Jesus
Seminar - Robert M. Price
One of the
last critics on the list is Robert Price, a well known former member of the Jesus Seminar, author of books such
as "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man" and was interviewed in Brain Flemming's film "The God Who Wasn't There".
Robert Price is a former Christian believer who now takes to the side of the Jesus-myth hypothesis, even so, Robert Price
gave a critical review of Acharya's book in his own words, which were included within Mike Licona's essay article:
Dr. Robert
Price is far from being a Christian. Rather, he is a prominent atheist and a member of the Jesus Seminar who reviewed Ms.
Murdock’s book. After referring to it as "sophomoric," Price comments, "She is quick
to state as bald fact what turn out to be, once one chases down her sources, either wild speculation or complex inference
from a chain of complicated data open to many interpretations. One of the most intriguing claims made repeatedly in these
books is that among the mythical predecessors of Jesus as a crucified god were the Buddha, the blue-skinned Krishna, and Dionysus.
Is there any basis to these claims, which Murdock just drops like a ton of bricks? Again, she does not explain where they
come from, much less why no available book on Buddha, Krishna, or Dionysus contains a crucifixion account. . . . When Murdock
speaks of the ‘Christ Conspiracy,’ she means it. She really believes that ‘people got together and cooked
up’ early Christianity like a network sitcom. And who were these conspirators? The, er, Masons (pp. 334 ff.). It is
remarkable how and where some people’s historical skepticism comes crashing to a halt. But it gets much, much weirder
than that. We start, in the last chapters, reading bits and pieces drawn from James Churchward, promoter of the imaginary
lost continent of Mu; Charles Berlitz, apologist for sunken Atlantis; Zechariah Sitchen, advocate of flying saucers in ancient
Akkadia; and of course all that stuff about the maps of the ancient sea kings. The Christ Conspiracy is a random bag of (mainly
recycled) eccentricities, some few of them worth considering, most dangerously shaky, many outright looney.
While any other
person might re-evaluate their approach on a certain subject when their information is lacking or contains errors, Murdock
once again took this criticism of her book too personally and devoted an article to Robert Price's review on the TBK: http://www.truthbeknown.com/firesponse.htm
"When
I described Robert Price's negative review of my book, The Christ Conspiracy a friend's immediate response was "professional
jealousy." Be that as it may, a mythicist attacking
another will only perpetuate the deleterious hoax that I and so many others have worked so hard to bring to light - and risked our necks doing so, I might add."
What is she
talking about? What does Robert Price, a Jesus-myther, exposing the works of Acharya S. in the light bulb of criticism "will
only perpetuate the deleterious hoax"? She seems to be confused and must think that because Robert Price is criticizing her
work that this somehow disproves an historical Jesus? Where in the hell does she come up with this type of thinking? If you
have any brains at all you'd know that this is a case against mythicists. This shows that Jesus-mythers cannot come to an
unifying agreement with their various theories on how Jesus never existed, some, for instance, say Paul invented Christianity
for the sake of popular fame, others would say Paul was writing a figurative poem which later developed into a religion! Not
a single one of these theories makes rational sense when it comes down to it, so exactly who are we to believe is true? Which
one actually PROVES Jesus did not exist and was simply imaginary? Acharya must think she is something so
incredibly "special" that she considers her work to be the only serious accurate research out there that is avaible:
"that I and so many others have worked so hard to bring to light", but wait a minute here, lady, Robert Price is considered
to be one of the most seriously accredited Jesus-mythers around! How is she going to try and discredit Price's work when most
proponents of the Jesus-myth theory are probably more familar with Price than Acharya? What is Acharya going to do to prove
that Price is uncredible and she isn't? (Not to say that Price is 100% right either) by pulling out the "Woman's Encylopedia
to Mythology" by Barbara Walker?
"With
evident cynicism and vituperation, Price has chosen to name his critique of me "murdock.htm," apparently gleefully rubbing
it in that in 2001 Price unprofessionally
and unethically revealed my real name,
after obtaining it from a trusted source who is mortified by his appalling behavior. I am disgusted that Price felt the need
to expose personal and private information about me, endangering me and my family. Like many others, I had chosen to remain
anonymous for safety's sake, which should have been obvious, considering the contentiousness of the material and the fact
that, not all that long ago, people were killed or jailed for questioning in this manner."
Whoa! That's
one serious case of hyper-paranoia! So is Acharya now a paranoid schizo? "Yes Acharya, the BIG BAD EVIL Christian
theocracy dominates and controls all of the major worldwide industries and rests on the foundation of a lie, and all those
who wish to expose this 'lie' will be arrested and or executed!" Apparently this woman does not wish to live in modern times,
and is exaggerating the religious influences over our government, maybe it's because only god-believing politicians get elected
into office and those that oppose this 'governmental bias' get kicked out of North American countries huh? Yep, because anyone
exposing these public views is immediately thrown into the clink or is burned at the stake (by order of decree from the Pope
himself!) That's exactly the reality we are facing today, no question. So what if Price revealed Acharya's real name? She
didn't seem to have a problem revealing the real name of JP Holding and letting every reader on her site know that it
was a pen name via anonymous.
