I just published the English edition of my debate with Fernando Bermejo-Rubio and Franco Tommasi, Jesus: Militant or Nonexistent? Two Views Compared (Philosophy Press, 2025), including a chapter by Robert Price, and originally published in Italian as Gesù resistente Gesù inesistente: Due visioni a confronto (Manni, 2022). There we composed a written debate, meeting assigned word-counts, on the question of Jesus’s historicity, with them agreeing it is more likely he didn’t exist than that he was the Jesus of any other reconstruction than theirs–which was of Jesus as an armed resistor to Rome (such as someone who really did order his men to procure swords, and whose storming of the temple was a military op of some kind).
The debate recorded in this book is unusual as we both take positions widely scoffed at, whose proponents rarely talk to each other. So you can see neither of us is chained to any institutional inertias or confessional assumptions, but are both attacking the mainstream consensus as too poorly argued to credit. Issues of facts and methodology come up a lot, and informedly. Every chapter is a useful read on the subject of the historical study of Jesus and early Christianity. And though I do not vouch for everything Price claims in his chapter, he does cite sources you can explore. So it maintains utility. And though I obviously strongly argue against Bermejo-Rubio and Tommasi in this volume, I actually do agree their theory is plausible—in fact, one variant of it has long been my number two theory of the historical Jesus, number one being of course that he didn’t exist at all (I’ll say more about all that in a blog tomorrow where I cover some elements of this book that I originally lacked word count to).
The formal description of the book (composed mostly by Tommasi with some of my edits and additions) is:
Was Jesus a revelatory being, whom the Gospels transposed into a mythic history … or a promoter of armed resistance against Rome, whom the Gospels whitewashed into a pacifist? With the weakening of the hegemony of confessional alignments in biblical studies, other points of view on the “historical Jesus” that have long had their supporters in the past have gradually gained more space and visibility. This includes mythicism, a radically agnostic position on the historical existence of Jesus, and another that finds Jesus to have been somehow involved in the armed resistance of the Jews against the Romans, another view that cannot be reconciled with any theological understanding of Jesus today.
This book presents a well-composed debate between these two visions regarding the historicity of Jesus: Robert Price (Ph.D., New Testament; Ph.D. Systematic Theology) and Richard Carrier (Ph.D., Ancient History) defend the hypothesis of mythicism; and Fernando Bermejo-Rubio (Ph.D., History of Religion, and Professor of Ancient History at UNED) and Franco Tommasi (Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Salento and a published author on Jesus) compare that with the “militant Jesus” hypothesis, arguing the latter is more plausible than any other theory of a historical Jesus.
The English edition is updated. We all added newly available references and minor tweaks not in the Italian. As this is a multi-author work I will not be producing an audio version. But it is available in print and kindle. Get yours today!
Meanwhile, for those wondering, I have several more books in the pipe this year. The closest to be published is my sequel to On the Historicity of Jesus. Somewhat farther out is my sequel to Sense and Goodness without God. And somewhere in between is a brief new volume on…well, that will be a surprise. I am also planning an anthology of my published philosophy papers, which will make a pair with Hitler Homer Bible Christ (which is an anthology of my published history papers). So stay tuned!
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There is now an interesting review of Jesus: Militant or Nonexistent by Nicholas Covington (of Hume’s Apprentice) that illustrates why even when wrong it remains the only serious debate of the subject in print and well worth reading and engaging with.
Very excited about these upcoming works! Look forward to reading this volume too.
Congratulations on your new book !!! Hope your writings survive any Major Nuclear War (and MAGA), remembering the Great Library’s fate. There is a seed bank in Scandinavia. Maybe a time-proof library would also be a good idea. Or even a survival community of all races that no one would want to bomb.
Purchased. Peep that babyface pic on your Amazon page. 🙂
Oh wow! That’s a good point. I never look at that so I didn’t notice I’ve aged quite a bit since!
Sorry if it disappoints, but I will update it. 🙂
Where will the sequel to OHJ be published? Have you officially gotten a publisher for it?
Yes. Stay tuned for that.
