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(Redirected from Richard C. Carrier) American Christ myth theorist (1969-) For the witness during the 1692 Salem witch trials, see Richard Carrier (Salem witch trials).

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Richard Carrier
Photo of Richard Carrier
Born	Richard Cevantis Carrier (1969-12-01) December 1, 1969 (age 55) Orange County, California, USA
Nationality	American
Education	B.A. (History), M.A. (Ancient history), M.Phil. (Ancient history), Ph.D. (Ancient history)
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University
Spouse	Jennifer Robin Carrier (1995–2015)
Website	www.richardcarrier.info

Richard Cevantis Carrier (born December 1, 1969) is an American ancient historian. He is a long-time contributor to skeptical websites, including The Secular Web and Freethought Blogs. Carrier has published a number of books and articles on philosophy and religion in classical antiquity, discussing the development of early Christianity from a skeptical viewpoint, and concerning religion and morality in the modern world. He has publicly debated a number of scholars on the historical basis of the Bible and Christianity. He is a prominent advocate of the theory that Jesus did not exist, which he has argued in a number of his works. However, Carrier's methodology and conclusions in this field have proven controversial and unconvincing to most ancient historians, and he and his theories are often identified as fringe.

Background

In his autobiographical essay, "From Taoist to Infidel", Carrier discusses his upbringing in a benign Methodist church, his conversion to Taoism in early adulthood, his confrontation with Christian fundamentalists while in the United States Coast Guard, and his deeper study of religion, Christianity, and Western philosophy, which eventually led to his embrace of naturalism. From 1995 to 2015, he was married to Jennifer Robin Carrier. Announcing their divorce, Carrier revealed that he is polyamorous, and that after informing his wife of his extramarital affairs, the last two years of their marriage had been an open relationship.

In 2008, Carrier received a doctorate in ancient history from Columbia University, where he studied the history of science in antiquity. His thesis was entitled "Attitudes Towards the Natural Philosopher in the Early Roman Empire (100 B.C. to 313 A.D.)." He has published several articles and chapters in books on the subject of history and philosophy.

For a number of years, Carrier was editor of and a substantial contributor to The Secular Web, where he wrote on the topics of atheism and metaphysical naturalism; these later formed the basis for his book Sense and Goodness without God. He also authored a regular column on the web site Freethought Blogs; this was suspended in 2016 amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Carrier has frequently been a featured speaker at various skeptic, secular humanist, freethought and atheist conventions, such as the annual Freethought Festival in Madison, Wisconsin, the annual Skepticon convention in Springfield, Missouri, and conventions sponsored by American Atheists.

Carrier strongly advocated for a movement in atheism called "Atheism Plus," through which he argued that the atheist community ought to also share certain particular political agendas, not just lack a belief in God. Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci criticized Carrier for being very intolerant of people who disagreed with him or his atheistic views and for radicalizing the "Atheism plus" agenda. Pigliucci also quoted the originator of "Atheism plus", Jen McCreight, criticizing Carrier: "Finally had time 2 read Richard Carrier's #atheismplus piece. His language was unnecessarily harsh, divisive & ableist. Doesn't represent A+."

In recent years, Carrier has been accused of engaging in unwanted sexual advances at skeptic and atheist conventions. Carrier has both apologized for and denied the alleged misconduct.

Public debates and other media

Richard Carrier at Skepticon (2016).

Carrier has engaged in several formal debates, both online and in person, on a range of subjects, including naturalism, natural explanations of early Christian resurrection accounts, the morality of abortion, and the general credibility of the Bible. He debated Michael R. Licona on the Resurrection of Jesus at the University of California, Los Angeles on April 19, 2004. Carrier debated atheist Jennifer Roth online on the morality of abortion. He has defended naturalism in formal debates with Tom Wanchick and Hassanain Rajabali. He has debated David Marshall on the general credibility of the New Testament. His debates on the historicity of Jesus have included professor of religious studies Zeba A. Crook, Christian scholars Dave Lehman and Doug Hamp.

The March 18, 2009 debate Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? with William Lane Craig was held at the Northwest Missouri State University and posted online in two parts by ReasonableFaithOrg (YouTube channel). Prior to the debate, Carrier commented that "I originally insisted we first debate Are the Gospels Historically Reliable? for the simple reason that you can't honestly debate the former until you've debated (and in fact settled) the latter." In his post debate commentary, Carrier argued that Craig "focused almost entirely on protecting the Gospels as historical sources, and it was there that his shotgun of arguments got well ahead of my ability to catch up." Another debate with Craig was broadcast on Lee Strobel's television show Faith Under Fire.

The October 25, 2014 debate Did Jesus Exist? with Trent Horn was held in San Diego, California, and posted online by the "MABOOM Show" (YouTube channel). A debate with Craig A. Evans, entitled Did Jesus Exist? was held at Kennesaw State University on April 13, 2016, and posted online by KSUTV.

In 2006, Carrier was the keynote speaker for the Humanist Community of Central Ohio's annual Winter Solstice Banquet, where he spoke on defending naturalism as a philosophy. Carrier appears in Roger Nygard's 2009 documentary The Nature of Existence, in which persons of different religious and secular philosophies are interviewed about the meaning of life.

