Richard Carrier

In his autobiographical essay "From Taoist to Infidel", Carrier recounts a benign Methodist upbringing, an early adult conversion to Taoism, and conflicts with Christian fundamentalists while he served in the United States Coast Guard. He writes that those experiences and his study of religion, Christianity, and Western philosophy led him to embrace naturalism. Carrier married Jennifer Robin Carrier in 1995, and the couple divorced in 2015. When he announced the separation he described himself as polyamorous and said the final two years of their marriage were an open relationship. In 2008, Carrier received a doctorate in ancient history from Columbia University, where he studied the history of science in antiquity. His thesis was entitled "Attitudes Towards the Natural Philosopher in the Early Roman Empire (100 B.C. to 313 A.D.)." From 1996 to 2008 Carrier edited and contributed extensively to The Secular Web, writing about atheism and metaphysical naturalism. Those essays later formed the basis for his book Sense and Goodness without God. Carrier has frequently spoken at skeptic, secular humanist, freethought, and atheist conventions, including the annual Freethought Festival in Madison, Wisconsin, Skepticon in Springfield, Missouri, and gatherings hosted by American Atheists. Carrier initially regarded the nonexistence of Jesus as a fringe theory that did not warrant academic investigation, but readers asked him to examine the topic and crowdfunded his research. He later became a vocal advocate of the view that Jesus was not a historical person. ==Public debates and other media==

(2016). Carrier has engaged in several formal debates, both online and in person, on a range of subjects, including naturalism, natural explanations of early Christian resurrection accounts, the morality of abortion, and the general credibility of the Bible. He debated Michael R. Licona on the Resurrection of Jesus at the University of California, Los Angeles on April 19, 2004. Carrier debated atheist Jennifer Roth online on the morality of abortion. He has defended naturalism in formal debates with Tom Wanchick and Hassanain Rajabali. In 2013, Carrier debated David Marshall on the general credibility of the New Testament. His debates on the historicity of Jesus have included professor of religious studies Zeba A. Crook, Christian scholars Dave Lehman and Doug Hamp. In 2006, Carrier was the keynote speaker for the Humanist Community of Central Ohio's annual Winter Solstice Banquet, where he spoke on defending naturalism as a philosophy. Carrier appears in Roger Nygard's 2009 documentary The Nature of Existence, in which persons of different religious and secular philosophies are interviewed about the meaning of life. In 2007, famed English philosopher Antony Flew, who had long advocated atheism in the absence of empirical evidence of divinity, published his final book with co-author Roy Varghese, ''There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind''. Flew espoused the position that there was an intelligent creator, thereby embracing the concept of deism. Carrier wrote to Flew, and discussed the philosopher's supposed conversion on The Secular Web. In Carrier's analysis he came up with an incorrect theory that There Is a God was authored primarily by Varghese, and misrepresented Flew's opinion regarding religion. Without addressing Carrier directly, Flew released a rebutting statement through his publisher: "My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 percent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I'm 84 and that was Roy Varghese's role. This is my book and it represents my thinking." The March 18, 2009 debate Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? with William Lane Craig was held at the Northwest Missouri State University and posted online in two parts by ReasonableFaithOrg (YouTube channel). Prior to the debate, Carrier commented that "I originally insisted we first debate [on the topic] Are the Gospels Historically Reliable? for the simple reason that you can't honestly debate the former until you've debated (and in fact settled) the latter." In his post debate commentary, Carrier argued that Craig "focused almost entirely on protecting the Gospels as historical sources, and it was there that his shotgun of arguments got well ahead of my ability to catch up." Another debate with Craig was broadcast on Lee Strobel's television show Faith Under Fire. The October 25, 2014 debate Did Jesus Exist? with Trent Horn was held in San Diego, California, and posted online by the "MABOOM Show" (YouTube channel). A debate with Craig A. Evans, entitled Did Jesus Exist? was held at Kennesaw State University on April 13, 2016, and posted online by KSUTV. Carrier appears in the 2020 film Marketing the Messiah, where he discusses several topics including biblical canon creation, the Pauline sect, the dating of Paul's letters and the Gospels, Gospel authorship and redactions over time, and his interpretation of the Gospels as allegory. On allegory, he specifically addresses the story of Jesus Barabbas as a symbolic retelling of atonement in Leviticus. Sexual harassment allegations In June 2016 