From one of John’s blog posts:

“ps

I mentioned to eminent New Testament expert James McGrath that Carrier labeled my research bizarre, and James replied:

‘You dared to disagree with him, and his only explanation for why people do so is that they are irrational, insane, and/or dishonest. This fact tells us more about him than anything else. Welcome to the club!'”

Responding to the substance of a Carrier critique is problematic. While there is nothing wrong with Carrier critiquing an article or book which questions his position(s), he almost invariably resorts to ad hominem* attacks on the author. Responding to Carrier’s critiques will again, almost invariably, generate more ad hominem attacks. Many scholars have come to recognize this pattern and decline to respond directly, relying on readers to judge the merits of the original argument. It is hard to blame them for taking this tack.

In a perfect world Carrier would respond to the substance of arguments against his mythic positions without engaging in the personal attacks, which could encourage a continuing dialogue. He seems incapable of doing so, however, and his “followers” seem to support his method of argumentation, which encourages him to continue in the same vein.

Carrier lost me with his claim to apply Bayesian “reasoning” to the historicity of Jesus. For a recent article critiquing Carrier’s method of establishing the base rate to which he applies Bayes’ Theorem, see Lord Raglan’s Hero and Jesus by Christopher Hansen which can be found here: ** you do not have permission to see this link **. There are also issues with mathematizing the so-called updates, which Bayes’ Theorem requires, but I am not aware of any articles which directly address this problem.

Ultimately though, it does not make much difference whether Carrier’s unique position is right or wrong. Jesus could be a complete myth with a different source than Carrier has proposed. Or, which I view as much more likely, he could have been an historical figure who was the subject of mythic historiography of the kind M. David Litwa describes in How the Gospels Become History.

* Please forgive my failure to italicize these words here and thoughout, as well as my failure to properly format book and article titles. I simply cannot figure out how to format text in this new forum environment. None of my old tricks work anymore.