Primera parte
Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Apart from fundamentalist Christians, all experts agree the Jesus of the Bible is buried in myth and legend. 1 But attempts to ascertain the “real” historical Jesus have ended in confusion and failure. The latest attempt to cobble together a method for teasing out the truth involved developing a set of criteria. But it has since been demonstrated that all those criteria, as well as the whole method of their employment, are fatally flawed. Every expert who has seriously examined the issue has already come to this conclusion. In the words of Gerd Theissen, “There are no reliable criteria for separating authentic from inauthentic Jesus tradition.” 2 Stanley Porter agrees. 3 Dale Allison likewise concludes, “these criteria have not led to any uniformity of result, or any more uniformity than would have been the case had we never heard of them,” hence “the criteria themselves are serio...