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A couple of IP editors have decided that this section is not properly sourced. I am not an expert in the matter, but it appears to be properly sourced to me. I invited the initial reverter to a discussion, but no one seems interested in discussion before removing apparently sourced material, so I'll just start the discussion myself. The removal has since been reverted, but in the interest of WP:CONSENSUS I will ask: As far as I can tell, this isn't blatant falsehood of the type which calls for simple deletion, so are there any other editors out there who would like to weigh in? Does this paragraph appear to be blatantly incorrect? — Josh3580 talk/ hist 22:40, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
I am the editor you speak of. The sources used to justify the portions I removed are opinions written in a book, that doesn't make them credible, nor does that make them consensus of scholars.
We'll start with this one:
Jesus Remembered by James D. G. Dunn 2003 ISBN 0-8028-3931-2 page 339 states of baptism and crucifixion that these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent".
Unfortunately that just isn't true. Those two facts are disputed. As I stated when I edited them, the Gospels don't even agree that he was executed by the order of Pontius Pilate. Even if they were, there is no extra biblical source of this information. Period. Scholars absolutely do not universally assent to this, and just writing that statement in a book and then using that statement as a source that it is universally assented is ridiculous.
^ Jump up to: a b c d Crossan, John Dominic (1995). Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. HarperOne. p. 145. ISBN 0-06-061662-8. "That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus ... agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact."
"As sure as anything historical can ever be." I can't even process how ridiculous this statement is. We have video footage of John F Kennedy being assassinated, but apparently this author believes that if two people living decades after someones death who don't live in the same place or even speak the same language state something, it must be a historical fact right up there with JFK's assassination.
Tacitus was born decades after Jesus's death, and was only repeating what Christians of his time were saying. He had no special knowledge of Jesus's death, he was writing down what he heard others say. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that it is disputed whether the passage was even written by Tacitus or later added by someone else.
Josephus has the exact same problems. Born after Jesus's death in a completely different place. Just like Tacitus, he was only repeating what he had heard. Just like Tacitus, it is disputed whether the passages are genuine or were later additions by someone else.
No credible historians believe that those two references somehow confirm the events depicted in the bible actually happened.
This entire article is clearly biased towards the Christian view on this topic, and does not present the actual evidence in a fair manner. The information has been cherry picked and manipulated into looking like it supports the historicity of Jesus.
Credible scholars will tell you that insofar as actual historical evidence goes, the only thing you can say is that there was a man named Jesus who lived in Galilee around that time that preached to some people.
But... I suppose that doesn't matter to you since "As long as it is properly sourced it stays."
And FYI, Wikipedia's own definition of "Consensus" does not match with yours at all.
Let's take a look at what Wikipedia says:
"Consensus is a normal and usually implicit and invisible process across Wikipedia. Any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus. Should that edit later be revised by another editor without dispute, it can be assumed that a new consensus has been reached. In this way the encyclopedia is gradually added to and improved over time. An edit which is not clearly an improvement may often be improved by rewording. If rewording does not salvage the edit, then it should be reverted."
Let me draw attention to this sentence: "Any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus. "
This is interesting, as you removed my edit and gave the reason that my new edit didn't have consensus and thus had to be removed. You can read the sentence above and see clearly that you can remove something without getting consensus first, and as long as nobody contests it is considered okay. You contested it for the reason that it wasn't consensus, which is a logical absurdity given that consensus can be reached by someone editing per Wikipedias own guidelines.
It seems clear you've got a bias towards what the article says, and are doing everything you can to protect it. You are not letting a normal editing take course, you are claiming that whatever is written first has some kind of protection because it was there first. That isn't the case at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.76.138.70 ( talk) 21:09, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, bible scholars agree that he existed. They do not agree that he was baptized, nor do they agree it was by the order of Pontius Pilate, which the gospels themselves do not agree on. It should be explicit from what I wrote previously that his existence isn't the problem... the problem is claiming scholarly consensus on something that is absolutey disputed by many, and likely most, credible scholars.
Again, you seem to think that as long as you can properly source something, that is the only thing that determines whether it should be included. It is clear that Wikipedia's own guidelines disagree with you. As it says above, consensus can be reached through edits as well. You seem to think that editing something out that is sourced is wrong. The guidelines don't say that, so stop pretending that is the case. The reason the guidelines don't say that is for specifically these types of cases. Just because you can find a book that says something doesn't make it credible.
