veriditas's review
2.0
A fundy friend inflicted "the case for christ" on me in middle school in 2002. It's a book that sidelines itself; if the guy who wrote it was really so open-minded and such a hard hitter for truth, why did he not talk to a single atheist, Jew, or Catholic? It was a book written for exactly one kind of person for exactly one reason.
So I picked this book up out of curiosity, because I didn't know who would bother refuting such a non-entity. The answer is perhaps unsurprising: an *ex* fundamentalist Protestant who has gone as radically far in the other direction as possible- this book argues, among other things, that Jesus never existed, the passion is a plagiarized psalm, and Paul's life story was Euripides fanfic. It argues these things in a very disjointed way, and while it's clear the author is a much higher quality thinker than Strobel (an extremely low bar to clear), he is not an organized one.
If you're the kind of person who thinks it's worth arguing with Uncle Scott at Thanksgiving, this book might be of interest.
So I picked this book up out of curiosity, because I didn't know who would bother refuting such a non-entity. The answer is perhaps unsurprising: an *ex* fundamentalist Protestant who has gone as radically far in the other direction as possible- this book argues, among other things, that Jesus never existed, the passion is a plagiarized psalm, and Paul's life story was Euripides fanfic. It argues these things in a very disjointed way, and while it's clear the author is a much higher quality thinker than Strobel (an extremely low bar to clear), he is not an organized one.
If you're the kind of person who thinks it's worth arguing with Uncle Scott at Thanksgiving, this book might be of interest.
catereads's review
1.0
Not to sound like a total mom, but after reading this, I'm not mad, I'm disappointed. To be clear, I'm not giving this book 1 star because I disagree with it on ideological grounds. I'm giving it 1 star because it was poorly argued and lacks substance. I've listed his main argument sins here and included examples below. First, Price frequently resorts to insults and ad hominem attacks rather than actually refuting Strobel's arguments. Second, his arguments largely boil down to wild speculation about what might have happened and people's intentions. Third, he continually goes on irrelevant tangents. Fourth, he constantly contradicts himself. As if that isn't bad enough, he closed part one of the book with an apparently serious argument that (if you are male), having a "personal relationship" with Jesus is kinda gay.
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