In 2007, famed English philosopher Antony Flew, who had long advocated atheism in the absence of empirical evidence of divinity, published his final book with co-author Roy Varghese, There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. Flew espoused the position that there was an intelligent creator, thereby embracing the concept of deism. Carrier wrote to Flew, and discussed the philosopher's supposed conversion on The Secular Web. In Carrier's analysis he came up with an incorrect theory that There Is a God was authored primarily by Varghese, and misrepresented Flew's opinion regarding religion. Without addressing Carrier directly, Flew released a rebutting statement through his publisher: "My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 percent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I'm 84 and that was Roy Varghese's role. This is my book and it represents my thinking."

Publications

Carrier's best-known works concern the development of early Christianity and atheism as well as modern views of religion and philosophy.

Criticism of Hitler's Table Talk

The empty tomb

In "The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb", Carrier argues that the earliest Christians probably believed that Jesus received a new spiritual body in the resurrection, and that stories of his original body disappearing from his tomb were later embellishments. Alternatively, he suggests the possibility that Jesus' body was stolen or misplaced. Carrier's analysis was criticized by philosophy professor Stephen T. Davis and Christian theologian Norman Geisler. Biblical scholar Andrew W. Pitts notes that Carrier's work "has received virtually no attention from biblical scholars". He also argues that Carrier makes numerous errors in his analysis of Second Temple Jewish materials as well as his linguistic analysis of 1 Cor 15:35–58.

Science education in the Early Roman Empire

This was Carrier's dissertation with some expansion. Here he attempts to describe the Roman education system that pertained to the sciences and how Jews and Christians held different views, which set the stage for dark ages. Michiel Meeusen, in his review, states the work had issues such as "whiggism employed in dealing with ancient science and scientists."

The scientist in the Early Roman Empire

This book is a follow-up to his dissertation "Science Education In The Early Roman Empire". Carrier argues that science in the Roman world was very advanced and progressive and would have reached a scientific revolution in a few more centuries had Christians not stepped in. In it he argues that Christians held back science for over a thousand years while ignoring or forgetting the scientific advancements of pagans. In Cristian Tolsa's review of the book, he notes that Carrier's view of science as essentially unaltered since Aristotle is a reductionist view that is inaccurate of the time period and that the book has "serious anachronisms". He also observes that Carrier fails to demonstrate the supposed stagnation of science from the Roman period to the modern period, but mainly assumes such is the case and relies on focusing on the advances made by pagans as enough to show that science really would have continued to grow indefinitely.

Historicity of Jesus

Earlier in his career, Carrier was not interested in the historicity of Jesus. His first thought was that it was a fringe theory, not worthy of academic inquiry; but a number of individuals requested that he investigate the subject, and raised money for him to do so. Since then, Carrier has become a vocal advocate of the theory that Jesus was not a historical person. Carrier clearly acknowledges consensus in scholarship, as he states "the non-existence of Jesus is simply not plausible, as arguments from silence in the matter aren't valid, nor could they ever be sufficient to challenge what is, after all, the near-universal consensus of well-qualified experts." And even states "the default consensus" is that Jesus Christ existed.

In Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn't Need a Miracle to Succeed (2009), Carrier writes on the social and intellectual context of the rise and early development of Christianity. Despite his initial skepticism of Christ myth theory, since late 2005 Carrier has considered it "very probable Jesus never actually existed as a historical person." In a blog entry from 2009, he writes "though I foresee a rising challenge among qualified experts against the assumption of historicity , as I explained, that remains only a hypothesis that has yet to survive proper peer review."

In Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (2012), Carrier describes the application of Bayes' theorem to historical inquiry in general, and the historicity of Jesus in particular. According to Carrier, Bayes’ theorem is the standard to which all methodology for any historical study must adhere in order to be logically sound. In his Bayesian analysis, the ahistoricity of Jesus is "true": that is, the "most probable" Bayesian conclusion. By the same methodology, Carrier posits that Jesus originated in the realm of mythology, rather than as a historical person who was subsequently mythologized. Carrier argues that the probability of Jesus' existence is somewhere in the range of 1/3 to 1/12000, depending on the estimates used for the computation. A number of critics have rejected Carrier's ideas and methodology, calling it "tenuous", or "problematic and unpersuasive". Simon Gathercole writes that Carrier's arguments "are contradicted by the historical data."

In On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (2014), Carrier continues to develop his Bayesian analysis of the historicity of Jesus. Carrier self describes himself and this work as "I am also the first historian in a hundred years to publish a complete peer-reviewed, academic press argument for the origin and development of Christianity that does not include a historical Jesus." The essence of his argument is that there is insufficient evidence, in the context of Bayesian probability, to believe in the historicity of Jesus. Furthermore, Carrier posits originally Jesus was the name of a celestial or "angelic extraterrestrial" being who was subordinate to God who came from a "cosmic sperm bank", was tortured and crucified by Satan and his demons, buried in a tomb above the clouds, and resurrected - all in outer space. As a celestial extraterrestrial, Jesus was probably known originally only through private revelations and hidden messages in scripture, which were then elaborated into an allegorical person, communicating the claims of the gospels. The allegorical aspect of Jesus was then lost during the struggle for control of the Christian churches during the first century. Noting that the gospels were written decades after Jesus' death, Carrier claims that the gospels are "wildly fictitious", and proposes that the Gospel of Mark is really an extended meta-parable. He further claims that post-biblical writings mentioning Jesus should not be regarded as independent sources for his existence, since they may have relied on the gospels for their information. Apart from the hero archetype pattern, Carrier contends that nothing else in the Gospels is reliable evidence for or against the historicity of Jesus.

