Biblical Studies

There are two passages in Josephus that refer to Jesus Christ. The first one in Book 18 of his “Antiquities of the Jews” is widely known as the Testimonium Flavianum (TF) (=the testimony of Flavius Josephus). Another, in Book 20, is a briefer reference but it is cited in major works as authentic to Josephus, and not the work of a Christian scribe. It’s this latter reference under discussion here. Continue reading “That other suspect entry in Josephus”

2007-04-04

How a gospel works: Judas reveals all

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by Neil Godfrey

So the truth is out. Professor Francis Moloney and Jeffrey Archer tell us how the gospels were written.

Note: No eyewitnesses! No oral traditions! No historiography! Continue reading “How a gospel works: Judas reveals all”

Judas and the Devil take on Dan Brown

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by Neil Godfrey

Professor Francis Moloney is incensed that Dan Brown can get away with his Da Vinci Code nonsense without an equally popular rejoinder from orthodox scholarship, so has teamed up with convicted perjurer Jeffrey Archer to popularize the way gospels “really were written”. (See earlier posts in the Judas category.)

Nothing like the services of a convicted perjurer to get The Truth out there! Continue reading “Judas and the Devil take on Dan Brown”

Judas scholar and the devil again

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

by Neil Godfrey

Interview on the radio this morning again — 8.30 am EST. Or if you miss this live it will appear soon enough here. [Update: it’s now here with transcript and pod soon to follow.] Continue reading “Judas scholar and the devil again”

2007-04-03

The Medium is the Message

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by Neil Godfrey

Chocolate Jesus! Now here’s a classic illustration of Vance Packard’s maxim: The Medium is the Message.

Marble good; oil on canvass good; but chocolate very bad!

At least no-one can call this art “tasteless” 🙂

Check out My Sweet Lord by Cosimo Cavallaro

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18a . . .

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by Neil Godfrey

This chapter is still coming . . . . not forgotten — main reason for the delay is that Bauckham relies most heavily on C. A. J. Coady’s book, Testimony: A Philosophical Study (1992), so I am enjoying reading Coady (along with some of the scholarly discussion circulating about his book) at the moment — hopefully to better position me to discuss Bauckham’s argument.

2007-04-01

Existential Jesus — another review

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by Neil Godfrey

youngalexander has alerted me/the iidb list to a new review of John Carroll’s book.

It’s in The Age, a review by another sociology professor, Gary Bouma. Promising an extract next week. Continue reading “Existential Jesus — another review”

Additional Sauces for the Feedings of 5000 and 4000

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by Neil Godfrey

Earlier post looked at Elisha’s miracle as Mark’s principle source for the mass feeding miracles – here I list a few distinctly Moses sources, and a comparison with Matthew’s parallel accounts, summarized from Dale C. Allison Jr’s The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (pp.238-242). Continue reading “Additional Sauces for the Feedings of 5000 and 4000”

2007-03-29

The Elijah-Elisha Narrative and the Gospel of Mark

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by Neil Godfrey

Dale and Patricia Miller and Thomas Brodie discuss the Elijah-Elishah Cycle — 1 Kgs 16:29–2 Kgs 13:25 — as a source of Mark’s gospel.

Brodie:

Brodie does not limit the influences on Mark to the Elijah-Elisha (E-E) narrative. He acknowledges diverse inputs from the broader Hellenistic culture. But in his “Crucial Bridge” he looks closely at the apparent E-E influences. Continue reading “The Elijah-Elisha Narrative and the Gospel of Mark”

Mark’s ending and Masada (& Elisha)

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by Neil Godfrey

This may be nothing but another passing shape in a cloud, but has anyone else passingly wondered if there might be some relationship to Mark’s ending in the way the Jewish war ended at Masada? Continue reading “Mark’s ending and Masada (& Elisha)”

The signs of the end in Josephus and Mark

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by Neil Godfrey

Josephus (War.6.5.3-4) lists 8 astounding signs sent by God to warn the Jews of their impending disaster: Continue reading “The signs of the end in Josephus and Mark”

"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
"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."

— Mary Booker, – February 2020 (personal email)
"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
"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
"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, 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
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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-- Martin Lewadny, - March 2009
"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)
"I always enjoy reading Neil’s blog because I think that he is careful, thorough, intellectually fair, and honest."

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

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
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Nancy Fraser - June 2019 (personal email)
"These reviews of yours are so bloody weird!"

— James Crossley, – April 2010
"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
"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
"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

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— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
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-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
"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)
"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!"

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"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)
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
It is worth saying another word of appreciation here for Neil Godfrey's effort to make Bruno Bauer accessible in English.

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"Thanks for this detailed interaction! I’ll try to offer something more substantial than 'Thank you' in response at some point, but I didn’t want to wait . . . to express appreciation for your detailed interaction with what I’ve written!"

— James McGrath, – June 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
"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

Gordon Rouse on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 1: ““Dark matter” is not a ‘fact’ or even a hypothesis. It is a mystery! Please do not bring physicists down…” Jul 28, 02:42
Dennis S. on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 1: “I think physics has the opposite problem when it comes to Dark Matter anyway – a lot of evidence but…” Jul 27, 20:35
Andrew Dabrowski on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 1: “I’m not a physicist, but I think you have to distinguish between popular perceptions and actual ongoing research. Pop science…” Jul 27, 18:53
Steve Ruis on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 1: “Re “So much in biblical studies that pass for facts are actually hypotheses. But they are repeated so often it…” Jul 27, 17:15
Gregory Doudna on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 1: “Thank you for preserving your worthy discussion comments here, Neil. I remember long ago Russ explaining the convergence with the…” Jul 27, 15:05
Andrew Dabrowski on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 1: “I can see how the Solomon story might have been inspired by Alexander’s, but I don’t think knowledge of the…” Jul 27, 15:03
Luke Burrage on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 1: “Read the “cut the baby in half” story and tell me how it makes sense to any audience who doesn’t…” Jul 27, 06:50
Scot Griffin on Defending Russell Gmirkin’s Hellenistic Dating of the Old Testament – Part 1: “I think Russell is largely correct in dating the Primary History to the Hellenistic Era. The Primary History is very…” Jul 27, 03:30
Jerry Walz on How the Gospel of John Created a Jesus from Wisdom Literature: “My research has taken me to there being yet another Messiah, and your references point to this person. It has…” Jul 26, 11:03

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