On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt

by Richard C. Carrier

The assumption that Jesus existed as a historical person has occasionally been questioned in the course of the last hundred years or so, but any doubts that have been raised have usually been put to rest in favor of imagining a blend of the historical, the mythical and the theological in the surviving records of Jesus.

Carrier re-examines the whole question and finds compelling reasons to suspect the more daring assumption is correct. He lays out extensive research on the evidence for Jesus and the origins of Christianity and poses the key questions that must now be answered if the historicity of Jesus is to survive as a dominant paradigm.

Carrier contrasts the most credible reconstruction of a historical Jesus with the most credible theory of Christian origins if a historical Jesus did not exist. Such a theory would posit that the Jesus figure was originally conceived of as a celestial being known only through private revelations and hidden messages in scripture; then stories placing this being in earth history were crafted to communicate the claims of the gospel allegorically; such stories eventually came to be believed or promoted in the struggle for control of the Christian churches that survived the tribulations of the first century.

Carrier finds the latter theory more credible than has been previously imagined. He explains why it offers a better explanation for all the disparate evidence surviving from the first two centuries of the Christian era. He argues that we need a more careful and robust theory of cultural syncretism between Jewish theology and politics of the second-temple period and the most popular features of pagan religion and philosophy of the time.

For anyone intent on defending a historical Jesus, this is the book to challenge.

Genres: Religion, History, Nonfiction, Atheism, Christianity, Philosophy, Theology

712 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2014

About the author

Richard Cevantis Carrier is an American historian, published philosopher, and prominent defender of the American freethought movement. He is well known for his writings on Internet Infidels, otherwise known as the Secular Web, where he served as Editor-in-Chief for several years. As an advocate of atheism and metaphysical naturalism, he has published articles in books, journals and magazines, and also features on the documentary film The God Who Wasn't There, where he is interviewed about his doubts on the historicity of Jesus. He currently contributes to The God Contention, a web site comparing and contrasting various worldviews.

Reviews

[Alan Zundel · Rating 4 out of 5]

What really happened back at the beginning of Christianity?

Measured by trashy novels like “The Da Vinci Code” and last year’s best-seller, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” public interest remains keen on this topic. We’ve moved from “The Greatest Story Ever Told” to “The Greatest Detective Story Ever Told.”

Scholars have been sifting the evidence for a couple hundred years now, and they’ve pretty well established that the gospels are not presenting literal history. But the gospels must be based on something that really happened, right? Historians have widely agreed there must have been a real person, Jesus, who kicked the whole thing off.

The problem is, when it comes to the question of what actually happened to Jesus or what he really said or did, historians and bible scholars are all over the map.

“Mythicists” propose an answer as to why they disagree: it’s because Jesus never existed in the first place.

As someone who’s had an interest in early Christianity for at least forty years now, I’ve long been aware there are people who argue that Christianity started with a myth, not a real person. I didn’t take them seriously because (1) historians were in consensus that Jesus existed, and (2) I couldn’t imagine how a mythological figure could come to be taken to be a real person.

Well, (1) that consensus may be breaking down, and (2) Richard Carrier’s recent book, “On the Historicity of Jesus,” has supplemented that defect of my imagination.

The subtitle of the book—“Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt”—exhibits false modesty, as Carrier spends over 600 pages explaining why he believes we have plenty of reason for doubt. For people with the requisite stamina and obsessive interest in the topic to plow through the book, it is worth the effort.

Carrier has a Ph.D. in ancient history and it shows. He leads the reader through a fairly comprehensive tour of the pertinent evidence, loaded with footnotes to experts’ publications in peer-reviewed books and articles. I caught up with scholarship on topics I already was somewhat familiar with, and learned a lot of things I did not know.

Carrier is also a prominent atheist, and arguments with and about him have lit up the internet. The debate about the historicity of Jesus is often a proxy for a theological debate between atheists and more conservative Christians, but it is in some ways beside the point.

Even if it were proven Jesus never existed, that would not prove God does not exist. And the non-existence of someone can never be definitively proven anyway, so Christians can go right on believing Jesus existed even if historians come to agree that it is very unlikely. Believing what other people find hard to believe has been a point of pride for Christians at least since Paul was writing.

But the topic of Christian origins is also important for non-theological fields: history, psychology, and the study of religion to name the most obvious. The greatest value of Carrier’s book is that he presents a sound method to follow in attempting to answer the question of whether Jesus existed. (Actually, he presented the method in an earlier book, “Proving History,” and in this book applies it to the topic at hand.)

Carrier says you must first define the “reference class” of the event you are examining to determine its “prior probability” of actually happening. You have to have background knowledge of the ancient world to do this. The story of a God-man who dies for sins and rises to heaven in triumph puts the event in the class of myths about dying and rising gods. That establishes an estimated probability of the historical reality of Jesus before examining the evidence.

Second, you create competing hypotheses to explain how the story came to be. Here the first hypothesis is that there was a real man, Jesus, who somehow inspired the myth-like story, and the competing hypothesis is that there was a myth of a dying and rising god that somehow came to be believed as an historical event.

Third, you survey all the relevant evidence, and with each piece of evidence you estimate the probability that evidence like this would exists for each hypothesis. Carrier’s survey includes both biblical documents (the Acts of the Apostles, the four gospels, and those epistles established to be early and authentic), and extra-biblical documents (the writings of Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Papias of Hierapolis, Hegesippus, Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, Thallus, and others).

Finally you follow the mathematical procedure to total the overall probability that each hypothesis is true, based on the prior probability and all the probabilities that each piece of pertinent evidence would exist under each hypothesis. It seems a sound method to me. Carrier estimates a 1 in 3 chance, at most, that Jesus existed, and a “more judicious” estimate of 1 in 12,000.

The important thing is that he tells you exactly how to go about coming up with a different estimate. If his opponents do, the debate would be enlightening.

But I doubt that many of them will.

His method called to mind a book that was required reading when I was in graduate school, Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Kuhn described how intellectual communities can remain married to a theory despite accumulating incongruous evidence, until there is a “paradigm shift” in their dominant way of thinking.

That process is never easy. It doesn’t take theological commitments to impede it, as reputation, psychological resistance to questioning one’s worldview, social pressure, and other mundane forces are sufficient.

As for me, I had already come to a place where I was willing to entertain mythicist arguments. I didn’t pay much attention to Carrier’s probability estimates, as I was more interested in understanding the mythicist interpretation of what happened and seeing how he would handle the evidence that I think would be the most difficult to account for. (For the record, Carrier addressed that evidence in Chapter 11 on the epistles. I think he did a good job, and would like to read rejoinders to his arguments.)

For those who got this far in my review, here is the payoff of a brief summary of the mythicist version of early Christian origins:

Between the 20s and the 40s a Jewish sect adopted a belief that a celestial divine figure, Jesus (which means “God saves”), descended from the highest heaven down through the celestial realms into the sub-lunar realm just above the earth, where God gave him a human body and Satan and his demons crucified him. Jesus then rose from the dead, destroying their demonic power over the earth and ascending in triumph back to the highest heaven. This belief was an amalgamation of common mystery religion themes and an interpretation of Jewish scriptures.

The sect was led by people like Peter and, later, Paul, who received messages from Jesus via visions and interpretations of scriptural passages. They believed Jesus’ sacrificial death enabled them to abandon the corrupt Temple sacrificial cult and receive forgiveness of sins via faith in Jesus and participation in ritual baptism and a sacred meal. The latter were again themes common to mystery religions.

Between the 30s and 70s some Christian congregations developed a longer allegorical story of Jesus’ life, sacrificial death, resurrection and ascension, with the inner meaning taught to higher initiates (the “telios”) and an outer, historicized story presented to new converts. This was also something that happened in other mystery religions. Persecutions, famines, and the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 disrupted the early churches and led to a “dark age” of the Christian movement from the 60s to the 90s or so. Most, if not all of the original Christian leaders died during this time.

It was during this “dark age” that the canonical gospels and Acts of the Apostles were developed, using the common techniques of adopting and adapting sayings, events, and literary models from other writings, primarily the Jewish scriptures. None of it was based on an historical Jesus, and the people involved in writing and rewriting them were writing guides to Christian living, not actual history.

In the second century there were competing versions of Christianity, and the one which prevailed was one which preached an historical Jesus rather than one who spoke only via revelation or the interpretation of Jewish scriptures. They sanctioned the Christian writings which could be used to support their position and suppressed writings which contradicted it. From that point on the history of the church is clearer.

Carrier’s claim is that this version fits the evidence better than the alternative version that things started with an actual person, Jesus. Read his book and judge for yourself whether he made a good case.

[Rusty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh boy – This was the most comprehensive book I think I’ve ever read regarding religious stuff in general. I mean, aside from actual religious texts themselves. This one is a doozy. It won’t be easy to get my thoughts down, I bet what I do get out will be disjointed and incomplete.

Okay, so, funny story, someone I love but has become very devout in their faith discovered I was reading this book, within hours of them finding this out I received lots of information about the author’s personal life, their sexual practices, accusations of shady money grabs, all of it presented to me like it should invalidate anything he writes on the subject of the historicity of Jesus. It was the most bizarre form of argumentation I’ve ever been exposed to. But the book (On the Historicity of Jesus) has a subtitle which I honestly didn’t notice when I purchased it: Why We Have Reason to Doubt. I suppose that I’d even consider reading a book with such a thesis means I’m on the precipice of spiritual disaster anyway, right? I guess they, while not willing to read any of the arguments presented, felt justified in trying to get me not to read them by poisoning the well as to his character.

That strange incident aside, over the past, say, 6 months, I’ve actively sought out as much material regarding the existence of God in general, and the validity of Christianity in particular, as I can. Much of this is in the form of essays and videos. I don’t log them all here (Goodreads only reflects books on the topic I’ve read, not the entirety of material I’ve consumed on the subject). As such, I’ve been drawn into the world of debates on the topic of faith.

Youtube has provide an endless supply of those, I’ve gotten to know quite well, the arguments for God as presented by pretty popular apologists and scholars, lesser known academics, enthusiastic laymen, scientists, and everything in between. I’ve not strictly kept it on any particular topic, as I’ve watched Christians debate Christians regarding doctrinal disputes, as well as debates related to Christianity vs other faiths altogether, like Islam. But be that as it may, I feel like I’ve gotten a handle on the best arguments for the existence of God, of the validity of Christianity, and the bible.

However, if you start looking towards the fringes of things, like Jesus being entirely fictional, the harder it gets to find people with real credentials in the appropriate fields that share those opinions.

