Not a valid defense, honestly. First, it’s moot: “And it also cites the most recent scholarship before that (e.g., Crossan, Paget, Van Voorst), which Casey should certainly have found.” Second, it’s irresponsible not to check the latest research from scholars you are specifically criticizing before updating a delayed book for a later release; especially when you should know they’ve published material challenging what you know you say in your book.

Neil Godfrey comments that Casey completed his book some years before the release date of 2014.

I started on Casey’s book, but despite finding the subject intriguing, I could not get through more than two or three chapters. One thing that stumped me was when he is listing mythicists who are also scholars (location 329 out of 7964 on my laptop’s kindle); Bart Ehrman is listed as one such mythicist! Location 459. I can’t help but think that I’m missing something here… Oh well.

I loved your review, and found it quite informative with respect to general information about the historicity of Jesus, historical methodology and such. Thank you.

Best Regards,
Mikkel

therefore Jesus must have actually been crucified.”

Should be:

therefore Jesus must have actually risen from the dead.”

None of those books are actually defenses of historicity (except Habermas, who is just writing specious and frequently dishonest apologetics and not anything actually taken seriously by mainstream scholars…his pages on Thallus alone are a joke).

Van Voorst has two pages on the subject, which are astonishingly feeble (I address them in OHJ). The rest is just an analysis of one set of testimonies, not even close to a complete case. Nor an argument for the existence of Jesus.

Grant ignores the Epistles and just does an idiosyncratic reconstruction of Jesus starting from the premise that he existed. No different than hundreds of “this is my Jesus” books produced every decade. He doesn’t actually address the claim that he doesn’t exist, or the arguments for that conclusion, in any significant degree (much less devote the book to it).

Dunn also virtually ignores the Epistles and just does an idiosyncratic reconstruction of Jesus starting from the premise that he existed. No different than hundreds of “this is my Jesus” books produced every decade. He doesn’t actually address the claim that he doesn’t exist, or the arguments for that conclusion, in any significant degree (much less devote the book to it).

These are not “in defense of the historicity of Jesus.” They just assume the historicity of Jesus. And then attempt to reach conclusions about him. Conclusions that contradict dozens of what other scholars conclude looking at the same data. (Hence chapter 1 of Proving History.)

In other words, these books aren’t even doing the same thing Ehrman’s did. They therefore cannot be compared. They may well be far better (indeed, Van Voorst is still the best recent book to read, despite being incomplete and not even attempting to make any concerted case for historicity). But it’s apples to oranges. They may be fantastically delicious oranges to Ehrman’s sour and worm-ridden apple. But they still aren’t apples.

I assume you have your reasons for excluding Casey’s previous work which is superior to this most recent travesty. What, then, is the reason for excluding works such as

Michael Grant’s Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels
Habermas’ The Historical Jesus
Dunn’s The Evidence for Jesus (which caused Well’s to shift his position)
van Voorst E. R. (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament- An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Studying the Historical Jesus)
Are you seriously arguing that Grant’s book is not comparable to Ehrman’s in any sense other than that it is vastly superior? What about those I haven’t mentioned? Are they all not comparable to Ehrman’s garbage and Casey’s regurgitated nonsense, or have you simply not bothered to do your research (again)?

(The spelling “mistake” trick was in a different context not related to the mythicism debate, just FYI. On the latter one need only compare the childish and illogical behavior of Tim O’Neill and the calm and accurate reply of Fitzgerald. O’Neill is something of an egotistical narcissist, so he will pump his chest and claim he obviously pwned Fizt, but non-delusional people will be able to see for themselves it’s the other way around. And I’m really only interested in the options of the non-delusional.)

>But its proponents are almost never scholars, many of them have a very poor grasp of the evidence and almost all have clear ideological objectives. Broadly speaking, they fall into two main categories: (i) New Agers claiming Christianity is actually paganism rebadged and (ii) anti-Christian atheist activists seeking to use their “exposure” of historical Jesus scholarship to undermine Christianity. Both claim that the consensus on the existence of a historical Jesus is purely due to some kind of iron-grip that Christianity still has on the subject, which has suppressed and/or ignored the idea that there was no historical Jesus at all.

This sort of claim just does two things: it denegrates all non-Christians who aren’t historians (Tim O isn’t actually a historian either, just a hypocrite), and it denegrates everyone who disagrees with Tim O as having ideological bias (but Tim O’s bias is impeccable, so again a hypocrite).

>In fact, there are some very good reasons there is a broad scholarly consensus on the matter and that it is held by scholars across a wide range of beliefs and backgrounds, including those who are atheists and agnostics (e.g. Bart Ehrman, Maurice Casey, Paula Fredriksen) and Jews (e.g. Geza Vermes, Hyam Maccoby).

Tim O goes on to claim that since some historians are atheists and agnostics, therefore there is no good reason to disagree with them. But this is not the gist of his argument. He doesn’t know what it is. All he does is insult people and make demands and argue about spelling, but not waste anytime actually making a relevant point. He feels the burden of proof is actually on the mythicist to show that someone didn’t actually exist when there is no substantial evidence.

Someone made a spelling mistake, so the mythicist argument is totally on the rocks. Bow to the great Tim O!

Why bother come here to argue about spelling or make demands that people admit that they are wrong? Why not offer the relevant historical facts?

I just find it profoundly odd that someone shows up to argue about spelling from years ago …

FFS – I am not arguing about “spelling”. I’m challenging a repeated pathetic slander that I am a “proven liar”, when this was previously never substantiated and has now been shown to be based purely on Carrier’s bumbling incompetence.

Speaking of which …

The basic gist of his position is that some historians are atheists or agnostic and therefore the mythicist position is irrational,

That is not the “basic gist” of my arguments at all. Not even close. It seems bad reading comprehension is the norm around here. You have learned from Carrier well.