Customer Reviews

Jesus Is Dead

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Jesus Is Dead is the first book I've read by Dr. Price and what a joy it was. The first third of the book is my favorite in which Dr. Price states his case of the historical Jesus. The last two-thirds of the book concerns him responding to other books. I began by not being too thrilled with the subject matter pertaining to the Templars and the Talmud of Jmmanuel, but soon I was wanting more. Next the good doctor deals with fundamentalist apologetics. I am a former Cristian fundie and used to read these types of books but didn't read many opinions on the other side. I missed a lot. The truth is that I didn't like what I read. I needed my miracles, the inerrancy of scripture, the literal word of God, etc. I believed that I could study the Bible on my own and God would show me the truth. I was no Biblical scholar though. As in other subjects one should rely on the experts. Biblical scholars know their Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and have the time to read the latest criticism. Truth is hard to accept at times. Losing my faith was the lowest point of my life but I don't regret it. One has to be honest with the facts wherever they lead even if they are not comfortable.

I do have one problem with this book though. On page 275 he refers to the National Inquirer. That should be National Enquirer. The Inquirer is out of Philly. I learned to differ these papers after I moved to Cincy which has the Enquirer.

I have to say that Dr. Price is my new favorite Biblical scholar. He is very knowledgeable about the Bible, forms of criticism, and he is extremely well-read. Plus he has a wonderful sense of humor. I appreciate Dr. Price's honesty above all though. His Bible Geek podcasts on his website are very informative and thoroughly enjoyable. I look forward to reading his other books.

This book does a fine job of demolishing the arguments of Christian apologists. Price shows how apologists operate by getting you to buy into some very shakey assumptions - that the gospel narratives, minus the supernatural - are basically historically reliable. Then they use events and characters in the story to argue that Jesus really did rise from the dead.

However, upon closer inspection the gospel narratives are not even remotely historical accounts, and provide numerous internal clues to this effect. The apologist tactic is tantamount to proving the existence of Batman by quoting the words of Robin, the Boy Wonder.

Price takes on quite a few specific big name apologists such as N.T. Wright, William Lane Craig, Glenn Miller, and Gary Habermas. He provides slam-dunk refutations for specific arguments, with observations on the general principle behind apologetic flim-flam tactics.

If you ever have to participate in a debate, THIS ONE BOOK is THE BOOK to read.

This book is something that is needed in scholarship today. The book is actually more of a conversation type book where it feels like you are speaking with Robert M. Price by a fire place as friends. He is very very funny and seems to not care about making fun of anything. This is kind of like the real Robert M. Price in a more comfortable tone and not in a scholarly setting. He makes jokes about the beliefs of some of the Christians like William Lane Craig, and Gary Habermas, but he is fair to the joking, since he does make fun of his comrade in the Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Crossan too. He of course has beef with William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, and other writers and even devotes chapters to these guys individually just so he can give them a beating a la Robert Price.

At least he tries.

With this in mind, anyone who wants to read some funny criticisms of New Testament scholarship, and for that matter funny criticisms about general history that includes Roman, Greek and of course modern; then go ahead and check this book out. If you go to Robert M. Price's website you can get an autographed copy of the book for $20 flat with Shipping included. I believe another reviewer mentioned that.

I actually agree with many of his points, but I don't reach his conclusions. I for one think that there really was a Jesus and that he did do quite a few things described in the gospels and that the gospels are not that unreliable as the thinks. But he's open minded and comical. That's good to know.

Here's some stuff he touches upon: The resurrection of Jesus, empty tomb, his theory that Jesus may have been John the Baptist, and critiques of Dan Brown and company and their wacky ideas, N.T. Wright, William Lane Craig, Johnathan Smith, Gregory Riley, A.J.M. Wedderburn, James Holding, Glenn Miller, and Gary Habermas.

In the end, this is a good book that is needed in scholarship today since it shows that there is humor in history and scholarship. And it helps give you some fresh air for those who believe the Bible to be false and those who believe the bible to be true since it shows that even scholars are funny humans.

