1. Introduction to Given’s Review and Bayes’s Theorem
Mark D. Given has recently reviewed my book
Hidden Criticism? The Methodology and Plausibility of the Search for a Counter-Imperial Subtext in Paul for RBL. In this monograph, which was published as part of the WUNT II series by Mohr Siebeck in 2015 and in 2nd edition by Fortress in 2017, deals with the question of whether we can discern anti-imperial echoes in the letters of Paul. Obviously, I like the conclusion of Given’s review very much:
“… chapters 3–6 brim with more critical insights than I could possibly mention. The author is to be highly praised for his mastery of relevant research displayed throughout this book and the incisive and judicious commentary he provides on it. Hidden Criticism is an important contribution to scholarship on the subject of Paul and empire and a must read for anyone seriously interested in the topic.”
Given also identifies one area, where he is not that happy with my book and I think his criticism is worth being quoted in detail here. Since James McGrath has also posted about this on his
blog (with several insightful comments under the original post), I’d like to take the opportunity here of deepening the conversation on this subject by on the one hand reflecting critically on some of the things I wrote in
Hidden Criticismand by also, on the other hand, re-emphasising some aspects that have been important all along to me but which I probably did not formulate clearly enough in the past.
Here’s how Given introduces his complaint:
“I only have one major criticism of the book: the use of Bayes’s theorem. … Whether or not the theory is necessary, Heilig does not explain it well. I found myself consulting additional resources that did explain it well, and only afterward could I better evaluate what Heilig is trying to do with it.”
First of all, I am very grateful to Given that he actually went the extra mile and did additional research, something that certainly not every reviewer would have done. Accordingly, this blogpost is meant as an attempt to do justice to his effort and is not to be understood as the unsatisfied reaction by the author. Moreover, I think Given is entirely right in his criticism. I tried to keep the introduction to Bayes’s theorem as short as possible in order to avoid the impression that it might be a more central aspect than it actually was for my work – with the result that the introduction to the concept is probably way too dense. If you want to know what Bayes’s theorem is and how it might affect the way we construct arguments, I would strongly encourage you to simply watch this 10-minute-video. If you have never heard of Bayes, trust me, it is an excellent investment of your time!
2. Bayesian Reasoning Can Help Evaluate “Criteria” in Biblical Scholarship
Assuming that you’ve watched the video (or are already familiar with Bayes’s theorem anyway), I will now continue by considering Given’s conclusion about the potential benefits and limitations of Bayesian reasoning for biblical studies:
“To be sure, Heilig is explicitly clear that he is not claiming Bayes’s theorem is a methodological key that can open the door to assured results regarding the subtext hypothesis. However, implicitly he often argues as if it can, or at least that it can rule out some proposals … “
Given here touches on a very important point, namely the actual relevance of Bayes’s theorem for my book
Hidden Criticism? In retrospect, I think that I might not have been clear enough on the question of why I even refer to the concept in chapter 2, which deals with the (in my view) dominant approach established by Neil Elliott and N. T. Wright of identifying a counter-imperial subtext in Paul by means of Richard B. Hays’s echo-criteria. The sole purpose of sketching the Bayesian principles was to evaluate this set of criteria. (I think that in my earlier essay-length summary of my argument this role might have been more obvious. You can access it
here.)
Biblical studies is obsessed with criteria: we use them in textual criticism, life-of-Jesus-research, and intertextuality discourses, to name just a few influential areas. Criteria are meant to make the scholar’s life easier. In my experience, however, they often complicate discussions unnecessarily – sometimes even becoming the object of scholarly debate to an astonishing extent. Every year, dozens of dissertations are written that all compare different sets of criteria which have been suggested by more senior scholars to solve a specific problem, then selecting one of the sets or modifying it, and then applying it to some texts. Biographically, it made a big impression on me when during iSBL 2013 in St Andrews a doctoral student’s presentation on intertextuality basically consisted of a listing of different sets of criteria that had been suggested. When asked in the end, which one he would be choosing for his own textual analysis, he basically threw his hands up in the air, saying: “Well, if only there were a meta-criterion for assessing the validity of criteria…!”
