The proper translation of Κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγέλιον, (or τὸ εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην) is John's gospel or the Gospel according to John. It is often referred to as the Gospel of John in common parlance. (Although this is technically not accurate it is acceptable.)
However to shorten it to John is wrong. No source in the early church ever referred to this gospel as Ἰωάννην. More importantly shorting the Gospel name to John is very confusing to the lay reader. In this article "John" sometimes refers to the man named "John" and at others times refers to the Gospel of John (and even once to John the Baptist!)
I would suggest for purposes of this article that:
Therefore I would request an admin. to make the following correction.
The Gospel of John (often simply John) is an account of the public ministry of Jesus, from his witness and affirmation by John the Baptist to his death, burial, Resurrection, and post-Resurrection appearances. It is fourth of the canonical gospels, after the synoptics Matthew, Mark and Luke.
The Gospel according to John ( Greek τὸ εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην) commonly referred to as the Gospel of John (Notwithstanding the name, it is an anonymous gospel) is an account of the public ministry of Jesus, from his witness and affirmation by John the Baptist to his death, burial, Resurrection, and post-Resurrection appearances. It is fourth of the canonical gospels, after the synoptics Matthew, Mark and Luke.
My proposed change does not change the 'content' but does add 'clarity' for the lay person. -
Ret.Prof (
talk) 13:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
That's very practical. When someone with limited curiosity on the topic encounters the Wall of Greek, their eyes glaze over and they're likely to run away. I agree that we should delay the Greek just a bit. Dylan Flaherty 16:43, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, but that is not a check-out; most of the first links are mirrors of this article, which represented only two Greek titles among several potentially sourceable. As I said, they're not in my editions of Nestle. I'll be happy to collaborate on an English and Greek variant list for first-section inclusion, but yours need to be reliably sourced. JJB 20:42, 21 November 2010 (UTC) I should add that your footnote is unduly redundant with the second graf's reminder that the gospel is technically anonymous. The text of this article betrays an exceedingly strong desire among editors to move this gospel as far away from any historical John as possible. This is glaringly betrayed by the very simple article on The Shepherd of Hermas, where I must scroll down even to find out who any Hermas was, and where discussion of whether Hermas even wrote it is quietly relegated to even later in the article, and yet IMHO the evidence of Hermas's authorship is even less than that of John's. Nobody argues the phrase "Shepherd of Hermas" is an implication a real Hermas wrote it! Imagine how the following reductio ad absurdam would look!
Why there is such a (ahem) religious movement to neglect POVs in this article is above my pay grade. JJB 20:56, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
[ Link to amazon, shows many/most of his books]
[ The New Testament:A student's Introduction]
[ The Old Testament:An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible]
All these books are published by McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. McGraw Hill is known as a publisher of quality academic books. They don't publish anything which is substandard and do not have any pro x$ tilt that I can see. I have some chemistry books from McGraw Hill, I find them to be pretty high quality.(this doesn't imply I am a chemist!) I hope others can agree on the quality of McGraw Hill's academic books. This should be enough to show that Harris is mainstream. And association with JS does not make anyone fringe. Lots of leading mainstream academics were associated with it and continue to be leading mainstream academics. eg. Fredriksen, Crossan, etc.- Civilizededucation talk 09:45, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
Now that we have established the majority view, we should also make sure that the majority view gets majority treatment. I'm afraid that currently the minority view is far overrepresented. For example, the article includes lines such as this one: "Recent scholarship by Christopher Rowland in particular has emphasized an emerging view that John is equally historical with the synoptics." Rowland died in 1967, so what this recent scholarship might be is not well understood.
Leadwind (
talk) 04:32, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
The first point I would like to make is that we really aren't concerned with the "majority" view as per the section title, but rather with presenting what might be called the consensus academic opinion on the subject as being the primary subject of discussion in this article. Other articles, such as maybe Calvinist views of the Gospel of John (fill in the name of any other group as appropriate) can certainly reasonably be established if such is the subject of multiple independent reliable sources and, hopefully, if there is some sort of consistency or comparatively limited scope of such articles. Obviously, if the views of for example Catholic academics are as diverse and of the same types as the broader consensus opinion, there is no real purpose served by having the child article. WP:FRINGE and WP:DUE are however serious concerns for articles of this type. I think, in general, most individuals would agree that the discussions of this book in what are generally thought of as reference sources are probably among the least biased and probably most clearly reflect the most consensus academic opinion. This is not to say that any individual sources are necessarily perfect - I've seen how, in some cases, even Encyclopedia Britannica can have a bit of a bias, although a clearly understandable one, toward sources and information most reflective of sources and views in the English-speaking and European worlds, where the bulk of its sales take place. But, in general, I think it is pretty much generally agreed that the amount of weight to give any material in an article like this is best determined by consulting the relevant reference sources, including specialist encyclopedias and reference works, and more or less structuting the article in rough proportion to the "average" of the reference sources consulted. John Carter ( talk) 19:12, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
The proper translation of Κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγέλιον, (or τὸ εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην) is John's gospel or the Gospel according to John. It is often referred to as the Gospel of John in common parlance. (Although this is technically not accurate it is acceptable.)
