Last week I got into a little bit of a “Twitter war” over the issue of whether or not Jesus was a historical person. As often happens on social media like Twitter or Facebook, you might intend to just make one comment, but then you find yourself roped into the equivalent of WWE’s Royal Rumble, with a whole mess of people putting in their two cents…then fifty cents…then a buck. And then when you wake up the next morning, you find you have 75 tweets waiting for you because some people just don’t want to stop.
And yes, this particular dust up was over the issue of Jesus—not whether or not he was divine, or did miracles, or resurrect from the dead, but just whether or not he actually existed.
It truly was fascinating.
Believe it or not, there are a number of atheists who have taken up their own crusade to convince people that Jesus wasn’t even a historical figure. And perhaps the poster-boy for the “mythicist movement” is Richard Carrier. He has a PhD in ancient Greco-Roman history but doesn’t formally teach anywhere. Instead, he makes his living giving lectures and promoting his book, On the Historicity of Jesus, in which he argues, as I’ve said, that there was no historical Jesus and that the entire story of Jesus is just a myth.
To be honest, I’ve known about Carrier for a few years but just don’t really take him seriously. In any case, the “Twitter war” actually started with the man himself. I noticed that a friend of mine from Twitter had posted something about how Richard Carrier was wrong in his claims, and he had actually responded to her tweet by basically saying that she didn’t know anything and that she didn’t have a PhD; he did, and therefore he could pull rank on her.
I thought that was kind of snobbish. Sure he had a PhD in ancient Greco-Roman history, but he didn’t have a PhD in Biblical Studies, so it wasn’t like he was an expert in Jesus studies. And so, I just quickly tweeted something to the effect that, speaking as someone who actually does have an advanced degree in Biblical Studies, I could pull rank on him, and that my friend was right—his claim that Jesus never existed wasn’t true.
The result was that for the next couple days, I got into a rather fascinating, sometimes heated, and somewhat silly debate with Carrier himself, along with a handful of atheists who clearly believe what he says. What I found most humorous was that with virtually every question I raised, the only response I would get from Carrier was, “Read my book…it’s peer-reviewed.” He simply wouldn’t give any direct answers. I basically said there was no way I was going to buy his 700+ page book when it he was giving me no reason to buy it. Denying the historicity of Jesus was like denying the moon landing—if you’re going to want me to buy a 700+ page book on why the moon landing was a hoax, you need to realize that right off the bat, I’m not going to believe you. So you’re going to need to give me something that makes me say, “Hmmm…”
If you can’t do that, I’m sorry, I’m going to assume you have a penchant for tinfoil hats.
Ah, But There Are YouTube Lectures!
That being said, that nutty “Twitter war” kind of piqued my interest. If you know about everything I’ve written about Ken Ham and Young Earth Creationism, you realize that there is just something inside me that longs to try to understand how some people can be so rabidly devoted to absurd claims that defy logic and reason. And so, over the course of this past week, I made it a point to watch a number of Carrier’s lectures on YouTube. I figured, hey, they are free—the only thing I’m wasting is my time.
I ended up watching three lectures: Why the Gospels are Myth, Why Invent Jesus? And The Real Origins of Christianity. And I have to say, it was quite a trip. I found myself channeling my inner Luke Skywalker and wanting to say, “Amazing, every word of what you just said…was wrong.”
To be fair, not every word Carrier said in those lectures was wrong, but pretty much every claim and assertion he made was. Not only that, but many of his comments about specific Bible passages and events came across as rather ill-informed. It’s not that he made his argument and I just wasn’t convinced. No, he made specific claims that were both demonstrably not true and patently juvenile. The only people who will find Carrier’s arguments convincing are people who have already agreed with him. He will make a claim, they will nod and say, “Yes,” and then will get on social media and parrot those claims, often putting them in obnoxious internet memes—to which fellow Carrier acolytes will approve of and pass on. Of course, the only thing that proves is that confirmation bias is alive and well.
Since I Watched the Lectures…
Nevertheless, since I did spend over three hours watching these lectures, I don’t want to have it be a complete waste of time. And so, I’ve decided to write a couple of posts on the claims and arguments Carrier made in them. Now I’m sure that he has probably said a lot more in his 700+ page book, but the fact is, he says plenty enough in these three lectures. Like that Twitter war that piqued my interest, I found them to be fascinating…but probably not in the way Carrier intended.
In any case, I thought I’d write a few posts and share my impressions and thoughts regarding what Carrier said in these three lectures. So sit back and enjoy the show…
The Gospels are Myth?
