Lataster v. McGrath: Jesus Must Be Real…Because, Reasons
With my move back to California and so much else going on I haven’t had time to closely read several books I want to review here, including Raphael Lataster’s peer reviewed defense of historicity agnosticism regarding Jesus, Questioning the Historicity of...Mason on Josephus on James
A German academic reference book appeared in 2017 titled Jesus Handbuch (more or less meaning “Jesus Handbook” or the Jesus Manual) edited by Jens Schröter and Christine Jacobi (you can access its table of contents and descriptive foreword at Mohr...Litwa’s Confused Critique of Mythicism
M. David Litwa’s new book How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths (Yale 2019) argues the authors of the Gospels “deliberately shaped myths about Jesus into historical discourse to maximize their believability for ancient...The Sociology of Ancient Scientists Cannot Be Based on Medieval Source Selection
I recently wrote a brief letter to the editors of Isis, a leading peer reviewed journal in the history of science, to call attention to a fatal error in a recent article they published on the sociology of ancient science, “Ancient Greek Mathêmata from a Sociological...Is Jesus Wholly or Only Partly a Myth? The Carrier-MacDonald Exchange
Last year Dennis MacDonald and I had a moderated conversation on the PineCreek channel regarding the plausibility of Jesus never really being a person in history. MacDonald is famous for proposing the Gospels construct myths about Jesus partly from Homeric and other...Why Did Mark Invent an Empty Tomb?
I have written on this question in many different places. Here I collect excerpts from, or summarize, several of the most important. You’ll find further material and expanded arguments, with evidence and footnotes and cited scholarship, in my contributions to The...No, Mr. Christian, A.N. Sherwin-White Didn’t Say That. And Even What He Did Say Was Wrong.
You might have heard this one before, but it bears a revisit. Once long ago William Lane Craig started using the argument that a mainstream historian in the early 1960s named A.N. Sherwin-White had demonstrated (in Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, pp....Tim O’Neill & the Biblical History Skeptics on Mythicism
In April of this year the Biblical History Skeptics talked shop for three hours with Tim O’Neill (this Tim O’Neill) and I was invited to talk shop about that with Godless Engineer last month. The latter video has now gone live and you can watch it here....Theism & Atheism: Science
Part 3 of my series on the new Macmillan reference Theism & Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy: my discussion of the Argument from Science, which holds that the collective consequence of the advance of the sciences is the substantial reduction in the...What Did Paul Mean in Romans 1:3?
Tim O’Neill is at it again, on Twitter this time, making false claims about my work, and about the Epistles of Paul. The item of contention again is my proposal that when Paul said Jesus was “made from the sperm of David” (which is literally what...The Ancient Romans Essentially Did Have Universities
It’s often claimed Medieval Christians invented the university. But this is as false as the similar claim that they invented the hospital. In both cases the underlying claim is used to sell a “Christianity saved the world” narrative in the halls of...Kamil Gregor on the Historicity of Jesus
An interesting video discussion of On the Historicity of Jesus took place earlier this year, in which “Kamil Gregor and Joel Pearson discuss the Historicity of Jesus.” It’s well worth a reply. Because Gregor understands the math. So what he gets...Cristian Tolsa’s Review of The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire
Cristian Tolsa, an Osnabrück postdoc fellow, wrote a brief review of my book The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire that inspires me to clarify some things that I wonder at their getting wrong, getting wrong what’s actually in the book and what it actually...Did Jesus Exist? Craig Evans’ Post-Debate Analysis
I debated the historicity of Jesus with the renowned Christian scholar Craig Evans back in 2016, and later analyzed that debate. But I didn’t notice Evans’ own post-debate analysis in the Christian Research Journal, nor its republication online years later...Yes, the Dark Ages Really Were a Thing
There is a trend to try and deny the Dark Ages ever existed; even to portray them as really lovely, light and wonderful ages of goodness and achievement. I’m exaggerating. But only a little. I’ve debunked this a lot. I have a whole category assigned to 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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