2014-01-27

"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
"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
"I find your blog most interesting and appreciate your ongoing effort to keep to the evidence for the issues discussed!"

-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
"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 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
"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
"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
"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)
"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
"I think you have a high quality blog that provides a positive public service by discussing academic topics within a wider audience."

— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
"Neil, this is actually rather useful. Good job."

— R. Joseph Hoffmann, – June 2014
"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’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
"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
"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
"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
"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
"These reviews of yours are so bloody weird!"

— James Crossley, – April 2010
"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
"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)
"Fantastic. I’m so glad you’re helping to spread these ideas!"

Nancy Fraser - June 2019 (personal email)
"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

db on How and Why the Gospel of Mark Used Scripture — a review of Writing with Scripture, part 1: “Per “Intertextual production of the Gospel of Mark”. Wikipedia. 29 June 2022. I added the following CC by Neil: [§.Comparison…” Jun 30, 00:03
James Faubel on How and Why the Gospel of Mark Used Scripture — a review of Writing with Scripture, part 1: “Who needs “witnesses” when one can just invent them along with your story many decades later?” Jun 29, 01:38
Neil Godfrey on Understanding the Emotional Jesus: temple tantrums, name-calling and grieving: “You should take a lesson from the post and try being more stoical! 😉” Jun 28, 23:58
L on Understanding the Emotional Jesus: temple tantrums, name-calling and grieving: “There’s nothing wrong with calling someone a hypocrite, it’s a call out for expressing hypocrisy. He called them hypocrites precisely…” Jun 28, 16:28
Pepe Cristiano on The Function of the Term: “Born of a Woman”: “The point here is that the inclusion of the woman destroys utterly the theological Leitmotiv meaning of the text and…” Jun 28, 08:58
Neil Godfrey on The Two Beasts of Revelation 13; and the Image, Mark and Number of the First Beast: “The basic idea behind Hadrian being from the sea is that his visits to the province of Asia (the setting…” Jun 27, 22:15
Neil Godfrey on The Function of the Term: “Born of a Woman”: “Yes, and even if one is not convinced of the case for interpolation, one does have to acknowledge the uncertainty…” Jun 27, 22:00
Neil Godfrey on The Two Witnesses in Revelation 11: the theories: “Thank you for the reference. I see I should have checked again with the archive.org text to see if my…” Jun 27, 21:58
Matt Morales on The Two Beasts of Revelation 13; and the Image, Mark and Number of the First Beast: “Hi Neil. Just going through this series now and there’s lots of good stuff here. Thank you for your efforts…” Jun 27, 13:57

Recent Posts

How and Why the Gospel of Mark Used Scripture — a review of Writing with Scripture, part 1 2022-06-28 23:02:24 GMT+0000

The Two Witnesses in Revelation 11: the theories 2022-06-24 21:19:47 GMT+0000

Revelation 12: The Woman, the Child, the Dragon – Wellhausen’s view 2022-06-22 10:37:43 GMT+0000

Measuring the Temple in Revelation 11 – the Questions Arising 2022-06-20 22:36:35 GMT+0000

Simeon The Just: The Forgotten Author Of The Hebrew Bible 2022-06-16 23:32:25 GMT+0000

Isaiah Sawn in Two — Origin of the Story 2022-06-08 23:54:13 GMT+0000

The Pale Horse of the Apocalypse, Its Rider and Companion 2022-06-07 03:00:37 GMT+0000

The Black Horse of the Apocalypse and its Rider 2022-06-06 07:42:15 GMT+0000

The Red Horse of the Apocalypse and Its Rider 2022-06-05 09:11:20 GMT+0000

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — Historical Person Interpretation 2022-06-04 23:40:57 GMT+0000

The White Horseman of the Apocalypse 2022-06-02 06:46:24 GMT+0000

The Common Situation Facing the Seven Churches of Revelation (?) 2022-05-30 08:47:31 GMT+0000

Hadrian — Man, Program and Impact in the Context of Revelation 2022-05-29 04:37:40 GMT+0000

Hadrian the God 2022-05-28 07:11:27 GMT+0000

The Throne of Satan in Revelation 2022-05-24 07:32:49 GMT+0000

The Doctrine of Balaam and the Nicolaitans 2022-05-23 03:20:21 GMT+0000

Miscellany 2022-05-18 06:03:53 GMT+0000

The 7 Kings of Revelation 17 — part 4 2022-05-17 23:55:23 GMT+0000

The 7 Kings of Revelation 17 — part 3 2022-05-16 08:44:57 GMT+0000

The 7 Kings of Revelation 17 — part 2 2022-05-12 23:40:41 GMT+0000

Most-Used Tags

Acts of the Apostles

Australia

Bart Ehrman

Bauckham: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

Biblical Scholarship

Charbonnel: Jesus Christ sublime figure de papier

Christianity

Christian Origins

Christ Myth Debate

Christ Myth Debate: Doherty

Criteria of Authenticity

Doherty: Jesus Neither God Nor Man

Earl Doherty

Epistles

Exchanges with McGrath

Fundamentalism

God and Other Deities

Gospel of John

Gospel of Luke

Gospel of Mark

Gospel of Matthew

Gospels

Gospels and Acts (Canonical)

Historical Jesus

Historical Method

Intertextuality

Islam

Israel-Palestine

James McGrath

John the Baptist

Josephus

Marcion

Maurice Casey

Midrash

Paul

Paul and his letters

Richard Bauckham

Richard Carrier

Robert M. Price

Roger Parvus

Terrorism

Thomas Brodie

Trump

USA

Vridar blog

Archives
Archives
Calendar
June 2022

S M T W T F S

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

« May
Meta

Log in

Entries feed

Comments feed

WordPress.org