Robert M. Price (1) (1954–)

A nice palate cleanser to the Case for Christ. Very sarcastic delivery that livens up the sometimes dreary subject matter, in many ways held back by the shortcomings of the progenitor book. What's readily apparent in the disingenuous nature of Strobel's book, the false dilemmas and outright preaching for a very specific evangelical christianity under the wafer thin guise of being a serious search for the truth, is revealed to be a much more sinister concoction of outright lies by people with real credentials. Price takes the time to go through the book step by step and actually check the casual remarks thrown out in Strobel's book, and a stunning amount of Bible quotes are just made up. "Lying for Jesus" is one of the most bizarre moral pretzels out there. 'Deception is okay because it's all in service of saving souls' is not just insultingly dishonest but one of the weakest conceptions of theology - you really believe in a God that would be fooled by this, from both parties?… (meer)

Fascinating compendium of suggested explanations of the original sources and meanings of the Hebrew myths and legends, based on comparative mythology, etymology and very careful attention to detail. You need to know your Bible stories, and be prepared to check the text for yourself. It isn't particularly original, to judge by the profusion of references, but it is great to have all this in one place, and with the customary Price sense of humour. As you read on, the various theories coalesce around Price's belief that the final form of the Jewish Bible coalesced late on, during a centralising, monolatrous reformation under the Hellenistic-era Hasmoneans.

Of special note is how interestingly Price uses ancient Near Eastern myths to illuminate the context for Jewish myths. Take a look at Psalm 82:5-7. There it is a mere fragment, but in Price's handling it is a shard of the myth of how Yahweh/Baal lorded it over the other gods, all Sons of El, as the victor over the sea-monsters of the original chaos, before casting the gods into the underworld for their misrule of the nations, whereupon they now stomp around causing earthquakes.… (meer)

This book presents some of the better pulp era H.P. Lovecraft influenced writers. There are no stories by Lovecraft in the book, as such I would not recommend this book to anyone who had not read at least some Lovecraft first.

It is good to remember that this is stuff written for the pulps so the writing is all over the place. Price does pick some of the better stories, although there is inexplicably two stories by August Derleth, who despite being the single person who preserved Lovecraft's name and writing after his death, is probably the weakest writer of Mythos influenced stories. They are fortunately brief.

The stories vary from simple pastiche to some decent original stories, although all are influenced by Lovecraft somehow. The better stories actually avoid too overt a mention of the Lovecraft Mythos. In general the endings are telegraphed pretty early so don't expect any Twilight Zone twists at the end unless you are totally unfamiliar with Lovecraft and the Mythos. Expect a lot of plot holes and simply outrageously inexplicable behavior, so suspension of disbelief is going to be de riguer.

I had fun with the book and would recommend recommend it for anyone who wants another taste of pulp era Lovecraft Mythos. Read it in short bursts so the stories don't seem too similar.



… (meer)