Jesus: Fact or Fiction? A Dialogue With Dr. Robert Price and Rev. John Rankin About this Debate [ 3K ] Opening Statement by Robert Price [ 24K ] Opening Statement by John Rankin [ 26K ] Dialogue [ 27K ] Questions from the Audience [ 58K ] Closing Statement by Robert M. Price [ 3K ] Closing Statement by John Rankin [ 4K ]

Dialogue   JOHN: Well Bob, thank you very much. This is delightful. I’d like to ask you one question. At the beginning, are we coming through? OK? At the beginning, you talked about mythological archetypes and you talked about all the stories of Jesus and the supernatural and whatnot. I want to ask you a […]

Mars Hill Forum #35 JESUS: FACT OR FICTION? A Dialogue With Dr. Robert Price and Rev. John Rankin Held At Unitarian Church Montclair, New Jersey January 11, 1997 Transcribed by Pieter Crow   DR. ROBERT M. PRICE is Adjunct Professor of New Testament at Drew University and Adjunct Instructor of Philosophy, Religion, and Classics at […]

Jesus: Fact or Fiction? A Dialogue With Dr. Robert Price and Rev. John Rankin   This debate was transcribed by Pieter Crow. About this Debate Opening Statement by Robert Price Opening Statement by John Rankin Dialogue Questions from the Audience Closing Statement by Robert M. Price Closing Statement by John Rankin

From Fundamentalist to Humanist (1997) Robert M. Price   Everyone is on a spiritual journey. Most of the time we are glad enough to admit this, but other times we want stability more than anything else, and at those times we are liable to fear religious change lest we fall away from hard-won truth. But […]

The Great Preposterous (1997) Robert M. Price   Ant-Man | Prophetic Ventriloquism | Immaculate Misconception | Pregnant Silence | Strike the Harp and Join the Chorus | Christianity Bastardized | Was Jesus sinless? | Paranormal Phenomena | Uniqueness of Jesus’ Teachings | Conclusion | Notes | Related Resources If oxen and horses or lions had […]

Robert J. Miller, The Jesus Seminar and its Critics. Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 1999. 154 pp. plus indices. Paperback. ISBN 0-944344-78-X. Reviewed by Robert M. Price.   If you had any remaining questions about the methods, goals, and origins of the notorious Jesus Seminar, this book by my Seminar colleague and pal Bob Miller ought […]

Review of The Case Against Christianity (1998) Robert M. Price   Michael Martin, The Case Against Christianity. Temple University Press, 1991. 273 pp. ISBN 1-56639-081-8 (hard cover); 0-87722-767-5 (paperbound). Reviewed by Robert M. Price. After a dozen years of active involvement as a born-again Christian, and another twenty as some sort of Liberal Protestant, I […]

Reply to Professor Hamblin (2004) Robert M. Price This article was originally published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Fall 2004). Reprinted with permission. I am gratified and delighted that my modest piece “Prophecy and Palimpsest” was of sufficient interest to call forth the remarks of Professor Hamblin in Dialogue […]

Christ a Fiction (1997) Robert M. Price   I remember a particular Superboy comic book in which the Boy of Steel somehow discovers that in the future, he is thought to be as mythical as Peter Pan and Santa Claus. Indignant at this turn of events, he flies at faster than light speed and enters […]

Damnable Syllogism (1997) Robert M. Price The Essence of Christianity What is Christianity all about? Or, as at least two important books (by Adolf von Harnack and Ludwig Feuerbach) from around the turn of the century put it, what is the "essence of Christianity"? For this is what we want to know, e.g., when we […]

Beyond Born Again Notes [Editor’s Note: These notes are taken from the cover pages and the back cover of the printed version of Beyond Born Again.] About The Author: Robert M. Price is pastor of the First Baptist Church of Montclair, New Jersey, having previously served as Professor of Religion at Mount Olive College. He […]

Beyond Born Again Introduction To The HTML Version Robby Berry History Of The HTML Version I first heard of Robert M. Price’s Beyond Born Again back in May ’95, when Ed Babinski sent me a copy as part of a package of freethought literature that he wanted me to have. Ed is an outspoken critic […]

________________________________________ 1 Beyond Born Again Introduction: Testimony Time “Wishes and hopes can also mature with men. They can lose their infantile form… and their youthful enthusiasm without being given up.” — Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God “I know you better now And I don’t fall for all your tricks And you’ve lost the one advantage […]

________________________________________ 143 Beyond Born Again Footnote References Introduction Malcolm Boyd, Christian, Its Meanings in an Age of Future Shock (New York: Hawthorn Bokos, 1975), p. 70. Clark H. Pinnock, Biblical Revelation– The Foundation of Christian Theology (Chicago: Moody Press, 1976), p. 14. Carl F. H. Henry, Frontiers in Modern Theology (Chicago: Moody Press, 1968), pp. […]