The first lecture I watched of Carrier’s was entitled Why the Gospels are Myth. Right out of the gate, I noticed a major problem in his presentation: He never properly defined what he meant by “myth.”
Properly understood, “myth” is nothing more than a particular genre of literature, just like poetry, parables, and histories are distinct genres of literature. And in the ancient world, it was the genre that people used to convey their beliefs about the gods, the created order, and humanity. In short, myths provided the “worldview lens” through which a culture would interpret their history and existence. Because of that, myths were decidedly non-historical; they were about the realms of the gods who existed outside of history.
Of course, that’s not how Carrier presents it at all: “I’m going to talk about why the Gospels are fiction. In formal parlance, we say ‘myth.’ It really just means fiction—it’s not true; it’s made up stuff.”
That’s it—that’s the extent of his clarification of what “myth” is. Evidently, for Carrier “myth” means, “That looks weird to me.” I’m sorry, but that won’t cut it. Myth is an ancient genre of literature, purposely non-historical, involving the gods, and serving to provide that culture’s basic worldview. Fiction, however, is a modern genre of literature that can be just about anything, and it does not always entail “weird things” happening. The Last of the Mohicans is fiction—it’s not myth. And furthermore, even if one reads the Gospels and finds that there is “weird stuff” in them that doesn’t happen in the natural world, that does not mean the Gospels are myth, because containing “weird stuff” is not a defining characteristic of myth…or fiction, for that matter.
Ancient Histories?
Properly speaking, the Gospels are ancient historical biographies. As Ben Witherington discusses in his book New Testament History, the Gospels display the characteristics of ancient historical biographies: (1) they are of the right length; (2) they are continuous prose narratives; (3) the main figure is the center of attention in any given narrative; (4) the use of indirect portraiture to reveal the central figure; (5) the stringing together of short anecdotal stories; (6) the focus is on the main figure’s public life; and (7) it is written as popular literature.
To be clear: whether or not one believes the Gospels to be telling the truth, the fact is, they bear all the literary characteristics of ancient historical biographies and are thus not myths.
Carrier though disagrees. He claims that since they don’t name their sources, or state their methods, or “are open to the possibility that they may be incorrect,” that they, therefore, do not look like ancient histories. I’m sorry, those things might be required for a PhD thesis, but they simply are not characteristics of ancient historical biographies.
And so, within the first five minutes of the lecture, Carrier did not present a proper definition of “myth” and he gave reasons why the Gospels are not written like a modern PhD thesis. It was not a good start. No matter what Carrier proceeded to say, he wasn’t going to be able to show that the Gospels are a myth, because he failed to explain what myth is.
Improbable Claims in the Gospels
The bulk of Carrier’s lecture consisted of doing literary analysis on a number of passages in the Gospels, interspersed with the occasional juvenile comment, and then focusing on the figure of Lazarus. Before he got into his literary analysis, though, Carrier presented a number of examples of improbable things in the Gospels that (supposedly) prove they are myth:
- Disciples abandon jobs, follow a stranger instantly
- Disciples dumber than a bag of hammers
- Jews need Judas to identify Jesus
- Jews hold illegal trial, execution on a high holy day
- Jesus flies with the Devil; fed by angels and magical animals
- Nativity stories, miracle tales, hoard of the undead
Now, mind you, none of those things indicate that a piece of writing is a myth. What they do indicate though is Carrier’s tendency to read the Gospels with the wooden literalism of the most ardent fundamentalist. For there is one more thing a competent reader of the Gospels (or of the historical narratives in the Old Testament as well) needs to know: the biblical writers wrote history in the form of a story.
What do I mean by that? The best analogy I can give is a movie like Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge. It is a movie about an actual historical event in WWII, and specifically about an actual historical person—private Desmond Doss. Nevertheless, in the telling of the story, Gibson obviously made creative choices as to how to present the story—thus the movie is both history and art. The same can be said of the history writing in the Bible. Simply put, you have to give the Gospel writers a little bit of wiggle room to be creative in their historical biographies. Therefore, just to address a couple of Carrier’s examples…
- Do we have to believe the disciples literally followed a stranger instantly? Can’t we logically assume that since both Jesus and many of his disciples were living in Capernaum that chances are they already knew each other? Of course. So when Carrier characterizes this as, “This is a mythic thing that happens,” he’s simply wrong. He’s reading with wooden literalism, and (again) instantly following a guy doesn’t make a story a myth.
