Robert M. Price

Robert McNair Price (born July 7, 1954) is an American New Testament scholar who argues in favor of the Christ myth theory – the claim that a historical Jesus did not exist.

Price is the author of a number of books on biblical studies and the historicity of Jesus.

A former Baptist minister, Price was a fellow of the Jesus Project, a group of 150 individuals who studied the historicity of Jesus and the Gospels, the organizer of a Web community for those interested in the history of Christianity, and a member of the advisory board of the Secular Student Alliance.

He is a religious skeptic, especially of orthodox Christian beliefs, occasionally describing himself as a Christian atheist.

Price eventually moved to a maximalist (or rather minimalist, by analogy with biblical minimalism) position in favor of the Christ myth theory, believing Jesus did not exist in Roman Galilee.

Price is also a writer, editor, and critic in the field of speculative fiction.

He has written about the Cthulhu Mythos, a shared universe created by the writer H. P. Lovecraft.

Price was appointed executor of Lin Carter's literary estate.

Price was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1954 and moved to New Jersey in 1964.

He received a Master of Theological Studies in New Testament from Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary in 1978.

At Drew University, he was awarded one Ph.D. in Systematic Theology in 1981 and another in New Testament in 1991.

Price was pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey.

He has served as Professor of Religion at Mount Olive College.

He additionally did some work at minor institutions, including professorships at nonaccredited schools Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary and the Center for Inquiry Institute.

Price challenges biblical literalism and argues for a more skeptical and humanistic approach to Christianity.

He also similarly declared in a 1997 public debate:

"If there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more."

Price notes that historians of classical antiquity approached mythical figures such as Heracles by rejecting supernatural tales while doggedly assuming that "a genuine historical figure" could be identified at the root of the legend.

He describes this general approach as Euhemerism, and argues that most historical Jesus research today is also Euhemerist.

Price argues that Jesus is like other ancient mythic figures, in that no mundane, secular information seems to have survived.

Accordingly, Jesus also should be regarded as a mythic figure, but Price admits to some uncertainty in this regard.

He co-wrote a book on the rock band Rush with his wife, Carol Selby Price, Mystic Rhythms: The Philosophical Vision of Rush (1999).

Price is currently the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism.

Price questioned the historicity of Jesus in a series of books, including Deconstructing Jesus (2000), The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (2003), Jesus Is Dead (2007), and The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (2012), as well as in Jesus at the Vanishing Point, a contribution to The Historical Jesus: Five Views (2009).

Price uses critical-historical methods, but also uses "history-of-religions parallel[s]," or the "Principle of Analogy," to show similarities between Gospel narratives and non-Christian Middle Eastern myths.

Price criticizes some of the criteria of critical Bible research, such as the criterion of dissimilarity and the criterion of embarrassment.

Price further notes that "consensus is no criterion" for the historicity of Jesus.

In Jesus at the Vanishing Point, Price acknowledges that he stands against the majority view of scholars, but cautions against attempting to settle the issue by appeal to the majority.

He writes at the conclusion of his 2000 book Deconstructing Jesus: "There may have been a real figure there, but there is simply no longer any way of being sure."

Price believes that Christianity is a historicized synthesis of mainly Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek mythologies, viewing Jesus of Nazareth as an invented figure conforming to the Rank-Raglan mythotype.

Price argues 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 contemporaneous popular stories in order to come up with the narratives about Christ.

Price asserts that there was an almost complete fleshing out of the details of the gospels by a midrashic rewriting of the Septuagint, Josephus, Homer, and Euripides' The Bacchae.

According to Price, "virtually every story in the gospels and Acts can be shown to be very likely a Christian rewrite of material" from those sources and "virtually every case of New Testament narrative" can be traced back to a literary prototype, so that there is "virtually nothing left."

In Jesus at the Vanishing Point (2010), Price gives three key points for the traditional Christ myth theory, which originated with Bruno Bauer and the Dutch Radical School:

In The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems (2011), Price maintains that the Christ myth theory is the most likely explanation for the origin of Christianity, giving another overview of arguments:

Price argues that if critical methodology is applied with ruthless consistency, one is left in complete agnosticism regarding Jesus's historicity.

Price is quoted saying, "There might have been a historical Jesus, but unless someone discovers his diary or his skeleton, we'll never know."

In 2020, an inflammatory introduction he wrote to Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! 6 anthology caused multiple authors to withdraw their work in protest.