My academic study
On the Historicity of Jesus was published in 2014, by respected biblical studies press Sheffield-Phoenix. It was the first complete study of the historicity of Jesus to pass peer review in over a hundred years. Since then only one other has been published, Raphael Lataster’s
Questioning the Historicity of Jesus, published by Brill in 2019. Both studies found doubt more credible than confidence. There has yet to be a countermanding study.
The last ever before ours, finding instead in the affirmative, was Shirley Case’s
The Historicity of Jesus: A Criticism of the Contention that Jesus Never Lived, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1912 (with a second edition in 1928). Everything else published since (pro or con) has either not completed anything like a full study of the question, or has not been subject to any reliable kind of peer review (or both). Ever since Case, peer reviewed books on the historical Jesus simply
assume historicity, with maybe (if rarely) a few pages on why that’s being assumed, but hardly anything like a real case for it. The field is awaiting—and greatly needs—a serious update of Case, to articulate well-examined (and not merely apologetical) reasons why historicity should continue to be assumed despite all the latest studies finding it shouldn’t. Especially since many of the assumptions Case relies on have been overthrown in mainstream scholarship since. We need a proper response to Carrier 2014 and Lataster 2019; at least, the best possible, so anyone can compare the best case to be made for each side.
Next year will mark the 10th anniversary of
OHJ’s publication. In preparation for a possible second edition for that I have already completed a 2023 Revised Edition, and that has now replaced the original in print (the audio edition will not be updated; digital editions might be someday but currently have not been). It has the same pagination (more or less) and merely corrects a plethora of typos and minor errors (nearly everything listed in
Errata for On the Historicity of Jesus, originally “Typos List,” which now leads with a list of changes I would still yet make, including updated citations). I am in contract to produce a new volume with Sheffield, and that was first imagined as just a more substantively updated edition of
OHJ (not a mere Revised Edition but a full Second Edition). But in consultation with their editorial team we are considering the possibility of instead producing a second
volume rather than a second
edition, which would address the top controversies launched by
On the Historicity of Jesus in the past decade, possibly even in dialogue with other fully-credentialed scholars.
This makes sense, as I am finding that the sorts of things I would change in a second edition are not very substantive: updating the references to cover publications since 2014 (none of which change any conclusions but only reinforce them); updating the wording in some passages to head off the kinds of disingenuous misreadings of the original that critics have undertaken (none of which is necessary for a sincere reader); and adding responses to, at least, those critics who attempted anything like a proper academic review (as in, published in a real academic journal). But that last can be accomplished in more fitting ways: with a dedicated chapter (or chapters) on that point in a new volume (rather than adding pages to the already overlong current volume, which would be necessary even if I could find material safe to subtract), or by publishing in the new volume actual debates or dialogues with other scholars on the point; or both.
If we do settle on this decision (nothing has yet been finalized), that would leave one thing still needed: a useful index to my blog articles updating (or defending against criticism) any argument in
On the Historicity of Jesus. This will serve. Below I have organized those articles by subject or purpose. And I intend to keep this updated (so even if the date of this article remains 2023, it will include entries after that year, as they are produced). So readers who want to know if anything has changed, or how I’d respond to anything, since the 2014 edition, in any matter substantially affecting its thesis, can now bookmark and consult this annotated article index.
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Linked Table of Contents
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Critics & Sympathizers
My responses to specific named critics are continuously catalogued in
List of Responses to Defenders of the Historicity of Jesus. I also maintain a catalogue of qualified scholars who agree that doubting the historicity Jesus is at least plausible in
List of Historians Who Take Mythicism Seriously (which have more than quadrupled in number since I published in 2014). And I maintain an
Open Thread On the Historicity of Jesus where any questions about my study (or Lataster’s) can be asked.
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Concerning Points of Method
I describe and defend my Bayesian methodology most thoroughly in
Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Prometheus 2012), which I contractually mandated the publisher have peer-reviewed by one professor of Mathematics and one professor of Biblical Studies (of their choosing). I have written a great deal on Bayesian epistemology since (category:
Bayes’ Theorem) and historical methods more generally (category:
Historical Method).
But more directly in relation to the thesis of
Historicity have been the following articles:
Addressing issues more obscure:
And on “crank” versions of Mythicism and why they should be rejected as implausible:
- Fincke Is Right: Arguing Jesus Didn’t Exist Should Not Be a Strategy. I explain why “Jesus didn’t exist” is not a good argument against Christianity being true and should not be used that way.
