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Per WP:BRD. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:44, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Extended content
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Alvar Ellegårddiff edit-summary: "no citations", removed
That's two citations. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:23, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Thomas L. Thompson
diff edit-summary "per talk page, Thompson is simply not a mythicist and so adding him here is incredibly misleading", removed subsection on Thomas L. Thompson. Bultmanndiff edit-summary " bultmann's views are outdated, as the very sentence in which he is mentioned shows", removed
No objection, I guess, though Bultmann does not seem to be irrelevant. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:38, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Frazerdiff edit-summary "this section is about proponents of mythicism, not non-mythicist authors who have vaguely influenced mythicism"; removed
References
Serious? The influences on mythicists are not about mythicism? A reference by Price? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:41, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Christ myth theoristsChrist myth theory#Christ myth theorists
diff edit-summary van Manen
diff edit-summary
References
The topic of this article is the Christ Myth Theory, not only Christ Myth Theorists. Van Manen, and the Dutch Radical School, are relevant for the topic. See also Van Voorst, cited at Radical criticism, and The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present, which refers to Van Manen. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:28, 14 January 2019 (UTC) (Lack of) biographical information
diff edit-summary
with
References
Overview of main arguments - bullit-list and bolding
diff, edit-summary Dating
diff, edit-summary "reorganizing"
diff, edit-summary Historicity of the Gospelsdiff changed a subheader from "The Gospels are not historical records" into "Historicity of the Gospels." The section is about the arguments of the CM-Theorists, but soit. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 08:42, 14 January 2019 (UTC) First the mainstream view, or first the mythicists?Lack of surviving historic records
diff, edit-summary Brother of the Lord
diff, edit-summary "redundant references"
diff, edit-summary Ah, here the note on Ph2:6-11 was removed. See above. I've re-inserted the line + reference, and the note. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:24, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Liberal theology
diff,
diff, edit-summary Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:17, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Notes
diff, edit-summary
Paul-Louis Couchoud
diff edit-summary Diversity and parallels
diff, edit-summary Same for this one and thisone. While this one has already been re-inserted, and edited. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 11:04, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Celestial being - order of info
diff, edit-summary The summarizing may be good diff. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 11:16, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Exaltation Christology
diff, edit-summary Scholarly reception
diff, edit-summary Thompson (again)
diff, edit-summary Wells (again)
diff, edit-summary Doherty
diff, edit-summary Price
diff, edit-summary Carrier
diff, edit-summary
Questioning the competence of proponents
diff, edit-summary
diff, edit-summary Pauline epistles
diff, edit-summary I've re-inserted the whole section on "Celestial being"; the original version simply makes more sense, including the ""Early High Christology Club," which is one sentence. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 19:16, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Enough for today; I'm a volunteer, not a payed staffer. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 19:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Josephus
diff, edit-summary
diff, edit-summary
Why? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:26, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Red notes
diff, edit-summary
diff, edit-summary Personification of Logos and Wisdom
diff, edit-summary Diversity and parallels
Early-20th-century proponents
diff, edit-summary
Remsburg
diff, edit-summary
So, Remsburg seems acceptable here too. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 08:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Arguments - van Voorst
diff, edit-summary
Lack of biographical information
diff, edit-summary Celestial being (again)
diff, edit-summary Jesus lived in a dim past
diff, edit-summary
Pauline epistles (again)
diff, edit-summary Genre
diff, edit-summary Weaving together various traditions - Wells
diff, edit-summary Josephus and Tacitus
diff, edit-summary John Allegro
diff, edit-summary Mainstream historical view
diff, dit-summary Straus
diff, edit-summary
Radical Dutch School (again)
diff, edit-summary Dating and authorship/genre
diff, edit-summary Non-working citation
diff, edit-summary Tacitusdiff - again, reversing the mainstream-mythicist order. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 10:20, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Mack
diff, edit-summary Historical Jesus
diff, edit-summary Real being
diff, edit-summary Redundant notes
diff, edit-summary Done - next, and proposalDone. Now, check all the notes, and remove as many as possible. Then re-assess various sections and subsections. May I propose that IP74 does not add any further note without discussing first? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 10:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Not done yet... - Celestial being
diff, edit-summary Maccoby
diff, edit-summary
into
References
"Vague"? Or some aversion against the word "myth"? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 06:35, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
diff, edit-summary Scholarly reception - Maurice Casey
diff, edit-summary
|
@
Yamla: could you please explain
this revert? Your edit-summay, rv, cited quote uses 'on', not 'one'
makes no sense to me. Which quote are you referring to, and why did rever a whole serie of edits, and includes the removal of multiple references and notes. Why?
Joshua Jonathan -
Let's talk!
18:12, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Ah, I see (emphasis mine):
Ehrman also notes that mythicist views would prevent one from getting employment in a religious studies department:
These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land one in a bona fide department of biology. [1]
References
I'm taking the liberty to re-revert the rest, presuming that was a misunderstanding, minus the "e"-typo in the Ehrman-quote. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 19:07, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
I've re-ordered the info in the Christ myth theory#Arguments section, to more strictly follow Bauer's threefold argument. I hope that this makes the structure clearer, and adresses Wallingfordtofay's concerns about the repetition of arguments. Some more fine-tuning is probably needed, but this is the basic idea. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:08, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
I still think that the traditional views on Jesus should be given before the scholarly views. The argument that the existence of Jesus is purely a historical question, may overrate the background of the scholars on this topic. See Michael Licona (2016), Is the Sky Falling in the World of Historical Jesus Research?, Bulletin for Biblical Research, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2016), pp. 353-368.
See also Keith & Le Donne; Price is not alone in his criticisms of the criteria being used in the quest for the historical Jesus, nor in his "Jesus agnosticism." Nor is Thompson: "...a larger process of accounting for how and why early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did." Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:12, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
The radical solution was to deny the possibility of reliable knowledge of Jesus, and out of this developed the Christ myth theory, according to which Jesus never existed as an historical figure and the Christ of the Gospels was a social creation of a messianic community." (source: Farmer, William R. 1975 "A Fresh Approach to Q," Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults (Vol 2), eds. Jacob Neusner, Morton Smith Brill, 1975) p. 43)
This scholastic mess has been an open secret in biblical history circles for decades. Over forty years ago, professors like Robin S. Barbour and Cambridge’s Morna Hooker were complaining about the naïve assumptions underlying the criteria biblical scholars used to gauge the “authentic” elements of the Jesus stories. Today, even Christian historians complain the problem is no better; most recently Anthony Le Donne and Chris Keith in the 2012 book Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity.
Joshua, one of your more recent edits has been to include a refer to vridar.org, Neil Godfrey's blog. Godfrey is a ridiculously unreliable source and I've removed the citation. Another check reveals that vridar is cited a few times in the page. Do you have any reason for why they should be included, or should I just move ahead and remove them? Wallingfordtoday ( talk) 02:07, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
2605:A000:160C:A1EE:71D3:58AC:F719:3A53 ( talk) 14:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)Neil Godfrey and Tim Widowfield, who both write at Vridar . . . happen to be some of the most astute and well-read amateurs you can read on the internet on the subject of biblical historicity. I call them amateurs only for the reason that they don’t have, so far as I know, advanced degrees in the subject. But I have often been impressed with their grasp of logic and analysis of scholarship. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect their work.
— User:Richard Carrier, March 2014
I agree with Wallingfordtoday, we should probably not include blogs. As for the quote the IP left, it's a bit beside the point. Someone can be absolutely right without being RS. RS is not necessarily about knowledge. Amateurs writing blogs are not RS, no matter how insightful they might be. Jeppiz ( talk) 15:32, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Ehrman notes that "the mythicists have become loud, and thanks to the Internet they've attracted more attention". [1] Within a few years of the inception of the World Wide Web (c. 1990), mythicists such as Earl Doherty began to present their argument to a larger public via the internet. [q 1] Doherty created the website The Jesus Puzzle in 1996, [2] while the organization Internet Infidels has featured the works of mythicists on their website [3] and mythicism has been mentioned on several popular news sites. [4]
References
Ehrman.2015.Debate
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Doherty.2011.Godfrey
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Internet.Infidels.Historicity
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Joshua, I just checked back on the page and continue finding you adding criticisms within scholarship of scholarship rather than criticism of mythicists against scholarship. This Wiki page isn't about what Meier or Hendel (a non-NT scholar who has no expertise on this topic) thinks is wrong with scholarship, it's what mythicists think is wrong with scholarship. Wallingfordtoday ( talk) 16:54, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
Mainstream historical-critical view, by the way, not
mainstream historical critical review. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 14:49, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
I've been off of Wikipedia for the last several days because of my workload, though I'm here now. I see Joshua has reinsterted many things, so let's begin by trying to discuss this one. Joshua, you've reinserted Thompson on the basis of him fitting the definition of mythicist per Ehrman's point of view. I don't quite see any such thing. As far as I'm concerned, Thompson's point is that Ehrman misrepresented him when styling him as a mythicist, not merely differed in the definition of his terminology so as to include Thompson's views into mythicism.
Another issue we'll focus on for now is something was reverted back I didn't want to see. A lot of editing I did had to do with the unbelievably intensity of the length of the article, which tediously goes over every mythicist explanation of debated verse rather than provides summarizes of mythicist views. Some of the explanations of "mythicist views" aren't actually mythicist views at all. Every scholar, for example, thinks that Christology was influenced by Jewish Wisdom literature. So what's the point of the section on this? Not only that, but for some odd reason, there are two different sections both about the exact same thing: Jesus being a celestial Jesus. I can hardly tell why, though it's been apparently brought back into the article because it's "interesting" or "seems relevant" or something. Wallingfordtoday ( talk) 23:10, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
2605:A000:160C:83E1:100C:75B8:CB44:F8E5 ( talk) 07:13, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[When] my friend and former colleague, Thomas L. Thompson, in The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David from 2005 seeks to dissolve the Jesus figure of the Gospels as a historical figure, making him, so to speak, the epitome of biblical and other—far older—Near Eastern concepts of a royal Messiah, the question of historicity invites us to look in other directions for an answer, rather than to try to identify ipsissima verba Iesu or situations which could have been historical recollections. This is not to deny that the Jesus story in the Gospels is saturated with reminiscences of Old Testament figures and events, the Old Testament being the medium of the Near Eastern Messiah myth. Moreover, in this respect, Thomas L. Thompson's book is an abundant and impressive arsenal of evidence.
Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias. This applies to both what you say and how you say it.
...in The Messiah Myth Thomas L. Thompson argues that the quest for the historical Jesus is besides the point, since the Jesus of the Gospels never existed.
From the Wiki-article:
Thomas L. Thompson (born 1939), Professor emeritus of theology at the University of Copenhagen, is a leading biblical minimalist of the Old Testament, and regarded as a myrhicist by several authors.( "Ehrman.2012.p11_15", "Casey2014"
Ehrman:
A different sort of support for a mythicist position comes in the work of Thomas L. Thompson.
Thompson:
Bart Ehrman has recently dismissed what he calls mythicist scholarship, my Messiah Myth from 2005 among them, as anti-religious motivated denials of a historical Jesus and has attributed to my book arguments and principles which I had never presented, certainly not that Jesus had never existed.
Ehrman does not state that Thompson denies the existence of Jesus; Ehrman states that Thompson gives "A different sort of support for a mythicist position." So, Thompson is misrepresenting Ehrman; and Ehrman regards Thompson to take a mythicist position. See also Ehrman's definition, as quoted in the lead, a paraphrase of Doherty:
the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity.
Ehrman does not state that mythicism is limited to the stance that Jesus did not exist.
Regarding the Wisdom-argument, you stated:
Some of the explanations of "mythicist views" aren't actually mythicist views at all.
You further stated:
The point is that the arguments they make aren't new, or have any particular thing to do with mythicism. They're just repeating what scholars say. This is not at all notable for the mythicist position.
From the Wiki-article:
According to Wells, Doherty, and Carrier, the mythical Jesus was derived from Wisdom traditions, the personification of an eternal aspect of God, who came to visit human beings. [1] [2] [web 1] [web 2]
References
Wells (1996), The Jesus Legend, p.xxv:
I continue to regard[ this Jewish Wisdom literature as of great importance for the earliest Christian ideas about Jesus.
They (the mythicists) try to explain where 'Jesus' came from, if not from an historical person. That's part of their argument, and quite relevant; they're not just shouting "Jesus didn't exist!", they're saying "Jesus was (and is) a myth, and this is part of this myth." They explain where the myth came from. That's quite relevant. And if that's in line with mainstream scholarship, it makes it even more relevant, showing that they're not complete cranks. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:59, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Just wanted to drop in my own two cents here to the point about the length of this article. I think that this version is much tighter and sums up the key points in a way that a reader coming to the topic could get her or his head around. I think a reversion to something like this would be advisable. Magic1million ( talk) 19:38, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
As explained before: context is needed [...] Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:22, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
JJ is correct. See Wikipedia:Fringe theories for more information. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 09:51, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
Joshua, I only sometimes look here. Now by a quick look it seems to me that you are currently the main originator of article changes. Just one comment. It seems to me that even the reference to http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/dav368029.shtml has again disappeared. I find obvious that Davies' voice, in particular articulated in the second and third paragraph, should be represented in the article; at least to demonstrate that not all scholars in this area are "Ehrman-like". In my attempts in the past, always somebody replied to me "Davies also writes there "Am I inclined to accept that Jesus existed? Yes, I am."", by which such "somebody" meant that we should thus ignore Davies' words in the above mentioned paragraphs. I can only hope that you are not like such "somebody", and that you will find an appropriate way to represent such voice in the article. (I am not a native speaker, and I also have no energy to try to "fight" myself for such an obvious thing.) Thank you. Jelamkorj ( talk) 20:05, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
While proponents like Earl Doherty, Price, and Carrier, are concerned with the origins of Christianity and the genesis of the Christ-figure, the perception of and debate about the Christ myth theory has increasingly turned to the simpler question whether Jesus existed or not({{refn|group=q|name="existence.simplification"}}) and consequently with some scholars proposing a more moderate position.({{refn|group=q|name="Davies.2012.evidence"}}
Simplification:
* Ehrman (2012), p. 4 harvp error: multiple targets (6×): CITEREFEhrman2012 ( help): "The reality is that whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist. That is what this book will set out to demonstrate."
* Thompson (2012a), §. Comment #4 : "I think it is very difficult to establish the historicity of figures in biblical narrative, as the issue rather relates to the quality of texts one is dealing with. I work further on this issue in my Messiah Myth of 2005. Here I argue that the synoptic gospels can hardly be used to establish the historicity of the figure of Jesus; for both the episodes and sayings with which the figure of Jesus is presented are stereotypical and have a history that reaches centuries earlier. I have hardly shown that Jesus did not exist and did not claim to."
* Dykstra, Tom (2015). "Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship". The Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies (JOCABS). 8:1: 29.As for the question of whether Jesus existed, the best answer is that any attempt to find a historical Jesus is a waste of time. It can't be done, it explains nothing, and it proves nothing.
Davies, Philip (August 2012). "Did Jesus Exist?". www.bibleinterp.com. The Bible and Interpretation. Retrieved 29 January 2017.: "The rather fragile historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth should be tested to see what weight it can bear [...] I don’t think, however, that in another 20 years there will be a consensus that Jesus did not exist [the "Jesus atheism" viewpoint], or even possibly didn’t exist [the "Jesus agnosticism" viewpoint], but a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability."
the perception of and debate about the Christ myth theory has increasingly turned to the simpler question whether Jesus existed or notapplies to blogs and internet-fora, not to the scholarly discussions.
a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability.makes sense, though; it seems to me that the shifting focus from "the" historical Jesus to 'Jesus as remembered by the early Christian movement(s)' is somehow "similar" to what Davies says here. Somehow, the articles on the historicity of Jesus are not up-to-date; they lack an overview of research from, say, the last 15 years. This is also indicated by the repetition, in all those articles, of the two 'basic facts' of Jesus'life that scholars agree on: baptism and crucifixion. That is, they can agree on that following the criteria-methodology. But, as recent critics seem to have pointed out: what does that tell us about Jesus' meaning, the impact he had on others? Something's missing... As Davies himself writes:
it is how he was understood that matters, it is that which created Christianity.
