GakuseiDon

Robert Price recommends Acharya's "Suns of God". As he writes here:

"I know Acharya has given me many new questions and much to think about. That was true of her first book [The Christ Conspiracy] and equally true of this one. I do not mind acknowledging her as my teacher as well."

youngalexander

GDon, it is not where we garner 'new questions', but rather that we do!

GakuseiDon

:notworthy: True enough!

Toto

Since I think that GDon's post is a potential hijack into issues that have been hashed over before, I am splitting the thread.

ETA: this appears to be an attempt by GDon to smear Robert Price with guilt by association with the historicists' all time favorite mythicist (perhaps after Rook Hawkins). It's so easy to point out flaws in some mythicists' case somewhere, and so hard to actually support the historicist case, isn't it?

We all know that he originally gave a less than favorable review to Acharya S. He then changed his mind, and rewrote his review, and at the same time, she started to put more effort into improving her work. We can speculate on the personal or political aspects of this. But it has nothing to do with the value to Price's work.

GakuseiDon

Thanks for splitting this out, Toto. I was going to suggest it, as it is worth seeing where Price is now coming from. From his review (my bolding):
http://www.truthbeknown.com/price-sog-review.html

First, her catalogue of parallels is so impressive as to press home the question: how can all these disparate cultures have come up, independently, with ceremonial crosses, sacrificed saviors, common myth-plots, etc.? Must these things not all be analogous responses by human brains, built the same way all over the earth, to the same stimulus? And what might that stimulus have been? It had to be something available to everybody, everywhere: Every eye shall see him. What else but the movements of the sun and the other lights through the heavens? We know astrology/astronomy to have been widespread across the ancient globe, and when we find such a correspondence among myths and ritual symbols, too, we naturally trace them to the same source. I don't believe I had ever faced the force of this argument before reading this book.

I've looked through her book (mostly looking for references to Horus's crucifixion) and if Dr Price found her convincing on this, then I am staggered.

Once one knows what to look for, Isaac, Esau, Enoch, Moses, Samson, and Elijah emerge as obvious candidates for solar myths. And Jesus certainly has many of the same marks.

Price cites Ignác Goldziher and Max Muller, both writing 100 years ago. But does modern scholarship hold to those views? Or are Price and Acharya blazing a new trail of truth?

At the same time, Price acknowledges that Acharya's research is hampered by reliance on old writers:

Again and again, Acharya finds herself hemmed in by old writers who never elevated their claims above the level of hearsay (as she herself points out). Kersey Graves (The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors) assures the reader that he has before him plenty of original documentation for his claims of crucifixion parallels, but he, er, doesn't have room to include any. And this is the rule, not the exception. Lundy, Higgins, Inman, Graves, Doane, etc., they all claim they have read or heard this or that, but none of them can site a single source document. Acharya seems generously inclined to believe them. I don't. I am not saying they were frauds or deceivers. Acharya suggests that these researchers may have read texts or examined ancient monuments that have since been destroyed by ecclesiastical censors. And she may be right. I certainly wouldn't put it past the Machiavellian ethics of the religious authorities. But did they get rid of all the evidence only after Doane, Graves, and the others had managed to see it? It is not that I distrust these old researchers. It's just that I cannot agree or disagree with their evaluation of evidence they do not share with me.

Fair enough. But it is obvious that the impressive list of parallels that Dr Price mentioned earlier is, to a large part, dependent on those old writers.

I think Dr Price has not only put on his water skiis, but that the shark has jumped him.

Toto

The problem is that the century-old writers asked some intriguing questions and posed some intriguing solutions. They are outdated, but no more than "historicist" scholarship of the same period, which is equally if not even more misguided.

"Modern scholarship" has dismissed these musings, but has not been confronted with a well argued case, according to Richard Carrier's essay on the 16 Crucified Saviors. If you are looking for a wide open field where it is possible to do new work, this is it.

I think that Robert Price would like to see more work on the subject, and Acharya S (now using her real name of Diane Murdoch) is at least attempting to popularize the subject and to do more work in the field, so he is encouraging her. But if you really want to know, why not ask Price or post a question on his forum, instead of just acting like this is some sort of character flaw on his part?