See “What Bayesian Reasoning Can and Can’t Do for Biblical Research” (27 March 2019) by Christoph Heilig.

Great quote therefrom:

Bayes’s theorem is indeed important for biblical studies. It is of course possible to take into account the evidence relevant for prior probability and likelihood without knowing these categories. Indeed, many good historians do so all the time (as I also clearly say in Hidden Criticism, p. 27: “Every good historical enquiry will always pay attention to both factors.”). The problem is that I’ve come to the conclusion that more often than not we (and I certainly include myself here) as biblical scholars are not actually following this example well enough.

I already had that. Thanks. I also have the post print edition now, thanks to a colleague.

If you have access to ResearchGate.net you can request a copy of the article from Wallach. I did so and he sent it next morning, although it’s the pre-print version. Seems to have all the info though.
Richard

They are all evolving and increasing their mathematization. The examples you give, are full of experts fully comfortable with mathematics and mathematical modeling. So they are nowhere near analogous to where history is as a field.

No. Sadly. This is a problem with the world of academia, IMO. Academics is for-profit, and no longer sees itself as existing to serve the public good. So they take work from content creators (like Wallach), paying them nothing. Then turn around and sell it for outrageous prices. And ban access to knowledge to all but the wealthy. I’m not a fan of their value system. But it’s what we’re stuck with.

You can bypass this by going to a public library. That dying institution that actually still exists for the public good and not for profit. They can usually get any article for you for free, or a very small fee (a few dollars at most), through interlibrary loan. Often even in PDF form emailed to you. But if not that, then xerox.

If you have a university near you, sometimes their libraries are open to the public (and you can get your own zerox or download a PDF to a flash drive). Also look for seminaries and theological unions. Their libraries are even more often open to the public. And they might carry Synthese (physically or electronically). You can always check ahead (calling their reference desk or finding and checking their online catalog).

On your bigger question. My impression is the same as yours. Ehrman provides the best explanation (in respect to NT studies, but IMO OT is no different) in the first chapter or so of Jesus, Interrupted. No church has any interest in communicating the truth to its congregations, and every interest in preventing their congregations from learning it. Consequently, an entire industry exists to disinform and confuse the public. People need to learn how to vet the trustworthiness of an authority—and it’s not “the authorities that say what I want or defend the things I value,” but “the authorities who, when I fact check them, turn out to be telling the truth even when it’s uncomfortable.”

But that’s a whole other challenge. Getting people to reason.

A couple of tangential questions:

Armed with the knowledge that the mainstream view has shifted so strongly in the last century, I was curious to see how the public perceives Old Testament historicity. Wikipedia seems in line with the academic literature, but a cursory examination of web hits and YouTube videos shows that most public articles and videos on the topic are apologetic, attempting to refute or ignoring the mainstream view. Has the mainstream view not percolated to the believers? Given how the mainstream view gets foregrounded when it comes to Jesus historicity, it seems like especially motivated reasoning to ignore the mainstream view for Old Testament historicity.

As a mathematician, I wanted to learn more about the specifics of the Bayesian analysis of Wallach. However, that article is not public. (This, presumably, skews the search results I was seeing.) Are there public versions of Wallach’s analysis, beyond your excellent article?

Thanks,
Daniel

Yes! I had two versions of the sentence and they ended up merged and I didn’t notice. Thank you! Fixing…

(And leaving the comment so people who had read the original will know it had an error that was repaired.)

Is this correct? Shouldn’t it be:

“… you are always only ever proving a theory true, by proving its alternatives false.”

or

“… you are always only ever proving a theory true, by trying to prove it false (and failing).”

If you fail to prove a theory’s alternatives false, doesn’t that mean that you HAVEN’T proven your theory true?

Or am I misunderstanding you?

(I presume this is a typo/editing error, and if so, you can delete this comment; it doesn’t add anything to the discussion if that’s the case.)

I haven’t thought enough about that, since it isn’t my field. But there are concerns. Increasingly less is being committed to print. Consequently, any catastrophe that results in the loss of the digital record, will wipe a lot of history (though not all of it, as there are still print sources, and equivalent, e.g. microfilm). But that’s not unlike ancient history, where rot wiped most of its history (vast archives of books and documents rotted away, or burned in accidental fires, etc.). There are projects to store digital data in permanent form (micro-etched metal plates, for example), but I don’t know how widely implemented they are or what’s being stored in them.