The article was promoted by Ian Rose 10:04, 15 August 2013 (UTC) [1]. reply
Jesus ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Toolbox |
---|
Reviewers: Please read this article's FAQ before reading the article. If you disagree with anything in the FAQ, please voice your concern at the article's talk page, not here.
This article became a good article in early May, and also received a copy edit from the WP:GOCE later that month. After much work, I believe this article is ready for FAC.-- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 17:13, 3 July 2013 (UTC) reply
Comments
Support (but see later comment way, way below) Comment. Very interesting, looks promising. My support is qualified by this not being my field and it certainly is a subject that begets an enormous literature. I am trusting that the literature is fairly represented.
Support from Cliftonian. After a number of read-throughs and comments and a few amendments on my own part, I now feel comfortable with giving this my backing. I've capped my comments below. Well done FutureTrillionaire! — Cliftonian (talk) 08:01, 21 July 2013 (UTC) reply
Resolved comments from Cliftonian |
---|
This is already a fine achievement on what many would see as one of the most important articles of all. Here are some comments which I hope will help on the way to FA status.
I hope this helps. I will come back to this review later as well. Well done so far and keep up the good work! — Cliftonian (talk) 07:59, 13 July 2013 (UTC) reply
|
On a first look, the article seems pretty good for a subject with an enormous amount of literature, with very divergent views on many aspects. In an article like this nuances of wording and emphasis are very important to get right.
-more coming Johnbod ( talk) 12:46, 21 July 2013 (UTC) reply
Resolved items
|
---|
As an amateur but serious New Testament scholar who has read many of the article's more important sources, I can attest that the material and tone fairly represents the scholarly consensus, while giving fair weight to the majority Christian interpretation of history. I'm very pleased with this, and it must have taken a lot of work. Well done. The prose is excellent overall. It is difficult to find unclear or clunky writing in this article. Thanks to FunkMonk for the image review.
All in all, this article is excellent and has exceeded my expectations. I hope my concerns are appropriately addressed, as it would be personally very satisfying to see such an important article featured. – Quadell ( talk) 19:55, 4 August 2013 (UTC) reply
|
Great progress has been made on this article, which considering its size, complexity and controversial nature is a huge achievement. As a battle-scarred text it has over the years been difficult to read (it still shows signs of unncessary length due to petty squabbles, but that's probably always going to be true with this subject. It's an impressive result.
There is, however, one weakness in the current form, and it's an important one. One editor above mentioned this, but it still needs to be taken seriously. Given that the main sources for information about Jesus are the canonical Gospels, the reader needs to have an understanding about how modern scholarship sees the relationship between them: beginning with Mark, which is developed further (and separately, and to some extent differently) by Matthew and Luke with the use of Q, and finally - probably from a distinct separate tradition - John. This doesn't have to be done in great detail - it's written about extensively in other articles - but it needs to be explained clearly in the "Canonical Gospel Accounts" section. What we have now is a fairly naive approach that treats all the Gospel accounts as a Gospel harmony, which misses out on much of what modern Biblical scholarship has established over the past century. It's astonishing to find no mention at all of Q, for instance, even thought it's broadly speaking part of the modern consensus. What follows in the article makes no sense at all unless the reader understands that the account they are reading is actually composed of four closely related but different ones. Right now, a reader who was not familiar with this would never suspect it. -- Rbreen ( talk) 22:27, 9 August 2013 (UTC) reply
@ Rbreen: Okay, I've added some info to the "Canonical gospel accounts" section. Can you take a look? Is it better now? -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 21:29, 11 August 2013 (UTC) reply
Strong oppose.
Strawman arguments The article reduces all doubt about a historical Jesus to “mythicism,” simplistically defined as "Christians made the whole thing up". In doing so, it misrepresents several scholars lumped under that label. G.A. Wells is called a mythicist, but has modified his position over time. His current view is that there may have been a wandering preacher who can be said to be the basis of the stories of Jesus. However, “this personage is not be identified with the dying and rising Christ of the early epistles.” [3] Other critics have expressed the opinion that there may have been a figure more responsible for starting Christainity than any others, but that he was an itinerant preacher/mystic. For example, Alvar Ellegård argues the personage commonly thought of as Jesus was the Teacher of Righteousness, who lived around 150 BCE. This range of “mythicism” is described in the lede of Christ myth theory, but omitted in Jesus. The omission makes the skepticism seem simplistic.