Celestial Jesus

In 2002, Carrier reviewed the work of Earl Doherty, who posited that Jesus was originally a mythological being who subsequently came to be regarded as a historical person. Carrier concluded that Doherty's theory was plausible, although at the time he had not yet concluded that this hypothesis was more probable than the historical Jesus. He also criticized some of Doherty's points, which he considered untenable, although he regarded the basic concept as coherent and consistent with the evidence. Over time, Carrier's views shifted to the point that he accepted Doherty's premise as the most likely explanation of Jesus. He wrote, "It does soundly establish the key point that Jesus was regarded as a pre-existent incarnate divine being from the earliest recorded history of Christianity, even in fact before the writings of Paul, and that this was not even remarkable within Judaism."

Carrier states that originally Jesus was the name of a celestial or "angelic extraterrestrial" being who was subordinate to God who came from a "cosmic sperm bank", was tortured and crucified by Satan and his demons, buried in a tomb above the clouds, and resurrected - all in outer space. Elaborating on this hypothesis, Carrier asserts that originally "Jesus was the name of a celestial being, subordinate to God, with whom some people hallucinated conversations", and that "The Gospel began as a mythic allegory about the celestial Jesus, set on earth, as most myths then were." Stories developed placing Jesus on Earth, and placing him in context with historical figures and places. Subsequently, his worshipers came to believe that these allegories referred to a historical person.

Carrier asserts that the idea of a pre-Christian celestial being named "Jesus" is known from the writings of Philo of Alexandria on the Book of Zechariah. He argues that Philo's angelic being is identical to the Apostle Paul's Jesus: he is God's firstborn son, the celestial 'image of God', and God's agent of creation. However, Larry Hurtado contends that the figure named "Jesus" in Zechariah is a completely distinct figure, and that the Logos Philo discusses is not an angelic being at all.

In Carrier's view, Paul's reference in Romans 1:3 to Jesus being the "seed" of David describes his incarnation from a "cosmic sperm bank", rather than the usual interpretation of Jesus as a descendant of David. In Carrier's interpretation of Paul, Jesus possessed a surrogate human body, and thus the religious requirement of a blood sacrifice was fulfilled by his crucifixion by demons. Gathercole, however, notes that Paul's reference in Romans 1:3 is a common expression in the Septuagint, which simply refers to a "descendant", and that the theme of the descendants of David is common throughout the Old Testament. Carrier argues that like the school of early Jewish mysticism (100 BC– AD 1000), known as Merkabah mysticism, together with its views on the heavens and firmaments of creation, "Mythicism places the incarnation of Jesus below the heavens... being the whole vast region between the earth and the moon , was well-established in both Jewish and pagan cosmology (see Element 37, Chapter 4, OHJ, pp. 184–193)."

Reception and criticism

Both classicists and biblical scholars agree that there is a historical basis for a person called Jesus of Nazareth. Writing in 2004, Michael Grant stated, "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." More recently, Patrick Gray posited, "That Jesus did in fact walk the face of the earth in the first century is no longer seriously doubted even by those who believe that very little about his life or death can be known with any certainty." Proponents of the belief that a historical Jesus did not exist are frequently dismissed as "fringe theories" within classical scholarship.

On the Historicity of Jesus was positively reviewed by collaborator and fellow mythicist Raphael Lataster in the Journal of Religious History, who concurs that according to the gospels, "Jesus fits almost perfectly" the Rank-Raglan mythotype, and claims that there is "not a single confirmed historical figure" that conforms to the mythotype.

However, most contemporary scholarship has been critical of Carrier's methodology and conclusions. According to James F. McGrath, Carrier misuses Rank and Raglan's criteria and stretches their scales to make Jesus appear to score high on mythotype. According to Christopher Hansen, Carrier misuses and manipulates Raglan's scale to make Jesus appear more aligned with a mythotype by scoring him high, thus more mythical, when other scholars have scored Jesus as low, thus more historical. He argues that other scholars have assessed Jesus to be low on Raglan's scale and when Hansen looks at multiple other examples of historical figures he notes that "Historical figures regularly become Raglan heroes. They often score twelve or more points on the Raglan archetype" which casts doubts on the usefulness of the Raglan scale for historicity.

Aviezer Tucker, previously an advocate of applying Bayesian techniques to history, expressed some sympathy for Carrier's view of the gospels, stating: "The problem with the Synoptic Gospels as evidence for a historical Jesus from a Bayesian perspective is that the evidence that coheres does not seem to be independent, whereas the evidence that is independent does not seem to cohere." However, Tucker argues that historians have been able to use theories about the transmission and preservation of information to identify reliable parts of the gospels. He says that "Carrier is too dismissive of such methods because he is focused on hypotheses about the historical Jesus rather than on the best explanations of the evidence."

