Real life has kept me busy enough — and exhausted enough in between periods of busy enough — to have a break from this scene for most of last month. Now I’m wondering where I left off. I know I was trying to keep spinning a few plates at once, but it all seems like ancient history to me now.
Some of the issues I was addressing really need lots of time to treat as well as I think they deserve. I don’t think the blog is really the best medium for most of the stuff I’m interested in any more. But change means effort and that sounds like hard work. I keep thinking I should organize some of my posts in more easy to find web articles. I’d like to collate various series like that of Roger Parvus as a single pdf document some time (if I have his permission of course). I’d also like to revise and collate some of my discussions on historical methodology into one single document. One day. (But it would help if an intellectually competent anti-mythicist could be found and engaged to help sharpen the arguments.)
I was enjoying the way a number of readers expressed some interest in some of my posts from time to time, and I would welcome any feedback either here or in email (neilgodfrey1 [ @ ] gmail.com) if there is any lingering interest in my following up some of those posts.
So, what to write about next? I have a few ideas, but which one will involve the least effort?
Neil Godfrey
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I’ve always enjoyed your book reviews.
Your dismantling of Tim Keller, Richard Bauckham, Maurice Casey, etc., have been very educational for me.
Perhaps you’ll continue to do more of this?
Good idea. I have long wanted to discuss Fredriksen’s ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’. On the other hand, I sometimes think the comments become very same-ish since the types of arguments and assumptions addressed are common across many if not most Historical Jesus studies. I had expected to do a more complete review of Casey’s book but found it was so bad at both the micro and macro levels I could not bring myself to do more than the occasional small section from time to time.
Take a break from writing about McGarth.
Too true that the arguments between historicists and mythicists tend to fall into a pretty well defined grid.
If you need fresh material to think about and comment about, why not try the following debate, unless you had already covered it:
First A Review of Brian Flemming’s DVD “The God Who Wasn’t There” by Michael Licona. This is a long text (26,000 words)
http://web.archive.org/web/20130310124417/http://www.answeringinfidels.com/answering-skeptics/others/a-review-of-brian-flemmings-dvd-the-god-who-wasnt-there.html
Second RESPONSES to CRITIQUES of the Mythicist Case in Mike Licona’s Review, by Earl Doherty, an even longer text ( 28,200 words)
http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/CritiquesLicona.htm
Licona’s Review and Doherty’s Response seem to cover the whole gamut of the discussion between both camps.
The contrast of quality and sharpness between both is striking. I don’t think apologists have a champion capable of duelling with Doherty.