How Textual Criticism Can Help or (Sorry) Hurt Your Cause
In both Classics as well as New Testament Studies, “textual criticism” is a tool for analyzing ancient texts through the lens of manuscripts, the data they present, and our accumulated knowledge of what often or rarely happened in the transmission of texts...Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed
After ten years of observing the field after publishing my academic study on the subject, I find there are generally only two reasons to remain confident in the historicity of Jesus: a desperate faith-based need to; and a disinterest in actually checking. The former...And So Kipp Davis Conclusively Demonstrates His Incompetence as a Scholar
Kipp Davis has composed three videos about my work that now amount to dishonest slander. Because once you make mistakes and find that out—but keep repeating those false statements anyway, rather than correcting them—you’ve transitioned from merely...Some Controversial Ideas That Now Have Wide Scholarly Support
I just completed a research trip to UC Berkeley and its neighboring Graduate Theological Union and garnered up a treasure trove of books, studies, and journal articles, checked and re-checked quotes and footnotes and citations, and took abundant notes. And all this...Did Jesus Even Exist? Bart Ehrman’s Latest Take
Bart Ehrman has almost entirely avoided discussing “the historicity question” for years (I continually catalogue everything, and my responses, in Ehrman on Historicity Recap; some people have mistaken an article on his blog on this as recent, but in fact...How We Know Acts Is a Fake History
I was asked by a patron to evaluate an article by Neo-Christian theologian Greg Boyd on the book of Acts being “a reliable history” (“Is the Book of Acts Reliable?,” which you can find at his mission website ReKnew). Of course I have...Appearing in New York First Weekend of May!
I will be speaking at the The Secular Humanist Society of New York’s annual Day of Reason event on May 7th, at Stout NYC, 133 West 33rd St., in Manhattan, NY. The event starts with a luncheon at 12:00 noon. Talk begins at 1pm. Followed by Q&A and an...Do the ‘We’ Passages in Acts Indicate an Eyewitness Wrote It?
As I write an article on why historians no longer trust Acts, and now categorize it as mythography rather than history (though it emulates a history), I realize one question needs to be settled separately, because otherwise it’s just too tedious a digression:...John MacDonald’s Bizarre Defense of a Historical Jesus
A few months ago, secular philosopher John MacDonald (a Vice President of Internet Infidels) wrote an article for The Secular Web, titled “Jesus Mythicism: Moral Influence vs. Vicarious Atonement—and Other Problems,” which he bills as “in part a...New Video Course on New Testament Studies for Everyone!
I am gradually transitioning my online courses to a high-quality video-and-syllabus format through MythVision. The first to launch is my course on New Testament Studies for Everyone. You can check out a five-minute video describing that course and how it works. And...Chrissy Hansen on the Pre-Existent Jesus
It’s the growing consensus in Jesus studies now that the first Christians believed Jesus was the incarnation of a pre-existent celestial being. Even Bart Ehrman has gotten aboard this trend (see Bart Ehrman on How Jesus Became God); and even Larry Hurtado, who...Dear Christian: You Might Be Worshiping the Antichrist
In recent years I came to a revelation: Christians are actually worshipping the Antichrist. Not all Christians, of course. Consider, for example, the Christian youth who come out to me after a presentation to a church group to explain their disappointment with their...Empirical Logic and Romans 1:3
Paul’s statement in Romans 1:3 that Jesus had “come of the seed of David according to flesh” is one of the most commonly cited pieces of evidence for Paul believing Jesus had been an actual man walking around Palestine (see Argument from...A Primer on Christian Anti-Intellectualism
I noted this month in my series on Justin Brierley’s book Unbelievable that rather than teaching its faithful how to think reliably, “Christianity teaches against any sound epistemology, even critical thinking.” In fact, “Christianity’s sacred...Justin Brierley on Jesus
Justin Brierley starts his discussion of the historical facts of Jesus by quoting H.G. Wells (p. 94), someone who had no degrees in history, and only remarked upon the historical effect on Well’s era of the literary character of Jesus, and merely presuming the...Get Dr. Carrier’s Latest!
About the Author
Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical methods.
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