The Quest for the Historical Paul (Part C) The modern quest for the historical Paul, determining who the apostle Paul was and what he said, is in an important way borne out of a real peculiarity in our New Testament sources.  On the One hand, we have the authentic letters of Paul that scholars see … New Published Article: The Quest for the Historical Paul with Nina Livesey (Part 3/4: Paul and the Gospel of John)

I remember being very impressed (as a disillusioned philosophy student, lol) in finding Nietzsche’s “Human All Too Human” 399 very apt: “That maturity is reached is manifested in the fact that one no longer goes to where the rarest roses of knowledge grow among the thorniest hedgerows but is satisfied with the field and meadow because life is … The Meaning of Life Through Death

Regarding the historicity (being in history) of Jesus, the convergence of multiple lines of evidence is very important in historical assessment and evaluation. I gave the example of multiple lines of evidence converging on the idea the Jewish elite were seen as responsible for the death of the historical Jesus, e.g., it makes sense Mark … AFTERWORD: Richard Carrier’s new book “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025)”

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 … EVALUATION: Richard Carrier’s new book “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025)” 

Hermeneutics is the idea that we can generate the meaning/sense of a text by considering individual elements as signs that point to or express a larger context, and the context is made manifest in the element.  So, Van Gogh’s peasant shoes might express a world of abject poverty and endless toil to which they belong: … (Part 7) Blogging Through Richard Carrier’s new book “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025)” – Hermeneutics/Deconstruction and Triangulation: Did Jesus Exist?

Last time we looked at Carrier’s approach and found it to be a very appropriate one.  Judgements, whether educational judgements or historical ones or whatever, are made according to criteria that have a qualitative and quantitative dimension.  Making this explicit is important because we want to get beyond “gut feeling” judgments like “this feels like … (Part 6) Blogging Through Richard Carrier’s new book “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025)”

There is a current push, in all disciplines really, to push toward reliability of conclusions, showing your reasoning is based on sound logic. For example, we want to be able to explain why a child received a B grade in Social Studies so that we don’t simply claim the child’s project felt like a “B” … (Part 5) Blogging Through Richard Carrier’s new book “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025)”

In this chapter, one thing that caught my eye was Carrier rejecting the Q source as a supporter of Jesus’ existence.  He writes: One of the most ineffectual versions of this approach is to defend the historicity of Jesus on the basis of non-existent sources, like ‘Q’ or ‘M’ or ‘L’ or the ‘Signs Gospel’, … (Part 4) Blogging Through Richard Carrier’s new book “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025)” 

This chapter is The Inadequacy of Critical Responses So Far. In this chapter Carrier responds to some of the responses to his work.  In general, he concludes: The most typical maneuvers are to (1) misstate an argument and rebut that, rather than any actual argument in either study; or to (2) restate the evidence or … (Part 3) Blogging Through Richard Carrier’s new book “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025)” 

Chapter 2 is called Updates, Developments, Trendline: What I’ve Published, New Developments, Has Any Background Knowledge Changed? Here are a couple things that stood out to me: 1. But it also includes a more direct comparison with the Hellenistic Osiris cult as a proof-of-concept. We know from Plutarch that Osiris was also publicly preached as … (Part 2) Blogging Through Richard Carrier’s new book “The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025)”