Bayes’s theorem rather obviously offers just such a grid – and that is why it had become important for my research on counter-imperial echoes in Paul’s letters. I wanted to know: “In order to answer the question of whether there is such a subtext in Paul’s letters, can I simply – with Elliott and Wright but also Barclay – apply Hays’s criteria to these texts?”
As it turns out, considered against the background of Bayes’s theorem, Hays’s set of criteria is
deeply problematic. Don’t get me wrong: It raises some really important questions. But some of these questions overlap. So we can’t just count answers. Moreover, half of the evidential weight that should influence the scale of our decision making with regard to whether the hypothesis of an echo is more probable than the alternative is actually contributed by
one of the questions! That’s why I conclude:
“In light of all of this, it does not seem advisable to use Hays’s criteria as a methodologically sound way to identify echoes. To be sure, it is possible to come to well-founded conclusions on their basis … but in these cases it is not the set of criteria itself which guarantees the success, but their wise use, which attributes the correct significance to each of them.”
Hidden Criticism, pp. 42-43
(You can see read a shorter version of my assessment of the criteria
here fore free.)
One is certainly free to judge this to be a rather modest insight. However, in light of the many “applications” of Hays’s criteria it still seems quite significant to me and I am glad to see that Joel White has recently also made an effort to do justice to it in the realm of identifying scriptural allusions (see his chapter in
this volume).
So, to come to an interim conclusion, one of the two ways in that Bayes’s theorem can be important for biblical studies and in that it also plays a role in my argument in
Hidden Criticism is the following:
Awareness of Bayes’s theorem can prevent us from using unsuitable sets of criteria when dealing with texts or at least tell us how the different criteria are to be assessed in relation to each other.
You might not be in need of such a framework because you are an excellent thinker anyway. Personally, it helped me immensely to have a tool at hand that helps me connect the dots between the individual criteria that are brought to a text by colleagues and myself. And when I think about the confusion of students, when they have to deal with “conflicting” criteria for establishing the relationship among textual variants and when I remember the confusion and sometimes even desperation of junior researchers in trying to navigate through the literature of those who came before them, I am tempted to believe that I am not alone in that situation.
3. Bayesian Reasoning Can Help to Prevent Argumentative Fallacies
To be sure, for the rest of
Hidden Criticism the theorem isn’t that important. In fact, its only significance for the remainder of the book is that it offers a certain context for understanding what chapters 3-5 are doing, namely that they are scrutinizing the “prior-probability” (or, as I called it in order to sound less mathematic: “background plausibility”) of the counter-imperial echo-hypothesis. By contrast, chapter 6 is only offering some guidance for how to evaluate likelihoods (or: “explanatory potentials”). It was important to me back then to emphasise that I was not answering the question of “how probable is the hypothesis that Paul criticised the Roman empire in coded form?” From a Bayesian perspective it can’t be any different, of course, because an assessment of the posterior-probability would presuppose an assessment of likelihoods, which, in turn, would necessitate the analysis of
specific texts in the framework of the discussed hypothesis and its alternatives. I didn’t see how I could do such an analysis as part of the book, which is why I wrote a second monograph that deals with a single text (2 Cor 2:14) to fill this gap. So I do think that Bayes’s theorem is important for
Hidden Criticism as a whole in that it offers a context for understanding what the book aims (and does not aim) to achieve. Unfortunately, I had been convinced to put the word “plausibility” in the subtitle of the book, which I regret. Also, the description I provided the publisher with is indeed a bit misleading (“On the basis of insights from the philosophy of science, Christoph Heilig suggests several analytical steps for examining this paradigm.”)
To come back to the more general question behind this blog post, let me summarise this aspect of the value of Bayesian reasoning for biblical studies (and in a limited extent also for
Hidden Criticism) as follows:
If we keep an eye on Bayes’s theorem, it can help us to gain a realistic perception of what we are actually contributing to a research question: Are we dealing with its background plausibility? Are we assessing its explanatory potential? Are we doing both and are we doing it also for competing hypotheses so that we can actually make statements about which hypothesis is most probably true?