For anyone interested in empirical history of the Bible please read:

On the Reliability of the Old Testament
Jesus and Archaeology
"The HarperCollins Visual Guide to the New Testament: What Archaeology Reveals about the First Christians"
"The Historical Jesus: An Essential Guide (Essential Guide (Abingdon Press))"
Biblical Archaeology Review (great research articles on Middle Eastern archaeology by archaeologists and scholars from diverse secular/religious backgrounds)

Much of what is said in this book needs to be considered well and sometimes taken with a grain of salt. A good book to read before "Jesus is Dead", and any other work that tries to construct and reconstruct history, is Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought since historian's fallacies are found in "Jesus is Dead". Its good to keep historians and their beliefs in check to see if they are going beyond what can be historically concluded or assumed.

An interesting look at plausibility, or not, of miracles in historical cases can be seen in Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (2 Volume Set). This is just for perspective.

For anyone wanting to compare reliability, or not, of textual transmission of Latin and Greek writings read these and compare how well, or not, other works from antiquity fare in Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics which gives a short but detailed history of the, usually few, manuscripts (many of which have variant readings) that were used to reconstruct the writings of ancient Latin writers (Cesar, Tacitus, Livy, Suetonius, both Plinys, Cicero, etc.) and Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature which gives a short but detailed history of transmission of both Latin and Greek texts.

Here are some books that detail textual variants and families of manuscripts in some popular writings:

"Homer's Text and Language (Traditions)"

"The Textual Tradition of Plato's Republic (Mnemosyne Bibliotheca Classica Batava Supplementum, 107)"

"The Manuscript Tradition of Polybius (Cambridge Classical Studies)"

Look also at the history and transmission of Buddhist scriptures in Buddhist Sutras: Origin, Development, Transmission and compare with reliability for the original Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama).

The issues concerning manuscripts such as "variant" readings, authorship, and transmission of writings are not unique to the Bible at all. They are common for ALL writings and histories from antiquity including all the Roman and Greek histories (which people never check for reliability or variant readings but believe without question or research). Copying by hand, translating to multiple languages, costs of writing equipment, and changes in conventions in writing have created multiple areas that have formed variants in all manuscripts from antiquity including accounts of Socrates, Alexander, Pythagoras, and the rest. Just read the omissions, insertions, and missing lines that are usually footnoted in modern editions of writings of ancient authors such as Archimedes or Aristotle or Plato, for example.

Furthermore, most people forget that Jesus, the original Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), Confucius, Socrates, Muhammad and many other historical figures never wrote a thing. It was their followers, friends, enemies and disciples that decided to write records, quotations, and biographies of these men.

Ultimately, people like Socrates, Pythagoras, Alexander the Great, Julius Cesar (aside from his own writings, which are not necessarily autobiographical in nature), Hippocrates, the original Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), Zoroaster, Confucius, and a basically all other historical figures are in the same situation if not worse than the accounts on Jesus. But it's all we got to work with. Perhaps Socrates didn't exist since his history is in the same situation as Jesus, not to mention that he has also never wrote anything and all of the "reliable" information on him was written decades later by only 3 or less "witnesses" (Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes (in his plays)). Check out the textual variants in Plato's writings (usually in the footnotes of critical editions)! Some stuff happened as Plato's writings were transmitted from Greek to Arabic to Greek. Anyone up for textual variants on Aristotle's writings or Tacitus or Lucretius? See comment # 28 for complete primary sources on Socrates and Pythagoras to compare to Jesus' situation.

All modern editions of writings (ancient and medieval) before the printing press were all reconstructed from variant manuscripts inevitably Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography & Textual Criticism. Of course most variants are insignificant such as spelling, grammar, repetition of words or letters, omission or insertion of terms for clarification, and so on. Usually, the overall messages in ancient writings do not get affected by much by a few lines or sections of variation. That's why we can trust many of them, including the New Testament writings. Also archaeology sheds light on the reliability or lack of these texts as well.

