Reading Ancient Scrolls
caseyhandmer.wordpress.com
caseyhandmer.wordpress.com
Competition website: https://scrollprize.org/
Seems like someone who is pretty into the scientific method, and, more importantly, spirit, to me?
Disclosure: I went to high school with Casey
Every last scrap of documentary evidence of the beginnings of Christianity was deliberately, openly, proudly torched by the early Church, so every conventional fact stands on extremely shaky ground. Consensus among current scholars not pledged to uphold Church doctrine is that the entirety of the New Testament, absent about half of Paul's letters, is wholly fictional. Paul, of course, had his own biases. It is still possible that some anecdotes are based on factual events, but we have no reliable reason to believe any in particular. Opinions vary.
People invested in current consensus should want to have actually-reliable documentation for any factual basis for any of it. It is just possible that there really was a Jesus from Nazareth at the center of Christianity. It is even just barely possible that this Jesus was crucified, maybe even in something like the manner now believed. (Zombie dinner parties afterward, not so much.)
Carrier is unpopular among Christians and crypto-Christians for obvious reasons that should not affect the rest of us. He is a well-taught, peer-certified, and articulate historian who is unafraid to take up opinions unpopular with retired colleagues. There is no reason to lose your mind about him: if you disagree with him, identify specific reasons why, and express exactly those. Be prepared to deal with Bayesian statistics reasoning, something old historians often have difficulty with.
Anyway, the reality is that Josephus exists, a Jewish historian writing about the history of Judaea less than fifty years after Jesus's death who mentions Jesus's existence. The Mythicists have to deny what is actually slam-dunk evidence by ancient historical standards to hold their position which is why it's always been the territory of cranks.
It's really funny that in this day and age it's atheists who are driving along tedious religiously-motivated debates about the ontological nature of the person of Jesus. It's doubly funny that the self-proclaimed rationalists cling to a conspiracy theory and deny evidence. Anyway there's a lot more to the ancient world worth learning about, but I'd recommend learning from historians who are professionals to avoid openly biased cranks with a religious axe to grind.
Mainstream historians, as a rule, don't touch Christian origins with a ten-foot pole because the independent evidence remaining, a tiny handful of quotes that all fit on literally one page, stinks to high heaven, and is guarded by legions of hornets' nests. They have plenty of more productive ways to spend their time. Does it matter, ultimately, if a Yeshua existed at the center of the surviving cult and was executed, the only factual detail of any significance?
It is, as they say, moot. Only actual, reliable evidence could ever change that. We used to think none could ever surface. Herculaneum could very possibly change that, and much else of overwhelmingly greater interest.
Carrier has very interesting things to say about the non-biblically-adjacent finds likely to surface there. However distasteful you find his biblical opinions, he is among the best choices to read on topics of late Roman science.
To any sane historian, the whole topic is plastered over with "Nothing to See Here" signs.
About Carrier, I find nothing but "crank crank crank crank" name-calling that is beneath any actually respectable historian speaking of another credentialed academic. The only response that does not itself identify the speaker as himself a crank is, "We differ on details, as follows." Of course every historian differs on details with literally every other historian.
>Carrier is unpopular among Christians and crypto-Christians
Carrier is in the minority because he holds a minority position. The reason it's a minority position is because it's steeped in conspiracy theories even if he tries to use Bayes to add a fig leaf. When I was working with them, no historians I knew of back in the '90s were crypto-Christians pushing a Historicist agenda, some of them were indeed priests, but no one was hiding anything. I am very sure you can't point to an actual working historian who is a crypto-Christian, while that term introduces even more conspiracy thinking.
The Historicist agenda isn't actually some secret formalization of traditional Christian doctrine, it's not a Christian or a crypto-Christian position, it's a position useful for historians speaking about secular history, that's why it was developed, and why it's the consensus position. It's an evidence-based position with sufficient evidence that professional historians hold a general consensus and the only outliers are folks who are motivated by a kind of evangelical atheism where they are the ones actually dragging religious biases into the debate and rejecting evidence-based thinking in favor of conspiracy theories (flavored with Bayes).
