Review: On the Historicity of Jesus

As a child, a teacher made me agree that even if all the Bible stories were fiction, there must still have been a real Jesus that the legend was built around.  This conclusion was unsatisfactory, because how can we say that a man existed, if there is nothing specific we can know about him?

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Is Jesus a Rank-Raglan hero?

Richard Carrier argues in his book On the Historicity of Jesus that Jesus fits exceptionally well into the Rank-Raglan hero classification. He claims no known historical figures do, making Jesus unlikely to have existed. I will examine these claims in detail. (more…)