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Robert M. Price
Born (1954-07-07) July 7, 1954 (age 69)
Jackson, Mississippi, U.S.[1]
Alma materMontclair State University
(BA, 1976)
Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary
(MTS, 1978)
Drew University
(PhD in Systematic Theology (1981));
PhD in New Testament (1993)[1]
OccupationTheologian
Known forViews on the historicity of Jesus
Political partyRepublican[2]
SpouseCarol Selby Price[3]
ChildrenVictoria and Veronica[1]
Websiterobertmprice.mindvendor.com

Robert McNair Price (born July 7, 1954) is an American New Testament scholar who argues in favor of the Christ myth theory – the claim that a historical Jesus did not exist. Price is the author of a number of books on biblical studies and the historicity of Jesus.

A former Baptist minister, Price was a fellow of the Jesus Project, a group of 150 individuals who studied the historicity of Jesus and the Gospels, the organizer of a Web community for those interested in the history of Christianity,[4] and a member of the advisory board of the Secular Student Alliance.[3] He is a religious skeptic, especially of orthodox Christian beliefs, occasionally describing himself as a Christian atheist.[5] Price eventually moved to a maximalist (or rather minimalist, by analogy with biblical minimalism) position in favor of the Christ myth theory, believing Jesus did not exist in Roman Galilee.

Price is also a writer, editor, and critic in the field of speculative fiction. He has written about the Cthulhu Mythos, a shared universe created by the writer H. P. Lovecraft.[6] Price was appointed executor of Lin Carter's literary estate. In 2020, an inflammatory introduction he wrote to Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! 6 anthology caused multiple authors to withdraw their work in protest. He co-wrote a book on the rock band Rush with his wife, Carol Selby Price, Mystic Rhythms: The Philosophical Vision of Rush (1999).

Price is currently the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism.[7]

Background

Price was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1954 and moved to New Jersey in 1964. He received a Master of Theological Studies in New Testament from Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary in 1978. At Drew University, he was awarded one Ph.D. in Systematic Theology in 1981 and another in New Testament in 1991. Price was pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey.[1] He has served as Professor of Religion at Mount Olive College. He additionally did some work at minor institutions, including professorships at nonaccredited schools Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary and the Center for Inquiry Institute.[8]

Christ myth theory

Price challenges biblical literalism and argues for a more skeptical and humanistic approach to Christianity. Price questioned the historicity of Jesus in a series of books, including Deconstructing Jesus (2000), The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (2003), Jesus Is Dead (2007), and The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (2012), as well as in Jesus at the Vanishing Point, a contribution to The Historical Jesus: Five Views (2009).

Methodology

Price uses critical-historical methods,[9] but also uses "history-of-religions parallel[s],"[10] or the "Principle of Analogy,"[11] to show similarities between Gospel narratives and non-Christian Middle Eastern myths.[12] Price criticizes some of the criteria of critical Bible research, such as the criterion of dissimilarity[13] and the criterion of embarrassment.[14] Price further notes that "consensus is no criterion" for the historicity of Jesus.[15] In Jesus at the Vanishing Point, Price acknowledges that he stands against the majority view of scholars, but cautions against attempting to settle the issue by appeal to the majority.[16]

Key arguments for the Christ myth theory

In Jesus at the Vanishing Point (2010), Price gives three key points for the traditional Christ myth theory, which originated with Bruno Bauer and the Dutch Radical School:[17]

In The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (2011), Price maintains that the Christ myth theory is the most likely explanation for the origin of Christianity, giving another overview of arguments:[21]

Jesus-agnosticism

Price argues that if critical methodology is applied with ruthless consistency, one is left in complete agnosticism regarding Jesus's historicity.[22][23] Price is quoted saying, "There might have been a historical Jesus, but unless someone discovers his diary or his skeleton, we'll never know."[24][25] He also similarly declared in a 1997 public debate:

If there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more.[26]

Price notes that historians of classical antiquity approached mythical figures such as Heracles by rejecting supernatural tales while doggedly assuming that "a genuine historical figure" could be identified at the root of the legend. He describes this general approach as Euhemerism, and argues that most historical Jesus research today is also Euhemerist.[27] Price argues that Jesus is like other ancient mythic figures, in that no mundane, secular information seems to have survived. Accordingly, Jesus also should be regarded as a mythic figure, but Price admits to some uncertainty in this regard. He writes at the conclusion of his 2000 book Deconstructing Jesus: "There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way of being sure."[27][note 1]

