A review by psteve
Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ by Richard C. Carrier

4.0

This unfortunately titled book is not like the superb Philip Jose Farmer novel from some years ago, Jesus On Mars; instead it's an examination of what early Christians, those in the New Testament and around, thought what or who Jesus was. He argues that much of the language around Jesus shows that early Christians actually thought he descended from space, and has plenty of proof of it. It doesn't really do a great job of talking about what early Christians, or others, may have thought of him. I was hoping for more of a wide-ranging survey, but is instead of a very good (to me) discussion of the historicity of Jesus -- did he really exist? Carrier makes the case that all history about Jesus derives from the book of Mark, and even Paul's early epistles don't discuss a historical Jesus, but a myth. I was, am, pretty persuaded, but I think a lot of that is my own bias. I'm also reading Ehrmann's book about whether Jesus was real or not, and at least in the first half, find it less well argued than Carrier. It seems to me that the evidence for a historical Jesus is just very thin.