It’s been a long time coming. But finally I can say again that every book I have written is available in audio! But I won’t be able to say “all read by me” anymore. Jesus from Outer Space is now available in an Audible edition, read by KC Gleason. She does a fantastic job and we might use her for my forthcoming books as well. Additionally, for all my audio books, which are graciously all published by Pitchstone Books, I prepare text-readable PDFs of bibliographies and source lists for the visually impaired. And though JFOS is a colloquial summary and thus doesn’t even have footnotes, it does have a (very) short bibliography, so that is now available there as well. Anyone who wants the full academic bibliography and source list for everything discussed in JFOS will have to consult the text it is summarizing, which is On the Historicity of Jesus, which also exists in an Audible edition and also has a text-readable PDF of its sources, although using a kindle edition of that with text-to-speech (or Whispersync with Audible) is still more useful for visually impaired academic researchers, as then you can more easily hear what connects with what. But if you just want to enjoy listening to an easy-to-follow summary of my findings, get the Audible edition of Jesus from Outer Space now. And enjoy!
Sadly I don’t see it through your Amazon link. Perhaps it’s not available in Europe or more specifically the Netherlands?
For whatever reason, Audible does not appear to be available in the Netherlands (you can see what nations it is in here). The solution would be to run Audible through a VPN set to a host country the app/site is available in. If you already are running Audible, you can try searching for JFOS in-app.
Is excellent, have been waiting for it for awhile. My only criticism would be that it goes on for too long on when discussing the rising and dying gods and the argument from Spartacus. I acknowledge that’s necessary though to counter the relentless torrent of apologist or intractible-historicist nonsense. What kind of brain defect does a person have to have to say that we have more evidence for Jesus than we do for Julius Caesar? He wrote his own book for cryin’ out loud!
Note that chapter actually quotes numerous actual historians (some of renown) exhibiting exactly that brain defect. Thus, the chapter was necessary.
I agree it’s tedious that we have to argue it, but we nevertheless have to argue it. Because that’s how biblical historians are behaving, and their false statements and disinformation need to be corrected.
But I would add that the effort to correct them also shores up exactly what methodology we need to prove Jesus existed, which historians have abandoned because Jesus can’t be defended with real evidence that way. So even those who know what is in there already still benefit from going over it: it then becomes even more clear what we are supposed to have but don’t, and thus what it actually takes to establish confidence in someone’s historicity.
I bought the audiobook and I’ve listened to about one third. I had already read the book and listened to its major “siblings” (and finding those much more rewarding BTW). I must admit that I do not like how this last book is read. The narrator is too fast, almost robotic. In addition, why change all the “I” in the text to a ridiculous “Carrier”? It’s your book, even if read by someone else when the author says “I” it should be read as such! In conclusion: Richard Carrier is a much better reader of his own books.
So, I didn’t detect either excess speed or roboticism. Numerous customers have reported the opposite. But you do know you can change the speed, right?
Having someone else say “I” doesn’t really work narratively. But we plan to convert it to “we” in the next volume.
Thank you for taking the time to reply. I just finished the audiobook, and I admit that after a while you get used to the rhythm, even though I still think that you are a much better reader of your books yourself. And I remain deeply averse to the transformation of “I” into an inconsequential “Carrier”. I will in any case buy any other future audio version of your books, I am indeed a sucker for them, their intelligence and erudition.
I am just using this means to highlight a curiosity that you may have already noticed (or even highlighted yourself): in Portuguese (my mother language), we use the same word (“céu”) for heaven and sky. As far as I know, the same happens with other Romance (Latin) languages (Spanish and Italian with “cielo”, French with “ciel”). I think the same applies to German (with “himmel”). So, when you “translate” heaven(s), in an ancient Judaeo-Christian context, to outer space, at least to me, it is not as strange as it might sound to an English-speaker. The heaven(s) are (in) the sky, in the celestial realm above us, not in another dimension, and that was an evidence for me since I was a little boy.
So, as I was beginning to read your book, that was something that immediately struck me. I don’t know if this coincidence of both meanings in a sole word is more than that.
It’s a good question, since this is also true in English (sky and heavens are also interchangeable poetically, and heavens is often used in English to refer to outer space). The pushback is not linguistic, but ideological:
When Christian scholars “guffaw” at my calling heaven outer space they are coming from the POV that heaven “obviously” means another plane of existence not visible or even accessible from outer space (hence why we don’t catch angels and god’s cities in telescopes: the cities and angels of heaven are in a parallel universe, not on Mars or orbiting Saturn). So when I correct this anachronism (their idea of heaven is a modern product of the scientific revolution which compelled “changing what heaven meant” to prevent Christianity from being falsified by telescopes) I am calling out an anachronistic ideology, not a linguistic error. In antiquity, and hence in the bible, OT and NT, “heaven(s)” does mean Mars and Saturn and the Moon and stars. They had no such conception of it being a parallel universe (see Aeon’s informative article on this).