It is quite obvious your biases are informing your decisions here. It is unfortunate that Wikipedia allows articles to be hijacked by people like you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.245.169.3 ( talk) 20:00, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
One emerging view is that Josephus had something to do with the construction of the Gospels and altered the timeline of Jesus to put his crucifixion in the time of Pontius Pilate. There are no contemporaneous sources for this event at that time. There is nothing in the history of that era which suggests a crucifixion of this sort of person. The difficulty is that since Wiki is about "mainstream" then those who adhere to the view that the crucifixion was at that time will not only be cited here but will always win the day, until university professors somewhere start looking at alternative timeframes. The main exponent of the emerging view, that Jesus is of a later time period are Joe Atwill and Ralph Ellis who make compelling cases that the NT is a fabrication by the Romans and that any real Jesus figure is to be found in the time of the Jewish Revolts. Ellis says he was Izates Manu Monobasus or Jesus of Gamala who, he argues, are one and the same person and was converted to Nazarene Judaism by Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah who preached a doctrine similar to that of Christianity. The Nazarenes are described by some as Min or Jewish Christians. I don't intend to weigh into this debate by making any edits because these are going to have to wait either until this theory is supported by "peer reviewed" papers or Wiki changes its policy of hammering new ideas into the ground because they constitute original research or are self promoting since these types of works are typically written by people outside the mainstream and the public who use Wiki are not to know that their are other ideas out there. Burdenedwithtruth ( talk) 05:45, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
The following message left on my talk page may be of interest to editors here too:
"This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help find a resolution. The thread is " Historicity of Jesus". Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! MrScorch6200 ( talk | ctrb) 20:36, 3 August 2014 (UTC)"
Martijn Meijering ( talk) 00:41, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
The use of the phrase "most scholars . . ." is a form of weasel words that shouldn't appear in an encyclopedia. It needs to be updated to reflect the factual content of its sources. 5 out of 6 of these sources are quotes from specific scholars (anecdotal evidence), and the final one is from a book published by yet another scholar. If this claim is to be seriously made on this page, the paragraph needs to be updated or edited to bring the entire paragraph back to topic. That same paragraph also needs to be updated to remove the use of the royal "we."
"Most scholars" can be changed easily to give the paragraph more rigor. "A study/survery by X showed that (X percent of scholars)/(a majority of scholars) do not contest the historicity of Jesus."
I'll try to update the language tonight if nobody else does and point to this talk topic for further discussion on language of the page. Leave sources here if you would like them included and try to avoid anecdotal sources. Until then, i'm going to put the weasel words tag back up. Please do not remove it unless you plan on changing the language and cleaning up the sources.
Thanks
Jpsousa4 ( talk) 20:35, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi, I have an interest in reformatting the criticism section to logically group the specific criticisms listed and perhaps make it more readable. Would it be okay if I go ahead and attempt this, and if people feel it takes away from the message of the criticisms, someone can revert it? Currently its just not very encyclopaedic and is a little hard to understand the flow of these criticisms, and reads as a collection of random views. Prasangika37 ( talk) 18:30, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
We can (and should) have a leisurely discussion on whether individual scholars who have criticised HJ research are reliable sources, or whether their opinion is notable, but Jeppiz has to abide by WP:BRD just like everybody else. 'But I'm right!' is not a valid excuse, because everybody thinks they're right, and allowing indefinite reverts would lead to chaos. Also, what would stop me from reverting you again, and then you again etc etc. The proper order is someone makes a Bold move, and if someone objects, they can Revert it and the original editor cannot reinsert his change until through Discussion on the Talk page he has achieved a new consensus. Until that time, the old consensus remains. If there are pressing issues, tags such as dubious, POV etc can be used to alert the reader to the problem. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 18:54, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
I've removed lengthy presentations of the views of two individuals who have no special competence in the field of the historical Jesus. One was a Swedish linguist of English, an academic field completely irrelevant to this article. The other is a historian, but a historian of Irish history. Unless anyone argues that Jesus lived in Ireland, the field of Irish history is also of no relevance here. WP:RS means that the reference should be reliable in the matter at hand. Being an expert and reliable WP:RS on one thing gives no status of WP:RS on everything. Academics are relevant sources in their own field of expertise, not in whatever field imaginable. Jeppiz ( talk) 18:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
Since this article is not about historicity, I'd support moving the Hoffmann quote in the criticism section to the CMT article, if people think that helps. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 14:45, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
Your latest reinsertion of your contentious edit is a blatant violation of WP:BRD. Please self-revert. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 22:42, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
So a new user has seen fit to reinsert fringe theories without bothering to provide an explanation. This whole process is getting rather frustrating and disruptive. Could anyone kindly explain why you feel we should disregard WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE here? Have people even read those policies? We don't need academic consensus (even if we have it in this case), it's enough that an overwhelming majority of academics agree and just a tiny minority disagree. But here we're even past that, as some people insist of inserting conspiracy theories by non-experts akin to Dan Brown. What does the article gain from this? Once again, nobody is suggesting we remove the criticism theory, but could we please adhere to Wikipedia rules when writing the article? Jeppiz ( talk) 12:53, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
Both of these writers, as presented in this article (I haven't read the sources), appear to be speaking about whether Jesus existed or not. Ellegard is on the extreme fringe, and he does not appear to be a specialist in this or any related area. Hoffman's views, and their relevance to this article, are difficult to ascertain, because the source cited was not actually written by him. But it appears not to be about Jesus research methods, but rather about whether Jesus existed or not -- something that is not under investigation in any serious academic context. More seriously though, the quote itself, attributed to Hoffman, does not appear in the source. This blatant misquotation can't remain in the article, regardless of previous "consensus".