What I can see, but not understand, is the stake that Christians have in the unanswerable question of Jesus’ historicity and his true historical self [...] an already accepted dogma looking for rationalization [...] [Paul's] writing is almost certainly the only extant direct testimony of someone who claims to have met Jesus (read that twice, and see if you agree before moving on).That is, the central subject of Paul and the Gospels is not "the" 'historical Jesus', but the arisen, exaltated Christ, who was in Heaven, and appeared from there at earth (Ehrmann). That's not a historical Jesus, but, excusez le mot, a mythological Jesus. It seems to me that there is a middleground between hardcore mythicism on the one hand, and hardcore opposition to mythicism at the other hand... Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 21:31, 15 February 2019 (UTC) / update Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 16:41, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
It's somewhat tiresome that we rehash the same old arguments year after year. A FAQ would be needed. To state the obvious: individual proponents are irrelevant. We should present the arguments, not the persons. Having a paragraph on every lunatic (and some serious ones as well) who believes in the CMT is completely irrelevant. Frankly, who cares is Onfray or Ellegård believe in CMT? They are as much authorities on Jesus as Trump is on tomato salad.
In short We should of course keep all arguments for CMT made in
reliable ssources and we should of course reference these arguments. We should remove the entire section about individuals. It serves no purpose, just makes the article longer and more repetitive without adding anything of value.
Jeppiz (
talk)
11:56, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Rarely do mythicists define what they mean by the term myth.
an approach that emphasized the degree to which the Bible and the ideas contained within it were the products of their cultural milieu [...] studied the influence of various ancient religious and philosophical traditions on the emergence of Christianity [...] Christianity’s customs and dogmas developed over time and in response to socioeconomic factors as well as influences from other traditions—in particular, Hellenistic Judaism and the religions of the Roman Empire.
@ Smeat75: if that's their understanding of what "myth" is, then that's a really poor understanding. Sad. Apparently, they don't understand David Friedrich Strauss "third way." Anyway, even more reason to explain how the methodologies differ, and why mainstream scholarship rejects the methodology, and therefore also, the conclusions, of mythicists. NB: it also illustrates why Thompson doesn't want to be placed in the "Jesus-did-not-exist party"; while, actually, his approach is truly a myth-oriented explanation, in the full and rich sense of the word. Maybe the article shpuld be moved to "Christ myth theories"? ;) Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 19:28, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Smeat75, and also Wellingfordtoday, thanks for your input and thoughts. It is challenging, and is providing new thoughts about the necessity to provide context, not just persons. I've
added info on the historical quest for Jesus, including the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule. Apparently, the CMT has to be understood against the backdrop of this quest; the RgS, especially Bultmann, has played an important role in the waning and waxing appeal of this quest, and is regarded as an important influence on Wells, who initiated the revival of the CMT. Mentioning the RgS correlates with the critique on Wells that his approach is an outdated RgS-approach.
Somehow, it must be possible to incorporate the (scholarly) understanding of what "myth" is in this section; that also opens the possibility to introduce the 'nothing but myth' approach of some mythicists, in their respective sub-sections. Smeat75, would you be able to find (written) sources which explicitly apply this kind of reductionism?
To the section on "Present day#revival" we should something about the influence of internet, as mentioned by Ehrman (as an aside: I was introduced to the CMT about ten years ago, thanks to internet), and the popularization and polemical stances to which this has led. I hope we can find more info on this.
Altogether, I think this provides more context, making clearer where the CMT comes from, and why it is rejected by mainstream scholarship.
Joshua Jonathan -
Let's talk!
10:25, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps a good solution would be to reorganize the article along the lines of the various theories that CMT might refer to, with a brief narrative describing each. Rather than giving all the historical views, the contextual accounts could be nested under the heading that best fits the aspect of CMT they are refuting. This could allow the merging of a number of the existing sections - at a minimum synthesizing sections 1 & 2 and pulling in and contextualizing the sections on the proponents. Maybe a primary section heading like "Primary theories of CMT" and then sub-headings stating the viewpoint, like "There was no historical Jesus." Then, under that sub-heading we could have a brief overview of the arguments against Jesus existing as an historical person, the arguments against that specific understanding (e.g. Tacitus & Josephus, etc.) and then a *brief* catalog of the proponents of this CMT viewpoint. I am hopeful that an approach like this could be used to pare down the article length substantially. Magic1million ( talk) 21:27, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
Lataster, Raphael (2019).
Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse. BRILL.
ISBN
9789004408784. This volume explains the inadequacy of the sources and methods used to establish Jesus' historicity, and how agnosticism can reasonably be upgraded to theorising about ahistoricity when reconsidering Christian Origins.
· Lataster, Raphael. Review of Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, by Bart Ehrman. Literature & Aesthetics 24 no. 2 (2014): 137–138.
· Lataster, Raphael. Review of Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?, by Maurice Casey. Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 5 no. 1 (2014): 166–168.
· Lataster, Raphael. Review of On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, by Richard Carrier. Journal of Religious History 38 no. 4 (2014): 614–616.
· Lataster, Raphael. “Bart Ehrman and the Elusive Historical Jesus.” Literature & Aesthetics 26 no. 1 (2016): 181–192.
· Lataster, Raphael. “Bayesian Reasoning: Criticising the ‘Criteria of Authenticity’ and Calling for a Review of Biblical Criticism.” Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences 5 no. 2 (2013): 271–293.
· Lataster, Raphael. The Case Against Theism: Why the Evidence Disproves God’s Existence. Cham, Switzerland: Springer 2018.
· Lataster, Raphael. “The Fourth Quest: A Critical Analysis of the Recent Literature on Jesus’ (a)Historicity.” Literature & Aesthetics 24 no. 1 (2014): 1–28.
· Lataster, Raphael. “The Gospel According to Bart: The Folly of Ehrman’s Hypothetical Sources.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Historical Association Sydney 7th July 2015.
· Lataster, Raphael. “Is There a Christian Agenda Behind Religious Studies Departments?” Accessed 18/02/2013. http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/2013/01/23/is-there-a-christian-agenda-behind-religious-studies-departments-by-raphael-Lataster, .
· Lataster, Raphael. “It’s Official: We Can Now Doubt Jesus’ Historical Existence.” Think 15 no. 43 (2016): 65–79.
· Lataster, Raphael. “Jesus Scepticism: An Examination of the Arguments for Various ‘Jesus as a Myth’ Theories.” Master’s thesis University of Sydney 2013.
· Lataster, Raphael. “On Richard Swinburne and the Failings of Christian Theistic Evidentialism.” Literature & Aesthetics 26 no. 1 (2016): 23–40.
· Lataster, Raphael. “The (Overwhelming) Improbability of Classical Theism.” Paper presented at the Oxford Symposium on Religious Studies Oxford 1st August 2016.
· Lataster, Raphael. “A Philosophical and Historical Analysis of William Lane Craig’s Resurrection of Jesus Argument.” Think 14 no. 39 (2015): 59–71.
· Lataster, Raphael. “Questioning the Plausibility of Jesus Ahistoricity Theories – A Brief Pseudo-Bayesian Metacritique of the Sources.” Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies 6 no. 1 (2015): 63–96.
· Lataster, Raphael. There Was No Jesus There Is No God: A Scholarly Examination of the Scientific Historical and Philosophical Evidence & Arguments For Monotheism. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013.
· Lataster, Raphael and Richard Carrier. Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2015.
• What is the WP:weight of this book for this article? – 2db ( talk) 04:14, 15 July 2019 (UTC) && 14:03, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
The ahistorical hypothesis is a hypothesis in Bible research, which means that the Jesus figure described in the Bible is not based on any historical person.
In history research one cannot always achieve complete certainty. It can therefore be quite reasonable that one has more than one hypothesis that deals with the same historical event and these different hypotheses complement each other, as long as one cannot show that one of these hypotheses with overwhelming probability is the true one. The core of the ahistoric hypothesis is thus whether or not Jesus existed as a historical person. It differentiates it from Jesus myth which says that what we believe we know about Jesus is largely myths but does not exclude that he existed as a historical person.
In the case of Jesus of Nazareth, two hypotheses are possible, namely that he has existed as a historical person or that he has not existed as a historical person. It is this latter hypothesis that is usually called the ahistorical hypothesis and which is described in this article. In fact, the difference between the hypothesis that Jesus existed and the ahistoric hypothesis has no greater historical significance, since in any case we have no reliable historical knowledge of Jesus and it remains disputed which historical value the various stories of Jesus have.
Dykstra, Tom (2015). "Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship". The Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies (JOCABS). 8 (1): 6.
Brodie and Ehrman are both competent scholars, both are assessing the same body of literature acting as historical evidence, and yet they reach diametrically opposite conclusions.
more...This is possible because each approaches the same literature with different assumptions. Two of the most important assumptions that determine how you interpret any given writing are related to its dependence on other literature and its literary genre, and it’s in precisely these two areas that Ehrman and Brodie differ.
The Jesus-as-myth scenario is plausible if all of the writings about him can ultimately be traced back to a single source, meaning that all of them are ultimately inspired by a single original inventor. It’s not likely that different people would independently invent the same imaginary person with the same name and a similar life story. Therefore, the strongest argument for Jesus’s historicity is that multiple literary witnesses to his life are independent – that is, they are documents written by authors who had no knowledge at all of each other’s writings. That is precisely the approach Ehrman focuses on first in his book. He counts seven independent narratives about Jesus...
As I understand, apart from Casey (2014), Ehrman (2012) and Case (1928, 2nd ed.) [1912], it appears that no other scholar(s) of the New Testament has ever put together a sustained argument that Jesus lived since 1912 ?
◦ Carrier (4 March 2014). "Critical Review of Maurice Casey's Defense of the Historicity of Jesus". Richard Carrier Blogs.
So far only two contemporary books [Casey (2014), Ehrman (2012)] have been written in defense of the historicity of Jesus (nothing properly comparable has been published in almost a hundred years).
◦ Per Ehrman (5 May 2012). "Did Jesus Exist as Part One". The Bart Ehrman Blog. [now bolded]:
I realized when doing my research for the book [DJE] that since New Testament scholars have never taken mythicists seriously, they have never seen a need to argue against their views, which means that even though experts in the study of the historical Jesus (and Christian origins, and classics, and ancient history, etc etc.) have known in the back of their minds all sorts of powerful reasons for simply assuming that Jesus existed, no one had ever tried to prove it. Odd as it may seem, no scholar of the New Testament has ever thought to put together a sustained argument that Jesus must have lived. To my knowledge, I was the first to try it...
◦ Widowfield, Tim (16 February 2015). "'It is absurd to suggest . . .' -- Shirley Jackson Case on The Historicity of Jesus". Vridar.
Case engages in a prolonged argument against “the spuriousness and the late dating” of Paul’s epistles (Case, 1912, p. 70). Later on he defends the consensus dating of the canonical gospels. In a chapter entitled “The Gospel Evidence,” he lays out his case for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being written “within fairly defined limits,” namely “the last thirty-five years of the first century.”
Reading his set of arguments today, I’m struck by how little has changed.
-- 2db ( talk) 19:11, 15 July 2019 (UTC) && 04:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC) && 02:32, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
To speak of 'two theories', as if they on a par, ignores this scholarly consensus.
Cf. Arnal, William E. (2015) [2005]. The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Contemporary Identity. Routledge. pp. 76–77. ISBN 978-1-317-32440-9.Twentieth-century scholarship, with its faith in history, assumed a historical Jesus as its starting point. It shared Schweitzer’s personal dilemma: a choice between a Jesus who fits modern visions of Christianity and Mark’s failed prophet. But they always assumed there was a historical Jesus to describe.
The recent defences of Jesus’ historicity by Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey lack lucid and competent methodologies, rely on highly questionable documents, and further make use of sources that no longer exist, if they ever did.
[...]
If the consensus view that a historical Jesus certainly existed is based on such tenuous methodology, it would seem reasonable that the consensus view should be reviewed, while not necessarily immediately rejected as false. Let us end this section with a mainstream scholar’s admission that such methods — like the earlier and often mentioned appeal to imaginary sources — are idiosyncratic; that they are unique to historians who specialise in the New Testament texts:more...The idea of formulating certain “criteria” for an evaluation of historical sources is a peculiar phenomenon in historical-critical Jesus research. It was established in the course of the twentieth century as a consequence of the form-critical idea of dividing Jesus accounts of the Gospels into isolated parts of tradition, which would be examined individually with regard to their authenticity. Such a perspective was not known to the Jesus research of the nineteenth century and it does not, to my knowledge, appear in other strands of historical research. In analysing historical material scholars would usually ask for their origin and character, their tendencies in delineating events from the past, evaluate their principal credibility — for example, whether it is a forgery or a reliable source — and use them together with other sources to develop a plausible image of the concerned period of history. It is not by accident, therefore, that the rather curious “criteria approach” has evoked many criticisms. [So says Jens Schröter, in Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, eds., Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (London: T&T Clark, 2012), pp. 51–52.]
Per WP:weight, Wp:rs, etc., what (if any) difference is there between Casey (2014) and Ehrman (2012)?
[Per Casey (2014), Jesus] it is quite likely that the book was not peer-reviewed, since it is actually a popular book, and not a proper monograph published by an academic press.
Cf. Casey, Maurice (2014). Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?. Bloomsbury T & T Clark [A&C Black]. ISBN 978-0-567-01505-1.
Casey acknowledges Ehrman's "bold attempt", but alluded to the latter's "regrettable mistakes". [Casey (JEAMM), p. 17.]
Cf. Ehrman, Bart D (2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperOne. ISBN 9780062206442.
--
2db (
talk)
00:08, 29 July 2019 (UTC) && 00:38, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
With all due respect, 2db, please keep in mind that this is WP:NOTAFORUM. Do you have any concrete suggestions for how to improve the article? If so, please state them clearly and briefly, and with a brief argument for why they are improvements. Jeppiz ( talk) 20:05, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
User:Joshua Jonathan do you concur that Lataster (2019) complies with WP:rs policy regarding the most (as in scholarly) WP:rs?
-- 2db ( talk) 06:11, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
I have two points to make here. Both concern the very extensive textbox "Quotes on the historicity of Jesus" (in the section Reception > Scholarly reception > Lack of support for mythicism):
First, and of imperative importance: I insist that the final section of the above-mentioned textbox ("Comparison with Holocaust-deniers") be deleted. There is no conceivable justification for comparing (a) the mass murder of millions of innocent people within living memory with (b) doubting or questioning the existence of a single person 2,000 years ago, no matter how holy. I am not being polite about this, since there is nothing to be polite about. Making such a comparison is tantamount to trivializing all those meaningless deaths. I am convinced that Jesus would agree with me on this.
Secondly, and of importance only for the credibility of this article: I suggest that the entire textbox be deleted. In this textbox (excluding the section on holocaust denial) are collected 65 quotes arguing against any and all forms of denial, doubt or questioning of the historical existence of Jesus, and 4 (!) quotes that support such denial, doubt or questioning (and please note that all four quotes are extracted from the original source in such a way that it is easy to gain the impression that they too are arguments against such denial, questioning or doubt). This is quite the opposite of the "neutral point of view" ( WP:NPOV) that is one of Wikipedia's basic standards.
Filursiax ( talk) 23:16, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
Some points on quotation usage from Wikipedia:Quotations:
- I believe the Wikipedia:Quotations guideline supports the removal of the quotebox - Epinoia ( talk) 01:35, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
The 'A historical Jesus existed' subsection includes the claim:
Yet, that there was a historical Jesus is not in doubt. New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman states that Jesus "certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees".
Both citations reference Ehrman's own works.
Any chance that someone could add a reference from one of those competent non-Christian scholars to back up Ehrman's assertion? Many thanks. JezGrove ( talk) 12:11, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi,
I see there was an add by an IP editor [3] and then a revert [4] with the reasoning being: "WP:CHERRY; lede clutter; Wells not a historicity expert; scholarship outdated and reliant on the heavily debated Q source; Wells always held that the Pauline Jesus was ahistorical."
After looking into the original add, the revert did not make much sense, since for one it does not look cherry picked at all and it does not clutter the lead at all. The source does state his views from previous decades of writings on the matter (Wells has quite a few prominent writings on Jesus not existing since the 1970s at least so he is a prominent authority on the topic from the mythicist side) and Wells summarizes his views in that quote that was provided by the IP editor. Since G. A. Wells is one of the earliest modern revivalists of mythicism (is featured in this article as such), and certainly has an academic background, his views are certainly more relevant than amateur mythicists. The other reasons provided were not good either since Wells views are his own. Like every other mythicists, it not mainstream. In terms of "outdated", that is an odd claim since, for instance, recent mythicists like Richard Carrier use really old and outdated ideas like 19th century/early 20th century literary theories like Otto Rank and Lord Raglan in their current writings. With stuff like this, that does not seem like a good reason to object to Wells change of mind on the matter.
