See my articles on stylometrics for perspective.

There are two different kinds: mathematical and nonmathematical. The principles and limitations of each are different.

Schmidt never runs any mathematical stylo. He sort of pretends to when he simply recreates Zipf’s Law (see my original article on Schmidt’s treatment of the TF; here I am only discussing the James passage, not the TF; most of his book is about the TF). But because he doesn’t know that’s all he did, he didn’t actually generate any valid result pertaining to the TF. The rest of what he does is nonmathematical, and suffers all the defects I and others already documented (and more).

It is a statistical analysis of a tiny [some] 90-word sample against a massive half-million-word corpus.

Not all stylo is statistical. This is a common confusion (per above). But yes, statistical sylometrics can’t actually be done on a single paragraph.

The only time Schmidt tries that (which is just one small section of his book; the rest is nonmathematical stylo), he actually just naively reproduces a known linguistic effect true of all writing and thus uninformative for the TF (as explained in my previous article).

The rest of what you talk about includes discourse style analysis, which was famously done by Hopper on the TF, formally proving your point in a real linguistics journal (see Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014).

While Schmidt [and to an extent, Mason] argue(s) that the TF’s style is “too good to be fake”, it isn’t even Josephus’s best style—it is a limited, localized mimicry that ignores the broader, more aggressive, and skeptical characteristics of the historian.

Really, it’s barely even Josephan in style at all. As I demonstrated last time.

Ancient scholars and critics were not as “stylistically blind” as some modern arguments imply.

They were to most statistical stylo markers. But since stat-stylo can’t be run on the TF (it’s too brief), that’s moot. I give examples of more obvious ways forgers tried to sound like authors in my previous article.

Stylometrics is not a hard science; it is a statistical analysis of a tiny [some] 90-word sample against a massive half-million-word corpus. Obsessing over the “leaves” of Greek grammar—the “forest” of ancient mimesis—the rigorous training in stylistic ventriloquism that defined elite education, is ignored. It assumes a forger is a clumsy intruder, when in reality, educated scribes (Eusebius?) were masters of the very tools they claim are unique to Josephus.

To demonstrate that these “uniquely Josephan” markers are actually modular templates easily mastered by any skilled rhetorician, consider my two “forged” passages: one concerning Eleazar and one concerning Zadok. Albeit they narrate fictional Jews, “Eleazar” and “Zadok”, they are complete fabrications [or aren’t they?] and would pass every one of Schmidt’s stylometric tests while—unlike the actual TF—fitting perfectly into Josephus’s “Book of Calamities.”

Γίνεται δὲ κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον Ἐλεάζαρός τις, γόης ἄνθρωπος, ὃς τοὺς ἁπλοὺς εἰς τὴν ἔρημον ἐξήγαγε παραδόξων ἔργων ὑποσχέσει. ἦν γὰρ παραδόξων ἔργων ποιητής, καὶ πολλοὺς μὲν τῶν Ἰουδαίων, πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ ἐπηγάγετο. καὶ αὐτὸν ἐνδείξει τῶν πρώτων ἀνδρῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν Πιλᾶτος σταυρῷ ἐπετίμησεν· οὐκ ἐπαύσαντο δὲ οἱ τὸ πρῶτον αὐτὸν ἀγαπήσαντες τῆς ἀπάτης· ἐφάνη γὰρ αὐτοῖς διαφυγὼν τὴν δίκην. εἰς ἔτι νῦν τὸ τῶν Ἐλεαζαριτῶν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ ὠνομασμένον φῦλον οὐκ ἐπέλιπε.

“About this time [μέν] (men), there arises (ginetai) a certain Eleazar, a man of cunning, who led the simple-minded into the wilderness with the promise of startling wonders (paradoxon). For he was a doer of startling deeds (ergon poietes), and won over many of the Jews and also many of the Greeks. And when Pilate, on the information of the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had first loved his deceptions did not (de) cease. For he appeared to them to have escaped the execution; and even to this day (eis eti nyn), the tribe of the Eleazarites, so named after him, has not died out.”

