An Ongoing List of Updates to the Arguments and Evidence in On the Historicity of Jesus

10 July 2023

My academic study On the Historicity of Jesus was published in 2014, by respected biblical studies press Sheffield-Phoenix. It was the first complete study of the historicity of Jesus to pass peer review in over a hundred years. Since then only one other has been published, Raphael Lataster’s Questioning the Historicity of Jesus, published by Brill in 2019. Both studies found doubt more credible than confidence. There has yet to be a countermanding study.

The last ever before ours, finding instead in the affirmative, was Shirley Case’s The Historicity of Jesus: A Criticism of the Contention that Jesus Never Lived, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1912 (with a second edition in 1928). Everything else published since (pro or con) has either not completed anything like a full study of the question, or has not been subject to any reliable kind of peer review (or both). Ever since Case, peer reviewed books on the historical Jesus simply assume historicity, with maybe (if rarely) a few pages on why that’s being assumed, but hardly anything like a real case for it. The field is awaiting—and greatly needs—a serious update of Case, to articulate well-examined (and not merely apologetical) reasons why historicity should continue to be assumed despite all the latest studies finding it shouldn’t. Especially since many of the assumptions Case relies on have been overthrown in mainstream scholarship since. We need a proper response to Carrier 2014 and Lataster 2019; at least, the best possible, so anyone can compare the best case to be made for each side.

Next year will mark the 10th anniversary of OHJ’s publication. In preparation for a possible second edition for that I have already completed a 2023 Revised Edition, and that has now replaced the original in print (the audio edition will not be updated; digital editions might be someday but currently have not been). It has the same pagination (more or less) and merely corrects a plethora of typos and minor errors (nearly everything listed in Errata for On the Historicity of Jesus, originally “Typos List,” which now leads with a list of changes I would still yet make, including updated citations). I am in contract to produce a new volume with Sheffield, and that was first imagined as just a more substantively updated edition of OHJ (not a mere Revised Edition but a full Second Edition). But in consultation with their editorial team we are considering the possibility of instead producing a second volume rather than a second edition, which would address the top controversies launched by On the Historicity of Jesus in the past decade, possibly even in dialogue with other fully-credentialed scholars.

This makes sense, as I am finding that the sorts of things I would change in a second edition are not very substantive: updating the references to cover publications since 2014 (none of which change any conclusions but only reinforce them); updating the wording in some passages to head off the kinds of disingenuous misreadings of the original that critics have undertaken (none of which is necessary for a sincere reader); and adding responses to, at least, those critics who attempted anything like a proper academic review (as in, published in a real academic journal). But that last can be accomplished in more fitting ways: with a dedicated chapter (or chapters) on that point in a new volume (rather than adding pages to the already overlong current volume, which would be necessary even if I could find material safe to subtract), or by publishing in the new volume actual debates or dialogues with other scholars on the point; or both.

If we do settle on this decision (nothing has yet been finalized), that would leave one thing still needed: a useful index to my blog articles updating (or defending against criticism) any argument in On the Historicity of Jesus. This will serve. Below I have organized those articles by subject or purpose. And I intend to keep this updated (so even if the date of this article remains 2023, it will include entries after that year, as they are produced). So readers who want to know if anything has changed, or how I’d respond to anything, since the 2014 edition, in any matter substantially affecting its thesis, can now bookmark and consult this annotated article index.

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Linked Table of Contents

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Critics & Sympathizers

My responses to specific named critics are continuously catalogued in List of Responses to Defenders of the Historicity of Jesus. I also maintain a catalogue of qualified scholars who agree that doubting the historicity Jesus is at least plausible in List of Historians Who Take Mythicism Seriously (which have more than quadrupled in number since I published in 2014). And I maintain an Open Thread On the Historicity of Jesus where any questions about my study (or Lataster’s) can be asked.

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Concerning Points of Method

I describe and defend my Bayesian methodology most thoroughly in Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Prometheus 2012), which I contractually mandated the publisher have peer-reviewed by one professor of Mathematics and one professor of Biblical Studies (of their choosing). I have written a great deal on Bayesian epistemology since (category: Bayes’ Theorem) and historical methods more generally (category: Historical Method).

But more directly in relation to the thesis of Historicity have been the following articles:

Addressing issues more obscure:

And on “crank” versions of Mythicism and why they should be rejected as implausible:

  • Fincke Is Right: Arguing Jesus Didn’t Exist Should Not Be a Strategy. I explain why “Jesus didn’t exist” is not a good argument against Christianity being true and should not be used that way.
  • The Problem with Varieties of Jesus Mythicism. Surveys the general field of amateur Mythicism, as represented in a recent anthology, and explains why they fail factually and methodologically, and what it actually takes to build a credible thesis.
  • Please No More Astrotheology. In reviewing a whole common category of crank Mythicism from that volume, I outline methodologically why “astrotheological” explanations of the origins of Christianity simply don’t hold water, and what it would actually have taken to reverse that conclusion.
  • Atwill’s Cranked-up Jesus. I address another common category of crank Mythicism, the idea that it was invented by the Roman Imperial government as some kind of psy-op, surveying its factual and methodological defects.

