Tag: Vridar blog

I’ve been having a break from real blogging since the past week. Need a breather and time for real life responsibilities. But when I return to the serious stuff that interests me most I want to address

• Roger Parvus’s latest three posts on the “Ignatian” letters,
• complete what I started with the study of George Athas’s arguments re Tel Dan,
• have a closer look at that Nazarene word, especially in light of Rene Salm’s recent articles and translations,
• finish notes from Horsley’s history of messianic movements up to the outbreak of the Jewish war,
• return to studying Herodotus and the Primary History of Israel and the relationship between the two,
• outline the evidence for the Persian and Hellenistic era provenance of the OT writings,
• catch up on some publications about Marcion and Paul’s letters,
• do more on the Lévi-Strauss model of myths and its application to Old and New Testament narratives,
• continue doing chapters of Earl Doherty’s book,
• try to finish my posts on midrash (if I can — I contacted one of the authors of one of the books I have been using to ask for clarification on a particular point I was about to address and have come away with more than I expected to think about),
• and a whole lot more in the back of my head that escape me at the moment.

Hence my lazy off-the-top-of-my-head reflections on things I’ve covered a million times before and that still seem to bug  the arrogant and ignorant.

I was reading Richard Carrier’s comments that Dr McGrath pointed to recently and note him saying that a PhD is the equivalent of 10,000 hours of training. I wish I had the time and opportunity for that (my circumstances did not permit me to take up an invitation for higher studies at the end of my post grad educational studies degree) since I painfully aware of my limitations as an amateur hobbyist in the area of biblical studies. I know I often present a slapdash argument or statement assuming that what I have said somewhere else a week or more ago is on any other reader’s minds, too. And I look back and am embarrassed at how often I have presented a point very badly.

I get a lot out of reading many formal scholarly works from a range of disciplines, and Doherty’s works, and it’s not always the raw content — often I’m studying the argumentation, the logic, the presentation and structure of the argument, etc. (And yes, this is where I find a lot of historical Jesus works a very mixed bag of flashes of brilliant insights and absurdly baseless circular and incredibly blinkered arguments.)

Anyway, before I get back to what I love to blog about the most, I have at hand some notes I hope to do up soon – one on the way a historian of relatively modern history uses myths and legends as sources in his historical inquiries, and another on how a historian uses certain kinds of analysis of ancient inscriptions in order to reconstruct historical events. I believe both illustrations demonstrate the point I have made for some time now about the different approaches of New Testament historians (I hope that’s a valid term — I copy it from Dr McGrath after he chastised me for using the term “biblical historians”) to the Gospels for their inquiries into the historical Jesus and the way other historians handle material that is mythical or in need of close literary analysis to decipher its meaning.

I’m looking for other blogs that also discuss the Bible and Bible scholarship in depth as I do here. I don’t mean from the same perspective — no matter if they are Catholic, Mormon, atheist, anything — just curious to know what else there is in internet-land that discusses biblical questions as regularly and analytically as I attempt to do here.

Many thanks.

(Email me if reluctant to post here: neilgodfrey1[AT]gmail[DOT]com)

If “hits” are an indication of what posts others have found of most use or interest, then I can say that the following two tables list the dozen most useful or interesting posts I have done

1. since late November 2006 when I started the Vridar blog;
2. in the past 12 months.

The lists should help clarify the sort of blog this is and what its primary impact has been. Continue reading “The 12 most read posts on Vridar”

I have posted several times explaining what the purpose of this blog is and what my interests and motivations are. It is all there, including links to those posts, in my “About” page that I have updated today.

Well I can now more or less say that on the basis of a poll that contained a sample of over a 100 responses (I cannot affirm that there were 100 respondents) that I set up about a week ago that slightly fewer than 40% of the readership of Vridar identify themselves as “mythicists” in the sense of believing that Jesus was not historical in the sense of being a real person who acted out his career in first century Palestine.

Half the readers are either believers in the historicity of Jesus or undecided. Continue reading “Vridar Readers and Vridar Futures”

In my previous post I misdirected anyone interested in following up where I posted on Dale Allison’s discussion of circularity in historical Jesus studies. I have since corrected that link. Here it is again:

Clarity about circularity by Dale Allison

The point being that Hobsbawm’s insistence on the need for independent evidence is designed to avoid just this circularity that is at the core of historical Jesus studies. His attempt to equate Hobsbawm’s historical concerns with those of Allison curiously manages to avoid this central point and difference between the two approaches to history.

It does not do to try to change the rules and say we have to work without independent evidence in the case of the gospels because it doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist then we need to ask questions of the evidence that will allow us to work within the norms of a valid logic that avoids circularity.

2010 has been a strange year blogwise. Had never expected so many readers — and especially appreciate the comments, supportive, corrective and informative.

Thanks all — glad to have made your company.

Wishing you all a good new year.

And may all the historical Jesus scholars be nice.

I like the idea of blog comments being threaded to enable replies to specific comments to be kept together, but a few times (not often) the comments do get quite numerous and it can be easy to miss someone’s latest contribution if it is nested in the middle of a long series of posts. The alternative is get rid of nesting altogether and have all comments listed in chronological sequence. I am in two minds about it, so am soliciting other views.

If interested do register an opinion in the poll I have set at the top of the left margin or here:

[polldaddy poll=4288732]