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Killing History: Jesus In The No-Spin Zone by [Robert M. Price]

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Robert M. Price

Killing History: Jesus In The No-Spin Zone Kindle Edition

by Robert M. Price (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Killing Jesus, the bestselling blockbuster by Bill O'Reilly, claims to be a purely historical account of the events in the life of Jesus leading up to his crucifixion. New Testament scholar Robert M. Price (a member of the Jesus Seminar) shows how unfounded this claim is in this critical review of O'Reilly's work. In fact, he judges the book to be the number one source of misinformation on Jesus today. Ignoring over one hundred years of New Testament scholarship, O'Reilly and his coauthor, Martin Dugard, have produced what Price describes as a Christian historical thriller that plays fast and loose with the facts. Price goes through the key events of Jesus' later life as described in the gospels and retold in Killing Jesus, painstakingly showing in each case what scholars know and don't know. Using humor, down-to-earth analogies, and witty sarcasm-not unlike O'Reilly's own interview style-Price makes it clear that O'Reilly's book is more historical novel than a work of serious history. By cobbling together the four gospel stories, ignoring the contradictions, and adding plenty of quasi-historical background embellishments, O'Reilly and Dugard have created a good narrative that resonates with a lot of Christians. Entertaining reading this may be, but history it is not.Killing History provides lay readers with an accessible introduction to New Testament scholarship while showing the many problems in O'Reilly's book.

Print length

291 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Prometheus
Publication date

September 2, 2014
File size

1455 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Robert M. Price does in Killing History what he does best: bring immense erudition, sharp critical thinking, and edgy humor to sort through a thorny topic in our public discourse about the Bible. In plain language, but without simplifying, Price expertly dissects the dilettante ‘arguments’ in O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus, exposing it for the pretentious pablum that it is. Along the way, Price serves up a first-rate introduction to the academic historical-critical interpretation of the gospels.”
—Robert J. Miller, fellow of the Jesus Seminar

“Even though serious and hard-hitting scholarship on the historical Jesus has been available for over three hundred years, modern writers continue to publish ‘popular’ accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds, blithely ignorant of what we actually know. In Killing History, New Testament scholar Robert Price shows that among the worst of sinners is Bill O’Reilly and his bestselling but ill-conceived book Killing Jesus. In point after point, Price convincingly and authoritatively argues that O’Reilly has produced a Jesus of his own imagination, rather than the Jesus who emerges from a historically informed study of the gospels.”

— Bart D. Ehrman, James A. Gray Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“It is no secret that Bill O’Reilly and I disagree on various issues of church-state separation. O’Reilly told me that Christianity is a philosophy, not a religion, so government actions promoting Christianity are not against the Constitution; I think that’s just a disingenuous attempt to justify favoritism and religious bigotry. Robert M. Price now shows that the master of the ‘No-Spin Zone’ also ‘massages his facts’ in his popular tome Killing Jesus. O’Reilly claims to be looking out for you, but he’d better realize that Price is looking out for the truth.”
—David Silverman, president of American Atheists

“For Robert M. Price, Bill O’Reilly’s heart may sometimes be in the right place, but his head is not. Nor has he any more business writing a ‘historical’ book about Jesus than Sean Penn might to pontificate about foreign policy! Though Price may not believe there was a ‘historical Jesus,’ that does not mean he wants to see him abused and, for Price, that is what is going on in Killing Jesus. Killing History reveals Bill O’Reilly’s claim that Killing Jesus is a ‘historical work’ and not a religious one as blatant spin—so much so that, for Price, O’Reilly qualifies as a whirling dervish!”
—Robert Eisenman, author of James the Brother of Jesus and The New Testament Code

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Robert M. Price is adjunct professor of theology and scriptural studies at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary, is the editor (with Jeffery Jay Lowder) of The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave and the Journal of Higher Criticism. He is also the author of Inerrant the Wind: The Evangelical Crisis of Biblical Authority; Top Secret: The Truth Behind Today’s Pop Mysticisms; The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind; The Reason-Driven Life: What Am I Here on Earth For? and many other works. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00IW4DOZE
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Prometheus (September 2, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 2, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1455 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 291 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1616149663
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #1,471,796 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #578 in Atheism (Kindle Store)
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52 ratings

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David C. Nilsen

Brilliant, Clear, Easy to Read, Funny

Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2014

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It turns out that Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard actually did a great service to the historical account of the life of Jesus the Christ: they wrote a book so pathetic that Robert Price had to write this one just to undork the mess they made. So aspiring writers and media pundits, take heart. There is no failure so abject that someone smarter than you cannot use it as a teaching point.

