Download Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus AudioBook Free
Anyone with an interest in historical methods, how historical knowledge can be justified, new applications of Bayes's Theorem, or the study of the historical Jesus will see this booklet to be essential reading. Virtually all industry experts agree that the Jesus of the Bible is a composite of myth, tale, plus some historical evidence. So what can we realize about the true Jesus? For more than 150 years, scholars have attempted to answer this question. Unfortunately, the search for the historical Jesus has produced as many different images of the original Jesus as scholars who have studied the topic. The effect is a perplexed mass of disparate ideas without consensus view of what actually occurred at the dawn of Christianity. Which doubt is not unique to the historical research of Jesus. The problems related to building the stability of historical criteria apply similarly to any historical examination of the persons and events that contain shaped our lives and the values we hold dear. This in-depth debate of New Testament scholarship and the issues of history all together proposes Bayes's Theorem, which deals with probabilities under conditions of doubt, as a solution to the situation of building reliable historical criteria. The author shows that valid historical methods - not only in the study of Christian origins but in any historical research - can be defined by, and reduced to, the logic of Bayes's Theorem. Conversely, he argues that any method that cannot be reduced to this theorem is invalid and really should be abandoned. Writing with thoroughness and clearness, the author explains Bayes's Theorem in conditions that are often understandable to professional historians and laypeople equally, employing nothing more than well-known primary university math. He then explores precisely how the theorem can be employed to background and addresses numerous issues to and criticisms of its use in evaluation or justifying the conclusions that historians make about the top persons and situations of days gone by. The original and established methods of historians are analyzed using the theorem, as well as all the major "historicity criteria" employed in the latest goal to determine the historicity of Jesus. The writer shows not only the deficiencies of the solutions but also ways to rehabilitate them using Bayes's Theorem.
