Debating Israel Only with Jason DeCosta
Next Sunday (October 18th) I’ll be debating Jason DeCosta on his version of the Israel Only theory, which purports to “fix” all the problems I found before in The Incompetent Crankery of the Israel Only Movement (discussed on MythVision years ago)....How Bad Methodology Led to Some Bad Ideas from R.G. Price and David Oliver Smith: Part 2 (Smith)
Yesterday I started this two part series explaining what I am doing and why (so please catch up there), and went through an extended example from R.G. Price. Today I will finish with the second example, now from David Oliver Smith (channeling Robert Eisenman). And I...How Bad Methodology Led to Some Bad Ideas from R.G. Price and David Oliver Smith: Part 1 (Price)
I have often noted or even used good ideas from amateur scholars like David Oliver Smith and R.G. Price (not to be confused with Robert M. Price). I even named Price in my original study of the historicity of Jesus as among the few amateurs doing work worthy of...The Mystery of the Seven Loaves as Mythographic Composition in Mark
What’s up with the numbers across Mark’s two feeding narratives? Weird numbers of loaves and fishes and baskets don’t make sense as history. No one would preserve incidental details like that, much less even have counted in the first place; nor could...Problems with the Bilby Thesis
Historian Mark Bilby is proposing a new thesis about dating the Gospels (and other NT texts) in an experimental study that, as of this publication at least, is at Zenodo (an open research archive), titled Neologismata, Volume 1: Proofs of New Testament Redactions...The Earth Will Be Destroyed Very Soon
The gargantuan amounts of money that are vanishing into the mysterious black hole of private equity (which is now collapsing because all that money has indeed vanished…somewhere) and AI (which is also vanishing…somewhere, because the data centers it was...Hansen’s Contribution to the James in Josephus Debate
There is a valuable new study by Chrissy Hansen, “Josephus and the Murder of James: An Argument Against Some Common Wisdom,” in the new journal Studies of Biblical Interest 2 (2025). I don’t agree with its conclusion but I think it’s a quality...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...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.
Support Dr. Carrier
Books by Dr. Carrier
Explore C.H.R.E.S.T.U.S.
