Abstract
This article examines the effect of material evidence upon historiographic hypotheses. Through a series of successive Bayesian conditionalizations, I analyze the extended competition among several hypotheses that offered different accounts of the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Palestine and in particular to the “emergence of Israel”. The model reconstructs, with low sensitivity to initial assumptions, the actual outcomes including a complete alteration of the scientific consensus. Several known issues of Bayesian confirmation, including the problem of old evidence, the introduction and confirmation of novel theories and the sensitivity of convergence to uncertain and disputed evidence are discussed in relation to the model’s result and the actual historical process. The most important result is that convergence of probabilities and of scientific opinion is indeed possible when advocates of rival hypotheses hold similar judgment about the factual content of evidence, even if they differ sharply in their historiographic interpretation. This speaks against the contention that understanding of present remains is so irrevocably biased by theoretical and cultural presumptions as to make an objective assessment impossible.
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Notes
Such construction, incidentally, counters another objection to the application of Bayesianism to historiography—that the Bayesian approach is too formalized, requiring precise and inaccessible data, etc. (Cf. Carrier 2012, pp. 62–65)
For use in Archaeology, see Buck et al. (1996).
Aside from its computational difficulty, Jeffrey’s conditionalization requires that we know the probability of both the evidential statement and its negation, “something that it is doubtful that anybody has ever done” (Talbott 2015).
I do not discuss here the “minimalist” school of thought (e.g., Davies 1992) that considers both historical events and archaeological findings irrelevant to the understanding of biblical narrative.
Naturally, variations and shades of opinions exist among supporters of each of these hypotheses, but giving them due description is outside the scope of this paper and is not pertinent to my attempt to analyze the change of scientific opinion in Bayesian terms. See for example Dever (1993, Chap. 2), Finkelstein (1998a, pp. 295–314), Moorey (1991) or Junkkaala (2006, pp. 11–36) for a fuller summary of the hypotheses and the history of their development.
Since hypotheses seeking to make sense of the biblical narrative about the conquest of Canaan cannot be tested in places and regions claimed in the text not to have been conquered, the list does not include sites in “the remaining land” (Josh. 13).
Biblical texts describing later periods (monarchic, exilic etc.) were interpreted more consensually, but their evidential status is not my concern here.
This can, for example, be the result of assigning a probability of 90 % to the first hypothesis, 0.9 % to the second, and allowing 9.1 % to the “catchall hypothesis.” But an infinity of other combinations give the same ratio and, as said above, I doubt if an absolute figure for the “degree of belief in hypothesis X” is meaningful here, and in any case do not attempt to compute any.
It is worth noting that researchers’ own appreciations of the evidential strength of their findings were often much stronger. Only rarely would a scholar say that his results “increase (diminish) the plausibility of hypothesis X by some degree.” Expressions like “there can be no doubt that this destruction was the deed of the Israelite tribes” (Yadin 1965) or “there is not the slightest doubt that we are now witnessing the beginning of the settlement of the Israelite tribes in the Negev” (Aharoni 1976) (italics mine) are much more frequent. But as we shall see, such strong claims were not always corroborated by later discoveries.
“Thus, attempting to salvage a hypothesis by inventing numerous ad hoc excuses for all the evidence it doesn’t fit will rapidly diminish the probability of that hypothesis being true.” (Carrier 2012, p. 80).
Recall that the Conquest hypothesis was not obligated to a literal interpretation of the Biblical narrative, only to its overall adequacy.
For example, these sites conspicuously lack remains of imported ceramic ware. Imports from Cyprus and the Aegean reached Canaan during most of the thirteenth century B.C.E, but ceased later due to regional disturbances that prevented that commerce.
As for the absence of material of foreign origin in general and of imported Aegean/Cyprian ware in particular, it can be explained (Faust 2006, pp. 55–63) as the result of the norms and ideology of the relevant population.
Consider, e.g., Lyell using previously known data to support uniformitarianism, van Vleck using quantum theory to explain the anomaly of the specific heat of hydrogen, known since the nineteenth century, or the much elaborated example of Einstein demonstrating how general relativity explains the perihelion of Mercury.
I am grateful to Ilan Sharon for suggesting this classification of the hypotheses to me.
An artifact that somehow (e.g. through a morphological changes or human intervention) found its way into an archaeological context, even though it was not created there.
Cf. Sect. 3.2 for the meaning of “content” and “interpretation” as used here.
In this respect the case discussed here differs from explications given to the ruins in Qumran (Ullmann-Margalit 2006) that were derived from scholars’ opinions as to whether the site was or was not inhabited by a sect of hermits.
Earman has other reservations about Salmon’s suggestion which are not relevant here.
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Y. Ben-Menachem, I. Sharon and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on and inputs into this article, and Y. Garfinkel for general guidance on matters discussed here.
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Wallach, E. Bayesian representation of a prolonged archaeological debate. Synthese 195, 401–431 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1224-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1224-8