The “ginetai” opening: Γίνεται δὲ κατὰ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον (Now there arises about this time) matches Josephus’s favorite chronological segue exactly.
The “men/de” balance: πολλοὺς μὲν… πολλοὺς δὲ construction is the rhythmic “symmetry” Mason argues is typical of Josephus’s mature, balanced prose.
Using Eleazaros tis (“a certain Eleazar”) follows the exact formula Josephus uses for the “Egyptian” and “Theudas” in Antiquities 20.
Using ποιητής (poietes) for a “doer” of deeds—rather than the Christian dynate or erga—is one of the specific points Mason uses to claim the TF is Josephan.
By calling Eleazar a goyes (charlatan) and his work an apate (deception), the passage fits the hostile context of Book 18 perfectly—something the actual TF fails to do.
The passive condemnation: ἐνδείξει τῶν πρώτων ἀνδρῶν (on the information of the leading men) mirrors the TF’s phrasing regarding the Jewish authorities, fitting Josephus’s habit of blaming “the leaders” for social unrest.
The genitive construction: τὸ τῶν Ἐλεαζαριτῶν… φῦλον (the tribe of the Eleazarites) mirrors the TF’s τὸ τῶν Χριστιανῶν… φῦλον (the tribe of the Christians).
The naming formula: ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ ὠνομασμένον (named after him) is a classic Josephan way to explain the etymology of a group, which Mason argues a Christian scribe wouldn’t bother with because they would assume everyone knew who “Christians” were.
The ending: εἰς ἔτι νῦν (unto even now) followed by οὐκ ἐπέλιπε (has not failed/vanished) is the precise structural formula found at the end of the TF.
Unlike the actual TF, this passage actually fits the flow of Ant.18.3, as it describes a thorubos (uproar) and a “charlatan” (goyes)—themes Josephus obsesses over in this section.

For those who think that this is just a “find and replace” excercise, here’s a entirely different narrative about Zadok. Which is “authentically Josephan” (Books 18–20) but NOT “TF-Style”, demonstrating that Josephus’s “style” is a wide ocean, not a single puddle, and fabrications or forgeries can escape even highly developed methods like stylometrics and even fit the context which, again, the TF does not. This “Zadok” passage is, in many ways, more authentically Josephan than the TF because it adheres to the broader literary and ideological patterns of Ant. 18–20, rather than just a few isolated “fingerprints” as in the TF.

Φάδου δὲ τῆς Ἰουδαίας ἐπαρχεύοντος, Ζάδωκός τις, ἀνὴρ παράβολος τὴν διάνοιαν, πείθει τὸν πολὺν ὄχλον τὰς κτήσεις ἀναλαβόντας ἕπεσθαι πρὸς τὸν Ἰορδάνην ποταμόν· ἔφασκε γὰρ αὐτοῖς κελεύσματι ἑαυτοῦ σχισθέντα τὸν πόρον παρέξειν εὔπορον. οὐ μὴν εἴασεν αὐτοὺς Φάδος τῆς μανίας ἀπολαῦσαι, πέμψας δὲ ἴλην ἱππέων ἀπροσδοκήτοις ἐπιπεσὼν πολλοὺς μὲν διέφθειρεν, αὐτὸν δὲ τὸν Ζάδωκον ζωγρήσας πυρὶ δαπανηθῆναι προσέταξεν. οἱ δὲ ἐκείνῳ προσκείμενοι, θείῳ τινὶ οἴστρῳ πληγέντες, ὑπ’ ἀγγέλου αὐτὸν ἀναρπασθῆναι διεβεβαιοῦντο· καὶ εἰς δεῦρο ἡ τῶν Ζαδωκιτῶν αἵρεσις ἐπὶ τῇ πλάνῃ διαμένει, θυσίας τῷ ἐκείνου ὀνόματι προσφέροντες.

“During the governorship of Fadus, a certain Zadok, a man of reckless daring, persuaded a great multitude to take up their effects and follow him to the river Jordan. He asserted that at his command the waters would divide, providing them an easy passage. However, Fadus did not permit them to enjoy such madness, but sent a troop of horsemen who fell upon them unexpectedly, slaying many and taking Zadok alive to be consumed by the flames. Yet his followers, being struck by a divine frenzy, claimed that he was snatched away by an angel; and even now, the sect of the Zadokites persists in their error, offering sacrifices to his name.”
 
Instead of ginetai, it uses Φάδου… ἐπαρχεύοντος (While Fadus was governing). This is Josephus’s most common way to set a scene in the later books of Antiquities.
It uses παράβολος τὴν διάνοιαν (reckless in mind/daring), a classic Josephan pejorative for rebels that never appears in the TF.
Instead of saying he “did” things, it uses ἔφασκε (he asserted/claimed), which Josephus uses to distance himself from the “miracles” of charlatans like Theudas or the Egyptian.
It uses μανίας ἀπολαῦσαι (to enjoy/indulge in madness), a very specific Josephan idiom for the “delusions” of the masses.
Instead of the “tribe” (phylon), it uses αἵρεσις (sect/school of thought). Mason argues “tribe” is a Josephan fingerprint, but Josephus uses hairesis far more often (as in the “three sects” of the Jews).
Instead of the TF’s eis eti nyn, it uses καὶ εἰς δεῦρο (and unto this [point/time]), a perfectly valid Josephan synonym that achieves the same historical anchoring.
 
