Jesus from Outer Space
Jesus from Outer Space
“Carrier’s best, most engaging, and readable work yet. Don’t let the hilarious title fool you; this book is all business. Putting all the historical evidence for Jesus in the crucible, he burns away every apologetic argument and cuts through centuries of special pleading and pious fraud to demonstrate that the ‘Real Jesus’ is an unreal one.”
—David Fitzgerald, author of The Mormons and Jesus: Mything in Action
About the Book
The earliest Christians believed Jesus was an ancient celestial being who put on a bodysuit of flesh, died at the hands of dark forces, and then rose from the dead and ascended back into the heavens. But the writing we have today from that first generation of Christians never says where they thought he landed, where he lived, or where he died. The idea that Jesus toured Galilee and visited Jerusalem arose only a lifetime later, in unsourced legends written in a foreign land and language. Many sources repeat those legends, but none corroborate them. Why? What exactly was the original belief about Jesus, and how did this belief change over time? In Jesus from Outer Space, noted philosopher and historian Richard Carrier summarizes for a popular audience the scholarly research on these and related questions, revealing in turn how modern attempts to conceal, misrepresent, or avoid the actual evidence calls into question the entire field of Jesus studies—and present-day beliefs about how Christianity began.
About the Author
Richard Carrier, PhD, is a philosopher and historian of antiquity, specializing in contemporary philosophy of naturalism and Greco-Roman philosophy, science, and religion, including the origins of Christianity. He blogs regularly and lectures for community groups worldwide. He is the author of numerous books, including Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism and On the Historicity of Jesus. For more about Dr. Carrier and his work see www.richardcarrier.info.
Details
ISBN: 9781634311946
Format: hardcover
SRP: $28.00
Page count: 232 pages
Trim size: 6 x 9
Pub date: October 2020
“It helps if you are omniscient, and Richard Carrier appears to be! The arguments and data supplied on behalf of Jesus Mythicism in his new book are astonishing—even if you thought you knew the debate pretty well! And if, like me, you are too stupid to understand Bayesian Probability, you will be relieved to see that the author has skipped it this time!”
—Robert M. Price, New Testament scholar and editor Journal of Higher Criticism“Jesus From Outer Space distills and simplifies, yet at the same time strengthens, core arguments in Carrier’s earlier work, On the Historicity of Jesus. Some, like me, will find the colloquial style jarring and some will find details to quibble over, but there is no gainsaying that the logic on every page is tight and the supporting evidence abounds. Carrier also addresses with forceful cogency some criticisms of his earlier arguments. Especially of note is the unrelenting demonstration of the circular reasoning and factual ignorance of several prominent critics of the Christ Myth hypothesis.”
—Neil Godfrey, author of Vridar.org
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