Neil Godfrey vs Richard Carrier

[timoneill]

Is no-one to be spared from Neil's disapproval? Even the great and mighty Artie Ziff deserves the librarian's wrath? Can anyone at all meet Neil's lofty standards of loftyness?

"Richard Carrier’s Review of Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus"

[sankari]

The constant infighting between Carrier, Godfrey and Verenna is a pleasure to witness.

[gakuseidon]

May 7, 2013 22:21:51 GMT timoneill said:

Is no-one to be spared from Neil's disapproval? Even the great and mighty Artie Ziff deserves the librarian's wrath? Can anyone at all meet Neil's lofty standards of loftyness?

Are you saying that "Loftyness is next to Godfreyness"?

I seriously think there may be something wrong with Godfrey. It's not that he blasts those he disagrees with, it's how he does it. There is a touch of paranoia in it. For example, in the link in your OP, Godfrey writes:

"Because of their [Carrier's and Verenna's] careless oversights (accompanied, one must presume, with a lack of interest in seriously checking to see if their grounds for darkening Zindler’s character were real) both have recklessly cast slanderous aspersions upon the integrity of Frank Zindler."

"Recklessly cast slanderous aspersions"? Who writes like that? He sees personal vendettas everywhere, disagreements are signs of "irrational hatred". If he is sitting at his computer and really thinking that people are motivated by personal vendettas against him or irrational hatred of him (rather than disagreeing because they think he is wrong on occasion) then that is a little sad.

[unkleE]

May 8, 2013 13:19:16 GMT gakuseidon said:

If he is sitting at his computer and really thinking that people are motivated by personal vendettas against him or irrational hatred of him (rather than disagreeing because they think he is wrong on occasion) then that is a little sad.

Yes, I read the Vridar link, and Carrier's and Verenna's posts on the subject, and I found Godfrey & Carrier more sad than funny. Neil misconstrued Verenna's comments on Zindler as well (thus getting in a lather of words without basis) while Carrier has an amazing view of his own importance (which is aggravating), making both of their comments somehow unreal as well as sad.

[sankari]

May 8, 2013 13:19:16 GMT gakuseidon said:

I seriously think there may be something wrong with Godfrey. It's not that he blasts those he disagrees with, it's how he does it. There is a touch of paranoia in it.

Godfrey's defensiveness is a direct product of the fundamentalist mentality he developed during his time with Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God.

He describes his experience here.

[unkleE]

May 9, 2013 2:24:33 GMT sankari said:

Godfrey's defensiveness is a direct product of the fundamentalist mentality he developed during his time with Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God.

Do you think it is the result or the cause?

[sankari]

May 9, 2013 2:57:46 GMT unkleE said:

May 9, 2013 2:24:33 GMT sankari said:

Godfrey's defensiveness is a direct product of the fundamentalist mentality he developed during his time with Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God.

Do you think it is the result or the cause?

The result.

Godfrey was raised in a Methodist family, but the Methodists are not fundamentalists so he wouldn't have picked it up from there. It was the WCG that tipped him over the edge:

As a fundamentalist WCG believer I believed I had all the big answers to the big questions of life. I simply shut my mind to any idea that questioned those answers.

[wraggy]

Well you learn something every day. I had no idea he was a fellow Aussie.

[fortigurn]

The best part of the entire page (only just ahead of Neil's subscribers pointing out various hypocrisies in what he wrote), is this comment from Hector Avalos, quoted by permission by someone in the comments.

“Although I had formal training in archaeology at the University of Arizona (B.A. Anthropology, 1982 + 1 year of graduate work in Anthropology which is the home department for archaeology), I hesitate to provide any definitive answer to the question of the existence of Nazareth without a very thorough investigation of the archaeological reports, and a more direct assessment of the site. I hope to do that in the near future.

I did visit Nazareth, including The Church of the Annunciation, in 2000 but I did not conduct an archaeological investigation. I was there as part of a tour associated with the Bethsaida Excavation Project, for which I did publish an article discussing some of the artifacts found at that site: Hector Avalos, “Bethsaida in Light of the Study of Ancient Health Care,” in Rami Arav and Richard Freund, eds. Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee, Volume 3 (Kirksville: Truman State University Press; 2004) 213-231.

Textually, I think that the word “Nazareth” does refer to a town in Mark 1:9, among other places in the NT. However, our manuscripts of Mark are from the third century and later, and so it is difficult to know what was added to those manuscripts between the first century, when it was presumably originally written, and the third century.

Some place names, after all, were probably added to texts that lacked them originally. For example, some early manuscripts (e.g., P46) of Ephesians may not have had “Ephesus” in Ephesians 1:1.

However, there are no significant variants of Mark 1:9 pertaining to “Nazareth” noted in my UBS 4th edition, and so the “authenticity” of that word in Mark 1:9 is about as certain as the authenticity of the word “Jerusalem” in other passages in Mark.

