Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Here is a list of some of the posts I have read and starred for future reference over this past week or two.
From Valerie Tarico:
From Heather Hastie:
Repeated by Ophelia Benson, originally a comment by Dave Ricks:
From Steve Wiggins:
From Salon.com
I have not included here those relating to studies of early Christianity or the bible. Maybe in another post….
The reason I’ve been slow to complete a new post lately is mainly because I’m buried in so much new reading. The major reading project that has taken most of my time is attempting to get on top of the relationships between the various Old Testament and Second Temple books as they address, in particular, the Fourth Servant Song (Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12) and the Suffering Servant. The Suffering Servant — and his Messianic function — did have an impact on some Jewish sects before Christianity emerged on the scene. The difficulty is – and this is why I’ve been so involved in more reading than writing lately — that each book I read raises further citations that I am keen to track down and also read more fully.
Recently I read and wrote about Raglan’s hero classification scheme. That, and hearing that another scholar (another one who is primarily an ancient historian and not a theologian) had applied Propp’s work on folktales to the story of the Exodus, prompted me to read Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. I have nearly completed this now and have been wondering if and how it might apply to the Gospels. Reading this has meant I’ve had to pause my study of Lévi-Strauss’s The Raw and the Cooked that takes another perspective on the way mythology is put together. I don’t know yet how much of all of this I’ll find applicable to the Gospels but I’m interested in working on that project once I’ve got a handle on both Propp and Lévi-Strauss.
And I’m also reading several articles (some quite lengthy ones) that a few readers have asked me to take a look at and comment on.
So it’s been a time of learning more than writing lately. (But the act of organizing thoughts for writing, and double-checking things, is also when I learn the most thoroughly.)
My writing outlet has come in sporadic comments on the earlywritings.com forum and the occasional comments on other blogs. Continue reading “A Pause – and What’s Been Happening on This Side”
Hi, everybody.
Recently we had some trouble with the WordPress JetPack plugin and outgoing emails. I’ve moved us over to a different plugin called Subscribe2. You may have noticed a slight change in the sidebar over on the right.
Issues:
Thanks for reading Vridar!
–Tim
Did you miss us?
Our recent downtime was self-inflicted. (I know Watts you’re thinking.) But anyhow, we’re on a new server in the Netherlands now, and so far everything seems to be working fine.
Dr Patrik Lindenfors, an associate professor at the Stockholm University, has asked me if I would be willing to help him by advertising his crowdfunded research project on this blog. I am honoured to do so and have just sent a donation to help out as well. He’s asking for public assistance because it’s outside his normal area of research.
His university website lists his areas of research and publications. He also has a personal webpage.
His Facebook page contains summaries of the new project.
The following is extracted from his webpage dedicated to explaining the project and the campaign for public assistance.
I propose to review potential placebo effects of religion and how these may explain why religious beliefs and practices are so common across human populations.
In my regular work I am a researcher of cultural evolution at Stockholm University. I have previously authored the books God Probably Doesn’t Exist, which has been translated into seven languages, and “Samarbete“, a popular science book in Swedish about the biological and cultural evolution of cooperation, currently being translated into English.
Now, I want to explore a proposal that has circulated in books and on-line discussions for a while – if there are any placebo effects of religion and whether these may be a partial explanation of the spread of religious beliefs and practices across human societies. . . . . .
You can read more and find out how to assist on the above links, in particular at the Divine Placebo webpage. Don’t delay though. He’s running out of time.
More from the site: Continue reading “Divine Placebo: A Request to Readers”
Best wishes for 2014 for all from Tim and me.
We have had our fair share of blog difficulties this year. They were initiated by one of those Bible scholars we are told so often are such terribly very nice people. Thanks to Tim Vridar was moved to a new site where we are no longer at the mercy of server owners who are prepared to act precipitously on the whims of disgruntled members of the body of Christ. Tim has also been responsible for troubleshooting the difficulties we had since our move and regular readers would have noticed a steady improvement in the interface and loading times. Unfortunately we have learned that our new server does not offer the quality service it used to give — we were down for some hours earlier today — so Tim will be moving us once again soon to a new site with lots of promise governance-wise and technically.
So a special thanks to Tim as well as to all readers who have continued to appreciate some of our posts, critically and otherwise.
Vridar is getting over 400 spam comments a day. This is too much for us reasonably to be expected to regularly check in any detail.
We do know that some comments for some unknown reason do get caught up in spam.
So if you post a comment that does not appear immediately please do email either Tim or myself (see the contact info page for how) and we will rescue your comment from the spam bin. Continue reading “Comments and Spam”
Today I received notice from WordPress that I was free to restore to public access my blog post in which I exposed Joel Watts as an incompetent scholar and lazy fool with respect to his efforts to argue against mythicists and even against the generally accepted nature of history itself as understood among historians. He did not contest my counter-claim to the original takedown notice within the 14 days required.
