2018-09-29

Sulawesi, Indonesia

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

by Neil Godfrey

It’s hard to write a new post when a country one has visited quite a few times and with whom one has close personal relationships has been hit by another tsunami:

Hundreds dead as quake, tsunami hit Indonesia’s Sulawesi

Indonesian tsunami: Death toll passes 400, Vice President warns it could rise into the thousands

Sulawesi is one island I have not visited though I have been wanting to go there for some years now. I have heard and read much about it and its people. What has happened is unspeakable.

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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.

-- Peter Kirby, - May 2023
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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-- Emanuel Pfoh - August 2020
"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
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Raphael Lataster - August 2019
"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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— April DeConick, – November 2007
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
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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, 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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—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
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— Anthony Le Donne, – September 2009
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"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)
"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
"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"

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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 Godfrey on Earl Doherty’s response to Bart Ehrman‘s Did Jesus Exist?: “Thanks. Fixed now. But you deserve an award for putting up with such an ugly looking page with all that…” Jan 15, 05:19
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Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “No need. The context sets the tone, rarely a single word. I want understanding between us. By the way, with…” Jan 13, 02:50
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Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “Addition: ChatGPT told me “The word “vacuous” can carry a negative connotation, as it implies that something is empty, lacking…” Jan 12, 21:10
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “For me it is interesting that you say “Carrier frequently confuses different things. He fails to provide clear definitions of…” Jan 12, 20:25
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