allegations of unwanted sexual advances by Carrier at atheist and skeptic events were publicized by bloggers and organizers. Freethought Blogs suspended his posting privileges pending review after reporting "several first-hand reports of persistent, obnoxious sexual behavior in defiance of specific requests that he cease." The Orbit published a contemporaneous roundup that described three categories of public allegations then on record, Carrier's own description of a rule-violating advance toward a student at a campus event, a second student's public account that he asked her out and touched her arm and leg without consent, and Skepticon organizers' description of repeated boundary-pushing toward a staffer, along with notice that the Secular Student Alliance (SSA) had removed Carrier from its Speakers Bureau and was reviewing its procedures. On the same day, Skepticon announced that Carrier was prohibited from attending future Skepticon events, citing "repeated boundary-pushing behavior." SSA stated that, after an internal inquiry, Carrier had been removed from its Speakers Bureau the prior year and that it was undertaking a board-level review of policies. Carrier denied the accusations, published a detailed rebuttal, and apologized for one incident he had earlier described, stating that he misread interest and immediately apologized, while contesting that any conduct amounted to harassment or policy violations. He assembled a public case summary, linking affidavits, exhibits, and correspondence, arguing that the claims were false and that no investigation had found him in violation of organizational policies. Carrier also published legal filings and evidentiary materials, including declarations from witnesses and attorney correspondence with Skepticon, on his site. Beginning in September 2016 Carrier filed defamation suits against Freethought Blogs, The Orbit, Skepticon, and several individuals. His federal action in Ohio was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction in November 2018, after which he pursued separate actions in other jurisdictions. In late 2019 the remaining cases were dismissed with prejudice pursuant to a settlement agreement among the parties, with defendants publicly characterizing the result as a complete walk-away and noting that the agreement permitted continued discussion of the allegations. The Washington Post summarized the controversy in 2018, reporting that Carrier both apologized for and denied allegations of unwanted advances and that he had been banned from at least one conference. ==Publications==

Carrier has written extensively throughout his career, including 11 books and 8 contributions to other publications. Carrier's best-known works concern the development of early Christianity and mythicism, as well as Roman scientific education and practices. Sense and Goodness without God Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism (2005) sets out a systematic naturalist worldview, developing positions in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics, and argues for naturalized moral realism and a physicalist account of consciousness in preference to theism. Not the Impossible Faith ''Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn't Need a Miracle to Succeed'' (2009) contends that the early Christian movement's growth can be explained by ordinary sociocultural mechanisms rather than miraculous events, assessing claims about missionary strategy, social networks, class and gender dynamics, and patronage in the Roman world. Why I Am Not a Christian Carrier's 2011 book Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith outlines a case against Christian theism by examining miracle claims, scriptural authority, moral theory, and the comparative explanatory power of naturalism. Proving History, On Historicity, and Outer Space Carrier has linked Proving History, On the Historicity of Jesus, and Jesus from Outer Space as an informal trilogy. Proving History introduces his Bayesian framework for historical method, On the Historicity of Jesus applies that framework to competing mythicist and historicist models, and Jesus from Outer Space restates the argument for general readers. ''Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus'' (2012) promotes formal probabilistic reasoning in historical research, critiques the "criteria of authenticity" used in Jesus studies, and defends Bayesian probability analysis as a way to compare hypotheses. Carrier argues that Bayes' theorem should guide historical methodology. He maintains that a Bayesian analysis renders the ahistoricity of Jesus the most probable conclusion and that Jesus originated as a mythic figure rather than as a historical person who was later mythologized. Carrier estimates the probability of Jesus' existence at between 1/3 and 1/12000, depending on the values supplied to his model. Critics have rejected his methodology, or "problematic and unpersuasive". Simon Gathercole argues that Carrier's conclusions "are contradicted by the historical data." Carrier describes himself and the book as "I am also the first historian in a hundred years to publish a complete peer-reviewed, academic press argument