New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman writes that Carrier is one of only two scholars with relevant graduate credentials who argues against the historicity of Jesus. Discussing Carrier's theory that some Jews believed in a "humiliated messiah" prior to the existence of Christianity, Ehrman criticizes Carrier for "idiosyncratic" readings of the Old Testament that ignore modern critical scholarship on the Bible. Ehrman concludes by saying "e do not have a shred of evidence to suggest that any Jew prior to the birth of Christianity anticipated that there would be a future messiah who would be killed for sins—or killed at all—let alone one who would be unceremoniously destroyed by the enemies of the Jews, tortured and crucified in full public view. This was the opposite of what Jews thought the messiah would be." Ehrman has also publicly addressed Carrier's use of Bayes' Theorem, stating that "most historians simply don't think you can do history that way." He said he only knows of two historians who have used Bayes' Theorem, Carrier and Richard Swinburne, and noted the irony of the fact that Swinburne used it to prove Jesus was raised from the dead. Ehrman rejected both Carrier and Swinburne's conclusions, but conceded that he was unqualified to assess specifics about how they applied the theorem. "I'm not a statistician myself. I've had statisticians who tell me that both people are misemploying it, but I have no way of evaluating it."

Reviewing On the Historicity of Jesus, Daniel N. Gullotta says that Carrier has provided a "rigorous and thorough academic treatise that will no doubt be held up as the standard by which the Jesus Myth theory can be measured"; but he finds Carrier's arguments "problematic and unpersuasive", his use of Bayesian probabilities "unnecessarily complicated and uninviting", and he criticizes Carrier's "lack of evidence, strained readings and troublesome assumptions." Furthermore, he observed that using Bayes theorem in history seems useless, or at least unreliable, since it leads to absurd and contradictory results such as Carrier using it to come up with low probability for the existence of Jesus and scholar Richard Swinburne using it to come up with high probability that Jesus actually resurrected. Gullotta also says that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever, either documentary or archaeological, that there was a period when Jews or Christians believed that Jesus only existed in heaven as a celestial being where he was born from a "cosmic sperm bank" and was subsequently crucified by satan and his demons in outer space, which is Carrier's "foundational" thesis, rather than living as a human being on earth. Carrier is observed to constantly misinterpret and stretch sources and he also uses extensively fringe ideas like those of Dennis MacDonald on Homeric epics paralleling some of the Gospels, while downplaying the fact that MacDonald is still a historicist, not a mythicist. Gullotta also observes that Carrier relies on outdated and historically useless methods like Otto Rank and Lord Raglan's hero myth archetype events lists, which have been criticized and "have been almost universally rejected by scholars of folklore and mythology", in which Carrier alters the quantity and wording of these lists arbitrarily to his favor. Gullotta describes the belief that a historical Jesus never existed as a "fringe theory" that goes "unnoticed and unaddressed within scholarly circles".

Concerning the same book, Christina Petterson of the University of Newcastle writes, "Even if strictly correct, the methodology is tenuous. In addition, the numbers and the statistics seem like a diversion or an illusionary tactic which intentionally confuse and obfuscate". Unlike Gullotta, Petterson describes On the Historicity of Jesus as somewhat amateurish: "Maths aside, nothing in the book shocked me, but seemed quite rudimentary first year New Testament stuff." With respect to Carrier's argument that the later tales of a historical Jesus should be studied for their literary and rhetorical purpose, and not for their historical content, Petterson says that this "reveals Carrier's ignorance of the field of New Testament studies and early Christianity."

M. David Litwa of Australian Catholic University, in a discussion of Carrier's work with a focus on On the Historicity of Jesus, notes that Carrier portrays himself "as a kind of crusader fighting for the truth of secular humanism", whose mission it is "to prove Christianity (or Carrier's understanding of it) wrong." He also notes that "Carrier's cavalier dismissal of the Bible and animosity toward the biblical deity would not seem to predispose him for careful biblical scholarship." Litwa describes Carrier as "on the fringes of the academic guild", although he is a trained scholar and does employ scholarly methods. Litwa goes on to argue against several arguments made by Carrier in On the Historicity of Jesus. Litwa writes that Carrier's application of the Rank-Raglan mythotype to Jesus relies on forced similarities and that "the pattern ignores major elements of life." He also criticizes Carrier's attempts to derive Jesus from James Frazer's theory of the Near-Eastern dying-and-rising fertility god as relying on a "largely defunct" category in religious scholarship. He notes that few gods die and rise, usually staying dead in some way. Although Litwa acknowledges a parallel between the suffering experienced by dying deities and Jesus's suffering, he argues that pagan dying deities do not choose to die as Jesus does. Regarding Carrier's appeals to other ancient religious figures such as Romulus and the prophet Daniel who appear not to have existed, Litwa argues that Jesus is attested only twenty years after his death by Paul: "A name and a human character to go with it could not have been invented in this short period without invoking suspicion." Litwa dismisses Carrier's hypothesis that Paul's Jesus was an angelic being crucified on the celestial plane as relying on "baseless" speculation that the second-century Ascension of Isaiah was available to Paul and that its mention of Jesus's birth on earth and his crucifixion in Jerusalem are later additions, despite scholarship to the contrary.

