Neil Godfrey thinks Rene Salm has refudiated Ken Dark, and tries to bankshot Carrier

 I had added Vridar to my blogroll, with all of its problems, because of some of Godfrey's comments and observations about Carrier.

But, now, with this piece by him, it seems that Godfrey's real goal is just to slam-dunk on Carrier.

First, here's what I said as a comment there:

Salm isn't even an academic or with an academic degree. (Sigh.) 

I've read Dark's long piece from 2020, and browsed some of his later online writing. 

I've also read an even more recent piece from Bruce Chilton, on Jesus as "mamzer" and a likely solution, that the Bethlehem near Jerusalem wasn't the only Bethlehem, and that there was another ... Six miles or so southwest of Nazareth. 

I'm not an academic, but I do have a graduate theological degree. (And, unlike Carrier, while I'm here, I read Hebrew as well as Greek.) Otherwise, if Neil's primary purpose is slam-dunking on Carrier, I can, and do, do that on my own. 

So, no, this impresses me not. I had added Vridar to the blogroll for my own site on critical religion. May be time to undo that again.

There you go.

Second, here's my piece from 2021 about Dark's big 2020 piece, refuting Jonathan M.S. Pearce and his mythicism-lite. (He later got refudiated on other things.)

Per that, and per what I told Godfrey, Salm has no graduate or even undergraduate degree relevant to the field. 

In a second 2020 piece, Dark notes that his claims about specific sites at Nazareth have often been misconstrued in the media. I'm sure Salm, not an academic, tagged along. Finally, here's a 2024 piece, a precis of his most recent book, in essence, discussing the reliability or not of oral history.

I haven't yet pulled Vridar back down, with the idea of keeping it up for shits and giggles if nothing else.