- Is it so unbelievable that when the Sanhedrin sends the temple police to arrest Jesus in the middle of the night they would need someone to identify Jesus? Carrier thinks that’s crazy, because Jesus had been preaching in public. Really? The middle of the night, in a garden, a bunch of men milling around—getting someone to identify the one they need to arrest is really hard to believe?
- The high priesthood of Jesus’s day, particularly the family of Caiaphas, was known to be hopelessly corrupt—they were called snakes and vipers by the Jews of the time. Is it really hard to believe that they might do something illegal to get rid of someone they felt was a threat?
Resurrection and the Undead
I’ll address stories like the temptation in the desert, the nativity stories, and the miracle claims in a later post. But for now, “the hoard of the undead”? Do you know what Carrier is talking about? He’s referring to the curious passage in Matthew 27:52-53, where it is said that when Jesus died many tombs were opened, and when Jesus was resurrected, many of those formerly dead people were also raised and appeared to some in the city.
Now let’s admit it—that sounds pretty odd. Nevertheless, to characterize it, as Carrier (and many other atheists on social media) does as basically a claim of a zombie apocalypse is ignorant as it is juvenile. Mike Licona, in his book The Resurrection of Jesus, recognizes the possibility that these verses might be metaphorical in some way—and that is certainly possible. In any case, anyone vaguely familiar with the Pharisaic understanding of “resurrection” would know that nowhere in second temple Judaism was “resurrection” understood as “the hoard of the undead.”
Resurrection, by definition, meant the raising of the formerly dead corpse to a transformed bodily existence—not a “spiritual going off to heaven,” and not a scene from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It was the belief that God would defeat death itself by resurrecting those faithful to Him into a new, immortal bodily existence.
I want to make clear: whether or not you believe this is irrelevant; whether or not Matthew 27:52-53 is claiming this literally happened isn’t the point. The point is that characterizing Matthew 27:52-53 as “the hoard of the undead” displays an utter ignorance of the Jewish concept of resurrection. The obvious reason why Carrier characterizes it that way is that his real aim is just do whatever he can to make the Gospels look dumb. He’s not making any real argument. He’s not educating anyone on what the Jewish understanding of resurrection is. He is actually poisoning the well. He’s not putting anyone into a position of understanding, so they can begin to properly assess what Matthew 27:52-53 is actually saying.
Instead of making a coherent, informed argument, he is engaging in juvenile mockery and slander. As we will see in the next post, this kind of thing is a staple in his presentations.
Conclusion
I want to be clear on one thing. I’m not trying to “defend” the historicity of Jesus (although I certainly do think he was a historical figure—as do 99% of all biblical scholars and historians). And I’m not necessarily engaging in any apologetics here. I am simply assessing what Richard Carrier claims in his lectures and am thoroughly unimpressed.
In my next post, I will look at the rest of Carrier’s lecture, The Gospels are Myth.
Dr. Anderson, this was very interesting!
Having spent a lot of time in online religion forums discussing/debating the historical Jesus and the overall reliability of the gospels with atheists I can say that “Jesus Mythers” like GA Wells, Earl Doherty and Richard Carrier are often the go-to experts of atheists and skeptics (for those slightly more open-minded, Bart Ehrman is their current man of the hour).
I, too have discovered that most of these skeptics, while making fun of fundamentalist Christians, nevertheless attempt to “demythologize” the NT based on the very same fundamentalist reading of the NT. Thus what they’re actually attempting to deconstruct is a silly caricature of the NT and Christianity rather than the real thing.
Few academic historians, even liberal skeptics like Ehrman, take these guys seriously.
I wonder who the “peers” are who reviewed Carrier’s book.
Pax vobiscum.
Lee.
Yes, you are completely correct. I’m really not going to spend too much time with Carrier’s stuff, but I do just find it fascinatingly bizarre.
“Fascinatingly bizarre” is a pretty good term.
Pax.
Lee.
Aside from what you pointed out above, can you give us the list of evidences there are that Jesus actually existed? That is to say, contemporary references to him? Writings that he made? Roman records perhaps. There must be some, right?
Well to your question: there aren’t CONTEMPORARY references to him. No one during AD 28-30 was following him around writing about him. But for that matter, no one was following around and writing about the many other messianic claimants running around Judea in the first century.
