2007-10-21

mr military “what’s a judge?” vs ms civilian “swiss bank account”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

An Asian perspective on Bhutto’s return to Pakistan: Bhutto bombing kicks off war on US plan

Wikipedia background on Musharraf and Bhutto

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"I find your blog most interesting and appreciate your ongoing effort to keep to the evidence for the issues discussed!"

-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
"Thanks for your very elaborate review! I realized that I hadn’t added your blog to our blogroll. This oversight has been corrected. Looking forward to more segments."

— Anthony Le Donne, – September 2009
"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."

— Earl Doherty, June 2011
"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
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-- Emanuel Pfoh - August 2020
Congratulations, Vridar, . . . I declare, Vridar, your own hard work translating Bruno Bauer will make a major difference in future studies of Bruno Bauer and the evolution of Hegel’s philosophy of religion.

-- Paul Trejo, - April 2023
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, 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
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
Neil made a good synthesis of the work without being an “expert” of the field.

-- Enrico Tuccinardi, - October 2022
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— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"Neil, this is actually rather useful. Good job."

— R. Joseph Hoffmann, – June 2014
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— James McGrath, – June 2009
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
"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
"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."

— Tom Dykstra, – JOCABS 2015
"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"

-- Klaas Spronk, - Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXI, 3/4 (2014)
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Nancy Fraser - June 2019 (personal email)
"I’ve even been cited by atheists with approval (which I really don’t know how to take, so thanks, I think, but I’m not sure, Vrider (even though I feel like I need to take a shower now))."

-- Jim West, – September 2010
"I want to say here that this site is so resourceful and highly on top of the most modern scholarship in the areas discussed here. . . I know of no other site which offers a wide range of topics related to careful critical analysis of historically and scripturally related issues."

-- Martin Lewadny, - March 2009
"I have found your website really valuable as an interpretive filter for Biblical scholarship, especially the origins of Christianity and historicity of Jesus issue. Your clarity of expression, fair comments and personal insights are much valued. I refer to your site frequently as yet more names and publications pop up requiring an academic critique and helpful recommendations for book purchases. So, please continue to delve deeply and share this intellectual sustenance with your grateful readers."

— Mary Booker, – February 2020 (personal email)
"Note that I do not use the term ‘amateur’ pejoratively. . . . In fact, Godfrey is extremely well read and his librarian skills have brought many important academic works to my attention."

Raphael Lataster - August 2019
"I’d like to thank you for this very nice representation of what I was trying to show in the book. It’s always gratifying when a reader zeroes in on exactly those aspects I thought were most interesting and most central to my argument. Thank you for this careful and engaged reading of my work – much appreciated!"

— Eva Mroczek, – June 2017
"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."

— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
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— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
"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)
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016

Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” by Schmidt – Review 1 – ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’: “I forgot to note in the original post that the quotation of the extract from Cernuda’s article was my machine-assisted…” Jun 21, 19:55
ABuddhist on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” by Schmidt – Review 1 – ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’: “>By saying that “early Christians viewed denying Jesus’ humanity as heretical” Schmidt is excluding the possibility that the doctrines that…” Jun 21, 19:46
Ken Olson on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” by Schmidt – Review 1 – ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’: “I agree with what you posted, but I’m particularly grateful for this point that had not previously occurred to me:…” Jun 21, 15:53
Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” by Schmidt – Review 1 – ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’: “Postscript – added about 2 hours after posting the above One more point that Thomas Schmidt advances in support of…” Jun 21, 07:52
Andrew Dabrowski on Trump Is the True Face of American “Democracy”: “Either of those would be a huge improvement over Trump.” Jun 15, 15:52
Fred Nienberg on Trump Is the True Face of American “Democracy”: “Americans have a very short historical memory since no one has compared Trump to Huey P. Long or WJ Bryan.” Jun 15, 02:52
John Hunt on Was the name “Jesus” too common to belong to a divinity or archangel?: “Just curious. Why isn’t David on this list?” Jun 13, 08:48
Thomas Worthington on Nina Livesey’s The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context: “The character need not be “fictional”, or at least not believed to be fictional. Forging letters in the name of…” May 30, 13:35
Neil Godfrey on Nina Livesey’s The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context: “Hi Don. The idea that there are different authors behind the epistles attributed to Paul in the NT is the…” May 30, 07:03

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