Given also seems to recognise the value of this second aspect for he ends his criticism by saying:
“I [would not] dissuade historians from reflecting on Bayesian reasoning in a loosely analogical way while doing their work. It can and should make us more circumspect in our use of ‘intuitions’ (34).”
The most basic disagreement (perhaps the only real disagreement) between Given and me might be the value of this contribution of Bayesian reasoning. Part of the reason for why I wrote “Paul’s Triumph” was to show that the vast majority of the different proposals for Paul’s use of θριαμβεύειν in 2 Cor 2:14 did not only miss some evidence but
systematically failed to incorporate huge areas of evidence. The authors of these articles and monographs usually picked either prior-probability or likelihood as their point of departure – without ever coming full-circle. There is of course nothing to be said against such contributions to scholarship – as long as they are not associated with claims about an overall-plausibility of the thesis under discussion (which then by definition renders the contribution incomplete).
Almost every journal issue has an article on a new suggested “background” for a biblical passage. (See, for example,
here on “neglected points of background.”) Mostly, the argument runs like this:
“There is some archaeological or literary evidence from other sources that indicate that the author might have been in contact with a certain cultural phenomenon. Now that we know that the author was aware of that ritual or concept, it of course becomes much more plausible to assume that he also talked about it. And that’s why we should assume that an until now mysterious text actually is to be understood against that background.”
To me it is mind-blowing to observe how often such articles do not even mention the question of whether the actual wording of the text is indeed what we would expect
if this background was indeed the one on the author’s mind. Without answer the following question that encapsulates the aspect of likelihood/explanatory potential no statement about whether or not the new proposal actually offers a better explanation for the text than previous alternatives makes any sense: “would we expect the specific wording if we presupposed a proposition with counter-imperial intent?” (
Hidden Criticism, p. 140). Given has some very insightful comments on precisely this issue:
“I have used a similar test with students over the years that I call the rhetorical criterion. When a student proposes an interpretation of a contested passage, I ask if these are the words we would have expected to be used to convey that meaning. Asking this question often heads off eisegesis because the student immediately sees that if the author meant what the student proposed, the wording would likely be different. Heilig uses this sort of logic to great effect while reflecting on various proposed anti-imperial passages. Whether one agrees with his specific conclusions or not, the way he reasons about these passages is worthy of emulation.”
If you think this problem is only prevalent among students, I’d refer you again to my analysis in
Paul’s Triumph. I have to insist: it is not.
And for that reason, 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.
Note also that Bayes’s theorem tells us two things about Given’s “rhetorical criterion” that one might easily overlook (i.e. I assume Given is aware of these aspects of his criterion, but I don’t think it’s so far-fetched to imagine that someone might miss them):
First, it’s possible indeed that the rhetorical criterion might “favour” (the technical term for this constellation) a specific meaning but that a different interpretation is still more
probable. The reason for this is that people sometimes indeed do what is unexpected. For example, let’s take the hypothesis that in the very last paragraph of
Hidden Criticism I intended to encourage research on the question of whether Paul criticised the Roman Empire in the subtext of his letters. Would you have expected me to have written “we should… avoid this complex of questions (
Hidden Criticism, p. 160)? Certainly not. But that’s exactly what I submitted to the publisher. Still, if you had read the book up to this point, your assessment of the semantics/pragmatics of this sentence wouldn’t be difficult at all, because you would already have a very clear idea about the background plausibilities of different interpretations of this sentence. (For more on this, see
here.)
In other words: Given’s “rhetorical criterion” is a really helpful pedagogical tool but it offers a guide to plausible interpretations
only in conjunctions with considering the aspect of background plausibility, i.e. the aspect that the aforementioned “background-studies” focus on exclusively (and unjustifiably so). If explanatory potential/likelihood is considered in isolation, there is a permanent danger of coming up with “false positives.”