Now, the first century texts we do have are in the New Testament: Paul’s letters dating from 20 years after the crucifixion; Mark possibly 30-40 years, Matthew and Luke perhaps 40-45 years, then John probably 60. By ancient standards, written accounts within a generation is really good. On top of that no one disputes that Paul was a real person who became a follower of Jesus within a couple years after the crucifixion–mid 30s. No one doubts people like Peter and James were real people of history.
We have the first century Jewish historian Josephus mention Jesus, John the Baptist, and James his brother. We also have mention of him from the Jewish Talmud.
We then have early second century Roman historians mentioning the Christian movement, and who they followed a man who had been crucified by Pilate.
Just with that, at the very least, I don’t know who in their right mind would doubt the fact there was a Galilean named Jesus, who had some sort of following, who was crucified by Pilate. By ancient standards, that is quite a bit of stuff from the first and early second century.
Of course, no one disputes that Joseph Smith was a real person who claimed to have received a revelation from Moroni. Do you think this is reasonable proof that Moroni was real?
Obviously not. Joseph Smith claimed he was visited by an angel and had access to golden tablets that no one ever saw. He made up a story about ancient people from over a thousand years earlier, and then eventually the Mormons ended up in Utah, pretty isolated from everyone else for quite a long time. When you live in relative isolation, it’s pretty easy to indoctrinate everyone within a generation.
By contrast, there is NO evidence that Peter, James, and Paul claimed Jesus was some sort of non-human angel. The didn’t even have to “claim” he was human, because it was known–he was a man who was crucified by Pilate. Second, they were making claims, not about some ancient people living thousands of years before, but of someone they claimed was their contemporary–thus making it extremely easy to refute if it was not true. Third, the early Christians were not isolated at all–they were dotted throughout the empire, living in the midst of a pagan culture and world. That would not be an optimal situation to get a fanciful story to stick.
If I was an atheist, here’s what my take would be: “Sure, Jesus was a messianic claimant in the early first century, like many others; he had followers and he was crucified around AD 30. Maybe he was some kind of charlatan faith-healer. For some reason, his movement kept going even though he was killed, even though in every other case of a Jewish messianic claimant, the other movements died out. I don’t know, but I don’t care. I’m an atheist–I don’t think he was God.” And I’d leave it at that.
All I’m trying to show in this post (and the next two coming up) is that Carrier’s attempts to try to show Jesus wasn’t even a historical figure really are perprosterous. I liken his claims about a “mythic Jesus” to Ken Ham’s claims about YECism–both fly in the face of what scholars know about history and what scientists know about the natural world.
> even though in every other case of a Jewish messianic claimant, the other movements died out
In the case of Sabbatai Sevi, the movement crashed but didn’t die out. Half of Gershom Scholem’s research was about how crypto-Sabbatianism was all over the Jewish world for over a hundred years, breaking out now and then spectacularly as in the case of Jakob Frank (Judge Brandeis was descended from his followers). More wonderfully, Cengiz Sisman claims to have interviewed Dönme Sabbatians, who lasted for centuries and had seemed to have vanished after their important role in founding Turkey.
In the ambiguous case of Schneerson, the movement is doing fine after several years of attempts to shun and humiliate them and drive them out of orthodoxy.
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Burden_of_Silence.html?id=NEL9CQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false
Thanks Joel.
So two more questions:
– what writings do we have from Peter and James to show what they thought?
– what evidence do we have to verify that Jesus was crucified by Pilate?
Well the epistles (be it by Paul, Peter, or James) are occasional documents–which means they were written to address specific situations, questions, issues etc. of the particular group the epistles were addressed to. Therefore none of them are explaining in detail the life of Jesus. The Gospels are the writings that tell about Jesus’ ministry. And one thing should be made clear here: even though Mark, for example, was probably written around AD 65-70, no scholar thinks it was made up out of whole cloth at that point. He was drawing together earlier sources which obviously would have gone back further.
Church Tradition claims that Mark essentially got a lot of his material from Peter. Can we verify that? No…if it was written around AD 65-70, could it be possible? Sure. The movement was still fairly small at that point. Church Tradition also has Luke as the writer of Luke-Acts–again, certainly possible. We know that Paul was imprisoned for two years when he went back to Judea around AD 62-64. And Luke was one of his co-workers. It is certainly possible that Luke did some of the research for his work at that time by talking to the apostles in Jerusalem. Therefore, the point is that, contrary to what people like Carrier claim, it is entirely possible that the material in at least the Gospels of Mark and Luke go back to the apostles themselves. Sure, we can’t PROVE it–but given what we DO know, it certainly is possible without having to stretch anything. In my opinion, that is a much more likely scenario than claiming (A) Paul made up an “archangel Jesus” borrowed from Philo (even though Philo never mentions an archangel named Jesus!), then (B) Christians a few decades later said, “Hey, let’s turn archangel Jesus into a human being in our stories so we can get more followers!”
