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Removed: During the early twentieth century, R. H. Charles ( archdeacon of Westminster from 1919 until his death in 1931) showed that some sayings of Jesus were borrowed from the literature of intertestamental pseudepigrapha and produced parallels. R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of The Old Testament (2 volumes, Oxford University Press, 1913). ..... what is this doing in the lede? Nothing in R H Charles supports suggests no historical Jesus, he only noted, like others before him, that some of the NT material draws on non-OT sources. And? This belongs in an article on the NT, has nothing to do with historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth. In ictu oculi ( talk) 23:34, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
And here is another gleaming example of how the crotchets and sensibilities of the average internet-addicted Wikipedia passioné leave readers with a distorted idea of what ideas, persons, etc., are actually important. Almost everything referenced in this article is marginal pseudo-research. This is longer than the page on Christology and nearly as long as the page on Christ. Please don't tell me that I and others should get to work adding to these other articles. A wiki article should only be so long. Please, someone sane, rational, reasonable agree with me that this page gives reader an outsized sense of this "theory" and its importance. Stealstrash ( talk) 06:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
The lead Section concludes with this assertion:
"Since the publication of the 2nd edition of Albert Schweitzer's Quest for the Historical Jesus in 1926, virtually no major New Testament scholar had bothered with rebutting the Christ-myth hypothesis until the publication in 2012 of Bart D. Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, which generated a flurry of online responses."
Ignoring the obvious error about "1926" as being the date of the 2d. ed. of Schweitzer's Quest, this simply seems to dismiss the existence of serious refutations of the Christ Myth thesis published between 1913 and April 2012. Should we not then check on this surprising assertion and have another look at the historical record?
WWI put a damper on the heated flurry of refutations to Arthur Drews's Christ Myth outside of Germany, but they continued unabated, if more sporadically, until WWII. The major critical works all followed the same pattern, weighing the merits of the arguments on both sides to conclude by confirming the historicity of Jesus against the deniers:
But after 1913, we can identify a whole series of refutations by major NT scholars, all of them still considered significant.
WWII and its aftermath put a stop to the public debate initially set off by Arthur Drews, until George Albert Wells (b. 1926), a professor of German at Un. of London, reignited it in the 1970s with a series of books directly influenced by his readings of Bruno Bauer, Albert Kalthoff and Arthur Drews in their original German, bursting on the public scene with a new wrinkle in the Christ Myth theory. Major refutations started coming out, resuscitating the debate of "Jesus Historicists" vs "Historicity Deniers".
A whole series of scholars raised their banners by publishing major refutations of Drews's Christ Myth thesis and its Wells reincarnation. The important refutations in 1984-2010 were:
Note, interestingly, that when major NT historian R. Joseph Hoffmann listed the major refutations of the Christ Myth thesis in his essay "Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus", (New Oxonian, May 22, 2012, note [3]), he limited the "important studies" (that is, Hoffmann's favorites) to only five works:
But Hoffmann omits from that list many historically significant refutations, especially Albert Schweitzer's critique of the Christ Myth in the added chapters 22 & 23 of the 2d edition of the Quest (1913), in disagreement with the lead section of this article, or Robert E. Van Voorst's work.
With the spread of the Internet, the old theological controversy that was raging 100 years ago has percolated down to the public forum and known a recrudescence, (see pro and con Wikiquotes on the "Christ Myth Theory", from the pre-1950s to the 2000s) with a "massive upsurge" of the non-existence thesis, as explicitly characterized by Maurice Casey in "Mythicism: A Story of Bias, Incompetence and Falsehood", (New Oxonian, May 22, 2012).
Both academic and independent scholars have ridden the new boom with publications all aimed at discussing the Christ Myth thesis and its aftermath. The major works published in 2011 and until Aug. 2012 have been:
CONCLUSION: It becomes much more difficult to claim a dearth of major refutations of the Christ Myth thesis between Schweitzer (1913) and Bart D. Ehrman (April 2012). -- ROO BOOKAROO ( talk) 17:15, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
It's true that there were scholarly treatments of the CMT between 1913 and 2012. But these treatments were a minuscule portion of the total scholarly output on the historical Jesus. It's simply not a major focus of scholarship (even now, when there's a clear upsurge in interest, many scholars still treat it as an annoyance), and this is a point worth making in our article.
As an aside, ROO BOOKAROO, could you consider shortening your posts? You're making good points, but perhaps supplying more data than is actually necessary. Concision is often more convincing than verbosity... --Akhilleus ( talk) 03:26, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
Akhilleus, good point.
But (to put it briefly), this article is so full of egregious mistakes that it becomes clear that it was written by well-intentioned writers who are not professional historians of the subject matter. In many places, this article reads as if it only reflected the current knowledge of American college undergraduates, and not the real knowledge of professional NT historians.
No wonder that Aramaist Maurice Casey had to produce his own critique, and that R. Joseph Hoffmann sees an urgent need to produce his own "masterly" version of the critique of the Christ Myth thesis — one that can deliver the knock-out punch that Ehrman was unable to deliver, because Ehrman's expertise has been devoted to textual criticism, and not to the Frage nach der Historizität von Jesus Christus, which remains a very special niche of NT scholarship, one to which, for instance, G. A. Wells has devoted 40 years of research, and R. Joseph Hoffman more than 30 years. While Ehrman took only a few months off for his research outside his expertise, doing a rush job with his latest book. -- ROO BOOKAROO ( talk) 12:22, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
Why does the article not include any summary of the content of criticism of the theory (as would be normal for an article). For instance, it uncritically accepts (without citation) that Pauline literature is the most direct source about Jesus, when in fact that is very debatable, and many of the oldest manuscripts we have are of the gospels? ie. P52, P90, P104, (c. 150) P64, P66, P77, P103 (c. 200) [1] 22:34, 15 December 2012 (UTC)JR
This article has a lot of challenges to the existence of Christ, but few if any extra biblical proofs that prove them to be false. Instead, it is littered with dismissive and un-encyclopedic quotes like "dismissed by most scholars" as if that constitutes a debunking. I don't care, as a reader, what "most scholars" (who presumably are paid employees of theological institutions) say, I care about extra-biblical contemporary evidence that Christ actually existed, and how, precisely that debunks the Christ Myth theories presented herein without the constant statements like "this scholar stands in the minority" and other dismissive and irrelevant appeals to the majority. No other postulation is allowed to simply be "true until proven false" as this article seems to really imply. If there is no evidence, the article should state clearly at the top that "There is no extra biblical evidence that Christ existed at all, and thus it is a disputed topic among scholars." If the majority is wrong, its wrong. Mrrealtime ( talk) 19:44, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
How in the world has this dreadfully written page about a non-topic received a "B-class" rating? The Enoch Powell entry, one of the best-written and most thoroughly researched on Wikipedia, has been given a "C." As always, clear to any clear-headed person that almost everything on Wikipedia is decided by a small group of obsessed persons who are not in any conventional sense well-educated. Stealstrash ( talk) 07:57, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
An anonymous IP has been adding editorialising material to the article. This is against policy and it needs to stop. It is perfectly OK to add dissenting opinions, with attribution, it is OK to quote notable sources arguing with the sources, but it is not OK for a WP editor to argue with the sources. If the editor feels the present section about bias is itself biased, he or she is most welcome to share their concerns so we can see if we can find a way to deal with them. That's what talk pages are for. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 20:11, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Clue me in - what's a WMF? (World Midwifery Federation? Wee Munchkins Foundation?). ANd more seriously, the article needs to distinguish between the idea of a fictional Jesus (one who never existed) and a mythical Jesus (one around whom myths have grown). On analogy with legends, King Arthur may be entirely fictional (never was a 5th century British king, someone made it all up), or there may have been such a king but no Round Table, Guinevere, or promised return to aid his people at a future hour of peril (the legendary part). When legends deal with gods they're called myths, otherwise the same thing.
The lead defines mythicism as "... an umbrella term that applies to a range of arguments that in one way or another question the existence of Jesus of Nazareth or the essential elements of his life as described in the Christian gospels."
There are four sources given and I'm sure they're accurately referenced.
My problem is, however, that the second part of this defines rules as "mythicism" a whole host of valid scholarly investigation into the nature and accuracy of the gospels. By this definition, anyone who asks, for example, whether Jesus might perhaps have been born in Nazareth instead of Bethlehem, is propagating the view that Jesus is mythical. That would be nonsensical. For this reason the article has grown to huge proportions and struggles to grapple with the subject of real mythicism, which is simply the idea that there never was a Jesus of Nazareth. I think the definition needs to be narrowed. PiCo ( talk) 10:32, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
The Title of this article needs to be "Jesus Myth Theory". Christ myth theory is biased and confusing. There is much debate on whether Jesus was Christ or not, Islam for example has him as a prophet, but not a Christ figure and that is just the tip of an iceberg. The entire article is about the historicity of Jesus. Whether he was historical and whether he was god in Jewish dude form are 2 different questions. He would have to be historical to be god in Jewish dude form, so the "Jesus Myth Theory" should be the title because it is the widest scope claim being discussed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Twainstheman ( talk • contribs) 03:01, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Please do excuse me for typing this here. I am just posting this as a formality to get it out in the open; and my apologies are offered in advance. There is a similar post here because there are edits there that seem to want to effectively merge in all the discussion of non-existence of Jesus, 1st century sources, Remsburg-type ideas, myth theory etc. there. I do not think it makes sense. But let us have a general discussion on that please and see what the consensus may be. History2007 ( talk) 03:30, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
It seems to me we need actual sources identifying a particular argument as an argument from silence, otherwise we are engaging in synthesis. Do any sources use that label, or is it jut editors? Humanpublic ( talk) 15:26, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
I frequently see "biased article" banners, and I read the article but can't find the bias. This article put me in mind of a sermon delivered by a true believer - I felt that the author was not presenting facts, but instead was presenting an argument that Jesus was a historical figure.
I feel that at the least, this article should be flagged until it can be rewritten. It might well be better to delete it until it can be rewritten in a neutral tone. Simicich ( talk) 08:38, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
The way it happened is that the history section has not been cleaned up. It is full of semi-sourced and less than accurate items - still hanging at the end there. If and when it is cleaned up, some integration may make sense. But the other side of the coin is that the article is not about History of Christ myth theory, just as Physics and Geology are not about the History of physics and the History of geology, but refer to them.
Come to think of it, the idea of making the long history section a separate article, and having a Main link here further upfront does make sense. Readers of the article on geology do not necessarily want to know about the "history of geology", some of the ideas therein being way too old; they want to know what geology is. But I think the section on "Historical Jesus research and the problem of bias" should stay here. History2007 ( talk) 20:33, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Disruptive sockpuppet; discussion under way on WP:ANI |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
What a biased article this is, and can it get any more biased when religious fundamentalists control an article that is about atheism. Too silly to laugh at. Baron master ( talk) 01:25, 18 February 2013 (UTC) "Integrity of Christian religion was challenged at an early stage"I removed the sentence "That the integrity of the Christian religion was challenged from an early period of its existence is borne out in 2 Peter 1:16, For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We saw his majestic splendor with our own eyes.' as it needs a source which states that that verse demonstrates that there were challenges to "the integrity of the Christian religion from an early period."01:31, 18 February 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smeat75 ( talk • contribs)
Unsourced InterpretationLots and lots of unsourced interpretation in this article - any possibility of improving on this ? Baron master ( talk) 01:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC) |
I changed "Modern scholarship has generally dismissed these analogies as without formal basis, and a form of parallelomania laden with historical errors." to "Christian theologians dismiss these analogies as without formal basis, and claim they are a form of parallelomania laden with historical errors."
Someone reverted this change. However, all of the references that are provided for this statement are from works by Christian theologians. "Modern scholarship" is a broad term that could be misinterpreted to represent a much larger cohort of academia than is justified by the sources.
