Like, Can You Rebel Against Rome with Only Two Swords?
In my debate with Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, he defended the theory that Jesus can only plausibly have been historical if he was an armed militant who was later whitewashed as a pacifist. I argued that that might be plausible in concept, but not when we look at the...From Homer to Frontinus: Biased Translation Is Not Unique to Biblical Studies
I am often asked what the best Bible translation is. My usual reply is that there aren’t any. All translations are biased, they merely differ as to how or where. The best you can do is to read it in the original language (and I teach a course with a lecture on...Saxton’s Weird Argument for 1 Thessalonians 2
A few months ago Deep Drinks hosted a debate, “Did Jesus Exist Historically? Godless Engineer vs Brave New History.” It was fairly boilerplate. As usual, the historicist (Elliott Saxton / Brave New History) failed to prep and didn’t know half of what...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...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 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...My Rank-Raglan Scoring for Osiris
The first question anyone has to answer when answering the question “How likely is it that Jesus was a mythical and not a historical person?” is “How often, at that time, were people like Jesus mythical and not historical?” And that requires...How We Know Acts Is a Fake History
I was asked by a patron to evaluate an article by Neo-Christian theologian Greg Boyd on the book of Acts being “a reliable history” (“Is the Book of Acts Reliable?,” which you can find at his mission website ReKnew). Of course I have...Do the ‘We’ Passages in Acts Indicate an Eyewitness Wrote It?
As I write an article on why historians no longer trust Acts, and now categorize it as mythography rather than history (though it emulates a history), I realize one question needs to be settled separately, because otherwise it’s just too tedious a digression:...On the Historicity of Jesus and the Rhetoric of Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho
It’s often claimed “we have no evidence of any skeptic of Christianity ever doubting Jesus existed.” I’ve long noted this isn’t true; and that it’s moot, because the very texts where we would expect to find this don’t survive...New Video Course on New Testament Studies for Everyone!
I am gradually transitioning my online courses to a high-quality video-and-syllabus format through MythVision. The first to launch is my course on New Testament Studies for Everyone. You can check out a five-minute video describing that course and how it works. And...A Primer on Successful vs. Bogus Methodology: Tim O’Neill Edition
Recently Tim O’Neill once again engaged his usual arrogantly dishonest methods and lied about the evidence in the very act of denouncing an actual expert (me) as incompetent, but in the process proving he was incompetent and I was not. Which is standard...Robyn Faith Walsh and the Gospels as Literature
Robyn Faith Walsh, a professor of New Testament studies at the University of Miami with a Ph.D. in religious studies from Brown University, has recently hit the circuit promoting her “controversial” thesis (building on her dissertation at Brown) that the...How We Can Know 1 Clement Was Actually Written in the 60s AD
The Epistle of 1 Clement, a diplomatic letter from elders in Rome to the Christian community in Corinth seeking to persuade them to return to a more orderly appointment of leadership after a recent internal rebellion of sorts, ultimately didn’t make it into 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.
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