But after learning that Joel had clearly turned back his system clock to make it look like he had indeed sent me an email to try to arrange a one-to-one settlement to the dispute as required, and that he had subsequently removed the Creative Commons notice to the page that I had (rightfully) copied for critical review, I sent an amended counter-notice four days later. I asked about this and Automattic assured me that the amended counter-notice made no difference to the time schedule and that I am free to republish the post in question. Continue reading “Joel Watts Fails to Defend His DMCA Takedown Application Against Vridar”
Updated about 20 minutes after original post -- detail added to the "So why I did not find. . ." paragraph.
The only detail so far unexplained in the deactivation of the Vridar.wordpress blog is why I apparently did not receive a warning notice from WordPress itself.
The times below are in Australian Central Standard Time, my local time. (Some images may be over-size for iPad viewing but to reduce them further would make them difficult to read.)
There is no doubt that Joel Watts attached a CC (Creative Commons) Licence notice to the blog post of his that I copied and reused.
So what IS a CC licence?
The whole idea behind a CC licence (we might even call it the CC philosophy) is to foster a win-win situation in the world of ideas. That is, the person who creates the new work will not lose anything if someone else, who likes that work enough to want to re-use it, picks it up and does re-use it to create something new.
So, for example, if I post a new literary work, all sweated from my own furrowed imagination, like,
I feel so egg-ceptionally, god-blessed smart today that I think you have egg all over your godless dumb face
and you think, Wow!, I like that! — then the CC licence is just for you! But it’s also for me who was inspired to write the original!
It’s for me, since I only need check of the tick-boxes in the CC form to tell the world what I want and don’t want others doing with my inspired words — e.g. do I allow you to make $$$$ from my words? do I allow you to re-use without telling the world I was the original creator of those words?
And it’s for you — you can re-use my words any way you would like within the constraints of the check-boxes I ticked.
So if you take my words and create something that argues against their original intent, and even proves they are shite, no worries! If you have also created your post under a CC then I can take that, re-use it, and argue the exact opposite!
We could even have a dialogue! Continue reading “What is a Creative Commons (CC) Licence?”
Watch this space for a new post by Tim.
Meanwhile read Manoj Joseph’s recent comments.
On a related matter: Joel Watts has been writing quite a lot to portray WordPress.com through Automattic as diligently investigating the merit of his claim before posting a DMCA takedown notice. See Ugh – Once Again the DMCA and his various comments on James McGrath’s post, Vridar No Longer Available.
Well, if one reads the statement by Automattic that Joel has kindly posted for our benefit one can see that Automattic explained to Joel exactly what they checked. Read that second last one-sentence paragraph:
That’s it. They explained to Joel that they had received his DMCA takedown notice and reviewed it for completeness.
It was the same when I submitted my counterclaim. I had to check off a whole lot of boxes confirming I had included everything in my statement that they required. They did not check my or Joel’s blog sites to see if my statement was true.
That is, Automattic at this stage does not investigate and confirm the validity of the claims. That is a later process and the responsibility of a court. Automattic’s job is to be sure that each party submits its sworn statements according to due process.
One reader has posted a classic cartoon of the recent events as explained by a certain M. Joel Watts, MA. . . . For full details of the particular post by M. Watts that this cartoon depicts, as well as the original source photographs on which it is based (they are also classics!) you must visit the original post by pithom on his blog. It includes a little webliography of recent related posts, too.
Hi Everyone,
The original Vridar site has now been restored by WordPress.com minus one controversial post. I have disabled comments on that legacy site, though, since Vridar.org (the site y0u are reading now) will be the active one from now on.
The Vridar blog was deactivated by its hosting company, WordPress.com, in response to my reactivation of a post that I did not realize had been taken down as a result of a reader’s complaint.
I have since issued a counter-claim and WordPress.com has responded by contacting me to say they have reinstated the original blog minus the post in dispute. That post will remain inactive pending a further response from the claimant within 14 days.
We have Tim to thank for getting up this new site for Vridar so quickly.
I would like anyone who has produced a blogpost or knows of a blogpost discussing what has happened to the Vridar blog to drop a comment and link, here, please. Also — any online discussions maybe.
I have left comments on a couple I chanced upon and would like to reestablish contact with those (and I do apologize — last few days have been a bit chaotic and I haven’t kept records to recall who I have visited recently). We’ve lost all our old blog links and subscriber lists as far as I can tell and need to reestablish these from scratch. I’d also like to offer personal thanks to any blogger who has commented on this fiasco and perhaps give an explanation on any blog that has been misinformed about the facts.
Cheers and many thanks,
Neil
Here’s one I came upon a few moments ago. I’m sure there are a couple more somewhere (including another I commented on recently) . . .
Here’s the other one I was trying to recall at the time I wrote the above:
http://irrco.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/joel-watts-neil-godfrey-censorship-and-dishonesty/
and another:
http://irrco.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/dmca-censorship-and-the-wattsgodfrey-debacle/
Also Pithom’s —
http://againstjebelallawz.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/the-prayer-of-monsieur-twats/