Let's make this article NPOV by providing a more specific descriptor for these sources that more accurately represents their credentials. Why would we want to obfuscate this information? It is not a slander to call someone a "Christian theologian" and it should not impugn their credibility. PeaceLoveHarmony ( talk) 20:00, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
One problem (out of the many) with PeaceLoveHarmony's post is that "Christian Theologians" are scholars. Theology is an academic discipline, and has been for hundreds of years. Of course, another problem is that not everyone who studies early Christianity is a theologian—in the US, most scholars writing about early Christianity in a college or university will be in departments of Religion/Religious Studies, not Theology. Never mind that the name of the department in which one teaches and researches is not necessarily reflective of one's approach to the subject, nor that one can be in a theology department studying Christianity without professing belief in Christianity...
To put it another way, PCL's argument seems to be that "these sources are all Christians, so they're biased, so Wikipedia has to raise a red flag to the reader." That's pretty silly, isn't it? --Akhilleus ( talk) 04:37, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Beeing a "Christian theologian" gives you hardly more credit in the field of history science than anybody else, therefor it should be made clear that this "majority of scolars" include many religious people (christians), who's main concern obviously is to defend their religious faith rather than finding the true historical facts. Which of course exclude them from being an objective source in this case. I am of the opinion that claiming the title "scolar" you must have a some academic backgound in the subject matter i.e. in the science of researching historical facts. DaNorse ( talk) 06:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
This is a list of books typically presented on the internet as the supporters of Christ myth theory. So we can see how many "academics and scholars" there are here:
I think for the sake of completeness, we should add a few other writers mentioned on various websites and Wikipages, they are:
So really there is one solid academic scholar here namely Thompson and then Price who can be called a non-academic scholar - given that he only teaches online courses on the subject (around $50 per course) at an online website with no campus. Note that G. A. Wells has softened his position of non-existence and now accepts the likely existence of a preacher mentioned in the Q source, although holding that the gospel narratives of his life/miracles are fiction. But just Thompson and Price do not make a long list. There are probably 1 or 2 more people with PhDs who deny existence (say Carrier, but who has no academic post) yet it is quite clear from this list that most of those mentioned are either amateurs or are scholars such as Mack who actually support existence. Most of these people are attorney/accountant/etc./etc. types and not scholars. The funniest one however was suggesting Raskin as a scholar. I did get a chuckle out of that one. But anyway, the results speak for themselves. History2007 ( talk) 13:49, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Paul Barlow that the list of 42 authors by Remsburg does not add much in that section and does not fit there. There is already something about that list of 42 names below in the Remsburg paragraph, and it states that the list was copied by others as well, but that entire section (20h century writers) is desperately asking for help regarding non-WP:RS sources, inconsistencies, etc. I have been really avoiding work on that, but may get to touch it up if no one else does. One should, however, point out that arguments made by Remsburg 100 years ago are only of "historical interest" and do not really apply any more given that Remsburg had most probably never heard of the findings of Shlomo Pines (who was born in 1908) when he wrote his book in 1909. History2007 ( talk) 22:00, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Obviously, we do not agree on what modern scholarship holds and how WP:RS is different from what you call jokes. I have to stop fr a while, but let us wait for further user responses. In the meantime, please do provide a list of the "many modern publications" you mentioned which use the Remsburg list of the 42 to argue non-existence. That list would be nice to see. Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 15:49, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Can you refute all the authors listed by Remsburg, and show that they actually did write of Jesus? I'm sure you can't. To answer your question, the only other modern book I know that uses Remsburg's list is "Who Was Jesus" by D. M. Murdock (p. 85), 2007. That's five that I know of. Again - what do you think about restoring the sentence "Some arguments from silence go back to John Remsburg in 1909 who enumerated forty-two..."? Sound reasonable, or what? MithrasPriest ( talk) 01:17, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I didn't see that list at the top you were referring to, sorry. Regarding "Tim Leedom seems to be just a university of Hawaii graduate..." did you bother to look at the book? He's editor. The articles are by revered authors. So a University of Hawaii graduate can't compile a respectable book? Sam Harris hadn't even finished his PhD when his book hit the NYT Best Sellers list, for example. Moreover, who is Lee Strobel, very often cited in WP? He is JUST (your word) a Christian author -- and a pastor. Certainly not neutral, and as non-notable of a historian as those I listed that you attempted to discredit as "just" this or that. Asher Norman - lawyer and realtor, is not to be trusted? Joseph Wheless was "just" a lawyer. Obama was "just" a lawyer before getting into politics. Come on, help add information to WP rather than tearing it down. Why are you so against mentioning that Remsberg listed 42 writers of the first and second century? Please explain. MithrasPriest ( talk) 01:38, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I am sorry but our mindsets seem to be so far apart that I am not sure how to respond. I will just mention that:
The rest of your comments about the list are largely WP:OR and per policy I can not partake in them sans WP:RS sources. Bu I will wait for other editors to respond to you as well. History2007 ( talk) 00:06, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
By the way, as an aside, the whole discussion about Remsberg's material being a century old, reminded me of a joke David Letterman had in one of his Top Ten Lists several years ago about the shortage of serious candidates for office and the number one choice ended up being: "We are going to dig up Grover Cleveland and run him again!" But there is a point therein, namely that if Remsberg has to be "exhumed" and presented as a scholar who supports a hypothesis, that just means that "there is a serious shortage of modern scholars who support that hypothesis" else a contemporary professor in a top university (say Oxford, Stanford, Princeton, etc.) would have been found to support the hypothesis. If none is found then the choice is "We are going to dig up John Remsberg and run him again!"
In fact Remsberg's statement regarding "aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author" is a good example of how his material is outdated. I mentioned Shlomo Pines before, but let us consider the statement by George Albert Wells himself (The Jesus Legend by G. A. Wells 1996 ISBN 0812693345 page 48) that most scholars today hold that Josephus made some reference to Jesus in the Testimonium Flavianum which was then retouched by Christians and particularly since Shlomo Pines' discovery of the Arabic version of the Testimonium. So Wells himself admits that most scholars hold that Josephus did refer to Jesus and the 1970s discovery of Pines (Remsburg was obviously unaware of it) does matter. So Remsburg's material is clearly outdated. That is clear. Very clear. History2007 ( talk) 09:29, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
The article as it stands is a complete misrepresentation of Remsburg: "Some arguments from silence go back to John Remsburg in 1909 who commented on the silence of Philo of Alexandria..." - Remsburg did not simply comment on Philo, he commented on 41 writers of the time and region. Why can't we simply mention that in the article without providing his list? I think we should fix that. Geĸrίtzl ( talk) 21:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
There is plenty of material on Drews now, in various pages, e.g. Arthur Drews (34k), The Christ Myth (25k) and his Denial book (only 5k) as well as here. There is a merge tag on the The Christ Myth page for it to merge here, having already split off from the Drews page itself. That would obviously not work given that this page is 70k, and per WP:Length it would immediately run over the limit, as well as WP:Due. So we will have to call that a no merge on procedural grounds in any case. Even the material on Drews here is longer than more logical myth theorists such as Bolland or the Dutch school - I guess because they wrote for the intellectuals and Drews for the masses. In any case, this length/merge issue needed to be noted here to deal with the merge tag there in any case. And this article is already at the upper edge of the 60k WP:Length guideline, but probably does not need a split as such just some trimming here and there. History2007 ( talk) 15:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
A special section should perhaps be added to note and describe the impact of the Internet as a new public information medium on the vast proliferation of advocates of one form or other of the "Christ Myth Theory."
The field of Christian origins has become—thanks to the explosion of information on the Internet—a free-for-all for passionate amateurs. Newcomers have jumped in to propagandize their favorite, idiosyncratic, views on Jesus and the Origins of Christianity. Many are amateurs who have at most a B.A. and neither professional experience in scholarly research nor training in scholarly criticism. While many may mention
Bruno Bauer,
Robertson,
Drews,
Couchoud, or even
Wells as an afterthought, none seems to have read either. In general they have relied on the current summaries of the published scholarship of Drews and Wells, without acknowledging any debt to the pioneers who preceded them. Unlike Couchoud and Wells, very few Internet researchers have been able to tap the huge font of German criticism.
They operate on the fringe, ignored by academic scholarship. Indeed, amateur Internet activists glory in their puffed-up achievements, trumpeting sensational breakthroughs never spotted before by academics. Such self-generated ideas find acceptance only among a fascinated, but uninformed and ignorant Internet public — which is, in fact, the readership they cultivate, thus avoiding entanglements with professional scholars and never being required to present papers in peer-reviewed Journals.
The new crop of Internet amateurs includes
Dorothy Murdock (The Christ Conspiracy),
Timothy Freke and
Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries, 1999),
Earl Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle, 1999),
Tom Harpur (The Pagan Christ, 2004),
Joseph Atwill (Caesar's Messiah, 2005),
Kenneth Humphreys (Jesus Never Existed, 2005), René Salm (The Myth Of Nazareth: The Invented Town Of Jesus, 2008), and a multitude of their proselytes.
Internet activists call themselves "independent researchers", animating their blogs with endless discussions of Jesus's existence and of early Christian history, and offering a multitude of historical speculations with endless idiosyncratic ruminations. Their works—if printed at all— tend to be self-published, thus escaping the control and discipline of the academic and professional editors at major publishing firms. Generally, Internet researchers in Christian origins avoid direct confrontation with academic experts in peer-reviewed journals.
They claim that their positions are "avant-garde", but their activity is mainly geared towards the sale of their books, pamphlets and DVDs, thus enabling them to make a living in the field of biblical studies without academic research qualifications.
Though marginal and on the fringe, these passionate amateur researchers in effect are actively amplifying the publicity for the non-historicity thesis outside universities, on Internet sites aimed at "rationalists" and "free thinkers" and among the public at large.
--
ROO BOOKAROO (
talk) 19:41, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
An IP objected to the quote: "We wield our criteria to get what we want...We all see what we expect to see and what we want to see....". I do not see that statement as having any problem, for Allison is a highly respected scholar, and the quote has full attribution. History2007 ( talk) 14:18, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
It is true that Paul did not know Jesus. But he writes that he met "James the brother of the Lord". Therefore it is impossible to say that Paul lived a long time after Jesus and that he did not know much about Jesus. It is also impossible to say that Jesus did not exist because non-existing people don't have siblings. -- 131.220.75.93 ( talk) 15:20, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
As several editors on the talk page, including me, have said over time, this specific article has, at least historically, not met our basic guidelines for its own individual notability. The fact that there are (or were, anyway) no reliable sources which discuss the specific topic of this article, the "theory" of some form of "Christ myth", as their own specific topic at any great length, the article faces almost endless problems of OR and SYNTH regarding what content should be included in it and what shouldn't. I imagine that there are similar cases elsewhere in wikipedia of articles which are "good ideas," maybe, but fail notability. In such cases as these, what should be done? Personally, IMHO, I think that there might be a way somehow to find closely related content which is maybe more consistent with academic sources, like, in this case, “Distinctive views of Jesus in the “alternative” community in the 19th century on.” I choose this sort of title because it more or less confirms to the precedent of the Fahlbush Encyclopedia of Christianity, which has extensive coverage of theological and religious developments in that period, and almost all these opinions seem to come from that basic time period. That's a real bear of a title, though, isn't it? If, as I think is probably the case in most of the theories/hypotheses included, they all share some basic points in common, and many of them repeat, to some fairly significant degree, their predecessors, it might make sense to have some sort of content on the developments and changes in a core belief, but how to do that if there aren't any independent reliable sources which seem to address something like the non-notable stated topic of the article? John Carter ( talk) 15:45, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
This nobody spammed this article with auto-quotations THIRTY times! 177.205.172.191 ( talk) 01:46, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
This article makes multiple statements saying that "modern scholars almost all agree that Jesus existed". So what? How does people believing something is real matter in this context? If you want to refute the Christ Myth Theory while writing about it, provide references that refute it, or at least attempt to. Why make all these statements concerning what scholars believe to refute it? Scholars in 2008 mostly believed that giving mortgages to people who couldn't afford them was OK. Wickorama ( talk) 06:31, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
I am concerned with the appearance of bias in the article, linked with denial of misfeasance by Catholic Medieval copyists. I think that the Inquisition shows that people were killed for making accusations of misfeasance and malfeasance, using religion as a shield for abominable behavior, and that this may have influenced the copyists unduly. Making arguments based on popularity does little but confirm my misgivings. Attempting to eliminate all mention of copyist mal- or mis-feasance only makes it obvious you're not being honest. Lying for jebus is not exactly what we had in mind for a free and honest publicly sourced encyclopedia. 207.177.235.66 ( talk) 02:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
There's been what I see as an effort to turn Paul-Louis Couchoud's bio into a fork of this article. Others may not see it this way but I thought I'd mention it here. The editor in question has been reverted by myself and another editor. Dougweller ( talk) 10:08, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
The sentence "Modern scholarship has generally dismissed these analogies as without formal basis, and a form of parallelomania laden with historical errors" does seem to be excessively POV given that the sources that support this statement at best suggest that those individual historians reject Christ Myth Theory for those reasons but not historians in general. Could we identify which historical errors (if any) are involved in this theory?