I removed both these paragraphs for the reasons above, but was reverted. What gives? I'm removing the Hoffman misquote immediately, pending verification, but I will leave the Ellegard paragraph pending further discussion and a new "consensus".
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 15:26, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
I have removed the stray quotation from Burton Mack, since it seemed out of place. He looks like a serious NT and Christian origins scholar though, and he has been critical of HJ research, so maybe his inclusion in the criticism section was warranted. He has not, I gather, been critical of the historicity of Jesus, which I mention for the benefit of those who might care about such matters. If we are to add him back, we need some sort of summary of his views, which I didn't find in the text. The hyperlink led to a short Google Books page with no visible pages I could find. There's a short description of the book, perhaps taken from the blurb:
"This book traces Burton Mack's intellectual evolution, from a creative analyst of ancient texts, to a scholar searching for the motives and interests of Jesus's followers who composed those texts, and for the social logic of "the Christian myths" they created. Mack rejects depictions of Jesus that have emerged from the quest for the "historical Jesus"--peasant teacher, revolutionary leader, mystical visionary or miracle-working prophet--on the grounds that they are based on a priori assumptions about Jesus, and are therefore contradictory. In addition, he argues, these portrayals are untrue to the many images of Jesus produced by the early Christians. Using systematic analysis, Mack seeks to describe and understand the cultural and anthropological influences on the conception and adoption of Christian myths and rituals."
I'm removing the preacher William Hamilton as there is no information on what criticism he may or may not offer. All we have is a quote about faith "Jesus is inaccessible by historical means. All we can know (or need to know) is that he has come." I guess there's nothing wrong with a preacher saying that in church or in a book, it's part of his faith that all we need to know is that Jesus has come. That's not a criticism of historical research. Even if it were, there is nothing to suggest Hamilton had any qualification in historical research. Jeppiz ( talk) 20:24, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
I haven't read his work. I grew up in Ireland and now live in Japan, and don't frankly care what an American historian of Ireland thinks about the New Testament. However, it seems his only publication on the subject was this. The blurb on Amazon implies he believes that the letters of Paul provide a special insight into the man Jesus before he became the second person of the Trinity, and that the canonical gospels fall short on this point. This is an extreme fringe view; the synoptic gospels present some of the lowest Christologies in the New Testament, and Paul's view of Jesus was that of a pre-existent divine being (i.e., higher than any of the synoptics).
I'd be interested to hear what people inside the field think of his attempts to "put historical Jesus studies back on track". However, devoting a paragraph of text to giving an uncritical regurgitation of Akenson's views in this context is problematic. On the earlier version of the Historicity of Jesus article, as well as on Yamanoue no Okura and others, I noticed a recurring problem that some users were referring to "history" and "historians" as though this was a specific, exclusive field, and imputing in the article text that people who apply historical method to historical sources, get paid to teach history in university, write history books, are referred to as "historians" in reliable tertiary sources, etc. should not be called "historians" when the phrases "literary scholars" or "biblical scholars" could be used, but uncritically referring to people who agree with them as "historians". I was naturally suspicious when coming to this article, that it would be the same; however, it seems that of ten uses of the word "historians" in the article body, only three are potentially problematic in this way. All three are in the Akenson paragraph. The paragraph does not quote him, but presents what are no doubt his views in Wikipedia's voice.
My questions are these: Does Akenson know Greek? If he does not know Greek, he is a WP:TERTIARY source, so why should his views be given precedence over the hundreds of more relevant scholars who aren't quoted in the article? Even if he does know Greek, can he be demonstrated to have had any training in any of the relevant fields? As I indicated two paragraphs above, his views are not shared by the overwhelming majority of scholars. The book I mention above, though, is not the one cited in the article; that "honour" belongs to this book, which appears to deal with the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, not with the historical Jesus: is the quotation provided the only time Jesus is mentioned in the book? Is that quotation the only evidence linking Akenson to the paragraph of text attributed to him? Is the rest of this material actually the work of Burton Mack? If so, the paragraph violates WP:SYNTH and falsely attributes the views of one writer to another. The only other source is only valid for the claim that he is "Professor of Irish Studies, in the department of history at Queen's University", something that's obviously not under dispute, but is completely irrelevant to this article.
