I don’t wish to appear a supporter of OUP, but I do like both the Oxford comma and the “ize” ending. It is a great misfortune that the latter is now seen as American.

I’ll illustrate this with just one example, White bizarrely tries to rescue Schmidt with this argument:

Schmidt does make a slight mistake here. What Olson is claiming isn’t found in Josephus is the phrase, “and ten thousand other.” The difference is specifically the word and being used in conjunction here. This seems to be more of a simple mistake, and not the implied attack that Carrier makes it out to be. The issue then is that while Josephus does in fact use the phrase, “ten thousand other,” elsewhere, and thus it fits with Josephus’s style, he doesn’t include the word kai, or and, prior to that. Now, Schmidt could have just left off this footnote, and there would be no real problem.

…
That’s entirely a false description of what I argued and found. Not just the conjunction with kai, but the order of words and their application is also incongruous with Josephus but exactly repeatedly Eusebian (facts concealed by Schmidt and now also White, who is now complicit in his dishonest faking of the data). And Schmidt’s entire argument is based on this mistake, so it can’t be fixed by removing the footnote. The mistake here isn’t just a typo in a footnote. It’s Schmidt’s entire argument.

This is the kind of specious bullshit Christian apologists resort to when caught lying: they complain about tone rather than substance (“How dare you call us liars!”), delete almost all the evidence against them and act like it doesn’t exist, and nitpick one or another thing to try and prove their man didn’t fuck up, and even then lie about what they fucked up and why it matters, to create a false narrative they can defend, rather than admit the true narrative that, when admitted, deservedly destroys their man’s reputation as either honest or reliable, and, more importantly, collapses their entire thesis.

That this is how Christians defend themselves is why they are Christians: they cannot honestly deal with the evidence, and so they make endless excuses for why they get to ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist. While the rest of us act rationally. Which is why we aren’t Christians, and why they shouldn’t be either.

No. But it will take some time for academic responses to appear (the system is slow), and I expect most will be gullible and fawning, as, like his peer reviewers evidently, they won’t check and thus ever know any of what we exposed here. There is a shocking lack of critical skepticism in biblical studies. It’s mostly Christian apologetics and prestige-backslapping. But maybe a real critic will get something up someday.

Hi Richard, were you in the audience for the AAR panel about this book? I popped my head in for a minute and then realized it was much too technical for me. Would love to know if this critique is being broadly accepted and responded to.

Oh yes. SocraticGadfly, I second that recommendation. A site is more readable with a far lighter and less busy background (indeed white is ideal, especially when someone runs night mode reversing the colors).

Just a recommendation for your blog: If you can find the time to make the change, please consider changing the background behind the text sections. The distortion of the stone/slate texture make it much harder on the eyes.

I hadn’t thought to check that. But do you mean what he says in the Acknowledgements:

I would like to further express my appreciation to the College of Arts & Sciences Publication Fund at Fairfield University for its aid in publication. Several others at Fairfield assisted financially too such as Glenn Dynner with the Bennett Center, Paul Lakeland and Nancy Dallavalle with the Center for Catholic Studies, and Fairfield’s Faculty Research Committee.

I do mention his position at the “Jesuit-run Fairfield University” which is a clue in itself, but it would not be unusual for any university to offer publication funding for its professors. The Bennett Center is The Bennett Center for Judaic Studies at Fairfield, and their interest in funding this is obvious (a Jesuit center for funding the study of Jewish literature in service of Catholic interests). But The Center for Catholic Studies, also at Fairfield, is more mission oriented and thus more telling: they have no “plausible deniability” claim to supporting disinterested scholarship tangentially related to their mission; they fund mission-supporting publications.

So is that what you were referring to?

Also, at the end, note the foundation helping pay for his book.

Thanks. Noted.