Certainly seems relevant to mention that even multiple decades long mythicists like Wells have changed their minds on the matter, no? I was under the impression that he remained an mythicist and am still surprised by this new info. If, no objections, then this add seems relevant enough to restore. Ramos1990 ( talk) 03:36, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
Does Wikipedia consider the strength of the arguments when labelling something as "fringe" or is it merely the number of people labelling something that matters? Thanks -- Damiano Tommasi ( talk) 02:18, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
The current edit gives undie weight to a fringe view point, it is not a minority view point as even the source says- Raphael Lataster is a mythicist that even says as much even if he does not agree it is not. As such we need better and more diverse references before be can call it a "minority" view when it represents a minuscule numbers of academics in the relevant fields. It like quoting holocausts denialists that their claim is held by academics, which it is by those on the fringe but no mainstream academics would recognized them as a minority view point - just fringe. Hardyplants ( talk) 05:06, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
[W]e need better and more diverse references before be can call it a "minority" view...
— User:Hardyplants
I am awaiting a cited quote of the peer reviewed "sources" on the historicity of Jesus that support Hardyplants claim. And also equal or surpass Lataster 2019 per WP:RS. However this may not be possible given the following:
“ | [There has] been no peer reviewed monograph in defense of the assumption of historicity for over a hundred years—not since Shirley Jackson Case published a now-deeply-outdated treatment for the University of Chicago in 1912 (a second edition released in 1928 isn’t substantially different (
Case, 1928).
[2db.c 1] [...] |
” |
— Richard Carrier [2db.c 2] |
The leading historicity scholars are Maurice Casey and Bart Ehrman, whose individual works on the question of the "historicity of Jesus"—as a sustained argument that Jesus lived—are not comparable to any other work by a contemporary scholar who also holds the historicity position. Casey and Ehrman are the only contemporary "secular" scholars to comprehensively address this issue, [2db.c 1] as Ehrman writes, "Odd as it may seem, no scholar of the New Testament has ever thought to put together a sustained argument that Jesus must have lived." [2db.c 3] Ehrman also notes that his book Did Jesus Exist? [2db.c 4] was written for a popular audience and that in regards to the question of the historicity of Jesus, "I was not arguing the case for scholars, because scholars already know the answer to that question." [2db.c 5]
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-- 2db ( talk) 05:45, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
Ad infinitum; how often have we discussed the fringe-status now? See WP:DONTGETIT. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 06:13, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
"Richard Carrier review and refutation"
There are about 10 sources for that sentence including Ehrman, Grant, Van Voorst, Gullotta...
— User:Ramos1990
The way Ehrman & Gullotta are being taken out of context is obvious:
Even Ehrman concedes that there are ‘a couple of bona fide scholars . . . Their books may not be known to most of the general public interested in questions related to Jesus, the Gospels, or the early Christian church, but they do occupy a noteworthy niche as a (very) small but (often) loud minority voice’. [Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, p. 3.]
Gullotta clearly agrees with Ehrman—whom he quotes—that "bona fide" scholars comprise a minority view. -- 2db ( talk) 07:00, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
you might want to think again about whether you really want to discount atheist scholars as ideologically "poisoned"
— User:Doric Loon
Quite correct indeed...
After presenting a current positive quoted citation from a highest WP:RS source. I asked for peer reviewed quoted citations of current sources that support the negative claim.
User:Doric Loon, you should expect significant misrepresentation of WP policy on this issue. You will have to lawyer up and become an expert on WP policy and conflict resolution.
Best of luck --
2db (
talk)
14:23, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
"peer reviewed quoted citations of current sources that support the negative claim"– cheers, Epinoia ( talk) 14:42, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
[H]as been so for a long time...
— User:Joshua Jonathan
Yes, and now it is outdated or refuted or always has been taken out of context to push WP:Truth.
-- 2db ( talk) 15:52, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
I have been asked to 'make a case' regarding my inclusion of information regarding the Name and location of Nazareth.
My edit is as follows:
Arguments against Jesus being mythical include the problem of Nazareth and its existence before and during the time of Jesus. The people in the Gospel of John are depicted as objecting to the idea that Jesus was the Messiah because he came from the wrong town. But the Gospels of Matthew and Luke contain stories explaining how Jesus happened to be born in the right town of Bethlehem. The stories attempt to explain that although Jesus was from Nazareth, he was actually born in Bethlehem. Archeological evidence presently does support the presence of a town/village where Nazareth is today, however there is no archeological or scriptural evidence to support the area being called Nazareth in the first century BCE. Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Southern Florida, James F. Strange, stated in 1992 that: "Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century CE. This likely reflects its lack of prominence both in Galilee and in Judaea." [1] However, in a recent book published by Professor Ken Dark of the University of Reading, new archaeological excavations appear to indicate that the area called Nazareth today was, to quote Professor Dark: "substantially bigger than previously thought, religiously very conservative and politically very anti-Roman." [2] This may open the question as to why the name 'Nazareth' was not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources. The area that is now called Nazareth has been occupied for about 9000 years, and there has been a city there since the later neolithic/early bronze age. [3]
References
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I see absolutely nothing wrong with the above information. It draws on known facts, from qualified Professors, and if Nazareth was a big town that wasn't mentioned, it questions why it was mentioned in the New Testament. If the area was called Nazareth, then that historicizes Jesus, as logically the NT writers wrote Nazareth because he came from there. If the area was not called Nazareth, why did the NT authors create the name? Adam Davis 83 ( talk) 07:19, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Arguments against Jesus being mythical include the problem of Nazareth and its existence before and during the time of Jesus.? Who states that Jesus must be mythical, because there was no place called Nazareth at that time? After that statement follows an expose about Nazareth and Bethlehem; how dos this relate to the historicity of Jesus? No clue. And even if this is an argument for the historicity of Jesus, where do mythicists argue against this argument? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:50, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Not only is the idea that Jesus came from Nazareth a common element in all four canonical gospels, it also seems to have been an awkward fact that did not fit well with the gospel writers’ claim he was the Messiah. This indicates it is likely his origin in this small village was a historical fact. Jesus Mythicists often deal with this by removing Nazareth from the story and some even claim all the archaeologists are wrong and Nazareth did not even exist. (Source: The Nazareth myth
I still think it's WP:UNDUE. Where do we fit it in? It's a Criterion of embarrassment; we only provide a link to that criterium, without going into the details. We give an overview of main arguments (and rebuttals), and of the main proponents; that's already a lot of information. Should we also give all the arguments Earl Doherty provides? And, we don't even mention Tim O'Neill in the article. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 10:33, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
@Slatersteven There are no quotes that contradict Nazareth being a new name. Here are the facts simplified: Jewish Prophecy said the Messiah would be from Bethlehem - Jesus is stated as coming from Nazareth - Jews are depicted as rejecting him because of this - the Gospels state he was born in Bethlehem, but came from Nazareth - the argument is that there are no mentions of the name Nazareth before or during Jesus' time - that means the name 'Nazareth' is confusing, as there is no archaeological or scriptural evidence for that name in BCE times - one argument is the area, known today as Nazareth, was insignificant so wasn't mentioned - new archaeological excavations appear to show that not to be the case. Adam Davis 83 ( talk) 11:18, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
Ok, you mean a source needs to state exactly what I have just stated? Adam Davis 83 ( talk) 12:34, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
[O]ne argument is the area, known today as Nazareth, was insignificant so wasn't mentioned - new archaeological excavations appear to show that not to be the case.
— User:Adam Davis 83
Please list all relevant cites with quotes (if possible) for: "new archaeological excavations appear to show that not to be the case". -- 2db ( talk) 15:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
A man named Rene Salm is one. He states Nazareth didn't exist. But that is innacurate, the area known as Nazareth today exists, of course, but there is no evidence that area was CALLED Nazareth. Adam Davis 83 ( talk) 16:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
some people (including René Salm and other Jesus mythicists) have questioned whether the connection with Jesus could have been true, and suggest that there is no evidence of Nazareth existing in Jesus's time.[2] Nazareth is now a large regional centre with a population of 76,551.[1] So it exists now, but its earlier history is less clear.
The idea of the non-existence of Nazareth was first publicised by the atheist activist Frank Zindler.[3] Salm is now the leading proponent, in his books The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (2008) and NazarethGate: Quack Archeology, Holy Hoaxes, and the Invented Town of Jesus (2015).[4][5] He claims that Nazareth did not exist before 70 CE.[4]
The archaeological evidence does not support any argument made for the historicity of Jesus. Per this article, it should be the preface when presenting the Mythicist argument that the author of Mark refers to Jesus from Nazareth (ἀπὸ Ναζαρὲτ) once, and to Jesus the Nazarene (Ναζαρηνοῦ) four times, thus the Markan author's use of the term Nazareth is likely an intertextual allusion to OT scriptures or a sect divergent from the Essenes, etc..
[T]he scriptures the [early] Christians were then using predicted three things about the messiah (and we know this, because they say so): that he would be born in Bethlehem, that he would come from Galilee (even though Bethlehem isn’t in Galilee), and that he would be a “Nazorian,” which actually doesn’t mean someone from Nazareth (the word is significantly different, though similar enough to sound almost like it). . . . There is no evidence Jesus was ever imagined to come from Nazareth before the Gospels invented the idea; all by trying to make their invented stories match select scriptures...
-- 2db ( talk) 17:31, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
David Keys ( https://twitter.com/davidmkeys) should be queried as to the sources for his journalism reporting that: "Detailed new research suggests that Nazareth . . . was substantially bigger than previously thought..." [David Keys (17 April 2020). "New archaeological evidence from Nazareth reveals religious and political environment in era of Jesus". The Independent.]
This book presents a new social and economic interpretation of Roman-period and Byzantine Nazareth and its hinterland as a whole, showing the transformation of a Roman- period Jewish village into a major Byzantine Christian pilgrimage centre.
-- 2db ( talk) 03:31, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Since Rene Salm was mentioned, it's important to remember he's nowhere near meeting WP:RS even when discussing CMT. Jeppiz ( talk) 11:57, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
-- 2db ( talk) 13:34, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Hello! The lead says that most scholars of antiquity "reject the Christ myth theory". But, it seems that there are a few different theories presented, which makes this statement sound a bit strange and unclear.
Specifically, it would be helpful to edit that sentence, or add something immediately after it, to clarify the scholarly consensus (if any) on the notion that "he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels." I'm personally not familiar with this topic or the sources, so I am posting here Pythagimedes ( talk) 02:27, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
interview with Thomas L. Thompson
[...]
8) What is the future of mythicism views inside the academic community, considering the publication of many related books and papers in previous times? Would you agree that mythicists could follow the steps of biblical minimalists?
Minimalism is a movement in biblical studies which brings the study of biblical narrative closer to what is normal for historians. As far as I am aware, most mythicists also understand this, though I think they may be too quick to judge the single issue of whether he existed. The proper question is rather a largely literary question than an historical one. Until we have texts, which bear evidence of his historicity, we can not do much more with that issue. We can and must, however, ask what the texts mean—as well as ask what they mean if they are not historical (a minimalist question). My professor Kurt Galling from Tübingen was once asked how one could tell whether an Old Testament text was historical or literary. He answered: If Iron floats on water it isn’t! The reference is found in the Elijah Elisha stories, whose reiteration has dominated the gospels. One might also use the story of the bear who kills the 42 children and certainly Elijah’s flight out into outer space.
The current text of the hatnote of the top of this article is "For the body of myths associated with Christianity, see Christian mythology and Jesus in comparative mythology. For the scholarly study of the historical Jesus, see Historicity of Jesus, Historical Jesus, and Quest for the historical Jesus. For sources on Jesus, see Sources for the historicity of Jesus and Historical reliability of the Gospels."
This is insanely excessive and is not helpful to our readers. Hatnotes should be short and should be limited to actual ambiguities, not subtopic. Naturally, I shortened the hatnote to only list those articles with both "Christ" and "myth" in the title, and was reverted by CycoMa with no explanation. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 07:49, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Hatnotes are disambiguation, so they are primarily for links that aren't relevant but happen to have similar names.That's not always true. In fact, the majority of links at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:About are used the same way this hatnote is used. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:37, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
I agree with Oiyarbepsy. The hatnote is strictly for "similar article titles that might get confused", that is, disambiguation. See WP:HATNOTE. It is not a list of helpful related topics. I agree that the various subtopic links might be valuable, but they should be part of the lead section then as normal text. They are not hatnote material. SnowFire ( talk) 15:30, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
Christ myth theory says
"According to mainstream scholarship, Jesus was an eschatological preacher or teacher, who was exalted after his death."
This appears to contradict Resurrection of Jesus, which says
"The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are explained as visionary experiences that gave the impetus to the belief in the exaltation of Jesus"
Do we really want Wikipedia to present the Exaltation of Christ (which redirects to Session of Christ) as a fact that is supported by mainstream scholarship? -- Dalek Supreme X ( talk) 00:54, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Per Lataster:
I do not assert that Jesus did not exist. I am a Historical Jesus agnostic. That is, I am unconvinced by the case for the Historical Jesus, and find several reasons to be doubtful. To compare these terms to those often used when discussing the issue of God’s existence, the ‘historicist’ is the equivalent of the ‘theist’, and the ‘mythicist’ is the equivalent of the ‘strong atheist’ or ‘hard naturalist’. The oft-forgotten ‘Historical Jesus agnostic’ is the equivalent of, well, the ‘God agnostic’.
I'd like to throw one more term into the mix. Not all ‘atheists’ are ‘strong atheists. Some are simply ‘agnostics’. I would like to propose, then, that we use the term ‘ahistoricists’ to encompass both the ardent ‘mythicists’ and the less certain ‘agnostics’. This avoids the false dichotomy, which I think historicists (much like theists) have been taking advantage of. They often frame the debate as only being between the right and the wrong, the reasonable and righteous historicists versus the silly mythicists, ironically appearing as unnuanced and dogmatic fundamentalists in the process. (As with the common false dilemma, presented by apologists, of ‘the truth’ being found in ‘Christianity’ or in ‘strong atheism’.)[Lataster, Raphael (2019). ISBN 978-9004397934. pp=2–3.]
-- 2db ( talk) 00:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
While Christ myth theory and Jesus myth theory are used as synonyms, they don't really have the same meaning. Alternatively Neil Godfrey gives the following definition:
A Christ mythicist is one who believes the literal truth of the myth of Jesus Christ as set out in the epistles and gospels of the New Testament, or who believes that those myths, even if they have only limited or no historical foundation, nonetheless contain symbolic or spiritual value for those of the Christian faith.[Godfrey, Neil (1 July 2019). "Definition of a Christ Mythicist".
{{ cite web}}
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( help) Vridar.]
Which echoes the 1909 definition given by John Remsburg:
[T]he Christ is understood [as] the Jesus of the New Testament. The Jesus of the New Testament is the Christ of Christianity. The Jesus of the New Testament is a supernatural being. He is, like the Christ, a myth. He is the Christ myth. [Remsburg, John Eleazer (1909). The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence. New York: The Truth Seeker Company.]
WP policy is to use the terms of modern peer review scholarship (Carrier, Gullotta) for article names. -- 2db ( talk) 22:58, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
eds John W. Loftus, Robert M. Price (2021). Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist?. Hypatia Press. — clearly Price is now using the modern terminology as will any future WP:RS from an academic press. A wish-full word wall that this is not the correct academic correct terminology now being used, ignores WP policy -- 2db ( talk) 04:09, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
@ CycoMa: I've reverted your addition of the "excessive citation" tags. The references are already bundled; it's possible to group them into single reference numbers, but that will make the syntax quite complicated. And the large number of references is due to the heated discussions and disagreements on the topic. Regards, Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: not moved. There is consensus that the proposed title is not the common name. ( non-admin closure) Extraordinary Writ ( talk) 15:12, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
Christ myth theory → Jesus myth theory – Per this talk §.Modern scholarship uses the term Jesus myth theory — modern scholarship uses the term(s) "Jesus myth theory", "Jesus mythicism" and has deprecated (i.e. made obsolescent) the term "Christ myth theory". In current popular usage "Jesus myth theory" or "Jesus mythicism" is the most common terminology used. 2db ( talk) 00:18, 1 October 2021 (UTC) && updated 09:35, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
WP policy is to use the terms of modern peer review scholarship (Carrier, Gullotta) for article names.This smells like a WP:COI. A simple search at Google Scholar gives 4 pages with links for "Jesus myth theory," and 14+ for "Christ myth theory." Ergo: Christ myth theory is the common name. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 04:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
I've firsted copy-edited the latest addition by 2db diff, and then reverted diff their revert diff of my copy-edit. They added:
Academic criticism of Christian dogma per beliefs in miracles, immortality, the trinity, and incarnation of the reigning lord of the Christian church, Jesus Christ [1] has "arrived at a Christianity depersonalized and anonymous, reducing Jesus to nothing more than a gifted genius whom legend had gradually deified." [2] [3]
References
For "the Jesus known in faith, the presently reigning Lord of the Church," Meier opts for "the risen Jesus."
