Carrier on Ehrman’s Response to Criticisms

Carrier took a moment out of his conference schedule to type a response to Ehrman.  It is as efficient as his others, meaning that he thoroughly shows the hubris of Ehrman’s latest foray (his book and his response to critics).  And let us not beat around the bush here, there is either dishonesty at work [...]

‘Is This Not the Carpenter’ in the Mail Today!

So my coedited volume ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus arrived today, much to my excitement (and confusion).  This is not due out for another two months (June 2012) but somehow a copy made its way to a third party bookseller on Amazon and I picked [...]

Richard Carrier, Bayes’s Theorem, and Historical Jesus Criteria

Richard Carrier has a new article posted at the online journal Bible and Interpretation entitled Bayes’ Theorem and the Modern Historian: Proving History Requires Improving Methods.  Here is the blurb: Several examinations of the methodologies employed in the study of Jesus have consistently found those methods invalid or defective. Which fact has resulted in the [...]

Carrier on Ehrman on Jesus – Part of Richard Carrier’s Review is Posted

I was pleased to see carrier posted up his review of Ehrman’s book late last night (early in the morning for me, here on the East Coast); what is a shame is that Carrier’s (dozen or so page) review is so outstandingly better than what Ehrman wrote (in his few-hundred-page book) that you have to [...]

The Jonah Ossuary: The Physics of ‘Work’ and Data Interpretation

When I was in elementary school, the school itself was under heavy construction (it now looks completely different than it did when I attended).  So the fifth and sixth grade classes were held in trailers attached to the brick and mortar school by a wooden ramp.  All of our subjects were taught from these trailers [...]

2012 is Shaping Up to be the Year of Fakes, Frauds, and Sensationalism

First, we had the picture of the Markan manuscript fragment that has widely been debunked as a fake. Now we have a ‘new’ 1500-year-old Bible with what appears to be gold lettering that just seems all sorts of odd. And just today, wouldn’t you know, a month and some days away from Easter, a new [...]

Review of the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit at the Discovery Center

 Where: Discovery Center – New York  When: January 8, 2012  Overall Impression of the Exhibit: Brief Introduction to the Exhibit: Today I traveled to New York to see the much-acclaimed Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Discovery Center (just off Times Square).  This is one of those exhibits I’ve been looking forward to seeing since [...]

The Transfiguration and the Inclusion of Moses

Ascension was nothing new in antiquity.  Richard Carrier jokingly noted that had there been television in antiquity, stories about people who ascend to heaven (or some variant of this) would have been more popular than crime dramas are today.  And, ironically, the New Testament doesn’t deny this. After six days Jesus took with him Peter, [...]

Defining Mythicism: Richard Carrier – “Did Jesus Exist?”

This video is some years old and people’s perspectives become more refined over time.  So I asked Richard if he still stands behind this video before vlogging.  Richard noted, in response: In the intro of the S.II talk I establish caveats (that the talk itself is tongue in cheek and doesn’t address lots of other [...]

‘The Umbrella Man’ – A Cautionary Tale About History

What a fantastic example of the underlying nuances of the past.  For those who question why I stress such caution when investigating figures in the past, say the figure of Jesus, this is why.  There are so many nuances to the investigation, that to stress anything with a black-and-white mentality or a hard certainty is, [...]