Mythological origins

Price believes that Christianity is a historicized synthesis of mainly Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek mythologies,[30][31] viewing Jesus of Nazareth as an invented figure conforming to the Rank-Raglan mythotype.[27]

Price argues that the early Christians adopted the model for the figure of Jesus from the popular Mediterranean dying-rising saviour myths of the time, such as that of Dionysus. He argues that the comparisons were known at the time, as early church father Justin Martyr had admitted the similarities. Price suggests that Christianity simply adopted themes from the dying-rising god stories of the day and supplemented them with themes (escaping crosses, empty tombs, children being persecuted by tyrants, etc.) from contemporaneous popular stories in order to come up with the narratives about Christ.[32]

Gospels as midrash

Price asserts that there was an almost complete fleshing out of the details of the gospels by a midrashic rewriting of the Septuagint, Josephus, Homer, and Euripides' The Bacchae.[33] According to Price, "virtually every story in the gospels and Acts can be shown to be very likely a Christian rewrite of material" from those sources and "virtually every case of New Testament narrative" can be traced back to a literary prototype, so that there is "virtually nothing left."[34]

Influences of Greek Cynicism

Price does not see in the Q document a reliable source for the historical Jesus, simply because Q shows everywhere a Cynic flavor, representing a school of thought rather than necessarily the teaching of a single person.[35] Price acknowledges that outside the New Testament there are a small number of ancient sources (Tacitus, for example) who would testify that Jesus was a person who really lived. However, Price points out that, even assuming the authenticity of these references, they relate more to the claims of the Christians who lived at that time on Jesus, and do not prove that Jesus was a contemporary of the writers of antiquity.

Historicising the myth

Citing accounts that have Jesus being crucified under Alexander Jannaeus (83 BCE) or in his 50s by Herod Agrippa I under the rule of Claudius Caesar (41–54 CE), Price argues that these "varying dates are the residue of various attempts to anchor an originally mythic or legendary Jesus in more or less recent history."[36][37][38]

Price also propounds the belief that the town of Nazareth did not exist during the first half of the first century CE, and is a pseudo-historical invention. Price and Bart Ehrman disputed this issue in the dueling works Did Jesus Exist? and Price's Bart Ehrman and the Quest of Historical Jesus of Nazareth: An Evaluation of Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist?

H. P. Lovecraft scholarship

Robert M. Price speaking in the Salomon Center at Brown University in 1990

Price has been a figure in H. P. Lovecraft scholarship and fandom for many years.[39] He is the editor of the journal Crypt of Cthulhu.[40] (published by Necronomicon Press) and of a series of Cthulhu Mythos anthologies.[41][42][43] In essays that introduce the anthologies and the individual stories, Price traces the origins of Lovecraft's entities, motifs, and literary style. The Cthulhu Cycle, for example, saw the origins of Cthulhu the octopoid entity in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Kraken" (1830) and particular passages from Lord Dunsany, while The Dunwich Cycle points to the influence of Arthur Machen on Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror."

Price's religious background often informs his Mythos criticism, seeing gnostic themes in Lovecraft's fictional god Azathoth[44] and interpreting "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" as a kind of initiation ritual.[45]

Price was in charge of the majority of the early Cthulhu anthologies by Chaosium; his first book published by Chaosium was The Hastur Cycle (1993), a short story anthology about a single element of Lovecraftian stories, and following this was Mysteries of the Worm (1993), a collection Cthulhu Mythos fiction by Robert Bloch.[46]

Other works

In 2010 Price became one of three new hosts on Point of Inquiry (the Center for Inquiry's podcast), following the retirement of host D. J. Grothe from the show. Having appeared on the show twice before as a guest (see external links below), he hosted until 2012.[47] Price hosted The Bible Geek, a podcast where Price answered listeners' questions. The most recent show was in June 2019.[48] Price was a regular guest on an interview podcast about religion, "MythVision Podcast."[49]