If these questions can be satisfactorily answered, the paragraph can stay. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 15:06, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
The repeated blanket reverts by Dominus Vobisdu are starting to become highly disruptive, as the user is either unable or unwilling to provide any explanations for their edits. Their sole purpose seems to be to revert me, regardless of what edit I make. After reverting to insert large sections that blatantly violated WP:FRINGE and WP:RS and providing no other explanation than a personal attack directed at me, the user is now back and inserts more contentious material despite the fact that there is no consensus for doing so and the matter is currently under discussion by several editors. There is never any logic to Dominus Vobisdu's reverts. First they reverted me claiming my edit was against the consensus version, now they are reverting me because I restored the consensus version. This user is clear WP:NOTHERE for any other reason than to either attack me or to push a fringe WP:POV. I won't engage in an edit war with a disruptive POV-pusher but I hope some responsible user can restore the last stable version while the discussion about Akenson is ongoing. Further disruptions by DV will be taken to ANI. Jeppiz ( talk) 15:29, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
I pointed out in the edit summary of my first removal of Ellegard that he seemed to be saying the same thing as Perrin, quoted directly above, and since Ellegard is both fringe and trained in an entirely unrelated field, he should not be cited when either he is the only author with that POV or other, better sources say the same thing and make him redundant to our article. The above discussion focused primarily on Ellegard's theological beliefs about Jesus and how they are irrelevant to the research methods question, but as far as I can see no one has addressed my original point ghat the Perrin citation makes the Ellegard citation redundant. Any thoughts? If I am in fact misreading it, can we not find another source with which to replace Ellegard? Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 08:08, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
Martijn Meijering, you say you don't want to use "fringe" about Ellegård and Akenson ("I hate the word fringe applied to an eminent scholar like Ellegard" and "it certainly doesn't apply to Akenson, who appears to be a very eminent historian indeed"). I'm afraid you may have misunderstood fringe, then. You can be the greatest and most serious scholar and still be fringe. Fringe is about how widely accepted an argument is, not about the person making the argument. This is how
Jimbo Wales himself explains it
:*If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name
prominent adherents;
:*If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article.
That, then, is what we have to follow, like it or not. You say yourself you want to keep Ellegård because "To my knowledge he is the one person who has criticised the relative insularity of HJ research." Well, that's exactly the problem, that's Wikipedia's definition of fringe, being alone in making a view.
Jeppiz (
talk) 21:29, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
The criticism section was recently divided into sections, which I think is helpful. One section that is missing is the one lead by Craig A. Evans and others like him. I want to be upfront and say that I personally do not consider what they do to be proper research. Craig A. Evans and others are firm Christians who believe in Jesus more or less as the gospels describe him. In my view, they do not start from evidence to arrive at their conclusions, but rather start from their preferred conclusion (the Bible is true) and then make sure they find evidence for that view. Unfortunately, it's not our job to discard researchers if they fit the criteria. There's no denying that Craig A. Evans holds a PhD in biblical studies and works as Professor of New Testament. As such, he fits Wikipedia's WP:RS as the historical Jesus is exactly his area of academic competence. He is critical of the research on HJ as he believes modern biblical scholars to be out to undermine Christianity. One of his books has the not-so-subtle subtitle How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. Even though I personally think his research is dubious (for the reasons already stated), I don't see any support in Wikipedia policies not to include his criticism. It's a minority position, but not minority enough to be fringe. I won't do anything at all about until others have had the time to comment. Jeppiz ( talk) 19:52, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
Despite al the cleaning up of the last week or two, this article is nudging 100k in size. There is no logical way to split it in half. What seems most logical is to remove the Portraits section, which is more speculative than actually historical. However that section is only about 13k, and is perhaps a bit small to be an article on its own. I propose therefore that we merge the Portraits section into the Quest for the historical Jesus article - where the opening sentence already reads "The quest for the historical Jesus refers to academic efforts to provide a historical portrait of Jesus." Comments please? Wdford ( talk) 22:31, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
I have split this article, and created a daughter article called Portraits of the historical Jesus, largely due to size constraints, but also because this material is referred to by other articles. I am now removing the duplicated material, and replacing it with summaries. Wdford ( talk) 11:11, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 |
A couple of IP editors have decided that this section is not properly sourced. I am not an expert in the matter, but it appears to be properly sourced to me. I invited the initial reverter to a discussion, but no one seems interested in discussion before removing apparently sourced material, so I'll just start the discussion myself. The removal has since been reverted, but in the interest of WP:CONSENSUS I will ask: As far as I can tell, this isn't blatant falsehood of the type which calls for simple deletion, so are there any other editors out there who would like to weigh in? Does this paragraph appear to be blatantly incorrect? — Josh3580 talk/ hist 22:40, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
I am the editor you speak of. The sources used to justify the portions I removed are opinions written in a book, that doesn't make them credible, nor does that make them consensus of scholars.