As for the crucifixion under Pilate, I know that Tacitus mentions it, as does Josephus.
I think it’s the fact that you have no corroborating external witnesses to the claims of Paul (as you have admitted above) that leads Carrier to his conclusions. Scholars no longer believe that the Epistles of Peter were actually penned by him, and in fact they admit that there is no evidence of Peter having even been in Rome (if he actually existed). Your other references (tacitus and josephus) are of course very late and cannot be considered more than hearsay. In short, all we’re left with is are the writings of Paul (someone who never met Jesus during his life, by his own admission), and wrote 20 years after the fact (we REALLY don’t know what was going on in those first 20 years, do we?). And then we have anonymous Gospels, starting no earlier than 40 years after the events they claim to portray. No records from Rome, or the Jews, to corroborate that any of it actually happened.
Is it a surprise that this looks like it could have been made up out of whole cloth (to anyone willing to abandon their pre-conceived beliefs that Mommy and Daddy couldn’t have been wrong about there being a Jesus) ?
Like I said, the early Mormons bought into Smiths story, and they were likely better educated than the 1st century Jews. They also were NOT isolated in Utah when it all started. And look how fast that church has grown in the last 150 (?) years! All from a lie. And they’ll all be appalled if you suggest to them that there was no Angel Moroni, or a lost tribe of Israel in the Americas, etc etc etc.
Well, to the point, if you applied that standard to any other figure in history before you accepted he/she was historical, you’d be rejecting everything we know about history.
Not a completely true generalization, but yes there are probably some others like that. I would have no problem admitting they might be mythical. I have my doubts about Ragnar Lothbrook, but I still enjoy watching “Vikings”.
One more problem with the Mormon parallel: NOTHING in the Book of Mormon has any evidence for it–the ancient towns, rivers, places, mountains mentioned in it: no archeological evidence at all.
Turn to the NT: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jericho, Casearea Philippi, Rome, Athens, Galatia….you get the idea–all provable.
Therefore, when you have documents written in the form of ancient historical biographies, every place that is mentioned is real, every political figure mentioned is provable, and there is pretty much consensus that figures like Paul, Peter, James, Mark, Luke, Mary were all historical people–what would a rational person conclude about whether or not Jesus was a historical person as well? 😉
Spider-Man lives in New York City, does that make him real? Cmon Joel!
Can you provide evidence that Mary et al were real????
Spiderman? Really? Lol
I think even Richard Carrier acknowledges that a lot of the other people mentioned in the NT were real people.
Oh, there are real people, Herod and Pilate! That doesn’t mean they took part events in the NT. It could just be a historical backdrop for fiction!
External verification would go a long way.
Well, I’m just saying there is a HUGE difference between the NT and the Book of Mormon,
well,, yes! One has too many “The father of”, and the other has too many “and so it came to pass” !!!!
What?
Kosh, can you provide any contemporary or Roman sources for the existence of Pythagoras? In fact, can you provide a single source mentioning Pythagoras within half a century of his death? Or Hillel? Or Apollonius of Tyana? Or Akiva ben Yosef? Can you name any contemporary sources for any Messiah claimant of the first century, like the Egyptian, Simon bar Giora, Judas the Galilean, Menahem, etc?
At this point, you may have realized “contemporary sources” is a fictional criterion for establishing the historicity of a figure. Invented out of thin air by … well, mythicists. Since you can’t name a source within 50 years of Pythagoras mentioning Pythagoras, yet I can cite early creeds in Paul’s letters like 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 and Phillipians 2:6-11 that go back to within years, if not months of the crucifixion, what exactly makes the historicity of Pythagoras, or Hillel, or Apollonius of Tyana, or Akiva ben Yosef, or the Egyptian, or Simon bar Giora, or Judas the Galilean on grounds as well established as Jesus?
You genuinely claimed scholars don’t think Paul wrote his epistles. Ummm .. they do. All of them. There are only six, out of the thirteen epistles, that are disputed. I want to know the names of the scholars claiming Paul really didn’t write Romans, Galatians, Philemon, Phillipians, 1/2 Corinthians, and 1 Thessalonians. Well …. there aren’t any. Why? 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians are split on authorship in scholarship. Your claim can only seriously apply to 1/2 Timothy and Titus, the Pastoral epistles. But these needn’t be pseudipigraphical either, since in ancient practice, authorship could be properly attributed to someone if the student of that person had written the letter.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/664194
As Joel pointed out, Paul didn’t think Jesus was an angel. It’s right there in Paul’s letters.