Well, Richard Carrier is just one such person. He mentions in the book that there is a lot of conspiracy theories out there, but almost no scholarship that makes a cogent case for Jesus being a myth from the very origin of Christianity. Carrier comes up quite frequently on YouTube as one of the debaters opposing whatever the Christian position is on a given topic. And as such, I was pretty familiar with his high level arguments as to why Jesus, in his opinion, is probably mythical, but he often would rush by points so quickly in debate that I wasn’t getting enough info for me to make a decision on. I don’t know, I think I think better when I’m looking at a book making an argument than I do listening to a debate. Probably because I can stop reading and think about things, or look up a reference, or do whatever I need to do in order to really process something.

So, over 600 plus densely packed pages, full of footnotes and references, Carrier lays out what feels like a comprehensive review of all the evidence on record regarding the historicity of Jesus.

I have to admit, there were tons of information presented here that I’d not been exposed to previously. It took me a very long time to get through this, I think I read nearly half the New Testament with this book just as background. He references so many NT passages and only occasionally would provide the text, so it would be up to me to look them up myself. Usually it would just be an insertion into the text referencing what scripture he was using to back up his points. I tried to check them all as I read. Not just that particular verse, but the chapter, or section, or, in the case of Mark, the whole damned book, in order to be sure I was getting things in the context in which they appear (He also referenced so many other books on a wide range of subjects that I about went broke ordering them from the internet. I’ll have a host of things to read for years if I do nothing else).

That isn’t to say I interpret things correctly, almost everyone I discuss this sort of stuff with insists I most certainly do not. But I do the best I can with the brain I have. I’m not even remotely interested in winning an argument as I am trying to determine what is true, or lacking the ability to discern that, what is most likely true.

So, Richard Carrier, he put this out. The argument he presents is so detailed that it’s nearly 250 pages in before he actually starts examining the evidence. Up till then he’s going over his methodology and the assumed knowledge a reader should be aware of, mostly regarding the larger religious community in the Roman empire and Jewish thought and the many sects of the time. It’s a lot of stuff.

But, if I can give the most high level recap possible, it would be like this:

1) There are no contemporaneous historical records of Jesus, period.
2) The oldest non-biblical references to Jesus are generations later than the time of Christ and by that point they are either simply repeating claims Christians made, or have been tampered with by later Christians and can’t be trusted as authentic. It’s the second century before anything reliable appears.
3) The gospels and Acts are part of a much larger body of work (more than 40 gospels and maybe 8 books of acts) that are all completely fictitious. Those that were canonized reveal a great deal about their authors though. Things like a misunderstanding of the geography of the region, of having Aramaic speakers speak in Greek (as opposed to speaking in Aramaic and later translating, like, there are puns that only make sense in Greek, and scriptures are quoted from the Greek version of the O.T (the Septuagint) which sometimes had subtle, but obvious, problems that didn’t exist in the Hebrew O.T.)*. The gospels also appear to have been crafted carefully from other sources, in some cases, copying other works point by point)
4) The genuine epistles never mention an earthly Jesus (much of the NT is thought by many mainstream scholars to include several second century forgeries – this is discussed in detail in the book, but understand that the vast bulk of epistles, gospels, and books of Acts were known fakes by the fourth century, and even then, books like the epistle of Hermes was thought by many to be genuine (and many modern scholars agree) while books like The Revelation of John was thought by many to be fake (as many modern scholars agree). And modern branches of Christianity, like the Coptic church, the Armenian church, Georgian and Ethiopian churches, all use different versions of the NT than protestant believers do.**
5) This should have been pointed out earlier, but there are some very old versions of Christianity (like, late first century for sure, and as the thesis of this book, maybe from the beginning) that DID hold that Jesus was entirely spiritual – never having appeared on earth in physical form, but was crucified, buried, and resurrected in the spiritual realm. These traditions were later deemed heretical and stamped out, and the theology of them is way too complicated for me to get into here – I’d probably butcher the explanation anyway – but it’s a way of looking at things I’d just never considered before. Anyway, some of the forged epistles that came later were, in the narrative that Carrier creates here, intended specifically to combat this belief that so many early Christians had.

The bottom line, honestly, is that he made a VERY strong case.*** I’m not sure I believe that Jesus was entirely non-historical, but damn, I’m now considering it as way more as possible than I ever did before. Carrier noted that this was his attempt to really lay out an argument that would withstand scholarly review, and he says he truly hopes that later critiques of his book will reveal errors, or perhaps future publications will refute his claims.

So, I found this challenging, and certainly makes me consider this seriously. The abbreviated breakdown I gave is probably too rough to serve as a meaningful representation of his arguments, so I’d recommend you read yourself if you think what I wrote sound insane.

* Examples, when Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Matthew (I think) says he’s riding into town on two separate animals as a fulfillment of prophecy, the Hebrew O.T. this prophecy fulfills doesn’t have this awkward passage, but the Greek O.T. does, due to a mistranslation of the text – the implication here is that the writer of Matthew (assuming it was Matthew, I don’t have this book, or the bible, in front of me to look anything up, I know, I say this almost every time I write something like this), trying to elaborate on Mark’s Gospel, decided that his was a fulfillment of prophecy, and since he was Greek, whipped out his Greek O.T., not realizing the error in translation there, and all of a sudden, Jesus is riding into town riding on the backs of TWO animals at the same time. This sort of mistake wouldn’t happen if the author of the book was an actual witness, or had even interviewed a witness, it’s an indicator that he was making stuff up.
**I’m sure I’m going to run out of space here, but think about this, the Syrian churches trace their roots back to the first century, and don’t have a tradition of the Greek version of Christianity that has dominated the west for the past few millennia. They were as a group, called out as heretics very early on and mostly forgotten. They have a claim to being close to the original version of Christianity that probably should be taken seriously. Their version of the NT does NOT include 2nd or 3rd John, 2nd Peter, or Jude.
***I’ll admit, an argument like this will fall apart in its ENTIRETY if there is just one knock down piece of evidence that comes out. I was thinking the whole time about the simple passage Paul wrote mentioning that he once visited with Peter and James, THE BROTHER OF THE LORD. Which I felt, given what I know about James, made this pretty damning. Carrier, while not entirely convincing me, did make a strong case that Paul refers to Christians in general as ‘brothers of the Lord’ and is not meant as an identifier as James being the human brother of Jesus Christ. He goes on about this a great length in the book looking at this passage, and advises from the outset of that section of the book that this is the best (and only, possibly) difficult piece of evidence to deal with.

[John C. Duff · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘On the Historicity of Jesus’ (OHJ) is an exhaustive analysis of all extant evidence concerning the Biblical Jesus, ultimately offering sound reasons for doubt of Jesus’ historicity. Applying a Bayesian criterion propounded in his foundational book ‘Proving History,’ Carrier methodically breaks down contemporary historiographical assumptions, and argues for a mythical Jesus at the naissance of Christianity. That the figure of Jesus falls so effortlessly into the Rank-Raglan hero model, given background data, prior probabilities, and all quantifiable evidence available, casts a devastating shadow of doubt on contemporary mainstream Jesus historiography.
This exhaustive tome of scholarly integrity is peer reviewed and published by an academic press, bestowing upon it a level of validity uncommon in the province of Biblical scholarship where Jesus’ historicity is presupposed. OHJ is an important addition to the abundance of erudition amassed through the years, and must be considered in every further examination or treatise relating to Biblical studies. Biblical scholars are no longer justified in hasty dismissals of the mythicist theory, and now obligated to contend with the theory by either refutation or incorporation.
Five stars for extraordinary academic value.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant piece of scholarship. Tightly argued, comprehensive evidence, and very persuasive. The author concludes that Jesus Christ was highly unlikely to be a historical figure. The evidence, according to Carrier, is more consistent with the conclusion that Jesus was originally a mythic being who, over time, became historicised. Whether you agree with this conclusion or not, this book is a must read for anyone interested in who Jesus was. It was a long haul to read but absolutely worthwhile.

[W · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Richard Carrier and of this book, but I have a different, albeit amateur, take on the trickiest evidence mythicists have to negotiate, viz. "James, the Lord's brother" (Gal. 1:19), "born/made of woman, born/made under the law" (Gal. 4:4), and "from the seed of David" (Rom. 1:3). Instead of relying on difficult interpretations of these phrases, I would suggest interpolation. I know it is easy to call interpolation on any phrase one doesn't like, and Carrier himself does not like to do it without excellent evidence because it lowers the probability of his theory (relying as it does on unproven tampering with the text). However, I am confident enough in the correctness of mythicism on other grounds that these phrases stand out from Paul's letters as obvious candidates for forgery.

For the following specific textual grounds for arguing interpolation I rely on Peter Kirby's work here: http://peterkirby.com/marcions-shorte...

"James, the Lord's brother" is contained in a passage in Galatians about Paul's supposed first visit to Jerusalem which is suspect in its entirety: it was not in Marcion's text, nor I suspect in Irenaeus'. Of course Catholics accused Marcion of deleting them, but it is no less likely that they added them in. If this line were absent, the figure of James, the human brother of a human Jesus of Nazareth, could still have been invented through a process of imaginative textual reconciliation: in Acts (as Carrier discusses) there is a problem where one James is killed and then another James carries on as the leader of the Church: combine this unidentified James with the brother James named in Mark's Gospel and Paul's remark at 1 Cor 9:5 about "the Lord's brothers", and (voila!) one has engineered a James, human brother of Jesus, who is a Church leader, then written into Gal. 1. Giving Jesus a human brother would also be an anti-Marcionite statement, to interpolate, since Marcion argued Jesus had no human birth (he descended in adult form). This interpolation solution would allow brother to hold its meaning of human siblinghood, while still not bolstering the case for the historical Jesus. This would also explain why, if this is a brother in the human sense, the sentence does not distinguish this kind of brother from the spiritual kind that Paul wrote about much more often: it wasn't Paul writing.

The phrase "born/made of woman, born/made under the law" was not in Marcion's text of Galatians. Marcion did not believe either of these things about Jesus, but they make sense as something Catholics might have interpolated to use against Marcionites.

Nor was "from the seed of David" in Marcion's text of Romans. Marcion believed Jesus had no human birth so dismissing this phrase would spare us having to follow Carrier's argument about sperm implantation.

I know Carrier will not make this argument, and there will be some who are loath to accept or to rely on interpolation arguments. Personally, from my reading I have very little confidence in the faithful transmission of the texts: Catholics were clearly willing to forge documents to bolster their theological positions - hence why several letters attributed to Paul are now regarded as forgeries. I have no problem believing they would have inserted anti-Marcionite interpolations. We cannot prove them interpolations, but readers who baulk at Carrier's most difficult arguments might like to consider this alternative way around his most problematic evidence.