for the origin and development of Christianity that does not include a historical Jesus." Sheffield Phoenix Press, a biblical studies publisher, released the volume. Carrier argues that a Bayesian analysis leaves insufficient evidence for a historical Jesus and that the earliest Christians revered a celestial or "angelic extraterrestrial" named Jesus who was subordinate to God. He maintains that this being emerged from a "cosmic sperm bank", was tortured and crucified by Satan and his demons, buried above the clouds, and resurrected in outer space. Carrier writes that the celestial Jesus was known through private revelations and scriptural interpretation before being cast as a narrative figure in the gospels. He contends that the allegorical dimension of Jesus was lost during early disputes over control of Christian communities. Because the gospels were written decades after Jesus' death, Carrier characterizes them as "wildly fictitious" and treats the Gospel of Mark as an extended meta-parable. Apart from the hero archetype pattern, Carrier contends that nothing else in the gospels is reliable evidence for or against historicity. Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ (2020) offers a popular-level restatement of Carrier's mythicist hypothesis presented in On the Historicity of Jesus, arguing that the earliest Christ cult centered on a celestial rather than historical person and that later narratives re-situated that figure in a biographical frame. Hitler Homer Bible Christ Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995–2013 (2014) collects articles and conference papers on early Christianity, historical method, Greco-Roman science, and textual criticism, including the study of Hitler's Table Talk translations. Science Education and The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire The Science Education in the Early Roman Empire monograph (2016) revises Carrier's dissertation and surveys the curricular, institutional, and social settings through which scientific knowledge was taught in the Roman world, with attention to rhetorical schooling, technical handbooks, and educational stratification. Michiel Meeusen, in his review, states the work had issues such as "whiggism employed in dealing with ancient science and scientists." The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire companion volume (2017) significantly expands upon and examines the practice and social roles of investigators of nature in Roman antiquity, drawing on literary, epigraphic, and papyrological sources, and advances claims about trajectories in ancient scientific inquiry and their reception in late antiquity. In Cristian Tolsa's review, he characterizes parts of Carrier's framework as reductionist and notes "serious anachronisms". Gesù resistente Gesù inesistente Gesù resistente Gesù inesistente. Due visioni a confronto (2022), co-authored with Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, Franco Tommasi, and Robert M. Price, stages a structured debate between historicist and mythicist interpretations of Christian origins for an Italian readership, with Carrier outlining his mythicist model. Essays Criticism of Hitler's Table Talk Carrier collaborated with Reinhold Mittschang to challenge several quotations attributed to Adolf Hitler in the monologues published as Hitler's Table Talk. Their paper argues that the French and English translations are "entirely untrustworthy" and suggests that translator François Genoud doctored portions of the text to amplify Hitler's hostility toward Christianity. Carrier produced a new translation of twelve quotations using the German editions of Henry Picker and Werner Jochmann and a fragment of the Bormann-Vermerke at the Library of Congress, disputing passages often cited to show Hitler's contempt for Christianity. He concludes that Hitler's comments "resemble Kant's with regard to the primacy of science over theology in deciding the facts of the universe, while remaining personally committed to a more abstract theism." Carrier also maintains that the monologues deride Catholicism while "voicing many of the same criticisms one might hear from a candid (and bigoted) Protestant." In a new foreword to Table Talk, Gerhard Weinberg comments that "Carrier has shown the English text of the table-talk that originally appeared in 1953 and is reprinted here derives from Genoud's French edition and not from one of the German texts." Derek Hastings cites Carrier's paper for "an attempt to undermine the reliability of the anti-Christian statements." Carrier's thesis that the English translation should be dispensed with entirely is rejected by Richard Steigmann-Gall, who while acknowledging the controversies raised by Carrier, "ultimately presume[d] its authenticity." Johnstone writes that Carrier only purports to show that four of the forty-two comments in Table Talks have been misrepresented, without discussing the rest and that for this reason, Johnstone contends that Carrier has been far from successful in demolishing the view of Hitler as a non-Christian. The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb In The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb, a