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Concerning the Prior Probability

  • Jesus and the Problem of the Fraudulent Reference Class. Many don’t like the principle that the more mythically a person is described, the less likely they are to have existed. Here I explain why attempts to get around my approach to estimating prior probability aren’t valid, vs. what would be.
  • My Rank-Raglan Scoring for Osiris. Goes into how I arrived at my score, what principles I used to downscore other heroes, and what constitutes valid and invalid upscoring and downscoring, and why this reference class is real, and matters. There is also important discussion in comments.
  • How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus? In Historicity, Chapter 6.7, I explain why the objection that such a rapid historicization can’t occur is untrue (and likewise, in Chapters 7.7 and 8.12, that it would occur without notice). Here I expand on my discussion in Chapter 12.3 as to what the most likely sequence of events was, and the evidence we have for it. This was expanded into a chapter in Jesus from Outer Space.

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Concerning the Extrabiblical Evidence

Josephus

There has been an effort to try and rehabilitate the references to Jesus in Josephus, but they are ever more fallacious and even methodologically self-refuting. There are two such passages to account for: the so-called Testimonium Flavianum is a fawning paragraph summarizing the Christian Gospel; and the so-called James Passage is imagined to be about the Christian brother of Jesus named James. Even though in Historicity I don’t depend on either of these being interpolations (their content is equally expected even if Jesus didn’t exist, as they merely repeat the Gospels and statements that would be made by any Christians by then, and therefore even if authentic they offer no further evidence for Jesus), critics have obsessed over debating them anyway, producing a lot of response and analysis that adds to what I have already published.

  • Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014. The single most important update to this question, summarizing all pertinent scholarship since Historicity that says anything new. This includes links to other articles of mine on these matters not listed below. And it explains why we can’t keep citing the consensus on this, if the consensus isn’t informed by these new studies.

I now maintain that article with links to all new discussions as they arise (most of which concern not the Testimonium Flavianum but the James passage), so it is the go-to for this subject now.

Tacitus
  • Blom on the Testimonium Taciteum. In response to a peer-reviewed article by Willem Blom, I further discuss why I doubt Tacitus mentioned Jesus, even though I don’t rely on that conclusion in Historicity (there, as with Josephus, my argument follows simply from there being no evidence Tacitus had a source independent of the Gospels). Includes a section on the mentions in Suetonius as well.
  • Margaret Williams on Early Classical Authors on Jesus. Useful review of a book subsequent to my study that supports many positions taken in it; including my response to Williams’ attempted critique of my questioning the authenticity of the material in Tacitus (even though I do not take that position in my study).
  • A Bayesian Brief on Comments at TAM. Addresses an obscure mathematical question raised about my peer-reviewed argument against the authenticity of the Tacitus reference to Jesus.
Others

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Concerning Acts

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Concerning the Gospels

In Historicity, Chapters 7 and 10 (see subject index), I rule out Q as a usable source, because it doesn’t survive, its existence and content are hypothetical at best, and it can’t be reliably dated any earlier than Mark, and so it can’t be established to be independent, only conjectured to be. Lataster’s study, Questioning the Historicity of Jesus, spends more time addressing why it is methodologically unsound to depend on hypothetical sources like Q in this debate. I have also written more on the subject, illustrating why I think Q is a dead hypothesis that really needs to be abandoned:

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Concerning the Epistles

General Points
1 Thessalonians
Romans
  • Empirical Logic and Romans 1:3. On why my hypothesis of “minimal mythicism” predicts the entire contents of Romans 1:3 and therefore the phrase “came from the sperm of David” cannot even in principle be offered as evidence for the historicity of Jesus, expanding on Historicity, Ch. 11.9.
  • What Did Paul Mean in Romans 1:3? Delves further, outlining the possible meanings of this passage, which go beyond merely the cosmological.
  • The Cosmic Seed of David. Explains in more detail what the cosmological thesis is and why it makes sense in context, becoming a chapter in Jesus from Outer Space.
Galatians
  • Galatians 1:19, Ancient Grammar, and How to Evaluate Expert Testimony. On why “Brother of the Lord” in Galatians cannot be decisively read as meaning a biological brother; in the process outlining the correct methodology needed to resolve such questions, expanding on Historicity, Chapter 11.10 (where also is treated 1 Cor. 9:5).
  • Yes, Galatians 4 Is Allegorical. Some critics keep treating Galatians 4:4 (where Jesus is said to have “come from a woman”) out of context, despite my warning in Historicity, Chapter 11.9, that it must be read in context. Here I fully demonstrate why its context (the argument of Paul beginning in Galatians 3 and spanning to the end of Galatians 4) determines Paul’s intended meaning.