Unbalanced sourcing The sourcing is particularly egregious. A claim that's debated in the Talk page archives as far back as I can see is that “virtually all” scholars agree Jesus existed. Also, that all scholars regard events such as his baptism and his crucifixion as fact. Here are the sources used for those claims about the views of modern historians:
I hadn't heard of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company until now: “Eerdmans has long been known for publishing a wide range of Christian and religious books, from academic works in Christian theology, biblical studies, religious history, and reference to popular titles in spirituality....” Fifty-percent of the article's sources asserting the unquestionable existence of Jesus are from this publisher.
I was going to get into the allegedly neutral sources for claiming that the baptism and crucifixion are undisputed facts, and that everybody acknowledges Josephus as “genuine.” These claims suffer the same sourcing problems. But the point is made. The sourcing needs to be cleaned up. Please, find some peer-reviewed, non-Christian, historical research on this controversial subject. Please represent the mythicist views fairly, with equal depth and respect. Strangesad ( talk) 04:52, 10 August 2013 (UTC) reply
Additional comments about the Historical views/Existence section.
The treatment of the argument from silence (paragraphs 2 & 3) is a good example of selective citation in order to promote a view. The article suggests that arguments from silence are mostly considered invalid, but here is what the sources say:
I attempted to add these quotes to give a fairer sense of what the sources actually say, but FutureTrillionaire reverted. [8]
These paragraphs suffer from the same kind of sourcing problem. A new example is this: "Teresa Okure writes that the existence of historical figures is established by the analysis of later references to them, rather than by contemporary relics and remnants.[229]" Here is that source's bio: "Teresa Okure, a Sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, is Professor of New Testament and Gender Hermeneutics at the Catholic Institute of West Africa." [9] Here are some other comments from the source, suggesting a lack of objectivity: “This study, however, focuses on how each culture...understands and appropriates the global Jesus whose global nature is given by God, in virtue of his being God's universal Messiah, not a human construct. It acknowledges that the main resources in any discussion of the historical Jesus are the canonical gospels...” See also this tidbit: “How do we know about the historical Moses....founder of the Israelite nation and religion?” (Huh? Moses founded Judaism?) Well, we don't know about the historical Moses.
The final paragraph in this section is about non-Christian references to Jesus. It says they "establish" the existence of Jesus. The sources don't clearly say that. Feldman, who is a high-quality source, says there is a genuine reference to Jesus in Josephus (about 50 years after the alleged death of Jesus). The comment is about whether the passage in Josephus is authentic, not whether it demonstrates the existence of jesus. That distinction is unclear in our article. And again, a typical use of non-neutral sourcing:
These sources just need to be fixed. And given the extent of priests, pastors, and ministers used as objective historical sources in this one subsection, it is hard to trust the other parts of the Historical Views section. Strangesad ( talk) 05:22, 11 August 2013 (UTC) reply
About a year ago, here], I reviewed the article by comparing it against the second edition of the Eliade/Jones Encyclopedia of Religion, which is from what I've read and heard in conversation with some religion reference librarians, one of the two or three reference sources on religion out there, as well as being, probably, the most current and generally accessible. At that time, the only reservations I had were about the length of the article and about the lack of inclusion of any content related to Hindu views. Given the staggering amount of information out there on this topic, on the wide variety of matters discussed in any number of reference books, I am not sure that the article could reasonably be shortened down dramatically without throwing off the balance of the article, and am even less than sure whether all the possibly indicated subarticles content might be moved to even exist yet, so I don't think that any complaints about the length per se are really actionable at this time. So, although I can see the article potentially improving, I am not sure that any such potential improvements are necessarily actionable at this time, and thus can't be used as reasons to oppose the article for FA consideration. John Carter ( talk) 17:06, 11 August 2013 (UTC) reply