The claim about parallelomania does not appear from a 'mainstream historian' but from the Jesuit Preiest Gerald O'Collins. It seems to be somewhat dishonest to attribute to 'historians in general what are in fact the words of a single priest!
And could somebody even explain to me what is meant by an analogy lacking "formal basis"? This seems to be an odd and somewhat arbitrarily applied criteria. -- 81.157.90.31 ( talk) 00:05, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
I've shortened the lead sentence so it reads Christ myth "is the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed." I did this because the article as it stands is including a great deal of very mainstream scholarly discussion as "Christ myth" - for example, the majority of modern scholars would seriously question the virgin birth stories in Matthew and Luke, but they aren't mythicists.
We really, really need a decent definition. There are four references cited at the end of that first sentence. The first, Ehrman, should be reliable but unfortunately I can't access it on google books. The second is a long web posting by G.A. Wells which I don't think is useful - he's speaking only for himself, and I can find a concise definition in it anyway. The third one, Theissen, also has no definition of Christ myth-theory, and in fact doesn't even discuss it in the same sense as this article. The last one, Voorst, looks promising, but the range of pages given is 7-11 and page 7 has been dropped for me. Nevertheless, at the top of page 8 (first page I have from that range) he seems to be saying that Christ-myth is the position that Jesus is a completely mythological figure.
Anyway, I think we need a good definition before the article can be written. I've found one in Van Voorst's 2002 entry in the encyclopedia "Jesus in history, thought and culture" (page 658) - it's now the 5th source referenced at the end of the first sentence, but I'd like to drop the other four and make this our starting point. PiCo ( talk) 03:48, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
In a recent exhaustive elaboration of the position, one of the leading proponents of Jesus mythicism, Earl Doherty, defines the view as follows: it is “the theory that no historical Jesus worthy of the name existed, that Christianity began with a belief in a spiritual, mythical figure, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction, and that no single identifiable person lay at the root of the Galilean preaching tradition.” In simpler terms, the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity.
— Ehrman 2012, p.12
Thank you everyone for your input.
So there seem to be two positions,the first that this article should be limited to the idea that Jesus never existed at all, the other that it should be about the myths etc that grew up around a historical Jesus.
The second seems to me be covered by the existing article Jesus Christ in comparative mythology - or at least it should be. That would let this article focus much more effectively on the first definition. There's also the article Historicity of Jesus to consider - like JC in comparative mythology, it has a section on Jesus as myth, and there's a lot of unnecessary repetition going on. So my suggestion now is to restrict this article to Jesus-never-existed, with Jesus-lived-but-Christianity-has-a-lot-of-myths for the other material. Martijn Meijering, since you're the major person wanting to include the second type of material in this article, how do you feel about that? PiCo ( talk) 08:37, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
"The Christ myth theory (also known as Jesus myth theory or Jesus mythicism and others) is the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed but was invented by the Christian movement around 100 CE.[1][2][3][4][5] The most sweeping version of the myth theories contends that there was no real historical figure Jesus and that he was invented by early Christians. Another variant holds that there was a person named Jesus, but the teachings and miracles attributed to him were invented and symbolic references. Yet another version suggests that the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament is a composite character constructed from multiple people over a period of time.[2][3][4]"
I don't like to get involved in this topic, but I don't see Bloodofox as coming from a "neopagan" perspective, and agree with him on two points. First, about stringing together citations: the practice fails to show how the sources relate to each other, and in a combined note, you can make it clearer how they complement each other, or differ in nuance. More important, this article has completely lost its way. There is no longer any delimited scope to differentiate it from (as was pointed out by PiCo above) Jesus in comparative mythology and Christian mythology or questions pertaining to Historicity of Jesus. I happen to agree with Bloodofox's insistence on a mythographical approach, and with his sane and uncontroversial statement that it's quite possible to regard Jesus as having been a historical figure with a lot of motifs from myth and folklore stacked up around him. "Myth" as a synonym for "falsehood, fiction" is a lexical item, not an encyclopedia topic, and "the Christ myth" to mean "Jesus never existed" is a polemical slogan, not a scholarly methodology that can be distinguished from historicity questions. I'm inclined, however, to think this article has become a lost cause. If the scope is so impossible to define, maybe it just needs to stop existing. Or maybe it could be dismantled into articles on specific theories attached to individual scholars, or even those typically dreadful articles on a single work of scholarship. Cynwolfe ( talk) 17:31, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
I like putting the link to the comp myth article in a hatnote. To address the point Paul made with the Hercules example, in fact we don't occupy the article Herakles or any of the related articles such as Labours of Hercules with lengthy discussions about whether there really was such a person, and whether he could actually hold the world on his shoulders. We describe the myths of Herakles, and particularly in the case of Hercules in ancient Rome, we describe the religious practices associated with the figure. In other words, we take more or less an approach of social constructivism: that the meaning or reality of Herakles is socially constructed, and independent of a fact-fiction dichotomy. When I search "Christ myth", I get a lot of polemical books, most of which use the phrase merely provocatively to mean "Jesus Christ never existed, and I'm gonna prove it". The hatnote at historicity of Jesus, however, seems to make a useful distinction that this article should be about the mythical Christ—that is, not an argument that "Jesus never existed, and here's why", but rather a mythographically sophisticated approach along the lines of "According to Christ myth theory, the narratives pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth provide a mythical rather than historical basis for Christianity." I also find the use of the word "invent" in the intro to be misleading and polemical. From a perspective of history of religions or mythography, it's naive, and implies the deliberate fabrication of a story at a particular time and place. That, however, is how a fiction is created, not a myth, which develops in complex, organic relation to a belief system. (I could make comparisons with Mithraic studies: It would be beyond blockheaded to explore the development of that mythos as a question of whether Mithras ever existed, or as an attempt to discover the individual founder.) The non-technical use of the word "myth" as a synonym for "fiction, lie, fabrication" calls the scholarly methodology into question, because it reveals that the scholar isn't actually concerned with myth in the first place, but rather with the question of historicity. But those questions belong at Historicity of Jesus, which obviously should not be an assemblage of evidence to support the view that Jesus was historical, but rather a neutral examination of the nature of the historical evidence. There's a fundamental distinction between the kinds of questions that can be addressed through methodologies pertaining to myth and those pertaining to history. That seems blurred here, and that's why I no longer understand the scope of this article. Cynwolfe ( talk) 19:33, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
I agree with above comments that the article is confused and problematic. I think this comes down to a major excluded middle problem.
The article gives the impression of having been partly written as a polemic intended to convince the reader that Jesus existed. I'm not accusing any editor or editors of having done this deliberately. Fact is, most of the sourcing on this topic is likely to be polemical one way or another (i.e. you will not find many floating voters specialising in this area). So, if an article is constructed using the sources too uncritically, it is likely to itself end up as a mish-mash of polemic.
The article appears to set out a formal argument that academic opinion favours the existence of Jesus, by listing the four positions on the question it is possible to take Christ_myth_theory#Variations_on_a_theme. The first of these says that Jesus did not exist, but it is unpopular with experts. The other three say that Jesus existed. Ergo, dear reader, Jesus existed.
Except it skips a possible stance that it ought to have considered. It is not really possible to be sure whether Jesus did or didn't exist - it is a question of probability which is not properly amenable to analysis. I would say that this is the most commonsense position, and would certainly emerge as the mainstream position among historians, had we the resources to run a survey, even if it is one less frequently argued for in sources (because, if you take this position, you are not likely to write books arguing one way or another about the existence of Jesus).
So, the Jesus existed/Jesus didn't exist debate represents only two poles of a spectrum. But, on the question of the status of the be debate, the article only seems to be interested in what participants in that debate have to say. But they are obviously not the best witnesses. The article needs badly to take greater account of outside views and commentary. Formerip ( talk) 21:27, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Aargh, not this dispute again. What this article is about is the idea/theory/hypothesis/proposition that there was no historical Jesus, and the stories about Jesus in the New Testament are fiction. Famous proponents of this view, beginning with Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews, are covered by this article. Drews wrote a series of books about this idea, which he called die Christus-mythe, in English translation "Christ myth". Writers following upon Drews (or refuting him) variously refer to the Christ-myth, the Christ Myth Theory, the Myth Theory, and so on, to refer to the idea of Jesus' ahistoricity. Modern proponents tend to call themselves Mythicists, and refer to the idea as Mythicism or Jesus Mythicism. Cynwolfe is quite right to indicate above that the use of "myth" in this sense is non-technical and non-academic, but the idea of Jesus' ahistoricity is itself non-academic. This line of thought uses the word "myth" in its most simplistic sense, as fabrication, partially because the idea springs from a simplistic analysis of the evidence of the New Testament. Van Voorst's coinage "non-existence hypothesis" is great, but no one uses it but him. WP:NAME indicates that an article about the non-historicity idea has to use "myth" in the title.
As I've said many times, looking at the title and deciding what the subject should be based on the meaning of the words in the title isn't a good idea here. There is a coherent subject--the idea that there was no historical Jesus. There's an identifiable body of proponents of this view--most are listed and covered in the article as we have it. There is academic coverage of the subject--aside from early 20th-century treatments, there's the recent book by Bart Ehrman, a forthcoming book by Maurice Casey. It's true there isn't *much* academic coverage compared to other aspects of the study of the historical Jesus/early Christianity, but that's precisely because the non-existence idea is such a non-issue in academic publishing.
Also, I don't understand Strangesad's post above...who's an example of scholars who "believe there was an itinerant preacher, associated with miracle work (not rare at that time)..." but "it isn't historically valid to identify him as Jesus"? --Akhilleus ( talk) 21:47, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Back to definitions: I'm not trying to railroad anyone here, but I think that if I don't edit boldly nothing will happen.
I've re-written the lead using the narrowest possible definition, sourced to Voorst. (Ehrman's definition is longer but essentially says the same thing). The rest of the lead, which I felt was over-long and inclined to argue cases instead of simply present them, I've replaced with a brief historical overview from Voorst, including his summary of the three major arguments used by mythicists from Bauer onwards. At the top of the article I've expanded the existing hat-note to direct readers to other articles on associated but different aspects of the study of the historical/mythological Jesus and the reliability of information about him.
This at least will give everyone the chance to criticise something concrete :) PiCo ( talk) 03:12, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
It's been drawn to my attention that, according to my user=page,I'm retired from Wiki. How very true. This will be my last post. Best of luck :) PiCo ( talk) 05:58, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
Yesterday I moved some material (and deleted some) so that the article begins with a section on tracing the history of mythicism. Today I'm going to consolidate material to create a new section dealing with the three major arguments used by mythicists, as identified by Voorst and more or less confirmed by Price, though Price isn't quite so encompassing as Voorst. I'll detail individual edits here as I go.
I've deleted the section that would have dealt with the three prongs of the mythicist argument, because it's mostly not about the mythicist arguments at all, but about why they're wrong. That's not what the article should be about. The existing section tracing the history of mythicist arguments in terms of major exponents is actually quite good and detailed, and seems balanced and representative. I didn't write it, I just found it there. My advice is to leave it, it's far better than what used to follow.
Incidentally, when I read books by Price, I find that he doesn't seem to be a mythicist at all in the sense of denying that Jesus ever existed - he just argues that the NT documents aren't a good guide to what the real Jesus may have said and done. That's a far cry from denying that he existed.