Dr. Price has done it again. He has put his vast knowledge of religion combined with his even-handed, rational analytical abilities and his sly wit to the task of dealing with the resurrection of Jesus. He deals very effectively with the arguments put forward by leading apologists and shows their logic and methodology to be lacking and inconsistent. A must read!

I'm a big fan of Dr. Price. He is extremely learned and immensely entertaining and both of those attributes are on display in this book.

The book is a collection of various pieces and book reviews that have appeared in the years prior to the book's publication. Most of the individual chapters deal with apologetic arguments and reviews of books written by apologists. Because of this there is quite a bit of repetition as apologists make the same arguments and Price offers up the same refutations.

There is also a bit of padding in the book as Price demolishes the current spate of books dealing with the Knights Templar, notably Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". The connection to mainstream apologetics is rather tenuous as neither skeptics nor apologists alike have the time of day for "Jesus survived the cross, married Mary Magdalene, moved to France, etc, etc" fantasies. Price seems to be trying to tar with the same brush, like comparing global warming deniers with holocaust deniers. I hope this was not intentional.

If you're looking for an actual book instead of a collection you're going to be slightly disappointed as I was. The pieces are all well written and well reasoned but read one after another they tend to be repetitious.

A Kindle edition of this book is on sale on the author's website. The Kindle edition is quite readable but has a number of shortcomings mostly due to the table of contents. The table does not show up in the menu, and only the chapters in the first half of the book are marked on the progress bar. The text is also not justified. Two other books are for sale in Kindle format on Price's website, "Night of the Living Savior" and "The Christ Myth Theory and its Problems". Like "Jesus is Dead", they are also collections.

Love the book, it's filled with Dr. Price's essays, etc. but I HIGHLY suggest you all go to his personal web site and pay 20 bucks paypal and get a personalized signed copy...and free shipping included in the 20. His site is www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com and you click on the paypal logo by the book. hope this helps. Lenny

Price relies on the public's ignorance of history and the Bible in his often irresponsible and unsupported accusations and contentions in this book. For example, he attacks as vacuous the overwhelming critical consensus for the early dating of 1 Corinthians 15:3ff., an ancient oral tradition reporting the Gospel data. However, when he knows he is addressing scholars and his articles must stand up to the scrutiny of peer review, his convictions suddenly change. In a scholarly monograph written for Religious Studies in 1999, in reference to 1 Corinthians 15:3ff., he admits, "In fact the list of appearances there can be pushed back with reasonable probability to within a few years of the crucifixion." This is an incredibly crucial concession. For in this very early pericope, we have the entire core gospel of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus already accepted by Peter, James, and Paul. An early date for this militates against many of Price's assertions. But Price also uses this early dating to forge a case against the Gospels' physical resurrection accounts. He argues the Gospels must not be historically reliable, because they are chronologically later and seem to be based on a later and allegedly contradictory understanding of the resurrection (legend purported to be written by second century Christians).
One of the many significant problems with Price's conjecture of a non-physical resurrection is the extensively documented study N.T. Wright detailed concerning Jewish beliefs of afterlife and resurrection in The Resurrection of the Son of God. Wright demonstrated the early Christian understanding of "resurrection" centered in the worldview of Second Temple Judaism, which understood it to be a "concrete, physical raising of dead bodies after a period of being dead." In fact, Pagans, Jews and Christians of first century Palestine all understood the term resurrection ("anastasis") and all its related terms in this same way, whether they affirmed or denied it. This held true historically until the second century (with its arrival of full-blown Gnosticism). Thus the early tradition pieces, including 1Corinthians, would reflect this understanding. Price only engages in "ad hominem" attacks and never answers the scores of pages of documentation Wright provides. Consequently, Price's theory is unsubstantiated.
Price cannot "follow the evidence wherever it may lead," or even acknowledge mainstream scholarship, because he knows simply accepting the general reliability and historicity of the New Testament would make it difficult to oppose a historical/physical resurrection. Instead, he precludes, "a priori" and without justification, any non-naturalistic theory or text. He clings to a religion of methodological naturalism, and must presume the non-historicity of the documents. Price then personally determines which verses he will choose as historical, in some cases based solely upon whether they imply the miraculous. As he says on page 89, New Testament scholarship to him "is a game where, using. . . certain arguments. . . one may make a. . .plausible case. . .for almost any notion." Thus, he selects verses which will make a case for Jesus being simply one of many "archetype mythic heroes." Unfortunately for Price's theory, if there is a human hero archetype, Jesus fills that role uniquely.
His prime contender to match Jesus in this role is Apollonius of Tyana. Price details his life eight different times in Jesus is Dead and once in the Religious Studies article. But he never informs us of the "fine print." Philostratus's biography of Apollonius is the only extant source of his life and is unconfirmed. There are no miracles in the book, which ends with Apollonius' death in 98AD, and it contains many geographical and historical inaccuracies. Philostratus' alleged source, Damis, comes from Nineveh, which did not even exist during his lifetime. Furthermore, Philostratus was commissioned to compose it 120 years after Apollonius' death by Julia Domna, the Roman emperor's wife. Cook's Cambridge Ancient History recorded, since she was to become high priestess of Hellenistic polytheism, she needed to find "a historical figure fitted to counter the propaganda of the subversive gospels." Nevertheless, in contradistinction to the Gospel accounts of Jesus, it provides no post-resurrection appearances, no eyewitnesses, and, in fact, no physical resurrection.
In order to substantiate his theory, Price must invent complicated legend-making scenarios. However, if the New Testament documents are merely historically reliable, as almost all mainstream scholars attest, there is no need to posit a Gnostic or mystery religion parallel. The empty tomb and post-resurrection appearances together provide a convincing case for Jesus' historical resurrection. Furthermore, Jesus is alive and doing miracles today (I, a former skeptic, liar, and drug dealer, am one.) But no amount of evidence is ever good enough for those who do not want the truth. For those who are open to hear "the other side of the story," I suggest reading the arguments of scholars Price denigrates (e.g. Wright, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig).