chapter in the edited volume The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (2005) by Robert M. Price and Jeffrey Lowder, Carrier argues that the earliest Christians, following Paul's language in 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 5, understood resurrection as the acquisition of a new spiritual body rather than the revivification of the corpse, and that empty tomb narratives arose later as legend. He reads 1 Cor 15:35–58 as teaching an exchange of bodies and treats 'soma pneumatikon' as a heavenly, immaterial body. He allows natural explanations for the fate of Jesus' remains, and in separate chapters in the same book other scholars develop theft and misplacement scenarios. Carrier's interpretation has been challenged. Stephen T. Davis, a philosopher of religion at Claremont McKenna College, argues for the early and evidential status of the empty tomb tradition, writing that "most biblical scholars agree with me that the empty tomb tradition goes back to the earliest proclamation of the Resurrection" and concluding that "the empty tomb tradition is very well established, and its central claims are believable." Davis also published a formal review of the volume in Philosophia Christi. Norman Geisler, an evangelical theologian and apologist, contends that the New Testament depicts an imperishable and supernatural risen body, stating that "there is evidence in the Gospels that Jesus' post-revivified body was imperishable and that it was supernatural." New Testament scholar Andrew W. Pitts rejects Carrier's two body exchange reading on methodological and linguistic grounds, writing that "his social model will strike many New Testament scholars as quite antiquated due to its reliance on Rabbinic materials." ==Views==

Atheism Plus Carrier strongly advocated for a movement in atheism called "Atheism Plus," through which he argued that the atheist community ought to also share a liberal political agenda, not just a lack of belief in God. Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci criticized Carrier for being very intolerant of people who disagreed with him or his atheistic views and for radicalizing the "Atheism plus" agenda. Pigliucci also quoted the originator of "Atheism plus", Jen McCreight, criticizing Carrier. Mythicism In 2002 Carrier reviewed the work of Earl Doherty, who argued that Jesus began as a mythological being later recast as historical. Carrier judged the theory plausible while still considering the historical Jesus more probable and rejected several of Doherty's arguments as untenable, though he found the overall concept consistent with the evidence. Over time he adopted Doherty's premise as the most likely explanation for Christian origins. He wrote, "It does soundly establish the key point that Jesus was regarded as a pre-existent incarnate divine being from the earliest recorded history of Christianity, even in fact before the writings of Paul, and that this was not even remarkable within Judaism." Carrier has described Christ myth theory as "very probable" since late 2005. In 2009 he wrote, "though I foresee a rising challenge among qualified experts against the assumption of historicity [of Jesus], as I explained, that remains only a hypothesis that has yet to survive proper peer review." Carrier argues that the earliest Christians honored Jesus as a celestial or "angelic extraterrestrial" subordinate to God who emerged from a "cosmic sperm bank", was tortured and crucified by Satan and his demons, buried above the clouds, and resurrected in outer space in the region between the earth and the moon. He maintains that early believers knew this celestial Jesus through private revelations and scriptural interpretation and that "The Gospel began as a mythic allegory about the celestial Jesus, set on earth, as most myths then were." Carrier asserts that the idea of a pre-Christian celestial being named "Jesus" is known from the writings of Philo of Alexandria on the Book of Zechariah. He argues that Philo's angelic being is identical to the Apostle Paul's Jesus: he is God's firstborn son, the celestial 'image of God', and God's agent of creation. However, Larry Hurtado contends that the figure named "Jesus" in Zechariah is a completely distinct figure, and that the Logos Philo discusses is not an angelic being at all. In Carrier's view, Paul's reference in Romans 1:3 to Jesus as the "seed" of David describes an incarnation drawn from a "cosmic sperm bank" rather than literal descent from David. He interprets Paul as teaching that Jesus temporarily assumed a surrogate human body and that demons fulfilled the requirement for blood sacrifice by crucifying him. Gathercole notes that Romans 1:3 echoes a common Septuagint expression meaning "descendant" and reflects a pervasive biblical theme about David's lineage. Carrier further argues that, in continuity with Merkabah mysticism and its layered cosmology, "Mythicism places the incarnation of Jesus below the heavens... being the whole vast region between the earth and the moon [the firmament], was well-established in both Jewish and pagan cosmology (see Element 37, Chapter 4, OHJ, pp. 184–193)." ==Reception and criticism==