We'll start with this one:
Jesus Remembered by James D. G. Dunn 2003 ISBN 0-8028-3931-2 page 339 states of baptism and crucifixion that these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent".
Unfortunately that just isn't true. Those two facts are disputed. As I stated when I edited them, the Gospels don't even agree that he was executed by the order of Pontius Pilate. Even if they were, there is no extra biblical source of this information. Period. Scholars absolutely do not universally assent to this, and just writing that statement in a book and then using that statement as a source that it is universally assented is ridiculous.
^ Jump up to: a b c d Crossan, John Dominic (1995). Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. HarperOne. p. 145. ISBN 0-06-061662-8. "That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus ... agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact."
"As sure as anything historical can ever be." I can't even process how ridiculous this statement is. We have video footage of John F Kennedy being assassinated, but apparently this author believes that if two people living decades after someones death who don't live in the same place or even speak the same language state something, it must be a historical fact right up there with JFK's assassination.
Tacitus was born decades after Jesus's death, and was only repeating what Christians of his time were saying. He had no special knowledge of Jesus's death, he was writing down what he heard others say. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that it is disputed whether the passage was even written by Tacitus or later added by someone else.
Josephus has the exact same problems. Born after Jesus's death in a completely different place. Just like Tacitus, he was only repeating what he had heard. Just like Tacitus, it is disputed whether the passages are genuine or were later additions by someone else.
No credible historians believe that those two references somehow confirm the events depicted in the bible actually happened.
This entire article is clearly biased towards the Christian view on this topic, and does not present the actual evidence in a fair manner. The information has been cherry picked and manipulated into looking like it supports the historicity of Jesus.
Credible scholars will tell you that insofar as actual historical evidence goes, the only thing you can say is that there was a man named Jesus who lived in Galilee around that time that preached to some people.
But... I suppose that doesn't matter to you since "As long as it is properly sourced it stays."
And FYI, Wikipedia's own definition of "Consensus" does not match with yours at all.
Let's take a look at what Wikipedia says:
"Consensus is a normal and usually implicit and invisible process across Wikipedia. Any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus. Should that edit later be revised by another editor without dispute, it can be assumed that a new consensus has been reached. In this way the encyclopedia is gradually added to and improved over time. An edit which is not clearly an improvement may often be improved by rewording. If rewording does not salvage the edit, then it should be reverted."
Let me draw attention to this sentence: "Any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus. "
This is interesting, as you removed my edit and gave the reason that my new edit didn't have consensus and thus had to be removed. You can read the sentence above and see clearly that you can remove something without getting consensus first, and as long as nobody contests it is considered okay. You contested it for the reason that it wasn't consensus, which is a logical absurdity given that consensus can be reached by someone editing per Wikipedias own guidelines.
It seems clear you've got a bias towards what the article says, and are doing everything you can to protect it. You are not letting a normal editing take course, you are claiming that whatever is written first has some kind of protection because it was there first. That isn't the case at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.76.138.70 ( talk) 21:09, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, bible scholars agree that he existed. They do not agree that he was baptized, nor do they agree it was by the order of Pontius Pilate, which the gospels themselves do not agree on. It should be explicit from what I wrote previously that his existence isn't the problem... the problem is claiming scholarly consensus on something that is absolutey disputed by many, and likely most, credible scholars.
Again, you seem to think that as long as you can properly source something, that is the only thing that determines whether it should be included. It is clear that Wikipedia's own guidelines disagree with you. As it says above, consensus can be reached through edits as well. You seem to think that editing something out that is sourced is wrong. The guidelines don't say that, so stop pretending that is the case. The reason the guidelines don't say that is for specifically these types of cases. Just because you can find a book that says something doesn't make it credible.