Anyway, the article is now much more readable. Does anyone think it now lacks anything major? 09:37, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
No, thise does not work. This article is intended to show some of the theories and evidence for the non existence of J in a historical sense. You have simply deleted most of that evidence because you don't agree with it. It's not about what you agree with. Allot of this stuff has been debunked, but that does not mean it doesn't belong here in this section. Kind of like how 9-11 conspiracy theory wiki still shows the evidence to support the claims, even though the claims are known to be false. I will begin re-inserting some of the pertinent information you have deleted. Greengrounds ( talk) 03:25, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
The 63,000 character reverts and downsizing for "fringe" please explain which citations are fringe and we can start there.
Is someone engaging in Wikipedia:Sock puppetry or is this a joke? You can't delete that much content without using the talk page, retire as Pico did and when it gets put back, two other people all of a sudden show up and revert the whole thing on "fringe" sourcing claims without explanation. Greengrounds ( talk) 10:02, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
Not one of you can point out a single line that you erased and why it was erased. Greengrounds ( talk) 11:48, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
And sMeat, i'm sorry that you misunderstood again, but what I was saying is that the article is ABOUT a "fringe" theory. It is not ABOUT the historicity of Jebus. It is about the different theories of the Jesus myth. Therefore, a citation from Robert Price is relevant in this article. So why did you erase the Robert Price citations? Greengrounds ( talk) 12:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
I sure wish I could find out what the theories are from this article. There was 63,000 characters on that topic, but you just erased it. You also erased the said refutations by mainstream scholars. Right now all that's left is a list of people who supported the theory, but we are not allowed to see what their theories are, are we? You erased the sections on Myth theories and responses, Elements of the theories, and Mainstream objections, didn't you? I invite you to put some of it back, as the 63000 characters you erased were not all "Fringe". For example Price and Bauer would be considered fringe in an article on the historicity of jesus, but this is not an article on the historicity of jesus, is it? It's an article on CHRIST MYTH THEORY. D.M. Murdoch would be considered fringe among her peers in this context. But Bauer and Price and others that you deleted are not. Again, please clarify which entries are fringe and why, so we can do this properly. Greengrounds ( talk) 13:21, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
Ckruschke ( talk), As I mentioned to Barlow and as HE BROUGHT UP, it was nice to have the arguments presented by mythicists so we can see what the arguments are, and it was nice to have see the rebuttals by other scholars. The sections I brought up were the sections on Myth theories and responses, Elements of the theories, and Mainstream objections. The other sections such as reliability of old testament texts were nice, too but unfortunately that's where Pico won all his fan fare. Anyway, given that the user Paul Barlow has just stated here that he agrees the changes by Pico were too radical, can we start by adding the 3 sections I highlighted. Then if there's something in particular someone doesn't like, it can be discussed here. Greengrounds ( talk) 22:29, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
So far, what I'm seeing is the consensus is that Pico's edits were "too radical" as said by Paul Barlow, and obviously I agree. I've mentioned 3 sections at minimum that I would like to see re-introduced. They are as follows: Myth theories and responses, Elements of the theories, and Mainstream objections. Let's start with what Elements of the theories. Here it is as it was before being removed:
Bruno Bauer laid down the three broad arguments followed by most later Christ myth theorists: [2]
Later authors do not always acknowledge Bauer or agree with his specific positions. [2] Among contemporary proponents, Robert M. Price sees the three pillars of the myth theories as: [3]
G. A. Wells has changed his position several times on various issues: he currently regards the Q source (a hypothetical collection of sayings of Jesus used as a source in the gospels of Matthew and Luke) as reliable, and rejects Price's dying and rising gods argument. [4]
To me, this section simply outlines the theories as presented by Bruno Bauer et el, and it does not claim that these theories are correct. We've already pointed out that the Myth theories are "debunked", we do this in the lead. So we simply provide outlines of the theories by some of it's proponents. I do not see how this is giving undue weight to using a fringe source. Any problems with re-inserting this section as is? Greengrounds ( talk) 00:38, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
IP 110.175.13.9 inserted material sourced to a blog, [2], but blogs are not reliable sources, see WP:RS "Anyone can create a personal web page or publish their own book, and also claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable." Smeat75 ( talk) 05:58, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
On a similar note I question the appropriateness of one of the External Links: The Credibility of the Bible - "Article discussing falsification hypotheses about Jesus' life, message and resurrection". This appears to be an anonymous evangelical web site on a blog-like level. The unidentified author of the article doesn't even directly discuss the Jesus Myth theory. Muzilon ( talk) 19:47, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
User:Wickorama has been making edits to the lead that I think are highly problematic: first, repeatedly inserting the information that Van Voorst is a theologian and pastor ( [3]), which is clearly meant to call into question the reliability of his statement that the CMT has no academic acceptance. Second, he has been expanding the lead to say that there are no contemporary documentary sources ( [4]), which is clearly meant to support the truth of the CMT. The basic problem here is that the lead is not supposed to be a place where the CMT is debated--it's supposed to be a description of the CMT, which includes the information that it has no academic acceptance. Wickorama's changes make the lead argumentative rather than descriptive, and reduce the value of the the text to the reader. --Akhilleus ( talk) 08:49, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
The passage which was recently inserted in the section "Other contemporary writers" - In 2012, Bart D. Ehrman published Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. While his conclusion was that he did, this book is significant with regard to the Christ Myth Theory, because for the first time a book authored by a believer in the historical existence of Jesus acknowledged the Christ Myth Theory is incorrect and I have removed it. Classical historian Michael Grant (the use of the word "believer" in this context is inappropriate) wrote a book in 1977 "Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels" in which he termed the hypothesis that Jesus never lived an "extreme view." He charges that it transgresses the basics of historiography: "if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned." Grant summarizes, after referring to Wells as an example: "modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory." These positions have been "annihilated" by the best scholars because the critics "have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary. [5] Smeat75 ( talk) 13:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
The Christ Myth theory has been "acknowledged" by those who disagree with it ever since it was formulated. Paul B ( talk) 10:50, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Wickorama ( talk) 00:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Response to Wickorama at 00:27 above - first of all, it is not really "an appeal to authority" to quote Ehrman and other experts who reject the CMT, it is summarising what reliable sources say. A very important quote, in my opinion, is the one from Michael Grant as he was a very eminent classical historian, not a religious studies professor or such and it is directly relevant to this article as he discusses the CMT, yes the source is now 36 years old, but if anyone else knows a historian of ancient history who has addressed the question since then, please let us know, AFAIK there aren't any. The question of Jesus' existence and those who dispute it is discussed in the Historicity of Jesus article, see [6]. It seems to me that you are asking for this article to be a WP:POVFORK, with one article, Historicity of Jesus, saying he did exist, and another article, this one, saying he did not. That is not allowed on WP, see WP:UNDUE "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of, or as detailed, a description as more widely held views." Since there are far more scholars who dismiss the CMT than support it, this article must make that clear to be WP:NPOV. Would you find it acceptable to have a section with "Criticism of the CMT" or some such title with the Michael Grant quote and others including "Van Voorst, Ehrman, and Casey together" as suggested by editor Akhilleus on this page at 12:03, 11 October 2013? Smeat75 ( talk) 01:16, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Wickorama, you have added various unsourced statements which are more like personal editorialising than parts of a neutral encyclopedia article, for instance Historicity refers to the study of alleged past persons and events to determine if they are historical or mythical - "alleged past persons" is not appropriate unless cited to a WP:RS and also the dichotomy, a "past person" is either historical or mythical needs a reliable source. Also Although all known Christian and secular references to Jesus were written more than a decade after his alleged lifetime, alleged,again, does not belong in there unless you are citing a reliable source which uses that word and that sentence is linking to reliable sources which state that Jesus existed and is clearly intended to cast doubt on their accuracy, ie it is more or less saying "these so-called experts say that Jesus existed, the dummies, even though there are no references to him in his lifetime." It is not appropriate to insert your personal views like that here as it would be if you were writing your own blog. Also I am not really clear why you want that section right at the beginning, it is usual to have a "Criticism" section after the main subject matter has been presented, not before, but in fact according to WP:CRIT The best approach to incorporating negative criticism into the encyclopedia is to integrate it into the article, in a way that does not disrupt the article's flow. The article should be divided into sections based on topics, timeline, or theme – not viewpoint. Negative criticism should be interwoven throughout the topical or thematic sections" which is what I tried to do but you removed my edits and said they should all be in one section. The lead, by the way, will have to include some statement that the CMT is rejected by mainstream scholarly opinion. Smeat75 ( talk) 05:40, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Why does this article call what are "references" on the other Wikipedia articles - Notes? And then adds "References", a list of publications, and then follows that with "Further Reading" a list of publications? Wickorama ( talk) 23:20, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
and his "Covert Messiah" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.78.188.4 ( talk) 15:54, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
You are engaging in an edit-war. If you keep this up, you are likely to be banned from editing. The docetism issue has been discussed before, and considered off-topic for this page. I won't revert you again, but someone else probably will, and if you revert that revert again it will likely result in a ban. We can always discuss this agin, but you cannot unilaterally impose your changes on this article. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 18:09, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
Since Robert_E._Van_Voorst is a theologian, and not a historian, it is problematic to use him as a source for this material, which deals specifically with the historical validity of the Jesus character. Being a theologian, his views are most certainly biased in this regard, and we should consider using more neutral and scholarly texts (published by major Universities) as sources to use instead. Spirit469 ( talk) 00:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
The article Historicity of Jesus duplicates a lot of what is in this article, but goes even further to make mention of a "strong myth variant". This does not appear to be included here, in the main article on the myth topic. Should it not be added here, for completeness? Wdford ( talk) 09:23, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
Would somebody please explain why there is a neutrality tag here, and what exactly the problem is perceived to be, so that we can address it? Wdford ( talk) 08:04, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
One reason to question the neutrality of the article is that the first 4 sources in the lede--forming the basis and introduction of the concept--come from one critic (Van Voorst). I doubt the article Jesus could be introduced primarily by Satanist sources. Beyondallmeaning ( talk) 21:04, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Besides the details of historical analysis, evidenciary evaluations for the contemporaneous events, the corruption of the historical record by religious, and Euhemerian apologetics, there is also an important development left unaddressed by this Wikipedia article: textual analysis for character. The primary expositor for this was Alan Dundes in "Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore ", in which he averred his expert opinion that the canonical gospels feature characteristics common to *oral tales*, implying their failure as journalistic or narrative accounts (being more aligned to folktales and mythology in this evaluation). In *combination* with the lack of contemporaneous confirmation of the events in question, all the more reason is given to align with scholars like Price and atheists in disputing the basis for any Jesus ever to have existed.
With numerous gospels (Jesus stories) recovered during the course of the last few hundred years after attempted destruction by Christians, these (Gnostic, primarily, but some others also; cf. Pagels' "Gnostic Gospels" and others) have also given reason (as featured within the wonderful "Alternative Christs" by Olav Hammer) to set out a pile of Christian hero stories next to one another and weigh them all equally in the face of religious enthusiasm. Doing this, we are left with little to support the Christian convention. By 2200 there will be no scholars with any credibility who think the Jesus character was ever more than fiction. This is also the case for Gautama Buddha, accounts of whom were not put into writing until hundreds of years after his supposed existence, yet the state of historical research and critical thinking at this point in human history is nascent, developing, and in need of an overhaul. -- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) ( talk) 05:41, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm curious as to why this section just lists a few historians and their assertions that the Christ myth theory is refuted instead of actually listing the evidence or proof they have that make the theory invalid. From what I've read, John Dominic Crossan's argument is the only one listed and it says Jesus is real because Josephus and Tacitus both agree that he was crucified or at least he says that this proves his crucifixion occurred. I think this section should actually list the evidence or arguments that scholars make denying the Christ myth theory instead of just their assertions that it's rubbish. Their assertions hold no value in understanding the merit of the theory and its flaws and this whole section, the way it is written, would be equivalent to me making a section on Obama's article titled "Worst President Ever" and then just listing assertions made by several conservatives merely emphasizing that point. In essence, only one rebuttal is actually given in this section and the rest is are just opinions that this theory doesn't matter and is only held by the minority, which is not a rebuttal. Scoobydunk ( talk) 02:24, 18 December 2013 (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 15 | ← | Archive 20 | Archive 21 | Archive 22 | Archive 23 | Archive 24 | Archive 25 |
Removed: During the early twentieth century, R. H. Charles ( archdeacon of Westminster from 1919 until his death in 1931) showed that some sayings of Jesus were borrowed from the literature of intertestamental pseudepigrapha and produced parallels. R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of The Old Testament (2 volumes, Oxford University Press, 1913). ..... what is this doing in the lede? Nothing in R H Charles supports suggests no historical Jesus, he only noted, like others before him, that some of the NT material draws on non-OT sources. And? This belongs in an article on the NT, has nothing to do with historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth. In ictu oculi ( talk) 23:34, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
And here is another gleaming example of how the crotchets and sensibilities of the average internet-addicted Wikipedia passioné leave readers with a distorted idea of what ideas, persons, etc., are actually important. Almost everything referenced in this article is marginal pseudo-research. This is longer than the page on Christology and nearly as long as the page on Christ. Please don't tell me that I and others should get to work adding to these other articles. A wiki article should only be so long. Please, someone sane, rational, reasonable agree with me that this page gives reader an outsized sense of this "theory" and its importance. Stealstrash ( talk) 06:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
The lead Section concludes with this assertion:
"Since the publication of the 2nd edition of Albert Schweitzer's Quest for the Historical Jesus in 1926, virtually no major New Testament scholar had bothered with rebutting the Christ-myth hypothesis until the publication in 2012 of Bart D. Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, which generated a flurry of online responses."