While the point of departure of Killing History is to point out where Killing Jesus failed as history, this book is actually a readable, accessible survey of how historical analysis of the Bible and other ancient writings is done. This field, dealing as it does with weighing and comparing various ancient accounts against each other and other evidence, can get pretty deep pretty fast. But by publishing a textbook example of doing it wrong, O’Reilly and Dugard provide a template of errors which Price can take one at a time and show what correct historical analysis tells us, and how to identify the sort of lazy work that fills Killing Jesus.

If you are looking for an entry point to the field of historical textual analysis, this book is ideal. By responding page by page and chapter by chapter to Killing Jesus, Price can provide clear, applied analysis to the concrete examples of O’Reilly and Dugard’s (hereafter O’D) errors. This method is clear and easy to follow, and is extensively documented. Where O’D try to mash together three or four different, inconsistent Gospel accounts, Price provides the Gospel source verses, plus any other Epistle and Old Testament verses that apply so you can follow O’D’s attempt and Price’s explanation of why it does not work. Killing History is a very fast read, but is also written in self-contained sections that allow you to read it episodically without losing the thread.

If you are looking for a book that beards the mighty O’Reilly in his own den, this does that too. Price takes significant pains to point out that he is not an O’Reilly basher, that he is in fact politically aligned with O’Reilly—he includes periodic snarky remarks about Michelle Obama and Jay Carney as reminders—but when O’D claim, over and over, to be writing “history” but are instead writing a pious novel, Dr. Price cannot let that stand in his area of expertise. Price pounds the message home, incident after incident, that O’D are either 1) dishonest, or 2) so ignorant and unqualified to write Biblical history that they can’t even grasp how dishonest they are by calling their book “history.” This is not name-calling, he just lays it out analytically.

Beyond being clear, informative, and thought-provoking, Killing History provides some bonus material. First, where O’D leave off with Jesus’ empty tomb, Price humorously (and wickedly) adopts their breezy, omniscient style to provide the Jesus’-eye-view of his resurrection as O’D might have written it. This is laugh-out-loud funny, but is still educational, as it provides example after example of how breezy, omniscient writing can no longer camouflage historical malpractice from you, the reader. After that are two very valuable “bonus” appendices.

The first is an analysis of modern thinking on when the Gospels were written. Building on the background and analysis in the body of the book, this further exploration takes many of the earlier thoughts to their conclusions and answers questions that had probably been occurring to the reader. The second appendix is a critical bibliography of contemporaneous histories, from Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetonius to Thallus, Phlegon, and Josephus, that are often cited by O’D and other scriptural opinion-mongers.

This being a scholarly work, it ends with 22 pages of notes, a five-page scripture index, and separate indexes for modern authors and general subjects.

This book is a rare and happy intersection of current celebrity victory laps (O’D) and sound, applied scholarship (Price). Seize the good fortune. Soli Deo Gloria.

32 people found this helpful

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Edward W. Goggin

Valuable but spoiled

Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2015

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When I finished reading Killing Jesus some months ago I wrote a simple but unfortunately terse review that found the book to be ahistorical. It disappointed me and, frankly, angered me that, like Mel Gibson's film, the book purported to be an historical account. Well, of course, it is not, and the fact that one of its authors prides himself for his perspicacity and spin detection made my experience with the book all the more annoying. And so I greatly appreciated Mr. price's book which goes to considerable lengths to dismantle the claims to historical accuracy made by O'Reilly and Dugard. Price's expertise in this area proved to be a great help to me in validating my initial view, and I thank him for these many fortifications.

This said, however, I feel compelled to add that I wish he had chosen to avoid the snarkasms and facetiousness sprinkled throughout. They change the book from an intelligent dismantling of a flawed piece of pseudo history into a rather juvenile carping dependent on tedious jokes and flip dismissals. There is really no good reason for these many dips into childishness. It is as if, in order to take on O'Reilly, Price had to adopt the persona of John Stewart with the commensurate mockery and puerility. Mr Price should have allowed his greater grasp of the facts and his clear command of argument do his work for him. He did not need to channel the spirit of Shecky Greene to clear the field. Indeed, the final chapter on the days after the Resurrection is worthy of SNL at its worst. It does not offend me; it startles me with its inappropriateness, and saddens me by the damage it does to an otherwise very useful book.

And so I feel that I can comfortably recommend Mr Price's book, as it has considerable success in debunking Dugard and O'Reilly's spurious claim for historicity. Price's detailed analysis shows Killing Jesus to be an embarrassing misuse of O'Reilly's bully pulpit, and, I'm afraid, a significant blemish on his claim to being an historian. If Mr O'Reilly's book is a moral comfort as many of its readers claim, then perhaps they should not read Mr Price's book. If, on the other hand, the reader mistakenly regards Killing Jesus as a substantial contributor to the field of Ancient History, then a perusal of Mr Price's work may be helpful in steering the reader to more fertile areas of historical research.
EWG

One person found this helpful

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Stephen C. Coyle

Robert Price’s book is both informative and entertaining.

Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2016

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Robert Price’s book is basically an analysis of Bill O’Reilly’s book "Killing Jesus". As such, the final product could have ended up being a dry, boring point-by-point refutation of everything Bill O’Reilly got wrong; however it is so much more than that.

There is a considerable amount of humor involved as Price takes apart O’Reilly’s “history” book and lays it out for all to see that Bill O’Reilly’s book was a work of pure fiction, fantasy and pandering. It is pandering to the religious right and an attempt to use Jesus to push right-wing political views. Bill O'Reilly cherry picked snippets from Biblical stories, twisted their meaning, and even made stuff up out of his own imagination and had the nerve to call it “history”.

Price calls O’Reilly out for his fraudulent “history book” and exposes every lie, half-truth, distortion and fabrication that Bill O’Reilly came up with.

He really puts O'Reilly in his place and makes O’Reilly look like a grade-school child who got caught trying to submit the storyline from a comic book and claiming that it was a history report. I wish that everybody who has read O’Reilly’s “history book” would read Robert Price’s book, so they could see just how dishonest and unscholarly Bill O’Reilly really is.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Guy Mannering

Christian apologists get a drubbing from Price.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 25, 2016

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Robert M. Price is well-known as one of the more formidable exponents of the Christ Myth Theory which maintains that there never was an historical Jesus. In Killing History - Jesus in the No Spin Zone he takes to task two authors, Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, who co-authored a book entitled Killing Jesus, a work of Christian apologetics which, in the words of Price, was aimed at "reinforcing believers' faith and stilling their doubts by providing a real-seeming illusion about the myths and legends of the gospels." O'Reilly is apparently a popular broadcaster in the US and together with Dugard has written a number of well-regarded books on the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations. Neither is an acknowledged New Testament scholar but this didn't deter them from deeming Jesus to be fair game for the same kind of treatment, hence the title of their book which apparently enjoyed good sales.

O'Reilly and Dugard in re-creating their "historical Jesus" employ the cut-and-paste method long favoured by Christian apologists. You cherry-pick your evidence, try to harmonise conflicting accounts by massaging the facts, gloss over any inconvenient material and fill in any gaps from your own imagination. As Price observes: "They are not, despite O'Reilly's oft-repeated claims, writing history. They are engaged in apologetics, spin, on behalf of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy" (and hence the subtitle of Price's book, Jesus in the No Spin Zone).

An expert scholar like Price has little trouble in exposing the methodological weaknesses, historical fallacies and dilettante arguments that abound in O'Reilly and Dugard's book. In fact the two guys get such a thorough drubbing that I was almost beginning to feel sorry for them by the time I got to the end of this book, but on the whole I think they deserve it. Certainly by the time you get to the end I think you will agree that Price has convincingly demonstrated that there is very little in the gospels that can be deemed historically reliable, although on this occasion he chooses to forego any advocacy of the Christ Myth. He includes two interesting appendices, one on the dating of the gospels and the other on whether any ancient historians mention Jesus. I'm intrigued by the strong indications that Mark and Luke show a knowledge of Josephus (for example Mark's trial narrative is uncannily similar to, and may therefore have been modelled on, that of the peasant prophet Jesus ben- Ananias in Josephus ). This would of course push Mark back to about AD 100, thirty years beyond the conventional dating, and Luke even later.

Books by advocates of the Christ Myth Theory or by sceptical NT scholars, including some of Price's earlier works, can be quite daunting in the density of their exposition, especially for those new to the subject, but Killing History - Jesus in the No Spin Zone is highly readable, indeed even enjoyable given that Price finds plenty of opportunities to exercise his mordant wit. Recommended.

One person found this helpful

William Bennett

Recommended, but contains one chapter that might have been omitted.

Reviewed in Canada on June 19, 2015

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In this book, Robert Price rather savagely critiques the book, "Killing Jesus," by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard. He certainly pulls no punches, but he is entirely fair in his criticism of that flawed work.

I admit that I vacillated for some time between a 3 and 4 star rating, and the reason I settled on only 3 is because Price includes a "Chapter that never was;" that is, a chapter that he wrote, supposedly in the style of O'Reilly and Dugard, aimed at illustrating their failings in those which they actually wrote. This chapter is a blemish in an otherwise carefully thought-out rebuttal to *Killing Jesus*, which is justly shown to be an ill-conceived piece of fiction masquerading as history. Price's professionalism (which I do not question) is not attested to by this unwarranted mockery. Nevertheless, these few low quality pages only slightly detract from an otherwise well thought out work, and the book as a whole is recommended.

Michael H. Mc Quarrie

Even No Star !

Reviewed in Canada on November 14, 2014

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I detest Bill O'Reilly but I feel the same about this unreadable mish-mash.