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Elementary Questions

Varia

In Chapters 4 and 5 of Historicity I enumerate 48 “Elements” as basic facts of background knowledge (some of which are modal facts, i.e. facts about what is plausible rather than definite) that are true regardless of whether Jesus existed (they are not evidence for or against his existence, but equally compatible with either), and which any theory of his existence (pro or con) must accommodate (because their being true impacts how likely or unlikely other things are). Too much discussion of the historicity of Jesus ignores this data, yet assessments change when accounting for it. Also in this category are the contents of Chapter 7.

The following articles advance discussion on some of these details:

  • Gnosticism Didn’t Exist (Say What Now?). In my six-year postdoc research for Historicity I came to suspect “Gnosticism” didn’t exist as a thing in antiquity, that it was a fallacious construct of modern theorizing, but that was too much of a side issue to resolve. So I didn’t address the question, but simply ignored it; I never mention Gnosticism anywhere in my study. The same year I published, the Westar Institute concluded the same thing. I would have made this a 49th background fact in any new edition of OHJ.
  • Did ‘Docetism’ Really Even Exist? In Historicity I raised the suspicion, but in this later article assertively argue, that “Docetism” might also be a false concept invented by modern scholars, and noted how that changes how we look at some evidence pertaining to the historicity of Jesus. I am more confident of this now, and would make this a 50th background fact.
  • Jesus Is an Extraterrestrial. In Historicity, several Elements were devoted to establishing that the ancient heavens and firmament correspond to what we now call “outer space,” and that this changes how we understand ancient thought. I defend this point more directly in Jesus from Outer Space. And since then, Catherine Hezser has supported this conclusion. I survey that here.
  • Adam’s Burial in Outer Space. In Historicity I discuss traditions depicting the original Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve’s burial sites, as existing in outer space; here I demonstrate that this is indeed what they said, and why this matters to the probability the same could be thought of Jesus.
  • Was Jesus-Is-Michael an Early Christian Mystery Teaching? In a footnote in Historicity I mention my suspicion (but make nothing of it) that the original secret belief of Christians was that Jesus was in fact the incarnation of the angel Michael. Here I survey the evidence collected in a recent peer-reviewed study arguing the same, making the possibility even more probable than I thought.
  • Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. I dispel the persistent myth that “dying and rising gods” and heroes didn’t exist when Christianity arose. To the contrary, it was a fad.
  • Virgin Birth: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. Likewise, vis miraculous births and conceptions.
  • Some Controversial Ideas That Now Have Wide Scholarly Support. Principally demonstrates a field-wide acceptance now of a pre-Christian dying-messiah tradition, an early high Christology, and the existence and popularity of a dying-and-rising god mytheme.
Philo’s Angel

In addition to those scattered discussions, the single most controversial section of these chapters was Element 40, which opens (emphasis now added):

In fact, the Christian idea of a preexistent spiritual son of God called the Logos, who was God’s true high priest in heaven, was also not a novel idea but already held by some pre-Christian Jews; and this preexistent spiritual son of God had already been explicitly connected with a celestial Jesus figure in the OT (discussed in Element 6), and therefore some Jews already believed there was a supernatural son of God possibly even named Jesus—because Paul’s contemporary Philo seems to interpret the messianic prophecy of Zech. 6.12 in just such a way.

I had to add these qualifying words to the Revised Edition because the ensuing argument to this being probable was ignored by critics, along with all the arguments I advanced for this conclusion, that some Jews already understood this angel to be named Jesus (among his “many names”). Critics then conflated this one detail with the overall conclusion that this angel existed in pre-Christian Jewish lore regardless of its name. Trying to untangle these errors has been like pulling teeth. I have written a great deal unpacking all these mistakes and why critics really need to stop making them, and deal with the actual argument I presented in Historicity. In the process, I expand and clarify the argument so it is easier to follow, and objections more obviously met.