Strauss arrived at a Christianity depersonalized and anonymous, reducing Jesus to nothing more than a gifted genius whom legend had gradually deified. In this account, the Christian faith could be explained without reference to the Jesus of history. Strauss in this way firmly stayed on the side of the negative critique. He did not arrive at a historical core of the life of Jesus…
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"Arrived at" refers specifically to
David Friedrich Strauß (1808-1874)); to say that "academic criticism" has arrived at his description of Christianity is a gross generalization, a reverse of the time-sequence (Strauss was one of the first critics, not the endpoint of academic criticism), and
WP:SYNTHESIS. Also, it does not fit at that section, which gives a general overview of mythicist arguments, not an historical introduction. And the sentence Academic criticism of Christian dogma per beliefs in miracles, immortality, the trinity, and incarnation of the reigning lord of the Christian church, Jesus Christ
is incomprehensible. Nor do I see how it is supported by the quote from the source.
Joshua Jonathan -
Let's talk!
08:04, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not moved. ( non-admin closure) Natg 19 ( talk) 04:37, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Christ myth theory → Jesus mythicism – In current popular usage "Jesus mythicism" is the most common terminology used. "Christ myth theory" has been deprecated (i.e. made obsolescent) in current popular usage. Per this talk §.Critics of the historicity of the Christ the christ (i.e. the lord of the Christian church) is a myth as held by virtually every secular person on the planet. To call someone a "Unicorn mythicist" for denying that Unicorns exist makes as much sense as to call someone a "Christ mythicist" for denying that Christs exist. WP policy is to name articles so as to distinguish them from similar sounding topics. WP policy is also to name articles with names appropriate to finding modern academic scholarship that engages with the topic's current academic debate and therefore cites modern scholarship. 2db ( talk) 17:00, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
Some time ago, the sentence
the view that "the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology", possessing no "substantial claims to historical fact." [1]
was changed to
the view that the story of Jesus is largely mythological, and has little basis in historical fact. [1]
References
paraphrasing Bromley; later, it was moved beyond the Ehrmann-definition
diff. In the past few days, the sentence was removed
diff "simplified, removed duplication", and then merged into the overview of stances
diff "These two sentences are identical - why duplicate them one after the other?" Well, because it first was not there, and beacuse they give a slightly different definition.
I've re-inserted the original sentence. The first sentence is the most accurate, directly quoting the source.
Joshua Jonathan -
Let's talk!
07:19, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
the Bible stories of Jesus are not historically factualis unclear and not to-the-point; the main thesis is: 'Jesus did not exist'. The differenc between "there was never a historical Jesus at all" and "there may have been a historical Jesus" seems quite obvious to me. If you want to know how Price reached ths conclusion, c.q. possibility, just look-up the source. Which source discusses this 'stitched together' thesis? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 15:53, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
The three stances described in the lead are a summary of the stances described in the article, based on sources. Your third stance is not what's included in the CMT, nor is it described or explained as such in the article. And the moderate view and the agnisticist view are not the same. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 12:47, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
Indeed. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 04:07, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
Carrier's criteria for what a historical and a mythical Jesus should be our baseline. Right now his work is the only peer reviewed work to clearly define both.
Historical Jesus
"If any one of these premises is false, it can fairly be said there was no historical Jesus in any pertinent sense, And at least one of them must be false for any Jesus Myth theory to be true." (Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. pp. 33–34. ISBN 978-1-909697-35-5.)
"But notice that now we don't even require that is considered essential in many church creeds. For instance, it is not necessary that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Maybe he was, But even if we proved he wasn't that still does not vindicate mysticism. Because the 'real' Jesus may have been executed by Herod Antipas (as the Gospel of Peter in fact claims) or by Roman authorities in an earlier or later decade then Pilate (as some early Christians really did think) Some scholars even argue for an earlier century (and have some real evidence to cite) ... My point at present is that even if we proved proved the founder of Christianity was executed by Herod the Great (not even by Romans, much less Pilate, and a whole forty years before the Gospels claim), as long as his name or nickname (whether assigned before or after his death) really was Jesus and his execution is the very thing spoken of as leading him to the status of the divine Christ venerated in the Epistles, I think it would be fair to say the mythicists are then simply wrong. I would say this even if Jesus was never really executed but only believed to have been Because even then it's still the same historical man being spoken of and worshiped."
Mythical Jesus
"That all five propositions are true shall be my minimal Jesus myth theory." (Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. pp. 53. ISBN 978-1-909697-35-5.)
Note Carrier allows for a Jesus to exist well before the 6 BCE - 36 CE range normally given. The problem is such a "historical" Jesus has also be put into the "Christ Myth" category. Where the line is varies depending on the author and right now Carrier is the only one to give clear definitions of both positions in a peer reviewed work by a reliable academic publisher. -- 174.99.238.22 ( talk) 20:27, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
The rest of the Rank–Raglan mythotype isabout as bad:
The list read like a vague group of criteria so as many "legendary" figures could be used while excluding "real" ones. The fact that some historical people score high while some fictional people score low shows the thing to be a total joke. It is not even good indicator of "something is wrong here". Carrier would have been better off throwing that thing into a bin. As for the other points there is Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic (April 20, 2012) which addressed Ehrman's points and their problems (both in presentation and with regards to facts). As for the article behind the paywall (On Richard Carrier’s Doubts by Daniel N. Gullotta) there is On the Historicity of Jesus: The Daniel Gullotta Review by Carrier. If Carrier's statement of "It starts with Gullotta declaring sixth grade math is beyond him and therefore should be ignored." is true the red flags should be going up. For most US university you have to take college level math courses to even get your application looked at.
So the only "rebuttals" we have to Carrier's work either center on something (Rank–Raglan mythotype) we likely all agree he should have never put in the work or a Jesus other than the one he defined. Those are not rebuttals to Carrier's work. So we have any that refute Carrier's actual points or ultimate conclusion without doing a snow job on the reader?-- 174.99.238.22 ( talk) 01:19, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
Take a look at John Remsburg's work (referenced Critics of the historicity of the Christ section above) as to why there is that variation as there is a huge variation in the meaning of "myth":
New Testament scholar Ian Howard Marshall in his I Believe in the Historical Jesus talked about the spectrum of the historical Jesus "two views of the historical Jesus which stand at the opposite ends of a spectrum of opinion about him." At one extreme is the view that Jesus is a "totally fictitious creation like King Lear or Doctor Who" (sic) and the other is the the Gospels are entirely factually accurate. He wrote that neither works and "[W]e shall land in considerable confusion if we embark on an inquiry about the historical Jesus if we do not pause to ask ourselves exactly what we are talking about."
In Eddy, Paul R.; Boyd, Gregory A. (2007). The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Academic. we have a this huge range broken into four broad categories and even they admit categories are "admittedly over simplistic", "ideal-typical", and a "useful heuristic" and therefore should not be taken as absolute definitions. Yet everybody and his brother seems to say that historical and mythical have clear definite definitions.
Logically, if the "Historical Jesus" is all over the map than its counter argument is going to be similarly all over the place. Heck, if either Michael O. Wise's 72 BCE messiah or Israel Knohl's 4 BCE messiah actually founded Christianity (or Chrestianity as that is how it is spelled our earliest manuscripts) and Jesus took that over rather than actually founding it would fall under Bart Ehrman's definitions of a "mythical" Jesus even if everything else in the Gospels is historical accurate. It doesn't help that there are conflicting evidence there may have been a pagan group called "Chrestians" who followed a Chrestus as far back as the 1st century BCE.
The whole argument is akin to saying that Columbus sailed west to prove the Earth was round is mythical/historical or that the Battle of Troy was mythical/historical. And about as nonsensical as either all or nothing answer is wrong.-- 174.99.238.22 ( talk) 01:40, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
This article necessarily refers to the term "Christ myth theory" as a popularised though misleading term for the view that Jesus did not exist as a historical figure at all, though incorrectly (and possibly deliberately) conflating the terms to dismiss the view that Jesus is not also 'divine'. That being as it is, the article should not further misuse the term "theory" elsewhere in the article. This is especially the case because POVs generally expressed on the subject of this article cross over with misuse of the term in the related context of evolution being 'just a theory'.-- Jeffro77 ( talk) 01:26, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
@ CompliantDrone: the phrase "virtually all" has been discussed over and overagain, here and at Talk:Historicity of Jesus; I suggest you first scroll through the talkpage-archives before even starting the next discussion on this. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 22:01, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
-- 2db ( talk) 23:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc.
Reading through the lead, there is a quite egregious POV problem. The lead first conflates the 'Christ myth theory' as both views that No Jesus existed at all (i.e. 'Jesus myth') and there may have been a historical Jesus, but elements of myth were added (i.e. Christ myth). To then say that the conflated definition as a whole is widely considered a "fringe theory" is highly inaccurate. It is widely accepted by scholars that Jesus likely existed, was a disciple of John the Baptist, and was executed by the Romans, but there is not solid agreement on essentially anything else of the historical Jesus. More importantly, there is considerably less agreement among scholars that Jesus is 'Christ'. The view that there was no historical Jesus at all is widely considered a fringe theory by scholars, but to also imply that scholars also reject the view that Jesus was not 'divine' is rampantly dishonest.-- Jeffro77 ( talk) 00:42, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Copied from User talk:Joshua Jonathan#Christ myth theory
Hi. In this edit, you have said to "stick to the term", though the 'term' "Lives of Jesus" doesn't appear to actually be the title of anything, nor is it clear that that plural term is sourced to anything, but instead seems to be an analogy based on a single work with a singular name. Can you confirm whether the plural form is sourced to anything, or otherwise establish why it is necessary to 'stick to the term'? Thanks.-- Jeffro77 ( talk) 07:36, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
End of copied part
A first quest for the historical Jesus took place in the 19th century when hundreds of Live of Jesus were written. David Strauss (1808–1874) pioneered the search for the "historical Jesus" by rejecting all supernatural events as mythical elaborations. His 1835 work, Life of Jesus,[45] was one of the first and most influential systematic analyses of the life story of Jesus
A first quest for the historical Jesus took place in the 19th century when hundreds of Live of Jesus were written. David Strauss (1808–1874) pioneered the search for the "historical Jesus" by rejecting all supernatural events as mythical elaborations. His 1835 work, Life of Jesus,[45] was one of the first and most influential systematic analyses of the life story of Jesus
-- 2db ( talk) 13:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)Professional historians of Christianity — including most of us working within the secular academy — tend to treat the question of whether Jesus existed or not as neither knowable nor particularly interesting. Rather, we focus without prejudice on other lines of investigation, such as how and when the range of characteristics and ideas attributed to him arose.
[T]he historic Jesus is something different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures … We can, at the present day, scarcely imagine the long agony in which the historical view of the life of Jesus [Leben-Jesu-Forschung tr. "Life of Jesus Research"] came to birth… [Schweitzer 1910, pp. 3–4. NOW WITH EMPHASIS]
• Schweitzer, Albert (1910) [1906 in German] (in en). The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede [Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung]. London: A. and C. Black. translated by W. Montgomery. -- 2db ( talk) 13:35, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
-- 2db ( talk) 03:16, 29 January 2022 (UTC)Hugh Anderson states that ‘All the Gospel materials bearing on the life of Jesus were so assiduously studied by liberal Protestant theologians that within the space of a few generations, some sixty thousand biographies, so it is estimated, had been produced’
The following phrases:
are synonymous with
And
is synonymous with (and also nuanced sarcasm of)
For the article "Biographies of Jesus" is more suitable but less humorous. -- 2db ( talk) 07:20, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
New Testament scholars should concede that the kind of history that is deemed acceptable in their field is, at best, somewhat eccentric. Most biblical scholars would be a little unsettled if, for example, they read an article about Apollonius of Tyana in a journal of ancient history that began by arguing for the historicity of supernatural events before defending the veracity of the miracles ascribed to him yet would not be unsurprised to see an article making the same arguments in a journal dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus. [Meggitt 2019, p. 458.]
• Meggitt, Justin J. (2019). "‘More Ingenious than Learned’? Examining the Quest for the Non-Historical Jesus". New Testament Studies 65 (4): 443–460. doi:10.1017/S0028688519000213. -- 2db ( talk) 20:52, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
A tactic used per this article is to claim that there is no difference between between the secular academy and the non-secular academy. For example, it is mainstream in the secular academy that the "entire quest for criteria" has failed.
• Crook, Zeba (1 January 2014).
"Matthew, memory theory and the New No Quest : original research". HTS : Theological Studies. 70 (1): 1–11.
doi:
10.4102/hts.v70i1.2716. [Abstract] … although numerous criteria have been developed, refined and used extensively in order to distinguish between original Jesus material and later church material, those criteria have long been unsatisfactory…
[T]he traditional quest criteria do not accomplish what they were intended to…
-- 2db ( talk) 16:17, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
A common tactic used per this article is to paint Richard Carrier as "fringe". Therefore nothing in what he writes about is authoritative or trustworthy except when citing his own views. Even when Carrier is restating mainstream conclusions he is "fringe". In the Academy of scholarship it is possible, often likely, that one will find a scholarly work that is WP:RS while its overall thesis is "fringe".-- 2db ( talk) 13:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
The following content addition should not be an issue.
Rejecting the "Criteria of Authenticity", Carrier writes:
The growing consensus now is that this entire quest for criteria has failed. The entire field of Jesus studies has thus been left without any valid method. [Carrier 2012, p. 11.]
Daniel Gullotta notes that per the criteria of authenticity, "Many of Carrier’s concerns and criticisms have been longed noted and echoed by other historical Jesus scholars." In support of this claim, Gullotta repeats the extensive list of citations (Gullotta 2017, p. 345, n. 127.) that were originally given by Carrier in Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (pp. 11, 293f, n. 2-7). Additionally, Gullotta also gives the following citations that were not given in Carrier's 2012 work:
- Le Donne, Anthony (2009). The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David.
- Rodriguez, Rafael (2010). Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text.
- Charlesworth, James H.; Rhea, Brian, eds. (2014). Jesus Research: New Methodologies and Perceptions : the Second Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Princeton 2007.
- Crossley, James (2015). Jesus and the Chaos of History: Redirecting the Life of the Historical Jesus. Oxford University Press.
- Bernier, Jonathan (2016). The Quest for the Historical Jesus after the Demise of Authenticity: Toward a Critical Realist Philosophy of History in Jesus Studies.
- Keith, Chris (2016). “The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research”. Journal for the Study of the New Testament. 38 (4): 426–455. doi:10.1177/0142064X16637777.
-- 2db ( talk) 16:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
It is notable that the term "minimal historicist" appears to have been coined and defined by Carrier. And it is also the case that the term refers to someone who accepts the same ideas that are in fact the only elements of Jesus' life that are agreed upon by mainstream scholars. And it is also the case that both Wells and Van Voorst explicitly state that Wells was no longer a mythicist from the mid-1990s onwards. And yet the article has dozens of references to Wells' later works that are characterised as the views of 'mythicists', even though those views are also held by various mainstream scholars. Some editors at this Talk page maintain that Carrier is unreliable for presenting any mainstream position (even where Carrier agrees with the mainstream view), though both the article and editors at Talk freely use the terms "minimal historicist" (and related forms such as "minimally historical") to describe Wells and his views. The same editors go on about how 'we must go by what the sources say' to the extent that even the suggestion of putting similar ideas in the same paragraph is supposedly 'synthesis and original research'. Yet those same editors are content with the blatant misrepresentation of Wells' views from 1996 onwards as both a 'mythicist' and a 'minimal historicist'.-- Jeffro77 ( talk) 10:33, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
-- 2db ( talk) 12:08, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[U]nlike ‘guilds’ in professions such as law or medicine, it is not apparent what members of the ‘guild’ of biblical scholars have in common, other than a shared object of study and competence in a few requisite languages, and therefore what value an alleged consensus among them really has, especially on what is a historical rather than a linguistic matter. [Meggitt 2019, pp. 459–460).]
