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).

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.

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.

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.

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.