  • The Difference Between a Historian and an Apologist. Addresses Larry Hurtado’s strange tirade against my Philo’s Angel argument, and analyzes the difference between sound and unsound methodology, illustrating how scholars should be engaging, but aren’t. Probably the best place to start on this debate, as Hurtado was a real expert, so his mistakes cannot be attributed to amateurism; I also here more carefully outline the logic of my argument.
  • Chrissy Hansen on the Pre-Existent Jesus. One of only two peer-reviewed responses on this issue never even mentions much less addresses any of my arguments in the matter, but instead critiques a thesis I never stated (that this angel was worshiped before Jesus); nevertheless, I respond to the arguments Hansen does make.
  • On the Historicity of Jesus: The Daniel Gullotta Review. Links to the subsection of my response to Gulotta’s academic review of Historicity discussing Philo’s angel.
  • The Curious Case of Gnostic Informant: Reaction vs. Research. Links to the subsection of my response to an amateur YouTuber’s attack on my argument and explains why it gets everything about it wrong, factually and logically.
  • Davis Didn’t Check The Literature. Links to the subsection of one of my critiques of Kipp Davis where I demonstrate numerous experts on Zechariah agree with my reading of Philo.
  • Bart Ehrman on How Jesus Became God. My review of Ehrman’s book in which he reverses course and agrees with me that this angel existed and Jesus was believed to be its incarnation (though Ehrman never discusses the question of its name). See also Some Controversial Ideas.
The Ascension of Isaiah

The next most controversial claim among my background knowledge came to be my analysis of the apocryphal Ascension of Isaiah. While in reality nothing I said was historically out of line with other scholars taking the same side in these debates, critics have flipped their lid over it, resorting even to ad hominem and slander. They not only never address any of my actual arguments regarding this text, but they even mistake me as having argued this is evidence against the historicity of Jesus. To the contrary, I use my reconstruction of it as an example of what a mythicist text might have looked like, in my chapter on defining the theory (Chapter 3) rather than defending the theory (Chapters 7 through 11). I make only slight use of it as evidence, scoring it as extremely weak (Chapter 8.6 and 8.13). Again, trying to untangle these errors has been like pulling teeth:

Euhemerization

There has been some confusion over what “Euhemerization” means (in respect to Element 45 in Chapter 5), with various critics confusing it with “deification” or “apotheosis” (it is in fact the opposite phenomenon), or confusing the process itself with the various reasons for deploying the process, which can differ for different authors, who use it to achieve different goals (sometimes exactly the opposite of each other). I have covered these issues in:

  • Euhemerization Means Doing What Euhemerus Did. Explains why Euhemerization (making a non-existent god into a historical person) is by definition the opposite of deification (making an actual historical person into a non-existent god).
  • Brief Note on Euhemerization. Follows up with a demarcation of the process from its motivations. Useful expansions of this are in the ensuing comments as well.
Applications of the Talmud

Impertinent challenges to my employment of evidence from the Talmud for various elements of background knowledge are addressed now in Simone’s Series on How to Read the Talmud: On Jewish Diversity and Simone’s Series on How to Read the Talmud: Boyarin and the Dying Messiah Concept. Even more impertinent challenges were addressed before in Kipp Davis’s Selective Confirmation and Ignoring of Everything I Actually Said and Then Kipp Davis Fails to Heed My Advice and Digs a Hole for Himself.

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Any questions you don’t see addressed here, as to how I may have changed my mind on any specific thing or how I would elaborate my defense of it beyond what I do in On the Historicity of Jesus or Proving History (or anything said or argued differently in Lataster’s Questioning the Historicity of Jesus), feel free to ask them in comments. Please give the page number(s) in the book you are referring to, and what your question is about the material there.

Please also remind me in comments if you notice I’ve left any articles out of this index.

27 Comments

  1. JP
    JP on July 10, 2023 at 3:19 pm

    Please take care of yourself Richard. I fear for the field if anything were to happen to you. Your output, thoroughness, and arguments are second to none. We need you around for a very long time indeed.

    Reply
  2. Greg Geisler
    Greg Geisler on July 10, 2023 at 6:05 pm

    Thank you for this great resource. Bookmarked.

    I’m wondering if you are familiar with Dr. Laura Robinson (@LauraRbnsn).

    On a recent twitter thread she posted on historicity of Jesus, I posted:

    “Peer reviewed books on historicity by Carrier and Lataster are models of skeptical and empirical scholarship.”

    Her brilliant reply: “No, they aren’t”

    She has a Phd in New Testament studies?

    Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on July 11, 2023 at 9:27 am

      She most definitely is (PhD in NT from Duke).

      Can you find where she said that and link it here?

      Her reply to you sounds dismissive of our work, not supportive. But maybe if I can see the context?

      Reply
    • Michael D Samuels
      Michael D Samuels on July 11, 2023 at 12:57 pm

      Let’s continue.

      Here is a snippet of my exchange with Dr. Kipp Davis from the comment section of MythvisionPodcast’s May 12 post of Questions for Dr. Carrier (This was in a thread that started with Kipp’s comment, “The answer is “No.” Richard Carrier is most definitely not the GOAT.” :

      @lreadlResurrected
      4 days ago

      @DrKippDavis Jeez, how badly has he hurt your butt?

      My take, if you could refute his arguments in OHJ you would. That’s what peer review is all about.

      Just go point-by-point and bowl him over. Easy-peasy, right?