Mythicists generally get offended more than the rest here
— User:Ramos1990
Yes I see that clearly. -- 2db ( talk) 01:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
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Per WP:BRD. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:44, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Extended content
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Alvar Ellegårddiff edit-summary: "no citations", removed
That's two citations. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:23, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Thomas L. Thompson
diff edit-summary "per talk page, Thompson is simply not a mythicist and so adding him here is incredibly misleading", removed subsection on Thomas L. Thompson. Bultmanndiff edit-summary " bultmann's views are outdated, as the very sentence in which he is mentioned shows", removed
No objection, I guess, though Bultmann does not seem to be irrelevant. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:38, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Frazerdiff edit-summary "this section is about proponents of mythicism, not non-mythicist authors who have vaguely influenced mythicism"; removed
References
Serious? The influences on mythicists are not about mythicism? A reference by Price? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:41, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Christ myth theoristsChrist myth theory#Christ myth theorists
diff edit-summary van Manen
diff edit-summary
References
The topic of this article is the Christ Myth Theory, not only Christ Myth Theorists. Van Manen, and the Dutch Radical School, are relevant for the topic. See also Van Voorst, cited at Radical criticism, and The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present, which refers to Van Manen. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:28, 14 January 2019 (UTC) (Lack of) biographical information
diff edit-summary
with
References
Overview of main arguments - bullit-list and bolding
diff, edit-summary Dating
diff, edit-summary "reorganizing"
diff, edit-summary Historicity of the Gospelsdiff changed a subheader from "The Gospels are not historical records" into "Historicity of the Gospels." The section is about the arguments of the CM-Theorists, but soit. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 08:42, 14 January 2019 (UTC) First the mainstream view, or first the mythicists?Lack of surviving historic records
diff, edit-summary Brother of the Lord
diff, edit-summary "redundant references"
diff, edit-summary Ah, here the note on Ph2:6-11 was removed. See above. I've re-inserted the line + reference, and the note. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:24, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Liberal theology
diff,
diff, edit-summary Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:17, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Notes
diff, edit-summary
Paul-Louis Couchoud
diff edit-summary Diversity and parallels
diff, edit-summary Same for this one and thisone. While this one has already been re-inserted, and edited. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 11:04, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Celestial being - order of info
diff, edit-summary The summarizing may be good diff. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 11:16, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Exaltation Christology
diff, edit-summary Scholarly reception
diff, edit-summary Thompson (again)
diff, edit-summary Wells (again)
diff, edit-summary Doherty
diff, edit-summary Price
diff, edit-summary Carrier
diff, edit-summary
Questioning the competence of proponents
diff, edit-summary
diff, edit-summary Pauline epistles
diff, edit-summary I've re-inserted the whole section on "Celestial being"; the original version simply makes more sense, including the ""Early High Christology Club," which is one sentence. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 19:16, 14 January 2019 (UTC) Enough for today; I'm a volunteer, not a payed staffer. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 19:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Josephus
diff, edit-summary
diff, edit-summary
Why? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:26, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Red notes
diff, edit-summary
diff, edit-summary Personification of Logos and Wisdom
diff, edit-summary Diversity and parallels
Early-20th-century proponents
diff, edit-summary
Remsburg
diff, edit-summary
So, Remsburg seems acceptable here too. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 08:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Arguments - van Voorst
diff, edit-summary
Lack of biographical information
diff, edit-summary Celestial being (again)
diff, edit-summary Jesus lived in a dim past
diff, edit-summary
Pauline epistles (again)
diff, edit-summary Genre
diff, edit-summary Weaving together various traditions - Wells
diff, edit-summary Josephus and Tacitus
diff, edit-summary John Allegro
diff, edit-summary Mainstream historical view
diff, dit-summary Straus
diff, edit-summary
Radical Dutch School (again)
diff, edit-summary Dating and authorship/genre
diff, edit-summary Non-working citation
diff, edit-summary Tacitusdiff - again, reversing the mainstream-mythicist order. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 10:20, 15 January 2019 (UTC) Mack
diff, edit-summary Historical Jesus
diff, edit-summary Real being
diff, edit-summary Redundant notes
diff, edit-summary Done - next, and proposalDone. Now, check all the notes, and remove as many as possible. Then re-assess various sections and subsections. May I propose that IP74 does not add any further note without discussing first? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 10:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Not done yet... - Celestial being
diff, edit-summary Maccoby
diff, edit-summary
into
References
"Vague"? Or some aversion against the word "myth"? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 06:35, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
diff, edit-summary Scholarly reception - Maurice Casey
diff, edit-summary
|
@
Yamla: could you please explain
this revert? Your edit-summay, rv, cited quote uses 'on', not 'one'
makes no sense to me. Which quote are you referring to, and why did rever a whole serie of edits, and includes the removal of multiple references and notes. Why?
Joshua Jonathan -
Let's talk!
18:12, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Ah, I see (emphasis mine):
Ehrman also notes that mythicist views would prevent one from getting employment in a religious studies department:
These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land one in a bona fide department of biology. [1]
References
I'm taking the liberty to re-revert the rest, presuming that was a misunderstanding, minus the "e"-typo in the Ehrman-quote. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 19:07, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
I've re-ordered the info in the Christ myth theory#Arguments section, to more strictly follow Bauer's threefold argument. I hope that this makes the structure clearer, and adresses Wallingfordtofay's concerns about the repetition of arguments. Some more fine-tuning is probably needed, but this is the basic idea. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:08, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
I still think that the traditional views on Jesus should be given before the scholarly views. The argument that the existence of Jesus is purely a historical question, may overrate the background of the scholars on this topic. See Michael Licona (2016), Is the Sky Falling in the World of Historical Jesus Research?, Bulletin for Biblical Research, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2016), pp. 353-368.
See also Keith & Le Donne; Price is not alone in his criticisms of the criteria being used in the quest for the historical Jesus, nor in his "Jesus agnosticism." Nor is Thompson: "...a larger process of accounting for how and why early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did." Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 09:12, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
The radical solution was to deny the possibility of reliable knowledge of Jesus, and out of this developed the Christ myth theory, according to which Jesus never existed as an historical figure and the Christ of the Gospels was a social creation of a messianic community." (source: Farmer, William R. 1975 "A Fresh Approach to Q," Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults (Vol 2), eds. Jacob Neusner, Morton Smith Brill, 1975) p. 43)
This scholastic mess has been an open secret in biblical history circles for decades. Over forty years ago, professors like Robin S. Barbour and Cambridge’s Morna Hooker were complaining about the naïve assumptions underlying the criteria biblical scholars used to gauge the “authentic” elements of the Jesus stories. Today, even Christian historians complain the problem is no better; most recently Anthony Le Donne and Chris Keith in the 2012 book Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity.
Joshua, one of your more recent edits has been to include a refer to vridar.org, Neil Godfrey's blog. Godfrey is a ridiculously unreliable source and I've removed the citation. Another check reveals that vridar is cited a few times in the page. Do you have any reason for why they should be included, or should I just move ahead and remove them? Wallingfordtoday ( talk) 02:07, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
2605:A000:160C:A1EE:71D3:58AC:F719:3A53 ( talk) 14:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)Neil Godfrey and Tim Widowfield, who both write at Vridar . . . happen to be some of the most astute and well-read amateurs you can read on the internet on the subject of biblical historicity. I call them amateurs only for the reason that they don’t have, so far as I know, advanced degrees in the subject. But I have often been impressed with their grasp of logic and analysis of scholarship. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect their work.
— User:Richard Carrier, March 2014
I agree with Wallingfordtoday, we should probably not include blogs. As for the quote the IP left, it's a bit beside the point. Someone can be absolutely right without being RS. RS is not necessarily about knowledge. Amateurs writing blogs are not RS, no matter how insightful they might be. Jeppiz ( talk) 15:32, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Ehrman notes that "the mythicists have become loud, and thanks to the Internet they've attracted more attention". [1] Within a few years of the inception of the World Wide Web (c. 1990), mythicists such as Earl Doherty began to present their argument to a larger public via the internet. [q 1] Doherty created the website The Jesus Puzzle in 1996, [2] while the organization Internet Infidels has featured the works of mythicists on their website [3] and mythicism has been mentioned on several popular news sites. [4]
References
Ehrman.2015.Debate
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Doherty.2011.Godfrey
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Internet.Infidels.Historicity
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).Joshua, I just checked back on the page and continue finding you adding criticisms within scholarship of scholarship rather than criticism of mythicists against scholarship. This Wiki page isn't about what Meier or Hendel (a non-NT scholar who has no expertise on this topic) thinks is wrong with scholarship, it's what mythicists think is wrong with scholarship. Wallingfordtoday ( talk) 16:54, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
Mainstream historical-critical view, by the way, not
mainstream historical critical review. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 14:49, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
I've been off of Wikipedia for the last several days because of my workload, though I'm here now. I see Joshua has reinsterted many things, so let's begin by trying to discuss this one. Joshua, you've reinserted Thompson on the basis of him fitting the definition of mythicist per Ehrman's point of view. I don't quite see any such thing. As far as I'm concerned, Thompson's point is that Ehrman misrepresented him when styling him as a mythicist, not merely differed in the definition of his terminology so as to include Thompson's views into mythicism.
Another issue we'll focus on for now is something was reverted back I didn't want to see. A lot of editing I did had to do with the unbelievably intensity of the length of the article, which tediously goes over every mythicist explanation of debated verse rather than provides summarizes of mythicist views. Some of the explanations of "mythicist views" aren't actually mythicist views at all. Every scholar, for example, thinks that Christology was influenced by Jewish Wisdom literature. So what's the point of the section on this? Not only that, but for some odd reason, there are two different sections both about the exact same thing: Jesus being a celestial Jesus. I can hardly tell why, though it's been apparently brought back into the article because it's "interesting" or "seems relevant" or something. Wallingfordtoday ( talk) 23:10, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
2605:A000:160C:83E1:100C:75B8:CB44:F8E5 ( talk) 07:13, 18 January 2019 (UTC)[When] my friend and former colleague, Thomas L. Thompson, in The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David from 2005 seeks to dissolve the Jesus figure of the Gospels as a historical figure, making him, so to speak, the epitome of biblical and other—far older—Near Eastern concepts of a royal Messiah, the question of historicity invites us to look in other directions for an answer, rather than to try to identify ipsissima verba Iesu or situations which could have been historical recollections. This is not to deny that the Jesus story in the Gospels is saturated with reminiscences of Old Testament figures and events, the Old Testament being the medium of the Near Eastern Messiah myth. Moreover, in this respect, Thomas L. Thompson's book is an abundant and impressive arsenal of evidence.
Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias. This applies to both what you say and how you say it.
...in The Messiah Myth Thomas L. Thompson argues that the quest for the historical Jesus is besides the point, since the Jesus of the Gospels never existed.
From the Wiki-article:
Thomas L. Thompson (born 1939), Professor emeritus of theology at the University of Copenhagen, is a leading biblical minimalist of the Old Testament, and regarded as a myrhicist by several authors.( "Ehrman.2012.p11_15", "Casey2014"
Ehrman:
A different sort of support for a mythicist position comes in the work of Thomas L. Thompson.
Thompson:
Bart Ehrman has recently dismissed what he calls mythicist scholarship, my Messiah Myth from 2005 among them, as anti-religious motivated denials of a historical Jesus and has attributed to my book arguments and principles which I had never presented, certainly not that Jesus had never existed.
Ehrman does not state that Thompson denies the existence of Jesus; Ehrman states that Thompson gives "A different sort of support for a mythicist position." So, Thompson is misrepresenting Ehrman; and Ehrman regards Thompson to take a mythicist position. See also Ehrman's definition, as quoted in the lead, a paraphrase of Doherty:
the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity.
Ehrman does not state that mythicism is limited to the stance that Jesus did not exist.
Regarding the Wisdom-argument, you stated:
Some of the explanations of "mythicist views" aren't actually mythicist views at all.
You further stated:
The point is that the arguments they make aren't new, or have any particular thing to do with mythicism. They're just repeating what scholars say. This is not at all notable for the mythicist position.
From the Wiki-article:
According to Wells, Doherty, and Carrier, the mythical Jesus was derived from Wisdom traditions, the personification of an eternal aspect of God, who came to visit human beings. [1] [2] [web 1] [web 2]
References
Wells (1996), The Jesus Legend, p.xxv:
I continue to regard[ this Jewish Wisdom literature as of great importance for the earliest Christian ideas about Jesus.
They (the mythicists) try to explain where 'Jesus' came from, if not from an historical person. That's part of their argument, and quite relevant; they're not just shouting "Jesus didn't exist!", they're saying "Jesus was (and is) a myth, and this is part of this myth." They explain where the myth came from. That's quite relevant. And if that's in line with mainstream scholarship, it makes it even more relevant, showing that they're not complete cranks. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:59, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Just wanted to drop in my own two cents here to the point about the length of this article. I think that this version is much tighter and sums up the key points in a way that a reader coming to the topic could get her or his head around. I think a reversion to something like this would be advisable. Magic1million ( talk) 19:38, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
As explained before: context is needed [...] Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 05:22, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
JJ is correct. See Wikipedia:Fringe theories for more information. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 09:51, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
Joshua, I only sometimes look here. Now by a quick look it seems to me that you are currently the main originator of article changes. Just one comment. It seems to me that even the reference to http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/dav368029.shtml has again disappeared. I find obvious that Davies' voice, in particular articulated in the second and third paragraph, should be represented in the article; at least to demonstrate that not all scholars in this area are "Ehrman-like". In my attempts in the past, always somebody replied to me "Davies also writes there "Am I inclined to accept that Jesus existed? Yes, I am."", by which such "somebody" meant that we should thus ignore Davies' words in the above mentioned paragraphs. I can only hope that you are not like such "somebody", and that you will find an appropriate way to represent such voice in the article. (I am not a native speaker, and I also have no energy to try to "fight" myself for such an obvious thing.) Thank you. Jelamkorj ( talk) 20:05, 15 February 2019 (UTC)
While proponents like Earl Doherty, Price, and Carrier, are concerned with the origins of Christianity and the genesis of the Christ-figure, the perception of and debate about the Christ myth theory has increasingly turned to the simpler question whether Jesus existed or not({{refn|group=q|name="existence.simplification"}}) and consequently with some scholars proposing a more moderate position.({{refn|group=q|name="Davies.2012.evidence"}}
Simplification:
* Ehrman (2012), p. 4 harvp error: multiple targets (6×): CITEREFEhrman2012 ( help): "The reality is that whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist. That is what this book will set out to demonstrate."
* Thompson (2012a), §. Comment #4 : "I think it is very difficult to establish the historicity of figures in biblical narrative, as the issue rather relates to the quality of texts one is dealing with. I work further on this issue in my Messiah Myth of 2005. Here I argue that the synoptic gospels can hardly be used to establish the historicity of the figure of Jesus; for both the episodes and sayings with which the figure of Jesus is presented are stereotypical and have a history that reaches centuries earlier. I have hardly shown that Jesus did not exist and did not claim to."
* Dykstra, Tom (2015). "Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship". The Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies (JOCABS). 8:1: 29.As for the question of whether Jesus existed, the best answer is that any attempt to find a historical Jesus is a waste of time. It can't be done, it explains nothing, and it proves nothing.
Davies, Philip (August 2012). "Did Jesus Exist?". www.bibleinterp.com. The Bible and Interpretation. Retrieved 29 January 2017.: "The rather fragile historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth should be tested to see what weight it can bear [...] I don’t think, however, that in another 20 years there will be a consensus that Jesus did not exist [the "Jesus atheism" viewpoint], or even possibly didn’t exist [the "Jesus agnosticism" viewpoint], but a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability."
the perception of and debate about the Christ myth theory has increasingly turned to the simpler question whether Jesus existed or notapplies to blogs and internet-fora, not to the scholarly discussions.
a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability.makes sense, though; it seems to me that the shifting focus from "the" historical Jesus to 'Jesus as remembered by the early Christian movement(s)' is somehow "similar" to what Davies says here. Somehow, the articles on the historicity of Jesus are not up-to-date; they lack an overview of research from, say, the last 15 years. This is also indicated by the repetition, in all those articles, of the two 'basic facts' of Jesus'life that scholars agree on: baptism and crucifixion. That is, they can agree on that following the criteria-methodology. But, as recent critics seem to have pointed out: what does that tell us about Jesus' meaning, the impact he had on others? Something's missing... As Davies himself writes:
it is how he was understood that matters, it is that which created Christianity.