Christopher Hansen observed that Carrier believes Jews already believed in a preexisting a supernatural son of God named Jesus based Philo's interpretation Zech. 6.12. However, Hansen argues that his argument relies on weak arguments and no evidence. He states, following Daniel Gullotta, "there is not a single instance of a recorded celestial angel or Logos figure named Jesus/Joshua in ancient Jewish literature."

Professor Emeritus Larry Hurtado of the University of Edinburgh writes that, contrary to Carrier's claims, Philo of Alexandria never refers to an archangel named "Jesus". Hurtado also states that the Apostle Paul clearly believed Jesus to have been a real man who lived on earth, and that the deities of pagan saviour cults, such as Isis and Osiris, were not transformed in their devotees' ideas from heavenly deities to actual people living on earth.

Similar criticisms were voiced by Simon Gathercole of Cambridge, who concludes that Carrier's arguments, and more broadly, the mythicist positions on different aspects of Paul's letters, are contradicted by the historical data, and that Paul's description of Jesus' life on Earth, his personality and family, tend to establish that Paul regarded Jesus as a natural person, rather than an allegorical figure. According to Christopher Hansen, Carrier's understanding of Romans 1:3 as meaning that Jesus was born in heaven by God from a "cosmic sperm bank" is not supported by the Jewish or Christian sources and not supported even by the scholars that Carrier cites to make his argument.

In addition, Carrier's counter-consensus thesis that the early reference to Christ in the Roman historian Tacitus was a Christian interpolation, and that Tacitus intended to refer to "Chrestians" as a separate religious group unaffiliated with Christianity, has been recently rejected by Willem Blom, who finds that Carrier's thesis relies on unconvincing silences and mistaken understandings of the 1st and 2nd centuries, and notes that the consensus view is that the passage is not an interpolation. Furthermore, classicist Margaret Williams observes that Carrier’s thesis is outdated, not supported on textual grounds, nor is there any evidence of this non-Christian group existing and is thus dismissed by classical scholars. She noted that in a recent assessment by latinists on the Tacitus passage, they unanimously deemed the passage authentic and noted that no serious Tacitean scholar believes it to be an interpolation.

Blais et al. observed flaws in Carrier's methodology and resulting Bayesian calculations, namely that Carrier used 14 people from before the 10th century BC (from the distant past) to calculate the probability of Jesus existing and not existing. His selection of personages influenced his probability of historicity of Jesus to be 33% at best (a fortiori). However, when Blais et al. used 33 personages from after the 10th century BC (more recent time period) along with the date they were depicted as living, they observed that most were actually historical. This update significantly alters the probability of historicity of Jesus to be 99% at best (a fortiori).

Marko Marina states that Carrier's work is guided by his ideological agenda, not by serious historical work, and criticizes his views of Paul's letters, his assumptions of how Jesus tradition developed, lack of positive evidences from primary sources and notes that his mythicist views have not won any supporters from critical scholars in the past 10 years.

Bibliography

Gesù resistente Gesù inesistente. Due visioni a confronto (with Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, Franco Tommasi & Robert M. Price, in Italian) (Manni, 2022) ISBN 978-8836171477
Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ (Pitchstone Publishing, 2020) ISBN 978-1634311946
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014) ISBN 978-1909697492, 978-1909697355
Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995–2013 (Richmond, CA: Philosophy Press, 2014) ISBN 978-1493567126
Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012) ISBN 978-1616145590
Chapter: "How Not to Defend Historicity", in Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth, (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press 2013) ISBN 978-1578840199
Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith (Philosophy Press, 2011) ISBN 978-1456588854
Chapters: "Christianity's success was not incredible", "Neither life nor the universe appear intelligently designed", "Moral facts naturally exist (and science could find them)" in The End of Christianity edited by John W. Loftus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books 2011) ISBN 978-1616144135.
Not the Impossible Faith, Why Christianity Didn't Need a Miracle to Succeed Lulu.com (2009) ISBN 978-0557044641
Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism. AuthorHouse (2005) ISBN 1420802933.

Footnotes

"Although it remains a fringe phenomenon, familiarity with the Christ myth theory has become much more widespread among the general public with the advent of the Internet."

