Jesus Archives • Richard Carrier Blogs

Matt Kovacs Demonstrates What’s Wrong with Atheists Clinging to the Historicity of Jesus

Richard Carrier — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:32:09 +0000

I’ve commented a lot lately in my articles on the historicity of Jesus that critics themselves are now demonstrating why historicity is a bankrupt paradigm: they never have a sound or valid argument for it. Instead, they kneejerk oppose it emotionally, doing no work to even understand the peer reviewed studies questioning it (they rarely […]

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That Phenomenally Stupid Article by Bill Cooke

Richard Carrier — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 20:01:05 +0000

The Center for Inquiry is clearly in sad decline. They just published a wildly incompetent article on Jesus mythicism by Bill Cooke, “Five Challenges to Christ Myth Theorists,” in their magazine Free Inquiry (44.5, August/September 2024). It was pretty well roasted on Facebook. It’s even worse than that embarrassing travesty of an article by Jehovah’s […]

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The Chavez Review of Jesus from Outer Space

Richard Carrier — Wed, 22 May 2024 18:13:50 +0000

The Review of Biblical Literature recently published a brief “review” of Jesus from Outer Space by William Chavez (RBL 03/2024). It is quite useless as a review, because it merely complains about aesthetics, ignores the academic study the book summarizes, and (as usual) makes false claims about it. You won’t learn from this review what […]

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Allen’s New and Illogical Theory of the Testimonium Flavianum

Richard Carrier — Fri, 10 May 2024 16:03:36 +0000

I recently read a new article by David Allen, “A Model Reconstruction of What Josephus Would Have Realistically Written about Jesus,” in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 18 (2022), which tries to argue that Josephus really did write ‘something’ where we now have the Testimonium Flavianum but that it has to have been […]

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Jesus from Outer Space Now Available in Greek and Polish!

Richard Carrier — Fri, 03 May 2024 13:50:34 +0000

My popular market summary of my academic study of Jesus, Jesus from Outer Space, is now available in Greek and Polish translations. Follow the links for details and to buy one. These are not available in the Americas by normal channels, but special ordering at a brick and mortar store might be possible; otherwise, you’re […]

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I’ll Virtually Be in Bangor, Maine!

Richard Carrier — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 18:30:52 +0000

This April 27 (2024), a Saturday, I’ll be appearing in Bangor, Maine (video now available, which requires a correction, noted below). This was via Zoom to discuss the historicity of Jesus (including my new book on it which I just completed and sent to the publisher). I summarize that but then focus on the extrabiblical […]

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Was the Entire New Testament Forged in the Second Century?

Richard Carrier — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 15:38:24 +0000

There have been two really weird and unexpected turns in mainstream peer-reviewed scholarship lately: multiple independent studies are redating the entire Bible—Old Testament and New—far later than consensus imagines. What’s Up with the Old Testament? The first trend is a concerted series of studies independently arguing that the entire Old Testament was essentially forged in […]

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Like, Can You Rebel Against Rome with Only Two Swords?

Richard Carrier — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 20:35:59 +0000

In my debate with Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, he defended the theory that Jesus can only plausibly have been historical if he was an armed militant who was later whitewashed as a pacifist. I argued that that might be plausible in concept, but not when we look at the evidence. My overall argument, which I adapted into […]

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Margaret Williams on Early Classical Authors on Jesus

Richard Carrier — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 19:55:56 +0000

Preparing my new volume on the historicity of Jesus for next year, I’ve found that one of the works published since my first volume that warrants attention in my new one is Early Classical Authors on Jesus (T&T Clark, 2022) by Margaret H. Williams (hereafter ECAJ). Here I will review this book, and comment on […]

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Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed

Richard Carrier — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 15:03:52 +0000

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 is, of course, why believers can’t engage in honest debates over […]

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