2023-04-09

BRUNO BAUER: Christ and the Caesars – in English

Machine translated by Neil Godfrey from Christus und die Caesaren. Der Ursprung des Christenthums aus dem römischen Griechenthum
March 2023

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Neil Godfrey

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Latest posts by Neil Godfrey (see all)

Ceasefire and hostage exchange - 2025-01-20 22:38:53 GMT+0000
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

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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
"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, 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)
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
"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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— James McGrath, – June 2009
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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
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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-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
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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— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
"Fantastic. I’m so glad you’re helping to spread these ideas!"

Nancy Fraser - June 2019 (personal email)
"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
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
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-- Klaas Spronk, - Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXI, 3/4 (2014)
"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."

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-- Martin Lewadny, - March 2009

Neil Godfrey on Challenging the Authenticity of Paul’s Letters: “I prefer to see “Luke’s” Theophilus as one of the many names he concocts in Acts — it’s the name…” Jan 20, 23:11
Gordon Rouse on Challenging the Authenticity of Paul’s Letters: ““obsession with Pilate” It may have come about much later, as I am thinking about the ‘Acts of Pilate’ and…” Jan 20, 22:39
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “In short, I believe anyone can see from my record of using Bayes and defending Bayes for testing hypothesis is…” Jan 20, 19:12
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