I had assumed it would be Sheffield, the same as OHJ. Did that change? Got your new book yesterday. Will read this weekend.
It has. I have submitted a different book to Sheffield (more on that to come). The sequel will be published elsewhere (to be announced in the next few months).
I’m puzzled by “sequel” I do recall you considering doing a 2nd Edition of OHJ (same topic but with corrections and updates to address more recent evidence/counter-evidence+arguments) a while back, but I think I missed where that discussion ended up.
(to me, “sequel” suggests more of a continuation, i.e., expanding the topic in some direction, say if you were to do more on 2nd century church history, Marcion et al, or the lost years (65-110), or more about the various ancilliary figures (Paul, Peter, …), except I didn’t think you were that interested in going those particular directions, so I’m at something of a loss…)
Correct. The revised edition of OHJ launched in 2023. So it’s already out. I then announced my plan to either do a whole new version or a sequel of some kind. I settled on the latter.
And by “sequel” I mean to the study, not to the chronology. As in, I will discuss what has happened in the academic literature in the last ten years; respond to critics, discuss new studies supporting the conclusions in OHJ, and tackle new topics I only briefed in OHJ (e.g. the new book has a whole chapter on Docetism as evidence for Mythicism, expanding a couple of sentences in OHJ into a detailed discussion of the most recent scholarship that is trending my way now).
Bom dia. Richard Carrier, você enviou o novo livro sobre a historicidade de Jesus para uma revisão esse ano ? Estou entusiasmado para comprar o novo volume.
Yes. It should be out this year. Details to come.
I’m excited for you and I am looking forward to devouring your new releases! Well done Richard.
Todd G
I’ve been keen to hear more from you.
Tbh I prefer your works on things that don’t specifically revolve around the historicity of Jesus as I think your philosophical positions are much more enlightening.
Either way, I will be purchasing this book in support of your ongoing work.
I, too, prefer my philosophical work. But I get hired to do the Jesus stuff far more. And I have to make a living. Which in turn has made me one of the world’s leading experts on that, which carries a moral obligation to continue informing and advising on it; but it would be nice if I got more paid work in philosophy.
Nevertheless, two of my forthcoming books will be in philosophy (I am building an anthology of my published philosophy to match my anthology of published history, and a sequel updating Sense and Goodness without God).
So stay tuned!
Ok, just got the kindle version. Will read this up before moving on to the post about the debate. Looking forward to the other books in the pipeline!
Have you read “The Chosen People” by John M. Allegro? It traces the militant aspect from the return to Jerusalem from Babylon, through the Macabbees/Hasmoneans, up to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. At the end it considers a blend of Essene, Zealot, Sicarii, the latter two so high on amanita muscaria and unshakeable faith in the Jews’ Last Days God-assisted supremacy to fear the Romans, who all the sane Jews knew were too strong for them. He looks in to how the mixture of defeated Essenes and militant guys after 64 may have devolved into Christianity, with the crucifixion story modeled on the execution, 100 years before it, of the Qumran Teacher of Righteousness, possibly by Alexander Jannaeus. You might have to go to “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth” to get all the details, since “The Chosen People” is centrally about the Jews, not Jesus. Its theme is how the bad doctrinal launch given them by the rich Jews who stayed behind in Babylon led inevitably to the Holocaust.
I haven’t. But Allegro was generally a crank. And this sounds like the standard “pretend a pile of speculations are facts” methodology that my Fisk explains is a bad method rife throughout biblical studies as a field. And even if this is solid work, it’s only relevant if the militant hypothesis has already been proved likely by the direct evidence available. So it would just add to the bibliography that Bermejo-Rubio and Tommasi provide in this volume.
Have you read any of his books?
I tried. But they are too awful and outdated to endure. I’ve spent more time reading ensuing debates (various critics and his responses) throughout the literature.
He can’t help being outdated. He died. What do you find awful? I am interested in the sources of the beliefs which you say Peter’s group passed to Paul (JFOS), hence my curiosity about Qumran and Allegro’s translations of the Scrolls.
