This is the final part of my review of Richard Carrier’s book, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus.

All in all, I found this book to be pretty mediocre. Richard Carrier states in his bio on his blog that he is a specialist in Christian origins and with this book he has tried to make a name for himself in the field. But he has failed. Abysmally. This book only goes to demonstrate Carrier’s lack of familiarity with the field he is trying to navigate.

I wasn’t convinced that Bayes’s Theorem is relevant and effectual when dealing with the complexities of historical data, and I really don’t think it is going be useful to historical Jesus research. But even if Bayes’s Theorem truly is a useful heuristic tool and a constructive approach for the study of the historical Jesus and Christian origins, we would need someone who possesses an actual understanding of the field to be able to fruitfully utilize it. This rules Richard Carrier out. He does not possess an expertise in the relevant areas of knowledge (e.g. Second Temple Judaism, New Testament, History of Religion). Thus, he lacks the knowledge required to be able to wield Bayes’s Theorem profitably and any numbers he comes up with to plug into the equation will not hold water.

The author is following this volume with a sequel which shall deal more fully with the historical Jesus (yes this book was just a prelude to whet our appetites). In an earlier part of this review I expressed my concern for how the author will be able to competently handle the composite Jesus traditions and texts. For instance, when it comes to the crucifixion of Jesus, I bet we will not see anything mentioned about how Q portrays Jesus’ death in light of Deuteronomistic theology, whereas the later Matthew instead emphasizes an expiatory nature of Jesus’ death. In fact, I could almost guarantee we wouldn’t see such a thing considering that Carrier says in this volume (pg. 139) that such a view of Jesus’ death (i.e. as an expiatory sacrifice) was not a post-hoc rationalization but something already expected by Jews (yet another example of Carrier’s fundamentalist reading of the Bible).

Furthermore, a little while later he mentions in a footnote that he is “increasingly convinced there was no Q in the traditional sense, but the designation still conceptually defines some source, even it if turns out to be Matthew or some lost Gospel”. Apart from the fact that this doesn’t make much sense (Q is the corollary to the Two-Document Hypothesis and is the material common to Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark, so if Q “turns out to be Matthew” then you are actually talking about the Farrer-Goulder Hypothesis, not the 2DH and Q), there is also the disconcerting possibility that Carrier will just wind up dismissing Q, or at least rating the 2DH and Q as being improbable, which will then make such issues (e.g. the portrayal of Jesus’ death in Q) irrelevant. This is important because if Carrier considers the initial tradition of Jesus’ death to have already been expiatory in nature, then I’m sure this will be used to increase the probability that Jesus’ death could have been created out of thin air (because Carrier wrongly believes there was already an expectation for the eschatological messiah to be executed as an atonement for sin due to his fundamentalist reading of the Old Testament). He does says that he will revisit the question of Q in the next volume, but I am not holding my breath for an in-depth and well-informed analysis.

I am hoping that the second volume will provide us with filet mignon, but Mr. Carrier is ill-equipped for such a task and will only be able to give us rump roast.

Welcome to part four of my review of Richard Carrier’s book, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. In his lengthy section on the criterion on embarrassment, Carrier discusses Jesus’ birth in Nazareth. Here is one remark that boggled my mind:

If Mark 1:9 is discounted as an interpolation (via contamination from, or harmonization with, the other Gospels, which we known to have been a frequent occurrence in their transmission), then Mark never actually said Jesus came from Nazareth. (143)

Of course, Carrier doesn’t provide any reasoning to support this verse being an interpolation, which is probably due to the fact that there isn’t any support for such an idea. But hey, why let a little detail like that get in the way. If you don’t like what a text says, just create an unnecessary conjectural emendation out of thin air and proclaim, “Interpolation!” Maybe, if we’re real lucky, Carrier will try and apply Bayes’s Theorem to New Testament textual criticism and come up with his own edition of the Greek New Testament!

Warning – Tangent Ahead: Maybe we could even apply Bayes’s Theorem to theology. I estimate a 5% chance that Mark 16.9-20 is original and thus part of the infallible Bible. Yet, when I take into account the fact that I had a friend called Mark in primary school, that I am old enough to know who Marky Mark is, and that I’ve seen Mark Ruffalo in a few movies, the odds are changed to making the ending of Mark almost certainly authentic and thus giving me an 80% probability that I could play with snakes (as per Mark 16.18) and survive a poisonous snake bite (cf. Acts 28.3-6). I like those odds.

