From Homer to Frontinus: Biased Translation Is Not Unique to Biblical Studies
I am often asked what the best Bible translation is. My usual reply is that there aren’t any. All translations are biased, they merely differ as to how or where. The best you can do is to read it in the original language (and I teach a course with a lecture on...No, the Original Christians Did Not Loot Egypt
So the big Carrier-Jabari debate went down last week. That all began with my article Some Problems with Modern Kemetic Mythology, which caught numerous catastrophic errors in the crank efforts of Jabari Osaze (who goes by Brother Jabari) to argue a confused...Did Christians Steal Their Religion from Egypt?
There will be an online special event next week: the night of the 23rd of December (a “pre” Christmas Eve!), I will debate Jabari Osaze on whether Christianity was stolen from Egyptian religion. This is an exclusive webinar event. Tickets are $30. This is...How Textual Criticism Can Help or (Sorry) Hurt Your Cause
In both Classics as well as New Testament Studies, “textual criticism” is a tool for analyzing ancient texts through the lens of manuscripts, the data they present, and our accumulated knowledge of what often or rarely happened in the transmission of texts...Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed
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...Daniel Bonevac’s Bayesian Argument for Miracles
I was privileged to be able to sit in on some of a private virtual Q&A with Christian philosopher Daniel Bonevac regarding his peer-reviewed paper “The Argument from Miracles,” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 3 (2011), pp. 16-40. Many...The Methodological Application of My Theory of Humor
In interviews and hangouts I’ve often discussed my theory of humor and its importance to how we interpret humor, from how we use comedy to understand things about history, to how we decide whether a joke is actually racist or offensive rather than simply funny...Did ‘Docetism’ Really Even Exist?
Some years ago I briefed the Westar Institute’s conclusion that Gnosticism didn’t exist. It is a modern construct. The term in antiquity never designated any sect or set of beliefs; and what the term designated in modern times never existed in...How Would We Know Jesus Existed?
You can watch an edited video of my live talk, with slides, for the Secular Humanist Society of New York earlier this month: How Would We Know Jesus Existed? But here I will provide a brief written methodological summary, for ease of reference and use. My talk drew...Captain DadPool on Who Is Inventing Workarounds: Historicists or Mythicists?
Youtuber Captain DadPool recently published a short video (Responding to Godless Engineer’s Recent Attacks) that so aptly captures the backwards methodology of defenders of the historicity of Jesus it will be productive to analyze. Especially as it supplements...New Video Course on New Testament Studies for Everyone!
I am gradually transitioning my online courses to a high-quality video-and-syllabus format through MythVision. The first to launch is my course on New Testament Studies for Everyone. You can check out a five-minute video describing that course and how it works. And...A Primer on Successful vs. Bogus Methodology: Tim O’Neill Edition
Recently Tim O’Neill once again engaged his usual arrogantly dishonest methods and lied about the evidence in the very act of denouncing an actual expert (me) as incompetent, but in the process proving he was incompetent and I was not. Which is standard...The Jesus Chronicles: Three Things People Get Wrong about Probability
Lately I’ve seen a flurry of repeated mistakes in reasoning about probability. I realized a primer is needed to correct some people so they can stop making those mistakes (assuming you care about not making mistakes; an alarming number of people don’t, but...Gesù Resistente, Gesù Inesistente
I have successfully produced several debates on the historicity of Jesus with qualified PhDs (live and online; see: Crook; Evans; Goodacre; Waters; and twice now with MacDonald; in Akin and Horn, Horn has multiple masters degrees). But I have long wanted to get one...How Not to Act Like a Crank: On Evaluating Pliny’s Alleged Mention of Nazareth
My first article this month established with extensive evidence that Gnostic Informant (Neal Sendlak) is completely unreliable and cannot be trusted to tell you the truth or get key facts right or even understand how arguments and logic work. Among the copious...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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