Edit: it should also be noted that these 3 verses are not in DeBuhn's reconstructions of Marcion's texts: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Edit: the blog Vridar mentions that neither Justin Martyr nor Tertullian seems to be aware of a James, brother of Jesus, who is a leader of the Christians.

Thanks for reading.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would suggest read anything by Bart Ehrman rather than this book. Ehrman brings the nuance that Carrier ignores. I noticed I had said the same thing after I had read Carrier’s book “Sense and Goodness Without God” in 2014 and at the time, I knew that I was being too generous in how I rated that book. I don’t want to make the same mistake with this book.

Carrier is in left field in how he applies Bayesian Statistics. There are two things I just love and get irritated when misapplied: 1) Markov Matrixes (MM) and 2) Bayesian Statistics. I never got past George Gilder’s dislike of MM in his book “Life After Google,” and conversely Carrier overuses Bayesian Statistics inappropriately within this book. Just read anything by Bart Ehrman and you’ll see how history with narrative can be applied more effectively than misapplying Bayesian Statistics.

I do love Bayesian Statistics. I’d even say that we process our world around us intuitively using a Bayesian approach, but just as a fly knows nothing about Newton’s law of gravity when it jumps, we don’t know that we are using Bayes Theorem when we process the world and that makes for a better appreciation of reality as we fill in our narratives about the world.

The book “Philosophy of Science” by Curd has a very good chapter on Bayesian Statistics and the chapter is needed since induction has a flaw in that it can never recognize itself; logic does not connect directly to reality. Godel shows that we cannot get from logic to mathematics without using set theory.

A logical syllogism such as ‘all crows are black’ means that the contrapositive statement ‘if something is not black, it is not a crow’ are equivalent. Therefore, a red pencil in front of you would be evidence for all crows being black. Bayesian Statistics is the only way we have of discounting a red pencil as evidence of all crows being black.

Ultimately, induction never proves itself and the Bayesian priors weighted by expectations smoothed by reality is how we process the world. Bayesian has its purpose, but its purpose is not to turn our feeling about the world into truths about the world. Historians do that by taking three years of analysis and turning it into one page of synthesis, if their lucky, and Carrier concludes way beyond what his analysis should permit, and it turns out that not all crows are black despite that red pencil in front of you.

Carrier makes a big deal about Josephus and his Jesus paragraph. I tend to agree with what Carrier says and that the paragraph was added by a scribe after the fact. In addition, I’ve read the complete works of Josephus and the part of his works I couldn’t stomach was the last ten pages of his autobiography. He is a creep of a person. He makes up Masada, and his other story about killing everyone in the cave is incredibly unlikely, and that Jesus paragraph that Josephus writes about doesn’t flow with how Josephus writes the rest of his works, but all that aside it was still irrelevant for the historicity of Jesus, because at best Josephus would have just been quoting from someone who believed it to be true. One does not need Bayesian Statistics to discount Josephus, just read him for yourself, fill in the narrative as you see fit. You’ll be richer for it, but don’t use Bayesian Statistics when your priors, your present, and your expectations are fuzzy at best.

Overall, Carrier misfires completely with this book because he stays rigorously to his thesis that Jesus is a complete myth. There’s a great course lecture called “Jesus: An illustrated Life.” It puts the Jesus of the Bible into the context of the time period. The itinerant preachers, and the corruption of Herold, the Roman dominance, Jerusalem hugely important, carpenters building projects, the poverty in Galilee, the Dead Sea scroll community, and the background that explains the time period are part of the story that Carrier misses. History is more nuanced than Carrier allows for while narratives explain our world as Bart Ehrman ably demonstrates.

Read anything by Bart Ehrman. Do not try Carrier’s arguments, you would get shot down, because though we live in a Bayesian world it does not mean we throw away our stories that we use to explain our constantly becoming history. Ehrman shows how Jesus became God while Carrier discounts that there was such a person in the first place. Paul was killing Christians because he thought there was something worth killing (Paul is what we would today call a 'psychotic'); Carrier makes the point that all of Paul’s knowledge was supernatural, but that still doesn’t make Jesus not real, and Paul was murdering Christians because he thought they were a real threat.

[Rea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled across one of Richard Carrier's lectures on YouTube earlier this year. My body was busy trying to fight off bacterial pneumonia that was resisting antibiotics, and I had very little energy for anything other than listening. And Richard Carrier's lectures are actually really interesting. It didn't take long before I decided to get the book and learn more about his arguments.

Born in Western Europe, to parents who never really bothered much with religion (but did give me the opportunity to decide for myself whether I wanted to attend Church each week), I've grown up to be very skeptical of the claims made by Christianity (and other religions). I'd never really given much thought to whether there was a real, historical figure (or multiple figures) upon whom Jesus is based, but I was already convinced that the Jesus presented in the Bible was most definitely not a real, living, breathing man.

Discovering Richard Carrier has introduced me to a whole new area of the Jesus debate that I'd never really realised even exists: the debate about whether or not Jesus did exist.

Carrier presents a lot of very compelling evidence to suggest that it's entirely possible that a character similar to Jesus could very easily have been invented in the time period by evaluating other religions and cults that were popular at the time, as well as the social setting where the character came to popularity. He also takes the time to look into early Christian literature and what it does, and does not, say about Jesus, as well as analysing the other historical sources that mention Jesus (essentially all of which were tampered with by early Christians in order to give weight to their religious claims).

I'm sure that there are also compelling arguments from the other side of the argument, but I'm not educated enough in this area to be able to pick out the good ones from the bad ones. I'm also leery about the fact that some secular scholars are still caught in the Church's grip due to the way that their studies are financed.

Carrier opened a new door for me, and even though I was already on the same page as many of the arguments that he's presenting, it was very interesting to get a more in-depth look into this topic.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick note - review was done in a couple of stages, the first 6 chapters first, then the rest a week or so later

To start with, I know no Greek, so have to defer to the translation given, and in cases where two people disagree, can only weigh their arguments against each other. Similarly, I am not a historian, so have to take much of what is written on faith. I have read other mythicism books, and a few ostensibly secular ones on the evidence for the historical Jesus, though have found them to typically be circular, with many of the arguments relying on a presumption of historicity, or in some cases, little better than Christian apologetics.
While reading, I frequently found statements I was unconvinced by, but pretty much every time, Carrier acknowledged the problems and either justified them, or gave them low weight in his calculations. There are times when he can be a little repetitive (he has two fairly long sections on Romulus, saying more or less the same thing in different chapters), and to my mind, often labours a point much more than is necessary, but perhaps with a controversial idea such as this, you really do need to give people as little chance of a get out as possible.
I come into the book largely on the side of mythicism, having being convinced that there is a good case, and that the case for Historocity is weak starting from Earl Doherty's book about 10 years ago up to Bart Ehrman's book a couple of years ago. To borrow the kind of language Carrier uses, if historicity were true, it is unlikely that a respected scholar could manage no better than that.
Going in, I had several starting premises
1) The Jesus of the bible did not exist – this is totally uncontroversial except with fundamentalists
2) The gospels are mostly fiction, based on retelling of Old Testament stories and other myth of the time – Again, this is a mainstream view. The main issues to be addressed is if there is any history left in, if such can be identified and if the gospel authors made up the stories themselves, or used pre-existing works or circulating oral traditions. I hadn't seen particularly good arguments on either side for this one
3) There is no useful evidence outside of the bible – it is all too late, or unreliable. This is a little more controversial, but is largely accepted by many people who believe in the historicity of Jesus
4) Paul describes mostly mythical Christ. There are a handful of instances where he talks in what seems like historical terms (though never giving actual historical details), that mythicism needs to explain, but there are also numerous instances where he either fails to mention Jesus or talks in purely mythical terms, which historicism must explain. The most common explanations for his silence, that everyone already knew the stories, so there was either no point in mentioning them, or it would be insulting, or alternatively, that his competition were the disciples, so talking about what Jesus said or did would draw attention to their better claim are totally unconvincing and not only completely unrealistic based on how actual people behave, but totally inconsistent with what we see from him in his writings.
By its very nature, this will be a controversial book, that is likely to receive many negative review. The vast majority of such 1 or 2 star reviews will be from people who have nor read the book, didn't understand it, or didn't pay attention, which will be clear if they argue
1) Mythicism has already been shown to be wrong.
2) Mythicism is a fringe position and all actual scholars consider Jesus historical.
3) We know Jesus was real because (insert favourite argument)
There is little to be said about the first two, but the third is one of the reasons this book, and the previous volume, "Proving History" are important. It is not enough to pick one or two verses, say "these seem to fit a historical Christ much better than a mythical Christ, case closed", you need to actually consider how likely such a passage would be with a historical figure or a mythical figure and then include this with all the evidence. That is what this book does.
There may also be objections based on
4) Carrier's Greek/history is poor and he mistranslates/misrepresents/misundertands something (in such cases, it is unlikely we would see evidence why the preferred version is better, but at least this has the potential to be a valid argument. It is not really one that is easy to assess for a non expert, especially if it is just presented as an assertion

The first chapter introduces the problem and gives an extremely brief summary of the history and current state of the subject and the aims of the book.

The second chapter discusses what the minimal theory of historicity should be, concluding it should be the fairly obvious idea that a man known as Jesus acquired followers, some of whom claimed he was executed and soon after he began to be worshipped as a god.

The third chapter does the same for mythicism, but finds, without really going into any details that many mythicist ideas too outlandish to consider, so is much more specific, that Jesus was a celestial deity who communicated through divine inspiration, was incarnated, died and resurrected in a supernatural realm and that allegorical stories were told of this that later came to be viewed as history. Carrier does a good job showing this kind of thing was not unheard of, while acknowledging the specifics are unique for each and does not consider the cultural variations to be a problem. Some would probably disagree here, but this is special pleading and they would not make the same objection to his other examples.

Taken together, the first three chapters establish the plausibility of mythicism and the inconsistencies and weakness of historicism. This is probably evidence of Carrier's bias here, and the treatment is a little uneven, but with the Bayesian analysis employed, the tone of this section is essentially irrelevant.

Chapter 4 gives background on Christianity, with particular emphasis on mythical elements and similarities to other cults. Hardcore historocitists are likely to find fault here, though in truth, there is little controversial, except perhaps the idea that the early Christians believed their knowledge of Jesus came from scripture, but this is adequately supported., at least for those Christians we have evidence of.