On the Historicity of Jesus was positively reviewed by collaborator and fellow mythicist Raphael Lataster in the Journal of Religious History, who concurs that according to the gospels, "Jesus fits almost perfectly" the Rank-Raglan mythotype, and claims that there is "not a single confirmed historical figure" that conforms to the mythotype. Most contemporary scholarship has been critical of Carrier's methodology and conclusions. Marko Marina, an ancient historian, states that Carrier's work is guided by his ideological agenda, not by serious historical work, and criticizes his views of early Christianity citing a lack of positive evidences from primary sources and notes that his mythicist views have not won any supporters from critical scholars. Historian Daniel Gullotta states that Carrier's mythicist views and motives are questionable. Critiques of Mythicism thesis Both classicists and biblical scholars agree that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person. Writing in 2004, Michael Grant stated, "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." More recently, Patrick Gray posited, "That Jesus did in fact walk the face of the earth in the first century is no longer seriously doubted even by those who believe that very little about his life or death can be known with any certainty." Proposals that a historical Jesus did not exist are frequently dismissed as "fringe theories" within classical scholarship. M. David Litwa of Australian Catholic University, in a discussion of Carrier's work with a focus on On the Historicity of Jesus, notes that Carrier portrays himself "as a kind of crusader fighting for the truth of secular humanism", whose mission it is "to prove Christianity (or Carrier's understanding of it) wrong." He also notes that "Carrier's cavalier dismissal of the Bible and animosity toward the biblical deity would not seem to predispose him for careful biblical scholarship." Litwa describes Carrier as "on the fringes of the academic guild", although he is a trained scholar and does employ scholarly methods. Litwa goes on to argue against several arguments made by Carrier in On the Historicity of Jesus. Litwa writes that Carrier's application of the Rank-Raglan mythotype to Jesus relies on forced similarities and that "the pattern ignores major elements of [Jesus's] life." He also criticizes Carrier's attempts to derive Jesus from James Frazer's theory of the Near-Eastern dying-and-rising fertility god as relying on a "largely defunct" category in religious scholarship. He notes that few gods die and rise, usually staying dead in some way. Although Litwa acknowledges a parallel between the suffering experienced by dying deities and Jesus's suffering, he argues that pagan dying deities do not choose to die as Jesus does. Regarding Carrier's appeals to other ancient religious figures such as Romulus and the prophet Daniel who appear not to have existed, Litwa argues that Jesus is attested only twenty years after his death by Paul: "A name and a human character to go with it could not have been invented in this short period without invoking suspicion." Litwa dismisses Carrier's hypothesis that Paul's Jesus was an angelic being crucified on the celestial plane as relying on "baseless" speculation that the second-century Ascension of Isaiah was available to Paul and that its mention of Jesus's birth on earth and his crucifixion in Jerusalem are later additions, despite scholarship to the contrary. James McGrath notes that Carrier's view of a celestial Jesus dying in outer space, never on earth, comes from a mythicist interpretation of Ascension of Isaiah and was central to Earl Doherty's mythicist view. McGrath states that the text is a later text that includes a descent to earth and fits more with a Docetic view than mythicism. Christopher Hansen observed that Carrier believes Jews already believed in a preexisting a supernatural son of God named Jesus based on Philo's interpretation of Zechariah 6:12. However, Hansen argues that his argument relies on weak arguments and no evidence. He states, following Daniel Gullotta, "there is not a single instance of a recorded celestial angel or Logos figure named Jesus/Joshua in ancient Jewish literature." Professor Emeritus Larry Hurtado of the University of Edinburgh writes that, contrary to Carrier's claims, Philo of Alexandria never refers to an archangel named "Jesus". Hurtado also states that the Apostle Paul clearly believed Jesus to have been a real man who lived on earth, and that the deities of pagan saviour cults, such as Isis and Osiris, were not transformed in their devotees' ideas from heavenly deities to actual people living on earth. Similar criticisms were voiced by Simon Gathercole of Cambridge, who concludes that Carrier's arguments, and more broadly, the mythicist positions on different aspects of Paul's letters, are contradicted by the historical data, and that Paul's description of Jesus' life on Earth, his personality and family, tend to establish that Paul regarded Jesus as a natural person, rather than an allegorical figure. Methodological and probabilistic critiques According to James F. McGrath, Carrier misuses Rank and Raglan's criteria