Corpus-Paul

["Bob MacDonald" <bobmacdonald AT home.com>]

Richard writes:
>>An hypothesis should be judged according to the combined weight of the
assumptions that it requires. When
we are offered two rival hypotheses which both fit the facts, the one with
the lighter weight of assumptions is ALWAYS the more probable. It's a simple
matter of probability theory. It matters not at all that 'complicated
stories are the ingredients of reality'.>>

This is an assumption relating to beauty also. It applies to the
predictability of a scientific hypothesis where laws, of motion for example,
can be inferred. So Copernicus is preferred to Ptolemy because the inertia
of our lives and the motions of satellites can be planned with precision
based on these principles. But history is not so scientific that Occam's
principle can be applied so easily. It is not probability that is critical
but explanatory power linking hypotheses and what can be known from
literature and language of primary sources.

Does Occam's razor apply to the kind of historical analysis that so many are
trying to do in the reconstruction of the acts of 'this generation'?

I am beginning to doubt it.

The use of this principle of parsimony most appropriate to science and model
theory is; "when you have two competing theories which make exactly the same
predictions, the one that is simpler is the better."

The traditional statement is quoted in one of its Latin forms in
Kloppenberg-Verbin's Excavating Q - I can't put my finger to the page - but
there are two caveats I wish he and others would mention.

1. Don't multiply statements in the theory _without reason_. There is ample
reason for preferring complexity in history to simplicity.
2. Don't apply a principal intended for prediction to something that cannot
be predicted.

A good model of the historical situation should take into account as many
known facts and inferences as possible. It should not be judged as good if
it makes things simpler that are not, by definition, simple to begin with.

Perhaps you are right, Richard, that probability wins in the past. I remain
unconvinced. What wins for me is an explanation or instruction that opens
the heart of the matter: e.g. why this fierce battle over circumcision? Why
is Paul so shocked at the libertinism of the Corinthians? What sorts of
pressures - religious and political and daily life issues - created the
characters that are known to us as names only from Paul's writings?

Go for the story Loren - deliver a plot that has plausibility and character
so we can know what the Spirit was up to in this formative age.

Bob

mailto::BobMacDonald AT home.com
+ + + Victoria, B.C., Canada + + +

Catch the foxes for us,
   the little foxes that make havoc of the vineyards,
for our vineyards are in flower.   (Song 2.15)
http://members.home.net/bobmacdonald/homepage.htm