2009-12-20

Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow

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

by Neil Godfrey

http://images.smh.com.au/2009/12/19/988571/billboard-420×0.jpg

Never thought I’d see a church as progressive as St Matthews in Aukland, New Zealand.

Have a look at the Australian ABC news stories:

Mary and Joseph poster sparks unholy row

and

Church resurrects controversial billboard

but finally the inevitable . . .

Sexy God billboard removed

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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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"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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Raphael Lataster - August 2019
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
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.

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Editor, An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed
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-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
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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.

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"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
"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."

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"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!"

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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.

-- Enrico Tuccinardi, - October 2022
"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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— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"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)

Clarke W Owens on Paul’s Letters as Second Century Writings — The Relevance of the Circumcision Question: “Stephen, I note that this book contains a shout-out to Vridar in its back pages.” Jan 30, 02:02
Gordon Rouse on Pausing to Ask Questions: Nina Livesey’s The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: “So if we assume Marcion wrote the epistles. Then the content is not really controversial in its time, as most…” Jan 30, 00:18
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

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