here are comments from NG's blog

[StephenGoranson]

Stephen Goransonsays:
2022-10-02 15:16:38 GMT+0000 at 15:16
Concerning “This traditional view holds that the Bible grew out of the literary matrix of Mesopotamia and Syria-Canaan. Possible Greek influence is not even considered.”
Greek possible influence maybe in Kohelet, Proverbs, and Daniel, for example, have long been considered.
In TaNaK, that is, rather than in Torah——-both evidently imo grew by long accretion.

Reply
Neil Godfreysays:
2022-10-02 21:58:59 GMT+0000 at 21:58
Thanks for the correction, though someone in another place had alerted me to the error and I had fixed it before you posted your comment.

But do note that “this traditional view” was a clear reference to the Documentary Hypothesis and it was that that I was discussing — and Ecclesiastes, Proverbs and Daniel are not part of the DH.

Reply
Stephen Goransonsays:
2022-10-03 13:29:06 GMT+0000 at 13:29
If, on the c.273-272 Torah creation hypothesis, Judaeans/Samaritans/Israelites had no national literature, what was there to “erase”?
And if, hypothetically, such was nonetheless erased (“clean slate”), what then was hypothetically incorporated in c. 273-272?

“Plato’s program of creating a mythic past in which the divine laws of the nation had been established in distant antiquity faced an obvious practical difficulty, namely the living memory of the new colonists. Plato fully recognized this problem and sought to overcome it by devising strategies to erase the nation’s memory of any other way of life, like erasing a tablet and starting with a clean slate. In order to erase the cultural memories of the past and replace them with new memories, the rulers would exercise complete control over the nation’s education, literature, public speech and cultural contacts with other nations…” (Gmirkin 2017 = Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible, 255.)

Reply
Neil Godfreysays:
2022-10-03 19:18:20 GMT+0000 at 19:18
According to RG’s thesis, Plato’s program was not copied slavishly in every detail by the authors of biblical books nor was every situation Plato described transferrable to another people. Even Plato allowed for variations. See the latest post for the sources verifying this fact: https://vridar.org/2022/10/03/why-genes ... imaeus-3b/

A good critic of a thesis will begin by first demonstrating that he has a clear grasp of the idea he is criticizing and will present it in its strongest form possible: he will then apply his critique.

Distorted readings of the texts and misapplications of them only demonstrate that the critic is intellectually dishonest in his agenda.

Reply
Stephen Goransonsays:
2022-10-03 19:58:02 GMT+0000 at 19:58

Oh, so not *exactly*? Well, perhaps, NG, you forgot reading what Russell Gmirkin wrote on Biblical Criticism and History Forum on August 26, 2022: “This is exactly what happened with the creation of the Hebrew Bible after 270 BCE.”
Neil Godfreysays:
2022-10-03 20:05:20 GMT+0000 at 20:05
You have a distinctive ability to read the letter of selected words and miss their intent and context, taking the letter to use as a tool for your vicious agenda, Stephen. A charitable reader would note the apparent contradictory words that RG has written and seek to understand the context of each and the sense of what he was conveying each time.

There is no place for you here. I have seen too much of your personal hostility and vendettas on display elsewhere to trust you here.

[Stuart]

Give it a rest. This is petty.

On other forums, when people start feuding like this, they get warnings from the mods. And posts like this which are only meant to stir things up publicly result in bans for a period of time.

When a post is deleted it's usually because the poster realizes it was either a mistake or would be received badly. So they take it down. Respect that and move on.

[Leucius Charinus]

Stephen if you ran a personal blog site and archive you'd do precisely the same thing.

[neilgodfrey]

I did not delete any of those comments, Stephen. You simply don't know how to look for them. Try going to the correct post.

[neilgodfrey]

Stephen -- every single one of those comments are on the blog and I did not at all remove any of them.

But I did say there was no place for casuistry and that you were no longer welcome there.

Future comments of yours will go straight to spam. But everything you think I've deleted has remained there.

[neilgodfrey]

Stephen, I expect an apology and a retraction of your false accusation.

[neilgodfrey]

Stephen -- I find it interesting that you apparently made copies of all of your comments and my replies as if expecting me to delete them, and when you presumably went back to the wrong post and didn't see them you assumed your malicious expectations about what I might have done were proven correct.

You are the victim of your own malice and incompetence.

[neilgodfrey]

Stephen -- if you clicked on the right post, the one where you posted your comments -- you would see Russell's reply to your last comment.

I will leave it to you to try to find it for yourself, if you can -- don't bother replying because you are now on my spam list. Τhough all your existing comments will remain along with the replies to them.

(All recent comments are listed in the right column of the blog. Yours have always appeared there and have never been removed.)

[StephenGoranson]

I copied the comments because one of my comments had the following appended:
"Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is a preview; your comment will be visible after it has been approved"
so I copied comments in case they were dismissed, so I could remember them if they went away.

Also, another comment recently had been removed, then later restored. And I did not see one of my comments in the right column.

Also, I see that the NG comment that originally included
"There is no place for you here."
has been rewritten, without notice, to
"There is no place for casuistry here."

Therefore, I'm not sure which version of the changing status of that blog-in-flux is to be trusted as the basis of complaint about a supposed "vicious agenda."
It is possible that I mixed up two or more versions of those changes in the unreliable blog; if so, then my mistake.

More importantly, imo,
the claim that a Greek ruler arranged for erasing national memory in the people of Judaea/Samaria/Israel and replacing it
is historically unreliable, counter-indicated,
and is also a potentially dangerous fantasy conspiracy prejudice.

[neilgodfrey]

No, Stephen, that is not acceptable. This thread is about me and my supposed "whatever" about removing your comments. THAT Is what is "more important" here. At no time were the comments you posted in the OP removed. If you did not see one of them for a moment it was not because it was removed, and as you admitted, you did see it reappear.

(If you did not see one of your links to a comment on the right margin it is because that list only contains a limited number of the total recent comments and you certainly must have seen that your name was there -- linking to at least the latest of your comments that you here accuse me of removing!)

You have just admitted now that you never saw all of those comments removed and that you lied.

I want an apology