      Reply

      Highlighted reply

      @DrKippDavis
      4 days ago

      @lreadlResurrected LOL. No. The reason neither I nor anyone else will respond to OHJ through peer review is because the book itself is garbage, and not worth wasting anyone’s valuable time.

      I have discovered this for myself in my recent efforts to provide a short response to just one section of the book—chapter 4. Keep an eye out for a video on my channel in which I demonstrate with exacting precision just how poorly Carrier reads and interprets the Jewish source material that forms a significant part of the “background knowledge” to his minimal mythicism. He clearly cannot read the texts, he never cites them, and he most frequently misrepresents them. It is terrible scholarship.

      Reply
      • Richard Carrier
        Richard Carrier on July 11, 2023 at 3:15 pm

        Lol. Kipp Davis acting like a bombastic child is not a new experience for me.

        But when that video comes out, let me know.

      • Richard Carrier
        Richard Carrier on July 11, 2023 at 3:19 pm

        P.S. I love how Davis says my peer-reviewed book is so bad it doesn’t warrant an academic reply; yet then immediately says it warrants hours of non-academic reply on an un-peer-reviewed video.

        Davis needs to pick a lane and explain why his unvetted video can’t be a vetted paper in a journal. Why are we the only ones getting peer-reviewed arguments published?

        Lataster and I did this properly. Why can’t Kipp?

      • Michael D Samuels
        Michael D Samuels on July 12, 2023 at 11:43 am

        I think he’s too busy promoting that loser, Simcha Jacobovici. He appears very pleased with himself over his TV appearances.

        Personally, I wonder if he is a walking, talking example of crypto-Christianity at work. That might also account for his deliberate ignorance of Lataster’s work.

        It’s a shame because I suspect he has done some good work in the study of the DSS, but how can you trust that when he is so triggered by the notion that his Jesus was never more than a literary character? There’s a short somewhere in the wiring…

  3. Peter Behnam
    Peter Behnam on July 10, 2023 at 10:55 pm

    Richard, I guarantee you’ve inspired a generation of scholars especially younger ones to recognize the importance of quantifying the qualitative so the scholarship can finally be anchored in logic and math to the greatest extent reasonably possible. Because right now it’s a free for all.

    Reply
  4. Jeremy
    Jeremy on July 11, 2023 at 5:04 am

    For what it’s worth, I think a second volume as you propose would be a more valuable contribution to the field than a second edition.

    I would imagine it’s also a more tempting commercial proposition for you and your publisher.

    By the way, I seem to recall talk of a possible revised edition of Sense and Goodness. Did that get shelved?

    Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on July 11, 2023 at 9:10 am

      I agree on all points.

      And Pitchstone has greenlit publishing a second edition of Sense and Goodness without God. I have shelved that only until next year, devoting this year to Historicity, as its tenth anniversary is next year. Sense’s twentieth anniversary is the year after that. So in 2024 I’ll work on an update to Sense, for publication in 2025.

      But I don’t know yet if that new version will be a refit of the same book or something more like Jesus from Outer Space, a shorter more colloquial summary with some updated ideas (such as I outline at the top of my Typos page for it). I am leaning toward the latter, so the original edition will not become obsolete. It will in that case continue to contain the lengthier arguments for those who want to dive into them beyond just the summary (since I think only some sections of the book actually needs revision). I’ll decide on that in 2024.

      Reply
  5. Oppy1
    Oppy1 on July 11, 2023 at 7:07 am

    Great post!

    Reply
  6. Oppy1
    Oppy1 on July 11, 2023 at 1:26 pm

    Also, do you have any opinions of Peter Harrison’s contention that the conflict between science and religion is only recent, and that the conceptions of both are already a product of a certain 20th century pre-conception of both science and religion? Also, I think he has a book challenging longheld assumptions about scientfiic materialism without god? Asking because I saw him cited in one of your articles? Cheers!

    Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on July 11, 2023 at 3:12 pm

      These myths are common. It’s been a long time since I read his specific versions of them. But the myths you mention in general I deconstruct in The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire.

      The truth is in between. The old ways of framing the so-called “war” between science and religion were overstated and misdescribed. But so has been the reframing of that into a “no such thing” narrative.

      Likewise, scientific materialism was a pagan development (most concertedly in the philosophy of Strato the Aristotelian and the atomists), while modern scientific materialism (which has been supplanted by physicalism—ever since we discovered “matter” is not the only material) has a more complex history than he avers (it wasn’t “invented by Marxists,” for example).

      And in no way has science ever depended on theism. None of its founding axioms involve or require a deity or belief in one. See The Lame That Would Not Die for links.

      Reply
  7. Jason
    Jason on July 11, 2023 at 6:31 pm

    I would add “Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?” Critics complain that mythicism entails a double standard for historical evidence.

