Robert M. Price

What happens to faith when the creeds and confessions can no longer be squared with historical and empirical evidence? Most critical scholars have wrestled with this question. Some have found ways to reconcile their personal religious belief with the scholarship they practice. Others have chosen to reconstruct their view of religious meaning in light of what they have learned. But most have tended not to share those views in a public forum. And that brings up a second question: At what point does the discrepancy between what I know, or think I know, and what I am willing to say publicly become so acute that my personal integrity is at stake? Being honest about what one thinks has always mattered in critical scholarship. In the pages of ""When Faith Meets Reason"", thirteen scholars take up the challenge to speak candidly about how they negotiate the conflicting claims of faith and reason, in hopes that their journeys will inspire others to engage in their own search for meaning.

In a shrinking world in which religion has become as much a motivation for war and terror as an inspiration for saintliness and benevolence, it is more important than ever that we understand faiths other than our own. Where did they come from? How did they begin? Were their legended founders real historical individuals? How do their beliefs shape their actions? Which faiths are mutations of older ones? Many otherwise helpful introductory volumes cover only the most populous religions and, fearing most readers will shy away from going deeply into important detail, they wind up grossly oversimplifying. By contrast, Robert M. Price's Houses of the Holy fills in these blanks comprehensively and does so in clear straightforward language, without cheating the necessary complexity. Here you will find fascinating coverage of a full dozen religious faiths, including several you have likely never even heard of

I världen bortom möter vi äldre tiders sällsamheter jämsides med nutida vidunder. Magi förenas med vetenskap, kackerlackor ingår parningsritual med människor, uråldriga skogsväsen lockar till sig en stockholmsfamilj på kantarelljakt. Mäster Vredben och en buktalardocka är på människojakt. Och vampyrer lever för evigt i universitetens skymningskorridorer. Tolv osaliga berättelser där klassiker blandas med moderna författare.

What if we have been missing a whole stage of how the canonical gospels came to be? What if there were a whole raft of prior Jesus narratives, the fragmentary vestiges of which now appear in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? This would explain why these gospels seem over-crowded with incompatible understandings of Jesus ("Christologies")? In The Gospels Behind the Gospels, innovative biblical scholar Robert M. Price attempts to reassemble the puzzle pieces, disclosing several earlier gospels of communities who imagined Jesus as the predicted return of the prophet Elijah, the Samaritan Taheb (a second Moses), a resurrected John the Baptist, a theophany of Yahweh, a Gnostic Revealer, a Zealot revolutionary, etc. As these various sects shrank and collapsed, their remaining followers would have come together, just as modern churches and denominations seek to survive by merging and consolidating. Our canonical gospels might be the result. Similarly, Price explores the possibility that Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ were originally figureheads of rival sects who eventually merged in much the same way. You will never read the gospels the same way again!

In The Pauline Letters: A Rhetorical Analysis, David Oliver Smith unveils his revolutionary discovery that the apostle Paul divided his letters into structured literary units as he wrote them. These literary units are based upon repeated words, phrases, and abstract concepts and are invariably patterned into chiastic, parallel, or hybrid structures. Using his technique of rhetorical analysis, Smith sets out each literary unit in the seven undisputed letters of Paul. After the structures of the literary units have been exposed, the units reveal interpolations that disrupt Paul's original structure. When the interpolations revealed by this technique are compared with interpolations heretofore proposed by Pauline scholars, there are some surprising results. Smith also uses his technique to analyze the Deutero-Pauline letters to determine whether any of those letters exhibit the same literary attributes as the undisputed letters.

Was Jesus a mainstream or sectarian Jew, as the scholarly consensus tells us? This view—that we must automatically adopt Second Temple Judaism as the paradigm in which to interpret or reconstruct the historical Jesus—is often presented as self-evident, unquestionable, and beyond dispute. However, the promotion of the Jewish Jesus raises serious questions—specifically, whether this consensus is the product of theological and ecumenical agendas. In Judaizing Jesus, noted scholar Robert M. Price challenges this trend and offers a menu of alternative ways of seeing Jesus: Sacred King, Cynic Philosopher, Gnostic Redeemer, and…the Buddha! He concludes by proposing a new theory of Christian origins to explain how and why the first Christians themselves Judaized Jesus.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