I will just make some general comments. What I see here is that someone like Quadell with deep knowledge of the entire topic has made very constructive remarks, which have brought an article to very good shape and ready for FA. What is very strange, but not unexpected are the comments from the sockpuppet Humanpublic, using Srangesad's account. Strangesad is by far the smarter of the two (and far more succinct usually), and her initial arguments were better than these - which map 1 to 1 to what Humanpublic had argued before and rejected on teh talk page. Those comments just promote the Christ myth theory which was discussed on talk at length and is a WP:Fringe view and has been on WP:FTN around ten times now and is called fringe or "very tiny minority" view again and again And it is totally clear that Humanpublic/Strangesad "knows" what the mainstream view is, yet specifically edits/disrupts the article to trump the mainstream view by placing the WP:FRINGE view ahead of it, and claims that it is supported by the source. Comments from this sockpuppet wcan not be taken seriously. Let me quote Jimmy Wales from the policy on WP:Due:
So the minority view that Humanpublic/Strangesad is singing about can not drive a major article. In any case, I will address those in place, which is easier to do. The reviews by Quadell and Johnbod were constructive and it is a comprehensive and well represented review of the subject. This is a very good article, but I have to stop now. From what I have seen there are highly knowledgeable users such as Quadell on this page now who can address these issues. And I should leave it to them. This article is ready for FA. Not here anymore ( talk) 09:59, 12 August 2013 (UTC) reply
Determining consensus to promote an article to FA is not simply a numbers game, where many declarations of support will trump one or two voices of opposition, but more a matter of comprehensiveness and cogency of arguments. In this case, I can't see that the deeply felt objections raised by one reviewer nullify the arguments of many others, or that those objections (which seem to come back to one point) are actionable under the FA criteria. The stability of the article might be called into question, but a topic like this makes that pretty well inevitable. Therefore I expect at this stage to include it among a list of promotions I plan to make in the next day or so. In the meantime, some housekeeping:
The article was promoted by Ian Rose 10:04, 15 August 2013 (UTC) [1]. reply
Jesus ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Toolbox |
---|
Reviewers: Please read this article's FAQ before reading the article. If you disagree with anything in the FAQ, please voice your concern at the article's talk page, not here.
This article became a good article in early May, and also received a copy edit from the WP:GOCE later that month. After much work, I believe this article is ready for FAC.-- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 17:13, 3 July 2013 (UTC) reply
Comments
Support (but see later comment way, way below) Comment. Very interesting, looks promising. My support is qualified by this not being my field and it certainly is a subject that begets an enormous literature. I am trusting that the literature is fairly represented.
Support from Cliftonian. After a number of read-throughs and comments and a few amendments on my own part, I now feel comfortable with giving this my backing. I've capped my comments below. Well done FutureTrillionaire! — Cliftonian (talk) 08:01, 21 July 2013 (UTC) reply
Resolved comments from Cliftonian |
---|
This is already a fine achievement on what many would see as one of the most important articles of all. Here are some comments which I hope will help on the way to FA status.
I hope this helps. I will come back to this review later as well. Well done so far and keep up the good work! — Cliftonian (talk) 07:59, 13 July 2013 (UTC) reply
|
On a first look, the article seems pretty good for a subject with an enormous amount of literature, with very divergent views on many aspects. In an article like this nuances of wording and emphasis are very important to get right.
-more coming Johnbod ( talk) 12:46, 21 July 2013 (UTC) reply
Resolved items
|
---|
As an amateur but serious New Testament scholar who has read many of the article's more important sources, I can attest that the material and tone fairly represents the scholarly consensus, while giving fair weight to the majority Christian interpretation of history. I'm very pleased with this, and it must have taken a lot of work. Well done. The prose is excellent overall. It is difficult to find unclear or clunky writing in this article. Thanks to FunkMonk for the image review.