It is quite obvious your biases are informing your decisions here. It is unfortunate that Wikipedia allows articles to be hijacked by people like you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.245.169.3 ( talk) 20:00, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
One emerging view is that Josephus had something to do with the construction of the Gospels and altered the timeline of Jesus to put his crucifixion in the time of Pontius Pilate. There are no contemporaneous sources for this event at that time. There is nothing in the history of that era which suggests a crucifixion of this sort of person. The difficulty is that since Wiki is about "mainstream" then those who adhere to the view that the crucifixion was at that time will not only be cited here but will always win the day, until university professors somewhere start looking at alternative timeframes. The main exponent of the emerging view, that Jesus is of a later time period are Joe Atwill and Ralph Ellis who make compelling cases that the NT is a fabrication by the Romans and that any real Jesus figure is to be found in the time of the Jewish Revolts. Ellis says he was Izates Manu Monobasus or Jesus of Gamala who, he argues, are one and the same person and was converted to Nazarene Judaism by Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah who preached a doctrine similar to that of Christianity. The Nazarenes are described by some as Min or Jewish Christians. I don't intend to weigh into this debate by making any edits because these are going to have to wait either until this theory is supported by "peer reviewed" papers or Wiki changes its policy of hammering new ideas into the ground because they constitute original research or are self promoting since these types of works are typically written by people outside the mainstream and the public who use Wiki are not to know that their are other ideas out there. Burdenedwithtruth ( talk) 05:45, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
The following message left on my talk page may be of interest to editors here too:
"This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help find a resolution. The thread is " Historicity of Jesus". Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! MrScorch6200 ( talk | ctrb) 20:36, 3 August 2014 (UTC)"
Martijn Meijering ( talk) 00:41, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
The use of the phrase "most scholars . . ." is a form of weasel words that shouldn't appear in an encyclopedia. It needs to be updated to reflect the factual content of its sources. 5 out of 6 of these sources are quotes from specific scholars (anecdotal evidence), and the final one is from a book published by yet another scholar. If this claim is to be seriously made on this page, the paragraph needs to be updated or edited to bring the entire paragraph back to topic. That same paragraph also needs to be updated to remove the use of the royal "we."
"Most scholars" can be changed easily to give the paragraph more rigor. "A study/survery by X showed that (X percent of scholars)/(a majority of scholars) do not contest the historicity of Jesus."
I'll try to update the language tonight if nobody else does and point to this talk topic for further discussion on language of the page. Leave sources here if you would like them included and try to avoid anecdotal sources. Until then, i'm going to put the weasel words tag back up. Please do not remove it unless you plan on changing the language and cleaning up the sources.
Thanks
Jpsousa4 ( talk) 20:35, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi, I have an interest in reformatting the criticism section to logically group the specific criticisms listed and perhaps make it more readable. Would it be okay if I go ahead and attempt this, and if people feel it takes away from the message of the criticisms, someone can revert it? Currently its just not very encyclopaedic and is a little hard to understand the flow of these criticisms, and reads as a collection of random views. Prasangika37 ( talk) 18:30, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
We can (and should) have a leisurely discussion on whether individual scholars who have criticised HJ research are reliable sources, or whether their opinion is notable, but Jeppiz has to abide by WP:BRD just like everybody else. 'But I'm right!' is not a valid excuse, because everybody thinks they're right, and allowing indefinite reverts would lead to chaos. Also, what would stop me from reverting you again, and then you again etc etc. The proper order is someone makes a Bold move, and if someone objects, they can Revert it and the original editor cannot reinsert his change until through Discussion on the Talk page he has achieved a new consensus. Until that time, the old consensus remains. If there are pressing issues, tags such as dubious, POV etc can be used to alert the reader to the problem. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 18:54, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
I've removed lengthy presentations of the views of two individuals who have no special competence in the field of the historical Jesus. One was a Swedish linguist of English, an academic field completely irrelevant to this article. The other is a historian, but a historian of Irish history. Unless anyone argues that Jesus lived in Ireland, the field of Irish history is also of no relevance here. WP:RS means that the reference should be reliable in the matter at hand. Being an expert and reliable WP:RS on one thing gives no status of WP:RS on everything. Academics are relevant sources in their own field of expertise, not in whatever field imaginable. Jeppiz ( talk) 18:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
Since this article is not about historicity, I'd support moving the Hoffmann quote in the criticism section to the CMT article, if people think that helps. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 14:45, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
Your latest reinsertion of your contentious edit is a blatant violation of WP:BRD. Please self-revert. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 22:42, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
So a new user has seen fit to reinsert fringe theories without bothering to provide an explanation. This whole process is getting rather frustrating and disruptive. Could anyone kindly explain why you feel we should disregard WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE here? Have people even read those policies? We don't need academic consensus (even if we have it in this case), it's enough that an overwhelming majority of academics agree and just a tiny minority disagree. But here we're even past that, as some people insist of inserting conspiracy theories by non-experts akin to Dan Brown. What does the article gain from this? Once again, nobody is suggesting we remove the criticism theory, but could we please adhere to Wikipedia rules when writing the article? Jeppiz ( talk) 12:53, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
Both of these writers, as presented in this article (I haven't read the sources), appear to be speaking about whether Jesus existed or not. Ellegard is on the extreme fringe, and he does not appear to be a specialist in this or any related area. Hoffman's views, and their relevance to this article, are difficult to ascertain, because the source cited was not actually written by him. But it appears not to be about Jesus research methods, but rather about whether Jesus existed or not -- something that is not under investigation in any serious academic context. More seriously though, the quote itself, attributed to Hoffman, does not appear in the source. This blatant misquotation can't remain in the article, regardless of previous "consensus".