Allegro does not employ reliable modes of argument, and thus comes up with strange conclusions not logically supported by the evidence he presents. He is thus, pervasively, just unreliable. The most infamous example is his use of late medieval art to “prove” the use of mushrooms in Pauline congregations.
Whereas that his work is obsolete is not an indictment of him, but his work. It does no good to talk about “did he have a good argument half a century ago even though it’s obsolete now?” Since “it’s obsolete now” already rules out any relevance of his work now.
That does not mean everything he said is wrong. It just means anything he said is only usable if you can independently confirm it in more recent work. But if you can do that, you don’t need his work.
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross 40th Anniversary Edition Gnostic Media 2009
p.80 “The whole Eden story is mushroom-based mythology, not least in the identity of the “tree” as the sacred fungus, as we shall see. Even as late as the thirteenth century some recollection of the old tradition was known among Christians, to judge from a fresco painted on the wall of a ruined church in Plaincourant in France (pl. 2) There the Amanita muscaria is gloriously portrayed, entwined with a serpent, while Eve stands by holding her belly.”
I am not sure what “the old tradition” refers to – whether esoteric O.T. lore from way back, or to mushrooms in the early Christian church. I did not find any direct statement in SMC that the fresco proves that the early Pauline churches used mushrooms, though I think Allegro is convinced of that for other reasons. I have not reviewed his other books for claims of proof. I expect you must be very careful. Thank you for your warning about his logic. I noticed nothing because I’m a layman with not much at stake. I like him, though, and see him as one of the pioneers in bringing up matters that no one else dared to. His books have a very wide scope. He does say that he is creating his bird artistically, including a lot of speculation because there was not much data. Since his death there has been a lot of archaeological progress and discovery of ancient documents.
He means: because of this late medieval painting we can assume there was an ancient tradition it preserved.
That is a crank mode of argument.
He doesn’t have any evidence of any such tradition. That’s the only Christian evidence he has (and it’s too late to pertain). Everything else is just guilt by association (“other” religions used “various” drugs, “therefore” Christians did, which is a non sequitur, conflating an argument for nontrivial prior probability as an argument for substantive posterior probability, i.e. conflating plausibility with probability) and other non sequiturs (e.g. early Christians hallucinated a lot and had dinners, “therefore” there “must” have been something in the dinners, which is scientifically illiterate: altered states of consciousness do not require hallucinogens, so the inference that they must is invalid).
My previous reply expressed uncertainty over what “the old traditions” referred to. Reading a few pages before makes it clear that he means the ancient idea that the snake and mushroom were related. Both emerge from holes like an erecting penis and carry in their heads a poison. Pliny wrote that one should pick the mushroom when snakes were hibernating lest their venom pass into the mushroom. In the Eden legend the snake is closely linked to the fruit of the tree. Some will see the fruit, which makes humans godlike, as amanita. Amanita, the best quality, is said to grow from patches of exuded resin on pine trees. These are the old traditions meant. As far as I can tell, Allegro is not saying on p.80 that the fresco is a proof that early Christians had a mushroom sacrament. Maybe he does elsewhere, maybe in another book, but from SMC’s Index, “Tree of Life” occurs only 4 times and none say that the Plaincourant fresco proves anything about the practices of Paul’s congregations. I apologize to the publishers Gnostic Media for the direct excerpt in my previous reply, I have since noted that their copyright warning is very strict.
The afterword, Fungus Redivivus by Carl Ruck, reports that art historians claimed that the fresco showed a type of Italian cone-bearing pine tree, which claim was accepted for a while, until (pp. 375-377) lots of other mushroom tree art was discovered in churches and manuscripts from early Christian to the Renaissance.
Allegro was opposed to the mushroom and blamed its influence on the Zealots for their futile revolt against Rome which led to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the dispersal of the Jews.
His book, “The End of a Road”, which I’ve read, may be something like your “Sense and Goodness Without God”, which I hope to read someday.
Note that there literally is no evidence for mushroom use in the ancient church—not literary, not visual, not descriptive—none. The evidence we do have is of other techniques for inducing altered states (fasting, incubation, repetitive trance, and schizotypality).
