Acharya S

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Murdock's work received strong criticism from New Testament scholars and historians of early Christians. Agnostic New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman wrote in his Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth that "all of Acharya's major points are in fact wrong" and her book "is filled with so many factual errors and outlandish assertions that it is hard to believe the author is serious". Taking her as representative of some other writers about the Christ myth theory, he continues "Mythicists of this ilk should not be surprised that their views are not taken seriously by real scholars, mentioned by experts in the field, or even read by them". Emeritus Professor of New Testament Languages and Literature at the University of Nottingham Maurice Casey criticized her work for "her anti-Christian outlook, a lack of any proper sense of reality, failure to give adequate references, inability to interpret primary sources correctly, and dependence on inaccurate out-of-date secondary sources rather than primary evidence." Baptist comparative religion scholar Clinton Bennett compares her views to those of radical freethinker Robert Taylor (nicknamed "the Devil's chaplain"), secularist MP and Christ-mythicist John M. Robertson, and American mythographer Joseph Campbell. Butler University religion professor James F. McGrath describes her viewpoint as one that "once had some currency among scholars" in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but was subsequently abandoned. The book received mixed reviews among conspiracy theorists and supporters of the Christ myth theory. Writer Russ Kick, in his book You Are Being Lied To, describes The Christ Conspiracy as "an essential book for anyone who wants to know the reality behind the world's dominant religion". Conspiracy theorist and publisher Kenn Thomas calls her a "great chronicler of the conspiracy known as Christianity". Atheist activist and Christ mythicist Richard Carrier criticized her use of the inscriptions at Luxor to make the claim that the story of Jesus' birth was inspired by the Luxor story of the birth of Horus. Theologian and Christ-mythicist Robert M. Price also criticized Murdock's first book, while promoting her Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled in The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-Four Formative Texts, and writing the foreword to her Who Was Jesus?: Fingerprints of the Christ.