________________________________________ 109 Beyond Born Again Section III– Can Evangelical Theology be Born Again? Chapter 9: Theological Rhetoric In the last chapter we saw the ineffectiveness of the Evangelical attempt to disqualify Liberal theology as “unscriptural.” We noted that, contra J. I. Packer and company, it is not self-evident that the only way to take scripture […]

________________________________________ 97 Beyond Born Again Section III– Can Evangelical Theology be Born Again? Chapter 8: Biblical Ventriloquism ________________________________________ 98 “Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be….” — I John 3:2a “Watch what you say They’ll be calling you a radical, A liberal, oh fanatical, […]

________________________________________ 89 Beyond Born Again Section II– The Evangelical Apologists: Are They Reliable? Chapter 7: A False Trilemma Once Evangelical apologists feel they have practically proven the resurrection, they attempt to get all the mileage out of it they can. The resurrection itself must be defended anyway. But wouldn’t it be helpful to be able […]

________________________________________ 75 Beyond Born Again Section II– The Evangelical Apologists: Are They Reliable? Chapter 6: Guarding An Empty Tomb In Chapter 5, I dealt with the most common arguments for the reliability of the gospels. Now I want to discuss a special case, the arguments advanced for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the outset […]

________________________________________ 62 Beyond Born Again Section II– The Evangelical Apologists: Are They Reliable? Chapter 5: Evidences That Demands A Mistrial “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest of man’s wisdom, but on God’s power.” — […]

________________________________________ 53 Beyond Born Again Section I– The Born Again Experience: A Brave New World? Chapter 4: The Personal Savior “I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” If you are an Evangelical Christian you can remember saying these words probably more times than you can count. If on the other hand you are not […]

________________________________________ 48 Beyond Born Again Section I– The Born Again Experience: A Brave New World? Chapter 3: Devil’s Advocates In Chapter 1, I had occasion to mention the common Evangelical belief in the reality of Satan and his demons. I showed how this belief fit into the set of “combat” coping mechanisms that are part […]

________________________________________ 33 Beyond Born Again Section I– The Born Again Experience: A Brave New World? Chapter 2: The Evangelical Subculture In the last chapter, I tried to explain and critique some important aspects of the way Evangelicals interpret and cope with their experiences. Now I want to turn to a slightly different aspect of Evangelical […]

________________________________________ 127 Beyond Born Again Section III– Can Evangelical Theology be Born Again? Chapter 10: Toward Evangelical Maturity Never has Evangelical biblical scholarship been so mercilessly run through the wringers as it was in James Barr’s Fundamentalism (1977). Many of his reviewers criticized Barr for not offering any alternative to what he tore down. This […]

________________________________________ 9 Beyond Born Again Section I– The Born Again Experience: A Brave New World? ________________________________________ 10 Chapter 1: A Might Fortress Is Our Mentality “Hey, wouldn’t you like to be born again Live a new life that’s free Without sin, no ties to philosophy.” — Anne Herring and Matthew Ward, “Learn a Curtsey” “You’ll […]

________________________________________ 159 Beyond Born Again Appendix: Getting A New Start Some readers may have been taken aback at my suggestion at the end of Chapter 10, that I can deem leaving Evangelicalism a viable option. It is clear to me that there are individuals whose experience with Evangelical Christianity has been negative enough in the […]

Beyond Born Again: Towards Evangelical Maturity (1993) Robert M. Price Contents Introduction: Testimony Time Price provides a brief overview of his background in the Evangelical Christian scene, as well as an overview of his book’s contents. Introduction To The HTML Version (by Robby Berry) Robby Berry explains the history of the HTML version of Beyond […]

Note: This article was originally published in the Fall 1995 issue of The Journal of Higher Criticism (Vol. 2, No. 2) and is reproduced with the permission of Robert M. Price. Because HTML does not currently support the Greek alphabet, we have replaced the Greek letters in the original manuscript with the English transliteration. Any […]

Review of The Riddle of Resurrection (2009) Robert Oerter   Review: Tryggve N. D. Mettinger. 2001. The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East. Stockholm, Sweden: Almqvist and Wiksell International. 275 pp. The idea that Jesus’ death and resurrection connects to a wider pattern of “dying and rising gods” originated […]

Preaching to the Choir (1997) Robert McNally   Review of E. Calvin Beisner, Answers for Atheists, Agnostics, and Other Thoughtful Skeptics : Dialogs About Christian Faith and Life (Crossway, 1993, ISBN 0891077006), 191 pp, $12.99 paper By its own admission, “Answers for Atheists” was originally written with a specific audience in mind: those Christians who […]