The Fire & the Veil · Foundation of Asha · instrument
Score the rubric against us
Our own detector failed its own hostile re-score. It stays barred until people outside this house have scored the same items. This is that packet.
What happened. We built an instrument that scores a doctrine on four tells and asks whether the composite separates doctrines an institution installed from doctrines that merely developed late. On the comparison that mattered it reached an AUC of 0.960. Then we re-scored it adversarially, mechanically demoting every judgement-based score, and the same comparison collapsed to 0.220, below chance. The two tells carrying the discrimination are the two that rest on judgement rather than manuscripts. So the honest reading is that the instrument may be measuring its operator.
What we did about it. We barred it. It is not permitted to point at anything, and the audit queue it produced is published as a pre-registration of where we will look rather than as a finding. The report says so in those words. The remaining repair is the one we cannot perform ourselves: independent raters applying the same written rubric to the same items.
What we commit to
We publish what comes back whether or not it helps us, with your scores attached to the item list so anyone can recompute. If inter-rater agreement is poor, that is the finding and we will say so on this site, in the instrument's own report, and in any paper that cites it. If it is poor enough, the Calculus is withdrawn.
You may score anonymously. You may put your name on it. You may tell us afterwards to bin it. There is no account, no tracking on this page, and nothing leaves your browser until you press the button yourself.
How it works
Below are 35 doctrines and textual features. For each one, score four tells at 1, 0.5 or 0, using the definitions in the next section. It takes most people about an hour. Your answers save in this browser as you go, so you can stop and come back.
The packet is deliberately blind. You are not shown our scores, and you are not shown which class an item belongs to, because the class is the answer key. The order is shuffled with a fixed seed so that two scorers see the same sequence and the file's own grouping tells you nothing. If an item is unscorable as stated, say so in its note rather than guessing: a rubric that cannot be applied is a result about the rubric, and we would rather learn it from you than not learn it.
The rubric
O(d) = P + H + I + M, range 0 to 4. Each tell is scored 1 (fires), 0.5 (partial) or 0 (does not fire).
P — Philological
Does the doctrine depend on an artifact of the translation or transmission layer: a rendering, gloss or insertion that resolves a problem the source language does not have?
- 1
- A specific attested word, rendering or translation-tradition insertion is load-bearing, and the source language lacks the problem it solves.
- 0.5
- A translation-layer artifact is involved but the doctrine survives without it.
- 0
- No translation-layer dependency. Note: a purely internal interpolation in the SOURCE language does not fire P. It fires H.
H — Historical
Is the doctrine absent from the earliest strata, and does it arrive suddenly rather than developing gradually?
- 1
- Absent from earliest strata AND datable to a sudden arrival.
- 0.5
- Late but gradual, or present early but substantially transformed.
- 0
- Present in the earliest strata.
I — Institutional
Does a specific, nameable institution gain an administrable power from the reading?
- 1
- A specific named institution gains a power it can administer, withhold or charge for.
- 0.5
- Benefit is real but diffuse, or the beneficiary is contested.
- 0
- No institutional beneficiary.
M — Motive / dependency
Does accepting the reading install a dependency chain that terminates at the institution that produced it?
- 1
- Explicit dependency chain terminating at the producer.
- 0.5
- Partial or indirect dependency.
- 0
- No dependency chain, or the chain runs away from the producer.
The items
The rosary as devotional form
Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8 as Trinity proof-text)
Mary Magdalene as prostitute
Luke 22:19b-20 (the long institution narrative)
ha-satan (the accuser, an office) merged with diabolos into one cosmic Devil
The pre-tribulation rapture
Longer ending of Mark (16:9-20) and the Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11)
Developed angelology with named archangels
Sufi tariqa organization
1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (the 'women be silent' verses)
Baptism as Christian initiation
Icon veneration in Byzantine practice
Circumcision as covenant sign (Genesis 17)
The systematized Frashokereti cosmology of the Bundahishn
Original sin as inherited guilt, via Romans 5:12
Advaita Vedanta's non-dual synthesis (Shankara, 8th c.)
The liturgical year, including the 25 December nativity date
Sabbath observance in Israelite law
Jesus' abba address to God
Christian monasticism as an institution
Purgatory as a place
Sheol / Hades / Gehenna / Tartaros flattened into one 'hell'
The Guru Granth Sahib as living Guru (1708)
The Lord's Supper as communal practice (distinct from sacrificial re-presentation)
Matthew 28:19 (the triune baptismal formula)
almah rendered parthenos (Isaiah 7:14)
The pre-Pauline creed (1 Cor 15:3-7) as received tradition
The Donation of Constantine
The Resurrection narratives
Justification by faith as taught in Galatians and Romans
Matthew 16:18-19 (the rock, the keys, the ekklesia)
The Mahayana bodhisattva ideal
The Lord's Prayer
The Shema (Deut 6:4) as Israel's confession
Ministers as sacerdotal priests
When you are done
Press the button below. It writes a JSON file to your computer and sends nothing anywhere. Email it to contact@foundationofasha.com, or attach it to an issue, or post it publicly and tell us where. If you would rather not be associated with the project at all, send it from a throwaway and we will publish it as anonymous.
If you got partway and stopped because the instrument is badly designed, that is worth more to us than a completed sheet. Send the partial file and the reason.