Chapter 5 is a continuation of 4, but focusing on other pagan beliefs and religions at the time and their similarity to Christianity. Of particular significance is that he clearly establishes that dying and rising saviour gods were well known before Jesus. This again is likely to meet criticism from scholars who will claim that because they are not identical to the form Christianity took, they can be dismissed.
Some of this, such as Christianity being a mystery cult with secret teachings seems a stretch, and it may be that Carrier is cherrypicking here the one or two quotations that support this point, and I lack the background knowledge to assess it, but even if so, I don't think this has much influence on the final outcome.

There is much in these chapters that is presented from a mythicist point of view and any serious attempt to defend the conventional view of Christianity's origins will need to counter this, or at least show it to be relatively minor compared to the overwhelming evidence in favor. I also suspect there will be complaints about his use of the apocrypha here, thus showing they failed to understand the argument, as he does address this.

For chapter 6, Carrier works out the prior probability, which is basically the starting value he will put into the equation. He uses Jesus excellent fir as a Rank-Raglan class hero, which he demonstrated in chapter 5, and for which members are typically mythical. This may be another weakness, as there could be other classes used to establish the prior, which would give a higher value for historicity (for example, if we date the first gospel to 80AD, then "all people who had biographies written less than 50 years after the events in them were set" could be one). This would likely make little if any difference, as the Rank Raglan data would then come into play later on, and might even decrease the odds of a historical Jesus, as Carrier fudges the data here to make the prior higher than the actual results would warrant (he is quite open about this). A second possible issue here is that he picks "people who score more than half" a his basis, but doesn't seem to justify this. Again, if he had picked a higher number, it would have altered the actual prior, though not the one he uses, but I don't know what if he had chosen a lower value. How low would he need to go before actual historical figures would be included, and would they be outweighed by the addition of more mythical ones? It may be that this is addressed, and I missed it, but either way, I don't think it effects the final result, it is just something I would like to have seen. Carrier has argued outside of the book that other values would either give too much or too little data, and that there are no other suitable reference classes, but I haven't found this convincing and it should be demonstrated, rather than asserted, though this can be the job of anyone who decides to honestly address the issues.
Chapter 7 is an introduction to the evidence that will be used - extrabiblical (both religious and secular) and biblical (gospels, epistles and Acts) with an explanation of how we will assess them and what criteria he will use to accept or dismiss. Right from the start, he states that late documents, unless there is very good reason to believe they show an independent tradition, are to be excluded, which rules out anything after 120AD. Again, Christian apologetics may include such things, such as Lucien and Mara Bar Separion, but the use of these reeks of desperation anyway.
Acts, Carrier concludes is fiction, which to my knowledge is again not particularly controvertial. It is certainly full of fictional and mythic elements, with characters who fail to behave like real human beings. He argues that the content is evidence against minimal historicity and this was not something I found convincing – one of his prime examples was the way Jesus' family (and other characters, but mainly them) just disappear. This seemed to be arguing against a specific theory, not the minimalist one he had earlier set up. Most of the evidence in this chapter doesn't upport either theory, though I agree that the example of Paul's Trial, when nothing is said of any historical Jesus does slightly argue for the mythicist view
Next, he comes to the gospels. These have already been shown to be mostly fiction, with Mark as the first gospel, based on retelling of Old Testament stories and then Mathew and Luke expanding and redacting it, finally John being largely independent, though probably influenced by Luke, based on several similarities in stories and elements that are clearly mythical. Carrier accepts the traditional dates for this, and although he allows for a fairly wide range, the dating seems to be irrelevant to hi thesis as it is not given any particular consideration. He demonstrates that the consensus of fiction is correct and that Mark came first, retelling the Old Testament passages with a Homeric theme, and that much of the content, that is confusing otherwise, makes sense in this context. He argues that if there was a historical Jesus, nothing of his life made it into the gospels, and in the unlikely event it did, it is impossible to identify. He thinks this in itself is evidence against a historical Jesus, as it is unlikely that the writers would have no interest in anything their founder actually says or does but does not use this in his calculations as he has used the overall arc of the story to set up his prior probability. I think there is enough here that he didn't use that this could have been included to further strengthen the mythicist case, though it wouldn't do so by much.
He also argues against the commonly held Q hypothesis, which is that Mark came first and that most of the extra material in Luke and Mathew came from a sayings gospel "Q" He doesn't really give the Q side, so it is hard to be sure, but it seems like the people who support Q are assuming historicity and that the authors couldn't have just made it up. On the basis that the gospels are fiction, the Mark – Mathew – Luke hypothesis seems plausible.
Finally, he looks at the epistles and this takes two main forms. Firstly, he considers the argument from silence, showing (and again being extremely generous to the historical Jesus theory), just how ridiculously unlikely it would be that Paul had no cause to say anything about Historical Jesus, either to bolster his own arguments or to refute those of his opponent, and demonstrates how staggeringly inane the historicists excuses for this gaping hole are. Secondly, he looks at the passages claimed to represent Paul talking about a historical Jesus. Much of this is highly technical, which makes it hard for the non expert to judge, but it seems plausible, and he at least shows that the historicist tactic of pointing to these verses, saying they are about a historical Jesus and not looking at the context or implications is woefully lacking in any sort of critical analysis. There are a couple of weaknesses in this section, one time, he talks of how Paul is writing of people preaching another Jesus, which he assert must be a mythical one as Paul could say this if his Jesus was celestial, but not if he was historical. He doesn't back up this claim at all. Another time is talking of the "Brother of the Lord" phrase, where he talks of the theoretical need for "policing of terminology" which seems a straw man.
He also considers the argument that Pail specifically talks of Jesus in mythical terms, though this is mostly spread throughout the chapter, making it difficult to see it as a whole. They exceptionto this is Hebrews, which he analyses in details. It is worth noting that Carrier finds this to be one of the most obviously mythical books in the entire New Testament, which seems very much against consensus, the NIB New Testament survey for example claiming "No New Testament writer presents a more human Jesus than does the author of Hebrews" Having read both chapters, it seems that the author of the New Testament survey chapter was simply reading on the assumption of historocity and thus interpreting in that manner, even when it required a strained reading, though to be sure, I would want Hebrews in front of me as well, to compare it to both set of claims.
Overall, the conclusion is sound, thought is argued from a mythicist point of view. I can't think of anything relevant that a Historicist would include that would shift the probabilities much, and I don't think anyone who is being intellectually honest would use values much different for the historicist position to the ones Carrier uses, especially as for his "most likely" scenario he is excessive generous to the historical position and some of the numbers he use are untenable

There are occasions where they mythicist theory explains too much – he frequently says that something is consistent with Jesus being a myth, so is 100% likely, but even if it is consistent with a historical Jesus, it is not considered 100% likely, which is to say that the "possible v probable" judgement is used a little more strictly on the historicist view that mythicist one.

[Darrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The purpose of this book is not to end the debate but to demonstrate that scholars need to take this hypothesis more seriously before dismissing it out of hand, and that they need much better arguments against it than they've heretofore deployed. A better refutation is needed, and a better theory of historicity, which, actually, credibly explains all the oddities in the evidence. If this book inspires nothing else, I'll be happy if it's that. But this book may do more. It might inspire more experts to agree with the possibility at least that Jesus Christ was born in myth, not history."

Introduction

There are about as many theories regarding who the historical Jesus was as there are historical Jesus scholars. Historicists disagree with each other over which parts of the gospels are historical and which are mythical. But what if the figure of Jesus is nothing but myth?

Carrier approaches this question in a very methodical way (the bibliography alone is over 40 pages). I know of no other book about Jesus that takes as many pieces of evidence into account.

Disproving a single mythicist or historicist theory doesn't disprove them all, so Carrier compares the minimal mythicist theory with the minimal historicist theory to stand in for all of them. Since the study of ancient history can only deal with probabilities and not certainties, Carrier employs Bayes' Theorem to compare the two minimal theories to each other. Since Carrier favors the mythicist theory, he weighs the evidence in favor of the historicist theory in order to prevent his own bias from skewing the results.

The Ascension of Isaiah, a Christian document composed around the same time as the gospels, describes Jesus descending from the seventh heaven all the way down to the firmament above earth to be crucified by Satan and his angels before ascending in glory. The earliest version of this document contained no life on earth for Jesus. Did the first Christians think of Jesus as a celestial figure who endured an ordeal of incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection in a supernatural realm and only later came to believe he lived on earth?

Elements

Carrier lists 48 background elements in his book. I only have enough room to mention some of them.

Element 3: Jews expected a messiah, but there was much diversity concerning what they expected the messiah to do (e.g., defeat demons vs. defeat the Romans).

Element 8: Jews searched the scriptures for hidden messages about the messiah.

Element 11: The earliest known form of Christianity was a Judeo-Hellenistic mystery religion. It taught eternal salvation for the individual, procured by initiation rituals, involving induction into a set of mysteries. These involved a savior figure who was a son of god who suffered and gained salvation for members. All these cults involved an initiation ritual symbolically reenacting what the god went through and a ritual meal consisting of wine, bread, or fish. Many involved baptism and tended towards syncretism, monotheism, individualism, and egalitarianism.

Element 14: Christians like Origen and Eusebius insisted the Gospels were meant to be allegorical.

Element 17: The main features of the Gospel story can be found in Jewish scripture, especially Isaiah 52-53, The Wisdom of Solomon, Psalms 22-24, Daniel 9 and 12, and Zechariah 3 and 6.

Element 18: Jesus was believed to have done away with the need for Passover and Yom Kippur (and therefor the need for the Temple) by his death. The Eucharist replaced Passover.

Element 19: Paul was the earliest Christian writer we know of, but he only knew of Jesus through revelation.

Element 21: There were many rival Christian sects, but only a few survived. The winners decided which texts to preserve, so there's a lot we don't know.

Element 40: Philo believed there was a supernatural son of God named Jesus based on his reading of Zechariah 6:12.

Element 43: A story involving voluntary human sacrifice fit in with both Jewish and pagan worldviews of the time. Both believed martyrdom was praiseworthy. Unjust execution by the state was not embarrassing.

Element 45: Euhemerization was common. This is when a god is written about as if they were an actual person who lived in a specific time, and then were later deified. Euhemerus wrote that Zeus and Uranus were originally kings.

Element 48: Jesus conforms to the Rank-Raglan hero type which is found in at least fifteen heroes. There are twenty-two features. Jesus matches over half these features. Every other figure who matches over half is not historical.

