New Exchange With Dr. Robert M. Price

7/11/2019

There is a new exchange between myself and Dr. Robert M. Price. You can view it on You tube at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfXhUJ2fdwE

Robert has drawn a different conclusion about the CM theory than the one he presented in our first discussion, a conclusion that is important to listen to.

12 Comments

Matt Scallon link

8/30/2019 03:24:54 am

This a wonderful exchange that shows the 180 degree turnabout in Dr. Price's understanding/appreciation of CM. I was , in fact, somewhat taken aback/shocked at Dr. Price's initial take on CM - a not so scholarly (ridiculing) take on what is obvious evidence of the typological parallels and their implications. His is a brave and courageous turnaround that await all who have "eyes to see, and ears to hear".

Laurence Crossen

12/21/2019 04:14:42 pm

Hi Joseph Atwill. The new book on the thesis and Price's turn around are good news. Just before Carrier's scandal I spoke with him on his blog saying I thought that, at bottom, you were correct because it could only be Philo and Josephus who could account for the exceptionally high quality of the New Testament writings. He often acknowledges this high quality. His lame reply was that I do realize, don't I, that there were many other writers no longer extant. It is also important to recognize the very unscrupulous and severe nature of some of his comments about you and your ideas, as he strove to distance his books from yours. I would add that the most important contributions towards Hellenizing the Jews must have been those of Philo and Josephus. Also, the influence of Stoicism on the New Testament is considerable as in the book: "Stoicism in Early Christianity by Tuomas Rasimus, Troels Engberg-Pedersen

Laurence Crossen

12/21/2019 04:19:40 pm

Also noteworthy in this context is that the teaching of Jesus to turn the other cheek is not so much a teaching of non-violence, as a teaching against taking offense. The ancient Romans would slap a person on the face when taking offense. This teaching is given by Seneca. It is very pertinent in the present outrage and offense/victim culture where so many people have forgotten the common sense that it is stupid and foolish to take offense easily.

Laurence Crossen

12/21/2019 04:22:37 pm

This is pertinent to Titus' efforts to subdue the rebel Jews who would have been motivated by offense culture.

Joe Atwill

12/22/2019 08:32:19 am

Hi Laurence,

Agree with all your comments. One thing always overlooked by NT scholars is that the Flavian court is the only place where the arcane expertize needed to write the Gosples is known to have existed. The Flavians also had a motivation to try and teach subjects not to take offense. They therefore should have been the first candidates to have produced the Gosples, not the last.

Joe

Laurence Crossen

12/22/2019 09:28:12 am

Have you any plans to revise and update your book?

tony bonn

2/11/2020 06:36:47 pm

Any signs of the book prophesied in Caesar's Messiah about the New Testament and Domitian coming to fruition?

Joe Atwill

2/11/2020 06:46:51 pm

I cover Domitian in my book Shakespeare's Secret Messiah.

Robert Campbell link

11/16/2022 09:20:55 am

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Daniel H.

4/5/2024 09:51:23 am

The video linked in this post has been changed to "private" on YouTube and so can no longer be viewed. Does anyone have an active link for the video?

Joe Atwill

9/5/2024 08:55:19 am

When Will These Things Be?
Robert M. Price
Of all the exegetical headaches in the New Testament perhaps the most throbbing occurs in Mark chapter 13. Is it as scandalous as the preaching of the Cross? Maybe so! At least a close second. Jesus is presented there as predicting his return to earth (though we are too quick to read in our assumption that he would have ascended to heaven in the meantime, something not mentioned in the text) coincident with the Roman demolition of the Jerusalem Temple. Well, the Romans put the wrecking ball to the House of God right on schedule, but there was no apocalyptic second advent of Jesus. Apologists claim a Pyrrhic victory, contending that at least the no-show vindicates the authenticity of the prediction via the Criterion of Embarrassment: the failure of Jesus’ Parousia means that no one would have fabricated a failed prediction after the fact. If Jesus had really said it, you’d think the prophecy would have suppressed. But then why wasn’t it? This makes me suspect that no one suppressed it because they did not understand the Olivet Discourse as having anything to do with any Second Coming of Jesus. What the prophecy predicted did happen—but what about the business about the appearing of the Son of Man?
Let us go back a few steps, to verses 3-4. Here we see the standard preamble to an apocalypse. Timothee Colani was the first to isolate the chapter as a pre-existing apocalyptic tract circulated in the streets of Jerusalem under the advancing shadow of the Roman siege. Note that Jesus is depicted as vouchsafing secret revelations to a selective elite of disciples, the inner circle of the Pillars, James, John, and Peter. The device presupposes that, prior to the promulgation of this Little Apocalypse, such “inside information” was unknown. It is hereby retrojected into the imagined days of Jesus and his disciples. We may suspect that the general expectation had been something like Revelation 21:10-27, the descent from heaven of a New Jerusalem, itself the macrocosm of which the now-superfluous Temple “made with hands,” was the doll’s-house microcosm. The Roman intervention was not originally envisioned, but that “lack” is hereby filled with the revelation Jesus gives to the Pillars.
Verses 5-8 imply that the Mark 13 apocalypse was not the only such Jesus-attributed apocalypse bulletin being circulated. The others also made themselves out to be the inspired words of Jesus. Readers are warned not to be taken in by these “rivalations.” It seems they were setting forth a different schedule for the events of the End: They would immediately follow on the very heels of reported famines, plagues, and earth tremors. But it all came to nothing. The Olivet Apocalypse was already damage control for a “Delay of the Parousia.” Exactly as in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, we beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God, etc.
These competing revelations are presumably to be connected with the numerous messianic claimants and their prophetic heralds mentioned in verses 21-22:
And then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. False Christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.
Surely we are to think of the various characters Josephus describes around the time of the Jerusalem siege: Simon bar Giora, John of Gischala, Menachem, and Jesus ben Ananias. These men are not the harbingers of the Temple destruction. But who is? The Son of Man, of course, but this is no real clue since the phrase is itself a cipher for Him Who Shall Not Be Named. Remember how one common use of that phrase is to refer to a speaker predicting his own pending misfortune, as if to speak the name itself would hasten or invoke that misfortune, as if to pretend to be speaking about someone else. Examples would include Mark 8:31 (“the son of man must suffer many things”), 9:12 (“how is it written of the son of man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt?”); 9:31 (“The son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him”); 10:33 (“the son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death,” etc.; 12:45

Isaac Zájara link

9/22/2024 04:10:29 am

The previous post is very interesting. And even more interesting once we know that Flavius Josephus = Mark the Evangelist, also the author of the REVELATION OF JOHN of Patmos.
And, indeed, the following characters from Josephus´s WAR OF THE JEWS are “avatars” of Jesus of Nazareth: Philip-bar-Jacim (II.17:4), Menahem-ben-Judas (II.17:8), Judas-ben-Jonathan (II.17:10); Niger of Peræa (III.2:13; IV.6:1), Nikanor (III.2:13), Jesus-ben-Sapphia (III:450-452 and 467-468) and Simon-bar-Gjora (II.22:2; IV.9:3-12; VII.2:1; VII.5:6); to this end, you can read the REVIEW of the book GUERRAS DE LOS JUDÍOS. AUTOPSIA AL EVANGELIO-MATRIZ in the “Isaac Zájara blog” (https://isaaczajara.blogspot.com/).

The roman conspiracy to invent jesus

New Exchange With Dr. Robert M. Price

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