In 2005, Price appeared in Brian Flemming's documentary film The God Who Wasn't There, is the subject of the documentary "The Gospel According to Price" by writer/director Joseph Nanni,[50] and appears in the films of Jozef K. Richards in the documentary, Batman & Jesus, and comedy series, Holy Shit.[51][52]

In 2020, Price was in the process of bringing back a fantasy adventure anthology series called Flashing Swords!, which was popular in the late 1970s. In the introduction to the sixth volume, he had made several statements that readers and other collaborating authors felt were transphobic, misogynistic, and racist. Several authors, in response, had their names and works retracted from the volume.[53]

Debates

In 1999, Price debated William Lane Craig, arguing against the historicity of Jesus' resurrection.[54] In 2010, he debated James White, arguing against the reliability of the Bible. In 2010, Price debated Douglas Jacoby, on Jesus: Man, Myth, or Messiah? In 2016, he debated New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman on the historicity of Jesus. Although they disagreed, Ehrman considered Price one of the more esteemed proponents of mythicism as Price had the relevant credentials and study, compared to other mythicists whose expertise stemmed from other disciplines.[55][56]

Publications

Books on religion

Chapters and articles on religion

Cthulhu Mythos (as editor or author)

Magazines

Notes

  1. ^ In Deconstructing Jesus Price points out, "(w)hat one Jesus reconstruction leaves aside, the next one takes up and makes its cornerstone. Jesus simply wears too many hats in the Gospels – exorcist, healer, king, prophet, sage, rabbi, demigod, and so on. The Jesus Christ of the New Testament is a composite figure ... The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time."[28] Price also states "I am not trying to say that there was a single origin of the Christian savior Jesus Christ, and that origin is pure myth; rather, I am saying that there may indeed have been such a myth, and that if so, it eventually flowed together with other Jesus images, some one of which may have been based on a historical Jesus the Nazorean."[29] In a discussion on euhemerism, Price cautiously asserts that "a genuine historical figure" may ultimately lie at the root of the Christian religion.[27] That figure (about whom he detects no surviving mundane, secular information) would have eventually been made into God through apotheosis. Nonetheless, Price admits uncertainty in this regard. He writes in conclusion, "There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way of being sure."[27]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Robert M. Price Archived 2010-06-08 at the Wayback Machine, The Jesus Project, Center for Inquiry.
  2. ^ "About". Republican Atheists. Retrieved June 15, 2017.
  3. ^ a b Advisory Board Secular Student Alliance, accessed April 15, 2010.
  4. ^ Tokasz, Jay. Scholars to explore existence of Jesus Archived December 2, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, The Buffalo News, November 30, 2008, accessed February 22, 2009.
  5. ^ gerede dasein (April 20, 2016), Being a Christian Atheist (Dr. Robert M. Price), archived from the original on December 22, 2021, retrieved October 21, 2017
  6. ^ Journal of Higher Criticism, accessed April 9, 2010; Joshi, S. T. and Schultz, David E. An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press, p. 217. ISBN 0-9748789-1-X
  7. ^ "Journal of Higher Criticism" (PDF). March 18, 2018. Retrieved March 19, 2018.
  8. ^ "About the Show". The Human Bible. Center for Inquiry Institute. n.d. Archived from the original on March 22, 2015. Retrieved March 1, 2017..
  9. ^ Price 2003a, pp. 9–24.
  10. ^ Price 2003a, p. 125.
  11. ^ Price 2011a, p. 25.
  12. ^ Price 2003a, pp. 121, 125–128, 331.
  13. ^ Price 2003a, pp. 16–19.
  14. ^ Price 2003a, p. 121.
  15. ^ Price 2009, p. 61.
  16. ^ Price 2009, pp. 61ff.
  17. ^ Price, Robert M. (2003). The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?. Prometheus Books. p. 350. ISBN 978-1-61592-028-0. Most of the Dutch Radical scholars, following Bruno Bauer, argued that all of the gospel tradition was fabricated to historicize an originally bare datum of a savior, perhaps derived from the Mystery Religions or Gnosticism or even further afield. The basic argument offered for this position, it seems to me, is that of analogy, the resemblances between Jesus and Gnostic and Mystery Religion saviors being just too numerous and close to dismiss.