Romans 8:37-39: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Mormon thing is really just plain ridiculous, that’s the simplest way I can put it. No New Testament author claimed to have received golden tablets from an angel. That seems to refute the analogy. Jesus existed, this is a demonstrable fact. Not only did Paul, in the early 30’s AD convert to Christianity, meaning in the early 30’s there were traditions being passed around about an Aramaic Jew who had claimed to be the Messiah and had gotten crucified by the Romans (because that’s really something you’d want to make up about your dead Messiah), but Paul knew Jesus’ family. It’s right there in Galatians 1:18-19. He knew Jesus’ own brother. Which means Jesus existed. You’d think if Jesus didn’t exist, his brother would know about it. And, please, if you’re going to suggest Paul really was talking about a “spiritual brother”, read this.
https://historyforatheists.com/2018/02/jesus-mythicism-2-james-the-brother-of-the-lord/
I have to say…THAT is a response!
I do my best.
Joel, I’m quoting from your statement above: “The only people who will find Carrier’s arguments convincing are people who have already agreed with him. He will make a claim, they will nod and say, “Yes,” and then will get on social media and parrot those claims, often putting them in obnoxious internet memes—to which fellow Carrier acolytes will approve of and pass on”. Question: May I inject any and every Political Figure of the past two years (or more) instead of Carrier’s to show all of my FB Friend’s (and myself) the mechanism(s) at work…False claims, memes, and “Sharing” without ever considering the sources or recognizing the propaganda machine in play? And btw; enjoying the main conversation…keep on keeping on.
Yes…reducing any real argument to talking points and memes is a larger problem for our current society, for sure.
Thanks!
Carrier is exactly what he looks like: A complete clown. And as an atheist it irritates me how many of these cretinous “new atheists” (mostly in North America) seem to suspend their better judgement (if they had any to begin with) and buy whatever rubbish he tells them at face value.
I can’t help but find it amusing how his retort to you over twitter was to say “Read my book… ..it’s peer-reviewed”. His opus “on the historicity of Jesus: why we have reason to doubt” is actually the only book he’s (self) published that can claim that, as his other offerings prior to this were noted for avoiding peer review.
And even this peer-review is extremely dubious. Carrier was stupid enough to admit that the publisher of his book incredibly allowed Carrier to pick his peer-reviewers. this said publisher was “Sheffield Phoenix press”; a shabby on-off 2-3 man vanity publishing operation that made usage of facilities at the University of Sheffield and which unashamedly favoured “The Copenhagen school”.
I’ve never found any copies of Carrier’s books in any libraries and any that were under the $10 that I’ve set as a limit on what I’d be willing to pay for them. But I’ve read; excerpts from his books, many of his blogs and a certain article from the Journal of Early Christian Studies (volume 20 issue 4 pp 489-514). I find him extremely inarticulate, waffling and tedious to read and find his powers of logical deduction lacking.
In the said certain journal article; he puts forward a theory that the reference to Jesus in Antiquities book XX (to identify James being executed as his brother) to be an “accidental interpolation”; which relies upon about a coincidence of about 7 purely hypothetical events that are individually all highly unlikely. Funny how he doesn’t apply his “Bayesian analysis” to his own theories now isn’t it? And to top it off; hilariously he concludes that all further discussion on this matter must be forever closed. No; I’m not making that up.
I can’t help but notice that every newer video I see featuring him; he seems to get progressively more unkempt and cheaply-attired. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking on my behalf but I suspect that this living he’s making from “giving lectures and promoting his book” isn’t working out too well for him. I’m not sure if his book’s even in print anymore; the publisher has gone into one of its phases of ceasing operations.
I just wish there was evidence that wasn’t touched by catholic hands. All the evidence and documents seem to originate from within a catholic or christian vacuum. And given the churches history of lying, forgery and corruption, it’s no wonder people are skeptical about it’s many claims, both of the church and of the bible’s authors.
I think you are overstating things. Biblical textual scholars are very confident in the reliability of the biblical texts. There is almost no doubt that probably over 95% of what we have in the ancient manuscripts available to us is reliable and accurately reflects the original manuscripts. And the little that is in question doesn’t affect the understanding of Christianity in the first century at all.