However to shorten it to John is wrong. No source in the early church ever referred to this gospel as Ἰωάννην. More importantly shorting the Gospel name to John is very confusing to the lay reader. In this article "John" sometimes refers to the man named "John" and at others times refers to the Gospel of John (and even once to John the Baptist!)
I would suggest for purposes of this article that:
Therefore I would request an admin. to make the following correction.
The Gospel of John (often simply John) is an account of the public ministry of Jesus, from his witness and affirmation by John the Baptist to his death, burial, Resurrection, and post-Resurrection appearances. It is fourth of the canonical gospels, after the synoptics Matthew, Mark and Luke.
The Gospel according to John ( Greek τὸ εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην) commonly referred to as the Gospel of John (Notwithstanding the name, it is an anonymous gospel) is an account of the public ministry of Jesus, from his witness and affirmation by John the Baptist to his death, burial, Resurrection, and post-Resurrection appearances. It is fourth of the canonical gospels, after the synoptics Matthew, Mark and Luke.
My proposed change does not change the 'content' but does add 'clarity' for the lay person. -
Ret.Prof (
talk) 13:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
That's very practical. When someone with limited curiosity on the topic encounters the Wall of Greek, their eyes glaze over and they're likely to run away. I agree that we should delay the Greek just a bit. Dylan Flaherty 16:43, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, but that is not a check-out; most of the first links are mirrors of this article, which represented only two Greek titles among several potentially sourceable. As I said, they're not in my editions of Nestle. I'll be happy to collaborate on an English and Greek variant list for first-section inclusion, but yours need to be reliably sourced. JJB 20:42, 21 November 2010 (UTC) I should add that your footnote is unduly redundant with the second graf's reminder that the gospel is technically anonymous. The text of this article betrays an exceedingly strong desire among editors to move this gospel as far away from any historical John as possible. This is glaringly betrayed by the very simple article on The Shepherd of Hermas, where I must scroll down even to find out who any Hermas was, and where discussion of whether Hermas even wrote it is quietly relegated to even later in the article, and yet IMHO the evidence of Hermas's authorship is even less than that of John's. Nobody argues the phrase "Shepherd of Hermas" is an implication a real Hermas wrote it! Imagine how the following reductio ad absurdam would look!
Why there is such a (ahem) religious movement to neglect POVs in this article is above my pay grade. JJB 20:56, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
[ Link to amazon, shows many/most of his books]
[ The New Testament:A student's Introduction]
[ The Old Testament:An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible]
All these books are published by McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. McGraw Hill is known as a publisher of quality academic books. They don't publish anything which is substandard and do not have any pro x$ tilt that I can see. I have some chemistry books from McGraw Hill, I find them to be pretty high quality.(this doesn't imply I am a chemist!) I hope others can agree on the quality of McGraw Hill's academic books. This should be enough to show that Harris is mainstream. And association with JS does not make anyone fringe. Lots of leading mainstream academics were associated with it and continue to be leading mainstream academics. eg. Fredriksen, Crossan, etc.- Civilizededucation talk 09:45, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
Now that we have established the majority view, we should also make sure that the majority view gets majority treatment. I'm afraid that currently the minority view is far overrepresented. For example, the article includes lines such as this one: "Recent scholarship by Christopher Rowland in particular has emphasized an emerging view that John is equally historical with the synoptics." Rowland died in 1967, so what this recent scholarship might be is not well understood.
Leadwind (
talk) 04:32, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
The first point I would like to make is that we really aren't concerned with the "majority" view as per the section title, but rather with presenting what might be called the consensus academic opinion on the subject as being the primary subject of discussion in this article. Other articles, such as maybe Calvinist views of the Gospel of John (fill in the name of any other group as appropriate) can certainly reasonably be established if such is the subject of multiple independent reliable sources and, hopefully, if there is some sort of consistency or comparatively limited scope of such articles. Obviously, if the views of for example Catholic academics are as diverse and of the same types as the broader consensus opinion, there is no real purpose served by having the child article. WP:FRINGE and WP:DUE are however serious concerns for articles of this type. I think, in general, most individuals would agree that the discussions of this book in what are generally thought of as reference sources are probably among the least biased and probably most clearly reflect the most consensus academic opinion. This is not to say that any individual sources are necessarily perfect - I've seen how, in some cases, even Encyclopedia Britannica can have a bit of a bias, although a clearly understandable one, toward sources and information most reflective of sources and views in the English-speaking and European worlds, where the bulk of its sales take place. But, in general, I think it is pretty much generally agreed that the amount of weight to give any material in an article like this is best determined by consulting the relevant reference sources, including specialist encyclopedias and reference works, and more or less structuting the article in rough proportion to the "average" of the reference sources consulted. John Carter ( talk) 19:12, 23 November 2010 (UTC)