    I agree that modifying OHJ is probably less relevant for the future of the discussion. That work already contains the arguments necessary for an academic to argue against (they just don’t). My future wishlist would be to create a new volume by removing most of the Bayes instruction out of Proving History and combining that with Not the Impossible faith. I think there is some useful discussion there that is missed if you only read OHJ. Then a third volume that fills out the various arguments in OHJ from the blog posts you have mentioned above (with the snark removed) along with work from Hitler Homer Bible Christ.

    You could keep a similar format of the blog posts and stick to specific topics that tend to come up repeatedly in discussions of mythicisim. I don’t think any of the new stuff needs to be peer reviewed. I think at this point it’s been demonstrated that the peer review process is actually unnecessary to the argument. Academics and lay people will either read and interact with the material or they won’t.

    Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on July 13, 2023 at 2:05 pm

      Note that my article How Would We Know Jesus Existed? already includes the points in and summary of the Spartacus article (as also half a dozen other articles, e.g. on Hannibal, Caesar, etc.), so I didn’t include those as redundant.

      Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on July 13, 2023 at 2:32 pm

      As to your suggestions, I appreciate them. But I don’t see the value of merely republishing more non-peer-reviewed stuff. My blog already does that, and is available for free world over (and indeed this is what my Patreon supporters pay for: universally free work product available to the world). Whereas books are available only to those with adequate money and geographical privilege. Anyone who could buy a book, can just read the same material on the internet. While even more people than that can read the same material on the internet.

      That’s why I probably won’t do more than just Jesus from Outer Space in that category, because it is a tightly organized set of updated material from my blog, serving the purpose of quick colloquial introduction and persuasion. I don’t yet see the need for more of that.

      (In other subjects it could be warranted, though, e.g. Hitler Homer mixes published with blog articles, to economize access to paywalled material, and I’d like to do one like that for my published philosophy; I think a colloquial summary of Sense and Goodness without God would meet the same need as JFOS; etc.)

      So, I think, if I’m going to publish another book on historicity, it needs to have some value beyond merely replicating what I do on my blog, and what I already accomplished with JFOS.

      Getting a peer-reviewed study out (or even better, a published dialogue with genuine experts) would have value because it can’t be dismissed as yet one more unvetted editorial or whatever. “Oh that’s just his blog, only on paper; it wasn’t really vetted by experts, so who cares?”

      Yes, people who say that always move the goalposts—they’ll complain about something I publish that isn’t peer reviewed, then when I point out it was, they then start denigrating peer review altogether and coming up with reasons to dismiss all peer reviewed studies (“anybody can get things published through peer review” is almost verbatim a ridiculous statement spoken by Chrissy Hansen).

      But I don’t care about those people when deciding on book projects. They are clearly too deluded to ever respond to evidence or critical reason. They have already declared dogma precedes test. I am more interested in the fence sitters, who will respond favorably to peer-reviewed work, taking that as grounds to take something seriously.

      Because a lot of this has been Prestige Politics: people won’t voice an opinion for fear of how that would make them look, and they are trapped in a panopticon where they can’t let themselves believe things that their peers haven’t told them is okay (or worse, have pledged to ridicule and downgrade the social status of anyone who does).

      This is why the most important thing right now is for more respected peers in this industry (than already have) to break the chain of social pressuring and just admit it’s okay to take this seriously. That will “give permission” for more to do so, and so on down the line. Break the wall; comes the flood.

      This was, for example, what held Phillip Davies back (we can speak of his private views now only because he is deceased), and others, who admitted to me they agree my work is plausible, but fear the “harassment” they’ll face saying so in public.

      Defending your admittance of an unpopular position to the conversation takes work, because hostile peers will harass you until you defend it, which requires undergoing an elaborate vetting process of the arguments on both sides. And most people have plenty enough on their plate. But if they can just point and say, “All those other respectable experts said it should be taken seriously, so why are you giving me shit for doing the same?,” that takes a lot less work, and stops the harassment in its tracks. Because the harassment is always based on Prestige Politics; so the more prestigious a position gets, the less harassment can be effective in policing it.

      A new peer reviewed study at least has a chance of breaking through this levy. Better even if by a third independent scholar. But if it has to be me, it should be something vetted or engaged with by yet more bona fide experts, to demonstrate its “respectability” in the prestige economy. It’s irrational that this is what we have to do. But alas. It’s what we have to do.

      Reply
  8. Bill
    Bill on July 23, 2023 at 8:54 pm

    What books on the historical Jesus/mythicism would you say are completely out of date? I have in mind Rene Salm’s books and anything by Acharya S but would Burton L Mack’s first book and his one on Q be considered outdated by mainline scholars? What about Helms’ book on the authorship of the Gospels where he argues that Luke was actually a woman?

    Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on July 24, 2023 at 3:28 pm

      So, yes, you would have to ask about specific books like this.

