I am sorry that I have been largely absent for the last week due to having a huge writing demand. I have been working with Richard Carrier on my manuscript for my book The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story.
The simple fact of the matter, and this is something I had come to realise in researching my book, is that Carrier is the foremost scholar on the subject in the world. I don’t say that lightly, and some of you will raise your eyebrows. And I include theists, here. But when you realise quite how much he has written in an awful lot of publications and places, and when you realise how much research and sheer knowledge this involves (including translations of primary evidence), then there should be no doubt. There is a solid twenty-year plus back catalogue.
His generosity of time in poring over the MS with a fine-toothed comb is incredibly rewarding. Together with Michael J Alter, and others too, I have been incredibly lucky, ensuring that the final product will be tighter and tighter. I cannot begin to communicate with you his wealth of knowledge on all matters concerning the exegesis and hostricity of the claimed events.
I am even changing my mind on certain chapters; for example, on my argument considering the lack of veneration for the “empty tomb”, I now understand that this is much weaker than what I first thought (taking into account the destruction of Jerusalem and how this might affect such an early tradition, just for a start). In other words, there are alternative hypotheses that offer equally satisfactory answers, so Carrier rightly point out, that means that my veneration argument is not as strong as initially thought. I will still include it as part of a cumulative case, but now with a whole bunch of caveats.
That’s skepticism for you – doubt everything, most proiminently yourself.
Again, apologies for my absence, but these things take a hell of a lot of time and effort. It might well be the last big research-type book I have in me, so I’m going to make it count. Due to my MS, I had to use a fair bit of speech to text for the writing process, which was great up front, but it has come back to bite me on the arse at the back end of the process. You’re used to my typos here – imagine 100,000 words to deal with!
Stay in touch! Like A Tippling Philosopher on Facebook:
You can also buy me a cuppa. Or buy some of my awesome ATP merchandise! Please… It justifies me continuing to do this!