All in all, this article is excellent and has exceeded my expectations. I hope my concerns are appropriately addressed, as it would be personally very satisfying to see such an important article featured. – Quadell ( talk) 19:55, 4 August 2013 (UTC) reply
|
Great progress has been made on this article, which considering its size, complexity and controversial nature is a huge achievement. As a battle-scarred text it has over the years been difficult to read (it still shows signs of unncessary length due to petty squabbles, but that's probably always going to be true with this subject. It's an impressive result.
There is, however, one weakness in the current form, and it's an important one. One editor above mentioned this, but it still needs to be taken seriously. Given that the main sources for information about Jesus are the canonical Gospels, the reader needs to have an understanding about how modern scholarship sees the relationship between them: beginning with Mark, which is developed further (and separately, and to some extent differently) by Matthew and Luke with the use of Q, and finally - probably from a distinct separate tradition - John. This doesn't have to be done in great detail - it's written about extensively in other articles - but it needs to be explained clearly in the "Canonical Gospel Accounts" section. What we have now is a fairly naive approach that treats all the Gospel accounts as a Gospel harmony, which misses out on much of what modern Biblical scholarship has established over the past century. It's astonishing to find no mention at all of Q, for instance, even thought it's broadly speaking part of the modern consensus. What follows in the article makes no sense at all unless the reader understands that the account they are reading is actually composed of four closely related but different ones. Right now, a reader who was not familiar with this would never suspect it. -- Rbreen ( talk) 22:27, 9 August 2013 (UTC) reply
@ Rbreen: Okay, I've added some info to the "Canonical gospel accounts" section. Can you take a look? Is it better now? -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 21:29, 11 August 2013 (UTC) reply
Strong oppose.
Strawman arguments The article reduces all doubt about a historical Jesus to “mythicism,” simplistically defined as "Christians made the whole thing up". In doing so, it misrepresents several scholars lumped under that label. G.A. Wells is called a mythicist, but has modified his position over time. His current view is that there may have been a wandering preacher who can be said to be the basis of the stories of Jesus. However, “this personage is not be identified with the dying and rising Christ of the early epistles.” [3] Other critics have expressed the opinion that there may have been a figure more responsible for starting Christainity than any others, but that he was an itinerant preacher/mystic. For example, Alvar Ellegård argues the personage commonly thought of as Jesus was the Teacher of Righteousness, who lived around 150 BCE. This range of “mythicism” is described in the lede of Christ myth theory, but omitted in Jesus. The omission makes the skepticism seem simplistic.
Unbalanced sourcing The sourcing is particularly egregious. A claim that's debated in the Talk page archives as far back as I can see is that “virtually all” scholars agree Jesus existed. Also, that all scholars regard events such as his baptism and his crucifixion as fact. Here are the sources used for those claims about the views of modern historians:
I hadn't heard of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company until now: “Eerdmans has long been known for publishing a wide range of Christian and religious books, from academic works in Christian theology, biblical studies, religious history, and reference to popular titles in spirituality....” Fifty-percent of the article's sources asserting the unquestionable existence of Jesus are from this publisher.
I was going to get into the allegedly neutral sources for claiming that the baptism and crucifixion are undisputed facts, and that everybody acknowledges Josephus as “genuine.” These claims suffer the same sourcing problems. But the point is made. The sourcing needs to be cleaned up. Please, find some peer-reviewed, non-Christian, historical research on this controversial subject. Please represent the mythicist views fairly, with equal depth and respect. Strangesad ( talk) 04:52, 10 August 2013 (UTC) reply
Additional comments about the Historical views/Existence section.
The treatment of the argument from silence (paragraphs 2 & 3) is a good example of selective citation in order to promote a view. The article suggests that arguments from silence are mostly considered invalid, but here is what the sources say:
I attempted to add these quotes to give a fairer sense of what the sources actually say, but FutureTrillionaire reverted. [8]
These paragraphs suffer from the same kind of sourcing problem. A new example is this: "Teresa Okure writes that the existence of historical figures is established by the analysis of later references to them, rather than by contemporary relics and remnants.[229]" Here is that source's bio: "Teresa Okure, a Sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, is Professor of New Testament and Gender Hermeneutics at the Catholic Institute of West Africa." [9] Here are some other comments from the source, suggesting a lack of objectivity: “This study, however, focuses on how each culture...understands and appropriates the global Jesus whose global nature is given by God, in virtue of his being God's universal Messiah, not a human construct. It acknowledges that the main resources in any discussion of the historical Jesus are the canonical gospels...” See also this tidbit: “How do we know about the historical Moses....founder of the Israelite nation and religion?” (Huh? Moses founded Judaism?) Well, we don't know about the historical Moses.