      But some of what you list was never worth reading, so it is moot to ask whether they are “out” of date; they were never “in” date. Salm, for example, has always been an amateur conspiracy theorist whose books are too unreliable to employ. His only worthwhile work was a peer reviewed journal article that already met with adequate response (I recommend reading that and the responses). Acharya S never produced anything worth reading. Another amateur conspiracy theorist, her methodology and results were deeply unreliable.

      By contrast, Mack and Helms are/were fully qualified experts and wrote important works in their subjects.

      I never consulted Helms’ book on the authorship of the Gospels; I relied on the latest peer-reviewed surveys instead (such as the Hermeneia commentaries, the latest editions of Ehrman’s college textbooks, etc.). That doesn’t mean his book is out of date. One could just assume it is, because of its date. But that depends on what’s in it. Much of what he might have said in the late 90s is still true, for example. But that question is so fraught and constantly changes, I wouldn’t expect something over twenty years old to still be usable in that specific topic.

      By contrast, Helms’ older book Gospel Fictions is still solid. Nothing has overturned its conclusions, really. And its gist has only been further confirmed by subsequent literary studies. But this is because it isn’t the sort of subject likely to see considerable change once it passes muster. Once you prove connections between Mark’s stories and the Elisha-Elijah sequence, all you can do after that is add more evidence to the same conclusion (as happened; I cite the relevant literature, before and since, in OHJ, Ch. 10).

      Same with Mack. I’m not sure what you mean by his first book (he wrote a lot, and his very earliest books are esoteric). Some of his stuff holds; some of it doesn’t. But his main corpus is twenty to thirty years out of date now, so I wouldn’t count on it. Anything in them you want to trumpet, you would be wise to check if it’s survived decades of consideration, review, and transformation in the field. The subject of Q in particular has changed extraordinarily.

      Reply
      • Bill
        Bill on July 28, 2023 at 11:59 pm

        Okay, thanks. I also heard an apologist say that the “we” passage (Mary Magdalene “we don’t know where the body is”) is proof that John didn’t intend for it to only have been Mary who reported the empty, tomb. Is that a weak claim?

      • Richard Carrier
        Richard Carrier on July 29, 2023 at 6:24 pm

        I’m not sure what that argument is. But the final redactor of John (remember our John has been edited twice, so it has three different authors over three different periods, making finding any coherent message in it difficult) clearly imagined multiple people discovering the empty tomb. That’s why he adds the absurd tale of the Beloved outrunning Peter etc.

        The Beloved is in fact Lazarus (the arguments and evidence are considerable; all these points are covered in Ch. 10.7 of OHJ.) and John invented that character to reify and reverse the argument in Luke’s Parable of Lazarus (that’s why he finds the exact same cloths in Jesus’s tomb as Lazarus himself cast off at his resurrection, explaining why he knew what the scene meant; etc.).

        This is all fiction. So it has no value for any kind of historical argument.

  9. David Booker
    David Booker on December 1, 2023 at 4:12 pm

    Hi Dr. Carrier,

    I was recently reviewing how passages from different texts could be connected, basically following the template Philo suggests for the “son of god” he referenced, to “reveal” Paul’s Christ (and for what it’s worth, I was able to build out quite a bit mostly using textual references you’ve provided in the past).

    Anyway, I was curious about where both Philo and Paul might have found a textual source for Jesus being the “image of god” and “god’s agent of creation.” While I was poking around, I looked at the textual connections to Psalms in Hebrews 1 (which would seem to confirm how Christians were interpretting scripture to reveal secret information about Jesus, as he’s of course not mentioned in any of the original passages alluded to).

    As Hebrews seems to favor Psalms for information about Jesus, I turned (or rather clicked) over to that text, and then out of curiosity clicked over to the ‘Name of God’ translation. When I did this I noticed that through Psalms there are refereces throughout to both Yahweh and also Elohim. Then I looked again at the passages referenced in Hebrews and noticed this:

    Psalm 2:7 “I will announce Yahweh’s decree. He said to me: “You are my Son. Today I have become your Father.”

    Deuteronomy 32:43 (Septuagint) “Rejoice, you heavens, for him, and all the angels of Yahweh worshiped him…”

    Psalm 45:7 “…That is why Elohim, your Elohim, has anointed you, rather than your companions, …”

    Psalm 110:1 “Yahweh said to my Lord, “Sit in the highest position in heaven until I make your enemies your footstool.”

    So then I was wondering, could ‘Elohim’ have been seen as a reference to Jesus?

    Then I clicked over to Genesis,

    Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning Elohim created heaven and earth.”
    Genesis 1:26 “Then Elohim said, “Let us make humans in our image, in our likeness.”

    So I think I found my answer. So my guess is either ‘Elohim’ was one of the “many names” Philo says this archangel went by, or, as Elohim is plural, that when Elohim was used, as opposed to simply Yahweh, then it was seen as a reference to Yahweh and also his “secret servant,” who of course would be Jesus.

