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)

The Name of the Apostle Paul - 2025-01-20 04:09:39 GMT+0000
Challenging the Authenticity of Paul’s Letters - 2025-01-18 02:50:35 GMT+0000
Nina Livesey’s The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context - 2025-01-10 21:18:06 GMT+0000

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

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
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
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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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-- Jim West, – September 2010
"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
"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)
"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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"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."

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— Earl Doherty, November 2013 (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
"I think you have a high quality blog that provides a positive public service by discussing academic topics within a wider audience."

— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
"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
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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— April DeConick, – November 2007
"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, 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
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
"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)
"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
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-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
"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
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
"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
"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
"These reviews of yours are so bloody weird!"

— James Crossley, – April 2010
"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

Neil Godfrey on Challenging the Authenticity of Paul’s Letters: “But where does all this fit with other content? Hebrews, Revelations and Logos writers who do not even seem to…” Jan 20, 08:53
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I think that a crucial problem between us is that you seem to think that when I do not attach…” Jan 20, 08:31
Neil Godfrey on Challenging the Authenticity of Paul’s Letters: “That was a question that I had a hard time answering, too. There is an alternative scenario, though. The name…” Jan 20, 08:23
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “Can you explain me, Neil, what is your process that reaches the absolute 1? Isn’t it just the same process…” Jan 20, 08:16
Nicholas Ryan Covington on Challenging the Authenticity of Paul’s Letters: “Gospels and Paul in dialogue? I am unsure of a good example or two of Paul responding to the gospels,…” Jan 20, 02:40
Gordon Rouse on Challenging the Authenticity of Paul’s Letters: “I struggle with most reconstructions, they all seem to have problems. If Marcion did publish a canon that contained Paul’s…” Jan 19, 21:38
ABuddhist on Challenging the Authenticity of Paul’s Letters: “But if Marcion had invented the Pauline letters, why would he present as purified versions of corrupt earlier letters? Surely,…” Jan 18, 22:36
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “A small addition: The example value n=100 in my above model is unnecessarily large; but all this is just a…” Jan 18, 21:42
Stephen P Ruis on Challenging the Authenticity of Paul’s Letters: “I subscribe to the hypothesis that Paul’s letters and much more were outputs of Marcion’s workshops. What I still need…” Jan 18, 16:34

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