Wish me luck!

Carrier provides a few alternative explanations as to how Nazareth came to be associated with Jesus. He says that there are “several plausible reasons why Jesus would be falsely contrived as a Nazarene” (142). As I said in part III of this review, giving a possible reason is not the same thing as providing a plausible one. Carrier anticipates this criticism by saying that, “Since no prior author mentions a connection between Jesus and Nazareth (Paul, for example, makes no mention of it), such developments are more than merely possible … these are viable possibilities, at least sufficiently probably to require us to rule them out first” (142). So since Paul makes no mention of Nazareth, the three alternative explanations he provides for the Nazareth connection are “viable possibilities”? Seems like quite a stretch, but nevertheless, even if we grant Carrier that, they are still far less probable (barring a brilliant piece of argumentation from Carrier in the next volume) than the notion that Mark is simply stating that, indeed, “Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee” (Mark 1.9).

One of the alternatives that Carrier mentions is that the Nazareth connection derives from Numbers 6 and the Nazarite vow. In discussing this option he says that, “a Nazarite vow was most typically of limited duration (a fixed number of days), consecrating oneself to God by certain rituals – most prominently, abstaining from wine (which Jesus indeed vows to do: Mark 14:25; Matthew 26:29)” (142). Yea… those Gospel references are to the last supper where Jesus says he will not drink again of the fruit of the vine. I don’t think his disciples would be terribly impressed with Jesus’ Nazarite vow if he made it the night before he was executed (at least, I doubt they would be impressed enough that they would then remember him as one who made a Nazarite vow). Perhaps a more pertinent passage for Carrier to have mentioned would have been Q/Luke 7:33-34 which depicts Jesus as one who did drink (and thus probably not someone who was under a Nazarite vow).

President Obama and McKayla Maroney are not impressed with Jesus’ Nazarite vow.

Carrier then demonstrates more of his fundamentalist reading of the Bible:

Yet Matthew even claims a Nazareth origin derived from prophecy – in fact, not the town, but the epithet, which could thus have been Mark’s source as well (see Matthew 2:23). Unless Matthew was lying, we are obliged to agree that Mark (or his source) could have had that same prophecy in mind. (144)

Carrier compares Mark’s reference to Nazareth with Matthew’s reference to Bethlehem. In other words, since Matthew wanted to have Jesus born in Bethlehem (in order to ‘fulfill prophecy’) and thus created an elaborate narrative which achieved this purpose, Mark likewise created the notion that Jesus came from Nazareth due to a (now lost) prophecy which Mark needed to be fulfilled. Note that Carrier says: “Unless Matthew was lying”!? Yes, the author of Matthew probably was lying. There was no prophecy concerning a Nazareth origin (James McGrath’s review of Proving History makes the same point). Carrier’s readiness to accept that Matthew was correct is like a fundamentalist Christian who does likewise (lest Matthew be a liar and biblical inerrancy a falsehood). But Carrier has an obvious agenda in this book and so has to clutch at whatever straw he can find, even if it includes ditching scholarship and reading the Bible like a fundamentalist.

Another display of ignorance from Carrier is his brief foray on how Mark presents Jesus speaking of “the Son of Man”. There is no mentioning of the possibility of an Aramaic Vorlage underlying the Greek phrase (ο υιος του ανθρωπου), making Carrier’s discussion on all this pretty meaningless. In a footnote he does list a few of the most recent scholarly volumes on the the issue, but evinces no real knowledge about this controversial topic. It’s like he searched Amazon for the phrase ‘Jesus Son of Man’, saw the recent volumes by Müller, Casey, Walck, Hurtado and Owen, and just threw them together in a footnote to make it look like he knows what he is talking about.

Following this is a discussion on the betrayal of Judas Iscariot (still in the context of the embarrassment criterion). In order to support a point he is making, he says: “‘Iscariot’ is (as many scholars believe) an Aramaicism for the Latin ‘Sicarius’” (154). Unfortunately, he doesn’t mention the other, more plausible, etymology of “Iscariot” (that it’s derived from “man of Kerioth”). Though he says he will deal with this again in the next volume, so maybe we will see something more substantial then.

