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Richard Carrier: A Fuller Reply to His Criticisms, Beliefs, and Claims about Jesus
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Richard Carrier: A Fuller Reply to His Criticisms, Beliefs, and Claims about Jesus

Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum

Richard Carrier: A Fuller Reply to His Criticisms, Beliefs, and Claims about Jesus

Richard Carrier - My Response to His Criticisms Richard Carrier is one of the new breeds of mythicists. He is trained in ancient history and classics, with a PhD from Columbia University – an impressive credential. In my book Did Jesus Exist I speak of him as a smart scholar with bona fide credentials. I do, of course, heartily disagree with him on issues relating to the historical Jesus, but I have tried to take his views seriously and give him the respect he deserves. Richard Carrier, as many of you know, has written a scathing review of Did Jesus Exist on his Freethought Blog. He indicates that my book is “full of errors,” that it “misinforms more than it informs” that it provides “false information” that it is “worse than bad” and that “it officially sucks.” The attacks are sustained throughout his lengthy post, and they often become personal. He indicates that “Ehrman doesn’t actually know what he is talking about,” he claims that I speak with “absurd” hyperbole, that my argument “makes [me] [...]

BDEhrman2024-04-02T14:16:23-04:00April 25th, 2022|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum|

Carrier and James the Brother of Jesus

I hope I am not beating a dead horse by going at some length into this discussion of James, the brother of Jesus, in response to the Mythicists, who have a very real stake indeed in saying that he wasn’t really Jesus’ brother, since that would mean Jesus existed. I’m pursuing the matter in part because it is such a key issue and as well to show that it would be possible to argue to all eternity with Mythicists on point after point after point. Some of them are truly inexhaustible. If I wanted to spend my entire life and career doing nothing but answering Mythicists rejoinders to my replies to their responses to my comments on their claims – it could occupy my next twenty years! I am giving a taste of what it involves here. The short story: The historical man Jesus from Nazareth had a brother named James. Paul actually knew him. That is pretty darn good evidence that Jesus existed. If he did not exist he would not have had a [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-27T15:58:33-04:00November 5th, 2016|Bart's Critics, Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Attacks from the Other Side: An Ill-Tempered Richard Carrier

Sometimes I think that if I’m “getting it from all sides,” I may be doing something right. The religious conservatives seems to be up in arms about my book How Jesus Became God – both conservative evangelical Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics like the Very Reverend Robert Barron. In fact, as I’ve said, I do not think anything in the book is inimical to Christian faith, unless it is completely committed to a view of the infallibility of the Bible and its full, historical accuracy. The Christianity I admire is not like that. But I get it from the non-religious left as well. Yesterday a member of the blog sent me the following critique – delivered in terms of mocking incredulity – by Richard Carrier, the mythicist (i.e., one who does not believe that Jesus existed) who has shown more vitriol, hatred, and mean-spiritedness toward me than almost any of the fundamentalists who attack me from the other side. The following is in reference to my point that we do not have any references to [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-27T15:59:57-04:00April 21st, 2014|Bart's Critics, Historical Jesus, Mythicism|

Carrier, Bayes Theorem, and Jesus’ Existence

As most of you know, I’m pretty much staying out of the mythicist debates. That is for several reasons. One is that the mythicist position is not seen as intellectually credible in my field (I’m using euphemisms here; you should see what most of my friends *actually* say about it….) – no one that I know personally (I know a *lot* of scholars of New Testament, early Christianity, and so on) takes it at *all* seriously as a viable historical perspective (this includes not just Christians but also Jews, agnostics, atheists – you name it), and my colleagues sometimes tell me that I’m simply providing the mythicists with precisely the credibility they’re looking for even by engaging them. It’s a good point, and I take it seriously. In that connection I should say that I can understand how someone who hasn’t spent years being trained in the history of early Christianity might have difficulty distinguishing between serious scholarship that is accepted by experts as being plausible (even when judged wrong) and the writings of others [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-27T16:02:02-04:00November 7th, 2013|Bart's Critics, Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Mythicism|

Response to Carrier

A lot of people have been asking me when I will be replying to Richard Carrier's full-frontal assault (!) on my book. I've started to reply in a couple of posts (maybe some haven't noticed....), but I hope to have a fuller set of comments soon, on his charges of "Errors of Fact." I know what I want to say, but am simply overwhelmed right now with other things to do. Long story, I won't bore you with it. But I *hope* to have a fairly sizeable posting on the topic by Wednesday (I'm saying this here so I don't need to reply individually to everyone who has asked). I have decided that I will post it on the Public Forum, since I really do take his charges of scholarly incompetence seriously and feel that I need to address them. In the meantime, someone forwarded to me the following post on R. Joseph Hoffmann's blog. I think it's pretty good and amusing and worth reading. I don't think I've ever met Hoffmann, but I've known [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-14T23:38:50-05:00April 24th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum|

Acharya S, Richard Carrier, and a Cocky Peter (Or: “A Cock and Bull Story”)

As I indicated in my earlier posting, I will make an exception in this case and post these comments on the Public Forum, although normally I reserve my Responses to Critics to the Members Only section of the blog. As many readers know, Richard Carrier has written a hard-hitting, one might even say vicious, response to Did Jesus Exist. I said nothing nasty about Carrier in my book – just the contrary, I indicated that he was a smart fellow with whom I disagree on fundamental issues, including some for which he really does not seem to know what he is talking about. But I never attacked him personally. He on the other hand, appears to be showing his true colors. Still, the one thing this bit of nastiness has shown me is that even though I seem to stir up controversy everywhere I go and with everything I write, I really don’t like conflict. I would much prefer that we all simply get along and search for truth together. But alas, the world does [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-27T16:00:39-04:00April 22nd, 2012|Bart's Critics, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum|

Richard Carrier on The Huffington Post Article (1)

I began to write replies to Richard Carrier’s rather heated response to my Huffington Post article before his now more extensive review of my book appeared on his blog. I will first reply in a series of posts to the first response, and then deal with the more extensive and, well, overly heated (!) later response. This was my first response: Richard Carrier has written a rather intemperate reaction to my piece in the Huffington Post in which I summarize, in about a thousand words, some of the major points I make in my new book Did Jesus Exist (361 pages! It is not easy to condense that much material in three pages!). One thing he objects to most vehemently to is my claim that there are no scholars trained in the relevant fields of academic inquiry (e.g., New Testament; early Christianity) and teaching at a recognized institution of higher learning who takes the position that he and his fellow mythicists take, that Jesus never existed. I can understand why Carrier is so upset. He [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-27T16:01:15-04:00April 21st, 2012|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus|

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