Non-Canonical Writings

The original Christians were called the Nazorians and believed Jesus died in the time of Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BC). The Babylonian Talmud knows of no other form of Christianity. If Jesus existed, how could different Christians believe he lived in different centuries?

There were numerous Jewish and pagan historians who discussed 1st century Judea, but none mention Jesus. Even within Christian literature, suspiciously little survives. 1 Clement tells us nothing about the historical Jesus. Clement knows of Jesus only through the Old Testament and visions. He has no knowledge of the Gospels. Ignatius believed Jesus was a historical figure, but he argued with Docetists who didn’t. Ignatius gives no evidence that Jesus existed other than citing a now lost gospel. When discussing the martyrdom of James the Just, Hegesippus describes Jesus as a celestial figure who hasn't come to earth yet.

There are two passages that mention Jesus in Josephus, but both are almost certainly interpolations. The Testimonium Flavianum is based on Luke's Emmaus Narrative. It doesn't make sense in context. It doesn't match Josephus's style of writing. No Christians mention the passage until Eusebius in the fourth century (not even Origin who often quotes from Josephus). It also doesn't make sense that a book written for a gentile audience wouldn't go into more detail to give a better explanation. Only Christians could make sense of the passage as is. Also, Josephus usually writes at length and this passage is uncharacteristically short.

Another passage in Jewish Antiquities mentions James the brother of Jesus. Origin also doesn't quote this passage even though he would have desperately wanted to quote a passage like this when arguing with his critics. Again, Eusebius is the first to notice it. The Jesus in this passage is most likely Jesus ben Damneus who is mentioned again a bit later. If not, Josephus would have provided more explanation since the passage as is would be confusing to non-Christians.

There is a passage in Tacitus about Nero persecuting Christians, however it's likely this passage was originally about the followers of the Jewish instigator Chrestus who were scapegoated for burning Rome. This passage isn't mentioned until the fourth century (it's not even mentioned by second century Christians when they discuss Nero persecuting Christians).

Suetonius never mentions Jesus. He discusses a Jewish instigator named Chrestus. People think it's a misspelling of Christus, but there's no reason to think this. First of all, the incident is about Jews, not Christians per Suetonius, Dio Cassius, and even Acts 18:2. Jesus was also not alive or in Rome at the time the incident occurred, and Paul's letter to the Romans doesn't mention it as we'd expect. A second passage in Suetonius mentions Christians being persecuted under Nero. This was probably a reference to the Chrestians originally, but even if not, it doesn't tell us anything about the historical Jesus, so it favors neither theory.

Acts

Acts uses the Kings narrative from the Old Testament, basing Jesus and Paul on Elijah and Elisha. Acts also imitates Homer, as well as other literary sources. The prison breaks in Acts are similar to the prison breaks in the Bacchae of Euripides. Ezekiel, Daniel, and other Old Testament books are also used. Acts also uses Paul. Acts 15:7-11 puts Paul's words from Galatians 2:14-21 into Peter's mouth, which is the opposite of what Paul said happened.

Luke is considered the author of Acts, and in fact the story of Paul in Acts parallels the story of Jesus found in Luke. Acts is also based on the book of Tobit in which blindness falls like scales from someone's eyes involving a man named Ananias (or the son of Ananias) traveling on a road in order to deliver a letter with a divine being in disguise. Acts shares far more in common with ancient novels than ancient histories. Acts is pretty much entirely a literary fabrication. If there is any genuine history in it, it would be impossible for us to tell.

The Gospels

There's a long standing debate among biblical scholars regarding the genre of the gospels, but it really doesn't matter. Any genre, including history and ancient biography, could contain myth. What matters is that the Gospels are not researched histories, even by the lax standards of antiquity. They don't name their sources. They don't discuss methods or the possibility of information being incorrect. They don't discuss the existence of alternative accounts. They don't express amazement at incredible events. They don't explain why they changed their sources or even acknowledge that they did. They also don't explain who they are or why they're qualified to write history.

Mark

Pilate freeing Barabbas (a name which literally means "Son of the Father") has no basis in history (the Romans never freed prisoners like this). Rather, it is patterned on the scapegoat ritual of Yom Kippur (Mark also has this take place during Passover so it's a combination of two different Jewish holidays).

Mark based his crucifixion account on Psalm 22 as well as other Old Testament texts. Mark bases much of his Jesus story on the Elijah/Elisha narrative from Kings. Mark uses literary characteristics such as chiastic structure, a form of poetic repetition which would be very unlikely to occur in history, but is common in myth.

The sequence of the Passover narrative is based on the tale of Jesus ben Ananias as recounted by Josephus in The Jewish War. Both Jesuses come to Jerusalem during a major religious festival, enter the temple area to complain about the temple, quote the same chapter of Jeremiah, preach daily in the temple, declare 'woe' unto Judea, predict the temple will be destroyed, get arrested by the Jews but make no defense, get beaten by the Jews, are taken to a Roman governor and interrogated, asked who they are but again make no defense, get beaten by the Romans, get killed by the Romans after the Roman governor decides he should release him, utter a lament for themselves before they die, and both die with a loud cry.

The scene where Jesus cleanses the temple is not believable. There would have been hundreds of merchants and money changers, the temple grounds were enormous with acres of public space, and it was heavily guarded. The scene is more likely based on Jeremiah in which the destruction of the first temple is predicted to parallel Jesus's prediction of the destruction of the second temple.

Mark is entirely a literary construction from start to finish. If there is any genuine historical information, we have no way of unraveling it from the symbolic narrative.

Matthew

Matthew quotes Mark's fictional narrative word for word, but also adds additional material including a fictional nativity story and a post-resurrection appearance. Matthew's nativity story is based on the nativity story of Moses as found in the first century book Biblical Antiquities. Matthew disagreed with Mark's Pauline Christianity in which circumcision and dietary restrictions were optional, so he rewrote Mark's story for Torah-observant Christians.

Matthew replaces Mark's literary structure with one of his own, divided into five sections which alternate between narrative and the five Great Discourses. Matthew parallels Jesus with Moses. The Five Great Discourses parallel the five books of Moses. The Sermon on the Mount emulates Moses delivering the commandments from Mount Sinai. Jesus's Great Commission echoes Moses's Great Commission.

In Mark, Jesus wanders in the wilderness for forty days to parallel the Jews wandering for forty years. Matthew also adds Jesus having the same temptations as the Jews to further the parallel. What Matthew adds to Mark isn't history, just more myth.

Luke

Luke is the first gospel to claim to be history. However, Luke is not doing history. He doesn't weigh facts and check them against independent sources. He never names his sources or tells us why we should trust them. He's just rewriting Matthew and Mark to suit his own purposes.

Luke borrows heavily from Matthew and quotes him verbatim in places, so the Q theory (that Luke and Matthew both used a now lost document called Q) is unnecessary. Luke changes the Sermon on the Mount into the Sermon on the Plain. He changes the nativity narrative, but copies Matthew's in some ways. He also changes how Judas dies and the genealogy of Jesus. Luke attempts to harmonize Mark's gentile Christianity with Matthew's Torah-observant Christianity.

Luke used Josephus and Homer as a model, as well as expanding upon Mark's use of 1 and 2 Kings. John the Baptist's nativity is based on Samson's nativity as told in Biblical Antiquities 42. Mary's song (the Magnificat) in Luke 1:46-55 is based on Hannah's song in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.

Luke uses a diptych structure which is often interrupted, which suggests someone else made later additions. Like Mark and Matthew, Luke also uses the Romulus resurrection story, but he expands their versions in his Emmaus narrative.

John

Some think John is independent of the synoptics, but he does show awareness of them. He just felt more free to retell the story using his own words. John wants to refute the idea that no sign shall be given by having Jesus perform many public miracles. No one keeps the miracles secret as in Mark.

John felt free to invent new characters and events, change the order of events, and change how long and when everything happened. John invented the Lazarus character in order to refute Luke's parable in which Lazarus does not rise from the dead.

Epistles

In his authentic epistles, Paul only answers questions about doctrine and rules of conduct. If Jesus existed, it's very bizarre that no one would ask him about the life and death of Jesus.

Paul only talks about Jesus as a celestial figure, never as a historical person. Paul never mentions Jesus's baptism, his ministry, his trial, his miracles, what he was like, what he did, where he was from, or any people he knew. Paul never mentions Galilee or Nazareth, Pilate, Mary, or Joseph. He never places anything Jesus said in an earthly context.

The only sources Paul gives for his knowledge of Jesus are private revelation and hidden messages in scriptures. Paul speaks of people preaching other Jesuses, receiving a different spirit and thus a different gospel (2 Corinthians 11:4) which doesn't make sense if Jesus existed, but does make sense if Jesus was a figure who only appeared in visions.

James and 1 Peter are likewise silent about the historical Jesus. (2 Peter and the epistles of John discuss a historical Jesus, but these are forgeries.) Jude, supposedly the brother of Jesus, introduces himself only as the brother of James and never mentions a historical Jesus. According to Jude, the words of Jesus were only known through the revelation-receiving apostles.

James, in his epistle, doesn't say he's the brother of Jesus either. James 5:11 says all Christians have 'seen' Jesus die, and implies Jesus hasn't come to earth yet. Some things James wrote were later considered sayings of Jesus by the time the gospels were written, but James isn't aware of these being Jesus's sayings.

1 Peter only knows of Jesus through scripture and revelation and doesn't quote Jesus even when it would be natural to do so. He also tells us Jesus will only come in the future. His knowledge of the crucifixion comes from Isaiah 53, not from eyewitnesses.

Epistle to the Hebrews never mentions an earthly life for Jesus. He is only described as a celestial high priest, which fits with the Jesus described by Philo and the Ascension of Isaiah. Hebrews 8:1-5 says Jesus performed his sacrifice in the celestial temple and it wouldn't have worked if he'd performed it on earth. When Hebrews quotes Jesus, it's just quoting scriptures.

Returning to Paul, 1 Corinthians 2:6-10 says Jesus was crucified by "the rulers of this age", a phrase most likely signifying demonic rulers. 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 says the Jews (not the Romans) crucified Jesus, but most scholars agree this is an interpolation. Paul never elsewhere blames Jews for the death of Jesus. He never says God's wrath has already come (he believes in a future judgement). Paul teaches that the Jews will be saved, not destroyed. Also, the wrath of God wouldn't have come upon the Jews until after 70 AD and Paul was dead by then. The passage doesn't make sense in context. Also, Paul repeatedly refers to himself as being a Jew, so him condemning Jews doesn't make sense. 1 Timothy 6:13 says the Romans crucified Jesus, but this is also a forgery.