What I can see, but not understand, is the stake that Christians have in the unanswerable question of Jesus’ historicity and his true historical self [...] an already accepted dogma looking for rationalization [...] [Paul's] writing is almost certainly the only extant direct testimony of someone who claims to have met Jesus (read that twice, and see if you agree before moving on).That is, the central subject of Paul and the Gospels is not "the" 'historical Jesus', but the arisen, exaltated Christ, who was in Heaven, and appeared from there at earth (Ehrmann). That's not a historical Jesus, but, excusez le mot, a mythological Jesus. It seems to me that there is a middleground between hardcore mythicism on the one hand, and hardcore opposition to mythicism at the other hand... Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 21:31, 15 February 2019 (UTC) / update Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 16:41, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
It's somewhat tiresome that we rehash the same old arguments year after year. A FAQ would be needed. To state the obvious: individual proponents are irrelevant. We should present the arguments, not the persons. Having a paragraph on every lunatic (and some serious ones as well) who believes in the CMT is completely irrelevant. Frankly, who cares is Onfray or Ellegård believe in CMT? They are as much authorities on Jesus as Trump is on tomato salad.
In short We should of course keep all arguments for CMT made in
reliable ssources and we should of course reference these arguments. We should remove the entire section about individuals. It serves no purpose, just makes the article longer and more repetitive without adding anything of value.
Jeppiz (
talk)
11:56, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
Rarely do mythicists define what they mean by the term myth.
an approach that emphasized the degree to which the Bible and the ideas contained within it were the products of their cultural milieu [...] studied the influence of various ancient religious and philosophical traditions on the emergence of Christianity [...] Christianity’s customs and dogmas developed over time and in response to socioeconomic factors as well as influences from other traditions—in particular, Hellenistic Judaism and the religions of the Roman Empire.
@ Smeat75: if that's their understanding of what "myth" is, then that's a really poor understanding. Sad. Apparently, they don't understand David Friedrich Strauss "third way." Anyway, even more reason to explain how the methodologies differ, and why mainstream scholarship rejects the methodology, and therefore also, the conclusions, of mythicists. NB: it also illustrates why Thompson doesn't want to be placed in the "Jesus-did-not-exist party"; while, actually, his approach is truly a myth-oriented explanation, in the full and rich sense of the word. Maybe the article shpuld be moved to "Christ myth theories"? ;) Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 19:28, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Smeat75, and also Wellingfordtoday, thanks for your input and thoughts. It is challenging, and is providing new thoughts about the necessity to provide context, not just persons. I've
added info on the historical quest for Jesus, including the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule. Apparently, the CMT has to be understood against the backdrop of this quest; the RgS, especially Bultmann, has played an important role in the waning and waxing appeal of this quest, and is regarded as an important influence on Wells, who initiated the revival of the CMT. Mentioning the RgS correlates with the critique on Wells that his approach is an outdated RgS-approach.
Somehow, it must be possible to incorporate the (scholarly) understanding of what "myth" is in this section; that also opens the possibility to introduce the 'nothing but myth' approach of some mythicists, in their respective sub-sections. Smeat75, would you be able to find (written) sources which explicitly apply this kind of reductionism?
To the section on "Present day#revival" we should something about the influence of internet, as mentioned by Ehrman (as an aside: I was introduced to the CMT about ten years ago, thanks to internet), and the popularization and polemical stances to which this has led. I hope we can find more info on this.
Altogether, I think this provides more context, making clearer where the CMT comes from, and why it is rejected by mainstream scholarship.
Joshua Jonathan -
Let's talk!
10:25, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps a good solution would be to reorganize the article along the lines of the various theories that CMT might refer to, with a brief narrative describing each. Rather than giving all the historical views, the contextual accounts could be nested under the heading that best fits the aspect of CMT they are refuting. This could allow the merging of a number of the existing sections - at a minimum synthesizing sections 1 & 2 and pulling in and contextualizing the sections on the proponents. Maybe a primary section heading like "Primary theories of CMT" and then sub-headings stating the viewpoint, like "There was no historical Jesus." Then, under that sub-heading we could have a brief overview of the arguments against Jesus existing as an historical person, the arguments against that specific understanding (e.g. Tacitus & Josephus, etc.) and then a *brief* catalog of the proponents of this CMT viewpoint. I am hopeful that an approach like this could be used to pare down the article length substantially. Magic1million ( talk) 21:27, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
Lataster, Raphael (2019).
Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse. BRILL.
ISBN
9789004408784. This volume explains the inadequacy of the sources and methods used to establish Jesus' historicity, and how agnosticism can reasonably be upgraded to theorising about ahistoricity when reconsidering Christian Origins.
· Lataster, Raphael. Review of Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, by Bart Ehrman. Literature & Aesthetics 24 no. 2 (2014): 137–138.
· Lataster, Raphael. Review of Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?, by Maurice Casey. Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 5 no. 1 (2014): 166–168.
· Lataster, Raphael. Review of On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, by Richard Carrier. Journal of Religious History 38 no. 4 (2014): 614–616.
· Lataster, Raphael. “Bart Ehrman and the Elusive Historical Jesus.” Literature & Aesthetics 26 no. 1 (2016): 181–192.
· Lataster, Raphael. “Bayesian Reasoning: Criticising the ‘Criteria of Authenticity’ and Calling for a Review of Biblical Criticism.” Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences 5 no. 2 (2013): 271–293.
· Lataster, Raphael. The Case Against Theism: Why the Evidence Disproves God’s Existence. Cham, Switzerland: Springer 2018.
· Lataster, Raphael. “The Fourth Quest: A Critical Analysis of the Recent Literature on Jesus’ (a)Historicity.” Literature & Aesthetics 24 no. 1 (2014): 1–28.
· Lataster, Raphael. “The Gospel According to Bart: The Folly of Ehrman’s Hypothetical Sources.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Historical Association Sydney 7th July 2015.
· Lataster, Raphael. “Is There a Christian Agenda Behind Religious Studies Departments?” Accessed 18/02/2013. http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/2013/01/23/is-there-a-christian-agenda-behind-religious-studies-departments-by-raphael-Lataster, .
· Lataster, Raphael. “It’s Official: We Can Now Doubt Jesus’ Historical Existence.” Think 15 no. 43 (2016): 65–79.
· Lataster, Raphael. “Jesus Scepticism: An Examination of the Arguments for Various ‘Jesus as a Myth’ Theories.” Master’s thesis University of Sydney 2013.
· Lataster, Raphael. “On Richard Swinburne and the Failings of Christian Theistic Evidentialism.” Literature & Aesthetics 26 no. 1 (2016): 23–40.
· Lataster, Raphael. “The (Overwhelming) Improbability of Classical Theism.” Paper presented at the Oxford Symposium on Religious Studies Oxford 1st August 2016.
· Lataster, Raphael. “A Philosophical and Historical Analysis of William Lane Craig’s Resurrection of Jesus Argument.” Think 14 no. 39 (2015): 59–71.
· Lataster, Raphael. “Questioning the Plausibility of Jesus Ahistoricity Theories – A Brief Pseudo-Bayesian Metacritique of the Sources.” Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies 6 no. 1 (2015): 63–96.
· Lataster, Raphael. There Was No Jesus There Is No God: A Scholarly Examination of the Scientific Historical and Philosophical Evidence & Arguments For Monotheism. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013.
· Lataster, Raphael and Richard Carrier. Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2015.
• What is the WP:weight of this book for this article? – 2db ( talk) 04:14, 15 July 2019 (UTC) && 14:03, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
The ahistorical hypothesis is a hypothesis in Bible research, which means that the Jesus figure described in the Bible is not based on any historical person.
In history research one cannot always achieve complete certainty. It can therefore be quite reasonable that one has more than one hypothesis that deals with the same historical event and these different hypotheses complement each other, as long as one cannot show that one of these hypotheses with overwhelming probability is the true one. The core of the ahistoric hypothesis is thus whether or not Jesus existed as a historical person. It differentiates it from Jesus myth which says that what we believe we know about Jesus is largely myths but does not exclude that he existed as a historical person.
In the case of Jesus of Nazareth, two hypotheses are possible, namely that he has existed as a historical person or that he has not existed as a historical person. It is this latter hypothesis that is usually called the ahistorical hypothesis and which is described in this article. In fact, the difference between the hypothesis that Jesus existed and the ahistoric hypothesis has no greater historical significance, since in any case we have no reliable historical knowledge of Jesus and it remains disputed which historical value the various stories of Jesus have.
Dykstra, Tom (2015). "Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship". The Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies (JOCABS). 8 (1): 6.
Brodie and Ehrman are both competent scholars, both are assessing the same body of literature acting as historical evidence, and yet they reach diametrically opposite conclusions.
more...This is possible because each approaches the same literature with different assumptions. Two of the most important assumptions that determine how you interpret any given writing are related to its dependence on other literature and its literary genre, and it’s in precisely these two areas that Ehrman and Brodie differ.
The Jesus-as-myth scenario is plausible if all of the writings about him can ultimately be traced back to a single source, meaning that all of them are ultimately inspired by a single original inventor. It’s not likely that different people would independently invent the same imaginary person with the same name and a similar life story. Therefore, the strongest argument for Jesus’s historicity is that multiple literary witnesses to his life are independent – that is, they are documents written by authors who had no knowledge at all of each other’s writings. That is precisely the approach Ehrman focuses on first in his book. He counts seven independent narratives about Jesus...
As I understand, apart from Casey (2014), Ehrman (2012) and Case (1928, 2nd ed.) [1912], it appears that no other scholar(s) of the New Testament has ever put together a sustained argument that Jesus lived since 1912 ?
◦ Carrier (4 March 2014). "Critical Review of Maurice Casey's Defense of the Historicity of Jesus". Richard Carrier Blogs.
So far only two contemporary books [Casey (2014), Ehrman (2012)] have been written in defense of the historicity of Jesus (nothing properly comparable has been published in almost a hundred years).
◦ Per Ehrman (5 May 2012). "Did Jesus Exist as Part One". The Bart Ehrman Blog. [now bolded]:
I realized when doing my research for the book [DJE] that since New Testament scholars have never taken mythicists seriously, they have never seen a need to argue against their views, which means that even though experts in the study of the historical Jesus (and Christian origins, and classics, and ancient history, etc etc.) have known in the back of their minds all sorts of powerful reasons for simply assuming that Jesus existed, no one had ever tried to prove it. Odd as it may seem, no scholar of the New Testament has ever thought to put together a sustained argument that Jesus must have lived. To my knowledge, I was the first to try it...
◦ Widowfield, Tim (16 February 2015). "'It is absurd to suggest . . .' -- Shirley Jackson Case on The Historicity of Jesus". Vridar.
Case engages in a prolonged argument against “the spuriousness and the late dating” of Paul’s epistles (Case, 1912, p. 70). Later on he defends the consensus dating of the canonical gospels. In a chapter entitled “The Gospel Evidence,” he lays out his case for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being written “within fairly defined limits,” namely “the last thirty-five years of the first century.”
Reading his set of arguments today, I’m struck by how little has changed.
-- 2db ( talk) 19:11, 15 July 2019 (UTC) && 04:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC) && 02:32, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
To speak of 'two theories', as if they on a par, ignores this scholarly consensus.
Cf. Arnal, William E. (2015) [2005]. The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Contemporary Identity. Routledge. pp. 76–77. ISBN 978-1-317-32440-9.Twentieth-century scholarship, with its faith in history, assumed a historical Jesus as its starting point. It shared Schweitzer’s personal dilemma: a choice between a Jesus who fits modern visions of Christianity and Mark’s failed prophet. But they always assumed there was a historical Jesus to describe.
The recent defences of Jesus’ historicity by Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey lack lucid and competent methodologies, rely on highly questionable documents, and further make use of sources that no longer exist, if they ever did.
[...]
If the consensus view that a historical Jesus certainly existed is based on such tenuous methodology, it would seem reasonable that the consensus view should be reviewed, while not necessarily immediately rejected as false. Let us end this section with a mainstream scholar’s admission that such methods — like the earlier and often mentioned appeal to imaginary sources — are idiosyncratic; that they are unique to historians who specialise in the New Testament texts:more...The idea of formulating certain “criteria” for an evaluation of historical sources is a peculiar phenomenon in historical-critical Jesus research. It was established in the course of the twentieth century as a consequence of the form-critical idea of dividing Jesus accounts of the Gospels into isolated parts of tradition, which would be examined individually with regard to their authenticity. Such a perspective was not known to the Jesus research of the nineteenth century and it does not, to my knowledge, appear in other strands of historical research. In analysing historical material scholars would usually ask for their origin and character, their tendencies in delineating events from the past, evaluate their principal credibility — for example, whether it is a forgery or a reliable source — and use them together with other sources to develop a plausible image of the concerned period of history. It is not by accident, therefore, that the rather curious “criteria approach” has evoked many criticisms. [So says Jens Schröter, in Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, eds., Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (London: T&T Clark, 2012), pp. 51–52.]
Per WP:weight, Wp:rs, etc., what (if any) difference is there between Casey (2014) and Ehrman (2012)?
[Per Casey (2014), Jesus] it is quite likely that the book was not peer-reviewed, since it is actually a popular book, and not a proper monograph published by an academic press.
Cf. Casey, Maurice (2014). Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths?. Bloomsbury T & T Clark [A&C Black]. ISBN 978-0-567-01505-1.
Casey acknowledges Ehrman's "bold attempt", but alluded to the latter's "regrettable mistakes". [Casey (JEAMM), p. 17.]
Cf. Ehrman, Bart D (2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperOne. ISBN 9780062206442.
--
2db (
talk)
00:08, 29 July 2019 (UTC) && 00:38, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
With all due respect, 2db, please keep in mind that this is WP:NOTAFORUM. Do you have any concrete suggestions for how to improve the article? If so, please state them clearly and briefly, and with a brief argument for why they are improvements. Jeppiz ( talk) 20:05, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
User:Joshua Jonathan do you concur that Lataster (2019) complies with WP:rs policy regarding the most (as in scholarly) WP:rs?
-- 2db ( talk) 06:11, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
I have two points to make here. Both concern the very extensive textbox "Quotes on the historicity of Jesus" (in the section Reception > Scholarly reception > Lack of support for mythicism):
First, and of imperative importance: I insist that the final section of the above-mentioned textbox ("Comparison with Holocaust-deniers") be deleted. There is no conceivable justification for comparing (a) the mass murder of millions of innocent people within living memory with (b) doubting or questioning the existence of a single person 2,000 years ago, no matter how holy. I am not being polite about this, since there is nothing to be polite about. Making such a comparison is tantamount to trivializing all those meaningless deaths. I am convinced that Jesus would agree with me on this.
Secondly, and of importance only for the credibility of this article: I suggest that the entire textbox be deleted. In this textbox (excluding the section on holocaust denial) are collected 65 quotes arguing against any and all forms of denial, doubt or questioning of the historical existence of Jesus, and 4 (!) quotes that support such denial, doubt or questioning (and please note that all four quotes are extracted from the original source in such a way that it is easy to gain the impression that they too are arguments against such denial, questioning or doubt). This is quite the opposite of the "neutral point of view" ( WP:NPOV) that is one of Wikipedia's basic standards.
Filursiax ( talk) 23:16, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
Some points on quotation usage from Wikipedia:Quotations:
- I believe the Wikipedia:Quotations guideline supports the removal of the quotebox - Epinoia ( talk) 01:35, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
The 'A historical Jesus existed' subsection includes the claim:
Yet, that there was a historical Jesus is not in doubt. New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman states that Jesus "certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees".
Both citations reference Ehrman's own works.
Any chance that someone could add a reference from one of those competent non-Christian scholars to back up Ehrman's assertion? Many thanks. JezGrove ( talk) 12:11, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi,
I see there was an add by an IP editor [3] and then a revert [4] with the reasoning being: "WP:CHERRY; lede clutter; Wells not a historicity expert; scholarship outdated and reliant on the heavily debated Q source; Wells always held that the Pauline Jesus was ahistorical."
After looking into the original add, the revert did not make much sense, since for one it does not look cherry picked at all and it does not clutter the lead at all. The source does state his views from previous decades of writings on the matter (Wells has quite a few prominent writings on Jesus not existing since the 1970s at least so he is a prominent authority on the topic from the mythicist side) and Wells summarizes his views in that quote that was provided by the IP editor. Since G. A. Wells is one of the earliest modern revivalists of mythicism (is featured in this article as such), and certainly has an academic background, his views are certainly more relevant than amateur mythicists. The other reasons provided were not good either since Wells views are his own. Like every other mythicists, it not mainstream. In terms of "outdated", that is an odd claim since, for instance, recent mythicists like Richard Carrier use really old and outdated ideas like 19th century/early 20th century literary theories like Otto Rank and Lord Raglan in their current writings. With stuff like this, that does not seem like a good reason to object to Wells change of mind on the matter.
