Are you able to reproduce his reasoning in a post here, or at the very least to specify the location in his work where this may be found, with perhaps a relevant citation of his writings on this subject?
Sure. Below I've give the relevant quotes from from Dr Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus". I'd be interested in dejudge's comments on them.
On Paul's epistles: Starting from page 260:
The current consensus in regard to the canonical Epistles is best summa*rized in Bart Ehrman's Forged [11] Seven letters are commonly agreed to be authentically written by the apostle Paul in or around the 50s CE. [12] Those are 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. With the possible exception of Philemon (which has no rel*evant content for our purposes), [13] I think that assessment is probably cor*rect-although we know that even these seven letters have been meddled with.
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[12] This dating is perhaps too gullibly based on Acts; but Paul certainly wrote before the Jewish War, which began in 66, and probably before the Neronian persecution of 64 (if such there was), as neither are ever mentioned in his letters; and he wrote well after Aretas assumed control of Damascus (which he mentions in 2 Cor. 1 1 .32), which was between the years 37 and 40; and most (if not all) of his literary activity came fourteen to seventeen years after his conversion (Gal. 1 . 1 5-18; 2. 1 ; possibly also 2 Cor. 12.2); all of which argues for his letters being written in the 50s.
On the Gospel of Mark, starting from page 264:
The 'usual' consensus on the four canonical Gospels is that Mark was written around 70, Matthew around 80, Luke around 90, and John around 100. Those are all arbitrary ballpark figures, which don't really have much basis in fact...
... it must also be noted that all of the Gospels have undergone redactional activity after their original composition, so really they've been meddled with by multiple authors...
Mark was certainly written after 70 (the year the Jerusalem temple was destroyed), but how long after is an open question (some attempts have been made to argue it was written earlier, but on grounds far too specula*tive to consider here).[24] We really have no evidence that Mark was written any earlier than 100, in fact, so it's simply presumption really that puts his Gospel in the first century. I suspect Mark was written in the 70s or 80s, but only because its author seems to have the Jewish War still in mind as a relatively recent event, but that's a largely subjective judgment. Nevertheless, I will leave it at that until someone proves otherwise.
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[24] Some scholars do still try to argue earlier dates for Mark, but only by rejecting a lot of evidence, such as how pervasively Mark assumes the Jewish War has passed and that God has abandoned the temple cult (these facts do not just feature in Mark 13: see, e.g., Chapter 10, §4). Mark also includes an apologetic for the failure of the apocalypse to have come yet, which entails he wrote many decades after Jesus predicted the end was nigh (Mk 13.28-37; see Carrier, Proving History, pp. 148-49), which can't be any earlier than the 60s. The fact that Mark has Jesus say several 'wars' had to pass first entails Mark knew the Jewish War had not only passed, but hadn't brought about the apocalypse, and therefore he had to have his Jesus explain this (Mk 1 3.7-8). Likewise, Paul knows nothing of the stories in Mark (see Chapter 11), so Mark can hardly have been circulating before the 60s. Even Hebrews and 1 Clement are unaware of the content of Mark (see Chapter 11, §S, and Chapter 8, §51 and insofar as we know those books were written after Paul died, that leaves almost no room for Mark to have been composed before the War. Much discussion hovers around Mark's Jesus claiming a pagan shrine would be erected where the Jewish temple once stood, and though (as far as we know) that did not come to pass (until the Bar Kockhba revolt: see note on the Epistle of Barnabas in Chapter 8, §6), Mark still had to know the temple was destroyed to have such an expectation in the first place (and post-war rumors that Rome would do this would not be an improbability ; it is, after all, what Rome eventually did). Because Mark assumes this desecration would follow the Jewish War (Mk 13.7-8) and the preaching of the gospel worldwide (Mk 1 3 . 1 0), so he cannot be referring to the threat of Caligula in the 40s (which came to nothing, and was far too early for the gospel to already have been preached to all nations, much less for several wars of 'nation against nation' to have passed, much less such wars as Jesus would have to apologize for as not ending the world). Since the event of Mk 13.14 (which predicts the desecrating shrine) was to begin a phase of worldwide doom (Mk 13.15-20) accompanied by false messiahs (Mk 13.21-22), concluding with the end of the world (Mk 13 .24-27), Mark was not retrofitting recent history into the prophecy of Jesus in Mk 13. 14; rather, he is conceiving a future apocalyptic sequence of events-but one that presupposes the Jewish temple no longer stood. Mark is thus writing after.
On the Gospel of Matthew: starting from page 266:
There is no evidence really that Matthew was written in the 80s. He certainly wrote after Mark (as everyone knows he copies Mark, often verbatim, and is in fact polemically redacting Mark, as I'll show in Chapter 10). But it is by no means a given that he would only redact Mark near to when Mark was written; and we don't know when Mark was written anyway. Likewise, any assumption that Jewish Christianity faded after the 80s has no basis in evi*dence either. That sect's existence continues to be attested for centuries (see §1 of the next chapter), and though it certainly declined in size and influence in the second century, that is no help in dating Matthew. I will conclude that Matthew was written in the 80s or 90s simply to err on the side of the earliest likely period, and for no other reason.25
On the Gospel of Luke, starting from page 267:
Luke also wrote after Mark (as Luke also copied from Mark), and I am increasingly convinced that in fact Luke is also a redaction of Matthew and therefore postdates Matthew (see Chapter 1 0, §6). The evidence that Luke used the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus for some of his material is also convincingly strong, and that would place this Gospel after 93 CE.26 Many experts have argued for Luke-Acts postdating 115 CE. I will conclude that most likely Luke wrote between the 90s and 130s, and then arbitrarily side with the earlier of those dates.
On the Gospel of John, starting from page 268:
John wrote after Luke-as almost everyone agrees, but as I will demonstrate in Chapter 10, John is almost certainly a polemical redaction of Luke (just as Matthew is of Mark; only John employs a freer, less verbatim style), making John the last of all.3 1 External evidence placing the Gospel of John's appearance in history is also the scarcest. It could have been written as late as the 140s (some argue even later) or as early as the 100s (provided Luke was written in the 90s). I will arbitrarily side with the earlier of those dates. John was redacted multiple times and thus had multiple authors. [32]
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[32] I'll discuss some of the evidence for this in Chapter 10. but this is already the consensus of Johannine experts; in addition to the scholarship cited in the previous note, see White, From Jesus to Christianity, pp. 305-14; and Mark Strauss, Four Portraits, One Jesus: An Introduction to Jesus and the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI:Zondervan, 2007), pp. 334-35.
