Shrink Wrapped Son of Man

Having thoroughly enjoyed Robert M. Price’s response to Rick Warren, The Reason Driven Life, several years ago, I eagerly looked forward to reading his more recent book, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man. Price’s aim in the latter book was to set aside theological interpretations of Christian scriptures and see if there are any passages, particularly in the four gospels, that provide hard, historical data about Jesus Christ. His conclusion, not surprisingly, is that there is no such data to be found anywhere in the Bible.

Did Jesus rise from the dead? The Gospels give us no reason to think so. Every single story bears the marks of fiction, with earlier versions ruling out later ones, with extrabiblical parallels providing abundant nonhistorical analogies, while current experience provides no historical parallel. The Gospels certainly do not put us in touch with the faith (whatever it may have been) of the earliest Christians. They do not tell us whether the resurrection of Jesus was even part of the first Christian faith(s). Everywhere we have looked, we have found naught but legend and myth, fiction and redaction. What we have found is a kind of empty tomb. What we can never tell is whether anyone was ever buried there.

Throughout his examination of numerous passages from the four gospels, the book of Acts and purportedly historical excerpts from the Pauline epistles, Price explains carefully – and, more importantly, applies – his analytical methods. Readers unfamiliar with scholarly methods of New Testament analysis will find Price’s book a good introduction to this subject.

Non-Christians who have spent any time studying Christianity are aware that many of the New Testament stories and teachings have numerous parallels in the legends and literature of other religions. Some of these religions pre-dated Judaism and Christianity and others were contemporaneous with the early Christian era. One thing I didn’t realize was how many of the New Testament stories were actually based on Old Testament legends. I was aware of some stories that are said to have “pre-figured” Jesus’ ministry, but not of others in which Old Testament healings, etc., appear to have been simply re-written with reinvented/renamed characters, much as formula fiction is written today. Throughout the book, Price carefully dissects numerous passages from the Old Testament and other ancient writings alongside their New Testament parallels and demonstrates that many biblical themes – betrayal, atonement, salvation, redemption, resurrection, etc. – are universal. Neither the themes nor their resolutions are unique to Christianity. Price shows that, far from being unique, all of the Christian Jesus-legends are either derived from or based on the literary forms of pre-existing stories of gods and heroes.

One of the things that most fascinated me was Price’s re-interpretation of the Jesus stories as competing, rather than complementary or cumulative, accounts. Price reminds the reader that the early Church was not monolithic. Dozens of Christian factions and communities believed divergent, often contradictory, bodies of “Christian” dogma and myths. When one keeps this in mind and reads the New Testament as literature produced by pro-James, or pro-Peter, or pro-John, or pro-Paul factions, the need to harmonize obviously discordant accounts disappears. Price demonstrates, to put it bluntly, that it makes more sense to read the New Testament as political propaganda produced by competing candidates/parties for church leadership than as a coherent body of god-inspired dogma.

If one accepts Price’s analyses and conclusions, one cannot accept the miracle-working, crucified-resurrected-and-ascended Bible-Jesus as an historic figure. Price leaves open the question of whether the Bible-Jesus character was loosely based on an actual itinerant preacher or a completely fabricated legend. At this point, we’ll probably never know which is the case. What we do know is, thanks to Price and many other scholars, the legend of Jesus Christ is no longer God-sized. It’s time to bring out the shrink wrap.

– the chaplain

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