Certainly seems relevant to mention that even multiple decades long mythicists like Wells have changed their minds on the matter, no? I was under the impression that he remained an mythicist and am still surprised by this new info. If, no objections, then this add seems relevant enough to restore. Ramos1990 ( talk) 03:36, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
Does Wikipedia consider the strength of the arguments when labelling something as "fringe" or is it merely the number of people labelling something that matters? Thanks -- Damiano Tommasi ( talk) 02:18, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
The current edit gives undie weight to a fringe view point, it is not a minority view point as even the source says- Raphael Lataster is a mythicist that even says as much even if he does not agree it is not. As such we need better and more diverse references before be can call it a "minority" view when it represents a minuscule numbers of academics in the relevant fields. It like quoting holocausts denialists that their claim is held by academics, which it is by those on the fringe but no mainstream academics would recognized them as a minority view point - just fringe. Hardyplants ( talk) 05:06, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
[W]e need better and more diverse references before be can call it a "minority" view...
— User:Hardyplants
I am awaiting a cited quote of the peer reviewed "sources" on the historicity of Jesus that support Hardyplants claim. And also equal or surpass Lataster 2019 per WP:RS. However this may not be possible given the following:
“ | [There has] been no peer reviewed monograph in defense of the assumption of historicity for over a hundred years—not since Shirley Jackson Case published a now-deeply-outdated treatment for the University of Chicago in 1912 (a second edition released in 1928 isn’t substantially different (
Case, 1928).
[2db.c 1] [...] |
” |
— Richard Carrier [2db.c 2] |
The leading historicity scholars are Maurice Casey and Bart Ehrman, whose individual works on the question of the "historicity of Jesus"—as a sustained argument that Jesus lived—are not comparable to any other work by a contemporary scholar who also holds the historicity position. Casey and Ehrman are the only contemporary "secular" scholars to comprehensively address this issue, [2db.c 1] as Ehrman writes, "Odd as it may seem, no scholar of the New Testament has ever thought to put together a sustained argument that Jesus must have lived." [2db.c 3] Ehrman also notes that his book Did Jesus Exist? [2db.c 4] was written for a popular audience and that in regards to the question of the historicity of Jesus, "I was not arguing the case for scholars, because scholars already know the answer to that question." [2db.c 5]
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-- 2db ( talk) 05:45, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
Ad infinitum; how often have we discussed the fringe-status now? See WP:DONTGETIT. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 06:13, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
"Richard Carrier review and refutation"
There are about 10 sources for that sentence including Ehrman, Grant, Van Voorst, Gullotta...
— User:Ramos1990
The way Ehrman & Gullotta are being taken out of context is obvious:
Even Ehrman concedes that there are ‘a couple of bona fide scholars . . . Their books may not be known to most of the general public interested in questions related to Jesus, the Gospels, or the early Christian church, but they do occupy a noteworthy niche as a (very) small but (often) loud minority voice’. [Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, p. 3.]
Gullotta clearly agrees with Ehrman—whom he quotes—that "bona fide" scholars comprise a minority view. -- 2db ( talk) 07:00, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
you might want to think again about whether you really want to discount atheist scholars as ideologically "poisoned"
— User:Doric Loon
Quite correct indeed...
After presenting a current positive quoted citation from a highest WP:RS source. I asked for peer reviewed quoted citations of current sources that support the negative claim.
User:Doric Loon, you should expect significant misrepresentation of WP policy on this issue. You will have to lawyer up and become an expert on WP policy and conflict resolution.
Best of luck --
2db (
talk)
14:23, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
"peer reviewed quoted citations of current sources that support the negative claim"– cheers, Epinoia ( talk) 14:42, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
[H]as been so for a long time...
— User:Joshua Jonathan
Yes, and now it is outdated or refuted or always has been taken out of context to push WP:Truth.
-- 2db ( talk) 15:52, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
I have been asked to 'make a case' regarding my inclusion of information regarding the Name and location of Nazareth.
My edit is as follows:
Arguments against Jesus being mythical include the problem of Nazareth and its existence before and during the time of Jesus. The people in the Gospel of John are depicted as objecting to the idea that Jesus was the Messiah because he came from the wrong town. But the Gospels of Matthew and Luke contain stories explaining how Jesus happened to be born in the right town of Bethlehem. The stories attempt to explain that although Jesus was from Nazareth, he was actually born in Bethlehem. Archeological evidence presently does support the presence of a town/village where Nazareth is today, however there is no archeological or scriptural evidence to support the area being called Nazareth in the first century BCE. Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Southern Florida, James F. Strange, stated in 1992 that: "Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century CE. This likely reflects its lack of prominence both in Galilee and in Judaea." [1] However, in a recent book published by Professor Ken Dark of the University of Reading, new archaeological excavations appear to indicate that the area called Nazareth today was, to quote Professor Dark: "substantially bigger than previously thought, religiously very conservative and politically very anti-Roman." [2] This may open the question as to why the name 'Nazareth' was not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources. The area that is now called Nazareth has been occupied for about 9000 years, and there has been a city there since the later neolithic/early bronze age. [3]
References
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help)
I see absolutely nothing wrong with the above information. It draws on known facts, from qualified Professors, and if Nazareth was a big town that wasn't mentioned, it questions why it was mentioned in the New Testament. If the area was called Nazareth, then that historicizes Jesus, as logically the NT writers wrote Nazareth because he came from there. If the area was not called Nazareth, why did the NT authors create the name? Adam Davis 83 ( talk) 07:19, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Arguments against Jesus being mythical include the problem of Nazareth and its existence before and during the time of Jesus.? Who states that Jesus must be mythical, because there was no place called Nazareth at that time? After that statement follows an expose about Nazareth and Bethlehem; how dos this relate to the historicity of Jesus? No clue. And even if this is an argument for the historicity of Jesus, where do mythicists argue against this argument? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:50, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Not only is the idea that Jesus came from Nazareth a common element in all four canonical gospels, it also seems to have been an awkward fact that did not fit well with the gospel writers’ claim he was the Messiah. This indicates it is likely his origin in this small village was a historical fact. Jesus Mythicists often deal with this by removing Nazareth from the story and some even claim all the archaeologists are wrong and Nazareth did not even exist. (Source: The Nazareth myth
I still think it's WP:UNDUE. Where do we fit it in? It's a Criterion of embarrassment; we only provide a link to that criterium, without going into the details. We give an overview of main arguments (and rebuttals), and of the main proponents; that's already a lot of information. Should we also give all the arguments Earl Doherty provides? And, we don't even mention Tim O'Neill in the article. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 10:33, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
@Slatersteven There are no quotes that contradict Nazareth being a new name. Here are the facts simplified: Jewish Prophecy said the Messiah would be from Bethlehem - Jesus is stated as coming from Nazareth - Jews are depicted as rejecting him because of this - the Gospels state he was born in Bethlehem, but came from Nazareth - the argument is that there are no mentions of the name Nazareth before or during Jesus' time - that means the name 'Nazareth' is confusing, as there is no archaeological or scriptural evidence for that name in BCE times - one argument is the area, known today as Nazareth, was insignificant so wasn't mentioned - new archaeological excavations appear to show that not to be the case. Adam Davis 83 ( talk) 11:18, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
Ok, you mean a source needs to state exactly what I have just stated? Adam Davis 83 ( talk) 12:34, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
[O]ne argument is the area, known today as Nazareth, was insignificant so wasn't mentioned - new archaeological excavations appear to show that not to be the case.
— User:Adam Davis 83
Please list all relevant cites with quotes (if possible) for: "new archaeological excavations appear to show that not to be the case". -- 2db ( talk) 15:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
A man named Rene Salm is one. He states Nazareth didn't exist. But that is innacurate, the area known as Nazareth today exists, of course, but there is no evidence that area was CALLED Nazareth. Adam Davis 83 ( talk) 16:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
some people (including René Salm and other Jesus mythicists) have questioned whether the connection with Jesus could have been true, and suggest that there is no evidence of Nazareth existing in Jesus's time.[2] Nazareth is now a large regional centre with a population of 76,551.[1] So it exists now, but its earlier history is less clear.
The idea of the non-existence of Nazareth was first publicised by the atheist activist Frank Zindler.[3] Salm is now the leading proponent, in his books The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (2008) and NazarethGate: Quack Archeology, Holy Hoaxes, and the Invented Town of Jesus (2015).[4][5] He claims that Nazareth did not exist before 70 CE.[4]
The archaeological evidence does not support any argument made for the historicity of Jesus. Per this article, it should be the preface when presenting the Mythicist argument that the author of Mark refers to Jesus from Nazareth (ἀπὸ Ναζαρὲτ) once, and to Jesus the Nazarene (Ναζαρηνοῦ) four times, thus the Markan author's use of the term Nazareth is likely an intertextual allusion to OT scriptures or a sect divergent from the Essenes, etc..
[T]he scriptures the [early] Christians were then using predicted three things about the messiah (and we know this, because they say so): that he would be born in Bethlehem, that he would come from Galilee (even though Bethlehem isn’t in Galilee), and that he would be a “Nazorian,” which actually doesn’t mean someone from Nazareth (the word is significantly different, though similar enough to sound almost like it). . . . There is no evidence Jesus was ever imagined to come from Nazareth before the Gospels invented the idea; all by trying to make their invented stories match select scriptures...
-- 2db ( talk) 17:31, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
David Keys ( https://twitter.com/davidmkeys) should be queried as to the sources for his journalism reporting that: "Detailed new research suggests that Nazareth . . . was substantially bigger than previously thought..." [David Keys (17 April 2020). "New archaeological evidence from Nazareth reveals religious and political environment in era of Jesus". The Independent.]
This book presents a new social and economic interpretation of Roman-period and Byzantine Nazareth and its hinterland as a whole, showing the transformation of a Roman- period Jewish village into a major Byzantine Christian pilgrimage centre.
-- 2db ( talk) 03:31, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Since Rene Salm was mentioned, it's important to remember he's nowhere near meeting WP:RS even when discussing CMT. Jeppiz ( talk) 11:57, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
-- 2db ( talk) 13:34, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Hello! The lead says that most scholars of antiquity "reject the Christ myth theory". But, it seems that there are a few different theories presented, which makes this statement sound a bit strange and unclear.
Specifically, it would be helpful to edit that sentence, or add something immediately after it, to clarify the scholarly consensus (if any) on the notion that "he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels." I'm personally not familiar with this topic or the sources, so I am posting here Pythagimedes ( talk) 02:27, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
interview with Thomas L. Thompson
[...]
8) What is the future of mythicism views inside the academic community, considering the publication of many related books and papers in previous times? Would you agree that mythicists could follow the steps of biblical minimalists?
Minimalism is a movement in biblical studies which brings the study of biblical narrative closer to what is normal for historians. As far as I am aware, most mythicists also understand this, though I think they may be too quick to judge the single issue of whether he existed. The proper question is rather a largely literary question than an historical one. Until we have texts, which bear evidence of his historicity, we can not do much more with that issue. We can and must, however, ask what the texts mean—as well as ask what they mean if they are not historical (a minimalist question). My professor Kurt Galling from Tübingen was once asked how one could tell whether an Old Testament text was historical or literary. He answered: If Iron floats on water it isn’t! The reference is found in the Elijah Elisha stories, whose reiteration has dominated the gospels. One might also use the story of the bear who kills the 42 children and certainly Elijah’s flight out into outer space.
The current text of the hatnote of the top of this article is "For the body of myths associated with Christianity, see Christian mythology and Jesus in comparative mythology. For the scholarly study of the historical Jesus, see Historicity of Jesus, Historical Jesus, and Quest for the historical Jesus. For sources on Jesus, see Sources for the historicity of Jesus and Historical reliability of the Gospels."
This is insanely excessive and is not helpful to our readers. Hatnotes should be short and should be limited to actual ambiguities, not subtopic. Naturally, I shortened the hatnote to only list those articles with both "Christ" and "myth" in the title, and was reverted by CycoMa with no explanation. Oiyarbepsy ( talk) 07:49, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Hatnotes are disambiguation, so they are primarily for links that aren't relevant but happen to have similar names.That's not always true. In fact, the majority of links at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:About are used the same way this hatnote is used. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:37, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
I agree with Oiyarbepsy. The hatnote is strictly for "similar article titles that might get confused", that is, disambiguation. See WP:HATNOTE. It is not a list of helpful related topics. I agree that the various subtopic links might be valuable, but they should be part of the lead section then as normal text. They are not hatnote material. SnowFire ( talk) 15:30, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
Christ myth theory says
"According to mainstream scholarship, Jesus was an eschatological preacher or teacher, who was exalted after his death."
This appears to contradict Resurrection of Jesus, which says
"The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are explained as visionary experiences that gave the impetus to the belief in the exaltation of Jesus"
Do we really want Wikipedia to present the Exaltation of Christ (which redirects to Session of Christ) as a fact that is supported by mainstream scholarship? -- Dalek Supreme X ( talk) 00:54, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Per Lataster:
I do not assert that Jesus did not exist. I am a Historical Jesus agnostic. That is, I am unconvinced by the case for the Historical Jesus, and find several reasons to be doubtful. To compare these terms to those often used when discussing the issue of God’s existence, the ‘historicist’ is the equivalent of the ‘theist’, and the ‘mythicist’ is the equivalent of the ‘strong atheist’ or ‘hard naturalist’. The oft-forgotten ‘Historical Jesus agnostic’ is the equivalent of, well, the ‘God agnostic’.
I'd like to throw one more term into the mix. Not all ‘atheists’ are ‘strong atheists. Some are simply ‘agnostics’. I would like to propose, then, that we use the term ‘ahistoricists’ to encompass both the ardent ‘mythicists’ and the less certain ‘agnostics’. This avoids the false dichotomy, which I think historicists (much like theists) have been taking advantage of. They often frame the debate as only being between the right and the wrong, the reasonable and righteous historicists versus the silly mythicists, ironically appearing as unnuanced and dogmatic fundamentalists in the process. (As with the common false dilemma, presented by apologists, of ‘the truth’ being found in ‘Christianity’ or in ‘strong atheism’.)[Lataster, Raphael (2019). ISBN 978-9004397934. pp=2–3.]
-- 2db ( talk) 00:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
While Christ myth theory and Jesus myth theory are used as synonyms, they don't really have the same meaning. Alternatively Neil Godfrey gives the following definition:
A Christ mythicist is one who believes the literal truth of the myth of Jesus Christ as set out in the epistles and gospels of the New Testament, or who believes that those myths, even if they have only limited or no historical foundation, nonetheless contain symbolic or spiritual value for those of the Christian faith.[Godfrey, Neil (1 July 2019). "Definition of a Christ Mythicist".
{{ cite web}}
: Missing or empty|url=
( help) Vridar.]
Which echoes the 1909 definition given by John Remsburg:
[T]he Christ is understood [as] the Jesus of the New Testament. The Jesus of the New Testament is the Christ of Christianity. The Jesus of the New Testament is a supernatural being. He is, like the Christ, a myth. He is the Christ myth. [Remsburg, John Eleazer (1909). The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence. New York: The Truth Seeker Company.]
WP policy is to use the terms of modern peer review scholarship (Carrier, Gullotta) for article names. -- 2db ( talk) 22:58, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
eds John W. Loftus, Robert M. Price (2021). Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist?. Hypatia Press. — clearly Price is now using the modern terminology as will any future WP:RS from an academic press. A wish-full word wall that this is not the correct academic correct terminology now being used, ignores WP policy -- 2db ( talk) 04:09, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
@ CycoMa: I've reverted your addition of the "excessive citation" tags. The references are already bundled; it's possible to group them into single reference numbers, but that will make the syntax quite complicated. And the large number of references is due to the heated discussions and disagreements on the topic. Regards, Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: not moved. There is consensus that the proposed title is not the common name. ( non-admin closure) Extraordinary Writ ( talk) 15:12, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
Christ myth theory → Jesus myth theory – Per this talk §.Modern scholarship uses the term Jesus myth theory — modern scholarship uses the term(s) "Jesus myth theory", "Jesus mythicism" and has deprecated (i.e. made obsolescent) the term "Christ myth theory". In current popular usage "Jesus myth theory" or "Jesus mythicism" is the most common terminology used. 2db ( talk) 00:18, 1 October 2021 (UTC) && updated 09:35, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
WP policy is to use the terms of modern peer review scholarship (Carrier, Gullotta) for article names.This smells like a WP:COI. A simple search at Google Scholar gives 4 pages with links for "Jesus myth theory," and 14+ for "Christ myth theory." Ergo: Christ myth theory is the common name. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 04:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
I've firsted copy-edited the latest addition by 2db diff, and then reverted diff their revert diff of my copy-edit. They added:
Academic criticism of Christian dogma per beliefs in miracles, immortality, the trinity, and incarnation of the reigning lord of the Christian church, Jesus Christ [1] has "arrived at a Christianity depersonalized and anonymous, reducing Jesus to nothing more than a gifted genius whom legend had gradually deified." [2] [3]
References
For "the Jesus known in faith, the presently reigning Lord of the Church," Meier opts for "the risen Jesus."