On the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Carrier says:

The betrayal story also makes no historical sense. The authorities did not need Judas (much less have to pay him) to find or identify Jesus (Mark 14:10-11, 14:43-50). Given what Mark has Jesus say in 14:49 (and what Jesus had been doing in Jerusalem only days before), the authorities knew what he looked like, and they could have seized him any time he appeared in public. (153-54)

Yes they could have seized him in public at any time they wanted, especially if they wanted to risk a deadly skirmish. As Stephanie Louise Fisher points out in her review of Proving History, this sort of thing had occurred in the past during the time of Herod Archelaus.

Carrier then puts the icing on the cake with:

The fact that Jesus’ betrayer’s name essentially means “Jew” should already make us suspicious. (154)

The fact that Jesus’ betrayer has an extremely common name should make us suspicious?! Merciful Mother in heaven, someone buy this guy a clue. Or at least buy him the Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, part 1: Palestine 330 BCE – 200 CE (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), and point him towards pages 112-25. Judas/Judah was a common name. Why? Geez, I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob being called Judah! There is nothing suspicious about Jesus’ betrayer’s name unless you’re Richard Carrier and trying your hardest to fantasize up some reason as to why the Judas betrayal story was a myth.

I think the author has been spending too much time on Fantasy Island with these two guys.

Carrier then briefly deals with other criteria of authenticity such as coherence and multiple attestation. His discussion on the criterion of Aramaic context left a lot to be desired. Why? Because he pretty much just dismisses the possibility of the Greek text of the Gospels containing any Aramaisms, saying that any would just be the result of a Semitized Greek.

The last part of this review (a brief summary) will be posted tomorrow.

This is part III of my review of Richard Carrier’s book, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Chapter 4 of Proving History discusses how all valid historical methods represent different applications of Bayesian reasoning and that methods which contravene Bayes’s Theorem are unsound. Chapter 6 tackles deeper issues regarding the application and applicability of Bayes’s Theorem. In between these two chapters is the glorious Chapter 5. This chapter provides us with the author’s analysis of the criteria of authenticity, seemingly with the intention of demonstrating that 1) they are useless, and 2) Bayes’s Theorem should be employed instead. I myself am not a huge believer in the criteria of authenticity and I think that the criterion of embarrassment in particular can be far too easily abused. I would prefer to read historical Jesus studies which focus on other methods (such as Dale Allison’s Constructing Jesus which I mentioned in Part I). Though I do think that some criteria can be used beneficially; there is something good to be said about the cumulative weight of the criteria when applied to Jesus traditions.

The author begins with a brief look at the criterion of dissimilarity. He then launches into an approx. 45 page assessment of the embarrassment criterion, examining several Jesus traditions that have been supported as authentic due to this criterion. At one point the author says:

Quite simply, it’s inherently unlikely that any Christian author would include anything embarrassing in his Gospel account, since he could choose to include or omit whatever he wanted … In contrast, it’s inherently likely that anything a Christian author included in his account, he did so for a deliberate reason, to accomplish something he wanted, since that’s how all authors behave, especially those with a specific aim of persuasion. (134)

So an author would never include anything that could be viewed as embarassing?! Brilliant logic. I wonder if Carrier would be consistent and apply this principle to all ancient texts? Or should this piece of delicious logic only apply if it is a “Christian author”?

Carrying on from the previous quote:

… (and as we can plainly see, all the Gospel authors picked and chose and altered whatever suited them – even Mark excluded a vast amount of material found in Matthew, Luke, and John, so unless that was all fabricated after Mark, Mark left out quite a lot that would have been as available to him as it was to them). (134)

Unless that was all fabricated after Mark!? Of course a lot of it was fabricated! Sheesh. This displays the mindset of the author which I saw in a few places throughout the book: He approaches the biblical text like a fundamentalist!