So arguing for it with that kind of confidence is crank. The very idea that late medieval art (and that’s all there is) would even be relevant is crank. It does not matter “how much” one leans on it. To even suggest it is off rails. But Allegro offers it as the only actual evidence of mushrooms. Everything else is just handwaving.
In SMC he does not claim that the Plaincourant fresco is a proof of mushroom usage in the early Christian church. He only discusses it as relevant to the Garden of Eden story.
Those are the same thing. His argument from late medieval art (p. 80) for the tradition of mushroom use in the ancient church builds from his argument that they derived it from mushroom Eve myths (pp. 154–56), which the medieval frescos “prove.” Those are not two separate arguments. It’s all one argument. And it’s all silly.
I see no problem in a theory that the early Christian churches did not use amanita. I agree that fasting, solitude and sensory deprivation in a dark cave can produce entheogenic states of consciousness. They are even virtuous methods – 40 days and nights in the desert. They may be undertaken as worship with no intention to produce altered states. If those occur, with or without fasting etc., they may be quite different, more religious, than amanita. There is “cosmic consciousness” in “Varieties of religious experience” and in “A Little Book of Atheist Spirituality”, without drugs, and not necessarily produced with intention or special practices. It could be that faith alone, together with group solidarity and right action, suffices. Maybe God grants prophecy, speaking in tongues, halos. You allow some uncertainty in the non-historicity of Jesus. Maybe some exists for atheism as well.
Allegro does not argue for early church amanita based on the detail of the Eden story. He begins with the fertility religion of Sumer, and linked amanita cults. He tries to trace this down the ages. For instance, into an aspect of early Yahwehism. He thinks that despite heavy suppression it did not die out. He speculates that Josephus thought that the Essenes might have been influenced, though the passage is not clear to me. He thinks that the Zealots acquired the knowledge of which parts of the mushroom and how much to take was safe, but that their political orientation took them to excesses not found in old Yahwehism and the subsequent cults.
pp.154-6 does not re-invoke the Plaincourault fresco. It mentions an illustration (graphic or word picture) in the Book of Enoch. He thinks that Plaincourault is just an indication that medieval Christians were aware of amanita, and did not submit it as proof of his ideas about amanita use in the early church. That would be backwards. His theory comes up from the very ancient pre-Biblical past, and I think it is fairly certain that there were amanita cults back then, and that it is possible that there were Pauline church members who, without official sanction from the elders, maintained the amanita thread. If your copy of SMC has the afterword “Fungus Redivivus” by Carl Ruck, you can find evidence for a continuity of the thread, from Pauline times, up to Renaissance, pp. 375-377, and 378.
I am not claiming that Allegro is right, but only that you have not done him justice. I wonder whether the silliness of the amanita cult beliefs, and their obscenity by modern standards, has rubbed off on people’s impressions of Allegro, who is only a reporter of what may have been. You know how you have been dismissed as “fringe”, and how exploratory scholars in college religious faculties may lose their jobs. Allegro got similar harsh treatment, over the Scrolls, and over his theory of Jesus being invented.
Incidentally, pp. 154-56, the “Tree of Life” is mentioned as the source of Adam & Eve’s becoming like gods. Maybe this was in the Book of Enoch, but in Genesis there is an un-named tree in the centre of the Garden, which gave them the knowledge of good and evil, making them like gods (I believe many mammals have some of this), and, fearing that they would eat of the other tree, the Tree of Life, and become immortal, God had them expelled and the Tree guarded.
Please excuse it if you feel that I am wasting your time.
Since you don’t need drugs to hallucinate (countless religious cultures do without it), much less any specific drug (ergot and cannabis were just as common, and ethylene available at some locales), there is no logical argument that the Christians likely used any. You need evidence they did. There is none. To the contrary, the evidence indicates they used more typical hallucination triggers (incubation and trance behaviors are well attested, and match the known behaviors of still-current congregations, like Shakers and Pentecostals; and the indicators for natural schizotypality in apostles like Paul is quite strong, and likewise its role in religious movements still to this day). So there is no way to argue they were shrooming just because they could have. It’s bad logic. And it’s neglectful of the actual evidence or indeed even the concept of evidence.