Christian apologist James McGrath published a brief review of The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus in the latest Booklist Issue of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament. We know from precedent that McGrath is not a reliable operator. See my entry for McGrath in my ongoing List of Responses to Defenders of the Historicity of Jesus, showing how he has never honestly engaged with my original study On the Historicity of Jesus. So we don’t expect him to do so here. But what he doesn’t tell you has changed in the field is even more telling than the lies he tries to snooker you with. I will cover that story tomorrow. Today I will document the slander and lies that fill his review and his blog article about it, and why this shames and discredits the entire field of biblical studies.

This McGrath Review Is Rather Childish

Right out of the gate, in the very first sentence of his academic review, McGrath calls the book “ludicrous.” Which is basically an ad hominem, as he frames this as an attack on me as being vacuous and vainglorious. It’s a completely unprofessional lead sentence designed solely to belittle me—to imply I am ludicrous, and therefore so is every chapter of this book, all to discourage anyone reading it, lest they find out it isn’t ludicrous and doesn’t say any of the things he claims. The mere idea that history might be locked in an obsolete paradigm is not ludicrous—it’s a commonplace. The same has been said across the field already of Q theory, of Gnosticism, of Docetism, even the entire Third Quest for a Historical Jesus and its entire methodology of criteria of authenticity (more on that in tomorrow’s piece). Suggesting a paradigm might be obsolete is normal. It’s not “ludicrous.” And over forty experts agree that revisiting the same question for the historicity of Jesus is not ludicrous but needs to be taken seriously. McGrath isn’t taking it seriously. He’s acting instead like a desperate, threatened Christian apologist.

His whole opening paragraph childishly mocks the arguments of the book, rather than mentioning what they are or why they are wrong. For example, he whines like a child that I have a whole chapter arguing why historians need to do better at the mathematics of probability because their entire field consists of probability arguments. He thus behaves exactly like the scholars I take to task in that chapter. Yet he never mentions any of my arguments for why that kind of childish whining needs to stop and the point needs to be taken seriously—much less does he respond to any of those arguments. Which tells me he has no response. He cannot argue his point. So he just mocks mine.

This is precisely what is wrong with the field today. And it is ironic of him to complain that I am pointing this out—in a review article that displays every single thing that proves my point. His immature, unserious, unscholarly behavior—and a serious journal’s eagerness to publish that to its own disgrace—is the very problem I declaim. The field of Jesus studies is failing the public. And this is exhibit one. We need a new paradigm. And McGrath’s foolish attempt to insist we don’t is more evidence why we do.

McGrath relies on subtle ad hominem rather than honestly describing the book not just in his first line, but in almost every sentence. Such as when he whines over why “marking the anniversary of an uninfluential book” was worth the bother, when that isn’t anywhere the stated purpose of the book. The book explicitly says it needed to update the field on the findings and changes in the field in the ten years since the original study. Which is a legitimate and real need. It does not matter whether my book is prestigious. It’s a serious study. It needs to be updated as the field and the evidence changes. A serious scholar would understand that. McGrath is not a serious scholar. Instead he resorts to implying I am vainglorious—which is ad hominem, not a response to the actual purpose and content of the book he is reviewing. Which is, frankly, dishonest.

It is all the more embarrassing that to do this, McGrath still pretends Lataster’s 2019 study with Brill doesn’t exist (an honest scholar would admit that is evidence of the ongoing influence of my book and the relevance of its argument), or that our studies have persuaded dozens of scholars to agree our case needs more attention. McGrath won’t tell you these things I assume to preserve the lie that I am a lone wolf and my book had no influence worth accounting for. Lying, you see, is all they have left to defend their obsolete paradigm with—another documented point in Obsolete Paradigm that has set him off, flipping tables and frothing at the mouth, causing him to demonstrate my claim in the very act of trying to deny it. It’s all very silly. But that’s what Jesus studies has become.

Consider his dishonest line that Obsolete Paradigm is just “several-hundred pages filled with complaints about how unjust it is that the author’s previous book has had so little impact.” Anyone who reads the book will notice that is not at all what it is “filled” with, but it almost entirely consists of far more serious engagement with new evidence, new scholarship, and new developments, with the aim of documenting why a paradigm shift is needed—and why evading that is a sign of a dysfunctional field in need of reform. McGrath chose to put that dysfunction on public display, while claiming it isn’t dysfunctional. But the emotional and unserious tone and content of his review is too obviously evidence of the very dysfunction he is trying to deny. His review is inherently cringe. And I wonder if this will start to get noticed by the younger guard of scholars. Their feeling of shame that their field has done this may start to drive the very reform the field needs. Let’s hope. Meanwhile, everyone else will only lose trust in the field altogether, seeing this is what it has decayed into.