Ignoring the obvious error about "1926" as being the date of the 2d. ed. of Schweitzer's Quest, this simply seems to dismiss the existence of serious refutations of the Christ Myth thesis published between 1913 and April 2012. Should we not then check on this surprising assertion and have another look at the historical record?
WWI put a damper on the heated flurry of refutations to Arthur Drews's Christ Myth outside of Germany, but they continued unabated, if more sporadically, until WWII. The major critical works all followed the same pattern, weighing the merits of the arguments on both sides to conclude by confirming the historicity of Jesus against the deniers:
But after 1913, we can identify a whole series of refutations by major NT scholars, all of them still considered significant.
WWII and its aftermath put a stop to the public debate initially set off by Arthur Drews, until George Albert Wells (b. 1926), a professor of German at Un. of London, reignited it in the 1970s with a series of books directly influenced by his readings of Bruno Bauer, Albert Kalthoff and Arthur Drews in their original German, bursting on the public scene with a new wrinkle in the Christ Myth theory. Major refutations started coming out, resuscitating the debate of "Jesus Historicists" vs "Historicity Deniers".
A whole series of scholars raised their banners by publishing major refutations of Drews's Christ Myth thesis and its Wells reincarnation. The important refutations in 1984-2010 were:
Note, interestingly, that when major NT historian R. Joseph Hoffmann listed the major refutations of the Christ Myth thesis in his essay "Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus", (New Oxonian, May 22, 2012, note [3]), he limited the "important studies" (that is, Hoffmann's favorites) to only five works:
But Hoffmann omits from that list many historically significant refutations, especially Albert Schweitzer's critique of the Christ Myth in the added chapters 22 & 23 of the 2d edition of the Quest (1913), in disagreement with the lead section of this article, or Robert E. Van Voorst's work.
With the spread of the Internet, the old theological controversy that was raging 100 years ago has percolated down to the public forum and known a recrudescence, (see pro and con Wikiquotes on the "Christ Myth Theory", from the pre-1950s to the 2000s) with a "massive upsurge" of the non-existence thesis, as explicitly characterized by Maurice Casey in "Mythicism: A Story of Bias, Incompetence and Falsehood", (New Oxonian, May 22, 2012).
Both academic and independent scholars have ridden the new boom with publications all aimed at discussing the Christ Myth thesis and its aftermath. The major works published in 2011 and until Aug. 2012 have been:
CONCLUSION: It becomes much more difficult to claim a dearth of major refutations of the Christ Myth thesis between Schweitzer (1913) and Bart D. Ehrman (April 2012). -- ROO BOOKAROO ( talk) 17:15, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
It's true that there were scholarly treatments of the CMT between 1913 and 2012. But these treatments were a minuscule portion of the total scholarly output on the historical Jesus. It's simply not a major focus of scholarship (even now, when there's a clear upsurge in interest, many scholars still treat it as an annoyance), and this is a point worth making in our article.
As an aside, ROO BOOKAROO, could you consider shortening your posts? You're making good points, but perhaps supplying more data than is actually necessary. Concision is often more convincing than verbosity... --Akhilleus ( talk) 03:26, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
Akhilleus, good point.
But (to put it briefly), this article is so full of egregious mistakes that it becomes clear that it was written by well-intentioned writers who are not professional historians of the subject matter. In many places, this article reads as if it only reflected the current knowledge of American college undergraduates, and not the real knowledge of professional NT historians.
No wonder that Aramaist Maurice Casey had to produce his own critique, and that R. Joseph Hoffmann sees an urgent need to produce his own "masterly" version of the critique of the Christ Myth thesis — one that can deliver the knock-out punch that Ehrman was unable to deliver, because Ehrman's expertise has been devoted to textual criticism, and not to the Frage nach der Historizität von Jesus Christus, which remains a very special niche of NT scholarship, one to which, for instance, G. A. Wells has devoted 40 years of research, and R. Joseph Hoffman more than 30 years. While Ehrman took only a few months off for his research outside his expertise, doing a rush job with his latest book. -- ROO BOOKAROO ( talk) 12:22, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
Why does the article not include any summary of the content of criticism of the theory (as would be normal for an article). For instance, it uncritically accepts (without citation) that Pauline literature is the most direct source about Jesus, when in fact that is very debatable, and many of the oldest manuscripts we have are of the gospels? ie. P52, P90, P104, (c. 150) P64, P66, P77, P103 (c. 200) [1] 22:34, 15 December 2012 (UTC)JR
This article has a lot of challenges to the existence of Christ, but few if any extra biblical proofs that prove them to be false. Instead, it is littered with dismissive and un-encyclopedic quotes like "dismissed by most scholars" as if that constitutes a debunking. I don't care, as a reader, what "most scholars" (who presumably are paid employees of theological institutions) say, I care about extra-biblical contemporary evidence that Christ actually existed, and how, precisely that debunks the Christ Myth theories presented herein without the constant statements like "this scholar stands in the minority" and other dismissive and irrelevant appeals to the majority. No other postulation is allowed to simply be "true until proven false" as this article seems to really imply. If there is no evidence, the article should state clearly at the top that "There is no extra biblical evidence that Christ existed at all, and thus it is a disputed topic among scholars." If the majority is wrong, its wrong. Mrrealtime ( talk) 19:44, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
How in the world has this dreadfully written page about a non-topic received a "B-class" rating? The Enoch Powell entry, one of the best-written and most thoroughly researched on Wikipedia, has been given a "C." As always, clear to any clear-headed person that almost everything on Wikipedia is decided by a small group of obsessed persons who are not in any conventional sense well-educated. Stealstrash ( talk) 07:57, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
An anonymous IP has been adding editorialising material to the article. This is against policy and it needs to stop. It is perfectly OK to add dissenting opinions, with attribution, it is OK to quote notable sources arguing with the sources, but it is not OK for a WP editor to argue with the sources. If the editor feels the present section about bias is itself biased, he or she is most welcome to share their concerns so we can see if we can find a way to deal with them. That's what talk pages are for. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 20:11, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Clue me in - what's a WMF? (World Midwifery Federation? Wee Munchkins Foundation?). ANd more seriously, the article needs to distinguish between the idea of a fictional Jesus (one who never existed) and a mythical Jesus (one around whom myths have grown). On analogy with legends, King Arthur may be entirely fictional (never was a 5th century British king, someone made it all up), or there may have been such a king but no Round Table, Guinevere, or promised return to aid his people at a future hour of peril (the legendary part). When legends deal with gods they're called myths, otherwise the same thing.
The lead defines mythicism as "... an umbrella term that applies to a range of arguments that in one way or another question the existence of Jesus of Nazareth or the essential elements of his life as described in the Christian gospels."
There are four sources given and I'm sure they're accurately referenced.
My problem is, however, that the second part of this defines rules as "mythicism" a whole host of valid scholarly investigation into the nature and accuracy of the gospels. By this definition, anyone who asks, for example, whether Jesus might perhaps have been born in Nazareth instead of Bethlehem, is propagating the view that Jesus is mythical. That would be nonsensical. For this reason the article has grown to huge proportions and struggles to grapple with the subject of real mythicism, which is simply the idea that there never was a Jesus of Nazareth. I think the definition needs to be narrowed. PiCo ( talk) 10:32, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
The Title of this article needs to be "Jesus Myth Theory". Christ myth theory is biased and confusing. There is much debate on whether Jesus was Christ or not, Islam for example has him as a prophet, but not a Christ figure and that is just the tip of an iceberg. The entire article is about the historicity of Jesus. Whether he was historical and whether he was god in Jewish dude form are 2 different questions. He would have to be historical to be god in Jewish dude form, so the "Jesus Myth Theory" should be the title because it is the widest scope claim being discussed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Twainstheman ( talk • contribs) 03:01, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Please do excuse me for typing this here. I am just posting this as a formality to get it out in the open; and my apologies are offered in advance. There is a similar post here because there are edits there that seem to want to effectively merge in all the discussion of non-existence of Jesus, 1st century sources, Remsburg-type ideas, myth theory etc. there. I do not think it makes sense. But let us have a general discussion on that please and see what the consensus may be. History2007 ( talk) 03:30, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
It seems to me we need actual sources identifying a particular argument as an argument from silence, otherwise we are engaging in synthesis. Do any sources use that label, or is it jut editors? Humanpublic ( talk) 15:26, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
I frequently see "biased article" banners, and I read the article but can't find the bias. This article put me in mind of a sermon delivered by a true believer - I felt that the author was not presenting facts, but instead was presenting an argument that Jesus was a historical figure.
I feel that at the least, this article should be flagged until it can be rewritten. It might well be better to delete it until it can be rewritten in a neutral tone. Simicich ( talk) 08:38, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
The way it happened is that the history section has not been cleaned up. It is full of semi-sourced and less than accurate items - still hanging at the end there. If and when it is cleaned up, some integration may make sense. But the other side of the coin is that the article is not about History of Christ myth theory, just as Physics and Geology are not about the History of physics and the History of geology, but refer to them.
Come to think of it, the idea of making the long history section a separate article, and having a Main link here further upfront does make sense. Readers of the article on geology do not necessarily want to know about the "history of geology", some of the ideas therein being way too old; they want to know what geology is. But I think the section on "Historical Jesus research and the problem of bias" should stay here. History2007 ( talk) 20:33, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Disruptive sockpuppet; discussion under way on WP:ANI |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
What a biased article this is, and can it get any more biased when religious fundamentalists control an article that is about atheism. Too silly to laugh at. Baron master ( talk) 01:25, 18 February 2013 (UTC) "Integrity of Christian religion was challenged at an early stage"I removed the sentence "That the integrity of the Christian religion was challenged from an early period of its existence is borne out in 2 Peter 1:16, For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We saw his majestic splendor with our own eyes.' as it needs a source which states that that verse demonstrates that there were challenges to "the integrity of the Christian religion from an early period."01:31, 18 February 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smeat75 ( talk • contribs)
Unsourced InterpretationLots and lots of unsourced interpretation in this article - any possibility of improving on this ? Baron master ( talk) 01:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC) |
I changed "Modern scholarship has generally dismissed these analogies as without formal basis, and a form of parallelomania laden with historical errors." to "Christian theologians dismiss these analogies as without formal basis, and claim they are a form of parallelomania laden with historical errors."
Someone reverted this change. However, all of the references that are provided for this statement are from works by Christian theologians. "Modern scholarship" is a broad term that could be misinterpreted to represent a much larger cohort of academia than is justified by the sources.
