Richard Carrier - The Hero Savior Analogy

[Angrboda]

 A book full of caricatures about me would be no more representative of "the historical rhythm".  Regaradless of the fact that I exist in the here and now, that doesn't actually give anyone any good -reason- to think that I did..centuries (or even just decades) into the future.  You'd ask for corroborating data, wouldn't you?  You wouldn't be satisfied with a book of exaggerated descriptions of the archetypal redneck as "the historical rhythm", would you?  When that corroborating data turns out to be simple misinterpretation all the way to fraud, and so does the book of caricatures...would you -still- feel confident that one of the caricatures is "the historical rhythm"?

If the volume of noise was the same and included a number of mundane and even embarrassing details, I'd feel confident that there are facts to be known about the historical rhythm even if buried underneath a heap of prejudice, exaggeration, and delusion.

The question is not simply whether or not there is a signal in the noise, but what exactly is signal and what is noise. "Hero Savior" implies things about the role of the man. Nobody cares much about a historical Yeshua without the miracles. The signal that people care about could just be noise. Thus it's important to sort out not only that 'some' of the narrative may be true, but what that 'some' of the narrative actually is. The evidence we have is poor witness to that question. We are interested in verifying the existence of miracle Yeshua, not that of Yeshua the man. Nobody cares a fig about the idea that there was an ordinary man named Yeshua in the first century.