Interpreting 1 Clement’s Supposed Descriptions of Fabulous Murders
While preparing next year’s book and reading and thinking about the one I just reviewed (Margaret Williams on Early Classical Authors on Jesus), I have evolved in my thinking about the rhetorical sense behind the “persecution” section in the Epistle...Margaret Williams on Early Classical Authors on Jesus
Preparing my new volume on the historicity of Jesus for next year, I’ve found that one of the works published since my first volume that warrants attention in my new one is Early Classical Authors on Jesus (T&T Clark, 2022) by Margaret H. Williams (hereafter...How Textual Criticism Can Help or (Sorry) Hurt Your Cause
In both Classics as well as New Testament Studies, “textual criticism” is a tool for analyzing ancient texts through the lens of manuscripts, the data they present, and our accumulated knowledge of what often or rarely happened in the transmission of texts...What About Orphans, Then?
I get constant attempts to salvage something, some desperate crumb of Western moral decency or innovation, that can be credited to Christianity. They always end up mythical, or too trivial to impress. As I explain in No, Tom Holland, It Wasn’t Christian Values That...Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed
After ten years of observing the field after publishing my academic study on the subject, I find there are generally only two reasons to remain confident in the historicity of Jesus: a desperate faith-based need to; and a disinterest in actually checking. The former...Goldberg’s Attempt to Rehabilitate the Testimonium Flavianum
Did Josephus write his paragraph about Jesus by slavishly copying Luke? No. In my Ongoing List of Updates to the Arguments and Evidence in On the Historicity of Jesus I maintain a section on Josephus, and as of now it simply summarizes and references my article...The Myth That Science Needs Christianity
Years ago I wrote several articles debunking the commonplace claim that Theism (or indeed even Biblical Christianity) was necessary for modern science. It’s time for an updated round-up, particularly in preparation for a recent new attempt to argue this that I...And So Kipp Davis Conclusively Demonstrates His Incompetence as a Scholar
Kipp Davis has composed three videos about my work that now amount to dishonest slander. Because once you make mistakes and find that out—but keep repeating those false statements anyway, rather than correcting them—you’ve transitioned from merely...Some Controversial Ideas That Now Have Wide Scholarly Support
I just completed a research trip to UC Berkeley and its neighboring Graduate Theological Union and garnered up a treasure trove of books, studies, and journal articles, checked and re-checked quotes and footnotes and citations, and took abundant notes. And all this...And Then Kipp Davis Fails to Heed My Advice and Digs a Hole for Himself
Dead sea scroll specialist Kipp Davis is doing a multi-part series on On the Historicity of Jesus (or at least select parts of it), and in his first video he demonstrated a catastrophic failure to actually read the text he is critiquing, such that he actually just...Kipp Davis’s Selective Confirmation and Ignoring of Everything I Actually Said in Chapter 4 of On the Historicity of Jesus
Kipp Davis recently published a kind of analysis of the fourth chapter of my academic study On the Historicity of Jesus: “How (Not) to Read the Talmud: Reviewing Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus, Part 1.” It’s a weird one, because...An Ongoing List of Updates to the Arguments and Evidence in On the Historicity of Jesus
My academic study On the Historicity of Jesus was published in 2014, by respected biblical studies press Sheffield-Phoenix. It was the first complete study of the historicity of Jesus to pass peer review in over a hundred years. Since then only one other has been...Daniel Bonevac’s Bayesian Argument for Miracles
I was privileged to be able to sit in on some of a private virtual Q&A with Christian philosopher Daniel Bonevac regarding his peer-reviewed paper “The Argument from Miracles,” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 3 (2011), pp. 16-40. Many...The Methodological Application of My Theory of Humor
In interviews and hangouts I’ve often discussed my theory of humor and its importance to how we interpret humor, from how we use comedy to understand things about history, to how we decide whether a joke is actually racist or offensive rather than simply funny...Did ‘Docetism’ Really Even Exist?
This article briefs a more thorough and academic treatment later completed in The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus. If you want to consult or cite the complete expert study of this question, citing numerous scholars concurring and many more prooftexts, you...Get Dr. Carrier’s Latest!
About the Author
Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical methods.
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