My latest and most controversial (and in-demand!) book is now available in e-book format. At last! You can now get On the Historicity of Jesus on kindle and nook (I don’t know if it’s also available on any other platforms or formats). The audiobook is still in production.
(And no, I have no control over the pricing. Near $20 might be a tad high for an e-book, but given that academic presses often charge two to three times that, we can’t really complain. Especially as this book is rather large. I will still earn more from print sales.)
(Also, there is nothing I can do about the absence of print pagination in the kindle edition. I had no control over its production. If I had designed it myself, I would have included matched pagination, as I did in my own most recent kindle releases.)
Need you to respond to this please>
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1463010
Thanks,
HH
Thank you! I just bought and downloaded the Kindle version; I look forward to reading this.
Glad to hear it is going well for you. I got the soft cover edition via Amazon soon after it went on sale.
As a child (back in the early 1950s) I started telling people that I didn’t believe Jesus ever existed. I am delighted that I now have your peer reviewed book to back me up.
WooHoo! Thanks!!!
Post about Jesus:
https://www.facebook.com/RichardDawkinsFoundation/posts/10152854809000155
Hi Richard.
Merry Christmas!
Can you explain a little bit about your claim that “Jesus Christ was regarded as having fulfilled (and thereby replacing) by his death the two greatest annual sacrifices in the Jewish religion, Passover and Yom Kippur, and thereby had replaced the temple as a relevant religious institution (On The Historicity Of Jesus, 143-144).” Does this mean you think the original Jewish Christians didn’t go to the annual temple service? I could see how this could be true for the original gentile Christians, but I’m unsure of the original Jewish Christians. What are your thoughts?
I recently purchased this book and I have really enjoyed reading it. I am a historian of the 20th Century, especially World War II, the Cold War and the Space Race. I admit I have thought that Jesus of Nazareth was probably a historical person. He was born around 4 BCE, preached Judaism for 1-3 years and was executed by the Romans for sedition around 30 CE. All of the supernatural attributes were clearly based on myth with no basis in reality. Now that I am reading Dr. Carrier’s book, I am forced to reconsider my thinking on this subject. I’m only on page 165 and while much of the material is familiar to me, it is presented in a way that demands a critical examination of the historical record. It isn’t light reading and I keep making notes in the margins as I go but this is a book that should be in the possession of anyone interested in the “quest” for the historical Jesus.
Hi Dr. Carrier. I asked Dr. McGrath the following question about your book:
“What do you think of Carrier’s claim that ‘Jesus Christ was regarded as having fulfilled (and thereby replacing) by his death the two greatest annual sacrifices in the Jewish religion, Passover and Yom Kippur, and thereby had replaced the temple as a relevant religious institution (On The Historicity Of Jesus, 143-144).’ Does this mean Carrier thinks the original Jewish Christians didn’t go to the annual temple service? I could see how this could be true for the original gentile Christians, but I’m unsure of the original Jewish Christians. What are your thoughts?”
Dr. McGrath’s answer was :
“The inclusion in Matthew of sayings that involve continued participation in temple worship (e.g. ‘when you bring your gift to the altar’), together with the depiction in Acts of the earliest Christians continuing to participate in temple worship, all suggest to me that the view of Jesus as replacing sacrifice in general, or specific sacrifices, was at the very least not something universal. Obviously we don’t have any specific reference to Christians either participating or refraining from participating in Yom Kippur, and so we can only infer as best we can from the other relevant evidence we have.”
What are your thoughts on McGrath’s answer?
Thanks
Mike Bird roundly pans your theory
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16974
Hi Dr. Carrier,
I was finally able to digest a good deal of your book and I must say that it’s as impressive a tome as their is on the arguments for the mythicist position. I also have a much clearer understanding of what your beliefs are towards what early Christianity was.
I have a few more questions:
1) To what extent do you think the earliest Christian leaders, Peter, James, etc were influenced by the beliefs of the Qumran community and do you think that they were in fact members of the Essene sect of Judaism?
2) I now understand that you think that the earliest Christians were a collection of individuals who experienced hallucinatory revelations that provided them with the belief that God’s only son was sacrificed in the lowest layer of their celestial cosmology and that earliest the Christian leaders used these experiences as proof that they were ordained to be God’s messengers on Earth. Do you believe that the redactors who compiled the Gospel of Mark believed that the Peter, James, the 12, etc. only experienced the revelations or do you think that by around the time Mark was written, Christians truly came to believe that there was a flesh and blood Jesus who lived and died as written in that gospel?
Many thanks again and many thanks for all the great research,
mlt5198
Dr. Carrier,
I’ve finally had the time to finish and digest your most comprehensive tome on the historicity of Jesus and I have a much more complete conception of what you believe initiated the Christian faith. The work will no doubt stand as the definitive argument for ahistoricity for some time.
I have a couple of questions based on what I read:
1) I now understand that you think the earliest Christians were a revelatory/hallucinatory splinter sect of Judaism and that the earliest leaders of the sect declared their experiences of these revelations of Jesus as proof as their being messengers on Earth of “the good news”. This struck me as being very similar in thinking to a number of things from the Qumran community and the Essenes in general. How much do you think the earliest Christian leaders (Peter, James, etc.) were influenced by the ideas and beliefs of the community at Qumran and do you think they themselves might have been Essenes? Do you think that it from that school of thought that they acquired their archetype for Jesus?
2) I also now understand that you think these earliest leaders believed that Jesus was crucified in the firmament of Judaic cosmology and that his real sojourn on Earth was soon to come. Do you believe by the time of the composition of the Gospel of Mark, that the editors/redactors of that gospel believed in a flesh and bone Jesus that died somewhat similarly to the narrative that they assembled or do you think that they believed simply in the revelatory experiences of the early church leaders and essentially constructed an allegory to use to try to win over converts?
Many thanks again for your time and your incredible research,
mlt5198