An American scholar of ancient history, Carrier has written widely about Christianity. Here he begins a two-volume inquiry into whether a case can be made that Jesus never really existed as a historical person. In this first volume, he resolves the central issue of how to test such a claim, indeed any historical claim. This methodological discussion should interest any historian, he says, not just those interested in the Jesus question. In the second volume, he tests the proposal that Jesus originated as a mythical character in tales symbolically narrating the salvific acts of a cosmic being who never walked the earth. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)