2018-01-16

Daniel Gullotta’s Review of Richard Carrier’s “On the Historicity of Jesus”: that “born of a woman” passage (again)

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by Neil Godfrey

Just in case anyone missed it. . . . Tim Widowfield of Vridar posted a rather insightful and well-researched article addressing a slight weakness in Daniel Gullotta’s review of Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus.

The Function of the Term: “Born of a Woman”

The TW post incidentally addresses a very common deficiency in biblical scholarship that has long been noticed by a few lay readers but that has yet to be addressed by the mainstream scholarly elites who have a vested interest in correcting “misperceptions” about their arguments as they appear on the world wide web.

I will be adding this post in due course to our archive on related articles @ The “Born of a Woman” / Galatians 4:4 INDEX

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"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
"Fantastic. I’m so glad you’re helping to spread these ideas!"

Nancy Fraser - June 2019 (personal email)
"I always enjoy reading Neil’s blog because I think that he is careful, thorough, intellectually fair, and honest."

— April DeConick, – November 2007
"I still wonder at all the material you turn out for Vridar. The more I read your stuff (and I still do, of course), the more I realize how much we all owe you. Your voice is unique."

— Earl Doherty, November 2013 (personal email)
"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
"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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— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
"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)
"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
"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, this is actually rather useful. Good job."

— R. Joseph Hoffmann, – June 2014
"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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"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."

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

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
"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
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

david fenton on Genesis = Science + Myth + Theology — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 3a]: “There is much that could be said from this post. I focus on Anaxagoras. The ‘Plan in Plato’, in my…” Nov 30, 07:47
Alexandra Creasy on Once more on Nazareth, Relevance and Salm versus Carrier: “Jesus was born in Bethlehem because prophecy! Jesus was from Nazareth because prophecy! Jesus did a ton of stuff because…” Nov 30, 06:44
david fenton on Genesis 1 “Amazing” “Unique” — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 2]: “Hello Ellen Donaldson You raise some excellent! points. A little of how I stand at this time. I had already…” Nov 29, 22:58
Russell Gmirkin on Biblical Creation Accounts and Plato – 1: “I mention Sandmel and parallelomania in passing on page 3 in my chapter on methodology. The modern antidote to parallelomania…” Nov 28, 11:54
david fenton on Biblical Creation Accounts and Plato – 1: “From Neils post: “That dreaded fourteen letter word comes to mind: “parallelomania””. The lecture that coined that term makes this…” Nov 28, 10:34
Anat on The “Late” Origins of Judaism – The Archaeological Evidence: “Did (real) Philistines consume pork? If, for whatever reason, all cultures of the south Levant avoided pork then pork avoidance…” Nov 27, 20:58
Willy Thomson on The “Late” Origins of Judaism – The Archaeological Evidence: “The customs of the Ethiopian Jews (Beta-Israel), before the interference of modern-day Israelis, were said to resemble pre-Talmudic Judaism in…” Nov 26, 00:04
Russell Gmirkin on When God Created Humans, then Retired: Genesis 1 as Science — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus – 5c]: “I missed Julian’s comparison! But I did mention earlier suggestions that Timaeus influenced Genesis 1 in Niesiołowski-Spanò 2007 and Wajdenbaum…” Nov 25, 15:48
david fenton on Gospel Truth (no joke): “Interesting article. Points 1 to 4 get 10 out of 10 from me. Point 5 “Seek to persuade, not antagonize—but…” Nov 25, 11:01

The Function of the Term: “Born of a Woman”

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4 thoughts on “Daniel Gullotta’s Review of Richard Carrier’s “On the Historicity of Jesus”: that “born of a woman” passage (again)”

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