Your assessment of a "minority position" carries exactly zero weight. Either the gradient is positive, negative, or static. For the case of mythicism, the gradient over the past century is strongly positive: a hundred years ago nobody could even discuss mythicism. Twenty years ago, few found it plausible. Since then, the number has risen sharply. As Max Planck said, science advances one funeral at a time. The trend is clear.
Does it actually matter? Only as much as any history matters.
I would agree that Carrier doesn't get taken as seriously as he should be, but I think it's partly because he has a very abrasive approach and he has a very unorthodox style due to being an outsider. He also has a tendency to repeat claims like "they won't respond" when in fact they have responded[1]. Historians are people too, and much like the asshole genius programmer who is difficult to work with because he bitches about everybody elses style, the person's technical contributions may not get as much love as they deserve on their merits because things are colored by emotion and discomfort with the person.
Personally, I think the "outsider" perspective is important and welcome, especially given what we've seen are systemic problems in academia in general.
But that said I think "Ehrman just huffs and blusters disgracefully" is pretty unfair. Ehrman has addressed many of Carrier's claims seriously (on his blog for example)[1]. There are lots of other responses in various other places that I wish were much better organized. These sorts of debates can get insanely detailed and long, and especially when so much from the ancient world is (IMHO) ultimately unknown and unknowable, in the end I personally just have to enjoy the ride and accept (much to my dismay) that I may never really know.
Lastly, there is something about the debate behind "did Jesus exist" that I find makes a lot of agnostic/atheist people lose their minds. It feels a lot like the response from Christians when one of their traditions/dogma is challenged. I get it, it would feel really justifying to be able to say "Jesus didn't even exist" but I think the evidence that the stories of Jesus evolved over time to become more and more mythical is strong enough that it doesn't matter whether a real man ever existed. It's a very fun debate when it doesn't become heated and personal, which unfortunately is almost never nowadays.
That said I really hope Carrier continues his work. I've enjoyed his books and I think he is on to something. I'd love to see him work more toward building consensus and working together though.
[1]: https://ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard-carrier/
Carrier has been very abrasive in the past, but not as I have seen lately. He might be said to have mellowed with age.
There is only one concrete fact of history here that is of any consequence: did Romans knowingly execute the instigator of the one cult that survived? I agree that we might never know. We need not trouble ourselves over Mary, Gadarene swine, or zombie dinner parties.
The charred scrolls in Herculaneum are deeply exciting for far more substantive reasons. We might find there was, or wasn't, a Jesus, and forget to care because of the important revelations.
Haha, yeah that's fair. IMHO he's a great public speaker and I enjoy watching him, but he has been really bad at laying out his arguments against Carrier in videos. I think partly because he is a super classy (and incredibly nice) guy who hates personal insults and such, and a lot of interviewers try to juice the beef (because let's face it, it's entertaining :-) ). I think he's also just deeply uncomfortable with the whole topic because of past friction and tends to try to avoid diving into it.
> Carrier has been very abrasive in the past, but not as I have seen lately. He might be said to have mellowed with age.
That would be great! IMHO Carrier is one of the most interesting atheists nowadays, and he's very much inline stylistically with the new atheist movement from the 00s (which I kind of like actually), but I don't know if it's cultural change or what but that approach really turns a lot of lay people off now, leaving just people like us. I'd love to see his appeal broaden, and I'm excited to see the next generation of thought leaders (and partially afraid that there may not be any).
Regardless, thanks for the discussion! I've found your comments very interesting
Much more interesting, ultimately, than any of the actual arguments is the modern method of evaluating them. It's not foolproof (fools are clever!) but it offers a chance of results that amount to more than just one more opinion. Makes me think of the Enlightenment dream that one day all disputes could be resolved by "come, let us calculate": http://scihi.org/universal-academic-gottfried-wilhelm-leibni...
Atheism is growing by leaps and bounds, even in the US, I'm guessing in large part because evangelicals here have so enthusiastically embraced out-and-out grifters and con-men. I doubt promotion can claim much credit.
A lot of the images aren't loading for me in the post, though.
These scrolls use carbon-based ink with composition much like the paper. But there might still be usable differences.
That should give plenty of information to separate different element concentrations in papyrus and ink
i am so glad to see it receiving funding and capable participants
But there's a simple way to test it!
