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Richard Carrier

On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt Paperback – June 3, 2014

by Richard Carrier (Author)

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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.

Print length

712 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd
Publication date

June 3, 2014
Dimensions

6.14 x 1.42 x 9.21 inches
ISBN-10

1909697494
ISBN-13

978-1909697492
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd (June 3, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 712 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1909697494
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1909697492
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.16 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 1.42 x 9.21 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #78,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #149 in Jesus, the Gospels & Acts (Books)

Customer Reviews:
353 ratings

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Douglas Fortune

Excellent book examining the lack of proof in Christian ideas

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2017

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Excellent book examining the lack of proof in Christian ideas. A common believer that has more faith than bible literacy would learn a great deal from this book.

Specifically, Carrier introduces 49 Elements in the first third of the book, which he refers back to constantly when demonstrating his arguments. This is helpful for both believers and non-believers, as it makes it very clear what the claims are, how they are arrived at, and what sort of discussions would help determine where the truth is on the matter. When we don't know, he's honest enough to say that.

Additionally, he discusses the artful, literary arrangement of Matthew and Luke/Acts, showing how and why these moral tales were constructed, and how unlikely it is that a historical figure with friends and family existed during the founding of Christianity.

Additionally, he takes a look at the Rank/Raglin hero-type, which is a theory born in the early 1900s. Two scholars began to notice the similarities between many past mythical figures, and devised a 22-point system which described common characteristics between known mythical heroes. Jesus fits the list very well, as do a few of the other known fabrications within the bible, such as Moses and Joseph.

Additionally, he explains and sketches the circumstances of pre-Christian Judaism with the accuracy and context of a historian, and makes a convincing analysis of the prophecy within Jewish books that suggests many elements that came to be identified within Christianity. It's surprising how closely the book of Daniel and the Psalms predict exactly what was said to happen. That's the problem with prophecy; when people are aware of it, and are desperately trying to understand the future, a prophecy becomes self-fulfilling simply because people expect it to happen. The actual events, which probably did not happen, are less important than what religious leaders though *should* happen or *should have* happened.

Excellent book!

59 people found this helpful

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JH89

Provocative, Eye-Opening, But Flawed Book

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2017

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This is a provocative, eye-opening, and, in many ways, a gripping book. Even if you disagree with the author’s conclusions, you will learn a lot about the ancient world and early Christianity by reading this book. Carrier has convinced me that we should not have firm beliefs about the existence of Jesus and it would be entirely unsurprising if Jesus didn’t actually exist. That said, I’m much less confident than Carrier that we should form the positive belief that Jesus did not exist rather than just suspending judgment.

Carrier convincingly shows how little reliable evidence we have for the historical Jesus. We have almost nothing.

We can basically dispense with almost all of the evidence for the historical Jesus. The Gospels are filled with allegories and magic. There may be historical fact in there somewhere, but we lack reliable means of figuring out what it is. It is unclear whether the later Christian writers knew much about the historical Jesus and there is pervasive corruption and doctoring of the sources. You don’t have to trust Carrier on this—other scholars have shown that later authors tampered extensively with the evidence. The most obvious cases are probably the Josephus interpolations and the fake epistles. The worst part is that we don’t really know how corrupted the evidence is—some of the writings that we think are authentic could very well be fake/manipulated.

Carrier does an excellent job in presenting background evidence that shows how unsurprising it would be if Jesus was only a myth. The cases of King Ludd, the cargo cults, Joseph Smith’s golden plates, and the Roswell UFO crash illustrate how quickly people can come to believe crazy things even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, we know that ancient peoples invented deities all of the time and created mystery cults around likely fictional people, like Osiris, Mithras, Attis, etc. Finally, ancient people historicized their gods/divine men (Heracles, Romulus).

The one remaining mystery is Paul’s epistles. In my view, the epistles are likely the only genuine clues that we have. But what are they evidence for? It is clear that Paul knew very little about the historical Jesus and that’s pretty weird (even Bart Ehreman and other defenders of the historicity of Jesus concede that this is puzzling). Yet I’m not entirely sold on Carrier’s interpretation that Paul only believed in a celestial Jesus. Much of the debate between historicists and mythicists on this involves delicate issues of textual interpretation and frankly I don’t put much stock in the reliability of arguments on either side. We just don’t have enough corroborating or contextual evidence to figure out what was going on with Paul.

Now let me turn to three problems with Carrier’s analysis.

First, Carrier has an elaborate theory about the mythical Jesus that involves Jesus descending from “outer space” and then being killed by demons. I’m skeptical that we can deduce that early Christians accepted this story (the Ascension of Isaiah is interesting but hardly conclusive) and, in any event, I don’t see why Carrier needs it. Instead of positing a bizarre celestial Jesus, Carrier could just deny that Jesus existed and argue that people made him up. Sure, the celestial Jesus is ONE possible explanation about how people mythologized Jesus. But why does Carrier need to commit to this strange and complicated story? It is also possible that early Christians thought Jesus was a real flesh and blood person on earth but that they invented this narrative too (analogous to King Arthur or King Ludd). Either way, Jesus could still have been a myth. So, it is unclear to me why Carrier commits himself to a controversial story about how the Jesus myth got started.

Okay, second problem. Why do we have so little evidence that early Christians believed in a celestial Jesus? Carrier’s answer: the historicist faction of Christianity won out and suppressed and altered the evidence. This might be true, but it is very risky to rely on this kind of quasi-conspiracy theory. The problem is that mythicists can cite this story to explain virtually anything. You don’t like something that Paul said? Blame it on the conspiracy. Where is the evidence that people accepted the story in the Ascension of Isaiah? The later Church destroyed it. See the problem? If we go down this road, then even the absence of evidence is evidence that the mythicists are right. It is true that there was tampering but mythicists can rely on the later suppression of evidence to justify whatever they want.

