortress Press.
We are familiar enough with the claims that the mention of the sons of Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross of Jesus indicates that they were real people: the first audience of the Gospel of Mark must have known them personally because there is no other mention of them in the other gospels.
Well, I just came across the following while reading for another project . . . . .
Similarly with a certain Simon of Cyrene, a passerby coming in from the country, who is compelled to carry Jesus’s cross. Despite the fact that he is given an identification by place of origin, he is also identified through his sons, Alexander and Rufus (15:21), who are not further described. Mentioning them here in this way implies that they must be well known. But to whom? To Mark’s readers? But I would point out that it is not necessary to assume that Alexander and Rufus were in fact well known to Mark’s readers, because naming them in this way still performs the literary function of assuring the reader that the scene with Simon of Cyrene is attested by his better known sons. If Alexander and Rufus as the sons of this Simon were in fact so well known to Mark’s readers, he would not have had to mention them at all. (Miller 2017, 395)
Miller, Merrill P. 2017. “The Social Logic of the Gospel of Mark: Cultural Persistence and Social Escape in a Postwar Time.” In Redescribing the Gospel of Mark, edited by Barry S. Crawford and Merrill P. Miller. Society of Biblical Literature.
The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal. (p. 39)
Other policy papers are also referenced in the interview below, papers that point to the US long term policy directed at Iran as a lynch-pin in its long-term goal of taking down Russia and China. The reason? It’s the capitalist ideology of the US, whereby the system has been structured to continually seek more profits, meaning the continual need to reduce the rest of the world to cheap resource suppliers and useful markets. — the danger: that a wounded great power would lash out in (unthinkably destructive) desperation if things started to turn against it.
Makes one wonder if the Christian Zionist and Israel lobby rise to dominance was not so “natural” within a “hapless” USA after all. Didn’t Woodrow Wilson invite propagandists to open up their channels in the USA in order to persuade those anti-war Americans to get fired up over the Kaiser and join in World War 1?
So Richard has stooped to changing his post in the light of my critique and I am unable to leave a reply to him on his blogsite. (He points out that he made a change to respond to me but only at the very end of a long comment trail.)
Carrier initially wrote: Vridar’s critiques are also a decade out of date . . .
To which I responded that I had posted one of René Salm’s (not my) critique of Dark and pointed out that my views were based on careful, critical study of Salm’s and Dark’s writings. I was responding to Carrier’s assertion that I was following Salm with some kind of “excess trust” and “reliance on assertions”.
Oh my god, so since then Carrier has added the following: Vridar’s critiques of Dark are also a decade out of date . . .
The point: Carrier is slapdash. He doesn’t check what’s before him. This is the same type of failure to actually read posts and comments in full, critically, to be sure he knows what they are saying before he responds as he has demonstrated earlier (see my criticisms of his use of Bayes and his posts on Pliny’s letter about the Christians). Carrier assumes certain persons are saying rubbish and so attacks them (including personally) — at least his attacks only demonstrate he has not read them with any serious intent in the first place. Presumably he is writing to persuade with rhetoric rather than honest argument that would require some work.
Plural. The link — please check it for yourself — is to posts where the word “Dark” appears in a title (e.g. “the Dark Side of”) or in the post (e.g. “dark green”)!!!!! There is ONLY ONE critique of Ken Dark!
Richard Carrier simply does not bother to read what he thinks he is writing against.
I do not believe Richard Carrier has bothered to even read René Salm’s arguments. I would like Carrier to demonstrate that he has done more than place trust and reliance on Dark’s assertions.
Carrier has since dismissed my post as “facesaving” and not worth a reply. In other words, he did not read it — or did not comprehend the meaning of critically reading and checking claims — something that seems quite alien to Carrier’s abilities when it comes to the archaeology of Nazareth.
Richard Carrier is in the same bucket as Bart Ehrman who notoriously demonstrated that he had not read the works he once wrote a diatribe against.
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I attempted to post the following to Richard Carrier’s site but was forbidden. Perhaps someone else can discreetly notify Richard and his readers what I have posted here:
Okay, Richard, My “face-saving” was simply to point out that I have actually critically read and checked Salm’s Nazareth arguments and compared them critically against Dark. I see you avoid giving any indication that you have actually read Salm’s work on Nazareth in a critical manner and compared with Dark as I have done. That would require some honest work.
and
Richard, you clearly do not always read what you write against. You spoke of my “critiques”, plural, of Ken Dark’s views of salm and linked to a page of mine that contained ONE critique and a whole lot of other posts with the word “Dark” in them! Oops.
If you read my “face-saving” response to you you would have seen that I was pointing out that I had actually critically read and studies Salm’s work on Nazareth and the various criticisms, including Dark’s, of his work. You offer no evidence that you have done that. I have never “trusted” the “assertions” of Salm as you claim — nor the “assertions of Dark” for that matter! — but demonstrated the basis for my sympathy for Salm’s studies.
You once again use sweeping dismissal to respond instead of actually doing some honest work and responding to the arguments and counter-claims critically.