References

^ "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). October 7, 2014. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
"Richard Carrier". Westar Institute. Jesus Seminar.
^ Casey, Maurice (2014). Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?. Bloomsbury T&T Clark. pp. 14–16. ISBN 978-0567447623.
^ Tucker, Aviezer (February 2016). "The Reverend Bayes vs Jesus Christ". History and Theory. 55 (1): 129–140. doi:10.1111/hith.10791.
^ Gathercole, Simon. "The Historical and Human Existence of Jesus in Paul’s Letters." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 16.2–3 (2018): 183–212.
^ Gullotta 2017.
Marina 2022, p. 215–235 states that Richard Carrier's mythicist views have not won any supporters from critical scholars or the academic community and that mythicist theory remains as fringe.
^ Litwa 2019, p. 35.
^ Gullotta 2017, p. 312.
^ Marina 2022.
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Weinberg, Gerhard (2003). Foreword In Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed. 2003. Hitler's Table Talk 1941–1944. New York: Engima Books, p. xi
Hastings, Derek (2010). Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 251.
Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2003). The Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 255–256.
Steigmann-Gall, Richard (2007). Christianity and the Nazi Movement Archived October 13, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Journal of Contemporary History 42 (2): 208.
Johnstone, Nathan. The New Atheism, Myth, and History: The Black Legends of Contemporary Anti-Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 90.
Carrier, Richard (2005). "The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb". In Price, Robert M.; Lowder, Jeffery Jay (eds.). The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1591022862.
Davis, Stephen T. (2006). "The Counterattack of the Resurrection Skeptics: A Review Article". Philosophia Christi. 8 (1): 39–63. doi:10.5840/pc2006814.
Geisler, Norman (Spring 2006). "A Critical Review of The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave". Christian Apologetics Journal. 5 (1): 45–106.
^ Pitts, Andrew W. (2016). "Paul's Concept of the Resurrection Body in 1 Corinthians 15:35-58". In Porter, Stanley E.; Yoon, David (eds.). Paul and Gnosis. BRILL. pp. 44–58. ISBN 978-90-04-31669-0. social model will strike many New Testament scholars as quite antiquated due to its overreliance upon rabbinic materials. Although he does attempt to recruit Philo and Josephus for his purposes as well, Philo—he agrees—may support the common Jewish understanding of the soul's immortality and his readings of Josephus simply do not represent a convincing departure from established thinking on Josephus's concept of the afterlife. Linguistically, Carrier runs into several problems as well. In addition to a committal of a fairly basic word-study fallacy and problems with identifying the grammatical subject and referential cohesion, Carrier fails to consider wider frames of co-text in his interpretation of 1 Cor 15:44 and does not provide his readers with convincing reasons to accept his rendering of ἀλαγησόμεθα as an exchange. Thus, the widely held transformation view still seems preferable to the exchange theory proposed by Carrier and several others before him.
Carrier, Richard (2016). Science Education in the Early Roman Empire. Pitchstone Publishing. ISBN 978-1634310901.
Meeusen, Michiel (July 4, 2018). "Review: Science Education in the Early Roman Empire, by Richard Carrier". History of Education. 47 (4): 578–580. doi:10.1080/0046760X.2017.1382579. S2CID 149357972.
Carrier, Richard (2017). The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire. Pitchstone Publishing. ISBN 978-1634311069.
^ Tolsa, Cristian (September 2019). "Review: Richard Carrier. The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire . 645 pp., bibl., index. Durham, N.C.: Pitchstone Publishing, 2017. ISBN 978-1634311069". Isis. 110 (3): 585–586. doi:10.1086/704630. S2CID 203109378.
"Did Jesus Exist? Dr. Robert M Price, Dr. Richard Carrier, David Fitzgerald Interview Part 1". YouTube. May 22, 2015. Archived from the original on December 22, 2021.
Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. pp. 2–3, 21. ISBN 9781909697355. I responded to these sincere inquiries with the same general reply: the non-existence of Jesus is simply not plausible, as arguments from silence in the matter aren't valid, nor could they ever be sufficient to challenge what is, after all, the near-universal consensus of well-qualified experts." and "The historicity of Jesus Christ is currently the default consensus.
Carrier, Richard. "Spiritual Body FAQ". Retrieved March 19, 2015.
Carrier, Richard (March 25, 2009). "Richard Carrier Blogs: Craig Debate Wrap". Retrieved March 19, 2015.
Carrier, Richard (2012). Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. New York: Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1616145606.
Lataster, Raphael (2015). "Questioning the Plausibility of Jesus Ahistoricity Theories — A Brief Pseudo-Bayesian Metacritique of the Sources". The Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies. 6 (1): 91.
Carrier, Richard (June 30, 2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (kindle ed.). location 40476: Sheffield Phoenix Press. ASIN B00QSO2S5C.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
^ Petterson, Christina (December 2015). "On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt". Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception. 5 (2): 253–258. doi:10.11157/rsrr5-2-702. Retrieved January 15, 2018.
"Sheffield Phoenix Press – Display Book". Sheffieldphoenix.com. Archived from the original on July 8, 2016. Retrieved June 21, 2016.
Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. ISBN 978-1909697355.
Carrier, Richard (August 1, 2022). "Book Review: Varieties of Jesus Mythicism". SHERM. 4 (1): 171–192. doi:10.33929/sherm.2022.vol4.no1.10. S2CID 251822585.
Carrier, Richard (2020). Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ (First ed.). Pitchstone Publishing. p. 8-9. ISBN 9781634311946. The most accurate description of earliest Christian thought is that Jesus was an angelic extraterrestrial, who descended from outer space to become a man, teach the gospel, suffer an atoning death, and rise again to return to his throne among the stars, even more powerful than before.
Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. p. 576-577. ISBN 978-1909697355. The notion of a cosmic sperm bank is so easily read out of this scripture, and is all but required by the outcome of subsequent history, that it is not an improbable assumption. And since scripture required the messiah to be Davidic, anyone who started with the cosmic doctrine inherent in minimal mythicism would have had to imagine something of this kind. That Jesus would be made 'from the sperm of David' is therefore all but entailed by minimal mythicism.
Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. p. 563. ISBN 978-1909697355. In Chapter 3 we addressed the bare facts of Jesus having suffered and died and been buried and resurrected, which are all expected beliefs on minimal mythicism - as on that theory, these events all occurred in outer space (in the original Christian belief). Jesus would have been buried in a grave or tomb somewhere above the clouds, just as Adam was (Element 38). He would likewise have been abused and crucified there, by Satan and his sky demons (Element 37), just as the earliest discernible redaction of the Ascension of Isaiah imagined.