A few pages later is another example of this fundamentalist approach to the biblical text (as well as his general lack of knowledge of biblical studies):

Religions frequently rally around apparently embarrassing yet entirely false myths, often in defiance of common sense. The Jews were no exception. Contrary to current assumption, the execution of their messiah was believed to have been predicted by Daniel (Daniel 9:26; even more clearly in the Greek), yet he was widely recognized as an inspired prophet of God. (137)

He restates the important part a little bit later as well:

The fact that the OT very clearly did predict the execution of the messiah (Daniel is explicit, and had already convinced the Jews of Qumran) likewise refutes Meier’s claim that OT support must have been for sought for after the fact. (139)

Carrier says that “the execution of their messiah was believed to have been predicted by Daniel (Daniel 9:26; even more clearly in the Greek)”, and that “the OT very clearly did predict the execution of the messiah (Daniel is explicit, and had already convinced the Jews of Qumran)”. Ummm, that’s the conclusion you would arrive at if you only read commentaries on Daniel by fundamentalists. If you read some more balanced literature, you will see that the “messiah” in 9:26 is Onias III. And it wasn’t understood by pre-Christian Jews as indicating that a future eschatological messiah would arrive on the scene and be executed.

Also, in a footnote to the first quote Carrier references 11QMelch ii.18 as making a connection between “the dying messiah of Daniel 9 to the suffering servant of Isaiah 52-53” and also points to a blog post of his which discusses this. No, the Qumran community did not connect a dying messiah of Daniel 9 to the suffering servant of Deutero-Isaiah. Carrier is wrong about a precedent for a dying messiah being found in 11QMelch. Of course, though, a lack of precedent does not necessarily mean that no one could have invented it. The tale of an eschatological messiah dying a shameful death that was ultimately redemptive could, in fact, have been invented without prior precedent. Though saying it is possible is not the same as saying it is plausible. And Carrier has utterly failed to show that it is a plausible hypothesis.

For anyone desiring to read a thorough refutation of Carrier’s nonsense about pre-Christian Jews already having a belief in a dying Messiah, then see Thom Stark’s lengthy (and humorous) postings here, here, here, and here. If you read those links you will also see more of Carrier’s gross incompetence when it comes to biblical studies, such as when Carrier says, “I also suspect the original meaning of “Christ prince” in [Daniel 9] verse 25, otherwise a strange construction, means two people, the Christ and the Prince, since those two are then mentioned together again in verse 26.” Yes, it is a strange construction if you know nothing about Hebrew.

More to come in Part IV…

Welcome to Part II of my review of Richard Carrier’s book, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus.

In chapter 2 the author provides twelve axioms (pp. 20-37) and twelve rules (pp. 37-39) of the historical method. Nothing terribly controversial about these except for, as the author himself admitted, the second part of the first rule which states that one must “Obey… Bayes’s Theorem”.

I will quote the second rule because not only is it a very sound piece of advice to follow, it also represents what I think is a deficiency in this book.

Rule 2: Develop wide expertise in the period, topics, languages, and materials that you intend to blaze any trails in, or else base all your assumption in these areas on the established (and properly cited) findings of those who have. (37)

I enjoy studying early Christianity. It may seem like a simple field of research to the lay person, but in reality it is complex and requires a multi-disciplinary approach. You have to deal with literary and non-literary sources: the former necessitating specialists in philology, palaeography, papyrology, and codicology; the latter covering such disciplines as epigraphy, archaeology, and numismatics. If one desires to study Christian origins then one has to study many diverse areas, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Nag Hammadi library (and, of course, the relevant languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic). When it comes to historical Jesus studies, one has to deal with composite texts and traditions. Does the author, Richard Carrier, demonstrate that he is knowledgeable in this area? We will see in Part III of this review. But first a quick overview of chapter 3.

Chapter 3 contains an introduction to Bayes’s Theorem. It is quite an informative chapter and I think the author did a pretty good job of dumbing it down for the mathematically challenged (such as myself). Of course, the author could be making horrendous mistakes in his application of Bayes’s Theorem, but since I am mathematically naïve I would not be cognizant of the fact.

In regards to the results obtained from using Bayes’s Theorem, Carrier states that we know they “are always necessarily true –if its premises are true”. What he means by ‘premises’ is “the probabilities we enter into the equation” (45). Yet as the author states, quantifying the relevant data so as to be able to input it into Bayes’s Theorem is a subjective endeavor, though he argues it is not an arbitrary one. He also says that “you must have reasons for your subjective estimates” and that “if you do have sufficient reasons, you need to ask if those reasons will be accepted by other reasonable people”. If they are, this “would then actually make them objective, since by definition objective reasons will be accessible and verifiable to all reasonable observers, who will thus all come to the same subjective estimate” (82).