I removed both these paragraphs for the reasons above, but was reverted. What gives? I'm removing the Hoffman misquote immediately, pending verification, but I will leave the Ellegard paragraph pending further discussion and a new "consensus".
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 15:26, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
I have removed the stray quotation from Burton Mack, since it seemed out of place. He looks like a serious NT and Christian origins scholar though, and he has been critical of HJ research, so maybe his inclusion in the criticism section was warranted. He has not, I gather, been critical of the historicity of Jesus, which I mention for the benefit of those who might care about such matters. If we are to add him back, we need some sort of summary of his views, which I didn't find in the text. The hyperlink led to a short Google Books page with no visible pages I could find. There's a short description of the book, perhaps taken from the blurb:
"This book traces Burton Mack's intellectual evolution, from a creative analyst of ancient texts, to a scholar searching for the motives and interests of Jesus's followers who composed those texts, and for the social logic of "the Christian myths" they created. Mack rejects depictions of Jesus that have emerged from the quest for the "historical Jesus"--peasant teacher, revolutionary leader, mystical visionary or miracle-working prophet--on the grounds that they are based on a priori assumptions about Jesus, and are therefore contradictory. In addition, he argues, these portrayals are untrue to the many images of Jesus produced by the early Christians. Using systematic analysis, Mack seeks to describe and understand the cultural and anthropological influences on the conception and adoption of Christian myths and rituals."
I'm removing the preacher William Hamilton as there is no information on what criticism he may or may not offer. All we have is a quote about faith "Jesus is inaccessible by historical means. All we can know (or need to know) is that he has come." I guess there's nothing wrong with a preacher saying that in church or in a book, it's part of his faith that all we need to know is that Jesus has come. That's not a criticism of historical research. Even if it were, there is nothing to suggest Hamilton had any qualification in historical research. Jeppiz ( talk) 20:24, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
I haven't read his work. I grew up in Ireland and now live in Japan, and don't frankly care what an American historian of Ireland thinks about the New Testament. However, it seems his only publication on the subject was this. The blurb on Amazon implies he believes that the letters of Paul provide a special insight into the man Jesus before he became the second person of the Trinity, and that the canonical gospels fall short on this point. This is an extreme fringe view; the synoptic gospels present some of the lowest Christologies in the New Testament, and Paul's view of Jesus was that of a pre-existent divine being (i.e., higher than any of the synoptics).
I'd be interested to hear what people inside the field think of his attempts to "put historical Jesus studies back on track". However, devoting a paragraph of text to giving an uncritical regurgitation of Akenson's views in this context is problematic. On the earlier version of the Historicity of Jesus article, as well as on Yamanoue no Okura and others, I noticed a recurring problem that some users were referring to "history" and "historians" as though this was a specific, exclusive field, and imputing in the article text that people who apply historical method to historical sources, get paid to teach history in university, write history books, are referred to as "historians" in reliable tertiary sources, etc. should not be called "historians" when the phrases "literary scholars" or "biblical scholars" could be used, but uncritically referring to people who agree with them as "historians". I was naturally suspicious when coming to this article, that it would be the same; however, it seems that of ten uses of the word "historians" in the article body, only three are potentially problematic in this way. All three are in the Akenson paragraph. The paragraph does not quote him, but presents what are no doubt his views in Wikipedia's voice.
My questions are these: Does Akenson know Greek? If he does not know Greek, he is a WP:TERTIARY source, so why should his views be given precedence over the hundreds of more relevant scholars who aren't quoted in the article? Even if he does know Greek, can he be demonstrated to have had any training in any of the relevant fields? As I indicated two paragraphs above, his views are not shared by the overwhelming majority of scholars. The book I mention above, though, is not the one cited in the article; that "honour" belongs to this book, which appears to deal with the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, not with the historical Jesus: is the quotation provided the only time Jesus is mentioned in the book? Is that quotation the only evidence linking Akenson to the paragraph of text attributed to him? Is the rest of this material actually the work of Burton Mack? If so, the paragraph violates WP:SYNTH and falsely attributes the views of one writer to another. The only other source is only valid for the claim that he is "Professor of Irish Studies, in the department of history at Queen's University", something that's obviously not under dispute, but is completely irrelevant to this article.