While Schmidt [and to an extent, Mason] argue(s) that the TF’s style is “too good to be fake”, it isn’t even Josephus’s best style—it is a limited, localized mimicry that ignores the broader, more aggressive, and skeptical characteristics of the historian.

Ancient scholars and critics were not as “stylistically blind” as some modern arguments imply. Ancient critics like Herodotus and the scholars at the Library of Alexandria systematically employed stylistic and chronological criteria to weed out spuria. 
The fact that we still debate the TF suggests it was either high-level mimesis that fooled early readers, or—as I think I argued—a localized insertion so well-tailored by educated and seasoned scribes [like Eusebius] that it only failed when viewed against the macro-context of Josephus’s broader work.

Since I’m neither a formally trained classicist nor historian of Antiquity … just my opinion. If some of my english reads “kinda off”; in defense, it’s not my native language, rather my fourth (after flemish-dutch, french and german) …

No. We are sure he is not.

Maybe you should actually read the article you are commenting on?

Montanus is a century later. So, no.

But Montanus does represent a later adaptive wing of the movement that retained revelators as authorities over apostolic pedigrees, which is a fossil of the original pre-historicist faith.

Thank you Dr Carrier. Would the custodians of Paul’s dossier be the Montanists? Seems there was pressure to co-opt him by the historicising group.

Of course I answer all that in some detail in chapter eight of On the Historicity of Jesus.

But in short, there are two overall questions here: did that happen; and why.

First question:

Yes. I don’t know anyone who says it that way, but everyone knows it however they mention it (or avoid mentioning it).

It’s rather like the fact that the Roman Empire never fell until after Europe discovered the New World. We just renamed it the Byzantine Empire after the 5th century and pretended it was different. So how scholars “talk” about the Roman Empire is weird; but the substance of what they say and admit to really does translate as “actually, the Roman Empire didn’t fall until 1453 A.D..”

In the same way, everyone knows and admits that we have no documents or correspondence from Christians in the second half of the first century (roughly sixty and possibly eighty or more years depending on how you date what we have, which is highly debated). Uninformed scholars will keep repeating the “96 AD” date for 1 Clement as an exception, making the blind spot “30–40 years” as you mention, but that date is absolutely wrong. And many scholars will keep believing an early second century date for Papias, but that is not really all that credible. 1 Clement is from the 60s and Papias mid-second-century. So the dark age is twice the length you mention; but if we want to argue a fortiori and just accept these mainstreamed errors, it’s still what you mention.

We might have texts from that era. For example, the Deuteropauline forgeries of Collossians and Ephesians “might” have been published then, and the Gospels of Mark and Matthew “probably” were. But these are all fictional texts that do not discuss anything going on in the church; we can try and guess at what they are reacting to or arguing for or against, but they don’t outright “say” that’s what they are doing, so we are still blind.

And this is a crucial problem because that is precisely when the key shift occurred from the celestial revelatory Jesus to the “dinner party” Jesus, a shift even mainstream historians admit with regard to the resurrection: the resurrection was all just inner visions, no earthly stories, in Paul; then suddenly it was historical narratives in the Gospels being taken literally, as in the final redaction of John and possibly already Luke. This shift from “these are cleverly devised myths” to “these are real stories” documented in the second century forgery of 1 Peter etc. (see chapter seven of The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus) occurs exactly in this blind period. Which is peculiar.

What’s extra peculiar is that this spot was blind even to Eusebius, the first real historian of Christianity, and he was a biased Christian so for even him not to have material is alarming. He had no sources to cite from the second half of the first century (and apart from Papias material of disputed date, none even for the early second century). I show this by example in How To Fabricate History: The Example of Eusebius on Alexandrian Christianity. Observations like this have led many scholars now to argue that Christian literature did not even exist in the whole first century (see Was the Entire New Testament Forged in the Second Century?).

So, definitely all scholars are aware of this fact. It only varies as to whether or how they mention it.

Second question:

Unknown. But I have thoughts.

I lay out in some detail what we could have had (what would have existed) in OHJ. We can’t know for sure because every answer to that question depends on what happened in that period and that’s precisely what we don’t know. But it seems likely there would have been a lot of correspondence (Epistles).

