EVALUATION: Richard Carrier’s new book “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025)”
- My thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
In these posts, I’ve presented some ideas that have come to mind about the first part of Carrier’s book. The methodological program is not radical at all, but very much in line with other disciplines trying to make their judgments grounded. Carrier asks how we move beyond historical judgments that are just rooted in “gut feelings?” The analogy I used is how educators use anecdotal notes, checklists, continua, exemplars, rubrics, portfolios, etc to make explicit why a student got a “B” level grade on an assignment. Accountability and transparency mean the teacher moving beyond “it feels like a B.” It was a thoroughly interesting book that I would encourage a wide readership, even if I do still tend to think there was a historical “guy” buried there under a mountain of myth.
Score: 9/10
The Posts:
AFTERWORD: Richard Carrier’s new book “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025)”