Historicity Big and Small: How Historians Try to Rescue Jesus
When the question of the historicity of Jesus comes up in an honest professional context, we are not asking whether the Gospel Jesus existed. All non-fundamentalist scholars agree that that Jesus never did exist. Christian apologetics is pseudo-history. No different...So What About Hannibal, Then?
This kind of argument has been tried again and again and again. I’ve discussed every one. (See Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?) It’s always of this form: P1. We should not doubt [x] existed. P2. The evidence for Jesus is better than for...The Difference Between a Historian and an Apologist
Larry Hurtado’s latest foot-in-mouth affords a good opportunity to explain what the difference is between an apologist and a historian. Not in respect to their goals (apologists need to defend a position even when it’s false or indefensible; historians...For the Existence of Jesus, Is the Principle of Contamination Invalid? Cavin & Colombetti vs. Law
A while back, Heythrop College professor of philosophy Stephen Law published a peer reviewed paper establishing that the Gospels actually undermine confidence in the historicity of Jesus owing to their inordinately fabulous nature (“Evidence, Miracles, and the...Did the Environment Kill Rome?
An article at Vox argues that environmental disasters destroyed the Roman Empire: “6 Ways Climate Change and Disease Helped Topple the Roman Empire,” by Kyle Harper, a professor of classics, whose article summarizes his book The Fate of Rome: Climate,...The Cosmic Seed of David
Nicholas Covington just produced an intersting article on the cosmic seed hypothesis that so vexes Jonathan Tweet (see Jonathan Tweet and the Jesus Debate). In Seed of David, Take Two, Covington makes two valuable points: he correctly frames the logic of the argument...How to Successfully Argue Jesus Existed (or Anything Else in the World)
In conjunction with my Critical Thinking course this month, and in light of a number of casual debates I’ve been in lately, I’ve drawn up this twelve step advice, which actually applies to all arguments for any conclusions in any subject whatever. But I’ll use...Kristi Winters on the Historical Jesus: Part 2
Yesterday I pointed out the defects of Kristi Winters’ YouTube case for the historicity of Jesus in 2015. Her case then, mostly, was at least respectably mainstream and just uninformed about a lot of things. But then in 2016 and 2017 her videos on this subject...Kristi Winters on the Historical Jesus: Part 1
I’ve had on my to-do list for some time to write about all the weirdly inept videos on the historicity of Jesus posted by YouTuber Kristi Winters lately. So I’ll do that now. In two parts. In the first, she starts sensible and merely wrong. In the second,...What Is Bayes’ Theorem & How Do You Use It?
Bayes’ Theorem is just a logical formula. Like any logic, it can be used to argue silly things (like Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory trying to predict the future of physics on a whiteboard). Because bad premises, always lead to bad conclusions, even with...Critical Thinking about History: An Essential Class to Take in the Age of Fake News
I’ll be teaching my affordable one-month online course on historical methods in a couple weeks (starting July 1): Thinking Like a Historian: Historical Methods, Practice and Theory. Please share this announcement to anyone you know who might be interested! Or...Two Lessons Bart Ehrman Needs to Learn about Probability Theory
A reader pointed something out to me that was a fantastic facepalm moment. It’s another demonstration of how Bart Ehrman doesn’t know how epistemic probability works, and not only hasn’t read On the Historicity of Jesus, he doesn’t even know...History as a Science
In 1970, David Hackett Fischer published a meaty and entertaining book, Historian’s Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (well and briefly reviewed by Philip Jenkins at Patheos). I highly recommend it. He’s funny, but correct. It’s not a...Speaking at Edinboro, Pennsylvania!
The Anthropology Club at Edinboro University has invited me to speak on Bayes’ Theorem Is the Logic of Historical Argument: A Demonstration Comparing the Historicity of Jesus and John Frum. That’s right, I’m going to compare Bayesian arguments for two...On the Historicity of Jesus: The Tim Hendrix Critique
Tim Hendrix, a mathematician, recently published an inaccurate critique of my book On the Historicity of Jesus. This is my analysis of where he went wrong. Hendrix wrote a critique of my book Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus a...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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