Horrors and Heresies is the second fiction collection by Mythos Mogul Robert M. Price. "The Savage Sword of Jehu" and "The Son of Jehovah versus the Cyclops" appear in print for the first time here. "The Parchment Chase" is a Lovecraftian version of the TV show The Paper Chase, set in the Miskatonic Divinity School. All the stories have some sort of religious connection, mostly of a pretty darn unorthodox character. Price's extensive religious studies background enables him to create authentic-sounding heresies and blasphemies. Here you will find forbidden texts from imaginary scriptures, twisted versions of classic biblical stories from both Old and New Testaments, a "hidden" episode from Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and an adventure of the late, great Christopher Hitchens modeled upon "The Call of Cthulhu." Is it blatant Political Incorrectness you want? You'll find plenty in "The Caliphate of Cthulhu." A couple of these stories first appeared in Secular Humanist mags including American Rationalist (did you know S. T. Joshi was AR's final editor?) and Free Inquiry, not usually the homes of weird fiction. Still another appeared in the late, lamented evangelical humor magazine, The Wittenburg Door.

Robert M. Price, a former Evangelical Christian, examines the confusing intersection of Christianity and superstition by asking questions. Is “practicing the presence of God” actually a variety of paranoia? Is having a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” really akin to a child playing with an imaginary friend? At what point does a religious belief become an obsessive neurosis? Price finds that the source of superstition in Christianity is the objectification of the transcendent. As a result, he argues, many of the most destructive superstitions within Christianity are inessential accretions to the faith, interfering with life-transforming piety to the glad benefit of many of Christianity's adherents. Christians who believe that an unexamined faith is not worth having will profit from struggling with Jesus Christ Superstition.

A New Testament Introduction and Commentary from the perspective of radical "Higher Criticism," but informed by scholars from a wide spectrum of opinion and spiced with humor.

Arguably no scholar in the 21st century has had more of an impact on public discussion and debate over the historical Jesus and the development of early Christianity than distinguished professor of religious studies, Bart D. Ehrman. He has introduced many new readers to crucial questions of biblical criticism in a series of bestselling books. In Bart Ehrman Interpreted, theologian and writer Robert M. Price evaluates Ehrman’s body of work. Taking a collegial approach and rejecting polemics, Price defends Ehrman’s writing against conservative attacks but also suggests a number of points at which Ehrman may be insufficiently or inconsistently critical. No matter one's views toward Ehrman, Bart Ehrman Interpreted will prompt much fruitful and positive discussion of his important work and of the popular and scholarly debates that surround it.

A New Testament Introduction and Commentary from the perspective of radical "Higher Criticism," but informed by scholars from a wide spectrum of opinion and spiced with humor. It is facile to say that the Gospels (and Acts) are not accurate history reporting. It is more complicated, but also much more fascinating to dive deep into these texts to discover why they differ from one another and what their authors were trying to do rather than writing history. Holy Fable volume II employs source, form, and redaction criticism to make these scriptures newly intelligible. Author Price has a unique knack for making this kind of specialist scholarship understandable in plain speech. And he shows how even critical scholars have been timid in following these methods to their logical conclusions.

In this first of a comprehensive two-volume study of the Old and New Testaments, Dr. Robert M. Price builds a spacious and sturdy ark to carry Bible readers over the floods of mystery that have long perplexed them. Why are there multiple creation stories? Who are the "sons of god" in Genesis? What's really going on with those Isaiah passages that preachers love to read at Christmas? Putting a lifetime of biblical scholarship hard at work on perhaps his most momentous project yet, Dr. Price explains the mysteries without scorning them. The beloved old Bible is revealed to be indeed a Fable, but still a Holy one in its sprawling and fascinating way.

Third edition of the author's book, with Foreword by Robert M. Price. This edition has an Appendix II added which provides citations for the 126 "Silent Historians" of Chapter 49. Four men have also been added to the list of Christ mythicists in Appendix 1: Albert Kalthoff's colleagues Emil Felden, Oscar Mauritz, Moritz Schwalb and Friedrich Steudel. Revised and updated May 17, 2023.

"Joe Pulver is what you get when you cross one of Plato's Muse-maddened poets with a Lovecraftian lunatic..." Matt Cardin, author of Dark Awakenings Schenectady, New York. Winter. The mutilated bodies of dead women are showing up everywhere and Detective Christopher Stewart hasn't got a clue, until he discovers the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. He also discovers that H. P. Lovecraft was a prophet... and that the stars are right for murder. Nightmare's Disciple is a richly-detailed, modern day Cthulhu Mythos novel of the terror a serial killer leaves in his wake and the hunt to foil his special plan for the world. This new edition includes afterwards and introductions by Robert M. Price and Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (all three are located at the end of this book): * Unpublished Introduction to the Original 1999 Edition, by Robert M. Price * Afterword, 10 plus Years Later, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. * Afterword: Fifteen Years of Dark Discipleship, by Robert M. Price