If these questions can be satisfactorily answered, the paragraph can stay. Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 15:06, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
The repeated blanket reverts by Dominus Vobisdu are starting to become highly disruptive, as the user is either unable or unwilling to provide any explanations for their edits. Their sole purpose seems to be to revert me, regardless of what edit I make. After reverting to insert large sections that blatantly violated WP:FRINGE and WP:RS and providing no other explanation than a personal attack directed at me, the user is now back and inserts more contentious material despite the fact that there is no consensus for doing so and the matter is currently under discussion by several editors. There is never any logic to Dominus Vobisdu's reverts. First they reverted me claiming my edit was against the consensus version, now they are reverting me because I restored the consensus version. This user is clear WP:NOTHERE for any other reason than to either attack me or to push a fringe WP:POV. I won't engage in an edit war with a disruptive POV-pusher but I hope some responsible user can restore the last stable version while the discussion about Akenson is ongoing. Further disruptions by DV will be taken to ANI. Jeppiz ( talk) 15:29, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
I pointed out in the edit summary of my first removal of Ellegard that he seemed to be saying the same thing as Perrin, quoted directly above, and since Ellegard is both fringe and trained in an entirely unrelated field, he should not be cited when either he is the only author with that POV or other, better sources say the same thing and make him redundant to our article. The above discussion focused primarily on Ellegard's theological beliefs about Jesus and how they are irrelevant to the research methods question, but as far as I can see no one has addressed my original point ghat the Perrin citation makes the Ellegard citation redundant. Any thoughts? If I am in fact misreading it, can we not find another source with which to replace Ellegard? Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 08:08, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
Martijn Meijering, you say you don't want to use "fringe" about Ellegård and Akenson ("I hate the word fringe applied to an eminent scholar like Ellegard" and "it certainly doesn't apply to Akenson, who appears to be a very eminent historian indeed"). I'm afraid you may have misunderstood fringe, then. You can be the greatest and most serious scholar and still be fringe. Fringe is about how widely accepted an argument is, not about the person making the argument. This is how
Jimbo Wales himself explains it
:*If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name
prominent adherents;
:*If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article.
That, then, is what we have to follow, like it or not. You say yourself you want to keep Ellegård because "To my knowledge he is the one person who has criticised the relative insularity of HJ research." Well, that's exactly the problem, that's Wikipedia's definition of fringe, being alone in making a view.
Jeppiz (
talk) 21:29, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
The criticism section was recently divided into sections, which I think is helpful. One section that is missing is the one lead by Craig A. Evans and others like him. I want to be upfront and say that I personally do not consider what they do to be proper research. Craig A. Evans and others are firm Christians who believe in Jesus more or less as the gospels describe him. In my view, they do not start from evidence to arrive at their conclusions, but rather start from their preferred conclusion (the Bible is true) and then make sure they find evidence for that view. Unfortunately, it's not our job to discard researchers if they fit the criteria. There's no denying that Craig A. Evans holds a PhD in biblical studies and works as Professor of New Testament. As such, he fits Wikipedia's WP:RS as the historical Jesus is exactly his area of academic competence. He is critical of the research on HJ as he believes modern biblical scholars to be out to undermine Christianity. One of his books has the not-so-subtle subtitle How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. Even though I personally think his research is dubious (for the reasons already stated), I don't see any support in Wikipedia policies not to include his criticism. It's a minority position, but not minority enough to be fringe. I won't do anything at all about until others have had the time to comment. Jeppiz ( talk) 19:52, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
Despite al the cleaning up of the last week or two, this article is nudging 100k in size. There is no logical way to split it in half. What seems most logical is to remove the Portraits section, which is more speculative than actually historical. However that section is only about 13k, and is perhaps a bit small to be an article on its own. I propose therefore that we merge the Portraits section into the Quest for the historical Jesus article - where the opening sentence already reads "The quest for the historical Jesus refers to academic efforts to provide a historical portrait of Jesus." Comments please? Wdford ( talk) 22:31, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
I have split this article, and created a daughter article called Portraits of the historical Jesus, largely due to size constraints, but also because this material is referred to by other articles. I am now removing the duplicated material, and replacing it with summaries. Wdford ( talk) 11:11, 8 October 2014 (UTC)