Exposing T.C. Schmidt’s Oxford Apologetics for the Testimonia Flaviana
There is a new book published by Oxford University Press that is a travesty of Christian apologetics undeservedly snaking the respectability of, well, Oxford University: T.C. Schmidt’s Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. The rhetorical...Ammon Hillman Is Not Telling You the Truth: The Gospels Do Not Describe Pedophilia, and No One Was Getting High on Vaginas
There is a classicist named Ammon Hillman (a.k.a. David Hillman) who wrote a decent dissertation on ancient pharmacology and then went on to make absurd claims about the Gospels and early Christianity that verge into pedophilia and an obsession with genitals. And yes,...Do Paul’s Letters Look Fake?
Previously I summarized why I am not convinced by Nina Livesey’s thesis, in her new study The Letters of Paul, that all his letters were forged in the second century (Are Paul and His Letters a Second Century Fabrication?). There I already summarized why. But...Can We Doubt Paul Existed?
Previously I summarized why I am not convinced by Nina Livesey’s thesis, in her new study The Letters of Paul, that all his letters were forged in the second century (Are Paul and His Letters a Second Century Fabrication?). There I mentioned I have never been...Are Paul and His Letters a Second Century Fabrication? A Critical Review of the Livesey Thesis
Biblical historian Nina Livesey has produced one of several recent mainstream studies questioning the authenticity of all the letters of Paul: The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2024). The...Statistical Stylometrics: The Good, the Bad, and the Horrid (Part 2: Pliny and Galen)
A couple of weird peer reviewed studies recently came out arguing from statistical stylometry that (1) Galen (the famed second century Greco-Roman medical scientist) did not write most of the works attributed to him (which would be a major thing because we have some...Statistical Stylometrics: The Good, the Bad, and the Horrid (Part 1: Paul)
Stylometrics (or “stylometry”) is the study of authorial style. To determine common authorship (or conversely, forgery) it looks at obvious things like preferred idioms, grammar, vocabulary, and valencing (how words are used, what they mean), and things...Did Judas Exist?
Bart Ehrman has strangely committed a lot of resources to defending the historicity of Judas. I say strange because most mainstream historians would be perplexed by this. Judas is obviously a fictional character. Christians need him to be real because they need the...My New Book! Jesus: Militant or Nonexistent? Two Views Compared
I just published the English edition of my debate with Fernando Bermejo-Rubio and Franco Tommasi, Jesus: Militant or Nonexistent? Two Views Compared (Philosophy Press, 2025), including a chapter by Robert Price, and originally published in Italian as Gesù resistente...Michael Alter’s Exemplary Review of Undesigned Coincidences
The Argument from Undesigned Coincidences is a naive Christian apologetic invented in the 19th century but revived recently by apologist Lydia McGrew, which ignores all historical knowledge of the redaction history of the Gospels to argue that, instead of the authors...Did the Rapture Already Happen!? No. Nor Will It Ever.
“Truly I tell you, this generation shall certainly not pass away until all these things have happened,” we’re told the Lord said, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with...Did the Rapture Already Happen!? My Debate with the Full Preterist Don Preston Is Tonight
You can catch up on the strange world of Christian preterism (a view lately gaining a lot of attention, and causing a lot of panic among Evangelicals), especially “full preterism,” at Wikipedia. But in the ultra-quick: Don Preston holds that Jesus not only...All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel according to Mark
I’ve often noted that even the very first Gospel we know of (the one eventually source-credited to someone named Mark), despite often being described as the least fantastical or the most mundane narrative of Jesus, is in fact wildly fantastical, and does not...Did Paul Write Philemon?
The mainstream consensus is that only seven letters of the thirteen attributed to Paul in the New Testament are authentic: 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, Romans, Philippians, Galatians…and Philemon; while the rest are either forgeries (Ephesians,...Dispelling the “Anonymous Sources Are Kosher” Argument
I’ve been getting the same question a lot lately, which suggests an old Christian apologetic trend has risen from the dead and is making its rounds, zombie-like, across the internet: “I’m being told it was normal in the ancient world to publish...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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