^ Carrier, Richard. "So ... if Jesus Didn't Exist, Where Did He Come from Then?" (PDF). www.richardcarrier.info. Retrieved May 12, 2016. The Official Website of Richard Carrier, Ph.D.
Raphael Lataster. Questioning the Plausibility of Jesus Ahistoricity Theories — A Brief Pseudo-Bayesian Metacritique of the Sources. The Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies, 2015, 75.
"Two Lessons Bart Ehrman Needs to Learn about Probability Theory – Richard Carrier". Richard Carrier. November 15, 2016. Retrieved November 17, 2016. part from what we can determine from and for the Rank-Raglan data, nothing in the Gospels argues for or against historicity: OHJ, pp. 395, 506–509.
"Richard Carrier Jesus Puzzle » Internet Infidels". Internet Infidels. January 1, 2002.
Lataster, Raphael (December 2014). "Richard Carrier: On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014; pp. xiv + 696". Journal of Religious History. 38 (4): 614–616. doi:10.1111/1467-9809.12219. , highly influenced by the work of Earl Doherty, states that Jesus was initially believed to be a celestial figure, who came to be historicised over time.
"Bart Ehrman on How Jesus Became God".
Carrier, Richard (2020). Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ (First ed.). Pitchstone Publishing. p. 8-9. ISBN 9781634311946. The most accurate description of earliest Christian thought is that Jesus was an angelic extraterrestrial, who descended from outer space to become a man, teach the gospel, suffer an atoning death, and rise again to return to his throne among the stars, even more powerful than before.
Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. p. 576-577. ISBN 978-1909697355. The notion of a cosmic sperm bank is so easily read out of this scripture, and is all but required by the outcome of subsequent history, that it is not an improbable assumption. And since scripture required the messiah to be Davidic, anyone who started with the cosmic doctrine inherent in minimal mythicism would have had to imagine something of this kind. That Jesus would be made 'from the sperm of David' is therefore all but entailed by minimal mythicism.
Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. p. 563. ISBN 978-1909697355. In Chapter 3 we addressed the bare facts of Jesus having suffered and died and been buried and resurrected, which are all expected beliefs on minimal mythicism - as on that theory, these events all occurred in outer space (in the original Christian belief). Jesus would have been buried in a grave or tomb somewhere above the clouds, just as Adam was (Element 38). He would likewise have been abused and crucified there, by Satan and his sky demons (Element 37), just as the earliest discernible redaction of the Ascension of Isaiah imagined.
Carrier, Richard (August 2014). "The Bible and Interpretation – Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt: Should We Still Be Looking for a Historical Jesus?". www.bibleinterp.com. Retrieved August 29, 2016. Christianity, as a Jewish sect, began when someone (most likely Cephas, perhaps backed by his closest devotees) claimed this "Jesus" had at last revealed that he had tricked the Devil by becoming incarnate and being crucified by the Devil (in the region of the heavens ruled by Devil), thereby atoning for all of Israel's sins. ... It would be several decades later when subsequent members of this cult, after the world had not yet ended as claimed, started allegorizing the gospel of this angelic being. By placing him in earth history as a divine man, as a commentary on the gospel and its relation to society and the Christian mission.
Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 200–05.
- Jesus being a preexisting archangel: Phil. 2:5–11
- Jesus was as an angel: Gal. 4:14
- Jesus knew Moses: 1 Cor. 10:4
Richard Carrier. Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt: Should We Still Be Looking for a Historical Jesus?. Bible and Interpretation, 2014.
Larry Hurtad. Gee, Dr. Carrier, You’re Really Upset! 2017.
Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, p. 577.
Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, p. 570.
Gathercole, Simon. "The Historical and Human Existence of Jesus in Paul’s Letters." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 16.2–3 (2018): 191, n. 32.
Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 184–193.
Ehrman, Bart (2011). Forged: Writing in the name of God. HarperCollins. p. 285. ISBN 978-0062078636.
Michael Grant (2004), Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, ISBN 1898799881 p. 200
^ Patrick Gray (2016), Varieties of Religious Invention, chapter 5, Jesus, Paul, and the birth of Christianity, Oxford University Press, p. 114
Robert M. Price (2010), Secret Scrolls: Revelations from the Lost Gospel Novels, p. 200 "Christ Myth theory as a discredited piece of lunatic fringe thought alongside Holocaust Denial and skepticism about the Apollo moon landings."
Raphael Lataster; Richard Carrier. Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Lataster, Raphael (December 3, 2014). "RichardCarrier: On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014; pp. xiv + 696". Journal of Religious History. 38 (4): 614. doi:10.1111/1467-9809.12219.
McGrath, James. "Rankled by Wrangling over Rank-Raglan Rankings: Jesus and the Mythic Hero Archetype". The Bible and Interpretation. University of Arizona.
^ Hansen, Christopher M. (2020). "Lord Raglan's Hero and Jesus: A Rebuttal to Methodologically Dubious Uses of the Raglan Archetype" (PDF). Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism. 16: 129–149.
Ehrman, Bart (2012). Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. New York: HarperOne. pp. 19, 167.
Ehrman, Bart (2012). Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. New York: HarperOne. pp. 167–170.
Ehrman, Bart (2012). Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. New York: HarperOne. p. 170.
Ehrman, Bart; Price, Robert; Mythicist Milwaukee (March 24, 2017). "Bart Ehrman & Robert Price Debate – Did Jesus Exist". YouTube. Bart D. Ehrman. Event occurs at 1:52:12 – 1:53:50. Archived from the original on December 22, 2021. Retrieved August 19, 2020.
Gullotta 2017, p. 312 "Yet I cannot help but compare Carrier’s approach to the work of Richard Swinburne, who likewise uses Bayes’ theorem to demonstrate the high probability of Jesus’ resurrection, and wonder if it is not fatally telling that Bayes’ theorem can be used to both prove the reality of Jesus’ physical resurrection and prove that he had no existence as a historical person.".
Gullotta 2017, pp. 340–342.
Litwa 2019, p. 34.
Litwa 2019, pp. 35–37.
Litwa 2019, p. 39.
Litwa 2019, pp. 39–41.
Litwa 2019, p. 42.
Litwa 2019, pp. 37–39.
Hansen, Christopher M. (May 4, 2022). "Re-examining the Pre-Christian Jesus". Journal of Early Christian History. 12 (2): 17–40. doi:10.1080/2222582X.2021.2001667. S2CID 246882282.
Hurtado, Larry (December 2, 2017). "Why the "Mythical Jesus" Claim Has No Traction with Scholars". larryhurtado.wordpress.com. Retrieved January 15, 2018.
Hansen, Christopher M. (2020–2021). "Romans 1:3 and the Celestial Jesus: A Rebuttal to Revisionist Interpretations of Jesus's Descendance from David in Paul". McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry. 22. Wipf & Stock.
Blom, Willem JC. "Why the Testimonium Taciteum Is Authentic: A Response to Carrier." Vigiliae Christianae 73.5 (2019): 564–581.
^ Williams, Margaret H. (2023). Early Classical Authors on Jesus. T&T Clark. pp. 67–74. ISBN 9780567683151.
Blais, Brian; Gregor, Kamil; Hansen, Chrissy (2024). "The Prior Probability of Jesus Mythicism Re-evaluated in Light of the Gospels' Dramatic Date". Journal of Early Christian History.

