Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus

The author of this dense and complicated volume is an independent scholar, a self-professed nonbeliever, and author (Why I Am Not a Christian) and editor. However, he comes to his subject as very much agnostic on the subject of whether the man Jesus actually existed. He observes the chaos that surrounds Jesus studies and insists that inconsistencies in the Bible, and the sparseness of extra-biblical evidence, make this search difficult. Carrier takes a unique approach: he uses a widely admired statistical formula to determine, based on observable evidence, the likelihood of historical events having occurred. He begins with a fairly cogent explanation of Bayes’s theorem, and proceeds to plug in the variables and draw conclusions based on the results. The author makes no effort to dumb down the study. The result is a book that will appeal to academics and scholars, but not to the common reader. He promises a second volume. Perhaps this next book will be less abstruse and more accessible to the general reading audience. (Apr.)