What do you think of Robert Price?

[Swimmy]

Guy was a Christian and went into apologetics and instead became a accidental atheist. Has put out a few books on the errancy of biblical scripture and how it has been constantly edited and changed.

[Icthus]

I don't like to pick on people, but honestly, I find Price to be a bit of looney. Usually, the beef I have with skeptical scholars is about the positions they take and isn't at all personal, but with Price, I find that my biggest complaints are actually about him. He comes off as the sort of anti-evangelist that will believe just about anything if it makes Christianity seem untrue. Though he's a scholar, he stumps for a whole host of positions that no one in academia would take seriously. He's made at least partial endorsements of such decidedly fringe theories as the swoon theory, pagan copycatting, the Christ-myth, second century dates for Acts and very late dates for the other New Testament writings, and the early Corinthian creeds as forgeries. He has claimed that Paul, against his Jewish background, believed in a spiritual resurrection, that Luke and Acts were written by two different people, that Nazareth and Joseph of Aramathea (spelling?) never existed at the time of Jesus, etc. His ideas are way out there, even amongst liberal scholars, and I doubt that many of his peers take him seriously.

I wouldn't mind reading his eccentric take on the New Testament (if only for fun), except for the tone he often adopts. Price can be kind of mean at times, especially to those who disagree with him. He rants a lot in his books, and he seems to dismiss a number of good claims by theists without addressing them. On top of this, he tends to insult other scholars when they don't agree with him. He questions their motivations and plays psychologist with them to try and make them look like shady apologists, and he doesn't seem to have much respect for scholars that obviously know better than him. One other thing I noticed was that he likes to say 'apologist' a lot, even when he's not talking about apologists. Apparently, if a scholar takes a relatively conservative position on an issue in the New Testament, it can only be because they are dogmatically towing the line for Christianity by engaging in apologetics.

As for his claims about changes in the text, I find them rather poor (which shouldn't be surprising considering textual criticism isn't his specialty).

Overall, I don't think he's really worth taking seriously, though it won't hurt to read him and see for yourself. He has several books out, and I can remember a few titles: Beyond Born Again, Deconstructing Jesus, and The Case Against the Case for Christ. The last one is an attempted rebuttal of Lee Strobel's book, The Case for Christ. I'm not sure where one can get a copy these days, though. If you're interested, I'm pretty sure tektonics.org has reviewed some of his books and probably has a lot more to say than I do (and is likely considerably more harsh).

[narnia4]

A rule of thumb for me- if someone denies the existence of Christ, it might not be license to ignore everything they say but its a huge warning sign that something isn't right there. I don't see how honest scholars can believe that, and to me it brings up huge credibility issues.