Let's make this article NPOV by providing a more specific descriptor for these sources that more accurately represents their credentials. Why would we want to obfuscate this information? It is not a slander to call someone a "Christian theologian" and it should not impugn their credibility. PeaceLoveHarmony ( talk) 20:00, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
One problem (out of the many) with PeaceLoveHarmony's post is that "Christian Theologians" are scholars. Theology is an academic discipline, and has been for hundreds of years. Of course, another problem is that not everyone who studies early Christianity is a theologian—in the US, most scholars writing about early Christianity in a college or university will be in departments of Religion/Religious Studies, not Theology. Never mind that the name of the department in which one teaches and researches is not necessarily reflective of one's approach to the subject, nor that one can be in a theology department studying Christianity without professing belief in Christianity...
To put it another way, PCL's argument seems to be that "these sources are all Christians, so they're biased, so Wikipedia has to raise a red flag to the reader." That's pretty silly, isn't it? --Akhilleus ( talk) 04:37, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Beeing a "Christian theologian" gives you hardly more credit in the field of history science than anybody else, therefor it should be made clear that this "majority of scolars" include many religious people (christians), who's main concern obviously is to defend their religious faith rather than finding the true historical facts. Which of course exclude them from being an objective source in this case. I am of the opinion that claiming the title "scolar" you must have a some academic backgound in the subject matter i.e. in the science of researching historical facts. DaNorse ( talk) 06:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
This is a list of books typically presented on the internet as the supporters of Christ myth theory. So we can see how many "academics and scholars" there are here:
I think for the sake of completeness, we should add a few other writers mentioned on various websites and Wikipages, they are:
So really there is one solid academic scholar here namely Thompson and then Price who can be called a non-academic scholar - given that he only teaches online courses on the subject (around $50 per course) at an online website with no campus. Note that G. A. Wells has softened his position of non-existence and now accepts the likely existence of a preacher mentioned in the Q source, although holding that the gospel narratives of his life/miracles are fiction. But just Thompson and Price do not make a long list. There are probably 1 or 2 more people with PhDs who deny existence (say Carrier, but who has no academic post) yet it is quite clear from this list that most of those mentioned are either amateurs or are scholars such as Mack who actually support existence. Most of these people are attorney/accountant/etc./etc. types and not scholars. The funniest one however was suggesting Raskin as a scholar. I did get a chuckle out of that one. But anyway, the results speak for themselves. History2007 ( talk) 13:49, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Paul Barlow that the list of 42 authors by Remsburg does not add much in that section and does not fit there. There is already something about that list of 42 names below in the Remsburg paragraph, and it states that the list was copied by others as well, but that entire section (20h century writers) is desperately asking for help regarding non-WP:RS sources, inconsistencies, etc. I have been really avoiding work on that, but may get to touch it up if no one else does. One should, however, point out that arguments made by Remsburg 100 years ago are only of "historical interest" and do not really apply any more given that Remsburg had most probably never heard of the findings of Shlomo Pines (who was born in 1908) when he wrote his book in 1909. History2007 ( talk) 22:00, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
Obviously, we do not agree on what modern scholarship holds and how WP:RS is different from what you call jokes. I have to stop fr a while, but let us wait for further user responses. In the meantime, please do provide a list of the "many modern publications" you mentioned which use the Remsburg list of the 42 to argue non-existence. That list would be nice to see. Thanks. History2007 ( talk) 15:49, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Can you refute all the authors listed by Remsburg, and show that they actually did write of Jesus? I'm sure you can't. To answer your question, the only other modern book I know that uses Remsburg's list is "Who Was Jesus" by D. M. Murdock (p. 85), 2007. That's five that I know of. Again - what do you think about restoring the sentence "Some arguments from silence go back to John Remsburg in 1909 who enumerated forty-two..."? Sound reasonable, or what? MithrasPriest ( talk) 01:17, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I didn't see that list at the top you were referring to, sorry. Regarding "Tim Leedom seems to be just a university of Hawaii graduate..." did you bother to look at the book? He's editor. The articles are by revered authors. So a University of Hawaii graduate can't compile a respectable book? Sam Harris hadn't even finished his PhD when his book hit the NYT Best Sellers list, for example. Moreover, who is Lee Strobel, very often cited in WP? He is JUST (your word) a Christian author -- and a pastor. Certainly not neutral, and as non-notable of a historian as those I listed that you attempted to discredit as "just" this or that. Asher Norman - lawyer and realtor, is not to be trusted? Joseph Wheless was "just" a lawyer. Obama was "just" a lawyer before getting into politics. Come on, help add information to WP rather than tearing it down. Why are you so against mentioning that Remsberg listed 42 writers of the first and second century? Please explain. MithrasPriest ( talk) 01:38, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I am sorry but our mindsets seem to be so far apart that I am not sure how to respond. I will just mention that:
The rest of your comments about the list are largely WP:OR and per policy I can not partake in them sans WP:RS sources. Bu I will wait for other editors to respond to you as well. History2007 ( talk) 00:06, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
By the way, as an aside, the whole discussion about Remsberg's material being a century old, reminded me of a joke David Letterman had in one of his Top Ten Lists several years ago about the shortage of serious candidates for office and the number one choice ended up being: "We are going to dig up Grover Cleveland and run him again!" But there is a point therein, namely that if Remsberg has to be "exhumed" and presented as a scholar who supports a hypothesis, that just means that "there is a serious shortage of modern scholars who support that hypothesis" else a contemporary professor in a top university (say Oxford, Stanford, Princeton, etc.) would have been found to support the hypothesis. If none is found then the choice is "We are going to dig up John Remsberg and run him again!"
In fact Remsberg's statement regarding "aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author" is a good example of how his material is outdated. I mentioned Shlomo Pines before, but let us consider the statement by George Albert Wells himself (The Jesus Legend by G. A. Wells 1996 ISBN 0812693345 page 48) that most scholars today hold that Josephus made some reference to Jesus in the Testimonium Flavianum which was then retouched by Christians and particularly since Shlomo Pines' discovery of the Arabic version of the Testimonium. So Wells himself admits that most scholars hold that Josephus did refer to Jesus and the 1970s discovery of Pines (Remsburg was obviously unaware of it) does matter. So Remsburg's material is clearly outdated. That is clear. Very clear. History2007 ( talk) 09:29, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
The article as it stands is a complete misrepresentation of Remsburg: "Some arguments from silence go back to John Remsburg in 1909 who commented on the silence of Philo of Alexandria..." - Remsburg did not simply comment on Philo, he commented on 41 writers of the time and region. Why can't we simply mention that in the article without providing his list? I think we should fix that. Geĸrίtzl ( talk) 21:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
There is plenty of material on Drews now, in various pages, e.g. Arthur Drews (34k), The Christ Myth (25k) and his Denial book (only 5k) as well as here. There is a merge tag on the The Christ Myth page for it to merge here, having already split off from the Drews page itself. That would obviously not work given that this page is 70k, and per WP:Length it would immediately run over the limit, as well as WP:Due. So we will have to call that a no merge on procedural grounds in any case. Even the material on Drews here is longer than more logical myth theorists such as Bolland or the Dutch school - I guess because they wrote for the intellectuals and Drews for the masses. In any case, this length/merge issue needed to be noted here to deal with the merge tag there in any case. And this article is already at the upper edge of the 60k WP:Length guideline, but probably does not need a split as such just some trimming here and there. History2007 ( talk) 15:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
A special section should perhaps be added to note and describe the impact of the Internet as a new public information medium on the vast proliferation of advocates of one form or other of the "Christ Myth Theory."
The field of Christian origins has become—thanks to the explosion of information on the Internet—a free-for-all for passionate amateurs. Newcomers have jumped in to propagandize their favorite, idiosyncratic, views on Jesus and the Origins of Christianity. Many are amateurs who have at most a B.A. and neither professional experience in scholarly research nor training in scholarly criticism. While many may mention
Bruno Bauer,
Robertson,
Drews,
Couchoud, or even
Wells as an afterthought, none seems to have read either. In general they have relied on the current summaries of the published scholarship of Drews and Wells, without acknowledging any debt to the pioneers who preceded them. Unlike Couchoud and Wells, very few Internet researchers have been able to tap the huge font of German criticism.
They operate on the fringe, ignored by academic scholarship. Indeed, amateur Internet activists glory in their puffed-up achievements, trumpeting sensational breakthroughs never spotted before by academics. Such self-generated ideas find acceptance only among a fascinated, but uninformed and ignorant Internet public — which is, in fact, the readership they cultivate, thus avoiding entanglements with professional scholars and never being required to present papers in peer-reviewed Journals.
The new crop of Internet amateurs includes
Dorothy Murdock (The Christ Conspiracy),
Timothy Freke and
Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries, 1999),
Earl Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle, 1999),
Tom Harpur (The Pagan Christ, 2004),
Joseph Atwill (Caesar's Messiah, 2005),
Kenneth Humphreys (Jesus Never Existed, 2005), René Salm (The Myth Of Nazareth: The Invented Town Of Jesus, 2008), and a multitude of their proselytes.
Internet activists call themselves "independent researchers", animating their blogs with endless discussions of Jesus's existence and of early Christian history, and offering a multitude of historical speculations with endless idiosyncratic ruminations. Their works—if printed at all— tend to be self-published, thus escaping the control and discipline of the academic and professional editors at major publishing firms. Generally, Internet researchers in Christian origins avoid direct confrontation with academic experts in peer-reviewed journals.
They claim that their positions are "avant-garde", but their activity is mainly geared towards the sale of their books, pamphlets and DVDs, thus enabling them to make a living in the field of biblical studies without academic research qualifications.
Though marginal and on the fringe, these passionate amateur researchers in effect are actively amplifying the publicity for the non-historicity thesis outside universities, on Internet sites aimed at "rationalists" and "free thinkers" and among the public at large.
--
ROO BOOKAROO (
talk) 19:41, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
An IP objected to the quote: "We wield our criteria to get what we want...We all see what we expect to see and what we want to see....". I do not see that statement as having any problem, for Allison is a highly respected scholar, and the quote has full attribution. History2007 ( talk) 14:18, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
It is true that Paul did not know Jesus. But he writes that he met "James the brother of the Lord". Therefore it is impossible to say that Paul lived a long time after Jesus and that he did not know much about Jesus. It is also impossible to say that Jesus did not exist because non-existing people don't have siblings. -- 131.220.75.93 ( talk) 15:20, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
As several editors on the talk page, including me, have said over time, this specific article has, at least historically, not met our basic guidelines for its own individual notability. The fact that there are (or were, anyway) no reliable sources which discuss the specific topic of this article, the "theory" of some form of "Christ myth", as their own specific topic at any great length, the article faces almost endless problems of OR and SYNTH regarding what content should be included in it and what shouldn't. I imagine that there are similar cases elsewhere in wikipedia of articles which are "good ideas," maybe, but fail notability. In such cases as these, what should be done? Personally, IMHO, I think that there might be a way somehow to find closely related content which is maybe more consistent with academic sources, like, in this case, “Distinctive views of Jesus in the “alternative” community in the 19th century on.” I choose this sort of title because it more or less confirms to the precedent of the Fahlbush Encyclopedia of Christianity, which has extensive coverage of theological and religious developments in that period, and almost all these opinions seem to come from that basic time period. That's a real bear of a title, though, isn't it? If, as I think is probably the case in most of the theories/hypotheses included, they all share some basic points in common, and many of them repeat, to some fairly significant degree, their predecessors, it might make sense to have some sort of content on the developments and changes in a core belief, but how to do that if there aren't any independent reliable sources which seem to address something like the non-notable stated topic of the article? John Carter ( talk) 15:45, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
This nobody spammed this article with auto-quotations THIRTY times! 177.205.172.191 ( talk) 01:46, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
This article makes multiple statements saying that "modern scholars almost all agree that Jesus existed". So what? How does people believing something is real matter in this context? If you want to refute the Christ Myth Theory while writing about it, provide references that refute it, or at least attempt to. Why make all these statements concerning what scholars believe to refute it? Scholars in 2008 mostly believed that giving mortgages to people who couldn't afford them was OK. Wickorama ( talk) 06:31, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
I am concerned with the appearance of bias in the article, linked with denial of misfeasance by Catholic Medieval copyists. I think that the Inquisition shows that people were killed for making accusations of misfeasance and malfeasance, using religion as a shield for abominable behavior, and that this may have influenced the copyists unduly. Making arguments based on popularity does little but confirm my misgivings. Attempting to eliminate all mention of copyist mal- or mis-feasance only makes it obvious you're not being honest. Lying for jebus is not exactly what we had in mind for a free and honest publicly sourced encyclopedia. 207.177.235.66 ( talk) 02:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
There's been what I see as an effort to turn Paul-Louis Couchoud's bio into a fork of this article. Others may not see it this way but I thought I'd mention it here. The editor in question has been reverted by myself and another editor. Dougweller ( talk) 10:08, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
The sentence "Modern scholarship has generally dismissed these analogies as without formal basis, and a form of parallelomania laden with historical errors" does seem to be excessively POV given that the sources that support this statement at best suggest that those individual historians reject Christ Myth Theory for those reasons but not historians in general. Could we identify which historical errors (if any) are involved in this theory?
