Price was formerly a Baptist minister in New Jersey, with doctorates in theology (Drew University 1981), and New Testament (Drew 1993).[9]
| Robert Price | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | July 7, 1954 Jackson, Mississippi[1] |
| Residence | North Carolina |
| Education | BA, MTS (1978) PhD in Systematic Theology (1981) PhD in New Testament (1993)[1] |
| Alma mater | Montclair State University Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary Drew University |
| Occupation | Theologian |
| Employer | Professor of biblical criticism for the Council for Secular Humanism's Center for Inquiry Institute[2] |
| Known for | Research into the historicity of Jesus |
| Spouse(s) | Carol Selby Price[3] |
| Children | Victoria and Veronica[1] |
| Website | |
| robertmprice.mindvendor.com The Bible Geek | |
A former Baptist minister, he was the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism from 1994 until it ceased publication in 2003, and has written extensively about the Cthulhu Mythos, a "shared universe" created by the writer H. P. Lovecraft.[6] He also co-wrote a book with his wife, Carol Selby Price, Mystic Rhythms: The Philosophical Vision of Rush (1999), on the rock band Rush.
Price is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, a group of 150 writers and scholars who study the historicity of Jesus, the organizer of a Web community for those interested in the history of Christianity,[7] and sits on 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. He is known in particular for his skepticism about the existence of Jesus as an historical figure, arguing in 2009 that Jesus may have existed but "unless someone discovers his diary or his skeleton, we'll never know."[8]
Contents
- 1 Background
- 2 Religious writings
- 3 H. P. Lovecraft scholarship
- 4 Other works
- 5 Books
- 6 Magazines
- 7 References
- 8 External links
Religious writings
In books like The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man and Deconstructing Jesus, Price challenges biblical literalism and argues for a more skeptical and humanistic approach to Christianity. He questions the idea of a historical Jesus; in the documentary The God Who Wasn't There, Price supports a version of the Jesus myth hypothesis, suggesting 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 the popular stories of the day in order to come up with the narratives about Christ.[citation needed] He has argued that there was an almost complete fleshing out of the details of the gospels by a Midrash (haggadah) rewriting of the Septuagint, Homer, Euripides' Bacchae, and Josephus.[10]