  18. ^ Price, Robert M. (2010). "Jesus at the Vanishing Point". In James K. Beilby, Paul Rhodes Eddy (ed.). The Historical Jesus: Five Views. InterVarsity Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-8308-7853-6. [The Traditional Christ-Myth Theory – The first of the three pillars] Why no mention of a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources? ... For the record, my guess is that Eusebius fabricated it [the Testimonium Flavianum] and that the tenth-century Arabic version represents an abridgement of the Eusebian original, not a more primitive, modest version.
  19. ^ Price, Robert M. (2010). "Jesus at the Vanishing Point". In James K. Beilby, Paul Rhodes Eddy (ed.). The Historical Jesus: Five Views. InterVarsity Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-8308-7853-6. The second of the three pillars of the traditional Christ-Myth case is that the Epistles, earlier than the Gospels, do not evidence a recent historical Jesus. Setting aside the very late 1 Timothy, which presupposes the Gospel of John (the only Gospel in which Jesus "made a good confession before Pontius Pilate"), we should never guess from the Epistles that Jesus died in any particular historical or political context, only that the fallen angels (Col 2:15), the archons of this age, did him in, little realizing they were sealing their own doom (1 Cor 2:6–8).
  20. ^ Price, Robert M. (2010). "Jesus at the Vanishing Point". In James K. Beilby, Paul Rhodes Eddy (ed.). The Historical Jesus: Five Views. InterVarsity Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-8308-7853-6. [Dying-and-Rising Gods] The Jesus story as attested in the Epistles shows strong parallels to Middle Eastern religions based on the myths of dying-and-rising gods. (And this similarity is the third pillar of the traditional Christ-Myth theory.)
  21. ^ Price, Robert M. (2011). "Conclusion: Do You "No" Jesus?". The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems. American Atheist Press. p. 425. ISBN 978-1-57884-017-5.
  22. ^ Price, Robert M. (2003). The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?. Prometheus Books, Publishers. p. 351. ISBN 978-1-61592-028-0. One wonders if all these scholars came to a certain point and stopped, their assumption being. "If Jesus was a historical figure, he must have done and said something!" But their own criteria and critical tools. which we have sought to apply here with ruthless consistency, ought to have left them with complete agnosticism.
  23. ^ Price, Robert M. (December 31, 1999). "Of Myth and Men: A Closer Look at the Originators of the Major Religions – What Did They Really Say and Do?". Free Inquiry magazine. 20 (1). Is it ... possible that beneath and behind the stained-glass curtain of Christian legend stands the dim figure of a historical founder of Christianity? Yes, it is possible, perhaps just a tad more likely than that there was a historical Moses, about as likely as there having been a historical Apollonius of Tyana. But it becomes almost arbitrary to think so.
  24. ^ Jacoby, Douglas (2010). Compelling Evidence for God and the Bible: Finding Truth in an Age of Doubt. Harvest House Publishers. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-7369-3759-7.
  25. ^ "Jacoby-Price Debate". Douglas Jacoby Website. July 31, 2013. Retrieved July 18, 2017.
  26. ^ Price, Robert M. (1997). "The Price-Rankin Debate: Jesus: Fact or Fiction?". infidels.org. Retrieved November 27, 2016. My point here is simply that, even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more.
  27. ^ a b c d e Price, Robert (2000). Deconstructing Jesus. Prometheus Books. p. 250. ISBN 1-57392-758-9.
  28. ^ Price, Robert M. (2000). Deconstructing Jesus, pp. 15–16.
  29. ^ Price, Robert M. (2000). Deconstructing Jesus, p. 86.
  30. ^ Price, Robert M. "Jesus at the Vanishing Point" in James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy (eds.) The Historical Jesus: Five Views. InterVarsity, 2009, pp. 55ff
  31. ^ Price, Robert M. Book review of "Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection". 2009. Retrieved 2010-08-04.
  32. ^ Price, Robert M. (2000). "The Christ Cults". Deconstructing Jesus. Prometheus. pp. 86, 88, 91, 93. ISBN 978-1-61592-120-1.