The claim about parallelomania does not appear from a 'mainstream historian' but from the Jesuit Preiest Gerald O'Collins. It seems to be somewhat dishonest to attribute to 'historians in general what are in fact the words of a single priest!
And could somebody even explain to me what is meant by an analogy lacking "formal basis"? This seems to be an odd and somewhat arbitrarily applied criteria. -- 81.157.90.31 ( talk) 00:05, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
I've shortened the lead sentence so it reads Christ myth "is the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed." I did this because the article as it stands is including a great deal of very mainstream scholarly discussion as "Christ myth" - for example, the majority of modern scholars would seriously question the virgin birth stories in Matthew and Luke, but they aren't mythicists.
We really, really need a decent definition. There are four references cited at the end of that first sentence. The first, Ehrman, should be reliable but unfortunately I can't access it on google books. The second is a long web posting by G.A. Wells which I don't think is useful - he's speaking only for himself, and I can find a concise definition in it anyway. The third one, Theissen, also has no definition of Christ myth-theory, and in fact doesn't even discuss it in the same sense as this article. The last one, Voorst, looks promising, but the range of pages given is 7-11 and page 7 has been dropped for me. Nevertheless, at the top of page 8 (first page I have from that range) he seems to be saying that Christ-myth is the position that Jesus is a completely mythological figure.
Anyway, I think we need a good definition before the article can be written. I've found one in Van Voorst's 2002 entry in the encyclopedia "Jesus in history, thought and culture" (page 658) - it's now the 5th source referenced at the end of the first sentence, but I'd like to drop the other four and make this our starting point. PiCo ( talk) 03:48, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
In a recent exhaustive elaboration of the position, one of the leading proponents of Jesus mythicism, Earl Doherty, defines the view as follows: it is “the theory that no historical Jesus worthy of the name existed, that Christianity began with a belief in a spiritual, mythical figure, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction, and that no single identifiable person lay at the root of the Galilean preaching tradition.” In simpler terms, the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity.
— Ehrman 2012, p.12
Thank you everyone for your input.
So there seem to be two positions,the first that this article should be limited to the idea that Jesus never existed at all, the other that it should be about the myths etc that grew up around a historical Jesus.
The second seems to me be covered by the existing article Jesus Christ in comparative mythology - or at least it should be. That would let this article focus much more effectively on the first definition. There's also the article Historicity of Jesus to consider - like JC in comparative mythology, it has a section on Jesus as myth, and there's a lot of unnecessary repetition going on. So my suggestion now is to restrict this article to Jesus-never-existed, with Jesus-lived-but-Christianity-has-a-lot-of-myths for the other material. Martijn Meijering, since you're the major person wanting to include the second type of material in this article, how do you feel about that? PiCo ( talk) 08:37, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
"The Christ myth theory (also known as Jesus myth theory or Jesus mythicism and others) is the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed but was invented by the Christian movement around 100 CE.[1][2][3][4][5] The most sweeping version of the myth theories contends that there was no real historical figure Jesus and that he was invented by early Christians. Another variant holds that there was a person named Jesus, but the teachings and miracles attributed to him were invented and symbolic references. Yet another version suggests that the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament is a composite character constructed from multiple people over a period of time.[2][3][4]"
I don't like to get involved in this topic, but I don't see Bloodofox as coming from a "neopagan" perspective, and agree with him on two points. First, about stringing together citations: the practice fails to show how the sources relate to each other, and in a combined note, you can make it clearer how they complement each other, or differ in nuance. More important, this article has completely lost its way. There is no longer any delimited scope to differentiate it from (as was pointed out by PiCo above) Jesus in comparative mythology and Christian mythology or questions pertaining to Historicity of Jesus. I happen to agree with Bloodofox's insistence on a mythographical approach, and with his sane and uncontroversial statement that it's quite possible to regard Jesus as having been a historical figure with a lot of motifs from myth and folklore stacked up around him. "Myth" as a synonym for "falsehood, fiction" is a lexical item, not an encyclopedia topic, and "the Christ myth" to mean "Jesus never existed" is a polemical slogan, not a scholarly methodology that can be distinguished from historicity questions. I'm inclined, however, to think this article has become a lost cause. If the scope is so impossible to define, maybe it just needs to stop existing. Or maybe it could be dismantled into articles on specific theories attached to individual scholars, or even those typically dreadful articles on a single work of scholarship. Cynwolfe ( talk) 17:31, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
I like putting the link to the comp myth article in a hatnote. To address the point Paul made with the Hercules example, in fact we don't occupy the article Herakles or any of the related articles such as Labours of Hercules with lengthy discussions about whether there really was such a person, and whether he could actually hold the world on his shoulders. We describe the myths of Herakles, and particularly in the case of Hercules in ancient Rome, we describe the religious practices associated with the figure. In other words, we take more or less an approach of social constructivism: that the meaning or reality of Herakles is socially constructed, and independent of a fact-fiction dichotomy. When I search "Christ myth", I get a lot of polemical books, most of which use the phrase merely provocatively to mean "Jesus Christ never existed, and I'm gonna prove it". The hatnote at historicity of Jesus, however, seems to make a useful distinction that this article should be about the mythical Christ—that is, not an argument that "Jesus never existed, and here's why", but rather a mythographically sophisticated approach along the lines of "According to Christ myth theory, the narratives pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth provide a mythical rather than historical basis for Christianity." I also find the use of the word "invent" in the intro to be misleading and polemical. From a perspective of history of religions or mythography, it's naive, and implies the deliberate fabrication of a story at a particular time and place. That, however, is how a fiction is created, not a myth, which develops in complex, organic relation to a belief system. (I could make comparisons with Mithraic studies: It would be beyond blockheaded to explore the development of that mythos as a question of whether Mithras ever existed, or as an attempt to discover the individual founder.) The non-technical use of the word "myth" as a synonym for "fiction, lie, fabrication" calls the scholarly methodology into question, because it reveals that the scholar isn't actually concerned with myth in the first place, but rather with the question of historicity. But those questions belong at Historicity of Jesus, which obviously should not be an assemblage of evidence to support the view that Jesus was historical, but rather a neutral examination of the nature of the historical evidence. There's a fundamental distinction between the kinds of questions that can be addressed through methodologies pertaining to myth and those pertaining to history. That seems blurred here, and that's why I no longer understand the scope of this article. Cynwolfe ( talk) 19:33, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
I agree with above comments that the article is confused and problematic. I think this comes down to a major excluded middle problem.
The article gives the impression of having been partly written as a polemic intended to convince the reader that Jesus existed. I'm not accusing any editor or editors of having done this deliberately. Fact is, most of the sourcing on this topic is likely to be polemical one way or another (i.e. you will not find many floating voters specialising in this area). So, if an article is constructed using the sources too uncritically, it is likely to itself end up as a mish-mash of polemic.
The article appears to set out a formal argument that academic opinion favours the existence of Jesus, by listing the four positions on the question it is possible to take Christ_myth_theory#Variations_on_a_theme. The first of these says that Jesus did not exist, but it is unpopular with experts. The other three say that Jesus existed. Ergo, dear reader, Jesus existed.
Except it skips a possible stance that it ought to have considered. It is not really possible to be sure whether Jesus did or didn't exist - it is a question of probability which is not properly amenable to analysis. I would say that this is the most commonsense position, and would certainly emerge as the mainstream position among historians, had we the resources to run a survey, even if it is one less frequently argued for in sources (because, if you take this position, you are not likely to write books arguing one way or another about the existence of Jesus).
So, the Jesus existed/Jesus didn't exist debate represents only two poles of a spectrum. But, on the question of the status of the be debate, the article only seems to be interested in what participants in that debate have to say. But they are obviously not the best witnesses. The article needs badly to take greater account of outside views and commentary. Formerip ( talk) 21:27, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Aargh, not this dispute again. What this article is about is the idea/theory/hypothesis/proposition that there was no historical Jesus, and the stories about Jesus in the New Testament are fiction. Famous proponents of this view, beginning with Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews, are covered by this article. Drews wrote a series of books about this idea, which he called die Christus-mythe, in English translation "Christ myth". Writers following upon Drews (or refuting him) variously refer to the Christ-myth, the Christ Myth Theory, the Myth Theory, and so on, to refer to the idea of Jesus' ahistoricity. Modern proponents tend to call themselves Mythicists, and refer to the idea as Mythicism or Jesus Mythicism. Cynwolfe is quite right to indicate above that the use of "myth" in this sense is non-technical and non-academic, but the idea of Jesus' ahistoricity is itself non-academic. This line of thought uses the word "myth" in its most simplistic sense, as fabrication, partially because the idea springs from a simplistic analysis of the evidence of the New Testament. Van Voorst's coinage "non-existence hypothesis" is great, but no one uses it but him. WP:NAME indicates that an article about the non-historicity idea has to use "myth" in the title.
As I've said many times, looking at the title and deciding what the subject should be based on the meaning of the words in the title isn't a good idea here. There is a coherent subject--the idea that there was no historical Jesus. There's an identifiable body of proponents of this view--most are listed and covered in the article as we have it. There is academic coverage of the subject--aside from early 20th-century treatments, there's the recent book by Bart Ehrman, a forthcoming book by Maurice Casey. It's true there isn't *much* academic coverage compared to other aspects of the study of the historical Jesus/early Christianity, but that's precisely because the non-existence idea is such a non-issue in academic publishing.
Also, I don't understand Strangesad's post above...who's an example of scholars who "believe there was an itinerant preacher, associated with miracle work (not rare at that time)..." but "it isn't historically valid to identify him as Jesus"? --Akhilleus ( talk) 21:47, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Back to definitions: I'm not trying to railroad anyone here, but I think that if I don't edit boldly nothing will happen.
I've re-written the lead using the narrowest possible definition, sourced to Voorst. (Ehrman's definition is longer but essentially says the same thing). The rest of the lead, which I felt was over-long and inclined to argue cases instead of simply present them, I've replaced with a brief historical overview from Voorst, including his summary of the three major arguments used by mythicists from Bauer onwards. At the top of the article I've expanded the existing hat-note to direct readers to other articles on associated but different aspects of the study of the historical/mythological Jesus and the reliability of information about him.
This at least will give everyone the chance to criticise something concrete :) PiCo ( talk) 03:12, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
It's been drawn to my attention that, according to my user=page,I'm retired from Wiki. How very true. This will be my last post. Best of luck :) PiCo ( talk) 05:58, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
Yesterday I moved some material (and deleted some) so that the article begins with a section on tracing the history of mythicism. Today I'm going to consolidate material to create a new section dealing with the three major arguments used by mythicists, as identified by Voorst and more or less confirmed by Price, though Price isn't quite so encompassing as Voorst. I'll detail individual edits here as I go.
I've deleted the section that would have dealt with the three prongs of the mythicist argument, because it's mostly not about the mythicist arguments at all, but about why they're wrong. That's not what the article should be about. The existing section tracing the history of mythicist arguments in terms of major exponents is actually quite good and detailed, and seems balanced and representative. I didn't write it, I just found it there. My advice is to leave it, it's far better than what used to follow.
Incidentally, when I read books by Price, I find that he doesn't seem to be a mythicist at all in the sense of denying that Jesus ever existed - he just argues that the NT documents aren't a good guide to what the real Jesus may have said and done. That's a far cry from denying that he existed.
