Heads you win, tails I lose #2

I would like to draw people's attention to an interesting list of historicity criteria for establishing historical credibility in claims about Jesus found in the New Testament (provided by Richard Carrier here). Recently, and showing a similar technique, I posted a piece on how Christians have a tendency to argue things in such a way that no matter what end of the evidential continuum we have, they would claim it as evidence for God or similar:

If the universe had been much smaller, just right for human life on a human scale, then the universe would have been obviously designed for humans, so would claim the same theist. The universe is the direct opposite of that, but still this somehow shows that God obviously designed it, such as the design being based on other purposes, using the analogy of the Sistine Chapel (one marvels at the size and beauty of it but it doesn’t need to be that big; that the awe and wonder derives from its magnitude) and so on.

and

Heads you win, tails I lose.

The ramifications of this approach are clear. There is no scenario that could exist which would prove, even probabilistically, that God did not exist or design the universe or whatever. No matter what scenario, the theist would contrive some explanation as to why that scenario supported the existence of God.

I have been working my way through Richard Carrier's "Proving History" and came across this list of historicity criteria used by biblical scholars to determine credibility of New Testament sources with regards to historical accuracy. The list makes for an intriguing example of the "heads you win, tails I lose" analogy set out above. The list below (p. 121-122), as Carrier himself states, is only a partial list, with the possibility that the criteria could be as numerous as three dozen.

Dissimilarity - if dissimilar to Judaism or early church, it's probably true
Embarrassment - if it was embarrassing, it must be true
Coherence - if it coheres with other confirmed data, it's likely true
Multiple Attestation - if attested in more than one source, it's more likely true
Explanatory Credibility - if its being true better explains later traditions, it's true
Contextual Plausibility - must be plausible in a Jewish or Greco-Roman context
Historical Plausibility - must cohere with a plausible historical reconstruction
Natural Probability - coheres with natural science (etc.)
Oral Preservability - must be capable of surviving oral transmission
Crucifixion - must explain (or make sense of) why Jesus was crucified
Fabricatory Trend - mustn't match trends in fabrication or embellishment
Least Distinctiveness - the simpler version is the more historical
Vividness of Narration - the more vivid, the more historical
Textual Variance - the more invariable a tradition, the more historical
Greek Context - credible, if context suggests parties speaking Greek
Aramaic Context - credible, if context suggests parties speaking Aramaic
Discourse Features - credible, if Jesus’ speeches cohere in a unique style
Characteristic Jesus - credible, if it's both distinctive and characteristic of Jesus

What is interesting about this list is the opposite ends of the spectrum that some of these criteria adopt. Embarrassment and coherence pretty much covers anything someone can say. I could say, "On Tuesday, Jim walked down the street naked" and this, given that Jim normally wears clothes, is likely true because of its embarrassing and unlikely nature. However, if I claimed, "On Tuesday, Jim walked down the street in jeans and a tee" then this would be coherent with expectations, and likely be true. Both claims, though opposites, have high credibility depending on which criteria one uses.

What does this mean? Well, in the discipline of biblical exegesis, one can create a historicity criteria for anything which is mentioned. As such, for every sentence in the New Testament, one can contrive a criteria which shows credibility.

Heads you win, tails I lose.