- The Problem with Varieties of Jesus Mythicism. Surveys the general field of amateur Mythicism, as represented in a recent anthology, and explains why they fail factually and methodologically, and what it actually takes to build a credible thesis.
- Please No More Astrotheology. In reviewing a whole common category of crank Mythicism from that volume, I outline methodologically why “astrotheological” explanations of the origins of Christianity simply don’t hold water, and what it would actually have taken to reverse that conclusion.
- Atwill’s Cranked-up Jesus. I address another common category of crank Mythicism, the idea that it was invented by the Roman Imperial government as some kind of psy-op, surveying its factual and methodological defects.
- James Valliant’s Bogus Theory of a Roman Invention of Christianity. I address the latest “popular” version of Atwill’s thesis and its misuse of the catacombs and numismatic and iconographic evidence. Here I also focus on methodology and what cranks in general are doing wrong.
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Concerning the Prior Probability
- Jesus and the Problem of the Fraudulent Reference Class. Many don’t like the principle that the more mythically a person is described, the less likely they are to have existed. Here I explain why attempts to get around my approach to estimating prior probability aren’t valid, vs. what would be.
- My Rank-Raglan Scoring for Osiris. Goes into how I arrived at my score, what principles I used to downscore other heroes, and what constitutes valid and invalid upscoring and downscoring, and why this reference class is real, and matters. There is also important discussion in comments.
- How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus? In Historicity, Chapter 6.7, I explain why the objection that such a rapid historicization can’t occur is untrue (and likewise, in Chapters 7.7 and 8.12, that it would occur without notice). Here I expand on my discussion in Chapter 12.3 as to what the most likely sequence of events was, and the evidence we have for it. This was expanded into a chapter in Jesus from Outer Space.
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Concerning the Extrabiblical Evidence
Josephus
There has been an effort to try and rehabilitate the references to Jesus in Josephus, but they are ever more fallacious and even methodologically self-refuting. There are two such passages to account for: the so-called Testimonium Flavianum is a fawning paragraph summarizing the Christian Gospel; and the so-called James Passage is imagined to be about the Christian brother of Jesus named James. Even though in
Historicity I don’t depend on either of these being interpolations (their content is equally expected even if Jesus didn’t exist, as they merely repeat the Gospels and statements that would be made by any Christians by then, and therefore even if authentic they offer no further evidence for Jesus), critics have obsessed over debating them anyway, producing a lot of response and analysis that adds to what I have already published.
- Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014. The single most important update to this question, summarizing all pertinent scholarship since Historicity that says anything new. This includes links to other articles of mine on these matters not listed below. And it explains why we can’t keep citing the consensus on this, if the consensus isn’t informed by these new studies.
I now maintain that article with links to all new discussions as they arise (most of which concern not the Testimonium Flavianum
but the James passage), so it is the go-to for this subject now.
Tacitus
- Blom on the Testimonium Taciteum. In response to a peer-reviewed article by Willem Blom, I further discuss why I doubt Tacitus mentioned Jesus, even though I don’t rely on that conclusion in Historicity (there, as with Josephus, my argument follows simply from there being no evidence Tacitus had a source independent of the Gospels). Includes a section on the mentions in Suetonius as well.
- Margaret Williams on Early Classical Authors on Jesus. Useful review of a book subsequent to my study that supports many positions taken in it; including my response to Williams’ attempted critique of my questioning the authenticity of the material in Tacitus (even though I do not take that position in my study).
- A Bayesian Brief on Comments at TAM. Addresses an obscure mathematical question raised about my peer-reviewed argument against the authenticity of the Tacitus reference to Jesus.
Others
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Concerning Acts
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Concerning the Gospels
In
Historicity, Chapters 7 and 10 (see subject index), I rule out Q as a usable source, because it doesn’t survive, its existence and content are hypothetical at best, and it can’t be reliably dated any earlier than Mark, and so it can’t be established to be independent, only conjectured to be. Lataster’s study,
Questioning the Historicity of Jesus, spends more time addressing why it is methodologically unsound to depend on hypothetical sources like Q in this debate. I have also written more on the subject, illustrating why I think Q is a dead hypothesis that really needs to be abandoned:
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--Carrier, Richard (10 July 2023).
"An Ongoing List of Updates to the Arguments and Evidence in On the Historicity of Jesus".
Richard Carrier Blogs. Retrieved 20 January 2025.
If so, feel free to itemize, in one's own words the 4 or 5 most convincing arguments in that 2+ hour video. I do NOT need an essay; a time-stamp or enough info to Google should be enough. Just do NOT force me to read Carrier in his original. Show your stuff with a 