"According
to Price's "review," he's apparently terrified of being lumped in with me and experiencing ridicule. Well, unfortunately,
when you're up against a human mentality and institution that have tortured, enslaved and slaughtered tens of millions of
people worldwide, you have to demonstrate some courage."
Courage against
what? The Religiously Influenced Government of Censorship, Anarchy, and Genocide, that's who! Once again, Acharya does not
seem to be living in modern reality, she must be in a delusional state of mind where she thinks that her works and whomever
she makes a treatise with will soon go down into history as memorial "revolutionaries" who fought for human rights, independent
freedom, and free speech against a government run by tragedic tyranny! This sounds more like a good movie script for a feminist
version of "Braveheart" with Acharya dressed as in a nice barabarian outfit carrying a battered war shield with her face covered
in battle-paint, but it has it's realistic expectations, right?
"Price's
assertion that Moses is a sun god has been considered laughable by numerous scholars and believers. Obviously, any respectable
mythicist should run for the hills rather than be associated with someone who would make such laughable suggestions!"
We'll cover
this in another article, but the quote in itself is a priceless treasury.
"And,
I would ask, what exactly is the difference between Price's analysis, including his methodology, and what I claimed and used
in The Christ Conspiracy? Very little."
So if we were
to debunk the claims of The Christ Conspiracy and its contents, this would mean that the Jesus-myth hypothesis is
a failed one and that Acharya's book basically speaks for all Jesus-mythers? This will hardily be a chore I imagine.
"Another
straw man that Price knocks down is my sources."
And
why isn't he allowed to critque her sources? We are all just supposed to take what she says by her own saying?
"If she says they're credible, then, bygawd, they're credible!" Sounds convincing it does.
"Furthermore,
while Price is oh-so-skeptical about this information, as an evangelist for some years - presumably as a willing adult - he
evidently had no problem not only swallowing the absurd gospel fable but also spreading it around! Should we respectable
mythicists be afraid of being associated with Robert Price because of his bizarre past?"
Does Acharya
even realize that the majority of Jesus-mythers are former Christian believers? Now that she's trying to get at Price for
his "bizarre past" we find she is still further shooting herself in the foot rather than doing her argument any good.
"Indeed,
I find it odd that Robert Price - so against the mystical, etc., and so concerned with his reputation - has been editing and
writing weird Lovecraftian science fiction for decades."
What about
Acharya's obsession with New Age spiritualism? She gives something like "The Secret" credit but she can seriously
criticize Robert Price for writing "Lovecraftian science fiction"???
"As I
have said repeatedly over the years, there are few of us (especially Jesus mythicists), and we should be working together.
It has been a goal of mine to bring together the various mythicists, such as Price, Doherty and others, for a taped conference
or two."
At the very
end of as much as will be quoted in this TBK response to Robert Price, Acharya declares that Robert Price's arugment on her
book serves as arsenal against Christianity, that she has the "courage" to stand up against a theocratic anarchy, her
works speak for all fellow Jesus-mythers, and that Robert Price's Christian background is "bizarre" and shouldn't
be taken seriously.
Unfortunately
Price was a weenier and melted like butter before "the very learned" Acharya. Price went and made a second review on Acharya's
other book "Suns of God" which can be found on another TBK link: http://www.truthbeknown.com/price-sog-review.html
We can only
say that Price has certaintly lost a great deal of his critical analysis skills and has abadoned it in favor of
submitting to someone's regard because of their agreeing position in some factor or another (i.e. Jesus never existed.)
Wikipedia.org - ???
Finally we
have on the list Wikipedia.org, (that's right, Wikipedia), probably the largest online encyclopedia on the internet. Wikipedia
is usually a high ranking source for information that might end up on Google searches and other major search engines (although
mostly Google). It usually receives contributions from registered users (altough it is administrated), and the only real problem
you could make out of Murdock's "attack" is the fact that articles can get tampered with from time to time. And of course,
here we have her "ranting": http://www.truthbeknown.com/wikipedia.htm
Is Wikipedia an "encyclopedia" or a forum for malicious gossip and libel?
That's the worldwide
web, hun. There is gossip in nearly everything, our media reports it all the time in newspapers, documentaries, and journalism,
society just has gossip, period. Her website is full of gossip itself (e.g."Jesus never
existed"), even she admits that the Christ-myth theory is only posited by a small handful of so called scholars, and that
the theory itself goes against the major consensus. In her mind, however, she perceives that her position goes ignored because
she does the real research and most of the scholarly authorities are religious believers with an censoring agenda. Well,
if she doesn't like it, tough luck. We might as well have laws that ban all atheist sites from posting "sacreligious" material
in order to make Christians happy, but it just isn't going to happen. The internet is itself a forum, there is always going
to be "malicious gossip" around regardless of where you go. If she wants it her way, than we will have to stop making t-shirts
about George W. Bush and her precious website will have to go bye bye, and I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate that very much
either.
The question is: Why does Wikipedia give free rein to such shamelessly
hypocritical, unqualified and hostile individuals, who haven't even read my books but who falsely present themselves
as authorities on me and my work?
