A Few More Attempts to Rescue Jesus

A while ago I composed Historicity Big and Small: How Historians Try to Rescue Jesus, summarizing and categorizing the main arguments pushed in a kind of phylogeny. Here I will expand on that by adding a few more arguments, within the same scheme I constructed there....

Some Problems with Modern Kemetic Mythology

There is a sub-category of Neopaganism today called Kemetism, or Egyptian Neopaganism. It is often heavily wrapped up in Black Supremacist or Afrocentrism movements. By analogy to Wicca, the most well-known variety of Neopaganism, which is based on a European pagan...

The Original Scriptural Concept of ‘The Lord’ Jesus

I recently realized a minor underlying fact in the background knowledge I laid out in my peer-reviewed book On the Historicity of Jesus has gone unnoticed. It seems trivial to me, but too many things do. I realize this stuff I take for granted is really shocking or...

Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity: The First Three Hundred Years

This is part two of my series on Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book and BBC series A History of Christianity, or as the book is sometimes titled, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, referring to the fact that Christianity evolved out of trends that began a...

Diarmaid MacCulloch’s BBC Series on the History of Christianity

I’ve been asked a lot about Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book and BBC series A History of Christianity, or as the book is sometimes titled, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, referring to the fact that Christianity evolved out of trends that began a...

Crucifixion Quake! An Unusual Movie about an Unusual Passion

Years ago I sat for a day of interviews for a film by Marco Bazzi about a geologist obsessed with the alleged earthquake at the time of Christ’s death. The resulting movie is now available (you can find it in most of the usual places, including Amazon Prime or...

Ancient Theories of Gravity: What Was Lost?

Everyone rags on Aristotle for totally phoning in his theory of gravity. But in perspective, (a) Aristotle was a biologist, not a physicist, so his not being the best at physics should not be held to any more account than when a modern biologist goofs some esoteric...

The Incompetent Crankery of the Israel Only Movement

There is a strange little fringe movement, including in its ranks even atheists and other nonbelievers, that attempts to make the bizarre argument that Christians should abandon their religion because “the Bible” says the entire Christian gospel concluded...

The Bible Actually Permits Abortion and Condemns Homosexuality

There are two common modern myths about the Bible, one conservative, the other liberal. The liberal myth is that the Bible never condemns homosexuality. In fact it clearly does, both in the Old Testament and the New. The conservative myth is that the Bible condemns...

Formalized Gullibility as a Modern Christian Methodology

In my debate with Craig Evans, one of the strange arguments he attempted was the Argument from Verisimilitude, whereby he says we should believe any story that’s dressed up in a realistic background. In my original Analysis of the Carrier-Evans Debate, I...

Blom on the Testimonium Taciteum

Years ago as part of my postdoc research for On the Historicity of Jesus I published a peer reviewed article in Vigiliae Christianae presenting the case (advanced under peer review by a few other scholars before me) that the single line about “Christ” in...

Jesus from Outer Space! The Price Review

My new book is available in kindle and print (audio is still in production but should arrive before 2022): Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ. Copies have already gone out to reviewers, and one is already scheduled to...