The closest Paul comes to mentioning the father of Jesus is Romans 1:3, where he says Jesus was "made from the sperm of David, according to the flesh." This could be allegorical as when he says every Christian comes from the sperm of Abraham in Galatians 3-4, however it could also be meant literally.

In the original Greek, Paul discusses Jesus as being "constructed" or "made" rather than born. This is the same way he talks about Adam who was also made by God rather than being born. 2 Samuel 7:12-14 can be read to say that God will use King David's sperm to construct a son of God, so this makes sense on mythicism.

Paul also speaks of Jesus being "made from a woman, made under the law" in an allegorical passage which, in context, speaks of those allegorically born to Hagar as being born into slavery to the Torah, but those born to Sarah as being born free from the Torah. Jesus was first born to Hagar under the law so he could kill off that law and be reborn to Sarah. Philo uses a similar allegory. No literal mother is meant here.

Although these two passages are more likely allegorical and not speaking of Jesus having a literal mother and father, Carrier counts them as evidence for historicity in order to be generous.

Next, we turn to potential references to Jesus having brothers. All baptized Christians were considered adoptive brothers of the Lord. Paul routinely calls Christians brothers or brethren. However, he only uses the full phrase "brother(s) of the Lord" twice, so this might be a reference to biological brothers.

The reference in 1 Corinthians 9:5 could be to biological brothers, but Carrier argues the phrase is more likely being used as a title. Galatians 1:15-22 refers to James as "brother of the Lord" perhaps to let us know James wasn't an apostle like Cephas but of a different rank in the church. Even though the phrase "brother of the Lord" makes perfect sense on mythicism, Carrier once again says this favors historicity in order to be generous.

Conclusion

In the end, arguing as much in favor of historicity as possible, Carrier concludes there's only a 1 in 3 chance that Jesus existed. Using what he thinks are more reasonable probabilities, Carrier calculates that there's only a 1 in 12,000 chance that Jesus existed.

Carrier invites readers to enter their own probabilities into his equation to come up with their own estimates and add additional evidence if there's something he didn't consider. He's open to being proved wrong as long as a sound argument is presented.

Carrier wrote this book not to end the debate, but rather to begin it. If you believe a historical Jesus existed, this is the book you have to refute.

[David S. T. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first mythicist book I've read and while I think that the arguments presented here are plausible, I still feel that the case for the historical Jesus is more convincing. I remain unconvinced by Carrier's attempts to work around Paul mentioning James the brother of the lord. I don't agree that just because the gospels have fabrications and exaggerations that the only choice you have is to completely disregard them; I've found that many of the arguments scholars come up with using "criterion of embarrassment" to seem reasonable (sadly this was discussed in Proving History so I'd have to read that to see how Carrier addresses this).

On a side note, I'm still not sure that using Bayesian probability to address history is reliable. Carrier knows this so he tries to get around it by being what he feels is generous in his probabilities (meaning that he gives what he feels are higher probabilities than he can reasonably justify to the historical claim), but I kept feeling that there's something wrong when you make up probabilities that you feel are reasonable without knowing the actual probabilities and then you use this to "prove" your point. For example, Carrier gets a big portion if his probability that Jesus didn't exist by looking at the Rank-Raglan mythotype. The Rank-Raglan mythotype has a set of 22 points that many hero types have. According to Carrier using the Gospels (Matthew) Jesus meets around 20 of these mythotypes, since most of the people that meet this many RR mythotypes aren't historical we can conclude that Jesus isn't historical. But here's the frustrating part, to get to these 20 mythotypes for Jesus we have to use the Gospels (that's right the same Gospels that Carrier has also completely thrown out as non historical). If we limit ourselves to the letters of Paul, Jesus only meets about 7 of these which is the same as the historical person Alexander. This ignores the fact that many other historical people also meet 7 so the probability for Jesus's existence is far higher that what Carrier has mentioned. I really feel there's a reason why historians don't use Bayes theorem; the theorem only works with known probabilities and without reliable known probabilities, it's not too hard to use this theorem to come up with the author's prior beliefs. For other examples look at William Lane Craig' using Bayes' theorem to "prove" that Jesus rose from the grave, or Richard Swinburne using the same thing to "prove" that God exists.

[Kahawa · Rating 5 out of 5]

How appropriate that I finish this book while flying away forever from 11 years of translating the bible in Africa. I came, answering the call of the great commission, and because it was the 'greatest thing I could do with my life', and here I am, realising the whole thing is probably a myth, and at least mostly myth, a meme that found traction, survived, evolved, replicated, adapted, and perpetuated to the beast it now is. It sucked me in, and I've almost sucked my children in, but hopefully that's not too late.

Carrier's monograph - Proving History, followed by On the Historicity of Jesus, is epic. I believe it will mark a point in history in the decades and centuries to come. Once the old guard dies off and the idea of mythicism is tolerated, then explored freely, I think scholarship will completely come over, not to the position of Carrier's description of the founding of the myth, but at least to the idea that there simply isn't enough evidence to conclude that Jesus was an historical person, leaving some kind of 'myth' as the best explanation.

I had quite a few criticisms of OHJ, but they weren't fatal to his main theses. He occasionally overstates a point, or a particular interpretation. But those criticisms are few and far between in a work this size. His knowledge of ancient history is intimidating, and he puts it to excellent use. I think his summary and conclusion at the end were well said, and weave a very different (but much more plausible) tapestry of the inception, rise and spread of first century Christianity.

I hope scholars start to take this work seriously, but to be honest, how many are going to a) read it, and b) have the mathematical (and historical) skills to take on Carrier with Bayes's Theorem? Can Ehrman? His Did Jesus Exist? is like a children's book in comparison. Ehrman's knowledge is deep and broad, but I don't think his methods are up to scratch. Are there other scholars out there who think the topic is even up for debate? There must be. We'll see.

I'm still not sure what I think of Paul. I think a lot of it has to do though with how I've been raised to read Paul, and it's hard to undo all of that. A cosmic Jesus who was given a fleshly cosmic body and was crucified by demons in outer space? I don't know.... But it's plausible, and I need to keep thinking about it and researching it.

The thought struck me while reading: what if the whole thing started because Peter, James and John had a shared vision of the Messiah appearing on a mountain with Elijah and Moses, which they didn't tell people about till much later? Wouldn't that be something.

I think my biggest take away from the book is not that Jesus must be a myth, but that the gospel of Mark is carefully and skilfully crafted mythology, which doesn't mean there was no historical Jesus, but it does completely destroy most of our evidence for a historical Jesus, because if Matthew depended on Mark, and Luke depended on them, and John on perhaps all 3, how do we know any of it is real, especially if Matthew, Luke and John appear to not realise that Mark was fabricating? That leaves us with Paul. And who knows what he thought. Did Paul exist? I'm not even highly confident in that, so... Or Peter, or anyone? I'm not being nihilistic, I think they're valid questions. Superstition along with forgery were so common in those early centuries that it's really hard to know (they're a potent mixture). How do we know that Paul's letters weren't fabrications by cult leaders dealing with issues pertinent to them? Can someone address this please? We have 0 letters from anyone writing to or about Paul during his lifetime, and no other evidences that can establish the historicity of Paul. Just some letters allegedly by him. And then some 'forgeries'. And then some 'histories'.

Well, those are my thoughts upon finishing OHJ. Where to next.....

[William Nist · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always have been predisposed to think the Jesus was an actual real human being, who was subsequently mythologized by his cultic followers, and that myth blossomed into the world wide religion that we see today through a series of historico-political events. But after reading Richard Carrier's explosive, in-depth, thorough, academic treatment of the Jesus story, it appears that I was probably wrong, and that Jesus likely was a mythological character from the very beginning with no actual physical reality. Jesus story was created by a synergistic combination of a ethnic myth and a Hellenistic mystery cult, similar to the stories of Romulus, Osiris and Zalmosis.

All of the evidence from extra-bibical and biblical texts are analyzed. The methodology of analysis is treated thoroughly. Dr Carrier is a scholar of ancient and Semitic languages. (Ph.D from Columbia.)

This book is not for the novice. It is meant for fellow academics to debate and discuss. I will admit it was a tough slough. There are many footnotes, and a knowledge of Carrier's previous work is desirable. BUT, the importance of the work can not be underestimated. To disengage the physical reality of Jesus from the religion that bears his name, had many ramifications for all thinking people.

This work is a tour de force in the examination of the Christian religion. Read it at your own risk. Your views may well be changed dramatically.

[Lage von Dissen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this comprehensive historical-critical analysis, Carrier challenges the current scholarly consensus pertaining to the historicity of Jesus Christ. When the scholarly consensus is analyzed, it becomes evident that the reasons most scholars believe in the historicity of Jesus Christ are generally fallacious and illogical with no reliable historical criteria used to arrive at such conclusions. Carrier examines the evidence we do have, most importantly, within the context of the culture that existed during the first two centuries of the common era. As it turns out, the earliest sources pertaining to Christianity are the epistles in the New Testament, and they show that the earliest conception of Jesus Christ was that he was a celestial or cosmic being rather than an actual historical figure, and it wasn't until decades later when the gospels were written, that we start to see a historicized Jesus come about. It should be noted that all of the events that purportedly happened to Jesus (i.e. death and resurrection, etc.) could just as easily have happened in the heavens or in the sub-lunar firmament as had been the case with other celestial beings and events as described by earlier Jewish and Pagan writings. The historicizing of mythological beings (which scholars call euhemerization) was also a common practice in antiquity during and long before the development of Christianity. Likewise, the supposed characteristics of Jesus, such as being a son of a god, being born of a virgin, an attempt being made to kill him as a child, dying and resurrecting, his body turning up missing, and providing eternal life to those communed and initiated (among numerous other attributes of a Savior god) places Jesus almost at the top of the list of the Rank-Raglan hero class which is used to compare other mythological beings in times past (e.g. Zeus, Hercules, Oedipus, Perseus, Osiris, etc.). The fact that no actual historical person has ever fallen within the Rank-Raglan hero class (especially with a majority of the attributes), and the evidence of many of these mythological beings being euhemerized and placed in history, implies that the likelihood of Jesus having been an actual historical person is extremely improbable based on this background information alone. We can see that there isn't any actual language in the epistles that necessarily places Jesus in history, including the outright claim by Paul that the sayings and doings of Jesus were only known to the apostles through two sources: divine revelation and studying the scripture. So they actually read into scripture (including Isaiah, and other books of the OT, and writings that never made it into the canon at all) to determine much of what Jesus "said" and "did". There were never any witnesses to said actions and words (except those that admittedly received the words through divine revelation), and thus there is no supportive evidence for necessary historicity.