Not only because the membership should be much larger than in Paul’s generation and the conflicts for control of church treasuries and congregations and ideology would have much higher stakes and more competition and a lot of really crucial shit was going on that would create crises and fires to put out and propaganda wars to win (first, the Jewish War changed everything; second, the shift from revelationism, where seers are authorities, to traditionalism, where people claiming apostolic pedigrees are authorities: see the latter half of chapter seven of OPH for the scholarship on this; third, the shift from pneumaticism to sarcicism in belief about the resurrection body that we see play out across the Gospels; and so on). But also because now there are Gospels circulating which would have created no end of arguments and heated concerns. There would be disputes about their content, their accuracy or edificacy, the way it is worded, how it is being marketed, how it is being interpreted, who controls it, and so on. Once Matthew published, there would be an all out war between factions insisting Mark was the real Gospel and factions insisting Matthew was. And so on.

All of this is missing. We have not a single word of it from anyone.

One might claim that it all went on orally so that’s why we don’t have it but there are two reasons to reject that claim: (1) it wasn’t true for the lower stakes, smaller movement of Paul’s time (not only do Paul’s letters refute the idea but he refers to lots of other letters, his and others’; correspondence was a big deal and routine across the church then, so it absolutely would have been even more so the generation after, not less); and (2) no one in the second or any later century who did write (e.g. Ignatius, Papias, the forged Pastorals, indeed even what we know of Marcion’s writing and corpus from his opponents’ trying to refute it) could report on any of it either.

Problem (1) is self-evident so I won’t go further into it. But problem (2) is also important: it’s clear early authors like Papias had no real access to any actual lore from his prior generation. Which means there wasn’t any (or any he wanted to discuss). What we get instead are fantastical and wildly erroneous urban legends, not any plausible lore about the late first-century text-wars and struggles for power within the church. I point this out again in my article on Eusebius above.

So the documents definitely had to have existed. And they definitely were lost. And lost early. Even Papias didn’t have access to them (and so he makes an excuse to only trust word of mouth, which he did so uncritically that all he raked up were porkies). We likewise see Irenaeus had no access to them. Nor Tertullian, not even in his vociferous effort to refute Marcion’s counternarrative, which means Marcion also did not have access to any, because Tertullian never has to respond to any of it, which means Marcion also didn’t cite any of it.

And so on.

This is why so many scholars are now doubting there even was first century literature or even a first century Christianity of any substance. I think that’s going too far. But the reason any can go that far is the problem I’m pointing out.

So what happened to all this stuff?

My most complete proposal is in How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus?.

The TLDR of that is: Christianity didn’t grow as we thought, but almost died out in the first century. When Pliny contacts it, it’s so dwindling almost everyone he found who had ever been a Christian had left it and the rest were a scant few stragglers so thin on doctrine he didn’t even know the religion had anything to do with Judaism. It appears that a revival was forced by Marcion producing expansion and propaganda wars for the wealth and narrative of the church.

That bottleneck would explain the loss of documents and data: it was all thrown away as useless as churches shriveled and dissolved and no one expected it had a future. Some dossier of Paul’s Epistles was the only thing popular enough to circulate and thus survive (becoming the founding stone of Marcion’s new push, along with a few scattered Gospels in circulation that he worked into his own). That’s also why there are no real stories circulating for Papias to hear. By the time he was writing, everyone who would have known any of that was either dead or into the wind.

There is no way to prove my theory. But it’s the only one that threads the needle of all the data we have, so far as I’ve yet seen.

Is this acknowledged as such in the literature. And had there’d be no such blackout what would you have expected especially in terms of literature.

Lastly, if I may, could we say this a ‘redaction’ – ie deliberate or wilful obscurement?

Thank you. All parties have been informed.

On my science history books, I’m already party to a class action litigation over that. So I might get compensation for it (at least in some century, given the slow pace of litigation these days).

This is the specific link for OHJ on the Internet Archive, it’s really the full book https://archive.org/details/on-the-historicity-of-jesus-why-we-might-have-reason-for-doubt-richard-carrier/mode/1up

When you search on the general search engine on the IA for ‘Richard Carrier’ you have to find links to your work among lots and lots of irrelevant links. Some of your books are not (really) accessible, some are, I believe one of your works on ancient science is also freely given. Not the Impossible Faith, as mentioned (and unavailable for borrowing even when becoming a full IA member), and Proving History are not fully given, except frontpage, first pages and the content page, basically.