Carrier seems to have high hopes concerning the ability of people to reach an agreement regarding the “subjective estimates” we should be plugging into Bayes’s Theorem. Color me a pessimist, but I am skeptical that such an agreement could be reached. As I noted in Part I of this review, it is silly to think that scholars with various ideological viewpoints would arrive at the same results by using the criteria of authenticity. The same holds for Carrier’s method of Bayesian reasoning. The different ideological stances of the people applying Bayes’s Theorem is going to generate disagreement on how to quantify all the relevant data.

Additionally, I’m curious as to how how he himself is going to quantify all the data appropriately? How is he going to handle the composite texts and traditions? Will he be able to adequately separate the primary traditions from the secondary? How is he going to deal with the multitude of issues (e.g. matters of provenance, chronology, linguistics, etc) related to the Gospels, the Pauline epistles, and other Jesus traditions? How is he going to handle alternative positions on an issue? Will he simply accept the consensus and ignore any dissenting views? How is he going to work in the fact that he is not competent when it comes to Second Temple Judaism? Will it give his “subjective estimates” a large enough margin of error to make the results meaningless? I guess we will just have to wait until the second volume is released. Though from what I saw in this volume, I am not going to set my hopes up too high.

Is Bayes’s Theorem a practical and effective tool to use in historical studies or does it just provide only a veneer of rigor and logic? This is a question perhaps best left to the mathematically literate of us. I have found one review of Proving History from someone who seems relatively clued in on mathematics (I would also encourage the interested reader to read Carrier’s response to that review, as well as the great comment discussion that ensued). That same blogger also makes further posts on the subject here and here (the latter link is particularly interesting in my opinion). If anyone knows of other reviews which focus on the Bayesian reasoning of Proving of History (whether they support Carrier’s thesis or not) then drop a comment and let me know!

I will finish this part of the review with a quote from Ian’s blog post:

So, what can we learn?

Well, for one, the inputs to Bayes’s Theorem matter. Particularly small inputs. When we’re dealing with rare evidence for rare events, then small errors in the inputs can end up giving a huge range of outputs, enough of a range that there is no usable information to be had.

And those errors come from many sources, and are difficult to quantify. It is tempting to think of errors only in terms of the data acquisition error, and to ignore errors of choice and errors of reference class.

These issues combine to make it very difficult to make any sensible conclusions from Bayes’s Theorem in areas where probabilities are small, data is low quality, possible reference classes abound, and statements are vague. In areas like history, for example.

Stay tuned for Part III of this review.

I was recently browsing the latest books on Amazon concerning historical Jesus studies and came across Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, written by the well-known blogger, Richard Carrier. I’ve read another book of his before, Why I am Not a Christian, which I consider to be by far the worst book I’ve read on the subject matter of atheism. So naturally I didn’t have my hopes up high for Proving History. Despite an early optimism brought on by a bold thesis in the first chapter followed by an insightful second chapter, I was eventually let down due to the author’s inelegance in his attempts to weave his way through the topic of Christian origins. It was like witnessing a fish out of water.

Why did I bother to read this book? In a nutshell, I find it strangely fascinating that there are people who believe that Jesus was not a historical figure (or who, like Carrier, seriously entertain the idea). This view seems to have gained ground in the online atheist community (e.g. I’ve come across many atheists on the anti-intellectual circlejerk known as r/atheism on Reddit who are Jesus mythicists). Though, of course, there doesn’t seem to be any scholars (in the relevant field) who argue for such a position.

[Note: I read this on the Kindle, so forgive me if any page numbers are incorrect]

This book is the first of a two-part volume. This volume introduces the problem with historical Jesus studies (as Carrier sees it) and offers up a solution… Bayes’s Theorem. The second volume (not sure when it is slated to be released) will then rigorously apply Bayes’s Theorem to historical Jesus studies.

The author begins in chapter 1 by providing his assessment of the state of historical Jesus research. He states quite unequivocally that:

The growing consensus now is that this entire quest for criteria has failed. The entire field of Jesus studies has thus been left without any valid method. (11)

…..

