hjalti

Well, to be fair, I think that Joel simply doesn't understand CC, from a new post on his blog: I mean, CC doesn't allow everything (e.g. his license said that you had to attribute him), but it's absolutely clear that Neil was well within his rights. Joel doesn't seem to get that, and then goes on to write stuff like this: "Finding that people are generally too ignorant to understand the point of CC,..."

James The Least

From Vridar

"So what is Joel’s method here? How does he prove his point that history is a science? It appears he Googles the phrase “history is a science” or similar, collects a quick grab-bag of URLs that pop up, and posts them as a “There! Gotcha!” But he can’t help but notice a few at least don’t support the idea, so he mentions that too.

"What he doesn’t grasp is that the whole collection is nothing but a testimony to the fact that history is not today considered a science — the main exceptions being some Marxists. The days when many historians thought of it as a science are now over a century gone.

"Unfortunately for Joel Watts I have checked every one of those links and not a single one of them demonstrates that history is a science. Many/most (not “some”) of them actually argue the very opposite!"

As this sorry episode demonstrates, one must tread lightly when advancing the idea that the emperor wears no clothes. It can be whispered, but not shouted, because then the emperor will try to kill you. Or shut down your blog.

This is not the first time that Vridar has exposed a Bible scholar's ideas to be based on utterly fallacious misunderstandings. Edward T. Hall's theory on "high context culture" was recruited by scholars as support for Paul's silence about the historic Jesus, but when Neil actually read Hall's book, he found that Hall actually argued the opposite of what the Bible scholars thought he said.

neilgodfrey

One irony here is that I probably know more about copyright in relation to online and academic publishing than most others, including academics, given that a significant part of my job is responsible for advice to academics publishing in an online environment.

Several times I have had to field quite false ideas in this blog world about how digital publishing, academic library process and copyright works among other New Testament students and scholars, both UK and US.

I am still trying to understand Joel's image of evidence that he emailed a request to modify my post. Something's wrong here and I simply cannot understand it. Gmail is renowned for hording emails, not deleting them. I have tried word searching across all folders, including spam, as well as browsing by date and sender -- simply nothing in my Gmail account, from either Joel or Wordpress prior to the take-down. How is that possible?

(I can understand a stuffup in Wordpress's case -- busy busy and big org, etc. But I can't understand Joel's evidence.)

neilgodfrey

Another classic case is McGrath's use of Jan Vansina, a prominent scholar of oral history. I have also demonstrated that McG has quote-mined Vansina in one of his published articles to make it appear the external discipline of oral history supports the oral tradition model used to explain the Gospels.

http://vridar.org/2012/01/26/oral-hi...esus-paradigm/

If one is going to argue that mythical embellishments were very quickly added to historical events soon after Jesus' death through orality one cannot use Vansina's book quote-mined by McGrath to make that case.

But the whole sorry episode is most apparent in so many NT scholars' failure to understand the nature of historical inquiry outside their own field generally. In the recent case of Joel Watts' post what we are seeing here is not only ignorance but arrogant and belligerent wielding of ignorance to wage ideological warfare.

(If I dare say so as an aside, we see the same thing among some scientists in their ideological war against certain current social issues. It's always been with us, first addressed, as far as I am aware, by Julien Benda in "The Treason of the Intellectuals". That's what much of the controversy is ultimately about. And history and religion are probably among the most ideological of any discipline.)

outhouse

Not sticking up for McGrath.


It all depends on the context of how one uses Vansina.


Oral tradition is one thing, and you cannot deny it in these illiterate cultures.


But what were really dealing with is cross cultural oral tradition, and we have plenty examples of this in Jewish history to understand the historical kernels that possibly exist, and ones that are whole pressed mythology.

Grog

Teeple, in the 70s addressed this well in the paper "The Oral Tradition that Never Was."

mountainman

Well then what do you expect?

I worked for almost 20 years with all forms of intellectual property.


My advice (which should be your own assessment) is to write to the powers that be and offer to withdraw and review the offensive page.

You have hundreds of other pages (the rest of your site) which do not violate copyright.

Why make yourself a scapegoat over one fucking page dude?

You can say the same thing with (quite legally acceptable) partial quotation.

Take the path of least resistance.

And if you need and want the support of numbers in this retraction and reinstatement you only need post here.

Good luck Neil.




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

aspronot

I have filters in Gmail to consign unwanted mail to the nether-nether. Filters can be set up to bypass trash so that there is no record of the targeted mail being received at all. Perhaps check any filters you may have created in the past?

Edit: Correction. I just checked and such mail still appears in the "All Mail" folder (which I never look at normally).

ApostateAbe

I suggest that Neil Godfrey use this opportunity to choose another blog host. Wordpress has a bad reputation for security.

outhouse

Teeple addressed this but didn't come close to overturning any such known view.


There is no debate at all, that oral tradition was alive and well in these illiterate cultures.

try again