T.C. Schmidt on James in Josephus: Apologetics vs. History

After Exposing T.C. Schmidt’s Oxford Apologetics for the Testimonia Flaviana altogether (and his fellow Christians failed to rescue him), I now shall address his appendix on my case against Josephus referring to the Christian Jesus when relating the execution of a...

Bart Ehrman’s Latest Weird Attempt to Refute Mythicism

After ten years of pretty much ignoring the arguments in the peer-reviewed studies on the question of Jesus’s historicity, Bart Ehrman has tried again to “respond” to their findings—and again proves he never really reads these studies and...

That Phenomenally Stupid Article by Bill Cooke

The Center for Inquiry is clearly in sad decline. They just published a wildly incompetent article on Jesus mythicism by Bill Cooke (with a PhD in religious studies) in “Five Challenges to Christ Myth Theorists,” in their magazine Free Inquiry (44.5,...

The Chavez Review of Jesus from Outer Space

The Review of Biblical Literature recently published a brief “review” of Jesus from Outer Space by William Chavez (RBL 03/2024). It is quite useless as a review, because it merely complains about aesthetics, ignores the academic study the book summarizes,...

Simone’s Series on How to Read the Talmud: On Jewish Diversity

My attention has been brought to a long series on my treatment of Jewish sources in On the Historicity of Jesus by a certain Simone (actual name unknown). The series is extraordinarily long-winded, almost entirely impertinent, and makes strange errors in vocabulary or...

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...

Why Nothing Remains a Problem: The Andrew Loke Fiasco

I’ve long defended an argument theists seem to have no ability to escape: The Problem with Nothing: Why The Indefensibility of Ex Nihilo Nihil Goes Wrong for Theists. Robert Koons couldn’t get around it (Koons Cosmology vs. The Problem with Nothing). And...

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...

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...