Lydia McGrew addresses your post saying:
"The fellow who sneers at our combined Bayes factor on the grounds that we are assuming independence appears to have overlooked the fact that we have an entire section discussing that very issue and offering, as far as I know, a new technical point in the literature concerning the question of whether assuming independence strengthens or weakens a case and relating this to the question of situations of duress." - link
You don't even need to read the article to see that 10^39 is just a silly number, but for those interested, it is obtained by assuming that the probability of each of the disciples believing in the Resurrection is independent of the probabilities for the other disciples. Despite the fact that the independence assumption is clearly nonsense, and they themselves describe it as a "first approximation", they then go on to quote this 10^39 figure throughout the rest of the article, and in the interview.
Just from very quickly skimming the paper, wha...
I think LWers may be intrigued...
Tim McGrew, author of this excellent annotated bibliography on Bayesian reasoning, recently co-authored with his wife Lydia a Bayesian defense of the resurrection of Jesus. I interviewed Lydia for my podcast, here. Atheist Richard Carrier has leveled some objections to their article, but his objections are weak.
Have at it.