and stretches their scales to make Jesus appear to score high on mythotype. According to Christopher Hansen, Carrier misuses and manipulates Raglan's scale to make Jesus appear more aligned with a mythotype by scoring him high, thus more mythical, when other scholars have scored Jesus as low, thus more historical. He argues that other scholars have assessed Jesus to be low on Raglan's scale, and when Hansen looks at multiple other examples of historical figures he notes that "Historical figures regularly become Raglan heroes. They often score twelve or more points on the Raglan archetype", which casts doubts on the usefulness of the Raglan scale for historicity. Discussing Carrier's theory that some Jews believed in a "humiliated messiah" prior to the existence of Christianity, Ehrman criticizes Carrier for "idiosyncratic" readings of the Old Testament that ignore modern critical scholarship on the Bible. Ehrman concludes by saying "[w]e do not have a shred of evidence to suggest that any Jew prior to the birth of Christianity anticipated that there would be a future messiah who would be killed for sins—or killed at all—let alone one who would be unceremoniously destroyed by the enemies of the Jews, tortured and crucified in full public view. This was the opposite of what Jews thought the messiah would be." Ehrman has also publicly addressed Carrier's use of Bayes' Theorem, stating that "most historians simply don't think you can do history that way." He said he only knows of two historians who have used Bayes' Theorem, Carrier and Richard Swinburne, and noted the irony of the fact that Swinburne used it to prove Jesus was raised from the dead. Ehrman rejected both Carrier and Swinburne's conclusions, but conceded that he was unqualified to assess specifics about how they applied the theorem. "I'm not a statistician myself. I've had statisticians who tell me that both people are misemploying it, but I have no way of evaluating it." Reviewing On the Historicity of Jesus, Daniel N. Gullotta says that Carrier has provided a "rigorous and thorough academic treatise that will no doubt be held up as the standard by which the Jesus Myth theory can be measured"; but he finds Carrier's arguments "problematic and unpersuasive", his use of Bayesian probabilities "unnecessarily complicated and uninviting", and he criticizes Carrier's "lack of evidence, strained readings and troublesome assumptions." Furthermore, he observed that using Bayes theorem in history seems useless, or at least unreliable, since it leads to absurd and contradictory results such as Carrier using it to come up with low probability for the existence of Jesus and scholar Richard Swinburne using it to come up with high probability that Jesus actually resurrected. Gullotta also says that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever, either documentary or archaeological, that there was a period when Jews or Christians believed that Jesus only existed in heaven as a celestial being where he was born from a "cosmic sperm bank" and was subsequently crucified by satan and his demons in outer space, which is Carrier's "foundational" thesis, rather than living as a human being on earth. Carrier is observed to constantly misinterpret and stretch sources and he also uses extensively fringe ideas like those of Dennis MacDonald on Homeric epics paralleling some of the Gospels, while downplaying the fact that MacDonald is still a historicist, not a mythicist. Gullotta also observes that Carrier relies on outdated and historically useless methods like Otto Rank and Lord Raglan's hero myth archetype events lists, which have been criticized and "have been almost universally rejected by scholars of folklore and mythology", in which Carrier alters the quantity and wording of these lists arbitrarily to his favor. Gullotta describes the belief that a historical Jesus never existed as a "fringe theory" that goes "unnoticed and unaddressed within scholarly circles". Concerning the same book, Christina Petterson of the University of Newcastle writes, "Even if strictly correct, the methodology is tenuous. In addition, the numbers and the statistics seem like a diversion or an illusionary tactic which intentionally confuse and obfuscate". Unlike Gullotta, Petterson describes On the Historicity of Jesus as somewhat amateurish: "Maths aside, nothing in the book shocked me, but seemed quite rudimentary first year New Testament stuff." With respect to Carrier's argument that the later tales of a historical Jesus should be studied for their literary and rhetorical purpose, and not for their historical content, Petterson says that this "reveals Carrier's ignorance of the field of New Testament studies and early Christianity." Classicist Margaret Williams argues that Carrier's thesis is outdated and not supported on textual grounds. She notes there is no evidence that this non-Christian group ever existed, leading classical scholars to dismiss the claim. Williams also reports that in a recent assessment by latinists on the Tacitus passage, they unanimously deemed the passage authentic. She emphasizes that no serious Tacitean scholar believes it to be an interpolation. ==Bibliography==