Strauss arrived at a Christianity depersonalized and anonymous, reducing Jesus to nothing more than a gifted genius whom legend had gradually deified. In this account, the Christian faith could be explained without reference to the Jesus of history. Strauss in this way firmly stayed on the side of the negative critique. He did not arrive at a historical core of the life of Jesus…
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link)
"Arrived at" refers specifically to
David Friedrich Strauß (1808-1874)); to say that "academic criticism" has arrived at his description of Christianity is a gross generalization, a reverse of the time-sequence (Strauss was one of the first critics, not the endpoint of academic criticism), and
WP:SYNTHESIS. Also, it does not fit at that section, which gives a general overview of mythicist arguments, not an historical introduction. And the sentence Academic criticism of Christian dogma per beliefs in miracles, immortality, the trinity, and incarnation of the reigning lord of the Christian church, Jesus Christ
is incomprehensible. Nor do I see how it is supported by the quote from the source.
Joshua Jonathan -
Let's talk!
08:04, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not moved. ( non-admin closure) Natg 19 ( talk) 04:37, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Christ myth theory → Jesus mythicism – In current popular usage "Jesus mythicism" is the most common terminology used. "Christ myth theory" has been deprecated (i.e. made obsolescent) in current popular usage. Per this talk §.Critics of the historicity of the Christ the christ (i.e. the lord of the Christian church) is a myth as held by virtually every secular person on the planet. To call someone a "Unicorn mythicist" for denying that Unicorns exist makes as much sense as to call someone a "Christ mythicist" for denying that Christs exist. WP policy is to name articles so as to distinguish them from similar sounding topics. WP policy is also to name articles with names appropriate to finding modern academic scholarship that engages with the topic's current academic debate and therefore cites modern scholarship. 2db ( talk) 17:00, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
Some time ago, the sentence
the view that "the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology", possessing no "substantial claims to historical fact." [1]
was changed to
the view that the story of Jesus is largely mythological, and has little basis in historical fact. [1]
References
paraphrasing Bromley; later, it was moved beyond the Ehrmann-definition
diff. In the past few days, the sentence was removed
diff "simplified, removed duplication", and then merged into the overview of stances
diff "These two sentences are identical - why duplicate them one after the other?" Well, because it first was not there, and beacuse they give a slightly different definition.
I've re-inserted the original sentence. The first sentence is the most accurate, directly quoting the source.
Joshua Jonathan -
Let's talk!
07:19, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
the Bible stories of Jesus are not historically factualis unclear and not to-the-point; the main thesis is: 'Jesus did not exist'. The differenc between "there was never a historical Jesus at all" and "there may have been a historical Jesus" seems quite obvious to me. If you want to know how Price reached ths conclusion, c.q. possibility, just look-up the source. Which source discusses this 'stitched together' thesis? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 15:53, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
The three stances described in the lead are a summary of the stances described in the article, based on sources. Your third stance is not what's included in the CMT, nor is it described or explained as such in the article. And the moderate view and the agnisticist view are not the same. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 12:47, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
Indeed. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 04:07, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
Carrier's criteria for what a historical and a mythical Jesus should be our baseline. Right now his work is the only peer reviewed work to clearly define both.
Historical Jesus
"If any one of these premises is false, it can fairly be said there was no historical Jesus in any pertinent sense, And at least one of them must be false for any Jesus Myth theory to be true." (Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. pp. 33–34. ISBN 978-1-909697-35-5.)
"But notice that now we don't even require that is considered essential in many church creeds. For instance, it is not necessary that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Maybe he was, But even if we proved he wasn't that still does not vindicate mysticism. Because the 'real' Jesus may have been executed by Herod Antipas (as the Gospel of Peter in fact claims) or by Roman authorities in an earlier or later decade then Pilate (as some early Christians really did think) Some scholars even argue for an earlier century (and have some real evidence to cite) ... My point at present is that even if we proved proved the founder of Christianity was executed by Herod the Great (not even by Romans, much less Pilate, and a whole forty years before the Gospels claim), as long as his name or nickname (whether assigned before or after his death) really was Jesus and his execution is the very thing spoken of as leading him to the status of the divine Christ venerated in the Epistles, I think it would be fair to say the mythicists are then simply wrong. I would say this even if Jesus was never really executed but only believed to have been Because even then it's still the same historical man being spoken of and worshiped."
Mythical Jesus
"That all five propositions are true shall be my minimal Jesus myth theory." (Carrier, Richard (2014). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. pp. 53. ISBN 978-1-909697-35-5.)
Note Carrier allows for a Jesus to exist well before the 6 BCE - 36 CE range normally given. The problem is such a "historical" Jesus has also be put into the "Christ Myth" category. Where the line is varies depending on the author and right now Carrier is the only one to give clear definitions of both positions in a peer reviewed work by a reliable academic publisher. -- 174.99.238.22 ( talk) 20:27, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
The rest of the Rank–Raglan mythotype isabout as bad:
The list read like a vague group of criteria so as many "legendary" figures could be used while excluding "real" ones. The fact that some historical people score high while some fictional people score low shows the thing to be a total joke. It is not even good indicator of "something is wrong here". Carrier would have been better off throwing that thing into a bin. As for the other points there is Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic (April 20, 2012) which addressed Ehrman's points and their problems (both in presentation and with regards to facts). As for the article behind the paywall (On Richard Carrier’s Doubts by Daniel N. Gullotta) there is On the Historicity of Jesus: The Daniel Gullotta Review by Carrier. If Carrier's statement of "It starts with Gullotta declaring sixth grade math is beyond him and therefore should be ignored." is true the red flags should be going up. For most US university you have to take college level math courses to even get your application looked at.
So the only "rebuttals" we have to Carrier's work either center on something (Rank–Raglan mythotype) we likely all agree he should have never put in the work or a Jesus other than the one he defined. Those are not rebuttals to Carrier's work. So we have any that refute Carrier's actual points or ultimate conclusion without doing a snow job on the reader?-- 174.99.238.22 ( talk) 01:19, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
Take a look at John Remsburg's work (referenced Critics of the historicity of the Christ section above) as to why there is that variation as there is a huge variation in the meaning of "myth":
New Testament scholar Ian Howard Marshall in his I Believe in the Historical Jesus talked about the spectrum of the historical Jesus "two views of the historical Jesus which stand at the opposite ends of a spectrum of opinion about him." At one extreme is the view that Jesus is a "totally fictitious creation like King Lear or Doctor Who" (sic) and the other is the the Gospels are entirely factually accurate. He wrote that neither works and "[W]e shall land in considerable confusion if we embark on an inquiry about the historical Jesus if we do not pause to ask ourselves exactly what we are talking about."
In Eddy, Paul R.; Boyd, Gregory A. (2007). The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Academic. we have a this huge range broken into four broad categories and even they admit categories are "admittedly over simplistic", "ideal-typical", and a "useful heuristic" and therefore should not be taken as absolute definitions. Yet everybody and his brother seems to say that historical and mythical have clear definite definitions.
Logically, if the "Historical Jesus" is all over the map than its counter argument is going to be similarly all over the place. Heck, if either Michael O. Wise's 72 BCE messiah or Israel Knohl's 4 BCE messiah actually founded Christianity (or Chrestianity as that is how it is spelled our earliest manuscripts) and Jesus took that over rather than actually founding it would fall under Bart Ehrman's definitions of a "mythical" Jesus even if everything else in the Gospels is historical accurate. It doesn't help that there are conflicting evidence there may have been a pagan group called "Chrestians" who followed a Chrestus as far back as the 1st century BCE.
The whole argument is akin to saying that Columbus sailed west to prove the Earth was round is mythical/historical or that the Battle of Troy was mythical/historical. And about as nonsensical as either all or nothing answer is wrong.-- 174.99.238.22 ( talk) 01:40, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
This article necessarily refers to the term "Christ myth theory" as a popularised though misleading term for the view that Jesus did not exist as a historical figure at all, though incorrectly (and possibly deliberately) conflating the terms to dismiss the view that Jesus is not also 'divine'. That being as it is, the article should not further misuse the term "theory" elsewhere in the article. This is especially the case because POVs generally expressed on the subject of this article cross over with misuse of the term in the related context of evolution being 'just a theory'.-- Jeffro77 ( talk) 01:26, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
@ CompliantDrone: the phrase "virtually all" has been discussed over and overagain, here and at Talk:Historicity of Jesus; I suggest you first scroll through the talkpage-archives before even starting the next discussion on this. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 22:01, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
-- 2db ( talk) 23:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc.
Reading through the lead, there is a quite egregious POV problem. The lead first conflates the 'Christ myth theory' as both views that No Jesus existed at all (i.e. 'Jesus myth') and there may have been a historical Jesus, but elements of myth were added (i.e. Christ myth). To then say that the conflated definition as a whole is widely considered a "fringe theory" is highly inaccurate. It is widely accepted by scholars that Jesus likely existed, was a disciple of John the Baptist, and was executed by the Romans, but there is not solid agreement on essentially anything else of the historical Jesus. More importantly, there is considerably less agreement among scholars that Jesus is 'Christ'. The view that there was no historical Jesus at all is widely considered a fringe theory by scholars, but to also imply that scholars also reject the view that Jesus was not 'divine' is rampantly dishonest.-- Jeffro77 ( talk) 00:42, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Copied from User talk:Joshua Jonathan#Christ myth theory
Hi. In this edit, you have said to "stick to the term", though the 'term' "Lives of Jesus" doesn't appear to actually be the title of anything, nor is it clear that that plural term is sourced to anything, but instead seems to be an analogy based on a single work with a singular name. Can you confirm whether the plural form is sourced to anything, or otherwise establish why it is necessary to 'stick to the term'? Thanks.-- Jeffro77 ( talk) 07:36, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
End of copied part
A first quest for the historical Jesus took place in the 19th century when hundreds of Live of Jesus were written. David Strauss (1808–1874) pioneered the search for the "historical Jesus" by rejecting all supernatural events as mythical elaborations. His 1835 work, Life of Jesus,[45] was one of the first and most influential systematic analyses of the life story of Jesus
A first quest for the historical Jesus took place in the 19th century when hundreds of Live of Jesus were written. David Strauss (1808–1874) pioneered the search for the "historical Jesus" by rejecting all supernatural events as mythical elaborations. His 1835 work, Life of Jesus,[45] was one of the first and most influential systematic analyses of the life story of Jesus
-- 2db ( talk) 13:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)Professional historians of Christianity — including most of us working within the secular academy — tend to treat the question of whether Jesus existed or not as neither knowable nor particularly interesting. Rather, we focus without prejudice on other lines of investigation, such as how and when the range of characteristics and ideas attributed to him arose.
[T]he historic Jesus is something different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures … We can, at the present day, scarcely imagine the long agony in which the historical view of the life of Jesus [Leben-Jesu-Forschung tr. "Life of Jesus Research"] came to birth… [Schweitzer 1910, pp. 3–4. NOW WITH EMPHASIS]
• Schweitzer, Albert (1910) [1906 in German] (in en). The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede [Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung]. London: A. and C. Black. translated by W. Montgomery. -- 2db ( talk) 13:35, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
-- 2db ( talk) 03:16, 29 January 2022 (UTC)Hugh Anderson states that ‘All the Gospel materials bearing on the life of Jesus were so assiduously studied by liberal Protestant theologians that within the space of a few generations, some sixty thousand biographies, so it is estimated, had been produced’
The following phrases:
are synonymous with
And
is synonymous with (and also nuanced sarcasm of)
For the article "Biographies of Jesus" is more suitable but less humorous. -- 2db ( talk) 07:20, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
New Testament scholars should concede that the kind of history that is deemed acceptable in their field is, at best, somewhat eccentric. Most biblical scholars would be a little unsettled if, for example, they read an article about Apollonius of Tyana in a journal of ancient history that began by arguing for the historicity of supernatural events before defending the veracity of the miracles ascribed to him yet would not be unsurprised to see an article making the same arguments in a journal dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus. [Meggitt 2019, p. 458.]
• Meggitt, Justin J. (2019). "‘More Ingenious than Learned’? Examining the Quest for the Non-Historical Jesus". New Testament Studies 65 (4): 443–460. doi:10.1017/S0028688519000213. -- 2db ( talk) 20:52, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
A tactic used per this article is to claim that there is no difference between between the secular academy and the non-secular academy. For example, it is mainstream in the secular academy that the "entire quest for criteria" has failed.
• Crook, Zeba (1 January 2014).
"Matthew, memory theory and the New No Quest : original research". HTS : Theological Studies. 70 (1): 1–11.
doi:
10.4102/hts.v70i1.2716. [Abstract] … although numerous criteria have been developed, refined and used extensively in order to distinguish between original Jesus material and later church material, those criteria have long been unsatisfactory…
[T]he traditional quest criteria do not accomplish what they were intended to…
-- 2db ( talk) 16:17, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
A common tactic used per this article is to paint Richard Carrier as "fringe". Therefore nothing in what he writes about is authoritative or trustworthy except when citing his own views. Even when Carrier is restating mainstream conclusions he is "fringe". In the Academy of scholarship it is possible, often likely, that one will find a scholarly work that is WP:RS while its overall thesis is "fringe".-- 2db ( talk) 13:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
The following content addition should not be an issue.
Rejecting the "Criteria of Authenticity", Carrier writes:
The growing consensus now is that this entire quest for criteria has failed. The entire field of Jesus studies has thus been left without any valid method. [Carrier 2012, p. 11.]
Daniel Gullotta notes that per the criteria of authenticity, "Many of Carrier’s concerns and criticisms have been longed noted and echoed by other historical Jesus scholars." In support of this claim, Gullotta repeats the extensive list of citations (Gullotta 2017, p. 345, n. 127.) that were originally given by Carrier in Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (pp. 11, 293f, n. 2-7). Additionally, Gullotta also gives the following citations that were not given in Carrier's 2012 work:
- Le Donne, Anthony (2009). The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David.
- Rodriguez, Rafael (2010). Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text.
- Charlesworth, James H.; Rhea, Brian, eds. (2014). Jesus Research: New Methodologies and Perceptions : the Second Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Princeton 2007.
- Crossley, James (2015). Jesus and the Chaos of History: Redirecting the Life of the Historical Jesus. Oxford University Press.
- Bernier, Jonathan (2016). The Quest for the Historical Jesus after the Demise of Authenticity: Toward a Critical Realist Philosophy of History in Jesus Studies.
- Keith, Chris (2016). “The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research”. Journal for the Study of the New Testament. 38 (4): 426–455. doi:10.1177/0142064X16637777.
-- 2db ( talk) 16:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
It is notable that the term "minimal historicist" appears to have been coined and defined by Carrier. And it is also the case that the term refers to someone who accepts the same ideas that are in fact the only elements of Jesus' life that are agreed upon by mainstream scholars. And it is also the case that both Wells and Van Voorst explicitly state that Wells was no longer a mythicist from the mid-1990s onwards. And yet the article has dozens of references to Wells' later works that are characterised as the views of 'mythicists', even though those views are also held by various mainstream scholars. Some editors at this Talk page maintain that Carrier is unreliable for presenting any mainstream position (even where Carrier agrees with the mainstream view), though both the article and editors at Talk freely use the terms "minimal historicist" (and related forms such as "minimally historical") to describe Wells and his views. The same editors go on about how 'we must go by what the sources say' to the extent that even the suggestion of putting similar ideas in the same paragraph is supposedly 'synthesis and original research'. Yet those same editors are content with the blatant misrepresentation of Wells' views from 1996 onwards as both a 'mythicist' and a 'minimal historicist'.-- Jeffro77 ( talk) 10:33, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
-- 2db ( talk) 12:08, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[U]nlike ‘guilds’ in professions such as law or medicine, it is not apparent what members of the ‘guild’ of biblical scholars have in common, other than a shared object of study and competence in a few requisite languages, and therefore what value an alleged consensus among them really has, especially on what is a historical rather than a linguistic matter. [Meggitt 2019, pp. 459–460).]
Mythicists generally get offended more than the rest here
— User:Ramos1990
Yes I see that clearly. -- 2db ( talk) 01:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
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