Anyway, the article is now much more readable. Does anyone think it now lacks anything major? 09:37, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
No, thise does not work. This article is intended to show some of the theories and evidence for the non existence of J in a historical sense. You have simply deleted most of that evidence because you don't agree with it. It's not about what you agree with. Allot of this stuff has been debunked, but that does not mean it doesn't belong here in this section. Kind of like how 9-11 conspiracy theory wiki still shows the evidence to support the claims, even though the claims are known to be false. I will begin re-inserting some of the pertinent information you have deleted. Greengrounds ( talk) 03:25, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
The 63,000 character reverts and downsizing for "fringe" please explain which citations are fringe and we can start there.
Is someone engaging in Wikipedia:Sock puppetry or is this a joke? You can't delete that much content without using the talk page, retire as Pico did and when it gets put back, two other people all of a sudden show up and revert the whole thing on "fringe" sourcing claims without explanation. Greengrounds ( talk) 10:02, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
Not one of you can point out a single line that you erased and why it was erased. Greengrounds ( talk) 11:48, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
And sMeat, i'm sorry that you misunderstood again, but what I was saying is that the article is ABOUT a "fringe" theory. It is not ABOUT the historicity of Jebus. It is about the different theories of the Jesus myth. Therefore, a citation from Robert Price is relevant in this article. So why did you erase the Robert Price citations? Greengrounds ( talk) 12:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
I sure wish I could find out what the theories are from this article. There was 63,000 characters on that topic, but you just erased it. You also erased the said refutations by mainstream scholars. Right now all that's left is a list of people who supported the theory, but we are not allowed to see what their theories are, are we? You erased the sections on Myth theories and responses, Elements of the theories, and Mainstream objections, didn't you? I invite you to put some of it back, as the 63000 characters you erased were not all "Fringe". For example Price and Bauer would be considered fringe in an article on the historicity of jesus, but this is not an article on the historicity of jesus, is it? It's an article on CHRIST MYTH THEORY. D.M. Murdoch would be considered fringe among her peers in this context. But Bauer and Price and others that you deleted are not. Again, please clarify which entries are fringe and why, so we can do this properly. Greengrounds ( talk) 13:21, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
Ckruschke ( talk), As I mentioned to Barlow and as HE BROUGHT UP, it was nice to have the arguments presented by mythicists so we can see what the arguments are, and it was nice to have see the rebuttals by other scholars. The sections I brought up were the sections on Myth theories and responses, Elements of the theories, and Mainstream objections. The other sections such as reliability of old testament texts were nice, too but unfortunately that's where Pico won all his fan fare. Anyway, given that the user Paul Barlow has just stated here that he agrees the changes by Pico were too radical, can we start by adding the 3 sections I highlighted. Then if there's something in particular someone doesn't like, it can be discussed here. Greengrounds ( talk) 22:29, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
So far, what I'm seeing is the consensus is that Pico's edits were "too radical" as said by Paul Barlow, and obviously I agree. I've mentioned 3 sections at minimum that I would like to see re-introduced. They are as follows: Myth theories and responses, Elements of the theories, and Mainstream objections. Let's start with what Elements of the theories. Here it is as it was before being removed:
Bruno Bauer laid down the three broad arguments followed by most later Christ myth theorists: [2]
Later authors do not always acknowledge Bauer or agree with his specific positions. [2] Among contemporary proponents, Robert M. Price sees the three pillars of the myth theories as: [3]
G. A. Wells has changed his position several times on various issues: he currently regards the Q source (a hypothetical collection of sayings of Jesus used as a source in the gospels of Matthew and Luke) as reliable, and rejects Price's dying and rising gods argument. [4]
To me, this section simply outlines the theories as presented by Bruno Bauer et el, and it does not claim that these theories are correct. We've already pointed out that the Myth theories are "debunked", we do this in the lead. So we simply provide outlines of the theories by some of it's proponents. I do not see how this is giving undue weight to using a fringe source. Any problems with re-inserting this section as is? Greengrounds ( talk) 00:38, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
IP 110.175.13.9 inserted material sourced to a blog, [2], but blogs are not reliable sources, see WP:RS "Anyone can create a personal web page or publish their own book, and also claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable." Smeat75 ( talk) 05:58, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
On a similar note I question the appropriateness of one of the External Links: The Credibility of the Bible - "Article discussing falsification hypotheses about Jesus' life, message and resurrection". This appears to be an anonymous evangelical web site on a blog-like level. The unidentified author of the article doesn't even directly discuss the Jesus Myth theory. Muzilon ( talk) 19:47, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
User:Wickorama has been making edits to the lead that I think are highly problematic: first, repeatedly inserting the information that Van Voorst is a theologian and pastor ( [3]), which is clearly meant to call into question the reliability of his statement that the CMT has no academic acceptance. Second, he has been expanding the lead to say that there are no contemporary documentary sources ( [4]), which is clearly meant to support the truth of the CMT. The basic problem here is that the lead is not supposed to be a place where the CMT is debated--it's supposed to be a description of the CMT, which includes the information that it has no academic acceptance. Wickorama's changes make the lead argumentative rather than descriptive, and reduce the value of the the text to the reader. --Akhilleus ( talk) 08:49, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
The passage which was recently inserted in the section "Other contemporary writers" - In 2012, Bart D. Ehrman published Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. While his conclusion was that he did, this book is significant with regard to the Christ Myth Theory, because for the first time a book authored by a believer in the historical existence of Jesus acknowledged the Christ Myth Theory is incorrect and I have removed it. Classical historian Michael Grant (the use of the word "believer" in this context is inappropriate) wrote a book in 1977 "Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels" in which he termed the hypothesis that Jesus never lived an "extreme view." He charges that it transgresses the basics of historiography: "if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned." Grant summarizes, after referring to Wells as an example: "modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory." These positions have been "annihilated" by the best scholars because the critics "have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary. [5] Smeat75 ( talk) 13:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
The Christ Myth theory has been "acknowledged" by those who disagree with it ever since it was formulated. Paul B ( talk) 10:50, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Wickorama ( talk) 00:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Response to Wickorama at 00:27 above - first of all, it is not really "an appeal to authority" to quote Ehrman and other experts who reject the CMT, it is summarising what reliable sources say. A very important quote, in my opinion, is the one from Michael Grant as he was a very eminent classical historian, not a religious studies professor or such and it is directly relevant to this article as he discusses the CMT, yes the source is now 36 years old, but if anyone else knows a historian of ancient history who has addressed the question since then, please let us know, AFAIK there aren't any. The question of Jesus' existence and those who dispute it is discussed in the Historicity of Jesus article, see [6]. It seems to me that you are asking for this article to be a WP:POVFORK, with one article, Historicity of Jesus, saying he did exist, and another article, this one, saying he did not. That is not allowed on WP, see WP:UNDUE "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of, or as detailed, a description as more widely held views." Since there are far more scholars who dismiss the CMT than support it, this article must make that clear to be WP:NPOV. Would you find it acceptable to have a section with "Criticism of the CMT" or some such title with the Michael Grant quote and others including "Van Voorst, Ehrman, and Casey together" as suggested by editor Akhilleus on this page at 12:03, 11 October 2013? Smeat75 ( talk) 01:16, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Wickorama, you have added various unsourced statements which are more like personal editorialising than parts of a neutral encyclopedia article, for instance Historicity refers to the study of alleged past persons and events to determine if they are historical or mythical - "alleged past persons" is not appropriate unless cited to a WP:RS and also the dichotomy, a "past person" is either historical or mythical needs a reliable source. Also Although all known Christian and secular references to Jesus were written more than a decade after his alleged lifetime, alleged,again, does not belong in there unless you are citing a reliable source which uses that word and that sentence is linking to reliable sources which state that Jesus existed and is clearly intended to cast doubt on their accuracy, ie it is more or less saying "these so-called experts say that Jesus existed, the dummies, even though there are no references to him in his lifetime." It is not appropriate to insert your personal views like that here as it would be if you were writing your own blog. Also I am not really clear why you want that section right at the beginning, it is usual to have a "Criticism" section after the main subject matter has been presented, not before, but in fact according to WP:CRIT The best approach to incorporating negative criticism into the encyclopedia is to integrate it into the article, in a way that does not disrupt the article's flow. The article should be divided into sections based on topics, timeline, or theme – not viewpoint. Negative criticism should be interwoven throughout the topical or thematic sections" which is what I tried to do but you removed my edits and said they should all be in one section. The lead, by the way, will have to include some statement that the CMT is rejected by mainstream scholarly opinion. Smeat75 ( talk) 05:40, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Why does this article call what are "references" on the other Wikipedia articles - Notes? And then adds "References", a list of publications, and then follows that with "Further Reading" a list of publications? Wickorama ( talk) 23:20, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
and his "Covert Messiah" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.78.188.4 ( talk) 15:54, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
You are engaging in an edit-war. If you keep this up, you are likely to be banned from editing. The docetism issue has been discussed before, and considered off-topic for this page. I won't revert you again, but someone else probably will, and if you revert that revert again it will likely result in a ban. We can always discuss this agin, but you cannot unilaterally impose your changes on this article. Martijn Meijering ( talk) 18:09, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
Since Robert_E._Van_Voorst is a theologian, and not a historian, it is problematic to use him as a source for this material, which deals specifically with the historical validity of the Jesus character. Being a theologian, his views are most certainly biased in this regard, and we should consider using more neutral and scholarly texts (published by major Universities) as sources to use instead. Spirit469 ( talk) 00:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
The article Historicity of Jesus duplicates a lot of what is in this article, but goes even further to make mention of a "strong myth variant". This does not appear to be included here, in the main article on the myth topic. Should it not be added here, for completeness? Wdford ( talk) 09:23, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
Would somebody please explain why there is a neutrality tag here, and what exactly the problem is perceived to be, so that we can address it? Wdford ( talk) 08:04, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
One reason to question the neutrality of the article is that the first 4 sources in the lede--forming the basis and introduction of the concept--come from one critic (Van Voorst). I doubt the article Jesus could be introduced primarily by Satanist sources. Beyondallmeaning ( talk) 21:04, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Besides the details of historical analysis, evidenciary evaluations for the contemporaneous events, the corruption of the historical record by religious, and Euhemerian apologetics, there is also an important development left unaddressed by this Wikipedia article: textual analysis for character. The primary expositor for this was Alan Dundes in "Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore ", in which he averred his expert opinion that the canonical gospels feature characteristics common to *oral tales*, implying their failure as journalistic or narrative accounts (being more aligned to folktales and mythology in this evaluation). In *combination* with the lack of contemporaneous confirmation of the events in question, all the more reason is given to align with scholars like Price and atheists in disputing the basis for any Jesus ever to have existed.
With numerous gospels (Jesus stories) recovered during the course of the last few hundred years after attempted destruction by Christians, these (Gnostic, primarily, but some others also; cf. Pagels' "Gnostic Gospels" and others) have also given reason (as featured within the wonderful "Alternative Christs" by Olav Hammer) to set out a pile of Christian hero stories next to one another and weigh them all equally in the face of religious enthusiasm. Doing this, we are left with little to support the Christian convention. By 2200 there will be no scholars with any credibility who think the Jesus character was ever more than fiction. This is also the case for Gautama Buddha, accounts of whom were not put into writing until hundreds of years after his supposed existence, yet the state of historical research and critical thinking at this point in human history is nascent, developing, and in need of an overhaul. -- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) ( talk) 05:41, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm curious as to why this section just lists a few historians and their assertions that the Christ myth theory is refuted instead of actually listing the evidence or proof they have that make the theory invalid. From what I've read, John Dominic Crossan's argument is the only one listed and it says Jesus is real because Josephus and Tacitus both agree that he was crucified or at least he says that this proves his crucifixion occurred. I think this section should actually list the evidence or arguments that scholars make denying the Christ myth theory instead of just their assertions that it's rubbish. Their assertions hold no value in understanding the merit of the theory and its flaws and this whole section, the way it is written, would be equivalent to me making a section on Obama's article titled "Worst President Ever" and then just listing assertions made by several conservatives merely emphasizing that point. In essence, only one rebuttal is actually given in this section and the rest is are just opinions that this theory doesn't matter and is only held by the minority, which is not a rebuttal. Scoobydunk ( talk) 02:24, 18 December 2013 (UTC)