McGrath’s most explicit dishonesty will, by contrast, only be noticed if someone checks. His unprofessional tirade is meant to prevent people doing that. But by being so immature, I wonder if that tactic will work this time. Because now it will be self-evident something is off about his protest. And that might evoke curiosity to see what he is hiding—and thus to actually read the book he is wildly slagging off yet telling the reader nothing actually about. Then they’ll find out that his dishonesty—his violation of professional ethics—is even more direct than I just documented.

For example, McGrath says “Carrier constantly assumes what he needs to prove (such as the purportedly purely mythological character of the Gospels and Acts).” In fact, I have whole sections in the book, with extensive bibliographies, documenting—not assuming—those points. McGrath is lying. These are not “assuming things I need to prove,” but proving that conclusions I already proved (not assumed) under review ten years ago have become increasingly the norm in the field (Paradigm 26–34; followed by much of chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 further proving the point). On the Historicity of Jesus already spent hundreds of pages and two whole chapters documenting why we now know Acts and the Gospels are mythographies—and shows that that is a commonplace, mainstream conclusion in the field now, and not some wild, maverick idea of my own. And McGrath’s colleagues surely know this (as I’ll show in tomorrow’s article). So I think they won’t react to his denying it the way he thinks they will. He’s making himself look ludicrous. And even more so, as my citing those previous proofs in Paradigm (as I also do) is not “assuming” the conclusion either, but properly citing where it has already been proved. McGrath lied to his colleagues about all of this.

Why?

Why does James McGrath have to tell these lies?

Why can’t he describe the arguments and evidence in the book and rebut it instead?

Why does he describe none of the arguments or evidence in the book? Not even a single thing?

The question answers itself. And I already made this point in Paradigm. So he was warned this looks bad. He did it anyway. And now you know the truth of him—and of biblical studies as a field now, because I suspect they will do nothing about this, thereby demonstrating a disinterest in their peers being serious or even honest.

Because McGrath’s lying only gets worse:

• McGrath claims Paradigm “is not without its interesting proposals, but they are passed by quickly rather than explored.” McGrath never gives an example. Not even of a “proposal” that is “passed by quickly rather than explored.” Anyone who has read the book might think its most interesting proposals include, say, its entire chapter on how the latest Docetism research causes us to rethink relevant texts and understandings of early Christianity (after all, this was a mistake I caught McGrath making before—so you’d think he’d be keen on it), or a twenty page analysis of debates in the field over the historical or mythical meaning of an important pericope in Luke (since he seems to think I never prove Gospel mythography but just “assume” it). But a whole fifty page chapter and a whole twenty page analysis are the exact opposite of “passed by quickly rather than explored.” So is the fact that in the ten years since my original study dozens of other studies have corroborated its more interesting points, such as that Christians did regard themselves as Brothers of the Lord (Paradigm has a whole chapter on that), and the Dying and Rising god mytheme was massively popular when Christianity arose (Paradigm has a whole paragraph with an extensive bibliography on that—and again, a dozen studies is not “unexplored”).
• McGrath claims its arguments “lack the rigor, attention to detail, and appropriate tone that are to be expected from an academic publication.” Ironically, McGrath’s review lacks the “appropriate tone that is to be expected from an academic publication.” He gives no examples of any such tonal defect in Paradigm. There aren’t any. He’s lying. Just as he is lying about its arguments lacking rigor or attention to detail. Every chapter is rigorous and immensely attentive to detail. Hence, he does not—and thus cannot—give his readers a single example of this not being the case. He is, again, lying.

McGrath then adds on his blog more lies, which confirm his declarations in the review were also lies:

• McGrath claims my original study “received no attention.” It received extensive attention, provoking numerous academic mentions and explorations (even, ironically, from himself). Paradigm even lists and discusses the numerous academic studies and responses it spawned. Chapter three is entirely filled with them; and about a third of chapter six is devoted to more. Again, the number of scholars calling for it to be taken seriously counts now in the dozens. So McGrath is lying. And the particular lie he is telling is telling. Because the only reason to claim no one noticed the book is to argue no one should. He is trying to create the outcome he falsely claims exists. He doesn’t want people to hear these arguments or see this evidence. And that tells you all you need to know.
• McGrath says “to mark” the tenth anniversary from my original study “by insisting that the failure to find [my] prior work interesting enough to engage with somehow proves [I am] right is absolutely bizarre.” That’s literally true—if indeed that is what happened. But he is lying. That is not what happened. It was certainly interesting enough to generate dozens of academic responses, including an entire independent corroborating study published by Brill, several detailed academically published attempts to answer it (or components of it), several references across academic literature, and dozens of comments by scholars on the theory’s renewed plausibility. But the big lie is not “it’s not interesting.” That’s the little lie. That McGrath has to lie about it to convince people not to read it self-refutes his own claim that it isn’t of interest, as does his failure to produce a single example of anything uninteresting in the book, and so does the extensive list you could draw up of very interesting new findings in it. The big lie is that it is bizarre to point out that his evasion of every argument and tranche of evidence presented in the book demonstrates an inability to rebut it. It is his evasion of the entire contents of the study that is bizarre. And he is trying to claim my saying that is bizarre. It’s quite the other way around.

