This is a summary of the current state of the debate after the mini blog war between myself and Bart Ehrman over his latest book, Did Jesus Exist?, which attempted to argue against various scholars (both legitimate and crank) who have concluded, or at least suspect, that Jesus never really existed, but was an invention …
Category Archive: Jesus
Jul 20 2012
Three New Videos
The three best new videos of me of late are: (1) my talk at the Madison Freethought Festival: So…if Jesus Didn’t Exist, Where Did He Come from Then? (you can also view a PDF of the slideshow, lacking the animations); (2) my talk the year before for Wichita Rapture Day: You’re All Gonna Die!! How …
Jul 11 2012
Is This Not the Carpenter?
A new book questioning the historicity of Jesus has just come out, with academic contributors of some esteem: Is This Not the Carpenter? The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus (a publication of the Copenhagen International Seminar: Equinox, 2012), edited by Thomas Thompson and Thomas Verenna. Neither Thompson nor Verenna are deniers …
Jun 29 2012
The Jesus Tomb and Bayes’ Theorem
Finally, a mathematician actually gets the math right on the Jesus Tomb hypothesis. Conclusion? We have not found the tomb of Jesus. For those who already know the backstory and want to jump right to it, read Bayes’ Theorem and the “Jesus Family Tomb” by physicist Randy Ingermanson. He approached the problem like a physicist …
Jun 14 2012
The Dying Messiah Redux
The following article has been revised and corrected, with appreciation to the critiques and analyses of Thom Stark. Revisions may continue so as to perfect the content and make this article of greatest utility. Latest revision: June 29 (2012). Last year I made the case that the idea of a “dying messiah” was not wholly …
Jun 08 2012
Historicity Course This July
Want to study the best case for and against the historicity of Jesus? Want to pick my brain about that for a whole month? CFI has asked me to teach another online course on that very subject this July (that’s right, just three weeks from now) entitled Did Jesus Exist? Navigating the Debate. You can …
Apr 08 2012
Jesus Myth on CNN.com
The Jesus myth vs. history debate just got covered on CNN.com for Easter Sunday. The article, by John Blake, is “The Jesus Debate: Man vs. Myth.” Blake interviewed me and several others on both sides of the issue, and put together a sort of okay article reflecting common views on both sides, although it’s a …
Mar 25 2012
McGrath on the Amazing Infallible Ehrman
James McGrath responded to my reply to Ehrman’s intemperate and badly worded assault on the theory that Jesus was mythical (McGrath: Responding to Richard Carrier’s Response to Bart Ehrman), and as such represents exactly what is wrong with defenders of historicity: carelessness, post hoc rationalization, and factual error. I shall examine these flaws in detail, …
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