    I didn’t see “Elohim” listed in the index for OTHOJ, and flipped through and didn’t see anything, but I was wondering if this was something you might have come across in the past? I don’t read or write ancient Greek, so I’m also relying on interpretations. Any thoughts or additional details?

    Thanks!

    Btw, for your next volume, a verse by verse reconstruction of Paul’s gospel via the scripture of the day would definitely be a worthwhile inclusion. It’s one thing to say his gospel can be reconstructed from scripture, it’s another thing to literally spell it out.

    Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on December 4, 2023 at 1:36 pm

      I was curious about where both Philo and Paul might have found a textual source for Jesus being the “image of god” and “god’s agent of creation.”

      There is no precise or certain answer. There are a lot of studies on this question. I list them in the article above. They survey the possibilities and the evidence for them. I do believe all the ones you mentioned, get mentioned in one or more of those studies.

      So then I was wondering, could ‘Elohim’ have been seen as a reference to Jesus?

      Yes. Not only for the reasons you adduce, but because any passage in which a word could be rendered as “Lord” could be taken to be about or describing Jesus (that doesn’t mean they all were; but they could have been). This was clearly a fundamental key used in the Christian pesher. See The Original Scriptural Concept of ‘The Lord’ Jesus.

      So my guess is either ‘Elohim’ was one of the “many names” Philo says this archangel went by, or, as Elohim is plural, that when Elohim was used, as opposed to simply Yahweh, then it was seen as a reference to Yahweh and also his “secret servant,” who of course would be Jesus.

      So, there is a lot of debate in the scholarship over this. Elohim is actually a plural (it means, simply, “gods”). The OT was originally composed by polytheists, wherein Yahweh was the supreme patron god of Israel (and eventually of all the gods, developing into henotheism), and it was he and his subordinates who did everything (god’s “court”). Eventually, this came to be reinterpreted as an honorific (God gets to be referred to in the plural the same way as modern kings, although the logic would have to differ, since l’état c’est moi doesn’t apply to God), and the original sense lost.

      By the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was just one of the ways to refer to God. But there may have been a particular effort to “over-theorize” the variation between Yahweh and Elohim, such that “Yahweh” references meant God and “Elohim” references meant his Viceroy (the Logos). So in that sense, yes, it could be taken as one of an angel’s many names. For more on how that worked in naming generally, see Was Jesus-Is-Michael an Early Christian Mystery Teaching?

      Btw, for your next volume, a verse by verse reconstruction of Paul’s gospel via the scripture of the day would definitely be a worthwhile inclusion. It’s one thing to say his gospel can be reconstructed from scripture, it’s another thing to literally spell it out.

      I can’t engage in such extensive speculation, lest my entire argument be straw-manned as dependent on speculation. So I won’t be doing things like this. The studies of the Second Power listed in this article already do most of that work and I can suffice to just refer to them for the purpose.

      The furthest I go is what I already did, in various Elements in OHJ (e.g., Els. 16–18 and 40–42), and there only to establish a proof of concept, not to prove I have “discovered” the entire secret lost pesher of the Christians. No one can do that with any sufficient certainty. The pesher is lost.

      Reply
      • David Booker
        David Booker on December 7, 2023 at 12:38 pm

        Thanks for the reply! I think I might have worded that poorly. Didn’t mean to suggest that you claim to “divine” Paul’s gospel — yeah, that wouldn’t go over well. I only meant that if you lay out the passages you reference, using the full Zechariah passage referenced by Philo as a given starting point, that it can provide a pretty good black and white visual aid for those that question the “plausibility” of Jesus being revealed via scripture.

      • Richard Carrier
        Richard Carrier on December 7, 2023 at 5:24 pm

        Well, that much is what I do in Historicity (see Elements 6–9, 17–18, 38–40, etc.). It’s just that, people who don’t like the conclusion, don’t actually read or respond to any of that material per se, or they complain that I am speculating—even though I explicitly say I am speculating and am placing no greater weight on my points than that (or when I can argue to a probability, I do, but then critics ignore all the evidence and arguments I present for that being probable).

        So I don’t yet see the value of repeating or expanding on any of that. People who actually want to know stuff, already have the material. Whereas those who supposedly “need more material” won’t read it. At best there could be some improved reference books on “uses of scripture” in the NT (the current volumes are interesting but wanting). But that would need to be done by someone who won’t be dismissed on mere ad hominem.

  10. James Kennedy
    James Kennedy on January 16, 2024 at 2:01 am

    You’re missing the Saxton article.

    Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on January 16, 2024 at 9:14 am

      It’s linked in the 1 Thessalonians article. So it is breadcrumbed here.

      But I appreciate the heads up on omissions generally; I might always miss something.

      Reply

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