Robert M. Price (1) (1954–)

Price argues that liberal Protestant scholars who produce reconstructions of the "historical Jesus" are creating their own Jesus icons to authorize a liberal religious agenda. Christian faith invariably tends to produce a Jesus capable of playing the role of a religious figurehead. "Jesus Christ" functions as a symbolic cloak for several hidden agendas. This is no surprise, since the Jesus Christ of the gospels is very likely a fictional amalgam of several first-century prophets and messiahs show more and of purely mythic Mystery Cult redeemers and Gnostic Aions. Price shows the origins of Jesus figures and how they may have finally merged into the patchwork savior of Christian dogma and argues that there is good reason to believe that Jesus never existed as a historical figure. Responsible historians must remain agnostic about a "historical Jesus" and what he stood for. show less

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 show more 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? show less

Apparently there's something in the worship of Tsathoggua that makes things . . . fun.

Tsathoggua is Clark Ashton Smith's toad god, the only deity in Cthulhu stories to tell a human to bugger off because he's eaten already. H.P. Lovecraft loved Tsathoggua, so he and Smith would spitball all kind of crazy background details about how Tsathoggua fit into the Mythos, including how the toad god's gay uncle was Cthulhu's cousin.

That's canon. Honest.

You can check out that craziness right here in show more Smith's own reprinted essay. Just remember what people back then meant by "confirmed bachelor." That sets a precedent for the level of fun in this anthology.

The M.C. is the always entertaining Robert M. Price, and his jovial tone comes through even at his most erudite digression.

And the stories? There's some greats in here.

-The Seven Geases, The Testament of Athammaus, and two others of Smith appear. They are fun sardonic fantasies, and well worth a read or reread.

-Most of the others in this collection have a sense of amusement lurking somewhere underneath, as if the author is winking at a fellow creator to say, "Hey, look what I did with this." Shadow of the Sleeping God, The Curse of the Toad, and The Oracle of Sadoqua amused me especially.

-Two or three are average tales in familiar molds. The Crawling Kingdom particularly feels a little rushed.

-We end with the wonderful tale of Tsathoggua in the far future land of Xothique, The Resurrection of Kzadool-Ra. Henry J. Vester III knocks it out of the park, using a clear version of Smith's style to make an original tale that would have made Lovecraft chuckle.

Also important is the sheer variety of stories. Some themed Cthulhu anthologies, like [book:The Ithaqua Cycle|36506], get samey after awhile due to each story having the same entity and basic conflict. Tsathoggua has so many facets that redundancy never sets in.

Go visit Tsathoggua for a while. Just hope he's eaten first. show less

This was a disappointing read, for a few reasons. One of them is that the book doesn't even do what it says on the tin: only a small minority of the stories have any real connection to Shub-Niggurath, either explicit or implicit. A witch, a straight-up evil goat, or something vaguely creepy happening while somebody is near a tree (but not connected in any way with the tree) do not, in fact, make something a "tale of the black goat with a thousand young". Sigh. However, there's a few genuine show more Mythos stories in here. Honestly, most of them just aren't very good.

CW: I should flag up that there's a lot of sex in some stories, and rape in at least two of them.

"The Curate of Temphill" is the worst, I think. Content-wise, its treatment of homosexuality is very questionable, and as the sole female character is a lesbian antagonist, you can imagine her treatment is frankly appalling. From a thematic perspective, it's got little to do with Shub-Niggurath unless you consider any hint of a goat to be enough (Price clearly does). But there's also a total lack of credibility in the story, where the new reverend of a village is handed documents claiming to be secret missing bits of the Bible. In the story, he immediately accepts them at face value, and revises his entire religious outlook instantaneously on this basis alone. The thing is, there have been countless documents claiming to be extra gospels, additional prophecies, Real True Original versions of various Biblical stories, and so on. On top of that, there are all the books which are canonical in one variant of Christianity but not another (the entire Apocrypha? the numerous books which various early Christian groups agreed not to include?). An actual clergyman, as the protagonist is meant to be, would absolutely be fully aware of this. He might mention the documents to the church hierarchy, since they could be of historical interest, but behaving as he does in the story is stretching suspension of disbelief several miles beyond breaking point. show less