(July 9, 2022) Historical information can be treated as signals traveling through time. So, think of each source document as a noisy communication channel transmitting information from the past. Each channel has a certain probability of correctly transmitting a valid signal.
The source documents with their probabilities of validity are listed below from earliest to latest. The numbers in parenthesis are confidence level percentages which indicate what percentage of the teachings from that source are expected to be valid, that is, which actually go back to the time of Jesus. The closer a source is to the time of Jesus the more valid it tends to be. These validity probability numbers come from the declining exponential curve shown in figure 2:
- 1 Thessalonians - 53 CE, validity = 0.59 (59%)
- Galatians - 55 CE; validity = 0.56 (56%)
- 1 & 2 Corinthians - 56 and 57 CE: validity 0.55 (55%)
- Q source - 69 CE; validity = 0.4 (40%)
- Mark - 70 CE; validity = 0.39 (39%)
- Matthew, Luke, Acts - 80 CE; validity = 0.30 (30%)
- Thomas, John, Josephus - 90 CE; validity = 0.23 (23%)
A perfectly valid signal is one having a 100% confidence level and none of these sources meets that level by itself. This means that in order for a Jesus teaching to valid it has to be found in two or more sources. If the sources confidence levels exceeds 100% then the teaching is considered to be valid, that is, it goes back to the time of Jesus.
In the military, stealthy radio communication methods use spread spectrum techniques because they use several low powered signal transmissions which are spread out over many different radio frequency channels. Individually, each real signal is hidden in the noise but if the receiver knows when and where to look for the real signals then they can be extracted using methods analogous to those used to extract the real Jesus teachings.
For most of its short history, signal engineering was a rather specialized field existing mostly in radar engineering. Signal engineering also comes under the heading of “decision theory” and a good conceptual introduction can be found in the book by Peterson (2009).
In signal engineering, a true signal is different from a valid signal which has met the 100% confidence threshold requirement. A true signal is what is put into the communication channel. A valid detected signal may or may not be true. For example, a perfectly valid but still false signal may have been placed onto the channel by a foe using electronic warfare techniques. Generally valid signals are assumed to be true unless other tests indicate falsity. The same reasoning holds true for historical signals. A valid signal is one which meets the threshold requirement of going back to the time of Jesus. It is assumed to be true unless other tests show it is false. These other tests are “audience relevance” and “coherency of thought.”
The source weigh curve shown in the figure assigns weighting values to each Jesus signal source based upon their date of composition. All curves need three points for their definition.
One point is 32 CE with a validity of 1.0. This is the death date of Jesus which is justified in section ?. All teaching signals dated to when Jesus was alive are defined as authentic with a validity number of 1.0. (yet some few could be false from deliberate lies).
The second point is 150 CE with a validity of 0.0. Teaching signals dated after the death of Jesus have a decreasing probability of validity. The time when all teaching signals are invalid with would be when all possible eye-witnesses are dead along with the people with whom they talked. This would take about 120 years (60 + 60) or 150 BCE. This is confirmed by the apocryphal "Gospel According to the Hebrews" which was written about that time and which all scholars believe is a complete fabrication.
The third (actually 3rd, 4th, 5th) point is found using an iterative optimization process to find the validity of the sources which are associated with the known false saying “take up your cross” discussed in section 1.2 below. By assigning a validity of 1.0 to this teaching the validities of its sources can be determined if we assumed the shape of the curve is a declining exponential.
We can determine the shape of the curve based upon how information is propagated from person to person. Each person is like a link in a chain and each person has a certain probability of correctly passing along a short piece information to the next person. As an example of saying transmission, assume each person in the chain has a 0.9 probability of passing on some piece of information accurately. This person tells another person so the probability of this second person passing on this same piece of information drops to 0.81 (0.9 x 0.9 = 0.81). For a third person the probability drops to 0.729 (0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9) and so on. This sort of repeating procedure produces a declining exponential function. The exponential function is found in all sorts of phenomena which grow or decay at a rate proportional to its value at any given point.