Final problem: I am unconvinced by Carrier’s “prior probability” that Jesus was unlikely to exist because other famous religious figures/divine men (Moses, Heracles, Romulas, etc) didn’t exist. For any of these myths, we can have two hypotheses: (1) the figure in question existed but then became heavily mythologized over time, or (2) the figure didn’t exist but was invented and mythologized. We just don’t know how often (2) happened instead of (1) with regards to religious figures in the ancient world. Perhaps there occasionally were real people who served as the basis of ancient myths. Since we don’t know even approximately how often this happened, I just don’t think we are in a position to assign prior probabilities yet to whether (2) is true for Jesus. At least, there is massive uncertainty here and it seems too quick to conclude that the prior probability that Jesus existed is, say, 33 percent (which is Carrier's number).

To sum up, this is a provocative and fascinating book. As you can see, it made me think more deeply about an important issue and that’s some of the best praise I can give for any book. But, unlike Carrier, I think the evidence requires a suspension of judgment about the existence of Jesus, not a determinate conclusion one way or the other. Anyway, this is a must-read for anyone who is interested in whether Jesus existed.

47 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

David H

A seriously academic, thorough review of the evidence that Jesus existed.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 28, 2019

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The historicity of Jesus is a touchy subject. Talk about it on social media and you're sure to attract both historicists and mythicists with strong views. New Testament scholars who dissent from the consensus suddenly find they're unemployable in university religious studies departments, ridiculed online and occasionally by NT scholars who hold the line.

I stumbled into this topic during a period of binge-watching YouTube videos featuring NT scholar Bart Ehrman, a former fundamentalist Christian whose studies eventually turned him into an agnostic atheist. In one of these, Ehrman referred to a 'fringe' view among some that Jesus never existed, and quickly dismissed it.

Like many Christians, my first reaction was amazed disbelief that such a wackadoodle theory could be taken seriously. I watched some videos online and some debates.

I occasionally fact-checked the refutations and found that in fact, opponents of Richard Carrier often misrepresented or got their facts wrong. The Trent Horn debate in particular amazed me because Horn insisted that something was written in a text, but when I checked, it wasn't. (Horn claimed that the Life of Adam showed Adam being buried on Earth, Carrier said the text has him buried in the third heaven. Both were insistent, because a lot hangs on it, believe it or not. I checked. Carrier was right.)

Wow - what was going on? How could something I had believed all my life to be a historic fact by a myth? Why couldn't any of these experts demolish Carrier's argument, as I'd expected them to do?

So - I read it for myself. Slowly and carefully, often looking up the footnote references. Every serious argument from scriptures (e.g. Acts, Gospels, Epistles) and from the historical record (Josephus, Tacitus etc) is examined, dissected and evaluated according to Bayes theorem, using the following method:
- how likely is it that this text would look like this if Jesus was a historical figure?
against
- how likely is it that this text would look like this if Jesus began as a myth?

The chapter on the evidence from the gospels is particularly fascinating - a summary of recent scholarship that shows the brilliance of the four evangelists as myth-creators and propagandists.

In the end I was convinced - on the historicity of Jesus, there is indeed reason to doubt.

(Review by Maria, David's wife.)

24 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

A thought provoking look at the mythicist case

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2018

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Having been fascinated by biblical studies for many years, as well as having taught 'A' level religious studies courses for twenty years this is a fascinating book. It has been easy to dismiss the mythicist case prior to this book but Carrier brings his academic power to bear on the issue and his critical faculties are on excellent form throughout. Very interesting on the Pauline epistles in particular. One slight caveat is the amount of time he spends on the 'mathematical' likelihood of either history or myth being correct on different points. Could have done with a little editing there but I understand why he has done it. Easily the best book I've read on this particular issue.

13 people found this helpful

Lusitanian

Very well researched and thought provoking

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 30, 2019

Verified Purchase

I bought this after attending a conference were the author gave a presentation. It's a very well researched book and the author has reportedvall know literature about whether Jesus existed or not.

The chapters are all interlinking, and more like a reference book where evidence is referenced around in different chapters so it's not an easy to read narrative. However it's interesting and has made me think about the topic more so. However the argument made also refers to other books from the author which I cannot cross reference because I haven't got them.

I find the topic very much repetitive throughout and as the argument is made in the first chapters I struggle to comprehend why the book continues. It feels likes I'm reading a thesis or scientific article rather than a book for public consumption.

Has it changed my mind about the historicity of Jesus? Not really, but to be honest it's doesn't make difference to me whether he existed or not. It's a thought provoking book.

6 people found this helpful

Highly recommended

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 14, 2019

Verified Purchase

I am a non-believer who was brought up in the Church of England, and have been trying to make sense of Christianity for decades. This book was very helpful to that endeavour. My initial concerns with Bayes's theorem, that the output will depend on one's subjective choice of input figures, were satisfactorily dealt with by Carrier choosing upper and lower bounds, and also inviting one to supply one's own estimates. Of much greater interest than the mathematical result, however, was the deep insight into why and how Christianity originated and developed in the early centuries. The biggest problem with this book is now trying to find something as engrossing with which to follow it.

9 people found this helpful

matelot

Was he or wasn't he?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2019

Verified Purchase

What got me was Carrier's challenge to the world to produce a different proof model for Jesus' existence, or a different result to Carrier's own model. No result for either. Interesting.

If giraffes could speak, God would be a giraffe.

The bibliography is overwhelming (much checked), and testifies to the years of research undertaken in reaching a logical conclusion..

This book is only of use to those with an unshackled world-view.

5 people found this helpful