You can find this kind of fallacy often associated with theses on matters of historical reconstruction that have defied an easy solution for a long time. For example, in the literature on the synoptic problem (or on problems of source criticism) you will find ever more complex solutions that aim at integrating the multitude of textual phenomena. Often, these proposals start with a rather simple core hypothesis that is over time supplemented with very many auxiliary hypotheses which need to be postulated to save the research program from the complexity of the empirical data. In the end of such a process you will necessarily have a hypothesis that will be capable of explaining each and every tiny detail of the textual tradition. However, the assertion “My theory explains all the evidence perfectly!” in itself is of little use, if this enormous explanatory potential is bought at the cost of an acceptable background plausibility.
Second, there is yet another danger for “false positives” associated with the rhetorical criterion. We’ve already discussed the possibility that the parameter of background plausibility is neglected. Another common mistake is to emphasise the good explanatory potential of a hypothesis but to overlook that there are alternative explanations, which
also perform quite well with regard to the likelihood-aspect.
For example, I sometimes think that political pundits on TV also would profit a lot from some familiarity with Bayesian reasoning. Just in the last couple of days, I’ve heard so many comedians and commentators wonder why many people in the Trump orbit lied about contacts to the Russians if there was no collusion (and apparently there wasn’t). For two years, these people seem to have concentrated only on the explanatory potential of the collusion hypothesis: if the Trump team had colluded with the Russians, it is indeed quite probable that they would have lied about contacts with Russian officials (because people often attempt to cover-up criminal activities when confronted with them). However, apparently, it never crossed the mind of these individuals that (leaving aside prior-probabilities for the moment entirely) there might also be other scenarios in which lying about such contacts might be quite predictable (e.g. taking into account the human tendency to lie, private business dealings, and – last but not least – avoiding the
appearance of collusion).
Third, the rhetorical criterion – the focus on likelihood/explanatory potential – can also lead to “false negatives” if used improperly. Again the problem might be the lack of comparison – which in this can lead to the false assumption that the only partial fulfilment of the rhetorical criterion could imply something negative for the overall probability of the hypothesis. That’s very problematic: Sometimes we should indeed accept a meaning even though there might have been much more common ways to express this thought. So the “rhetorical criterion” only works well if we apply it not just to a single possible meaning but to all the competing semantic hypotheses. For example, the word “
ninnyhammer” might not exactly be our first prediction for how a speaker might introduce the concept of ‘idiot’ into a discourse – but it seems to me that it would be an even more awkward choice for communicating a compliment.
Thus, it seems to me that Given’s own “rhetorical criterion” powerfully demonstrates the usefulness of Bayes’s theorem for biblical studies. Sometimes, it completely suffices to ask the student whether the actual text in front of us is what “we would have expected to be used to convey that meaning.” Under different circumstances, such a shift of the perspective can, however, lead to wrong results, at least if the procedure is not specified by means of further guidelines. The art of good exegesis is to know,
when this criterion in its simple form (i.e. when the focus on the explanatory potential of a single hypothesis) is actually productive. Being aware of Bayes’s theorem is
one way of mastering this art.
Again, let me be very clear about these: the above considerations might be very intuitive to you. If so, congratulations. You obviously
don’t need to print out Bayes’s theorem and attach it next to your monitor (plus, you’ve successfully beaten some very nasty tendencies of human reasoning, the prevalence of which has been well-established through psychological research). Others, like myself, might however benefit indeed from drawing more consciously on Bayes’s theorem when developing our arguments (at least for ourselves, whether it is productive to do so in writing is a different question, to be sure) because mistakes in these areas automatically imply rather fundamental problems for our conclusions.
So I think I largely agree with the rather limited role Given wants to assign to Bayes’s theorem for the process of biblical research. My point simply is that it comes into play at a very foundational level of the construction of exegetical arguments – and that disregard for the methodological principles as they
can be developed on the basis of Bayes’s theorem are more often neglected by exegetes that we might want to assume.
). "Your Honor, the entirety of Josephus' writings are inadmissable. I will move for a mistrial if opposing counsel shows any James or Jesus mention in Josephus to the jury again." ZERO. Carrier decides that Josephus' mentionS of Jesus were probably interpolations, but probably morphs into 100% certainty BEFORE he ever trots out Bayes' Theorem.
Do you have the slightest clue what Bayesian analysis even is? 