Sources

Bernier, Jonathan (2016), The Quest for the Historical Jesus after the Demise of Authenticity: Toward a Critical Realist Philosophy of History in Jesus Studies, Bloomsbury Publishing
Burridge, Richard A.; Gould, Graham (2004). Jesus Now and Then. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0802809773.
Fox, Robin Lane (2005). The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465024964.
Gullotta, Daniel N. (2017). "On Richard Carrier's Doubts: A Response to Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt". Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 15 (2–3): 310–346. doi:10.1163/17455197-01502009.
Marina, Marko (2022). "Povijesni Isus i miticizam: kritička analiza teorije Richarda Carriera". Diacovensia. 30 (2): 215–235. doi:10.31823/d.30.2.3.
Litwa, M. David (2019). How The Gospels Became History : Jesus and Mediterranean myths. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300242638.
Van Voorst, Robert E. (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-0802843685.
Van Voorst, Robert E. (2003). "Nonexistence Hypothesis". In James Leslie Houlden (ed.). Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia. Vol. 2: K–Z. ABC-CLIO. pp. 658–660. ISBN 978-1576078563.

External links

Official website
Richard Carrier's writings at Internet Infidels
Westar Fellow "Richard Carrier profile".

v t e Christ myth theory
Biblical minimalism Historicity of the Bible Textual criticism Criticism of the Bible People whose existence is disputed
Proponents	John M. Allegro Bruno Bauer Georg Brandes Thomas L. Brodie Richard Carlile Richard Carrier Paul-Louis Couchoud Earl Doherty Arthur Drews Charles François Dupuis Kersey Graves Tom Harpur Edwin Johnson Albert Kalthoff Alvin Boyd Kuhn Samuel Lublinski M. M. Mangasarian Michael Martin Michel Onfray Robert M. Price J. M. Robertson Acharya S Gilbert T. Sadler William Benjamin Smith Thomas L. Thompson Raoul Vaneigem G. A. Wells Thomas Whittaker Frank Zindler
Organizations	Mythicist Milwaukee
Documentaries	The God Who Wasn't There The Pagan Christ Zeitgeist: The Movie
Publications	Anacalypsis The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors The Christ Myth The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present Did Jesus Exist? (Wells) The Jesus Mysteries The Pagan Christ Caesar's Messiah The Jesus Puzzle The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross Journal of Higher Criticism
Critics	Greg Boyd Joseph Estlin Carpenter Shirley Jackson Case Maurice Casey F. C. Conybeare Bart Ehrman Maurice Goguel T. J. Thorburn H. G. Wood

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