Carrier also examines other forms of background information relating to the time before and during when Christianity was developing. There were many mystery cults that appeared both around the time that Christianity was developing and prior, and they all appeared to be a syncretism between Hellenistic beliefs and other local cultural beliefs. Christianity fits in line with these mystery religions as it also appears to be a syncretism of Hellenistic-pagan and Jewish beliefs, forming a cult ultimately based on human (or human-like) sacrifice and some kind of Savior god or soteriology. The pseudo-cannibalism seen in the ritual known as the Eucharist, that is, where initiates believe they are actually eating the body and blood of Jesus fits in line with many of these pagan rituals of animal (including human) sacrifice, etc., that preceded Christianity. When we examine the cultural context of Rome and Palestine, we see that there were Jews that realized that they would never have control of the temple, that it would likely be destroyed or forever held in the hands of some corrupt elite, and that the heavily militarized Rome (seemingly undefeatable through any Jewish military means) would continue to persecute Jewish beliefs in favor of pagan beliefs. With no hope of physical victory, the dissenting sects of various pre-Christian Jews moved the physical temple to a non-physical one placed in "heaven" and replaced the annual Yom Kippur and Passover sacrifices with the sacrifice of a demigod incarnated in a human form (thus eliminating the need for a physical temple), and this was a clever strategy to maintain a belief in victory and fulfillment of prophecy for the Jews despite the realization of never being able to accomplish this physically on Earth (as previously believed was necessary). By integrating paganistic and Jewish beliefs in Christianity, there was also the benefit of desegregating (many of) the Jews and the Romans (or others with Hellenistic beliefs) by giving them a belief system that satisfied various needs and desires in both groups. This provided the necessary precursor means for the benefits that would later accompany Constantine's adoption of Christianity as a state-ordained religion.

As for historical sources of historicity, the Christian sources are the least reliable, since many of them were forgeries (including various epistles in the NT), many of them appear to have been written as allegorical fictions (such as the Gospels) and many Christian writers had an obvious agenda to euhemerize Jesus (if Jesus didn't exist historically), since euhemerization increases the solidification and preservation of dogma, without which, someone else could come along and say that they've been receiving divine relevations as well (dare I mention the angel Gabriel that spoke to Muhammed later leading to Islam, or the angel Moroni that spoke to Joseph Smith later leading to Mormonism). By euhemerizing Jesus, this risk of dogmatic fluidity was dramatically reduced, which benefited whichever churches that began the euhemerization. Unfortunately, since the main churches that grew in influence outright destroyed texts that would threaten their views and thus preserved and expanded only those texts that supported their view, we are left with a large gap of no information on many of the other Christian sects, specifically the earliest ones that would have existed around the time of Paul as he was writing his epistles. With the evidence that does remain (within say the first hundred years after Jesus supposedly died), specifically that which was written by non-Christian historians, we are left with a few purported examples from Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger. The two examples typically attributed to Josephus are believed to be Christian interpolations as they don't match the context of what Josephus was writing about nor his easily distinguished writing style. Tacitus and Pliny appear to have gotten their information by questioning Christians, rather than looking at any Roman documents or other historical sources of information, and thus what little is traditionally ascribed to them is most likely hearsay given to them by Christians with an agenda propagating oral traditions. All in all, we are left with very little evidence to support the historicity of Jesus and can make a much more convincing case for mythicism based on the background information and the evidence that we do have. Carrier uses Bayesian probability estimates based on reasonable and sound arguments relating to what kind of evidence we would expect on minimal mythicism vs. minimal historicity, and determined that the odds that Jesus existed historically were at best 1 in 3, and at worst 1 in about 13,000. This is the first book published through an academic publisher that provides a convincing case for minimal mythicism, and Carrier implores the scholars within Jesus studies, etc., to address the concerns raised in the book and re-examine their historical criteria. Anyone intent on disproving mythicism in support of historicity needs to rebut the arguments presented in this book and make their case. It seems doubtful that scholars will be able to do this, as there are so many problems that just can't be reconciled with a favorable probability of historicity. Carrier nevertheless proposes this challenge to current scholars, and I'm glad he's opened the door for academia to re-evaluate the scholarship. I recommend this book to those interested in historical-literary criticism, Jesus studies, mythology, and religious studies in general.

[Tim Josling · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is difficult to get good information on the history of religions. Christianity is particularly a problem because of the 'mysterious' disappearance of almost all documentary material from the first 50 years.

A second problem is that much religious research is done by people who are committed, even contractually obliged on pain of dismissal, to a particular position about religion. Much research in this field is of such a poor quality that it makes Gender Studies look like a paragon of rigor and logic.

It seems obvious at first that Jesus must have existed. What about the Gospels, written by his very disciples. Except that they weren't. They were, it is true, named after his disciples but they were actually written half a century after the events they describe, by persons unknown, in a language (Greek) different from the language Jesus would have spoken. Of the maybe 50% of the letters of Paul that are not complete forgeries, and taking out obvious later 'enhancements', there is precious little material about Jesus. Paul says that there were eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus, but he includes himself in that list, and his sighting of Jesus bears all the marks of an abnormal mental state, possibly an epileptic fit.

Apart from Paul, the only evidence people can find is Josephus. There are two brief passages, some of which is clearly a forgery (where he, a devout Jew, says that Jesus was truly the Messiah), and there is some evidence they were all later additions.

Biblical scholars have typically taken it as a given that Jesus was a real historical figure and ridiculed those who have suggested otherwise.

I am not a fan of Carrier's Left Wing activism such as his attempts to hijack the Atheist movement into a branch of feminist/stalinist authoritarianism in the form of the "Atheism+" movement. But in this book he does a pretty good and careful job of looking at the evidence and comes to what seems like a reasonable conclusion that Jesus probably did not exist as a historical figure.

It does become very clear from this book and other material about early Christianity that even if Jesus did exist, we cannot know much about him. He probably didn't speak the Sermon on the Mount, initiate the Lord's prayer, or initiate the Eucharist. We are left with a mystery into which successive generations of religious people have poured their own fantasies, wishes and desires.

Carrier argues that he was probably a mythical figure who was later historicised.

Ont problem in this field is that there is really no credible book on the other side that carefully argues for the historicity of Jesus. Bart Ehrman's book "Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth" is not what is needed.

[Richard Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent analysis of the current scholarship on the debate concerning the historicity of Jesus. There are ample references to other works which defend both sides of the debate. This book will appeal both to the novice and to the expert. Carrier's thorough treatment of the subject is impressive.

[Paltia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Open me up and meet the celestial sky god who might have been crucified by satan and the sky demons. Yee hawwww “you gotta believe in something. Why not believe in me?” Norman Jesse Whitfield. It’s all about faith.

[Keith Swenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an excellent book, extremely well researched and organized. Whether you like the book or not depends on whether you are a believer or not. Those who visit a church every week and declare their allegiance to Jesus is not going to enjoy this book, and probably won't get anything of value from it, so my recommendation there is not to bother. Similarly, of course, you have to consider whether reviews are from a believer or not. However, if you are not committed to Jesus as a personal savior, you might find this viewpoint useful, but be warned: it is very dry. At each step he attempts to calculate the probability of something being likely or not, and the math is necessarily a bit tedious. His commitment to producing an Baysian analysis of the probabilities is probably the most important aspect of the book.

He considers two positions: (1) that the legend was formed around a real person named Jesus who taught in the middle east, and (2) that the legend started to be about a god (like Herakles or Zeus) about whom stories were told of his visits to earth, but he never actually existed as a person. The evidence for an against each position is considered. Both positions are essentially secular as he does not consider whether Jesus actually did any miracles, only whether there is evidence that the writers of the Gospels actually thought he was a real person, or already a legend at that time.

I gave it three stars because while it is an excellent literary contribution, it is a bit esoteric and scholarly, and so I figure it will not be of interest to everyone. I found the book hard to read, so I opted to get the audiobook version, read by Carrier himself, and that was far more palatable.

[Pedro Almeida Jorge · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if there was a church of "Aragornians"? How could a person 2000 years from now inquire whether Aragorn was actually a real person? Of course this is a weak analogy, but I hope you get the point.

If you like puzzles, logic and mythology, you should read this. Needless to say, if you are intrigued by the origins of Christianity, you also can't skip this one. It does not claim to close the case - instead, the author actually intends this to be above all the start of a more serious discussion. As for myself, I am completely convinced by Carrier's thesis and arguments. The world will never look the same after this one - but, interestingly enough, this book actually got me more interested in reading the New Testament, now from a whole new different perspective.

Verily I say unto you, this is the most ingenious feat of scholarship I ever came across. Simply amazing in its range and cleverness. The ball is now in the historicists' court - and after 6 or 7 years, I still have not seen any argument that the author has not managed to respond to. His website https://www.richardcarrier.info/ is also a valuable and interesting resource.

If you want a good introduction to the author's thesis, watch this nice interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biUOy...

[Cristobal Peña · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a through book.
This seems to be the most through review of the evidence if Jesus existed.
I was shocked to find out about all the forgeries , shocked at all the documents even from early christians prior to the 100 a.c.

Having not too long ago abandoned christianity I took for granted that Jesus was still this very wise historical character.
Now I have some serious doubts about that.

It is really tempting for me now to study koine greek so I can critically review some of the most contentious parts of the NT that are the most susceptible to translation bias

I wished more historical books were as through with its research at this.
With that being said I would be hard pressed to recommend this book to anyone due to how long it is.

I guess ill have to check the shorter version to see if I can recommend that.
I would love too someone to do a book this through for the case of historicity but I doubt that will happen unless some new evidence comes into play.

[Jim McIntosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carrier says at the end of the book, "I intend this book not to end but to begin a debate about this." This it certainly does. Even if you disagree with him, you have to admire his scholarship and research. Everything is carefully footnoted and cross referenced. It is a great summary for the current consensus on what is considered authentic in biblical writings. This alone argues for keeping the book at hand to use as a reference.

[Mary Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone interested in the history of Christianity.

[Bogdan Ghiurco · Rating 1 out of 5]

I will apply Richard Carrier's own "method' and review his book, by using the same type of "argument" his book is full of: This guy is a bum and a fraud. Why? Because I say so.

[Tanja Berg · Rating 5 out of 5]

With this book I lay to rest my curiosity and wild escapades into the Jesus myth topic. I have read a number of books on the topic the past month. This is by far the most comprehensive, thorough and scientific, written by a professor of history for the relevant time period.