McGrath tells other likely lies, such as that Paradigm contains “implausible assertions.” If that were true, why can’t he name any? I suspect because as soon as he did, he would be exposed as a liar—there are no “assertions” in Paradigm not backed by numerous studies or abundant primary evidence. So, his claim that they were mere “assertions” would be proved a lie. And then he would have to address the actual scholars and evidence he is claiming don’t exist so as to prove all that still does not render whichever conclusion even plausible—which is the very thing he can’t do. So I suspect giving examples would also expose him as a liar. So he doesn’t give any examples—except one that indeed exposes his whole argument as a fraud…

The Most Blatant and Despicable Lie

In his blog article about his review McGrath finally gives us an example (albeit still only one now) of what he claims his review was referring to. He claims that I merely assert that “Paul’s Jesus was ‘wholly imaginary’ and claim this is proven by the fact that Paul encountered him in dreams or visions,” which McGrath rebuts by saying, “As someone who has dreamt about real people, I know this to be a non sequitur.” What is a non sequitur is his example. I never make the argument he purports to be rebutting here. He is lying again And in this he is now explicitly defaming me, by falsely crediting to me a foolish argument I never made, so as to bring into ridicule my supposed incompetence as a scholar. But nowhere in my entire academic history have I ever argued “Paul’s Jesus was wholly imaginary because he says he saw him in a dream or vision.” That argument is not in Paradigm. It is not in Historicity. It is in no article on my blog or anywhere else.

Why did McGrath have to invent an argument I never made to rebut so as to claim to have rebutted me? Why can’t he mention and attempt to rebut an argument I actually made? The answer is what proves my every point about the bankruptcy and failure of Jesus studies as an academic field. It can only evade and lie. It cannot confront the truth even of its own peer reviewed literature.

Despite his quotation marks, the phrase “wholly imaginary” does not exist in Paradigm. Or anywhere on my blog or other books. But I assume he meant the following (it is the only passage in Paradigm he could mean), which is only in the introduction describing my position (pp. 15–16), not in chapters presenting evidence for it. Yet it is a description of a completely different argument than McGrath pretends to his peers. So you need to see this to get how shamelessly he is lying here (my emphasis in bold):

Objective historians today must admit there was no resurrected Jesus—no animated corpse rose from the grave to hang out and have dinner with his followers. That man is not historical [here I have a footnote containing a bibliography on the risen Jesus being imaginary]. Yet he became so, within a mere generation or two. And the original, mythical version of him (who was entirely imaginary, as Paul reveals in Galatians 1:11–16 and 1 Corinthians 15:3–8) was erased. But if a ‘historical’ Risen Jesus could be invented, and that version narratively erase the original (the one of mere fleeting dreams and visions), then so could a ‘historical’ Jesus prior to that be invented, and that version narratively erase the original.

Notice that I am clearly and unambiguously saying the risen Jesus was imaginary, not the pre-mortem Jesus—that is a possibility I explore next (which Paul’s evidence supports but does not alone prove). So McGrath has dishonestly told his peers and readers that I said the historical Jesus was “entirely imaginary” because Paul reports anyone ever meeting him only imaginarily. But I did not. I said the risen Jesus was “entirely imaginary” because Paul reports anyone ever meeting him only imaginarily. Which is an entirely commonplace, mainstream, respectable—indeed arguably majority mainstream—position in the field of Jesus studies.

So McGrath has just called most of his peers (like, say, Bart Ehrman) ludicrous fools whose work should never be read because their conclusion that Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead is poorly evidenced and implausible. Oooops. Nice going throwing your entire field under the bus like that—in aid of a purely Christian apologetical dogma, thus demonstrating that you are not a serious scholar but a mere propagandist. Or, I guess, maybe McGrath would insist he “meant” the historical not risen Jesus here, so as to avoid slagging off all his peers as disreputable idiots—but then he’d be admitting to lying about my book and its argument. He is impaled on either horn here, bleeding out in shame as an immoral man, just another liar for Jesus, cosplaying a scholar.

That’s what has become of this field.

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You can now read the promised followup article, Why Is a Historical Jesus an Obsolete Paradigm?, setting this fraud and corruption in NT studies aside to get back to real scholarship, and on to breaking the stranglehold Christian schemers are attempting to maintain.