Hi @dga471,
Back again. I’ve just posted a list of the 17 claims, which will be useful in the discussion that follows.
First of all, you’re still stating that each of the 17 occurrences are doubtful, most of them by multiplying together prior probabilities without rigorous consideration of the written evidence from the Gospels and how that affects the probability.
I didn’t claim that the probabilities could be multiplied, although some of them could be. Clearly f is dependent on b, which is to some degree dependent on a. Claim c also bears some relationship to b, as does q. However, claims d, e, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o and p are each capable of standing in isolation: one could accept any one of these claims while rejecting the others, and vice versa - although some points raised in h would weaken claim i, and a rejection of i also undermines claim n.
All in all, I think it would be fair to say that there are at least ten logically independent occurrences on this list. All of them, I would maintain, are historically improbable, and all of them are alleged to have occurred over a 24-hour time period. If you want to multiply them out, feel free to do so. For argument’s sake, we can assume that the probability of each occurrence is 1 in 10. Then for 10 such occurrences, the combined probability is 1 in 10^10 - and that’s over a very short time period. The number of such occurrences clearly matters. You mention three improbable things that happened to you. 1 in 10^3 is seven orders of magnitude higher than 1 in 10^10. I’m not attempting to make a rigorous argument here; I don’t believe I need to. Ten highly improbable alleged occurrences over a period of just 24 hours should serve as a red flag to any trained historian.
Secondly, you have not answered the question of whether it’s justified to classify 17 improbable occurrences equally. As a lot of people in this thread have argued, things like Communion and the good thief, even if improbable or straight out wrong, are immaterial to the overall reliability of the Gospels.
Please scroll down to the section titled “Why we need an incident-by-incident approach to Gospel reliability” in Part A of my OP. It’s about 1,000 words. I’m not going to cut-and-paste it here.
The point is that if one or more of the Gospels allege that Jesus did X, and it turns out that he didn’t, then that does weaken the case for the historical reliability of the Gospels. And the question of whether Jesus asked his disciples to drink blood at the Last Supper is of vital importance to over 1.5 billion Christians. Please don’t tell me that’s “immaterial to the overall reliability of the Gospels.”
Thirdly, it’s common for many improbable things to happen during a 24 hour time period if you’re just taking into account prior probabilities (which are difficult to assign rigorously anyway).
I wasn’t merely taking into account prior probabilities. See my post #45 above, here.
That’s already three improbable occurrences in the life of one person on a relatively mundane day. By these standards, my diary entry would be regarded as a mythological fabrication. This is just not the way to do history.
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Please see my point above about the number of improbable events. The likelihood of 17 (or even 10) such events over a 24-hour period is much lower than that of three such events.
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When all we have available to us are copies of four biographies written 30 to 60 years after Jesus was crucified, then we really have to fall back on probabilities, when assessing the credibility and reliability of the sources. How else can we proceed? We cannot interview the authors of the Gospels or the witnesses to the alleged events.
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Using your logic, I could defend any unlikely alleged revelation on the grounds that improbable events happen all the time. I don’t believe any trained historian would buy that defense.