Roll up a newspaper or some sheets of paper, bake it until blackened, then pull out the charred remains and have this fancy tech tell us what it sees. You could easily verify whether what it says is true and whether any of the interpretions" correlate in any way with the newspaper that went in.
In fact, this would be the right way to iteratively develop your process, hone your software, etc - you would have some criteria with which gauge that this is viable. As opposed to a process that is bound to find something even in white noise.
Alternatively, you could just get ai trained on ancient greek, give it some noise, get it to generate some text, and call it an amazing ancient greek discovery!
> The entirety of the ancient corpus today can fit on a small bookshelf.
This person hasn't been to the local bookshop - there are many bookshelves worth of ancient texts. There are bibles, other religious writings, ancient plays, ancient history, science, philosophical works, etc. Or, Casey is right... in which case, what is the provenance of all those purportedly ancient texts?
Perhaps its random speculation to you, but I cannot read what was written on burnt paper. I don't think the idea that some software/hardware fix can or ever could read what was written on burnt paper is viable.
However, I'm not just criticising the purported facts. I'm also offering a suggestion whereby I can be shown to be wrong, as I suggest a verifiable way to prove this idea works. I'm saying that you should surely test this system out on something that you can prove works, before rolling the idea out onto actual historical artefacts and adding to the ancient works on the bookshelf.
I just don't see what's objectionable to what I'm saying - it seems entirely based in common sense. However, I think it upsets people, as it snaps them out of a 'merry daydream' they have about how wonderful technology is.
It is a fact that actually-ancient manuscripts are vanishingly scarce; almost everything you cite on bookshelves today is from copies of copies of copies. And, extended text has already been extracted from charred scrolls from that very site, albeit destructively. So, what you insist is impossible has already been done. The goal is to do it better. You could have found out all this yourself with a tiny amount of reading, and not wasted everybody's time.
In your experience, can you really read text on paper, once it has been pyrolysed/burnt?
I have read text on undisturbed burnt paper, in the past. (Of course, what they have is not paper.) If you believe you cannot, then you certainly cannot, but you are not asked to. They have been doing it, and will continue. Among modern marvels you accept daily without demur, it does not stand out.
If you have personal experience of something, and then someone comes along and says something that is the antithesis of your experience, which source should you accept? Your experience or the other person? What if the other person is not a person, but a famous science journal - which source should you accept then?
The answer, if you are authority of yourself - is your own experience, every time. This trumps all other sources. It is the only golden source you have. Of course it can be fallible, but you do not intend to deceive yourself.
Other external sources can claim whatever they like! There are lots of incentives and mistakes that can be made. But it should not count for you more highly than your personal experience. For your own sanity, you must be aligned with your own experience - the other is that you are susceptible to any provided story.
The use of x-ray tomography is just the latest iteration on viewing techniques which have ranged from holding fragments up to the light to look for reflections from the carbonized ink, to multispectral scanning. Whether x-ray tomography is sensitive enough to detect carbon-based ink in carbonized scrolls is an open question. But unless you have personal experience to the contrary, based on carbonizing papyrus scrolls in a low-oxygen environment (not at all the same thing as lighting newspapers on fire), you might be inclined to believe, based on 250 years of observations, that there is information that can be extracted from the scrolls.
I remember when tvs weren't on for 24 hours - and there would be literal white noise being broadcast - it looked like lots of black and white dots moving. If you wanted and paid attention you could spot whatever you wanted on the screen - eg a red squirrel moving from left to right.
Why should viewing a red squirrel be discounted but finding 'ancient texts' be valid? Well, if you have a methodology that can read burnt newspapers (or a modern equivalent) and the text is correct - then you have a strong case.
If its just a case of 'trust the machine and its interpretation' well, I will trust my interpretation - that the machine is spotting red squirrels.
So, I know better than to base the self-assessment of my sanity on having been right.
Pompeii probably had a public library, but any scrolls that were in Pompeii, unlike in Herculaneum, burned to fine powder. And, any that were rescued from the eruption finally decayed and are lost; almost all of those, we don't even know the titles of.
You should be agreeing with my suggestion that if this mechanism works, it should be possible to do in a reproducible way! As per my suggestion of running it over a burnt newspaper. Then we can all see that this process isn't simply conjuring something out of white noise. Right?