Bayes’ Theorem And The “Jesus Family Tomb”

found an article from Dr. Randy Ingermanson

that shed more light than heat on the subject of the “Jesus Family Tomb”

Jesus Family Tomb: A New Statistical Analysis of the “Jesus Equation”:

Publication of the book The Jesus Family Tomb in late February, 2007, sparked a media firestorm.

Could it be that the actual tomb of Jesus of Nazareth had been found in a suburb of Jerusalem?

The book’s authors, Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, believe it has.

The book was followed up by the showing of a related documentary on the Discovery Channel on March 4, 2007.

I read the book as soon as I could get a copy and thought hard about Dr. Feuerverger’s calculations.

Because I have extensive experience in computing probabilities of such “remarkable events,”

I did my own set of calculations and posted them on this web site in an article titled “Statistics and the Jesus Family Tomb.

Shortly after my article appeared, I received an email from Jay Cost, a graduate student in political science at the University of Chicago.

Jay had written an influential article on the Real Clear Politics web site noting the importance of Bayes’ Theorem to the issue.

In his email to me, Jay reiterated his comments on Bayes’ theorem and also asked some pointed questions about my calculations.

That email prompted a long and intense discussion between me and Jay on the statistics of the Jesus family tomb.

At first, I was skeptical of his comments, but after doing some analysis, I quickly decided that he was correct –

there was more to say about the Jesus family tomb. After many hours of talking, we have fused his ideas with mine.

I can now report our conclusions.

{life, strange stuff}

Technorati Tags: bayesian analysis, Easter, Jesus Family Tomb, resurrection

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