2007-02-03

The Myth of an al Qaeda Takeover of Iraq

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by Neil Godfrey

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Latest posts by Neil Godfrey (see all)

Pausing to Ask Questions: Nina Livesey’s The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context - 2025-01-28 09:43:11 GMT+0000
Paul’s Letters as Second Century Writings — The Relevance of the Circumcision Question - 2025-01-24 08:40:32 GMT+0000
Paul’s Letters in Literary-Philosophical Context - 2025-01-23 09:45:57 GMT+0000

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"These reviews of yours are so bloody weird!"

— James Crossley, – April 2010
"Neil, You’ve done a clean job in your posting on ‘Jesus the Healer’. It reflects well on you. Best, John"

— John Moles, September 2011 (personal email)
"Neil, this is actually rather useful. Good job."

— R. Joseph Hoffmann, – June 2014
"Neil, in my mature judgement (I am now an old man), this fine 4-part study is a brilliant reworking, an instructive restatement of Hayden White’s Metahistory (and his subsequent writings). Your critique of certain historiographic representations as imbedded in the case study of the “scientistic”, “empirical” Richard Carrier provides a solid starting point for the more honest “fictive” reading of the New Testament that you encourage. Your last paragraph is a very intelligent call to sensitive readers of these texts. I suspect a whole generation of biblical students has been educated without the insights provided by the incomparable White. Bravo!"

-- Timothy Bagley, - November 2024
This is superb work, Neil, and reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s work from a century ago. . . . .

I commend you for being the first to even TRY to translate Bruno Bauer’s brilliant Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs, which is now more than 150 years old.

. . . . .Thank you for your historic effort.

-- Paul Trejo, M.A., - November 2022
Editor, An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed
"Neil Godfrey and Tim Widowfield, who both write at Vridar . . . happen to be some of the most astute and well-read amateurs you can read on the internet on the subject of biblical historicity. I call them amateurs only for the reason that they don’t have, so far as I know, advanced degrees in the subject. But I have often been impressed with their grasp of logic and analysis of scholarship. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect their work."

— Richard Carrier, – March 2014
"Here I give an admittedly subjective short list, in random order, of useful, high level and regularly updated weblogs on the study of the Old Testament . . . ‘Vridar: Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science’ (http://vridar.org/) by Neil Godfrey"

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It is worth saying another word of appreciation here for Neil Godfrey's effort to make Bruno Bauer accessible in English.

-- Peter Kirby, - May 2023
"For an excellent example of generally high-quality scholarship by someone who isn’t a biblical studies professor, see Neil Godfrey’s work posted on the website vridar.org."

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— Mary Booker, – February 2020 (personal email)
"By the way, my thanks to Neil for an ongoing superb job of exposing Jim’s review for what it is: a farcical and none too effective exercise in mythicism assassination, nothing to do with rational, let alone unbiased, scholarship. I’m also happy to see even Jim giving Neil credit where credit is due."

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https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
Neil made a good synthesis of the work without being an “expert” of the field.

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"Vridar is consistently thought-provoking, well-informed, and asking the right questions. There are intelligent, thoughtful comments and commenters regularly offering productive discussion. Books and publications are covered with a range of perspectives with attempts at fair and accurate representation of others’ arguments and content (where there are occasional and inevitable missteps on that I notice Neil making corrections and apologies where warranted, which wins points with me). Please carry on."

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-- Martin Lewadny, - March 2009
"Neil, for what it is worth it is obvious to me that if you had earlier in life tracked into a graduate program at one of the world’s leading research universities you would be one of the world’s formidable ones. You are doing essentially the same quality now (apart from the philology and languages) except mostly sticking to commenting on others’ work as informed comment/discussion."

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-- Paul Trejo, - April 2023
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016

Neil Godfrey on Paul’s Letters as Second Century Writings — The Relevance of the Circumcision Question: “That would be the understanding (that they are a small outlier) that the author is wants Trypho (us) to think.…” Jan 27, 21:02
Gordon Rouse on Paul’s Letters as Second Century Writings — The Relevance of the Circumcision Question: “You are a patient man if you can get to paragraphs 46 – my eyes glaze over reading J Martyr…” Jan 27, 10:34
Neil Godfrey on Paul’s Letters as Second Century Writings — The Relevance of the Circumcision Question: “Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho purports to be written a few years after the Bar Kochba war and paragraphs 46…” Jan 26, 08:40
Gordon Rouse on Paul’s Letters as Second Century Writings — The Relevance of the Circumcision Question: “So a lot of this thesis seems to be Christians rejecting strict Judaism, however Christian writings seem to also play…” Jan 26, 00:04
Neil Godfrey on Paul’s Letters as Second Century Writings — The Relevance of the Circumcision Question: “Nina Livesey devotes chapter 3 to a comparison between Seneca’s and Paul’s letters: https://vridar.org/2025/01/23/pauls-letters-in-literary-philosophical-context/” Jan 25, 22:02
Paul Trejo on Paul’s Letters as Second Century Writings — The Relevance of the Circumcision Question: “Bruno Bauer also weighed in on this topic with his book, “Christus Und Die Caesaren” (1877). He showed that the…” Jan 25, 17:19
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I wrote two lengthy replies but then I remembered that you indicated at one time I write too much ;-)…” Jan 25, 09:03
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I wanted to sort out Axiom 4 first, as I stated explicitly. Your reaction starting with “I’ll play the devil’s…” Jan 25, 05:15
Neil Godfrey on Paul’s Letters as Second Century Writings — The Relevance of the Circumcision Question: “Thanks for this info. I followed it up and see that Glick’s source is Rubin, ‘‘Brit Milah,’’ which is a…” Jan 25, 03:58

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