Because you cannot make judgments based on what is "shamelessly hypocritical", although there are qualified expectations
and ways to detect levels of hostility. Regardless, Wikipedia has an administration that monitors articles to check up on
newly contributed content and by discretion of the administrator(s) they will either keep or remove content depending on relevancy
and what is considered neccessary. Either way, an encyclopedia isn't based on censorship but neutrality, so what does Acharya
ask of Wikipedia? They may be able to keep out certain ad-hominens, but Wikipedia always has a list of criticisms on listed
individuals, simply for the purpose of documentation. Blaming Wikipedia as a whole based on independent contributions is
just plain stupid, and with her style of writing others all over her website with bad rep and revealing the real names of
individuals who use pseuodnyms, talk about "shamelessly hypocritical."
As an
example of extreme bias, here is what this 26-year-old "expert" has to say about me: Yes, I would like the overall message of said article to be "Acharya is a
nut", but that is only because I believe that statement to be close to objective reality.” crazyeddie 16:04, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Once
again we are left with the question: “what does it take to be an expert on a modern day person?” If one has written documents authentically authored by themselves, can’t they make a judgement based
on “objective reality”? Someone just has to read her website to formulate an opinion, if they wanted too. Furthermore, IT’S
THE INTERNET, get
over it, you’re going to have critics who attack your work at some point in time or another. Your work is, logically,
going to get criticized once it has been published, and this is something that Acharya seems to have difficulty understanding.
The message may come across as harsh and just plain mean spirited, it doesn’t matter. So far it just seems that Acharya
is the one who is pleading for the censorship, not her opponents, but she has to realize it just doesn’t work this way.
"The
Christian "Zarove" chimes in, displaying not only extreme bias but also apparent sexism in his dismissal of my defense
against his ongoing, vituperative defamation of me as a "hissy fit: Acharya S's veiws on other htigns (things) WHERE attmetoedot (?) be added, but the fans
objected as Acharya threw a hissy fit and acted like this was meant as an attack." (parantheses added.)
Well, so far
there have been no direct sexist remarks made in that comment, so it seems as though she is trying to equate "sexism"
with the words "hissy fit." There are other words we could use to describe her arguments, but she wouldn't like those very
much either, we'll see if she fits the definition of hissy fit in the first place (The Oxford American Writers Thesaurus):
hissy fit
•
noun
just try to ignore her if she has
one of her hissy fits synonyms : temper tantrum, tantrum, angry
outburst, fit of temper, paroxysm, paroxysm of rage, histrionics; fit of pique, snit, huff.
And from Answers.com:
Definition
A tantrum is an episode of extreme anger
and frustration characterized by crying, screaming, and violent body motions, including throwing things, falling to
the floor, and banging one's head, hands, and feet against the floor.
Well we'll give it to Murdock that she doesn't cry, scream,
or have violent body motions (at least that I am aware of) but we do know that she does exhibit angry outbursts in her
writings as though being personally attacked each time. So does Acharya throw hissy fits and tantrums? You be the judge.
"I would really like to know why "Zarove" - whose real name is Reginald Maxwell Cook - started this page, and why he holds such animosity and vituperation towards me
to the point where he has threatened to commit crimes against me. He began this obviously personal attack on me, merely because
I challenge his belief system. I did not personally attack him. I had never heard of him. I am merely defending myself against
these vicious and unwarranted attacks on my person. Reginald Cook has repeatedly called me a liar, has been shown to be wrong,
and has never apologized."
Hmm....I could have sworn that she didn't like it too much
whenever someone revealed her real name on the internet, and it made her worried for her very own sake of personal safety.
Too bad she didn't have the courtesy for others and was quick to do exactly what she would have condemned others for. Hmm,
yes, quite a shame. Also, what was she accused of lying about and for what reason? It seems rather vague: "he has called me
a liar and has been proven wrong". Okay, proven wrong on the case of what charges? Specifically what is it that she was claimed
to have lied about? I'm afraid just because she has her bits of knowledge here and there that doesn't mean she is telling
the 100% truth or that she is highly educated, if that's what she means by "liar."
CONCLUSION
So to wrap
things up, exactly what have we learned about Acharya S? Throughout the essay paper, we have quoted many of Acharya's words
(no perversions, no snip snip of anything that might say otherwise) and we have also left links to these quoted sources so
that viewers may visit them and judge for themselves. If you have been paying attention, you probably can get a good idea
of how this person is when it comes to arguments. Beyond any sort of critic that could be called "religious" Acharya manages
to harp on every single person who stands up against what she says and seems to give the ad-hominen booting. If Acharya S
was really an emotionally stable person, can't she just respond without attacking that person personally? Making judgements
based on what they believe, their psychological and mental state, their credibility based on their background (or the very
fact that they disagree with what she says)? Apparently not, and as we have seen, Acharya admits to having a familiarity with psychological
bipolarity, which can thus suit the explanation and reasoning behind her responses and her motivations for cussing her opponents
out.
Check and mate,
Ms. Murdock.