Anyone who has read real scholarship on the subject, knows that books (and scholars for that matter) like these are 60 years behind present studies.

While if understood in context as pertaining to the Catholic myth, there maybe some, but only some, validity to what is said, in this case, by a frustrated Christian fundamentalist who has swung from his past ridged extremism to a totally wild and opposite new ridged extremism.

The problem is not necessarily with the evidence, but the way that evidence is used without context, obviously, the personality doing the work, who is seeking to stab back at the heart of those he perceives betrayed him, and primarily, that that evidence is incomplete...

If one is interested in actual facts, REAL comprehensive studies of historical Christianity (and ultimately Jesus), I suggest one should (if they are of the intellectual capacity to - yes that is a challenge) read "James the Brother of Jesus" by Robert Eisenman (or for that matter anything by Robert Eisenman on the subject of Christianity).

Stay away from sensationalist schlock atheist fluffy bunny books such as Robert M. Price's, who ignore (denies even) the complete evidence, especially that of the existence of the historical Jesus, his brother James, and the Jerusalem Assembly. All because he is angry and feels betrayed by his Protestant and Roman myths that have "historical" cracks and fissures and are not inerrent (created in the first place by Saul of Tarsus, as the good little Herodian he was, to serve the Roman order - the Pax Romanus). the author enraged his ideological and religious utopia has failed his totalitarian spirit, he settles for the "unflappable" and "irrefutable" agnosticism of hyper skepticism, and ultimately atheism.

True scholarship is based on the evidence...ALL the evidence, rationally without emotional furvor, and modern scholarship draws a distinction between the historical figure, worshiped as an idol, because of Saul of Tarsus and the movement the founded, known today as Christianity, and the actual man and his movement that stood in opposition to both the Heathen exploitationist slave culture of the Roman Empire, and their agents in Palestine, the Herodians (of whom Saul of Tarsus was a member).

Don't wastes your time on such dribble...stick to the real stuff by true scholars, those looking for the truth based on the complete collective evidence, not individuals disseminating self justified ideological mood swings as scholarship.