  33. ^ Price, Robert M. (2005). "New Testament narrative as Old Testament midrash". In Jacob Neusner and Alan J. Avery-Peck (ed.). Encyclopaedia of Midrash: Biblical Interpretation in Formative Judaism. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-14166-9.
  34. ^ Price, Robert M. "The Quest of the Mythical Jesus". Jesus Project – Center for Inquiry. Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion. Archived from the original on April 17, 2017. Retrieved March 28, 2017. The Quest of the Mythical Jesus first appeared on the Robert M. Price Myspace page.
  35. ^ Price, Robert M. (2005). "Review of Can We Trust the New Testament?". infidels.org. Retrieved November 24, 2017. [Per] the suggestion of Doherty and me that the sayings of Q, typical Cynical material demanding no single author, were only subsequently ascribed to Jesus, having perhaps originally been attributed to Dame Sophia.
  36. ^ Price, Robert M. (2010). "Jesus at the Vanishing Point". In James K. Beilby (ed.). The Historical Jesus: Five Views. Paul Rhodes Eddy. InterVarsity Press. p. 80f. ISBN 978-0-8308-7853-6.
  37. ^ Price, Robert M. (2006). The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-four Formative Texts. Signature Books. p. 240. ISBN 978-1-56085-194-3. [Per the Toledot Yeshu] One of the chief points of interest in this work is its chronology, placing Jesus about 100 BCE. ... Epiphanius and the Talmud also attest to Jewish and Jewish-Christian belief in Jesus having lived a century or so before we usually imagine, implying that perhaps the Jesus figure was at first an ahistorical myth and various attempts were made to place him in a plausible historical context, just as Herodotus and others tried to figure out when Hercules "must have" lived.
  38. ^ Irenaeus (c. 180 CE). Demonstration (74) Archived 2011-05-04 at the Wayback Machine.
  39. ^ Hite, Kenneth (2008). Tour De Lovecraft: The Tales. Atomic Overmind Press. p. xiii. Joshi's only rival for eminence in the field during the 1980s and 1990s was Robert M. Price
  40. ^ Harms, Daniel (2008). The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia. Elder Signs Press. p. xv. ISBN 978-1-934501-05-4.
  41. ^ Shannon Appelcline, A Brief History of Game #3: Chaosium: 1975–present on RPG.net
  42. ^ Joshi, S.T. (2007). Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 126. ISBN 978-0-313-33780-2. The Cthulhu Mythos remains a popular venue in literature and the media. Since the 1980s Robert M. Price has been a kind of August Derleth redivivus in publishing a dozen or more anthologies of Cthulhu Mythos tales by writers old and new
  43. ^ Mitchell, Charles P. (2001). The Complete H.P. Lovecraft Filmography. Greenwood Press. p. 6. ISBN 0-313-31641-4.
  44. ^ Price, Robert M. (1995). "Introduction". The Azathoth Cycle. Chaosium. ISBN 1-56882-040-2.
  45. ^ Hite, Kenneth (2008). Tour De Lovecraft: The Tales. Atomic Overmind Press. p. 84. Equally importantly and convincingly, Price analyses the tale as a vision-quest, a coming-of-age ordeal ritual, which I have to say is pretty dead-on.
  46. ^ Shannon Appelcline (2011). Designers & Dragons. Mongoose Publishing. p. 91. ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7.
  47. ^ "Center for Inquiry Announces Three New Hosts for its Popular Podcast, 'Point of Inquiry'". Center for Inquiry. February 2010. Retrieved February 14, 2010.
  48. ^ "The Bible Geek". Robert M. Price's website. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  49. ^ Lambert, Derek. "MythVision Podcast". YouTube. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  50. ^ Nanni, Joseph. "Robert M. Price: The Man Behind the Christ Myth Movement". YouTube. Joseph Nanni. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  51. ^ "Robert Price". King's Tower Productions. Archived from the original on February 23, 2017. Retrieved February 5, 2017.
  52. ^ "Robert M. Price". IMDb. Retrieved February 5, 2017.
  53. ^ Johnston, Rich. (July 31, 2020) "Authors Ask That Their Work Be Removed From Flashing Swords #6", Bleeding Cool. Retrieved May 12, 2021.
  54. ^ Video on YouTube
  55. ^ "Bart Ehrman & Robert Price Debate – Did Jesus Exist?".
  56. ^ "Bart Ehrman & Robert Price Debate – Did Jesus Exist" – via www.youtube.com.

Sources

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