The quest for the historical Jesus has failed spectacularly. Several times. (12)

The “criteria” that the author mentions are the criteria of authenticity (e.g. dissimilarity, embarrassment, multiple attestation, and so forth). As Carrier notes, these criteria have been railed against by many scholars as having deficiencies and limitations, with some maybe even being outright useless. However, not all of them would then agree with the conclusion that the author derives from this – that the field of historical Jesus studies has “failed spectacularly” and “been left without any valid method”. Carrier quotes a couple scholars as follows:

As Helmut Koester concluded after his own survey, “The vast variety of interpretations of the historical Jesus that the current quest has proposed is bewildering.” James Charlesworth concurs, concluding that “what had been perceived to be a developing consensus in the 1980s has collapsed into a chaos of opinions.’”

That snippet from Charlesworth is from the introduction to Jesus Research: An International Perspective. Of course, while Charlesworth will readily acknowledge the diversity of views on the historical Jesus, he doesn’t see it as implying that the field of historical Jesus studies has “failed spectacularly” and has “been left without any valid method”. In the chapter this quote was taken from, Charlesworth discusses the profitability of “Jesus Research” (which seems to be his preferred term for the “third quest”) and says: “Imagination and reflections on topography, archaeological discoveries and realia help produce a more reliable depiction of Jesus…. The life and mind of Jesus from Nazareth is no longer lost in the fog of theological pronouncements.”

A peculiarity I found in this opening chapter is that it seems like Carrier is equating historical Jesus studies with the methodology of the criteria of authenticity (which were employed by Käsemann in the ‘second’ or ‘new’ quest and by many in the ‘third’ quest). But not every historical Jesus study is reliant upon these criteria and other methods are being employed. In fact, Charlesworth briefly mentions a few in the chapter Carrier just quoted (e.g. Gerd Theissen and his emphasis on sociology). One that wasn’t mentioned by Charlesworth (no doubt because it hadn’t been published yet) is Dale Allison’s most recent work, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History. In this volume Allison, who once embraced the criteria of authenticity, instead utilizes a contemporary cognitive study of memory and applies it to historical Jesus research. Using the Kindle search function I saw that Constructing Jesus is mentioned in one footnote by Carrier, though only in passing and not in any meaningful sense.

Carrier states his thesis again:

When everyone picks up the same method, applies it to the same facts, and gets a different result, we can be certain that the method is invalid and should be abandoned. (14)

This is a non sequitur. Carrier is arguing that since historians have used the same method (i.e. the criteria of authenticity), yet do not arrive at the exact same conclusion, this must mean “the method is invalid and should be abandoned”. But that conclusion does not follow. A more logical reason to explain the inconsistent depictions that emerge of the historical Jesus is the inevitable human element present in such undertakings. The scholars that are employing the criteria may hold different presuppositions which affect how they apply each criterion. Additionally, the data derived from applying the criteria can then be arranged in multitude of ways. The disparity in results is due, in part at least, to the unavoidable element of subjectivity in such an endeavor.

On a related note, I’m curious as to exactly what degree of accord amongst scholars is required before one can say that the method is valid? Does it have to be a sure and hard consensus? If so, can the unanimity be in regards to only a somewhat broad outline? e.g. that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who preached concerning the imminent inbreaking of God’s kingdom. Or do they have to agree on the historical Jesus down to every jot and tittle? I ponder this because apparently the unanimous consensus that there was indeed a historical Jesus isn’t enough to quell the doubts of some (e.g. Richard Carrier).

Carrier also says in this chapter that:

Historians must work together to develop a method that, when applied to the same facts, always gives the same result … The solution I propose involves understanding and applying Bayes’s Theorem (14, 16)

After reading this initial chapter I was very skeptical concerning the efficacy of the Bayesian approach the author puts forward as the panacea to historical Jesus studies. Needless to say…. [SPOILER ALERT]…. once I finished reading the book, my skepticism was unabated.

In Part II of this review I will offer up a few thoughts on the use of Bayes’s Theorem for historical Jesus studies, but since I am not a mathematician or historian by anyone’s standard, the usefulness of any comments in this regard will be severely limited and I can only leave it up to History to decide whether Carrier’s method is valid or not. I do, however, have a little bit of knowledge when it comes to early Christian studies and so in Part III of this review I will provide some comments to Carrier’s immediate forays into this area.