René Salm does raise some important questions about the archaeology of what is called Nazareth today, especially since much of the evidence derives from a time (1890s and early 1900s) that archaeology was not as well developed methodologically.

On the other hand, I think that Salm has a very difficult time proving a negative, especially since he himself says:”Very little of the Nazareth basin has ever come under the archaeologist’s spade, and most of the area is now thoroughly urban and built over”(René Salm, The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus [Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2008], p. 222). If that is the case, then how can we be sure that Nazareth did not exist in that basin?

Salm has found some errors in some of the recent reports on the Nazareth Village Farm published by Stephen Pfann, et al., in Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 25 (2007), but those errors do not prove the non-existence of Nazareth.

I also think that the so-called kokh-tomb evidence is problematic for Salm because such tombs are not representative of all the burial venues that could have existed. Kokh-tombs may represent the tombs of the wealthier inhabitants, and so Salm’s later dating for them does not disprove the existence of inhabitants who may have been buried with less expensive methods.

A useful recent discussion on this issue may be found in Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 26 (2008), which has articles by Salm, and some of his critics (e.g., Stephen J. Pfann, Yehudah Rapuano, Ken Dark).

So, although I appreciate Salm’s efforts to question archaeological conclusions, I cannot say that he has successfully disproven the existence of Nazareth. On the other hand, more archaeological work is needed to establish Nazareth’s existence in Jesus’ lifetime more definitively.”

[himself]

When Genesis refers to "Ur of the Chaldees," there is no expectation that Ur existed in the Chaldean era, only that the author was trying to locate Abram's point of origin for then-modern readers who might have wondered "Where is that?" In the same manner, a modern writer might state that the Iroquois tribe lived in New York State.

[fortigurn]

Jason Goertzen, one of Godfrey's followers, calls him out on a charge of hypocrisy (emphasis mine). The irony is rich, especially when Goertzen complains of precisely the same kind of behavior which James McGrath has observed in Godfrey's interaction with him.

“…wrote condescendingly…”

Unlike your own reviews of people you don’t like, which are nothing but respectful, right Neil? Are you not aware of the irony of your criticism of Carrier for this? Go back and read some of your own reviews of people you strongly disagree with (Hoffman comes to mind…), and ask yourself if you have the right to complain about this.

“[T]he clear suggestion that only Carrier knows what’s right and wrong when it comes to the question of Nazareth…”

More irony. You pontificate on a wide range of subjects, Neil, and when you do, you treat people who disagree like stubborn students. Even when I’ve laid out in painstaking detail how the logic of your argument breaks down the *best* I can hope for is for you to stop using the argument, to move the goal post, and to pretend like you’ve actually meant something else all along.

“As for the suggestion that mythicists somehow are all one with Acharya S in their reactions to criticism, with the only exception being that Salm is “not quite that defensive” (Acharya is never “DEfensive”!)…”

Once again, Neil, you show no interest in addressing what I’m actually saying, and prefer to twist it into a strawman. I didn’t say ALL mythicists. I said some mythicists. I am more or less convinced of mythicism. If I had to bet, I’d go with it. So no, I don’t think ALL mythicists are overly sensitive. Robert Price, for instance, doesn’t seem to be. And I didn’t present Acharya’s over-sensitivity as being representative of all mythicists. I presented her fans’ zeal as being the *extreme* case. That this is what you got out of what I said is just another example of how uncharitably you treat the opinions of those you disagree with.

“…or that everyone seems to be very sensitive to everyone else’s tone — this is absurd. We are talking about Richard Carrier’s review here.”

Oh is that what we were talking about? What’s absurd is how quick you are to talk to me like an idiot in a post criticizing Richard Carrier for being disrespectful. What’s absurd is that you would object to mentioning the broader context of the discussion (i.e., everyone objecting to everyone else’s tone, while not watching their own), as though it were irrelevant. Get real, Neil. Honestly, I don’t know why I bother replying to your blogs when I disagree, when this is, reliably, how you respond.

[sankari]

I'm amazed that the mythicists don't seem to realise what the real problem is here: uninformed amateurs with massive egos who cannot tolerate the idea that they might be wrong about anything.

Hubris, Dunning-Kruger syndrome and cognitive dissonance. It's exactly what we've said all along.

[unkleE]

May 9, 2013 6:16:57 GMT wraggy said:

Well you learn something every day. I had no idea he was a fellow Aussie.

Aussies have already stealthily taken over this forum - tomorrow the world!!

[wraggy]

Some of the best American actors in Hollywood are Aussies too.

The invasion has begun.

[sandwiches]

Some of the best American actors in Hollywood are Aussies too.

Indeed, I was looking at the very impressive list below, which seems to include every actor who has even seen Australia on a map, apart from Mel Gibson (who of course is most definitely American)....

www.imdb.com/list/2O6oQZL7nUM/

The 40 Best Australian Actors/Actresses