This is the class to take! My online course on the historicity of Jesus is this October: the best arguments pro and con, the cultural and historical background, the competing theories of the origins of Christianity, and more. But best of all, the October 21 debate between Bart Ehrman and Robert Price takes place during the course (and might be livestreamed for us to watch it concurrently with the course materials). And we’ll be discussing its outcome in the last unit!
This is the best chance to get a timely and fascinating look at the whole historicity debate of the last decade and more, and that debate in particular, and get to ask a Ph.D. expert in the field all the questions you ever had about either.
We’ll go through my book chapter by chapter and discuss its contents, and look at some additional resources and challenges. And by the end you’ll be able to converse informedly about all the main issues in the debate: what the best evidence is for the historical Jesus, why it can be questioned and how, and how you can decide for yourself whether theories without one are better or not. You will also have the opportunity to ask me all the questions you want, challenge me with all the arguments you’ve run into, and otherwise pick my brain on all the related issues you think important.
The course, Questioning or Defending the Historicity of Jesus, begins October 1 and goes one month, covering four units, one per week. There are no timed events so you can do the readings or post questions or engage in the forum discussions whenever you want, any day and time that suits you. All the course materials, including the discussions, stay available for you to consult or download for an additional month after that.
The only course text you must acquire (if you don’t already have it) is my book On the Historicity of Jesus. Everything else will be provided. For a more complete course description, and how to register, visit the course announcement page.
I’ve done it before last year, but I’m considering signing up again to take part in discussing the Price-Ehrman debate.
To benefit from a second go, you can even choose not do the readings you’ve already done (since you’ve done them; though any you want to re-review, of course, you can), but do different readings instead that relate to each unit’s overall topic, and ask questions about those. Those new readings can be things you found yourself (make sure to supply me with a copy or link if you will be asking questions about it), things cited in OHJ, or things connected to it all like the response-to-critics articles of mine I catalog (there is a link in the course intro section). That way you get a whole new layer of information and query on top of the introduction you got the first time.