Sorry Christians, the likelihood that Jesus Christ existed and as is at best 1 in 3 and at worst extremely slim. After 700 pages digging through the Bible and the relevant history of the day, I am convinced that the likelihood of a historical Jesus is unlikely.

Paul is the creator of Christianity and he was talking about a celestial savior, not an actual man. But you really need to read the book to get the full picture.
Or better yet, read the Bible. Read the gospels side by side and note the differences.

The gospels, by the way, are a later construction to create something like a real man, based on the hero archetype og the day. Since the «Jesus was real» myth was the one that won out, nearly all obvious references to the contrary have been wiped out.

[JCJBergman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this cover to cover takes serious time and dedication. In my position, it's a reference book for dipping in and out on certain issues. Carrier writes with insane detail and his bibliography is over 60 pages long - he is accused of being disingenuous by some (unsurprisingly few of those being Christians) but from what I can tell, he clearly cares about this topic, and coming to a reasonable answer about whether Jesus actually existed or not.

For quality of academic writing and acumen, 5 stars is a no-brainer for me on this one. My rating is independent from his conclusion. This is a beast of a book, and I'll be both damned and blessed if I ever entirely finish it.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did a historical Jesus actually exist? The debate over the essence of Jesus’ existence has been around since the very beginning of Christianity as competing Christian sects quickly arose, from the Paulines, Markans, Docetists, to the Nestorians and Arians. But the question of the very existence of even an actual figure known as Jesus has been just below the surface for centuries, occasionally bubbling to the top. Spurred on by the fantastic work of Earl Doherty, ancient historian Dr. Richard Carrier delves into this often taboo question from the perspective of his extensive expertise in ancient Roman and Greek history, Classical civilizations, and the history of Christian origins, in this magnum opus like work, “On the Historicity of Jesus.” He not only seeks to answer the question as decisively as possible, but to open this question for more serious and broad consideration from other scholars and remove the ridiculous taboo placed on it from decades of biased Jesus studies controlled largely by theological schools with a vested interest in preserving only one answer.

The book lays down a foundation in understanding methodology (based on Dr. Carrier’s previous work, “Proving History”) for examining a historical question like this from the little evidence available. Dr. Carrier provides a strong case for using Bayesian analysis to honestly and accurately determine not only the probabilities of whether a historical Jesus ultimately existed, but also the probabilities of the explanatory power of the historicity hypothesis verses the ahistoricity hypothesis regarding the scant available evidence we do have, verses what evidence we should have, on each hypothesis.

Dr. Carrier lays out a lengthy and orderly series of Elements which are regarded by most scholars as being well founded and widely accepted facts of early Christianity. These serve to establish a foundation and largely cover areas such as facts relating to origins of Christianity, textual analysis of various texts, development of other mystery religions contemporary with Judaism and Christianity, and mythological creations including a look at the hero class models such as the Rank-Raglan mythotype. He later refers back to these Elements quite often, as they are critical to understanding and properly analyzing the texts and evidence in question and following the foundations upon which they are crafted.

As the book moves forward we get to the meat of what will ultimately judge the case: the evidence. The first thing that becomes painfully obvious, is the utter lack of evidence for any historical Jesus. Dr. Carrier meticulously evaluates every possible piece of relevant evidence with a refreshingly as neutral approach as possible. I say as possible, because Dr. Carrier really gives far greater weight to the evidence in favor of historicity than scholars would be comfortable with on any other question, using a fortiori arguments to try and make the absolute most generous case for historicity. For some, discovering how pitifully the gospels and Acts weigh in as evidence may be startling, but the analysis is incredibly well founded and strongly supported by scholarship. As Dr. Carrier wades through some of the old gems of Jesus apologists, such as Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Thallus, and others, we find that the so-called evidence of these extra-biblical sources, simply isn’t evidence at all, but is more appropriately a case of wishful thinking on the part of apologists. The last resort for any hope of some solid evidence for Jesus historicity is the earliest Christian writings we have – those of the apostle Paul and the letter of 1 Clement. The theology of these two sources however, might not be what a historicist would hope for, and Dr. Carrier breaks them down in great detail in order to weigh these sources as evidence, and determine what that evidence tells us.

I don’t want to spoil the detailed conclusions to the questions and examinations of the evidence presented in this wonderful book. I also don’t see the need to be verbose in this review, as many others have written more eloquent reviews which don’t need repeating here in my own words. What I will lastly add, is that this book is incredibly reader friendly for the layperson. While this book is a large corpus of material meticulously examining the Jesus historicity question written in a format for scholars, having been positively and successfully peer reviewed, it is nonetheless so very well written that both scholar and layperson will thoroughly appreciate its contents and presentation. The scholarship for this book is impeccable and gives this book, its thesis and ultimate conclusion an authoritative support structure. References and citations of numerous scholars lend support to nearly every significant point made. I must conclude, that Dr. Carrier’s presentation is firmly supported by the evidence, the scholarship, and the unifying presentation that brings it altogether to drive home a significantly, and potentially consensus shifting conclusion. It is well worth the read – dare I say essential for the topic – and I cannot recommend it highly enough for both the convinced historicist and the confident ahistoricist, and even merely those curious about this fascinating question.

[Geoff Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough treatment of this subject.

[Ryan Clifton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree with other reviewers that the subtitle is way too modest. It's hard to imagine anyone after reading this book can still believe in good faith that Jesus existed at all.

[Carmelo Valone · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can one describe how wonderful this book is? What I might have to simply call as 'Deep Dive' into the origins of the mythos of you know who...everything from probability theory to storyline 'holes' to comparisons to other religious narratives. Ontologically pure protein foods for your mind. :)

I'd like to say more, but I'm really hoping that you too can read and make some of your own deductions of the historicity of Jesus.

[Ginger Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Are you ready for some footnotes? Because this is a densely researched look at the question of whether Jesus existed as a historical figure. (Note: There are plenty of internet-crank theories on this topic, but you won't find them in this book.)
The author concludes that Jesus most likely was mythical (and none of the evidence he presents is new to scholars, as far a I can tell). The earliest Christian writings to have survived (the epistles of Paul, dating from about 50 - 60 CE) don't present Jesus as a historical figure who performed miracles on Earth. Instead, the only sources Paul gives for knowledge about Jesus are revelation and passages from scripture (i.e., the Old Testament). Which is weird, since he claims to have known people who were supposed to be Jesus's disciples. 
Speaking of which (and as the author points out), why would Jesus's chosen disciples accept Paul as an apostle anyway, especially since (by his own admission) he started out as an enemy of the cult and subsequently seems to have spent much of his apostolic career badmouthing the Torah-observant branch (which was associated with Peter, supposedly the chief disciple)? This seems seriously strange -- unless, of course, there really was no historical Jesus. In which case Peter and Paul both got their ideas from visions -- and who could prove that Peter's hallucinations were better than Paul's?
Scholars have puzzled over these questions for decades. Now some have thrown in the towel and concluded that Jesus probably wasn't a real person. Instead, the Jesus cult may have originated with visions of a celestial being who was crucified and resurrected in Satan's sub-lunar realm.
If that sounds wacko to you, congratulations. You're living in the modern world. But Christianity began in the ancient world, where many people thought stories like this made perfect sense. They believed in the power of blood sacrifice (hence the need for Jesus to be crucified -- human sacrifice being the most powerful of all). Many also saw the universe as an ascending hierarchy of celestial realms that contained platonic-style originals of everything we know on Earth. The Apostle Paul even claimed to know a "man in Christ" (probably himself) who was "caught up to the third heaven" (2 Corinthians 12). The space between Earth and the moon was viewed as corrupt, though, populated by all manner of demons and demi-gods (unlike the increasingly perfect realms beyond). It was the perfect setting for a gruesome sacrifice.
The gospels place Jesus on Earth, of course. But the gospels are allegorical fiction, and would have been understood as such by their original readers. (Again, something scholars have known for a long time.) They also were written decades after the Jesus cult started, by which time its founders were probably dead. 
The first gospel to be written (Mark) dates to no earlier than 70 CE, and probably later. The author of Mark created his story mostly by reworking Old Testament passages, but he clearly was influenced by Paul's epistles too. (it was Paul who invented the Eucharist tale that appears in Mark 14, for example. See 1 Corinthians 11. Paul claims to have received this story "from the Lord" -- but since he never met Jesus, he must mean that it came to him as a direct revelation. Or maybe he just made it up to scare his piggish Corinthian followers into submission -- read 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 to see what I mean). 
The authors of Matthew and Luke later plagiarized Mark, while the author of John used Mark as a source but mostly crafted a new, improved Jesus who better fit his worldview (even inventing a humdinger of a miracle story about Jesus raising a partially decomposed Lazarus from the dead -- a story that the other gospel authors somehow failed to mention; just not dramatic enough, I guess). 
All the gospel authors, along with other early Christian writers, drew most heavily on their favored source: Secret messages and prophecies that they claimed to find in the Old Testament. The gospel authors found the OT particularly useful as a source for miracle stories, which they recast and attributed to Jesus. 
Despite the well-known evidence detailed in this book, most New Testament scholars still cling to the idea that Jesus was historical and struggle to find some crumbs of history in the gospels, even while admitting that they're obvious fiction. I suspect the next generation of scholars may have a different view. 

[Thomas Lindmark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was much more expansive and dense than I was expecting. After a few chapters the realization came that this book was very well researched indeed. There is a proper statistical method used. Analysis of all the relevant texts. Arguments both for and against historicity vs mythicism on the relevant passages. Probabilities assigned both for and against based what different authors write. There are lots and lots of references and footnotes. I started keeping track and I think page 176 wins with two lines of body text followed by 45 lines of footnotes.

This makes the book more academic in style and thus a bit harder to read through, but I think Carrier found a good middle path for a reader like myself who has a mere interest in the subject but no wish to spend years reading ancient texts. When Carrier writes it is easily understood and he takes time to explain the why’s and how’s and also references other opinions on relevant piece of obscure ancient texts.

The most interesting takeaway from reading this book is the seeming evolution of the myth. From a story of the sacrifice of a celestial non-earthly being of Pauls, the myth evolves and adds more convolutions and after a century not only was Jesus a real life carpenter, but he had a family and brothers and sisters and running around doing miracles. But the new narratives creates conflicts with reality and each other and leave a big mess of things when they are placed together. That mess I remember from reading thru the Bible a bunch of years ago.

Anyway. The book is a bit academic. If the interest exists, by all means read it. It certainly good. But if you just do not care about these things I believe you better of leaving it alone. Instead start by looking at one of Carriers lectures on YouTube and go from there.