2010-10-03

How shall they hear about Jesus unless from a Christian preacher?

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by Neil Godfrey

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Latest posts by Neil Godfrey (see all)

Paul’s Letters as Products of Marcion’s School - 2025-01-30 08:48:14 GMT+0000
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

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"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)
"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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-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
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— April DeConick, – November 2007
"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
"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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-- Jim West, – September 2010
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
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"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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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
"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
"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
"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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— Earl Doherty, November 2013 (personal email)
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 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)
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
"Thanks much for this book review. I think it expands, and contributes to, the effort in honouring Thomas that we with Lukasz originally had in mind with this volume. Best, Emanuel"

-- Emanuel Pfoh - August 2020
"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
"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
"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
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

Andrew Dabrowski on Paul’s Letters as Products of Marcion’s School: “Fascinating, thank you Neil.” Jan 30, 23:03
Neil Godfrey on Paul’s Letters as Products of Marcion’s School: “There is nothing single and simple-minded about the Paulines. They contain a mysticism that is way over Marcion’s head. Ooh…” Jan 30, 21:31
Neil Godfrey on Paul’s Letters as Products of Marcion’s School: “The only discussion NL has of Justin that is related to your question is a comparison of Justin’s methods (in…” Jan 30, 21:12
Neil Godfrey on Paul’s Letters as Products of Marcion’s School: “1 Clement, because of some kind of intertextuality with Hebrews, has been the primary source by which Hebrews has been…” Jan 30, 20:46
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “We seem to be from different planets 🙂 Let me bring a (vaguely related) quote by J.L.Savage from wikipedia “……” Jan 30, 20:22
RParvus on Paul’s Letters as Products of Marcion’s School: “I notice NL’s quote from Balas: “Marcion’s doctrines are marked by a certain simplicity, not to say single- and simple-mindedness…” Jan 30, 16:34
Clarke W Owens on Paul’s Letters as Products of Marcion’s School: ““[T]he Jewish rejection of Christian typological or spiritual exegesis of the Old Testament, which seemed to threaten Christianity’s claims to…” Jan 30, 15:00
ABuddhist on Paul’s Letters as Products of Marcion’s School: “>What we see at the beginning — gospel and Pauline letters in the hands of Marcionites — was the beginning…” Jan 30, 14:56
Neil Godfrey on Paul’s Letters as Products of Marcion’s School: “I don’t mean to give the impression that Jews were being hunted down after the Bar Kochba war. The destruction…” Jan 30, 12:12

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