The final paragraph in this section is about non-Christian references to Jesus. It says they "establish" the existence of Jesus. The sources don't clearly say that. Feldman, who is a high-quality source, says there is a genuine reference to Jesus in Josephus (about 50 years after the alleged death of Jesus). The comment is about whether the passage in Josephus is authentic, not whether it demonstrates the existence of jesus. That distinction is unclear in our article. And again, a typical use of non-neutral sourcing:
These sources just need to be fixed. And given the extent of priests, pastors, and ministers used as objective historical sources in this one subsection, it is hard to trust the other parts of the Historical Views section. Strangesad ( talk) 05:22, 11 August 2013 (UTC) reply
About a year ago, here], I reviewed the article by comparing it against the second edition of the Eliade/Jones Encyclopedia of Religion, which is from what I've read and heard in conversation with some religion reference librarians, one of the two or three reference sources on religion out there, as well as being, probably, the most current and generally accessible. At that time, the only reservations I had were about the length of the article and about the lack of inclusion of any content related to Hindu views. Given the staggering amount of information out there on this topic, on the wide variety of matters discussed in any number of reference books, I am not sure that the article could reasonably be shortened down dramatically without throwing off the balance of the article, and am even less than sure whether all the possibly indicated subarticles content might be moved to even exist yet, so I don't think that any complaints about the length per se are really actionable at this time. So, although I can see the article potentially improving, I am not sure that any such potential improvements are necessarily actionable at this time, and thus can't be used as reasons to oppose the article for FA consideration. John Carter ( talk) 17:06, 11 August 2013 (UTC) reply
I will just make some general comments. What I see here is that someone like Quadell with deep knowledge of the entire topic has made very constructive remarks, which have brought an article to very good shape and ready for FA. What is very strange, but not unexpected are the comments from the sockpuppet Humanpublic, using Srangesad's account. Strangesad is by far the smarter of the two (and far more succinct usually), and her initial arguments were better than these - which map 1 to 1 to what Humanpublic had argued before and rejected on teh talk page. Those comments just promote the Christ myth theory which was discussed on talk at length and is a WP:Fringe view and has been on WP:FTN around ten times now and is called fringe or "very tiny minority" view again and again And it is totally clear that Humanpublic/Strangesad "knows" what the mainstream view is, yet specifically edits/disrupts the article to trump the mainstream view by placing the WP:FRINGE view ahead of it, and claims that it is supported by the source. Comments from this sockpuppet wcan not be taken seriously. Let me quote Jimmy Wales from the policy on WP:Due:
So the minority view that Humanpublic/Strangesad is singing about can not drive a major article. In any case, I will address those in place, which is easier to do. The reviews by Quadell and Johnbod were constructive and it is a comprehensive and well represented review of the subject. This is a very good article, but I have to stop now. From what I have seen there are highly knowledgeable users such as Quadell on this page now who can address these issues. And I should leave it to them. This article is ready for FA. Not here anymore ( talk) 09:59, 12 August 2013 (UTC) reply
Determining consensus to promote an article to FA is not simply a numbers game, where many declarations of support will trump one or two voices of opposition, but more a matter of comprehensiveness and cogency of arguments. In this case, I can't see that the deeply felt objections raised by one reviewer nullify the arguments of many others, or that those objections (which seem to come back to one point) are actionable under the FA criteria. The stability of the article might be called into question, but a topic like this makes that pretty well inevitable. Therefore I expect at this stage to include it among a list of promotions I plan to make in the next day or so. In the meantime, some housekeeping: