Talk:Jesus/Archive 115

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No contempory records opinion under the lead picture is POV

I thought that captions under pictures whether lead or otherwise, simply described who the picture is of and where it is from. Since when have they become the place to make POV assertions about lack of contempory records of the existence of a person. We don't have comments like this in picture captions on any other articles (about people from antiquity) WP:NPOV WP:UNDUE DMSBel (talk) 18:45, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, it's not asserting a lack of records on the existence, but a lack of record on his looks. "Appearance" may be slightly ambiguous here - the point is that we do not know how Jesus looked (assuming he existed). We should probably try to find a better phrase. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:54, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying. I agree, if we really need to mention this in the caption, then a better phrase is required. I'll try and come up with some suggestions. Would there be anything wrong with qualifying it as refering to "facial appearance" - there might be a better way of phrasing it but it should not be left as just "appearance". "Physical features" would be less ambiguous also. Other suggestion are welcome. All images however are either art, or iconography, so could we not say more accurately and less ambiguiously that "no portraiture is known to exist"DMSBel (talk) 19:45, 1 February 2011 (UTC).
I like "physical features". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:53, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
After you replied I wondered how I had made the mistake. I am not sure if I read it as refering to existence because I have been discussing elsewhere about the Jesus myth hypothesis, perhaps that was why in my mind I made the association of appearance and existence. However that be as it may, proximity in meaning between appearance and appearing may also lead to confusion for some readers.DMSBel (talk) 20:10, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
What if we changed it to note the disclaimer that the camera had not yet been invented... :P -Andrew c [talk] 03:09, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

father and Father

can we clarify that in the Islamic view Jesus's father is God, but in the Christian view it is The Father. It is not the Holy Spirit, it is not Jesus Himself, but the Father. Do you think we should change view to belief as well? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.192.45.152 (talk) 02:48, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, in the Islamic view, Jesus' father is Joseph. "Son of God" is an abhorrent term to them. So I don't think this change would be prudent.Farsight001 (talk) 04:01, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
In the Muslim view, Jesus was born of a virgin, but God is not his father. Leadwind (talk) 05:12, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

did Jesus abrogate the Law?

The page states: "Judaism states that no prophet or dreamer can contradict the laws already stated in the Torah, which Jesus did."

Mainstream historians don't think that Jesus contradicted the laws of the Torah. This sentence says he did. It could say, "which Jesus is traditionally considered to have done" or "which Jesus reportedly did" or "which Jewish critics say he did."

Here are the sources:

  1. ^ Simmons, Shraga, "Why Jews Do not Believe in Jesus", Retrieved April 15, 2007; "Why Jews Do not Believe in Jesus", Ohr Samayach — Ask the Rabbi, Retrieved April 15, 2007; "Why do not Jews believe that Jesus was the Messiah?", AskMoses.com. Retrieved April 15, 2007.
  2. ^ Cook, Michael J. (2011). "CHAPTER 14 Jewish Perspectives on Jesus". In Delbert Burkett. The Blackwell Companion to Jesus. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. pp. 217. ISBN 978-1-4051-9362-7. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=5tjiiXkI_CUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=blackwell+jesus&hl=en&ei=SdQ_TfyZK8firAe1kOGoAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved 2011-Jan-26. "...that Jesus had not been descended from King David (John 7:40 – 42); that Jesus rejected or at least failed to reaffi rm the Law of Moses (Mark 2:24; 7:19b; John 9:16; cf. Acts 6:13 – 14); that he was not genuinely resurrected from his tomb (cf. Matt 27:62 – 66; 28:4, 11 – 15; Luke 24; John 20 – 21); and the like."

Can anyone suggest accurate wording? Leadwind (talk) 05:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the sentence you identify is simply wrong. It is hard to imagine what reliable source would support it, in any event. I think we can say that some people (need to provide citations, but I assume these would mostly be Christians) interpret the Gospel account of Jesus to mean that Jewish authorities believed that Jesus violated the law, but that mainstream historians (Cook is one good source, Saunders is a great source on this too) believe that he did not. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:46, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
SLR, I left in a reference to what Jews have traditionally believed. Jesus reportedly said things that no Jew in good standing would say, let alone what the Messiah would say. We have a reasonably good source supporting it. It's historically relevant that neither the Gospel Christ nor the historical Jesus match the character of the Jewish Messiah. I got rid of the web site references. What do you think? Leadwind (talk) 04:34, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
It might pay to explicitly compare the traditional view, in which Jesus is thought to have claimed to be God and therefore to be a poor example of a Jew, to Vermes's modern view, in which he was a Jew in good standing (while certainly unorthodox). Leadwind (talk) 04:38, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Vermes is a very well-regarded historian and his views are certainly significant. As I said, Sanders is also a good source, one of the most respected historians who has written on the matter. 21:20, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
The Jesus that Jews "traditionally" (let's just say, for the past thousand years) have rejected is certainly the Christian Jesus and abrogating the law is certainly part of this. But the principal reason Jews reject Jesus as messiah is for the simple reason that the Romans executed him. He never restored the Davidic Kingdom. I think it is important to distinguish between why Jews reject Christianity (in which the abrogation of the law is the or certianly one of the principal reasons) and why Jews reject the claim that Jesus was messiah (in which his failure to restore a functioning monarchy is clearly the principal reason). These two rejections obviously are closely intertwined for most of Jewish history, for obvious reasons, but they are nevertheless two different things. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:26, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
I would agree. Christians have various theological issues that are extremely important to them, vis à vis Jews - that is, "the Law" and "Jesus as Messiah". Jews, on the other hand, have quite different issues - specifically, failure to restore the Davidic kingdom, failure to bring a Messianic age, and (quite critically) Jesus as God. Jesus as Messiah is a very minor issue in comparison. The section must reflect Jewish concerns about Jesus, not Christian concerns about Jews. Jayjg (talk) 17:45, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Jewish views

I removed a good faith edit by Leadwind from this section, because as a "Jewish view" its sources used mark, Luke, Matthew, John and Acts i.e. Christian texts which, in a 1st century Jewish context, are open to wide interpretation. I removed the material from Vermes for the same reason - there are lots of attempts by scholars to figure out what Jews 2,000 years ago thought about jesus, and this is better left to a section on the historical Jesus.

In its place I put a more pointed and concise statement of the Jewish view of Jesus today (well, certainly since the Amoraim), with a link to more detailed information.

I shortened the section on Yeshu, which mot scholars do not believe is about Jesus. I kept links to major sources.

I did however lengthen the section on the Mishneh Torah, because this is an actual mainstream source that is explicitly about Jesus.

Judaism has no Vatican or Curia, no central authority to turn to for a "view" of Jesus. The Mishneh Torah is valuable because it is accepted as a valid source by all contemporary Jewish movements - or, minimally, it reflected the mainstream Jewish view before Judaism divided into movements (e.g. Reform, Reconstructionist) that no longer accept its legal authority. I also kept material relating to the major Jewish movements today, which do have authoritative representatives. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I like the changes. I think it's important that the section on Jewish views actually reflect Jewish views, rather than Christian views of Jewish views, which is what it did before you changed it. I also plan to restore the section name that it had for several years previous to January, "Judaism's view". This would reflect the title of the main article on the topic, and the problem with using "Jewish views" is that there are 14 million Jews, each with their own opinion - the section has been plagued with people inserting the views of the specific Jew they happen to agree with/admire etc. The section should stick to either the views of authoritative works (e.g. Mishneh Torah) or the views of modern movements. Jayjg (talk) 17:40, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Jesus' date of birth and death

Personally, I feel as though the dates in this page should be referenced solely as BCE and CE, because referring to BC and AD is referring to the time of Jesus' death, which obviously did not occur at 0 AD according to the article, so if we use BC and AD, this article essentially states that Jesus died 30 years after Jesus died, which occurred 30 years after Jesus died, and this circular logic continues, until it is impossible to determine when the present is. We should not base the dates of Jesus on Jesus, just as a dictionary does not define words as themselves. If this is confusing to those who have not learned what BCE and CE mean, possibly those words should be linked to their definitions.Quantumkayos (talk) 15:48, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for chiming in on a perennial issue. You might consider this issue to be an opportunity for practicing acceptance of things you can't change. Not that I disagree with your point. But you can well imagine that the assembled editors have been down this road before. Leadwind (talk) 17:01, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
That's a very poor reply Leadwind. It's like a lot of dogmatic religious argument. You gave absolutely no information. This is an encyclopaedia. We explain why. Could you give it a go, rather than just telling the questioner to not even bother asking? And even saying "This has been discussed before" is no answer. Good faith demands a little more than that. And I'd like to know too. HiLo48 (talk) 17:11, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
I don't like the situation either. I'd happily change all the year-naming to BC/AD, as a concession to the traditionalists among us. BCE/CE would also be an improvement. You're more than welcome to push the issue and see how it turns out. Leadwind (talk) 13:48, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
BCE/CE would indeed be an improvement, as would BC/AD. It's frustrating that the least popular solution is considered the "consensus", as every debate has a vast majority of people who don't like this solution, but can't come to a consensus on which of the other two to choose. This could be settled by a binding sitewide poll like the Ireland-related articles had. —Noisalt (talk) 20:00, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
"because referring to BC and AD is referring to the time of Jesus' death" Er... not unless things have changed since I studied theology many years ago! "B.C." is an abbreviation for "Before Christ" and "A.D." an abbreviation for "Anno Domini" (=Latin for "in the year of our Lord"). Both terms reference the supposed year of his birth, not his death. (You're not under the misapprehension that A.D. stands for "after death" are you?)Hundovir (talk) 18:34, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
This perennial dispute is actually quite an easy one to solve - possibly. The solution I have in mind should be acceptable to all reasonable people prepared to offer just a little compromise; it's this: Do not use AD or CE for years of the common era. Those years don't really need any annotation. If there's a doubt a link could be provided thus; 1. For years before the (nominal) birth of Christ, use BC only. Whilst the CE/BCE adherents might feel like this is too much of a compromise they should consider which notation they most object to; AD or BC. I suggest those who favour BCE/CE object more strongly to AD than they do to BC, given that arguably the former is making a proclamation they may not agree with, whereas the latter merely supports a widely accepted convention. So everyone gives a little and compromises. The AD/BC clan give up on AD and get BC in return. The CE/BCE faction give up on both but - importantly get to remove AD completely. Surely such a compromise is worth trying? 82.26.206.137 (talk) 19:22, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

father vs. Father

The Christian view of Jesus should say his father is The Father (one of the Trinity) not simply God. It would be implying that his father could be the Holy Spirit or Jesus Himself which would be a false representation of Christian beliefs. 74.192.45.152 (talk) 06:02, 27 February 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.192.45.152 (talk) 04:11, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Beyond etymology

Now that the etymology issue may be close to resolution, let me say that I find the section "Life and teachings as told in the Gospels" to be somewhat chaotic and hard to read, regardless of the text. The problem (which happens in many Wiki articles) is that over time various people add images all over it and they get confusing. Even before we discuss the text, I suggest we make a "nice and clean" image gallery there that telegraphs the key events such as Baptism, Crucifixion, Resurrection, etc. somewhat like Saint_Joseph#Gallery_of_life_in_art. But it should probably only have 12 images or so not to OD on those. Suggestions on the 12 events will be appreciated. Obviously Birth, Baptism, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascention are essential, but we need 7 more, e.g. Temptation, Transfiguration, etc. but I am not sure if catch of fish is essential. Ideas? History2007 (talk) 20:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

The 12 items I have after looking at various articles are: Nativity, Baptism, Temptation, Ministry, Teachings, Parables, Miracles, Transfiguration, Last Supper, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension. The reason for 12 is that some browsers show galleries 3 per row and some show 4 per row, so 12 will show pretty neatly in both cases. If there are suggestions for this list please provide, otherwise I will clean up the images based on these 12. History2007 (talk) 18:38, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Format of Teaching section

The embedded list format of the Teaching section of this article is odd; I would expect prose for this, like any other section. We might consider putting a {{main}} template on that section pointing to Ministry of Jesus#Teachings. ...comments? ~BFizz 21:31, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean the "Life and teachings as told in the Gospels" section or the "Teachings and preachings" subsection? I looked but did not see an embedded list. By the way this article has limited TOC to 2 levels so it is hard to see what it contains anyway. I think 3 would be a better limit, so at least the reader can see what there is. I have a hard time seeing what it contains, as is. History2007 (talk) 22:42, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I was referring to Historical Views > Teaching (Jesus#Teaching). The section consists of one- or two-sentence paragraphs with a bolded item at the beginning. ...comments? ~BFizz 22:59, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Ah that section. I agree, lists are not the way to do it. And on that note, those lists are already asking for help anyway. The section is about "Historical Views" and it has a bullet item that states:
  • Importance of faith and prayer: Jesus identified faith or trust in God as a primary spiritual virtue.
What that bullet item has to do with Historical views is beyond me. It tries to contrast teachings with history, but prayer is not contrasted. In fact there are many scattered and less than applicable sentences like that throughout this article. History2007 (talk) 23:07, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Not just that section

I have been looking at this article now for a few days, and I happened to see how it was "delisted" and demoted from being marked as a good article. I would agree with that delisting. This is "not" a good article at all. And I would also agree with what one of the people who voted for delisting said:

  • Reading this article is like riding shotgun with a novice driver who hasn't yet figured out how to correctly apply the brakes; every few seconds it's full stop, change topic, and accelerate again.

Well said. Moreover I would add that the novice driver does not seem to know the roads and has got lost in that some key topics are not even addressed in the article. Many things need clean up here. History2007 (talk) 00:39, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

wikipedia creating its own bias in Etymology

Most of the dictionary renders the meaning of Jesus to be "Jehovah is salvation". The given reference to catholic encyclopedia exclusively uses the same rendering, because "Jehovah" is the most widely used rendering of "YHWH". Using "Yahweh" creates confusion to a general reader, because most are unaware of the name "Yahweh". Why it is given so? Is it because of personal interests of Wiki editors to hide God's name? or the tradition of unfaithful Israel rabbi's to hide the name? or is it following the policy of catholic church to hide the name? 90% of all Bible (including KJ) and theological books use the name "Jehovah" not "Yahweh". The pronunciation of YHWH is not important, but the person identified widely by the name is. I request to change "Yahweh" to "Jehovah".--117.207.235.104 (talk) 14:39, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

"Is it because of personal interests of Wiki editors to hide God's name? or the tradition of unfaithful Israel rabbi's to hide the name? or is it following the policy of catholic church to hide the name?" I very much doubt that this is the case. You should be "assuming good faith" on the part of contributors. Hundovir (talk) 22:46, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a lot of debate as to what the name represented by YHWH is. It is almost certainly (and for reasons too numerous for me to bother listing here) not Jehovah. Gingermint (talk) 02:54, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
In any case, that discussion relates to the "name of Jesus" and is best addressed on the talk page for Jesus (name) which has a much more detailed section on etymology. That article is about "the name Jesus" and etymology is more pertinent there, rather than in this article which is about "the person Jesus". The etymology is actually duplicated in two sections of this article I see, and I will trim the lower section, so the main point for etymological discussions can be the Jesus (name) article that focuses on the name and its attributes, with a summary here and a Main. By the way, in general terms, I agree with Hundovir and Gingermint. History2007 (talk) 13:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
I apologize for failing to have "good faith". The point was not on the meaning, but was on the name used for the meaning. "YHWH, Jahweh, Yahweh, Jehovah" all represent the same person. As far as I know wiki policies ask to use the generally known words when describing something. Given "Jehovah" is widely known to a general reader, was my argument unreasonable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.199.5.85 (talk) 12:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Just pointing out: YHWH and Jehovah are the same word. Jehovah is a Latin transliteration of YHWH. The Latin pronunciation of Jehovah is almost identical to the pronunciation of YHWH. (In Latin J sounds like the English Y, Latin V sounds like English W.) It is when the Latin word is pronounced in English that the difference occurs. Saying Yahweh is just to establish the proper pronunciation. I see no problem with it. If the article reverts to using Jehovah, it needs to be made clear to the reader that the English pronunciation of Latin transliterations of Hebrew words in incorrect and the ancient pronunciation should be explained. —Charles Edward (Talk | Contribs) 14:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

How about a few solid WP:RS references so this discussion will not repeat itself in 9 months... History2007 (talk) 14:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
I gave them last time we had this debate.. haha! I will try to dig them back up. —Charles Edward (Talk | Contribs) 14:18, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Ok, and having those in Jesus (name) will also be good, for that is the place for etymology really. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 14:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
So, for my Latin to English pronunciation change comment, this website should hopefully suffice. [1] Specifically, here is an explanation for the J:
Sometimes one will see a "j" in Latin. Technically Latin has no letter J. It was introduced in the 13th century or thereabouts to differentiate between the vowel i and the consonant i. The consonantal i is like our y. "Major" in Latin is pronounced as MAH-yor. Until this last century, most printed Latin texts used the j to indicate the different sounds. Today the j's are usually replaced with the more classical i's.'
I am still hunting down something on Latin V. 2 and 3rd Century Latin, when Jehovah would have been transliterated to the early Vulgate, etc, V could sound like W. In later texts, around the 7th century, they began doubling the V (VV) to indicate when it sounded like a W (thus the W was born). I have a Latin dictionary I can access later for this, don't have time at the moment, sorry!
Now "Jesus" is a bit different than Jehovah. Jesus, is an anglicized pronunciation of a Latin transliteration of a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew word. Jesus came to Latin via Greek manuscripts, whereas Jehovah came to Latin via Amriac\Hebrew manuscripts. I will try to pull these sources back out later. —Charles Edward (Talk | Contribs) 14:39, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
I am sorry, but that website is not WP:RS in my view. It was set up by one person it seems. But I will also look for more solid refs next week. History2007 (talk) 14:56, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
The given references in the article for "Yahweh is salvation" including catholic encyclopedia,Fausset's Bible Dictionary use "Jehovah is salavation". Its a kinda synthesis to misinterpret the source(may be a fringe). The Strong's Greek Lexicon Number,Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, Thayer's Lexicon, A Greek-English Lexicon by Liddell and Scott's lexicon etc use "Jehovah is salvation". I agree "Yahweh" is the most possible rendering, still uncertainty is there. But its not a justification to replace "Jehovah", which is the widely used English transliteration since the 13th century. Also note that the name "Jesus" was pronounced very differently in ancient Greek. If "Yahweh" is used then we must specify that "Jehovah" is the same person identified by "Yahweh". I suggest the following "Jehovah (YHWH) is salvation" or "Yahweh (Jehovah) is salvation". Please do not confuse people with the pronunciation for the name of God. They already read it in the bible as "Jehovah". Its not the duty of Wikipedia to change the generally followed rendering for God's name.--117.199.10.101 (talk) 07:40, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
The reference uses Jehovah; it is then Jehovah. Forget the personal preferences.-StormRider 08:49, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I have not had a chance to do proper research on it this week yet, but from what I remember when I looked into it some time ago there are references on both sides I seem to recall. And I think there is no point in getting worked up on this - there may not be a 100% agreement among all references. I am sure God will understand, given that no one has been struck by lightning yet. So we can just say that some refs say this or that. But I will look into it this week. History2007 (talk) 09:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I eventually did the research. There are WP:RS sources on all sides, but Yahweh seems to be the predominant use by far. Representative cases are:

  • "help of Jehovah": The concise dictionary of English etymology by Walter W. Skeat 1998 ISBN 1853263117 page 225
  • "Jehovah is salvation": Catholic encyclopedia Origin of the name Jesus

So I think we should say that different sources say different, but similar things and include these 6 references, but emphasize Yahweh. History2007 (talk) 16:02, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok.. But be aware that there would be overwhelming sources for "Jehovah is salvation" too. Because well-established English transliterations of other Hebrew personal names are accepted in normal usage, such as Joshua, Isaiah or Jesus, for which the original pronunciations may be unknown. Hence most of the Bibles use "Jehovah". That's why I suggested "Yahweh (Jehovah) is salvation". Your preference. I do not have any more comments--117.199.15.249 (talk) 16:24, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Ok, I will fix it without emphasizig either one. History2007 (talk) 16:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Although the issue of whether what word should be used should be addressed, the questions "Is it because of personal interests of Wiki editors to hide God's name? or the tradition of unfaithful Israel rabbi's to hide the name? or is it following the policy of catholic church to hide the name?" shows a bias against Jews and Catholics (especially against Jews), and honestly only gives the appearance of the assumption that "Jehovah" is right and "Yahweh" is wrong. Pushing for and caving into a Jehovah's Witness bias does not bring about a neutral point of view, people. We're also only assuming our readers are nigh-illiterate if they can't tell that Yahweh and Jehovah are the same being, or that they won't reach that conclusion after a couple second's worth of research. In the case of Jesus, Isaiah, and most other Hebrew names, the Latinized-Germanicized-Anglicanized names are the versions that most Westerners (even scholars) are familiar with, and are what almost all the sources use, so the comparison to those names is not the same. The vast majority of English translations use "Lord," and the translations I've been able to lay hands on use "Yahweh" next. The argument that more people will have encountered Jehovah ultimately means it's more reasonable to use "Lord" instead. The New King James version uses "Lord" instead of Jehovah, because that term would be more familiar to common readers.

Of the Bible translations I have access to:

  • 1 uses "The Eternal" - Leeser
  • 1 uses "Ever-Living" - Ferrer Fenton
  • 2 use "Adonai" (really a variation of "Lord") - Douey-Rheims, Catholic Public Domain Version
  • 2 use "God" - Message, Contemporary English Version
  • 3 use "Iehouah" (which cannot be said to be either) - Geneva, Bishop's Tyndale
  • 12 use "Jehovah" or some clear variation:
1 American Standard Version
2 King James Version and variations
3 Darby
4 Webster
5 Third Millennium Bible
6 Wycliffe (which also uses Yahweh)
7 Young's Literal Translation
8 Green's Literal Translation
9 English Revised Version
10 Julia Smith
11 New Simplified Bible
12 Recovery Bible
  • 13 use "Yahweh" or some clear variation:
1 Bible in Basic English
2 Complete Jewish Bible
3 Holman Christian Standard
4 World English Bible
5 Wycliffe (which also uses Jehovah)
6 Rotherham Emphasized Bible
7 New Jerusalem Bible
8 Concordant Literal Translation
9 Exegeses Companion Bible
10 English Jubilee 2000 (also uses YHWH)
11 Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition
12 Scriptures '98 Version
13 The Jewish Study Bible
  • 24 (double the amount using Jehovah) use "Lord" or some clear varation:
1 New International Version
2 English Standard Version
3 God's Word Translation
4 Good News Translation
5 Hebrew Names Version
6 New American Standard
7 New Century Version
8 New International Reader's Version
9 New King James Version
10 New Living Translation
11 New Revised Standard
12 Revised Standard Version
13 Today's New International Version
14 Coverdale
15 Apostolic Bible Polyglot
16 Brenton English Septuagint translation
17 Complete Apostle's Bible
18 A Conservative Version
19 English Jubilee 2000 (also uses YHWH)
20 International Standard Version
21 New Heart English Bible
22 Knox Bible
23 New English Translation Bible
24 New English Translation of the Septuagint (different from the NET Bible)

The ones I am aware of, but have not been able to access for one reason or another: The Living Bible, The Clear Word, Matthew Bible, Great Bible, Taverner's Bible, Orthodox Study Bible, Common English Bible, Open English Bible. Even if all of those used Jehovah that would still mean "Lord" is used more. Taking into account the era they come from, The Matthew Bible, Great Bible, and Taverner's Bible likely use "Lord," or maybe "Iehouah." The Orthodox Study Bible likely uses "Lord" or "Yahweh" as well. The rest are fairly recent, and likely use "Lord" or "Yahweh."

Almost half of the extant English translations use Lord or some variation of it. If we are to go with one version based on what the readers would be familiar with, we'd have to go with "Lord." If we're going with the scholars, we're gonna have to go with "Yahweh." We could go with "Lord (Yahweh, or Jehovah)." This is not original research, but due weight given to different reliable sources concerning the translation of the Hebrew name. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:48, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Wow, that was a lot of resaerch. So is Yahweh better? Is Jahovah a JW push? I was not aware of that. What I did was search books with Yahweh and Jehovah and Yahweh was far more frequent, but the Catholic encyclopedia also used Jehovah and that is not a JW pub. Anyway, could you just provide a brief suggestion, thanks. However, I MUST say that this article has so many other items that need help that we should probably wrap this up, fix it and move on to fix the rest. History2007 (talk) 18:55, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
If we're going with WP:DUE, "Lord" actually appears to be the best choice, followed by Yahweh. JWs aren't the only ones that use the word, but I've never seen anyone else push for it with arguments of "well, even though some scholars go with Yahweh, it's not completely certain, but a lot of people use Jehovah a lot, as do these select, specific translations..." Ian.thomson (talk) 19:17, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Correction: Considering your search found Yahweh to be the most common, and that it's the second commmon in Bible translations, "Yahweh" probably would probably reflect the sources with due weight best. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. I will just try to fix it that way so we can move on. But at least we have 6 solid sources now and people like R.T. France etc. are pretty good scholars. History2007 (talk) 19:46, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
No, thank you. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:38, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
I am sorry, I did not understand that. I made the suggested fix, so please refix/touch up etc. so we can be done with it. History2007 (talk) 20:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm sorry, the meaning was "No, thank you instead," not "That's not want I wanted, but thank you." Ian.thomson (talk) 21:26, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
ha ha.. It seems Ian.thomson have a "frenzy". JW's do not assert that the exactly name Jehovah should be used . They use "Jah" and "Yah" in many of their publications including their song book. They agree that Yahweh is the most possible rendering as per scholars. However they assert that since Jehovah is used in KJ and other modern translations, they prefer Jehovah in English. Their position regarding the issue was found here--117.199.3.153 (talk) 15:40, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 71.52.126.248, 21 March 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} Please, the truth is that Jesus was not nailed to a cross but he was nailed to a tree. He was not God reincarnated, he was "God's only begotten Son". He even tells that in several scriptures of the Bible, John 17,3 and John 3,16 are just two. People will believe what they want but that does not mean the truth should not be spoken.

71.52.126.248 (talk) 13:30, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, we could do that, or you could read our neutral point of view policies instead of using Wikipedia to preach your own beliefs. If you have a problem with the neutral point of view policies, I recommend you read this. Also, learn the difference between "incarnated" and "reincarnated." Ian.thomson (talk) 15:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Section by section improvement

Based on my comments above about the delisting/demotion of this page from a "good article" status, and the comment made by one of the reviewers regarding the analogy that this article seems to have been written the way of a "novice driver" operates a car, I think clean up is in order here. I will provide a section by section list of the problems I see and the fixes I see as necessary so the ideas can be aired and fixes put into place.

Moving beyond the etymology (section 1), there is section 2 called "Chronology". I think an introductory section is a "good idea" but it has not been executed properly.

If I were "totally new" to the topic and I wanted to get information about it from Wikipedia, some questions that I would hope to have answered upfront after the lede and etymology, would be:

  • 2a. Did this man exist?, That question needs to be addressed upfront because readers will ask. The article answers that question (in the affirmative), way down in a section, but the answer should be provided upfront in one or two sentences.
  • 2b. When did he live? When did he die? and Where did he live?: The issue of the possible year of birth and death needs to be dealt with upfront from the historical perspective. And the fact that Judae was the approximate region for many events needs to be discussed. I moved the map of region up to that section, so the reader can get an idea, but the map is too hard to read because the font is small. A map with larger fonts would be a very good idea there.

The term "Historical context" would be far better as a section title there, and there needs to be a paragraph or two about the historical background, e.g. that the region had a less than homogeneous population, was occupied by the Romans, etc. This should not be a huge section, but should provide hyperlinks to where the user can get more information.

The discussion of the "Ministry" within the current Chronology section is, however, symptomatic of some of the problems this article faces. The existence of Jesus is not "in general" contested by historians at large, even by very critical historians. However, the question of the duration of his ministry relies entirely on biblical accounts with no further historical records. That needs to be clarified and not mixed with historical assertions.

Following this, the questions I would have as new reader would be:

  • 3. What is this man said to have done?: Here an overview of the life and works/teachings needs to be provided, with attribution to specific sources. I said "said to have done" because this is a secular encyclopedia and a purely religious view can not be presented. However, it is essential to provide clear attribution to biblical vs non-biblical sources.
  • 4. How do we know these things?: That is tantamount to a discussion of the historicity of the statements made in section 3: life and teachings. There are several separate articles within Wikipedia about "historical Jesus", "historicity of the gospels" etc. often contradicting each other, but that is another item. However, a summary of those with suitable links needs to be there.
  • 5. What do various groups think about these issues?: This is in effect, the subject of section on Religious perspectives. In fact, this section has less problems than others, so let us not open that Pandora's box now.

I constructed these 5 questions to resemble the current section structure, which I think can be maintained, but the purpose of each section needs to be much more clear and the logic therein (except section 5) needs serious improvement. And I do see serious problems of logic in the article beyond the novice driver issues, which I will address separately.

A key issue is the separation of biblical and historical records, with clear attributions in each case. The problem is that as the product of "repeated cut and paste operations" by multiple editors over several years, this article seems to have a hard time accepting or denying the historicity of the New Testament accounts and haphazardly waivers between the two perspectives, technically exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia on the issue by mixing assertions simply "quoted from WP:RS sources".

Of course, one needs WP:RS references, but the simple juxtaposition of sentences summarized from books in a "parrot like manner" and their pasting by different editors over time does not always produce consistent logic and is certainly very confusing to a reader. In general, part of the problem is the following:

  • The article repeatedly peppers the text with arguments that cast doubt on the historicity of the New Testament accounts altogether, calling them "4 separate stories" that can not be reconciled, etc.
  • Within adjacent paragraphs the article attempts to apply logical reasoning to the very New Testament accounts which were alleged to be inaccurate two sentences ago. It then attempts to draw conclusions, at times about historical facts.

It is a simple question of logic that one can not:

  • Claim that a set of assertions are logically inconsistent.
  • Use the same (allegedly inconsistent) assertions to draw conclusions that are true.

The reason the article has fallen into this logical trap is that to please all WP:RS references, it has mixed the perspectives of multiple scholars to the point that there is no clear distinction about any "single logical argument".

Each respective, and often respected, scholar quoted here has spent years perfecting a set of "logical sounding arguments" for themselves that they can defend when they run into other distinguished (and often pompous) colleagues at conferences. However, given that this article has mixed these perspectives without clear demarcation, it lacks any single consistent logical basis, and at every other step faces a logical problem, presenting "randomly placed sentences" that amount to less than logical statements. An example is the section "Constructing a historical view" with the section Teachings, with historical gems like:

  • "Jesus was remarkable in stating that one must become like a child to enter the Kingdom of God"
  • "Jesus identified faith or trust in God as a primary spiritual virtue"

These statements tell the reader nothing about historicity and that section just fails to help a reader, but confuses him/her about what a historicity argument would be. Moreover given that it has been pounded into the reader's mind throughout the text that "there is no consistent gospel story" then how can conclusions be presented out of context about the "overall teachings of Jesus" on trust in God as a primary spiritual virtue without stating which of those "supposedly irreconcilable" 4 gospel accounts they came from?

Anyway, I will address these issue in more detail later, but for now, let us focus on the Chronology section and the issue of turning it into a "historical background" section which gives more background, and in doing so separates the purely biblical record from the non-biblical historical records. I think a better map of the region would also be a good idea there. History2007 (talk) 21:35, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I have some problems with the questions as posed; I think they degrade the encyclopedia. (2a) did the man exist? This is not for us to answer. Our question is: what are the significant views aout Jesus? We can ask, what do mainstream historians think? And the answer is not "yes," it is "probably yes" or "likely yes" but no reputable notable historian says he definitely existed - and this is not the main question historians are concerned with, . This may be counterintuitive to most people, but hey, evolutionary scientists make claims and pursue questions that are counterintuitive, astronomers too. (2b), (3) and (40 are all backwards. Historians start by asking, "what sources are available," then "what do we know about the composition of these sources and their matrix," and finally, "how should we interpret these sources?" The result is an account of a "historical Jesus" i.e. an account of what a real man likely said and did. But historians only develop this after assessing the different sources - sources that mention a Jesus, and other sources that help us interpret the first sources. The distinction here is not between the "biblical" sources and "historical" sources. The Bible is a historical source, or conglomerate of sources. It simply has to be interpreted, as is the case with most historical sources, and the further back in time one gos, usually, the more in need of interpretation they are. So the distinction is between th earliest sources that mention Jesus (Pauline epistles and the Gospels) and then other sources (e.g. contemporary Aramaic texts from Judea that do not mention Jesus but do mention things like the Temple, or the Romans, or the High Priest, and Sanhedrin, and use words like "messiah") that help us interpret them.
One challenge facing this article is that historians who do the above can go in two different directions: they can draw conclusions about a historical Jesus, or about tensions and debates among early Christians - both of these can be reconstructed from the sources and in fact you really cannot do one without doing the other, except when they get around to publishing books and articles their pubs usually focus on one or the other.
I think one of the biggest challenges facing this article is that most readers just do not know how professional historians work.
I do think that you are putting you finger on a second challenge facing this article, which is that historians and religions look at the earliest sources on Jesus' life diferently, and interpret them differently, reaching different conclusions.
There is no issue of logic here. There are the early sources which in a literal reading make certain claims. Then there are Christians who interpret those claims a certain way, and historians who interpret them anothe way. It is not our job to make any argument, or to say any argument is "more logical" - we just have an obligation to provide all significant views. Even ones that contradict one another. That is NPOV 101. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:46, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Did I read "degrade the encyclopedia"? Don't go breaking my heart now. Moi? Degrade the encyclopedia? No way. But do not get worked up about it. Exactly 7 days ago I wrote to the exec director of Wikimedia to complain about quality in Wikipedia in general and challenged her to produce policies to improve quality overall, given that this year's policy initiative included an action item to make it more fun for newbies but no mention of quality. I do think quality in Wikipedia needs much more attention.
Face it, this article has quality problems. I am not the only one saying it. As stated above, one reviewer compared this article to "riding with a novice driver". This article has quality problems. And improvements do not happen by keeping quiet, they take place by speaking up.
Now, regarding "Did this man exist?" I think that is a question that readers will ask. As for the answer, the article already states: "Although most scholars involved with historical Jesus research believe his existence can be established using documentary and other evidence,[194][195][196][197][198] a few scholars have questioned the existence of Jesus as an actual historical figure." To most readers that sentence is an answer, given that the events took place 2,000 years ago. So that sentence needs to be copied further upfront and expanded with a few more sentences, given that it is buried down there, and until I changed the TOC param yesterday, it was not even clear that the section existed. And I do not really need a lecture on the historical process, I know the topic.
As for putting my "finger on a second challenge facing this article" we agree on that, but I think second is not the end of it. This article has multiple quality problems. There is no point in pushing them under the rug.
As for the statement that "there is no issue of logic here" I would modify that to say "there is very little logic here", then we would agree. But jokes aside, I provided a couple of examples above, but instead of debating it in the abstract I will deal with them as I get to each section. One section at a time. The long and short of it is that, as I stated, each scholar has crafted a logically consistent viewpoint, but the cutting and pasting of sentences by multiple editors here has created logical chaos via the juxtapositioning of "parrot like quotations" without attribution to a specific school of thought. So I will explain those in each case as we get to them. That should be fun.
As for NPOV 101, I do not see major NPOV problems in this article, but see a lack of quality, lack of flow, lack of logic, and a failure to inform the reader in an easy to understand manner. Overall, as evidenced by some of the comments in its demotion discussion, this article is a long, long, long way from WP:TPA. It is time to move it closer to that destination. History2007 (talk) 15:33, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
I am sorry you took my comments personally, they were not intended that way. I respond only to what is written on the talk page. I still do not agree with - or understand what you mean about - your point about logic. I see two problems, neither of which have to do with logic. The first is to be clear about distinct points of view e.g. Christian versus critical historian. The second is to provide an accurate account of any debates within some view - for example, not all Christians agree on X, not all historians agre on Y. This means that the article will necessarily include inconsistent statements, but this is not a problem of logic; the solution is to (1) make sure that the view is represented accurately and 2) provide correct attribution for the view. As for existence: I think it is a real oversimplification of scholarly research to say that scholars agree he existed. If readers go to the article on human evolution looking for the "missing link" they will be disappointed because scientists do not hold to this concept. Similarly, readers coming to this article to find out whether Jesus really existed will also be disappointed. At most they will find that Christians belive he existed, almost all historians believe he probably existed, and some scholars (mostly not historians of the time and place) say he definitely did not exist, and there are some scholars who are convinced that he did exist. The fact remains, most Christians view the Gospels as reliable history, and most historians believe that the Gospels were not written as what we today would call historical accounts, and that careful study of the sources in relation to other contemporary texts enable historians to reconstruct a historical Jesus who very likely existed but who is not identical to the Jesus represented in the Gospels. Now, if you think there is a clearer way to communicate this, great, but writing an encyclopedia we have an obligation to represent the best sources accurately. The current lead was the result of a lot of work by many editors who had read a good deal of the main works on the topic. As for improving the low or overall quality, I am all for it! Slrubenstein | Talk 18:17, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Ok, but we are still talking the abstract. So let us discuss each issue as we get to it. However, I should mention the easy point that existence of episodes such as the Raising of Lazarus (after 4 days) in the Bible means that without the assumption of "supernatural forces" these accounts run counter to modern biology as understood in the 21st century and hence run counter to scientific beliefs that exclude supernatural forces - and that runs counter to total scientific historicity. And, of course, angels appearing right and left will probably not be stamped as "believable" by physicists at large either, but such is the nature of religious documents and that was why some issues need separation. But historicity is just one issue in this article, and there are multiple other issues, so let us get to those as we get to the suitable sections. As for the lede, no point in sweating over ledes in Wikipedia. There is a joke that if you do not like the weather in Michigan, wait 10 minutes, it will change. Wikipedia ledes remind me of that, but that is another story. However, regarding the Chronology and the sentence from the article that I quoted above is already in the article, so I do not know why we have debate anew something that is already in the article, and can be copied verbatim from one section to the other. History2007 (talk) 19:11, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
"that existence of episodes such as the Raising of Lazarus (after 4 days) in the Bible means that without the assumption of "supernatural forces" these accounts run counter to modern biology as understood in the 21st century and hence run counter to scientific beliefs that exclude supernatural forces - and that runs counter to total scientific historicity." Uh, I do not understand what your point is. So what? i mean, what does this have to do with the article? Slrubenstein | Talk 20:23, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Just a side comment, ignore it for now. History2007 (talk) 20:33, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Okay - I wasn't trying to pick a fight, I just assumed you made the point because you thought it was edifying. About leads ... whatever may be the case for other articles, the lead to this article has been relatively stable for several years. I mean, in the past five years we have added a few sentences and tweaked it, that is about all. And for a lead to be this stable for such a long period cannot be because of "OWN;" there are many people who have successfully edited this article over extended periods, and I think it is fair to say that the lead is the product of Wikipedia collaboration over a long time at its best. My point is, there are good reasons why this lead has been so stable. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:59, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Maybe I should read the lede then.... I was focusing on content, and I have not followed this page for that long, so that was/is a general observation in Wikipedia that one should never sweat the lede. History2007 (talk) 15:13, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Section: Life and teaching

I have read through the section "Life and teaching" more carefully now and it only took 7 Kleenexes to finish it. The section "Jesus’ purpose" took 3 Kleenexes by itself (just kidding) because not only is it totally unreferenced, but also uninformed. And that was a key term that kept coming to mind: the text seems to be rather uninformed about the content of the New Testament, using terms that are less than accurate and making assertions that are not only less than correct, but also self-contradictory, as the examples below show. I am surprised this article has been sitting there with no "low quality flag" on top of it. It really needs one, but it is better to clean it up than just flag it.

The title of the section is "Life and teachings in the Gospels", and starts by assuming that it refers to the 4 canonicals, but it includes a section on "Titles in the New Testament", the NT being a superset of the Gospels. So one of the two titles must change, given that the subsection refers to 1 Corinthians.

Moreover, the section keeps referring to interpretations of the NT as well as titles, which are really portrayals of Jesus. A question arises: Is there going to be any content from Pauline writings in this section or not? If there is going to be any discussion beyond temporal issues such as Baptism, Last Supper etc. and the role as Messiah vs Prophet then Pauline material can not be ignored, for Pauline writings are as good a documentary basis about perceptions in the 1st century as any other. So if Pauline material is excluded, then other material about titles, tone, etc. will need to be curtailed, deleted or marked as incomplete. I think deleting the Messiah/Prophet/etc. aspects will weaken the presentation, so that material needs to be addressed, although to a lesser extent than temporal elements. So given that Pauline material is so widely used in those issues, the section title should become "Life and teachings in the New Testament" and that will also resolve the "Names and titles" issue.

Now, some more element by element problems are as follows:

Link management: The text seems to be unaware of Wikilinks and links are also pretty confusing at times. E.g. in that section Canonical gospel does not link to canonical gospel, but within Canonical gospel itself Canon links to Biblical Canon (hello?) and Gospel to Gospel. There is a correct link elsewhere, but too many link problems exist, as well as use of primaries as refs, and I can fix those, but they do reflect the "lack of care" that persists within the text. And lack of care is often tantamount to lack of quality. Moreover the Gospel episode links are not to Wikisource, which is the stated future direction of Wikipedia, and I will fix some those.

And there is serious discontinuity in the text, e.g. it refers to Logos in the "Character of Jesus" section, then has another section below about Logos - with just 1 reference and a pretty shallow discussion which borders on amateur, e.g. it fails to observe that John does include various temporal facts, but uses those to separate themes, unlike the others that start from temporal issues and derive themes. Technically speaking that section is trying to say that John has a Christology "from above" while the others approach it "from below". These are simple Christological concepts that the text seems to be uninformed about.

And that trend is present when the text starts by stating that "the Gospels" portray Jesus as the Messiah, then corrects itself later by pointing out that characterization as a theme in Matthew rather than others. While Matthew may focus on Messiah, the focus of Luke is on Prophet and not on Messiah, and the focus of John is on the divine elements related to "Son of God" and Logos - as the text hints itself. So the text is both inaccurate and contradictory. There are a number of such issues throughout the text that need to be fixed.

When discussing "Son of God" the text fails to connect the two separate voices from Baptism and Transfiguration: a simple fact that no presentation should miss. And self-assertions by Jesus are not suitably separated from assertions from other groups such as the apostles, voice from above, the narrative itself, etc. And less than correct generalizations are made in the text about the assertions made by the various groups through the narrative, given that these change through the narrative.

And on the titles note, again the text misses key temporal elements related to the use of titles in the narrative e.g. that in the trials, the priest reacts to the religious title Son of the Blessed, but Pilate can only react to the title King of the Jews (which implies non-religious uprising) with John 19:12 being a key turning point: "If thou release this man, thou art not Caesar's friend". These key temporal events need to be mentioned in a sentence each. It does not take much to say them, but their omission makes the text appear like novice driving.

The text mentions that genealogy is only discussed in Luke and Matthew, then restates that Nativity is only discussed in Luke and Matthew. Those issues are obviously related and should be closer in the text. And it should probably be mentioned that Luke's nativity text is 3 times the size of Matthew's, etc. And of course, the text totally misses the multifaceted relationship between the Baptist and Jesus that runs through the narrative. It does not take much to explain that, but not having it looks uninformed.

And given that the miracles constitute a major element of the "works of Jesus" in his life as it appears in the Gospel narratives, it is amazing to have an article on Jesus and just say that the miracles are usually about food. Hello? Hello? And that mention of miracles happens within the section Outreach to outsiders which again misses key elements and has been included at the expense of other pivotal temporal events that have been ignored. There were no outsiders in the Walking on Water miracle, and that in itself has been repeatedly declared by scholars as a central element in affecting the relationship between Jesus and the disciples. So miracles were not by any measure just for outsiders. The perception presented in the article is just incorrect. Please give us a break, we should do better than this. There are just too many examples of "let us glue this sentence here, because we happened to see it in a book" paragraphs that lack cohesion, and are just jerky, disconnected and less than correct statements.

On that note, the text has missed key other elements of the narrative at the expense of less important ones. E.g. I do not know how one can even begin to discuss the life of Jesus in the Gospels without mentioning the "fundamental pivot point" that takes place in Matthew 16:16, which in itself has been used as a book title. That type of omission is again a reflection of the text seeming to be "uninformed" and hence not informing the reader about key turning points in the narrative, given that there are 3 built in assertions in that episode that seriously impact the other statements made in the article.

And the problems continue to persist. The text attempts to address the issue of "I am" but misses the mark (pun intended), as usual, e.g. not mentioning that there are uses with and without a predicate and that the 7 uses with a predicate in John lead to specific claims, which the article mentions elsewhere in isolation. Just 2 more sentences there will set the record straight but once again the text seems uninformed about the use of the terms. I do not think it is necessary, or appropriate, to elaborate on the long discussions on "I am" and the multitude of theological perspectives and books (e.g. Aquinas) on these names, but the dual syntactic usage of I am and the uses that directly relate it to the titles mentioned elsewhere in the article must be mentioned and clarified if "I am" is to be included in a way that is not half-baked. Quality is not achieved by presenting things in a half-baked manner.

Now, I will stop pointing out errors and problems for now, because the list is too long. But as a pragmatic issue I think the temporal issues need to be discussed first, and in more detail than the titles and portrayals, given that these need to build on the temporal events and the titles and portrayals are more theological, hence needing less discussion in this article. So issues such as Logos, I am and the misnomer section on the Character of Jesus are best kept together with the names and titles section after the narrative discussion, given that a cleaned up titles section will have to refer to Logos etc. And there are other items to clean up anyway, e.g. the titles section includes a duplicate etymology for Christ, which was presented several sections before it, etc. So the clean up list is pretty long. History2007 (talk) 20:50, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

BC/AD revision

As i understand it, the BC/AD from the original article should be retained. That is wiki policy. If you check history that is the way it was written originally. I move that we change it back to conform to wiki policy. Overseer19XX (talk) 17:38, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

But it is retained, alongside BCE/CE, so I guess you mean you'd like to see BC/AD exclusively throughout. To judge from the talk-page history, the current form (admittedly somewhat long-winded) is the result of debate and eventual consensus. And I've a hunch that those who've spent so much time and effort on substantive improvements to this article might have bigger fish to fry. On consideration, I've struck through my last comment - it was unnecessary and plain ratty. Haploidavey (talk) 17:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)The manual of style says that its perfectly fine to change systems if there's consensus among the editors. Granted, looking through the archives, it appears more that there's just no censensus for any other method but using both AD and CE systems. Honestly, what I usually do is use BC/AD for Christianity related articles, and BCE/CE for other articles. Jesus is important both within (extremely so) and without Christianity, so the current compromise appears to be the best solution. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:04, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Parents?

God is his Father from the Christian perspective, but Jesus himself is also God (vis-à-vis that he is consubstantial with the Father; i.e., one and the same God). We may want to mention this under the heading "Parents" to better illustrate Christian dogma (mainstream Christianity does not teach that Jesus is God's Son in the literal human sense, as in the way that I am my father's son, etc.). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.108.156.113 (talk) 05:38, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Reverting to BC/AD

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesus&oldid=334728973 The original is BC/AD. WP:ERA says it goes back to BC/AD. Is there any confusion as to the original era of the article? Overseer19XX (talk) 20:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Is there any confusion over the massive mess among editors that switching to just one system or the other caused in the past? Ian.thomson (talk) 21:03, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
sorry, however the wiki rule is the rule. Overseer19XX (talk) 21:07, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
  • You have not responded to the comments in the section above which you started on the same topic. An agreement to use BC/BCE and AD/CE was established almost 6 yrs ago.--JimWae (talk) 21:12, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. The relevant WP:ERA "rule" is consensus. Haploidavey (talk) 21:17, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I have searched for an hour looking for the consensus. Can you link to where you find it? This is all i could find. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jesus/Archive_25#Era_Solution:_A_ProposalOverseer19XX (talk) 14:35, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Also, rules? Keeping the encyclopedia working trumps rules. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:28, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Overseer19XX, I believe you are misinterpreting the guidelines set forth in WP:ERA. It seems there has been consensus on this in the past and changing it requires establishing consensus now.

Regarding IAR, I don't believe anything--with the possible exception of an ArbCom case--trumps policies and guidelines under color of consensus. Sorry, I don't agree with changing back to the old form; I believe we should keep the encyclopedia academic. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 22:32, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I brought up IAR in reference to Overseer19XX saying we should stick with the rules. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
Look, I want to AGF Overseer, but this isn't the only place that we're running into issues with this editor. On another article that I've been watching for years, they changed all of the BCE to BC. It's getting frustrating. I think the previous consensus should stand. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 00:31, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Actually if you check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Herod_the_Great&oldid=422147234 i changed it to BCE/BC and AD/CE.Overseer19XX (talk) 14:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I hate to be the wet blanket here but using both is against the WP:ERA guidelines, and that--I believe--is the real crux of this discussion. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 15:03, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
So your saying it needs to go to BC/AD then as no consensus was ever reached?Overseer19XX (talk) 15:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm saying nothing of the sort. Although the passage of time can constitute consensus, all I said is that we can't use both forms at the same time. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 19:41, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Guidelines are just a reflection of general, site-wide consensus, not rules that apply to all individual cases. Exceptions are allowed, especially for purposes of keeping the encyclopedia working, and the combined system has resulted in less fighting than just one or the other. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:40, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I have no objection to us using BCE/CE as the only dating system. We can avoid all conflict if we just follow my approach. If this is unacceptable to anyone, I suggest we meet each other half-way as a working compromise. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:59, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, Slrubenstein, we've all seen your proposal, and it was rejected by the community. I'm curious, how do you think we could "avoid all conflict" if you we just follow your approach? If that were the case, your proposal wouldn't have been rejected. — CIS (talk | stalk) 23:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
You have not contributed much to this article, or you might have understood my comment. Maybe Jim Wae or someone else ho gets it will explain the obvious to you. 00:21, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

It is becoming unclear which parts of the above discussion are about the Jesus article & which are about the Herod article--JimWae (talk) 23:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Slrubenstein: I'm sorry but I'm missing something. What is the "my way" (your way) that you are proposing to "avoid all conflicts"? I went through the archived Talk pages and can't find it; perhaps I missed it. Can you help me understand, please? Thanks! — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 02:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Killed by Jews

It should be mentioned that Jesus was killed and persecuted by Jews. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 17.197.15.239 (talk) 22:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

New stuff goes at the bottom. The Bible says it was Roman soldiers that beat and hung Him on the cross... The whole "Jews killed Jesus" deal kinda forgets that He, His disciples, His family, and undoubtedly some of His friends, were Jewish. The claim that the Jews killed Jesus also has a chicken-and-egg relation to anti-Semitism. At most, certain people who happened to be Jewish wanted Him killed. So did a lot of Romans, but noone blames the Italians. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:38, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Not "the Jews", but the Sumerian-Babylonian Talmudist Sanhedrin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.153.221.249 (talk) 10:02, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
The Talmud was written between 200-500 CE. Kinda hard to be Talmudist in Jesus's time. Ian.thomson (talk) 11:44, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Plus, consider how long ago the Sumerians disappeared. But the real point is this: Occupied peoples always respond to occupation in different ways and one way is collaboration. This was true of both Poles and Jews under Nazi rule (and I specify Poles because they were the only Europeans to stand up to Hitler, and Jews because they ended up loosing the most). It was the same under Roman times. The Romans created the Sanhedrin as a puppet government. Later the rabbis of the Talmud rewrote this history of the Sanhedrin to fit their view of Jewish history which emphasizes an institutional continuity from Moses to the present. But according to all contemporary sources the Sanhedrin was simply an instrument of Roman rule. Even so, the Gospels are clear that Pilate made the decision. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
"I specify Poles because they were the only Europeans to stand up to Hitler" As a Brit, I rather object to this comment! Great Britain is now, and was in WWII, a European nation. Oops! Forgot to sign Hundovir (talk) 20:32, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, I meant that the Poles did not sign the Munich Pact, sorry I was too general/vague Slrubenstein | Talk 21:00, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Actually there is no benefit in mentioning who executed Jesus as his death was predestined beforehand. Brandmeister t 00:16, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
If you believe in predestination. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:51, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Lead dates

The Possible year of birth and Possible year and place of death sections suggest the year ranges 7–2 BC/BCE and 33-36 AD/CE respectively, which embrace both the majority and minority views. I think the lead would benefit from reflecting that. Brandmeister t 22:11, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there is certainly need for more consistency. I am not sure if the general convention is to use ranges or circa, so if ranges are to be used, I would suggest 7-2 but 30-36 for the death given that there are scholars who adhere to the 30 date. There are actually scholars who will swear on the grave of their dearly departed that the crucifixion was 37 AD/CE, but very few do that. If circa is to be used 5 and 33 will be the suitable midpoints of those ranges. Whichever way you want to change it should be fine, I think, depending on what the general conventions are. History2007 (talk) 21:53, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I think (7–2 BC/BCE – 30–36 AD/CE) in the first line might be just making it more difficult for readers to parse, and c. does fine there. I see no problem using the ranges in the infobox.--JimWae (talk) 20:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, specially with all those citations there, it is hard to see. How about using c. 5 and c. 33 and moving on? History2007 (talk) 20:43, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I think the ranges indicate the opinions more clearly than c, but wouldn't mind. Brandmeister t 22:33, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Apocalypse?

In the introduction there is the sentence: "Most contemporary scholars of the Historical Jesus consider him to have been an independent, charismatic founder of a Jewish restoration movement, anticipating an imminent apocalypse." It appears to be sourced to Theissen and Merz. The part I have a problem with is the "anticipating an imminent apocalypse" part, and wonder whether this part is itself in the source, and what specifically they mean by it.

The idea of the gospel (good news) is not entirely compatible with apocalyptic prophesies, and in any case its not clear to what "imminent apocalypse" the author (of the passage or of the source) is referring to. Was Jesus' claimed "apocalypse" referring to Rome's destruction of Jerusalem, or to later calamities, or to some imminent future event as some interpret the Book of Revelations? While apocalyptic predictions are certainly present among many of the clergy, it is a bit editorial and out of place here to suggest that Jesus himself was an apocalyptic. -161

The history showed that roughly 2,000 years after Jesus no apocalypse has occurred, so indeed the anticipated apocalypse wasn't "imminent". Jesus couldn't commit such a mistake, so either a clarification or removal is needed. Brandmeister t 22:39, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
One very significant scholarly view is indeed that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, expecting the end of time (not just any calamity) to come very soon indeed. Indeed, if you look at the New Testament, there is a distinct development from "don't bother to marry or educate kids, the end of the world is near" in earlier texts to a later position that is much more compatible with standard Greco-Roman family values. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:54, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't understand how this clarifies the issue. Does anyone have access to the cited source, and can they quote parts of that source which support the notion that Jesus was an apocalyptic? When that's done, we can move on toward treating the issue of balance and whether or not the one source is sufficient attribution for the way the article is currently written. It is my view that the passage is misinformed, or simply incorrect, and the one source may be out of balance with mainstream views. -67.161.54.63 (talk) 09:13, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
PS: A little reading here and here show in Theissen and Merz book a sophisticated usage of "apocalyptic" and a nominal usage of "apocalypse", neither of which are inline with the simple view that Jesus himself expressed apocalyptic visions. To the contrary, the source suggest that Jesus transformed preexisting notions of apocalypse into something entirely different:
"In so far as Jesus speaks of future, of cosmic catastrophies, he takes over Jewish apocalyptic notions, but he has no interest in these." (p. 242)
"What apocalyptic notions really mean to convey can also be interpreted as an internal transformation of human beings: The unconscious inner world is reorganized in a far reaching way." (p. 278)
-67.161.54.63 (talk) 09:38, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
There is Ehrman's Jesus, apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium, published by OUP (and the topic is further discusses in some of Ehrman's other books). Phillip Harland's course on the historical Jesus also covers this, as does Martin's "Introduction to New Testament History and Literature" (Lecture 13). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:38, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
None of these sources by themselves or together appear to indicate a mainstream view. For example, Martin's treatment of the concept here is not convincing:
"There's some of this that's very controversial. I would say, though, that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, an apocalyptic Jewish prophet. One of the reasons is that Jesus' life was framed by two apocalyptic events. If Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and John the Baptist seems clearly to have been preaching some kind of apocalyptic message about the coming kingdom, that means I think, that Jesus was originally a follower of John the Baptist, although the later Gospel writers will play that down. If Jesus was a follower of an apocalyptic Jewish prophet I think that, at least the beginning of his own ministry, was wreathed in that apocalyptic Jewish prophecy kind of world, and he was executed on a charge of sedition as being the King of the Jews, against the law. Only the Roman senate got to make kings, and if Jesus was going around claiming--and I'm not saying he was claiming, but if other people were claiming that he was the King of the Jews, the only way to understand that I think in this situation is that he believed that he was going to be the Messiah that would come at the end of time and overthrow the Romans. So his death was also apocalyptic." ([2])
-67.161.54.63 (talk) 01:12, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

The point here is that I don't think the statement "Most contemporary scholars of the Historical Jesus consider him to have been an independent, charismatic founder of a Jewish restoration movement, anticipating a future apocalypse is accurate. -76.103.87.239 (talk) 05:12, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Is Jesus Jesus, or did Jesus only claim to be Jesus?

I know this is completely assinine and contrived, but an IP editor wants to add Jesus to the article List of people claimed to be Jesus. For the purposes of this encyclopedia, red IS red, isn't it? Red isn't just claimed to be red, and there are only four lights even if we want to imagine five, right? I would think that WP:COMMONSENSE would dictate that Jesus not need be included. I'm not the only editor that thinks so, but I thought the issue should be brought up elsewhere. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:58, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

This is a snowball case, so I agree, he shouldn't be included as a generally undisputed and righteous claimant. Brandmeister t 22:24, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Your position being that Jesus did not claim to be Jesus? If he claimed to be Jesus, he ought to be listed as a person claiming to be Jesus. Earthpig (talk) 08:17, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
The article title is "List of people claimed to be Jesus," not "list of people that claimed to be Jesus." If we include Jesus, we need to change the article red to say "Red is claimed to be any of a number of similar colors that are claimed to be evoked by light claimed to consist predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light claimed to be discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm." - WP:COMMONSENSE would hold that red is red, Jesus is Jesus (and isn't just claimed to be Jesus), etc. Ian.thomson (talk) 12:02, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Did Jesus die on a Friday and rise on a Sunday?

The common belief is that Jesus died on a Friday and rose on a Sunday. Yet this belief is inconsistent with the Bible when it states Jesus would be dead 3 days (12 h per day) and 3 nights. This would be 3 periods of time between sunset to sunset and a Friday death and Sunday resurrection is only half that time.

An article on this link gives a more Biblical and historical (meaning measuring time and events from the way they were at the time of Jesus' life).

http://www.thetrumpet.com/?q=8198.6847.0.0

The assumption that Jesus died on a Friday and rose on a Sunday can not be proved or taken as fact if they conflict with the Biblical and historical account. Therefore alternate more plausible accounts must be considered even if they conflict with tradition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.109.207.56 (talk) 13:57, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


The Bible conflicts with itself here - Jesus does indeed say at one point 'the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth' (Matt 12) as Jonah was in the belly of the whale, but at others he says 'on the third day he will rise again (Matt 16, 17 and 20).

In the Gospels it's clear that the crucifixion takes place before the Sabbath - 'the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath' as John's gospel puts it. It is 'early on the first day of the week' according to John that Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb, 'just after sunrise' according to Mark.

Since the day started at sunset, the crucifixion was on Friday morning - 'very early in the morning' according to Mark's gospel, with Jesus dying just after noon, and being placed in the tomb before sunset. The first day of the week starts at sunset after the Sabbath - ie on Saturday evening. John may not even have been intended in the text that it was Sunday morning when Mary went. "Early" may have meant soon after sunset on Saturday - ie as soon as the Sabbath ended. So it could have been only a little more than 24 hours, not three days at all. Even if it was at sunrise, as Mark says, it is still only two nights and one day.

It does span three days though, the day of Preparation, the Sabbath Day, and the first day of the week (or Friday Saturday and Sunday if you prefer), and the statement in the Credo 'on the third day, he rose again' is based on counting days of the week, not periods of 24 hrs. Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:47, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Image

The used image in the intro is venerated only in the Roman Catholic Church and maybe in some Protestant, I don't know. For the page of Jesus should to be at least before the east-west schism, such as this: [Jesus Icon - JIW.jpeg] and this image [Spas vsederzhitel sinay.jpg]. Pensionero 16:25, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

No, that is not a Roman Catholic image. It is an image from an Anglican Church in NSW. I did not select this image for this page, but I see no problem in using it. However, there may be more subtle theological issues with the very nice St. Catherine's monastery image that you suggest given that it was deliberately painted to have two different expressions on each side of the face to reflect the divine and human elements, via the eye brow movement etc. Please see: Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine by John Galey 1986 ISBN 9774241185 page 92 and God's human face: the Christ-icon by Christoph Schoenborn 1994 ISBN 0898705142 page 154. That subtle artistic element is the expression of the belief in the Hypostatic union - the very source of some of the schisms that you refer to. Therefore the image you suggest is far more problematic from a theological standpoint than this image. History2007 (talk) 15:42, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
The Hypostratic union is recognized by the First Council of Ephesus and the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic and others claim to recognizing it, so there will no objections with this. You see there are key symbols on the icon - the Trinity symbol, the Gospels and the divine and human elements, which in the anglican glass miss, there are sheeps in it instead. То note this icon is painted before the east-west schism, somewhere in the 6th century. Pensionero (talk) 18:20, 13 April 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.130.29.44 (talk)
Yes, I am fully aware of the Hypostatic union issues, etc. In fact the turning point was not 431 in Ephesus, but 451 in Chalcedon. I have already fully clarified those issues elsewhere with references in Christology#Post-Apostolic_controversies, and how Coptic Orthodoxy etc. are not on board, so we are really getting off topic here discussing this. As I said above I think that is a very nice image, as most from that collection are, but it is most probably a 6th century post Chalcedon image and your argument that it is suitable because it is pre-schism does not apply. Moreover, the Hypostatic union also opens the door to Jesus being divine and this is a somewhat secular article which should steer away from those issues. If there is one issue that is less controversial among all Christians is John 10:1-7 and Jesus as the shepherd. That is far less controversial than the image you are suggesting. So why rock the image/boat when your point that it was Roman Catholic does not apply and your point that the other image is pre-scism does not apply to the Chalcedonian controversies. I see no reason why your suggested image should be selected, but I see reasons why it should not. History2007 (talk) 18:31, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Jesus' name pronunciation around the world

Out of sheer curiosity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.17.134.7 (talk) 03:40, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Quoting from scriptures

Hi, I would like to know why this article quotes a lot of scriptures, it may be against Wikipedia policies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Reliable_sources, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources_that_are_usually_not_reliable..असक्तः सततं कार्य कर्म समाचर | असक्तः हि आचरन् कर्म.. 07:08, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

In general, an article will run against WP:Primary if there are no WP:Secondary sources to accompany it. There were many WP:Primary cases here about a month or two ago, but several sections have now been checked and touched up with additional references. I made a comment about those and have been systematically checking and fixing several subsections for errors and the use of Primaries without Secondary support. But there are still plenty of errors in some sections that have not been checked, yet. E.g. it still says:
All the gospels report that he had become known as a religious teacher by the time he had reached his 30s. Luke says Jesus was “about thirty years of age” when he was baptized.
Obviously it is only Luke, and just using the primary (i.e. Luke) as the only source for it is not enough or correct. I have not reached that section yet, but in a few weeks these issues will be looked at. This is a complicated article and needs to be checked carefully. So wait a few weeks then look again. However, in several sections there are no longer any WP:Primary problems because each use of the primary is supported by more than 1 or 2 WP:RS secondaries. And as a general rule having links to and some quotes from the primary is not against WP policy if there are WP:RS sources to support those. Moreover, links to the primary within Wikisource are essential to clarify and allow the reader to verify what the article says. There were a few (but not many) website references which were borderline WP:RS and I have replaced some, and in a few weeks will check them all. And of course, the long term Wikipedia policy is to use Wikisource so there are no external links and those are getting used now as well. History2007 (talk) 07:45, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Oh well, that answers my query. Thanks..असक्तः सततं कार्य कर्म समाचर | असक्तः हि आचरन् कर्म.. 07:53, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Jesus not only a Prophet

In the article Prophets of Christianity mentioned Jesus as a Prophet but bible said He is God as a Human form, Son of God, Sprite of God. Though In Acts 2:30 said But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. but also it's not good to place him in Prophet category without mentioned any extra description. Hasanuzzaman T Shemul (talk) 18:19, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

New stuff goes at the bottom. This article does not say that Jesus is regarded as only a prophet in Christianity. If you have an issue with the Prophets of Christianity article, you should bring it up on that articles's talk page, but I will note that that article does point out that "Jesus is revered in most Christian denominations as the Son and incarnation of God," and does not say that Jesus was only a prophet. As the Son of God and the Incarnation, He would have direct communication with God, and He did make prophecies, which makes Him a prophet. Edit: Acts 2:30 doesn't describe Jesus as a prophet, but King David (see previous verse). I'm removing that part. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:40, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Historical Jesus

Most critical historians agree that Jesus was a Jew -- there is a lot of evidence that Jesus never even existed, including the fact that Jesus is not mentioned by the majority of historians during his alleged lifetime. In fact, of the three historians that are alleged to have mentioned Jesus outside the Bible two of them refers to Christ (not Jesus by name) and the third refers to Christ the brother of Jesus. I only point this out because the statement Most critical historians agree is not accurate. Erikeltic (Talk) 16:59, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Without arguing the issue, I would like to suggest "cross article consistency" here. Given that the section in question is a summary of other Wiki-articles such as Historicity of Jesus it should say roughly the same things as the Main articles do. Hence, said debate should take place in Historicity of Jesus, Historical Jesus, etc. then get summarized here, and be consistent with it, so a Wikipedia reader should expect to find similar statements within the Main article and the summaries that point to it. There is a section about Christ myth theory in this article as well that summarizes that article. So the issues really need to be covered in the relevant Mains with summaries here. And the mains there have at least 10-20 references for each side of the argument. History2007 (talk) 19:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
We state that "most critical historians agree that Jesus was..." We support that with sources. Are you disputing our sources? Are you saying we are lying? Do you have other sources that give conflicting opinion on what most historians who study Jesus agree upon? I understand there are a few people who make claims about Jesus not existing. But this is a minority position, correct? We make note of this view in other parts of the article. In fact it has it's own section. So I'm a little confused on what you want to accomplish. Do you think our sources are wrong? That we are portraying scholarship inaccurately? What would you change and how would you change it to bring it more in line with our policies. Thanks. -Andrew c [talk] 20:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
Andrew, I assume from the indents that your question was to Erikeltic. Right? History2007 (talk) 20:45, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
I am sure it was, but to anticipate the answer to Andrew's question: Erikeltic is simply wrong. The statement that most critical historians have these views is quite accurate. Erikeltic has a p[ersonal belief, and he has given us his reasons for his personal belief, but that is neither here nor there - we do not put Erikeltic's personal beliefs in the article, nor mine nor anyone else's. Editors working on this article have among them read a great many books by critical historians and have written a sentence based on those books, with sufficient citations (in fact, a couple of years ago an otherwise uninvolved editor argued that all the sourced provided was excessive and removed many). Slrubenstein | Talk 06:09, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
Please don't attribute/dismiss my statements to "personal beliefs". That's simply not the case, it does not assume good faith, and it's unnecessarily dismissive. Believe me when I tell you I have not brought personal beliefs into anything here. The citation (18) attached to the sentence I wrote about is attributed to a book by Raymond E. Brown, a Catholic priest. The citation does not support the statement Most critical historians agree that Jesus was a Jew. Furthermore, Father Brown was a priest and a Biblical scholar that tried to apply his own interpretation of history to the Bible. Were he an editor at Wikipedia, his writing would be non-WP:NPOV; much of the Jesus article is not written from a neutral point of view. So again, who are all these historians? Citation 18 does not support the poorly written statement. Even changing the sentence to something as simple as, The general consensus among mainstream historians is that Jesus was a Jew would be more accurate and neutral. Erikeltic (Talk) 11:33, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 70.186.214.6, 9 June 2011

jesus was not jewish.

70.186.214.6 (talk) 21:36, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Moved to actual request area. He was ethnically Jewish and practiced a form of Judaism. He may not have been orthodox, but more likely so than Sabbatai Zevi or Jacob Frank, especially since they actually lived after the point where Judaism got together and officially declared "No, you can't do and say that stuff and still be Jewish." Wikipedia doesn't enforce any denomination's point of view. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:59, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made.I agree with Ian.thomson above. However, if you pulled together some sort of highly reliable sources that argue that Jesus was not Jewish (I'm thinking here of academic, scholarly sources), perhaps a discussion of the issue could be included. Qwyrxian (talk) 07:17, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

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Weasel words

The statement "Most critical historians agree that Jesus was a Jew" violates Wikipedia's policy on weasel words. The "most critical historians agree that" part should be removed, and just state that "Jesus was a Jew." No need to cater to Christian bigots who deny history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Desfionm (talk • contribs) 22:07, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Please read the entire sentence. Jesus being a Jew is a small part of it. You wish to make a WP:POINT which is a bad idea in general, but the place to make this point is in the section on Jesus according to the Gospels. I have no idea what Christian bigots you are refering to, as far as I know this sentence was not crafted in order to cater to any particular view. And as for the sentence in question, it does indeed provide a conice account of what most mainstream scholars think. But there is a vast body of scholarship on Jesus - I think the whole introduction to this article does a great job of introducing all these views - and the logic of the structure is (1) to distinguish between distinct significant groups (critical scholars versus Christians versus Muslims) and (2) for each group, first to describe what all or most believe, and then to describe what only some or a still-significant-but-small-group believes. You cannot take one phrase out of context and criticize the way it is presented. You can to consider the organizing principles guiding the representation of different views. Slrubenstein | Talk 06:04, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
For what it's worth, the tobacco industry did exhaustive studies on the effects of cigarettes. Their findings should carry as much weight with academia as the vast body of scholarship on Jesus performed by priests, religious figures, and those that believe first and ask questions later. More than that, per WP:FLAT and WP:NPOV I have an issue with using source materials for Jesus when the sources claim that their subject was a supernatural being and the authors are writing from a position of faith. I don't think anyone could get away with citing Anne Rice or Stephen King for Insert Religious Figure X here; you can only "get away" with that sort of thing here because the belief in Christianity is just a given for many people. Erikeltic (Talk) 11:41, 10 June 2011 (UTC)


I thought about this discussion, and I think it is subject to the axiom: "a repeated talk page discussion implies lack of clarity in the article". I think the comment above is due to the fact that the article has not clearly explained the logic of the assertions about the existence of Jesus. The logic is neither trivial nor complicated and just needs to be explained in clear terms within the article, at some point.

The various assertions involved are as follows:

A: Existence: The assertion that Jesus existed as a human being is made by various people - I am carefully avoiding the term "person" here because hat has theological implications and the article should avoid that term, unless a theological point is being made. The existence of Jesus as a human being who had physical mass, etc. is independent of any assertion about his divinity - and indeed of any assertion about the existence of God or other supernatural entities. This assertion is made by a range of people, from priests to atheists. E.g. it is a safe bet to say that Geza Vermes does not get on his knees every morning to pray to Jesus. Yet Vermes does not deny the existence of Jesus - although he is very critical of the Gospels. So not all scholars who support the existence of Jesus as a human being are priests. Some believe he existed, but was not divine. Indeed, some do not even believe in God, and assume a purely mechanical universe, yet believe Jesus existed as a human being.
B: Fictional character: The assertion that Jesus never existed either as a human being or a supernatural entity amounts to the Jesus myth theory. It is a modern theory, proposed in the 18th-20th centuries that says Jesus was an invented character. I often think of it as an ancient variation of how Henri Cartan and his friends invented Nicholas Bourbaki as a prank and wrote books in his name - one of my favorite approaches to foundational math, but that is another story. However, it must again be clarified that the Jesus myth theory does not assume the existence of any super natural entities - but simply asserts that the character was invented. I often wonder which of the evangelists acted as Cartan under that theory.
C: Supernatural entity: Throughout history various groups have asserted that Jesus existed, but had no human form. This is again a separate assertion from the others. In this theory Jesus could have been "perceived" by his apostles and performed miracles without being human.
D: Variations & combinatons: There are diverse assertion about Jesus having had both divine and human forms. These have been debated for centuries and even resulted in schisms among Christian churches. There should be no detailed and lengthy discussion of this theological topic in this secular article, but a few link to monophysitism, miaphysitism, Non-Chalcedonianism etc. will help the interested reader get answers, and avoid talk page debates in the future.
E: Fun & fringe theories: There are many "fun and fringe" theories of unexpected origin. One of my favorites is the one about how in the pre-Narita period Jesus accumulated a good number of frequent flier points by going back and forth to Shingō and then let his Japanese brother be crucified. But that theory has very few followers outside a 10 mile radius around the gift shop at Shingō.

At various points in history the assertion listed above have had varying levels of support among world scholars. As stated above, and in the article, WP:RS sources indicate that the assertion regarding the existence of Jesus as a human being (regardless of any assertion about his divinity) has wide support at the moment. This may change in 30 years, but that is a separate story. We probably need to add more sources about this with people who were not priests like Brown, but that is not hard to do - and should be done.

I will try to see how this type of clarification can be sketched in the article so that future talk page discussions can be avoided, long after this thread has been archived. History2007 (talk) 13:53, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Repeated talk page discussion often does as you say suggest lack of clarity in the article. But I think this is more true or articles on topics where there is wide consensus among experts (e.g. Uncertainty principal and Algebra. I think this is less true concerning historical subjects, where many readers simply find it more difficult to distinguish between scholarly conculisions and personal opinion. With these articles, I think that repeated talk page discussion often instead suggests that many people use WP talk pages and forums and chat-rooms. Now, I am all for improving the clarity of any article, but frankly, I think this article does a pretty good job of introducing in a clear way a contenious topic on which there are many debates even among people with generally similar approaches (e.g. among Christians, among critical historians, etc). I think at this point, critics of the article have to demonstrate that they are widely and well-read on the topic, and can distinguish between their own views and those of others. Many editors have met this threshold and have contributed much to this article over the years. Hopefully many more will in the future. Still, new editors who come around and trash the article first have to provide their sources.
In short, it is easy for anyone to edit any WP talk page and there are a lot of people out there with opinions about Jesus. We have to be prepared for repeated critical comments from people who think Jesus is the Messiah and Lord, and people who think he never existed. it just goes with the territory and usually does not reflect anything on the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:07, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
There are only two things a person has to demonstrate to type on a wiki-talk page: a heartbeat and a keyboard. Anything else is an optional accessory.... Wink. But seriously, I do not share your high level of respect for the current content. But enough talk I think for today. History2007 (talk) 21:24, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
Right. I meant "for their comments to merit a serious response by other editors." Wink-wink. (and I do agree even this article can be improved upon ... I think more than enough work has gone into the lead, though, and better attention neefds to go into the other sections) Slrubenstein | Talk 21:29, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
Ok, let us agree on that and leave it there before it takes up more life. History2007 (talk) 21:30, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Accurate depictions

Neither the historical section nor any other section seem to cover the physical appearance of Jesus. There are 38 pictures in the article, and according to current theory, none of them accurately depict his physical appearance. That is, he was probably Egyptian, Arabian or African. See Race of Jesus. --Ozhiker (talk) 11:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I think you misread that article. He was most likely Jewish and and of Jewish descend (always assuming he existed). However, I'd strongly suspect that intra-ethnic variance is a lot greater than inter-racial variance in the levant, anyways. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:05, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
From a Christian point of view he is literally the "Son of God", so his physical appearance would presumably depend on the race of God. Reliable sources are rather unclear on that topic. From a non-Christian point of view, he was the son of a tradesman in the Levant, an area recently occupied by Greeks, Romans, Persians and others, and linked via the Med to Europe and North Africa. So take your pick. Paul B (talk) 12:15, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
There is, of course, the article Depictions of Jesus which breaks the ranges of artistic history to pre-Constantine, etc. About a month ago, I commented there that those depictions were short of Renaissance, etc. and that article in on my path to fix in 3 or 4 months.
However, it should be stated that Rembrandt, Caravaggio or Rubens were not even aiming to do photographic reproductions, but were producing art - based on the wishes of patrons. To get the next commission the patron had to like the current art. Of course, some Chinese depictions show Jesus as Chinese. So the artistic angle is a long debate, and the Depictions of Jesus is the venue for it. And the whole issue of when the beard appeared in the depictions, etc. has been a topic of discussion in art history and one could write 20 pages on that.
In terms of historical accuracy, the person who did the most detailed studies by far was James Tissot who traveled extensively in the middle east just to do research on what the clothing was like in that period, etc. Recently the Brooklyn Museum people have added a lot of those to Wikipedia, and they are Ok, but I ended up joking with the editor who adds them that we were getting "Tissot-pedia". In any case, Tissot did the most research, but it can not all be Tissot, and the best artists need to be balanced. And of course, there is no scholarly agreement as to whether Jesus or John the Baptist has round faces or long faces. And it makes no difference to the major focus of the article anyway. So I am not sure if that point is worth pursuing that much. History2007 (talk) 12:31, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from SteveNixon2, 23 June 2011

On the Jesus page add the link - Title = Jesus Never Existed.com link = jesusneverexisted.com This will provide a balance to the predominant literalist view on this page. SteveNixon2 (talk) 12:39, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

That's not an appropriate link--Jac16888 Talk 13:01, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Dates

Incorrect dates are given, not 7-2BC/BCE - 30-36AD/CE, it was 1AD/CE-33AD/CE, please change it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tommy-g-98 (talk • contribs) 08:44, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

No. Please read footnote 1 which explains the consensus among historians -- Alarics (talk) 16:16, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Jesus(74)/Y'shua(74)/IESVS(74)/Joshua(74), Jewish(74), Messiah(74), Cross(74), parables(74), preacher(74), etc.

The English(74) name of 'Jesus'(74) is no 'coincidence'. When the Bible was first being translated into English, William Tynsdale and later the group entrusted with preparing the King James Version, used gematria (isopsephy) like their Hebrew and Greek predecessors had. Simple(74) English(74) Gematria(74) uses the key(74) or alphanumeric code of A=1...Z=26. The main principle of 'Step 2' of gematria is that words/names/phrases with the same gematric sum have a connect(74) between(74) them. Consider that Jesus' (J10+E5+S19+U21+S19=74) name on the Cross (C3+R18+O15+S19+S19=74) 2,000 years ago in Latin was IESVS (I9+E5+S19+V22+S19=74). - Brad Watson, Miami 65.3.238.158 (talk) 14:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm quite certain that you could take any number of random, incoherent words from any book and find that many of them share the same alphabetic sum. I question the relevancy of this, you didn't suggest anything that would improve the article or ask anything to be removed; should this thread be closed?--Jacksoncw (talk) 15:44, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Jesus born on April 17, 6 BC or 17/4/747 AUC. He was crucified on Friday April 7, 30 AD or 7/4/782 AUC

The historical Y'shua bar Yosef was born on April 17, 6 BC or by the Julian Calendar used by the Romans at that time: 17/4/747 AUC (ab urbe condita [since the founding of Roma]). This date made Jesus an Aries the Ram, baby rams are lambs, and Jesus was/is considered the "Lamb of God". The Israelites learned astrology during their captivity in Babylon and the Dead Sea Scrolls document that they used it during the Roman occupation. The Magi - Persian wiseman - were astrologers. Astronomer Michael Molnar discovered this date in 1997 and wrote The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi (Rutgers Univ. Press, ISBN:0-8135-2701-5), see http://michaelmolnar.com . Since then, April 17, 6 BC has been reported as Jesus' actual birthdate by the BBC Video Jesus: The Complete Story (2001), Discovery Channel, History Channel, CNN, CBS Christmas Specials (December 2008 & 2009), and FOX. The nine Knights Templar excavated the Jerusalem Temple Mount (and the Jesus Family Tomb) between 1119-1128. They found several important scrolls including one with Y'shua bar Yosef's birthdate and took the information to the Pope. This scroll and information was passed on through the centuries; the Cathars knew it and were persecuted for it along with other heretical beliefs and practices. The Freemasons eventually learned it and encoded it when verse numbers were first added to the English Bible and Matthew 4:17 became Jesus' first teaching and the "star prophecy" of Numbers 24:17, etc. In 1717 AD, 4 London(74) Masonic(74) Lodges formed the first Grand Lodge. The US Founding Fathers/Freemasons (Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Hancock, and others) encoded July 4, 1776 and 'coincidentally', Franklin died on 4/17/1790, GW on 12/14/1799 (and John Adams & Thomas Jefferson both died on 7/4/1826). The Roman Catholic Church has held for centuries that Jesus was crucified on the first full-day of Passover Friday April 7, 30 AD or 7/4/782 AUC. This means that the Christ was 34-years-old at the time and turned 35 ten days later. - Brad Watson, Miami 65.3.238.158 (talk) 15:03, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Brad, please stop adding your personal interpretations of scripture. We need reliable sources for relevant material. See WP:RS. Vague references to the BBC and the Discovery Channel will not do. This is all fringe material. Paul B (talk) 15:07, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Paul, these are not just "my personal interpretations of scripture" and it's not "fringe material" to "those that have ears to hear". I provided reliable sources and have further clarified them with the specific BBC Video Jesus: The Complete Story (2001) and the two CBS Christmas Specials (December 2008 & 2009). I'll see if I can 'nail down' the exact History Channel Christmas specials that referred to April 17, 6 BC as Jesus' correct birthdate. Re: the Messiah's crucifixion on Fri. April 7, 30 AD, I've seen that on Catholic websites. I'll nail that down, also.Thanks for being the Devil advocate. - Brad Watson, Miami 65.3.238.158 (talk) 15:31, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

The BBC is a reliable source in a general sense, but it is not the best academic source, and in any case the BBC itself is unlikely to assert as fact the date of Jesus' birth, but rather to report the views of specific scholars. All the stuff about Freemasons is certainly fringe and I've no idea what the dates on which Jefferson and Adams died has to do with anything. Paul B (talk) 15:38, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Moreover, I have seen my fair share of downright unreliable documentaries on the history Channel. That is not a channel run by academic historians; it is a TV channel which, like the vast majority of TV channels (generally excepting publically financed ones like BBC and PBS) makes its money through entertainment. I think using any commercial production as a reliable source is foolhardy. Any truly reliable documentaries are themselves based on books or articles published by reputable scholars in reputable venues, os we are better off relying on those. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:40, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Slrubenstein. History channel often misinterprets many things and I have seen it present material as fact that I knew downright was completely false. I have also seen them present entire fabricated stories or evidence and present it as fact to support one of their theories. History Channel cannot even be considered a source, much less a reliable one. commercial productions usually just do a tiny bit of not-in-depth research and compile what they found. Unreliable.--Jacksoncw (talk) 15:38, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm tempted to ask Slrubenstein, why if books or articles published by reputable scholars in reputable venues is okay for the Jesus article, why the WP:POVFORK Yeshu article is refusing to let books or articles published by reputable scholars used as refs be reflected in the lede? Anyway, I will reflect that content here. In ictu oculi (talk) 22:38, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
You are saying that the Yshu article is a POV fork from this article? That is a pretty wild accusation. So you propose we merge that article with this one? How exactly? I see no way of doing that without really violating WP policy. This page is to discuss improvements to this article. What are you proposing? Slrubenstein | Talk 17:39, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

"Critical Theologians"

The lead contains the line:

Most critical theologians agree that Jesus was a Jew who was regarded as a teacher and healer, that he was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman Prefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, on the charge of sedition against the Roman Empire. I have issues with the word "theologians". Firstly, because I don't know what the beliefs of theologians have to do with anything; they're interested in religious beliefs, not history, so we simply shouldn't be mentioning them here. Secondly, most of the references cited aren't theologians; several of them, in fact, are not even Christians (Vermes & Grant, for example). The sentence would be true, if the reference to "theologians" were replaced with "scholars" or "historians" - and perhaps the reference to "healer" was removed - belief that Jesus a) existed, b) taught, c) was baptised for forgiveness of sins, and d) was crucified are all accepted by the vast majority of those fields.

Even if other users disagree with me about "vast majority", anyone who knows anything about the subject must agree that at least 51% of scholars agree with that stuff. I don't really care what theologians think about this - I doubt many people do - but surely historians should be quotes properly. HumeFan (talk) 15:15, 23 July 2011 (

I see no big deal either way. Don't sweat the ledes in Wikipedia - they change. As you suggested, "Most critical scholars agree that Jesus was a Jew who was regarded as a teacher and that he was baptized ..." would be more accurate given that healer is the weakest assertion there and scholar is more appropriate than theologs. I see no reason not to change it as you suggested. But I will bet you a nickle to a doughnut that 0.9999999999% of the world will not notice that anyway and the sun will come out tomorrow regardless. History2007 (talk) 15:34, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
Just to clear up one thing: Why the assumption that a theologian should be a Christian? See e.g. Hector Avalos, Bruno Bauer, Samuel Hirsch, and plenty of others. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:59, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)(edit conflict)Actually, I live in area where the views of theologians would be valued to the exclusion of historians (though I like to hear both personally). Western theologians are often concerned about history (since the Abrahamic religions are so fond of linear time), they are just more likely to have additional beliefs about history. Part of the reason the historians care to study Jesus is because the theologians do (consider how much attention Apollonius of Tyana gets from scholars or worshippers). However, both theologians and historians can agree on the description you gave and the word "scholars" would describe both camps. Also, of the authors cited, John P. Meier, Raymond E. Brown and N. T. Wright are priests, D. A. Carson and Ben Witherington III are evangelical theologian, Paul L. Maier was the Vice President of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, and Shaye J. D. Cohen is (although not a Christian) a Rabbi. There are almost twice as many theologians as non-theologians, but most of the theologians are also historians. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:08, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
I think we are heading towards a heated agreement here. No logical implication there abiut Christians, but Hindu theologs are less likely to bother with the issue anyway. In any case, "scholar" would be best, I think. History2007 (talk) 16:12, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I missed a change that should not have been made. This section was originally worded "critical historians" and for a very long time that is what it said. I do not know who changed it to "theologians" but this is an inaccurate word. Ian Thompson seems to think that anyone who gets a degree from, or teaches, a a seminar is therefore a theologian. This is a huge mistake. Many people have as titles "doctor of philosophy" and yet are not philosophers. There are historical reasons for this, which most academics know. Apparently Ian Thompson doesn't (BUT I am NOT arguing against his claim that theologians can and often are historians. But Wellhausen was a theologian who, in turning to history, actually broke with traditional theology - these can be complex relations). Sanders and Cohen are first and foremost historians, as are the other major sources for this sentence. I will change it back. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:00, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Again, I see no big deal here, except the unnecessary criticism of Ian. And I am not aware of any United Nations mandate that there is something sacred about the lede as it was X months ago - consensus can change in Wikipedia and several editors were just discussing the topic. But again, this is not a major issue either way and there is no need to make a big deal about it. History2007 (talk) 20:55, 23 July 2011 (UTC)


I meant to express a difference of opinion with Ian. Ian, if you read my comment as a criticism of you, I apologize. I am sure your comment was made in good faith, I just disagree on this mater.

The edit we are talking about was made on July 1 by a new editor. it was reverted by someone, and then restored. And there was no discussion. This is not right. In fact a year or two ago, there was a long discussion as to whether it should be "theologians" and we agreed that it was better as "historian." So to see a new editor make a change against a long-standing version with no discussion is quite inappropriate.

It is standard practice that, when there has been a longstanding consensus version, it should not be changed without discussion. I hope this is sufficient explanation for my restoration.Slrubenstein | Talk 23:37, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Jesus in Hebrew

On a separate note your statement that there are no original sources for the Hebrew or Aramaic name seems interesting, and I am somewhat new to that topic. Can you explain that and give refs for it. The etymology section seems to say otherwise. So what is the exact story? If the statement "there are no original sources for the Hebrew or Aramaic name" can be supported, it needs to get added with refs. It would be interesting to clarify that once and for all. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 21:03, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

As to the second matter - this too is something that we had a very long discussion about a few years ago, maybe five years ago. History, I am afraid you have it backwards. My claim, that there are no sources, does not need a source. For right or nine years we did not include the Hbrew or Aramaic version of Jesus' name, because there are no sources for the Hebrew or Aramaic version of Jesus' name. Once again, someone in the last two months changed a long-standing consensus version with no discussion, I am just restoring the consensus version. As to my comment: at most the only sources provided are by people who are simply saying that they think Jesus' name in Hebrew or Aramaic was Yehoshua. No one has ever provided a source that provides Jesus' Aramaic or Hebrew name. Look, I have my own opinion on the matter, about what Jesus' real name was, I do not think it was Jesus. But the oldest sources we have are all in Greek and provide his name as the Greek spelling of Jesus. The Gospels do not tell us what his Hebrew or Aramaic name was. We have no source telling us whether his given name was Hebrew or Aramaic. Thee just are no sources. As soon as you can provide a source with Jesus original name, whih by the way would probably be Hebrew OR Aramaic, not both, a real source would settle this once and for all, great then we can add what his name was. Show m the source!

Currently all we have is (1) a generic argument that "Jesus" generically is the Greek for the Hebrew Yehoshuah. Then we have (2) the point that this specific person's name in Greek was "Jesus." As far as sources go, this is all anyone has ever provided. Then someone makes the argument - it is a syllogism, a logical and not an empirical argument, that if "Jesus" is the greek name for Yehoshuah, and this guy from Nazareth's name in the Gospel of Mark is Jesus, therefore we can deduce that his Hebrew name was Yehoshua.

This is a logical argument based on two premises. As such, this is a clear example of WP:SYNTH. As such it violates WP:NOR. To say that Jesus's real name was Yehoshuah is to make an empirical claim. We cannot argue it logically. We need a source to support the claim. As I said, we have none.

There is a user page for James Wales. The Hebrew for James is Yaakov. It is a fact tht Wales' name is James, and it is a fact that the Hebrew for James is Yaakov. Hebrew language also came before English. So, does this mean that we should add to his page that his original name in Hebrew was Yaakov? No. We would need some source saying that on his birth certificate his name is Yaakov but having been brought up in the US everyone calls him Jimmy.

We cannot build arguments through syllogisms, it violates NOR. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:58, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

The statement that "My claim, that there are no sources, does not need a source" is technically valid. But then the etymology section says things that seem confusing at first sight. I have not looked into this in detail, so I do not have a firm opinion, or sources either way, although I find the 3 step argument below credible. But as is, the article will leave the reader somewhat confused. An interesting side-effect is that the template Jesus used in the article has a WP:OR gray background.
So if it is really the case that there are no sources (and that may well be the case) there must be some scholar who wrote that. So if you have such a reference it should go into the article. I think there are 3 seemingly correct statements here:
  • "Jesus" generically is the Greek for a Hebrew Yehoshuah - or whatever variant there might be.
  • This specific person's name in Greek was "Jesus."
  • No one has found any written statements of what this specific person was called by the Hebrew or Aramaic speaking population of the time.
Is that the way you see it? I think intuitively these three statements makes sense and such a statement needs to get added to the article, if sources for it exist, because it is an interesting point. Why would not there be sources for this 3 step argument? History2007 (talk) 23:18, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
I think I agree with your statements. I think I disagree with your conclusions. Disclosure: I contributed to the "etymology" section and I did ome real library research and so I m attached to it. But the basic issue here is: we cannot violate NOR. For example, this sentence "And Philo's reference (Mutatione Nominum item 121) indicates that the etymology of Joshua was known outside Judaea at the time.[38]" but using it to make claims about Jesus' name is NOR. That is because source 38 doe snot talk about Jesus. The crucial phrase in the etymology section is this "based on the Latin Iesus, of the Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs), itself a Hellenisation of the Hebrew יְהוֹשֻׁעַ" According to whom? The two sources merely support the translation of Yehoshua. But hat about the claim that Yehoshua became Iesous which became Iesus which became Jesus? What is the source for this? I think we need a source.
No, frankly I can tolerate a little bending of the rules in the body of the article, because we can say that there is no actual evidence for this and people will understand that this is a delicate point. But I feel very strongly we cannot mention this in the introduction. Introductions are not good places for delicate points. In the introduction we should stick to what is the mainstream view in the major sources. We actually do an admirable job of that. Adding Jesus' Hebrew name ruins it, because we go from an introduction that says many very carefully supported claims, carefully, to an introduction that just throws out some editor's opinion, and violates one of our core policies. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:37, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
I think one can say that there are no Hebrew document from the time, if we find a source that actually says that. And given that there are no Hebrew documents from the time, then the rest is "expert's opinion" as to how the name may have been mapped into Greek when they wrote the gospels, I guess. History2007 (talk) 23:58, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi History2007, Ian
I reverted Slrubenstein's edit because of concern over his current editing activity at Yeshu (WP:Povfork) and deletion of scholarly sources there.
As regards "the claim that Yehoshua became Iesous which became Iesus which became Jesus? What is the source for this?" I thought the article had one, if not add A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature ed. David L. Jeffrey Eerdmanns Grand Rapids 9780802836342 1992 p417 "This identification was reinforced by the fact that lesous is the Greek form of Joshua, leading the LXX translators to render Joshua as "Jesus" throughout the saga of the conquest of Canaan (cf. Heb. 4:8, where the KJV transliterates Joshua's name as "Jesus"). Joshua-Jesus typology was already well established in the early Church (cf. Heb. 3) and elaborated extensively in the patristic period."
In ictu oculi (talk) 01:16, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Interesting discussion actually. But having briefly looked at the other page, can we all avoid heated debate and do this calmly please without any more reverts until the matter is settled by mutual agreement or Heavens forbid consensus?
I must say I can not figure out what the real answer is yet, so could you guys please explain that to myself and the other editors who are just joining this in a form that can eventually go into the article. This will affect the template Jesus as well. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 01:23, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
I may be off line for a few hours, but that will not mean that I have lost interest. This is interesting. History2007 (talk) 01:25, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi History 2007,
The answer about the name? Generally mainstream sources seem to take as per the dictionary above that Yehoshua is Jesus in Greek. Yeshua is just a contracted form of Joshua (the contraction occurs 29x vs the full form 218x in the Massoretic Text), Yeshu is the spelling of Jesus used in the Talmud - where there is some issue of why the final ayin has been dropped. In terms of primary sources an interesting primary source I can see on this is A translation of the Magen wa-hereb by Leon Modena, 1571-1648 trans. Allen Howard Podet - 2001 p180-181-182 where Leon Modena interprets that it was Jesus who required his disciples to drop the ayin and since the Christians have dropped the 'ayin, they cannot now substitute the second letter he of the Tetragrammaton in making it YeshuaH... but what the article needs is a decent secondary source explaining Jewish reasons for dropping the ayin - presumably from just hearing Yeshu in Greek and Latin and not wanting to re-Hebraize it back to the MT spelling - but again it's something that needs sources.
The other issue on that Yeshu page is large chunks of already merged/duplicated junk DNA left from before the separate article on Jesus in the Talmud, plus Slrubenstein's insistent reversions of the lede towards "the theory of the two Jesuses" (a term used by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1998) for the defence made by various Jewish communities under Christian persecution 1240-1600s) as a legitimate modern scholarly Wikipedia article-lede, rather than the lede reflecting the academic refs in the article.
Back to the name issue, I'm wondering if Yeshu, Yeshua (name), Isa (name) shouldn't all be merged to Jesus (name) as language-duplicates and POVforks. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:07, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Now that is getting a little more clear, but please confirm this: "Are there no pre-gospel Hebrew documents that refer to Jesus?" I think there are none. Is that so? If there are none, then the assertion of the equality of Jesus and Yeshu/Yehoshua etc. is based on "scholarly opinion". So slrubinstein does have a point that one does not know "for sure, for sure" if the names are the same, but you do have a point also that scholarly opinion concludes that it was derived the way you said. Is that a fair assessment?
Regarding the merge, I think all 3 boats are rocking enough now, so why rock them more right now? Let this clarify then the others are separate issues. Although I do think the South Americans called Jesus would be surprised to get merged with Isa. But that is another story. History2007 (talk) 02:19, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi History
"Are there no pre-gospel Hebrew documents that refer to Jesus?" No, not for another 600 years. And yes assertion of equality of Jesus/Yeshu/Yehoshua etc is based on scholarly opinion; but it's scholarly opinion that is as well demonstrated/sourced as that Avraham/Abraham/Ibrahim or David/Dawid/Daud are the same name. Does Slrubinstein have a point that one does not know "for sure, for sure" if the names are the same? Not really, since this is Wikipedia and for the same reasons we report the NASA moon landings as sourced fact, we should e.g. report the MT-Septuagint-NT Yehoshua-Jesus etymology as sourced fact. That doesn't mean that religious beliefs alternative views and fringe theories can't be added in at the end of an article if they're significant: "Messianic Jews believe the name .... + WP:Source" "Maimonides believed the name.... + WP:source" and so on, if they are notable. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:26, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
The main problem with your argument here is that the original source documents regarding Abraham or David were in Hebrew. The same cannot be said for Jesus, where the original source documents are in Greek. Jayjg (talk) 17:46, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok, for now the fog is clearing. And it should all be explained in a way that most users can figure it out pretty quickly. So is right to say that there is general scholarly agreement that:

  • No Hebrew documents mention the name Yeshu/Yehoshua for several centuries after the gospels were written in Greek.
  • Most scholars think that Jesus was derived from the Hebrew Yeshu/Yehoshua/etc.

Is that a fair statement? Can it be WP:RS triple-sourced?

As a reader I will take what the scholars can give me, but I would have, of course, preferred a tape recording of a conversation between Apostle Peter and Jesus to be sure how Peter pronounced it. But I guess unless we find Rupert Murdoch's great grandfather we are not going to get that.. just kidding.

The other point is that from a reader's perspective book after book by scholars mentions that Jesus was based on the Hebrew, whichever variant there may be. I have seen many books say that. So, let us see what slrubinstein (and hopefully a few other editors) say about this then we go from there. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 04:33, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

History, you basically hve it right. Except Yshua is Aramaic, not Hebrew, so it i wrong to put "Yeshua" and sy that this is a Hebrew or Aramaic name, it is Aramaic.
This is a reconstruction, and it is a controversial one. Many people think Jesus never existed, so there was no original person with a Hebrew name to begin with. I happen not to believe this, but twice in the past six or seven years we have had heated, multiple-day debates over just this. There is a reason why the consensus that emerged, emerged. And we should not change it so casually. All notable historians I know of think Jesus did exist and that his name would have been Aramaic or perhaps Hebrew. But it need not have been Aramaic - Jews of that time did have Greek names, and Jesus was born close to a Greek town, so who knows? So I certainly want this view in the article. But given that whatever Jesus's name was, and whether it was Hebrew or whether it was Aramaic (would it have been both?) is a matter of debate, we should stick with the consensus version where discussion of this is in the Etymology section.
I asked a legitimate question: in the etymology section is this "based on the Latin Iesus, of the Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs), itself a Hellenisation of the Hebrew יְהוֹשֻׁעַ" - what are the sources for this claim? There are two sources that support the translation of Yehoshua into English (the next phrase in the sentence. But those sources do not support this phrase. What do I have to say? I just ask History2007 and In ictu oculu to provide their reliable sources for this claim. Please note I have not deleted this unsupported claim - I am politiely asking that we provide the most reliable sources. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:36, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

There has been a longstanding consensus on this page not to list Jesus' name as "Yehoshua" or "Yeshua" precisely because we have no original or contemporaneous Hebrew or Aramaic documents that use Jesus' name. What we have are Greek documents, and people have "reconstructed" Jesus' "original" Hebrew or Aramaic name based on that. We don't even know what language Jesus' actually spoke - Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek? One, two, or all of these? To build on Slrubenstein's Jimmy Wales analogy, Jimmy's legal name is "Jimmy" and his common name is "Jimbo". If someone 2,000 years from now were to reconstruct his name based on foreign language documents, they might conclude that his original name was actually "James", because Jimmy and Jimbo are both diminutives of James. Nevertheless, in reality neither his legal nor common names are "James". We cannot assert as fact what we simply do not know; rather, in the naming section we can explain that scholars think that Jesus' name was likely Yehoshua or Yeshua; that is the only way to comply with WP:V and WP:NPOV. Jayjg (talk) 16:34, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I really do not know why having or not having Yeshua in the lede is a big deal. Am I missing a big point here? Why is this so important? As long as it is in the etymology section, is that not good enough? But I think the current version of the "understanding" needs to get added with RS sources, something like:
  • No documents mention the name Yeshu or Yehoshua (or insert the suitable name here) for several centuries after the gospels were written in Greek. (Would be good to give a rough date for the first usage). [Source1, source2, etc.]
  • Most scholars think that Jesus was derived from the Yeshu/Yehoshua/etc. [Source3, source4, etc.]
I have not researched this enough to do it right, but why can't you guys just add something like this with RS sources to the etymology section and be done with this? It seems simple to me. Why debate it so much? My suggestion is to agree on something like this and move on. History2007 (talk) 18:34, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
You ask why not put it into the lead? The answer is: everything written about Jesus' non-Greek name is speculation. It is not fact. It is not even clear. Can you tell me whether it was Hebrew or Aramaic? What is your evidence? And why could it not have been Greek? Again, what is your evidence? All the histories I have read say that they are speculating. In the "Etymology" or another section we could and should have a coverage of the debates among scholars as to his "original" name and make it clear that it is speculation. Then, readers would not be deceived. We cannot go into detail in the lead, and the phrase that the other user inserted a few weeks ago implied that this is a fact, or that historians believe it is a fact, which is untrue and misleading. We should not mislead readers. Issues that require more context or explanation should be presented - at whatever length necessary - in the body of the article. Hitory2007, if you want to you can go back into the archive and see why it was that we reached this consensus many years ago.Slrubenstein | Talk 19:46, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
History2007, you say you want to keep things simple. The simplest approach is to keep the consensus version. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:47, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Actually, as I said I do not care if it is in the lede or not. I see no big deal there either way. But I think you guys need to figure out how to add it to the etymology section for sure, then the question of being in the lede or not I do not care about. I really see no big deal there either way. But as is, the fact that no Hebrew or Aramaic documents mentioned it for centuries after the gospels is missing from the article. It should get added. History2007 (talk) 19:55, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
On this I agree. Does anyone have any sources that propose an argument concerning Jesus' birth name? Does anyone have any books or articles that review the sources concerning his name? I think a clear discussion of these should be added to the Etymology section. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:10, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
I have Theissen and Merz's The Historical Jesus: a Comprehensive Guide. I do not see any section where they discuss his name - this is a pretty thorough book and it is organized around different areas of scholarly research and debate, so it suggests to me that the question of his name is not a major area of scholarly discussion.
They do point out that 6 km from Nazareth was the Greek town of Sepphoris and state that "Jesus grew up within the sphere of influence of a Hellenistic city" (165)
Relevant to this question is however what language Jesus spoke. I always assumed Aramaic. They write, "In what language(s) did Jesus preach? Whereas only a minority believe that he presented his teaching wholly or partly in Hebrew, there is a lively discussion as to whether we should supposed that Jesus spoke Greek." They personally consider this improbable. (169).
But as for his name, all I could find is the enigmatic "Jesus (another form of Joshua)" page 194.
So, I hope other editors have better sources than I have. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:31, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Languages of Jesus

Regarding: What language did Jesus speak or teach in? there is a Wiki-article Aramaic of Jesus and here is a review article by James Barr (biblical scholar). And Stanley E. Porter also states that the majority view is that Jesus' mother tongue was Aramaic. Of course, as usual, there are all kinds of opinions, but Aramaic seems to be the front runner hypothesis.And there are suggestions that Hebrew and Greek were also spoken as in the Barr article. And there is an entire book Discovering the language of Jesus. History2007 (talk) 00:47, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

The Aramaic of Jesus is one of those typical WP OR/POV-fork articles that is too common. It uses a lot of reliable sources on Aramaic and the SYNTH leap is to say that since Jesus lived in 1st century Galilee he probably spoke Aramaic so these facts about Aramaic would also apply to Jesus. I think it is actually a dangerous article, from a WP policy perspective.
It is true that most historians think Jesus spoke Aramaic, an it is also true that no historian considers this a point beyond debate, and it is also true that all historians agree there is no direct evidence. I think all these pounts properly sourced belong in this article. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:21, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I see no need to discuss this further, I think the James Barr article is a solid review and should be added at some point. No need to talk about it further. I think most readers will probably figure out that it would be pretty hard to make a living as a carpenter in Galilee (where the predominant language was Aramaic at that time) if one only spoke Swedish. I will leave it there. History2007 (talk) 16:46, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Evidence of existence

I came here to review what evidence there is for the actual existence of Jesus, and was thrown off by the lede which says "The principal sources of information regarding Jesus are ... [religious sources]". It occurs to me that this may not be the correct article for this. Any pointers? aprock (talk) 22:13, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I haven't been involved in this article; however, we strictly need to separate facts and fictions in an encyclopedia.
Existence can only be proven by historians scholars, not religious. The stories of Jesus are considered religious belief. I'm not saying they're false; but for an encyclopediac tone, we need to consider it a belief (unless there's reliable academic historian sources that say otherwise).
I hope that helps, and happy editing. ~ AdvertAdam talk 22:28, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. I wasn't interested in editing here. I was interested in reading. I'm just having a dickens of a time finding information about historical evidence of existence. aprock (talk) 22:30, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
You want Historical Jesus. --Daniel 22:38, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! aprock (talk) 22:46, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Josephus' Jewish Antiquities 18.63 refers to "Jesus, Messiah, and Christians". The Bible - both the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek 'New' Testament - is a historical narrative of the Jewish, Messianic-Jewish, and the earliest Christian peoples. "Existence" is proven by the Bible, although historians and scholars should always look for as many other sources as possible, i.e. The Jesus Family Tomb. - Brad Watson, Miami 65.3.238.158 (talk) 13:38, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

If Jesus was the Son of God then it's almost inevitable that any historical record of Him would be a "religious source". Owen214 (talk) 11:05, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

In its defense, the four accounts in the bible technically are historical sources. DVDV28 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:52, 28 July 2011 (UTC).

Edits Jesus (cf. Yeshu, Jesus in the Talmud, Yeshua (name))

Above, In ictu writes,"I reverted Slrubenstein's edit because of concern over his current editing activity at Yeshu (WP:Povfork) and deletion of scholarly sources there."

This is a sign of massive bad faith and it is inappropriate.

I made an edit - which by the way simply restored the consensus version, which had been changed without discussion. And In icto reverts me because she doesn't like my edits at another article?

Editors here should know the context. "Yeshu" is a character in a handful of stories in Rabbinic literature. Some modern scholars think that the word itself is a name for Jesus, which was added to the stories. Some modern scholars think that the stories themselves are about Jesus. Some Christians think that these stories are about Jesus, and most Orthodox Jews believe they are not. As you can see from other comments on this page, In icto oculi thinks that Yeshu is a name for Jesus. And what does she do?

She changes a longstanding consensus version with no discussion and against the views of other editors working on the article. Hmmmm ... sound familiar?

Well, I am not asking any of you to take an interest in an article on a genre of Rabbinic tales. But I am asking you not to let longstanding consensus work be changed without discussion.

I am also asking that we not tolerate someone who is simply trying to expand her edit conflict and POV-campaign from another article to this one. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:51, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Iccy, I made an edit to the page and I left an explanation on this page. Before reverting me, you should read my explanation, and respond to my explanation. We never revert someone's edit to this article just because of edits they made at another article. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:56, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

It would certainly require more than a flat contradiction (in fact it would quite clearly require a serious amount of previous discussion and ensuing consensus) to include an (unsourced) name in a controversial article like this one. I don't know enough about the issue to argue for or against - but I will maintain that prior to a solid consensus otherwise, exclusion of the disputed information is the logical status quo.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:35, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Slrubenstein
I reverted your edit to "Yeshua" since you have been very active on the WP:POVFORK (from Jesus in the Talmud) article Yeshu deleting WP:sourced secular scholarly material with exactly this subject area. When I come here and see you deleting material in exactly the same related area, it's reasonable to restore it. But I should also say that the restore was reasonable on its own merits even without your track record. It should be a non-controversial edit to have on an article on Jesus to have the Hebrew form of the name at least shown given that scholarly sources do have consensus that Jesus is just the Greek of Joshua. And the failure to have such a basic piece of information and source in the article suggests all kinds of POV.
Jayjg,
As regards the status quo edits. "The main problem with your argument here is that the original source documents regarding Abraham or David were in Hebrew. The same cannot be said for Jesus, where the original source documents are in Greek" which is why I propose:

A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature ed. David L. Jeffrey Eerdmanns Grand Rapids 9780802836342 1992 p417 "This identification was reinforced by the fact that lesous is the Greek form of Joshua, leading the LXX translators to render Joshua as "Jesus" throughout the saga of the conquest of Canaan (cf. Heb. 4:8, where the KJV transliterates Joshua's name as "Jesus"). Joshua-Jesus typology was already well established in the early Church (cf. Heb. 3) and elaborated extensively in the patristic period."

In ictu oculi (talk) 21:25, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
In ictu, I have not edited any POV fork. Also, you must edit an article based on reasonable discussion about that article, something you show no capacity for. You never should revert someone just because you do not like them.
Your edit is also unaccepatable because you are violating NOR. Your argument is (1) his name is Jesus, (2) scholars say Jesis is Greek for the Hebrew Yehoshuah, therefore (3) his original name was Yehoshuah. This is pure WP:SYNTH. Don't violate our policies. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:46, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Dear Slrubenstein
I am not David L. Jeffrey, this is not "my" argument. A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature ed. David L. Jeffrey Eerdmanns Grand Rapids 9780802836342 1992 is not WP:SYNTH, it is a tertiary source which meets WP:source, and is a mainstream consensus view:

A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature ed. David L. Jeffrey Eerdmanns Grand Rapids 9780802836342 1992 p417 "This identification was reinforced by the fact that lesous is the Greek form of Joshua, leading the LXX translators to render Joshua as "Jesus" throughout the saga of the conquest of Canaan (cf. Heb. 4:8, where the KJV transliterates Joshua's name as "Jesus"). Joshua-Jesus typology was already well established in the early Church (cf. Heb. 3) and elaborated extensively in the patristic period."

As regards this article Jesus as long as the article has the Hebrew name and a decent ref as above that should be okay.
As regards your views of what "most Orthodox Jews believe they are not" - whether "most Orthodox Jews/Catholics/Southern Baptists" believe something or not is irrelevant except in sections/articles about that religion - and then only as WP:sourced. As far as Yeshu, Jesus in the Talmud, Yeshua (name) etc. articles - you should restore the academic secular sources you have been deleting irrespective of what any religious group may or may not believe. In ictu oculi (talk) 22:16, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I never deleted sources, I only restored the version you deleted. I am certainly not imposing my views. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:58, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Well that is an issue for Yeshu but check your own edit record there and you may not have noticed it in your haste to remove the scholarly consensus that the name Yeshu is a reference to Jesus, but in doing so you deleted several scholarly footnotes, including an Israeli academic and an orthodox rabbi who disagree with your view. Likewise your edit of Johann Maier (talmudic scholar) footnotes to change the name Jesus (which Maier uses) to Yeshu, indicates a concern to impose your view over academic sources. Your editing on this page Jesus too appears to be opposed to mainstream scholarly views being presented where they disagree with your own. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:33, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Your quote from David Jeffrey only shows that Jesus is the Greek translation for Joshuah as it appears in the Tanakh. Your quote does not show David Jeffreys' saying that Jesus' birth name was Yehoshuah. For you to claim that it does is a clear NOR violation Slrubenstein | Talk 00:40, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Slrubenstein
As regards this article, I'm quite happy with the long-term consensus of the editors. The material about the origin of the Greek name from Hebrew Joshua is totally uncontroversial and David Jeffrey can be used as a source. The fact that in modern Israeli other Greek uses such as Jesus ben Ananias are rendered Yeshua would indicate that the use is as Jeffreys says completely normal - unless it happens to be Jesus of Nazareth. I would request you again to revert your unsourced changes to various articles - particular your edit of Johann Maier (talmudic scholar) footnotes to change the name Jesus (which Maier uses) to Yeshu, and likewise on the Yeshu article to cease pushing the view that there are two Jesuses in Hebrew traditions, which has no scholarly support today, and was even rejected by some Jewish scholars in the middle ages, Simon Duran for example. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:32, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
I am only marginally interested in this issue now In ictu oculi so I will not comment on this matter further, but I should say in passing that 1. Consensus is the bedrock of decision making within Wikipedia. 2. Consensus can change. There is no Wikipolicy that states that a consensus reached when Abe Lincoln was president can not be challenged. It can, and new consensus can be established. In this case it is not worth doing so I think, but there is absolutely no Wikipolicy that says a piece of text can be declared a UNESCO Heritage Site by virtue of an ancient consensus. Consensus can be changed, given enough effort and editors who agree with the change, so that issue must be clarified, regardless of this matter.
Secondly, as a matter of being realistic, which one do you think will be resolved first: the birth-certificate and birth-name of Jesus or that of Barack Obama? When the birth names/places of living people are in dispute among pundits and scholars as we speak, I think 2,000 years old issues should not be pushed too far. So you two guys should just agree on a middle ground in a civil manner and go from there. But I have no further interest in this specific issue of the name. History2007 (talk) 02:04, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi History. Obama I'd hope. Re the name here on Jesus, I'm easy, since the numbers of mainstream editors here will outweigh. Re the content on Yeshu, there's not much anyone can do about it, a fringe article topic inevitably always going to be a POVfork that attracts sectarian editing - the latest being that Yeshu means "let his name be obliterated." which it does, if medieval tracts are the basis of Encyclopedic content on Wikipedia. It really needs an AfD and merge with Jesus (name) and Yeshua (name), as it stands it's a freakshow.In ictu oculi (talk) 13:07, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
I am 99% sure an Afd on that will not succeed and a merge will probably not work, given that Jesus (name) by itself is notable in its own right. You will just spend effort and not get it. Wikipedia is full of pages edited b very few people, so one more will not hurt that much. But that discussion relates to that page, not this one, and should be kept separate. If the Afd/merge/this discussion is to attract attention to that page, these are not the vehicles for that. So each page should really live by itself and those types of SOS signals do not usually work well in Wikipedia because people see them as SOS signals dressed as merge flags, etc. But anyway that is a discussion for that page, not this page. History2007 (talk) 14:26, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi History, Well I think you're probably right about all 3 of those points. I'll leave it. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:46, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Revert to changes to 1>Era Format 2>Engvar 3>date format

This 2011-JUL-24 edit, with no edit summary, began a series of changes to 1> Era notation, 2> date format, and 3> Engvar. I have reverted those changes & tried to reintroduce all other changes made since then. If I missed one please be patient--JimWae (talk) 06:10, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Pictures

Technically, all pictures should be removed since nobody knows what Jesus looks like.

68.84.62.67 (talk) 00:14, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Technically, all pictures of Jesus should be understood as later artist interpretations and not photographic evidence or something like that. This has been covered before. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:17, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. I have been meaning to work on depictions of Jesus among other things and leave a short summary and a Main here. But that needs to happen after that article itself has been cleaned up. The summary will probably clear things up and avoid these questions in the future. It will probably be 2 months from now. In the meantime, we should point out the same applies to Buddha etc. in the absence of photography. History2007 (talk) 01:06, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Technically, all depictions of Buddah, Mohammed, etc. should be removed, since nobody knows what they looked like.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.64.0.252 (talk • contribs)
Repeating yourself and saying the word technically doesn't provide any substance or merit to your argument. Can you point to any of the site's policies or guidelines to explain why we shouldn't have pictures of them? Why is so inappropriate to feature later artistic representation that the majority of our readership associates with these figures, with the understanding that these aren't photographs? Why should we oppress visual learners? Ian.thomson (talk) 23:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Maybe he should try this on the Buddha page first, if he manages to remove all those, then repeat the discussion here. History2007 (talk) 05:59, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

"Person"

So there's some back and fourth going on over this. The wording implies that Christianity sees God and the Holy Spirit as "Persons" — says who? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 13:18, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

See the first few sources at Trinity. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:29, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
e/c. Right. And also here. But this discussion is really not necessary given that this is a secular and non-theological article. The entire debate about upper case vs lower case can be avoided if the word "person" is not used and we say a "member of" instead, being less theological. I will not bother discussing this again, for it is a minor issue, not worth debating. It is a theological issue and should not affect this secular article in any significant way. History2007 (talk) 13:36, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
Good. So wouldn't it be easy to move them here instead of edit-warring (not you)? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 13:32, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh. I see that's just been done. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 13:35, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)(edit conflict)(edit conflict)Or the source in this article discussing the Trinity, where it becomes a little clearer that Person and person mean two different things. As far as I can tell, our understanding of the word person would not translate as "Persona" as Person would, but as "individua." Ian.thomson (talk) 13:41, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Latest research and findings on the life and death of Jesus

In the latest revision, I referenced several documentaries based on the latest research and findings by notable historians and scholars – and endorsed by government and notable institutions. Wikipedia is not about holding some religious belief – it’s all about scientific and historical facts and findings, and presenting the truth in front of the world community – which it is created for. For disputed facts you can present the arguments of the both sides, but you CANNOT forcibly suppress the other point of view and delete data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikiglobaleditor (talk • contribs) 09:30, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

YouTube videos are not, as a rule, reliable sources. The BBC documentary is speculative, not factual to begin with. The "Jesus in Kashmir" idea is completely fringe and has been pushed by some very few popular book writers. Jesus life has been the subject of scholarly discourse for more than a millenium. Reliable sources, as e.g. books by scholars or papers published in the scholarly press, abound. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:48, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree.The notion that he rests in Kashmir is something that does not have any significant acceptance by the scientific community.Sam 10:09, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
In my edit I CLEARLY used the word 'by some scholars' - and Wikipedia has a clear policy on disputed facts : to present arguments from the BOTH sides. That's what I am doing - and you people are clearly violating the WP:Policy based on your 'personal' prejudices. You can argue it here but you CANNOT delete documented & endorsed facts Wikiglobaleditor (talk) 10:17, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Instead of wildly brandishing generic policy, please read up on WP:RS, WP:FRINGE, and WP:WEIGHT. Also, I fail to see why WP:WEASEL makes your violation of the other policies less egregious. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:44, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Wikiglobaleditor - please see WP:IRS. A "scholar" generally implies a university tenured academic. Secondly Wikipedia already has 2 articles for these theories: Jesus in Ahmadiyya Islam and Lost years of Jesus. So it's not that Wikipedia supresses Fringe theories, but WP:Fringe is there to say how those theories are sourced/represented. Take a look at Moon landing conspiracy theories and the footnote linked categories there. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:39, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Just in case this is still necessary, I agree completely with Stephen Schultz and In ictu oculi. Moreover, to claim that a BBC documentary - r any work of scholarship - is "endorsed by government" shows a massive failure to understand the nature of both scholarship and government. Governments might underwrite scholarly research, but they do not "endorse" scholarly research. Government officials are usually not qualified to do so, and with very specific exceptions (perhaps the Congressional Budget Office) they are not independent. TV documentaries, even for the BBC, are meant first to entertain and secondly to educate (in fact, the BBC recently produced a documentary on precisely this!) I am afraid, Wikiglobaleditor, that you have to be more than a couch-potato to research an encyclopedia article. Read the most recent books published by major academic presses, and articles published in established, peer-reviewed journals, if you want to learn more about what scholars think. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:33, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Jesus on the Internet?

Croatian writer Giancarlo Kravar: If and when Jesus is come back to this world to judge the living and the dead, he will do it on a network of networks - the Internet! Why can not we have to fear the Day of Judgement.78.2.85.125 (talk) 21:42, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Your point being?--Sam 05:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

BCE

This rubbish has got to stop. It's not widely used, it's flawed and hypocritical. Unless you're using something else for the names of the days of the week, you're a hypocrit. I demand another consensus, this time not one full of left wing pov pushers. Alexandre8 (talk) 01:13, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Consensus does not arise by demand or by personal attacks or lack of assumptions of good faith. The most that kinds of arguments will get you is a block for disruption. Let me gently direct your attention to our policies: WP:ERA and WP:EDITWAR. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:22, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Wikipedia is neutral, so there is no point in saying "the year of OUR LORD" (AD) or "the year before OUR MESSIAH" (BC) except within a Christian context. While Christ is of central importance to Christianity, Christianity does not have a monopoly on Jesus. The decision to use both BCE/CE and BC/AD covers both contexts. As for BCE/CE not being widely used, it is widely used in academic circles (guess where we get our sources from?), and it is finding increased use elsewhere. If you refuse to get this, I recommend you leave and go waste Conservapedia's time and bandwidth. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:25, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
OK so what is your alternative for monday BC AD has never been an issue since people like you come along and create problems out of no where. BC AD never offended anyone. IT's part of our language and you altering it has to be the most inflammatory thing to date. Alexandre8 (talk) 01:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm glad you've proven your hypocracy in more than one field. Suggesting to me conservapedia. my assuming socialists are supporters of BCE is just as equal to your assumption that all BC supporters are American Conservative Christians. Plain daft and wrong. Alexandre8 (talk) 01:29, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Dude, Alexandre8, you gotta stop ripping up articles man, unless you get a proper vote. It doesn't matter if you are right or not. This guy is going everywhere and ripping out articles having a BCE manor of style. Jasonasosa (talk) 02:00, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Don't forget that people first went around ripping up AD articles. This is no chicken or egg. The chicken came first here. Alexandre8 (talk) 02:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
And where are they today? hm? Probably where you're going to end up. Jasonasosa (talk) 02:07, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
They BCE pushers won, that's where they are today, or we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Alexandre8 (talk) 02:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
I think it’s comical that we humans have been arguing about CE vrs AD for the past century when God is not even thinking about it, since time is irrelevant to Him. While we wait for time to go by, He just Is at all times. Jasonasosa (talk) 04:54, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Plus, s far as I can tell, BCE and CE were first used by Christians and by the Church. This article uses both systems, so it is clearly respectful of both. I am always fascinated by dogmatists who insist it is "either/or," that it must be one or the other. And what on earth does socialism have to do with this? Jesus was a socialist after all. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:36, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Please don't twist words. This particular edit has funily enough nothing to do with jesus. We are examining wording, not content. Alexandre8 (talk) 15:07, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
To keep things short, please see Talk:Jesus/Archive_details and all the archives that contain AD/BC/BCE/CE discussions. In short, this is not going to change. And I really really wonder what this has to do with "left-wing" or "socialist". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
It is going to change. Just not very soon. --Zundark (talk) 18:34, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I think we need to fully protect this page because edit wars are occuring. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Curiouscorey (talk • contribs) 20:35, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

There has been no edit to the article for 7 days. That's not a current edit war. We don't apply full protection preemptively. See WP:NO-PREEMPT. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Lineage of prophets

Template on Lineage of prophet 'Six Islamic Prophets' is well designed and placed in article Islamic view of Jesus after lot of discussion. Jesus is one of prominent prophets and as precursor he is narrated in context with Islam in this article also. To place the template in this article will bring home this fact as well make Jesus position clear to all common reader. Hope most will agree to it.--Md iet (talk) 12:15, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I think 2 editors reverted that, and I would be 20% for including it, 80% for not having it because Jesus is not a central figure in Islam. Template looks good, but is not essential to this page. Sorry. History2007 (talk) 13:21, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Md iet, do you already forget the lengthy discussion we had about including this chart a year or two ago? We agreed that in the context of this article it violates NOR. This article mentions the Islamic view in the lead, has a section, and a link to another article, so it certainly makes the importance of Jesus to Muslims clear to all readers already! I remember that you made the same argument the last time you kept inserting your graphic in this article. Do you really forget all the objections? Then, please just go back to the archived talk and refresh your memory. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 14:35, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
By the way, the discussion at the Jesus in Islam article was last year and did not end with a consensus. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:40, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

"Most"

"Most critical historians agree that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew..." — this needs a citation, giving at least one who does not agree. Otherwise, I don't see the point in "most". Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 04:09, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually the lede just needs to summarize the body (as in WP:LEAD) and the body has references which state that by the end of the 19th century people also argued that Jesus was Aryan - e.g. the Nazi theologians supported that hypothesis (search for Aryan in the article /refs 354 and 364). So that should settle the issue. However, Palestinian was added with no scholarly support, so I will remove it until support is added. History2007 (talk) 06:44, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
oh, ok. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 07:33, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion: FAQ of past questions

In order to reduce the level of effort that goes into "repeated discussions" does it make sense to have a FAQ at the top of this page that gets populated as questions are asked?

My rationale is that there are usually underlying processes that drive systems and Wikipedia is no exception. Some time ago I came across a paper based on a thesis by a student about Wikipedia and he had done some studies that made sense. As I searched again, I only found a summary of the thesis here, but his main argument, supported by various graphs was that as the number of Wikipages and Wikiusers increase, reality will catch up with us, and he predicted that there will be:

an untenable trend towards progressive increase of the effort spent by the most active authors, as time passes by. This trend may eventually cause that these authors will reach their upper limit in the number of revisions they can perform each month, thus starting a decreasing trend in the number of monthly revisions, and an overall recession of the content creation and reviewing process in Wikipedia.

So as more and more IPs require comments, the level of effort to support them may become a burden. One way to avoid that may be to have an FAQ that answers questions like "why do you say most scholar", as asked above a few days ago, or a summary of the responses provided to HappyGod above, etc. Also the issue of "Jesus is buried in Kashmir" discussed above may have an entry there with multiple signatures endorsing an exclusion, etc. That may get asked in 18 months again.

That way, when a question is asked, we can just say "read FAQ item 17" and be done with it. Over time most questions will have answers in the FAQ and it will be easier to handle than the archives. Of course an ask.com type system may arrive in a few years for Wiki-archives, but that is too far away. For now, FAQ may help reduce the ongoing burden. Suggestions? History2007 (talk) 21:50, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

There already is a faq. Maybe we need to make it more obvious? Farsight001 (talk) 21:52, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
I will call my optometrist and give him a really hard time! But now that I have seen it, the FAQ is very short, and needs expansion, and more prominence. Also some of the links (e.g. Chronology) don't seem to get to the right archive. And if that had been a 2006 discussion, the Chronology has since been significantly expanded, e.g. by working backwards from the trial before Gallio in Achaea in 51/52, etc. If the FAQ had been more extensive the discussion with HappyGod should have been minimal. I will try to update some of the FAQ then. But how to make it more prominent? Is there a way to have a footer on this talk page that says, "read the FAQ first"? History2007 (talk) 22:02, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Semi protected page

Due to the persistence of the fruitloop spamming this page with messages about "Jesus, the spawn of Satan", I have semi protected for one week. Apologies to genuine IP editors - please don't hesitate to ping my talkpage if this causes you any issues. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 12:01, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Christ believed to be resurrected?

Second sentence reads: 'Most Christian denominations venerate him as God the Son incarnated and believe that he rose from the dead after being crucified.[9][10]'

I have three problems here: One is in the linguistics. Denominations cannot venerate or reject. Only church leaders or groups of people could. Not the denominations itself. The point is important because it skips over the issue of who formulates opinions on behalf of people with a denomination, and how they received a mandate to do this or not. Second follows from point one, is caused by the attribution in note 9 and 10: Two scholars (both publications are written almost a generation ago) can hardly be claimed to represent today's mandated opinions about 'most denominations'. Third is, that there is a wide gap between official points of view held by religious leaders in official debates, and private views held by many of the same people and ordinary Christians. In Netherlands, students of theology and church leaders have in several anonymous queries and interviews stated that they think that it is very possible or likely that Jesus wasn't literally born from a virgin, and didn't die and resurrect in the biological sense.

Almost all Christians in my family and social network hold similar views: Jesus was extremely special and important because he formulated the foundation of Christianity, and the stories about his non-biological conception, and his post mortem reappearance are very unlikely to have happened in the biological world, but they serve to illustrate the power of his ideas and legacy.

To me it seems that to formulate that 'Most Christian denominations venerate him as God the Son incarnated and believe that he rose from the dead' is factually incorrect, it suggests that most Christians would reject standard medical opinions about conception and death (which, at least in my surrounding they don't, so it is to the very least an opinion that should be attributed to literature more convincingly), and it misses or covers up the double layer of believing-while-knowing-better. As such it is a denial of the realities of today's Christianity.

Maybe a better formulation would be that Officially, Christian leaders from many denominations still venerate him as God the Son incarnated and hold that they believe that he rose from the dead after being crucified. It is however unclear how many Christians still today hold these as absolute truths.Pieter Felix Smit (talk) 17:07, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Partly a linguistic issue I guess, but please see: Baptist_beliefs and the talk there as an example of how certain groups do not have a "central teaching authority". Catholics do have a published hierarchy, but that does not apply to all Christians. I do not mind how it is worded, but I am not sure if the term "leaders" will not cause further debate sooner or later. Not an issue that is central to the article, however. History2007 (talk) 17:16, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
Besides the linguistics, Pieter Felix Smit, you must remember that your point of view and experiences aren't relevant. Also, saying "it suggests that most Christians would reject standard medical opinions about conception and death" is an interesting generalization that I do not believe this particular topic warrants discussing. Besides the issues I mention earlier in this paragraph, such generalizations as a whole should not be made and will only fan flames of senseless debate. Humans are interesting creatures who believe what they do on certain topics regardless of what they believe on topics seemingly related. In this particular instance, there are many who hold such topics unrelated. One can never weigh someone's belief in one thing against their belief in something else, unless the topic at hand specifically requires it and such "weighing" is done (and being cited to) sources that are reliable on such a topic - and the topic at hand must be relevant to such a discussion (which this one isn't). Anything else is either inserting our own opinions or biases into the matter by using our judgment on "Well, if A is true, then B cannot be - *I* believe that others would think so too". Nor is it a matter of if what they think is right... or wrong. It's only a matter of *what* they think. You'll find a bunch of helpful links (besides the ones I provided above) on your talk page in the welcome message VQuakr left you. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 05:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Celsus

This came to my mind because I was on the fence as to whether or not Celsus's Panthera should be included in the infobox in the father section. It is a historical fringe view, but it is notable, as seen in Yeshu#Meaning and etymology of Pandera and Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera#Historical context for the name Pantera. I did not put it in myself because a comparable unevidenced claim made today would not be considered for the infobox, but I'm asking because Celsus's claim is less than a couple century's younger than the Christian claim, and was something that early Christianity had to put up with.

However, I see that Celsus's version is not mentioned at all in the article. Wouldn't it be appropriate under a "Alexandrian Hellenism" section of "Religious views?" I'm inclined not to include it in the historical views section because no evidence was provided by Celsus. Ian.thomson (talk) 13:29, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Celsus is squarely within the historical fringe territory, but can probably get briefly mentioned in the historical section - I will add if you like. If we do not add it, in 6 months someone who reads that other article will ask about it anyway. However, adding Celsus to the infobox is opening teh door to all kinds of other entries there, about Jesus being in from Kashmir, Japan or Beverly Hills, so should be avoided. I had actually researched that topic in detail a few months ago, so I am familiar with the literature. But equating Celsus' indirect statement quoted by Origen with the 19th century Pantera grave in Germany is without any basis, except for Tabor's personal conjecture with no evidence and no scholarly support and should probably stay out. History2007 (talk) 14:37, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Ian, History 2007, keeping Tabor out is a good idea, his ideas are WP:Fringe and belong on his own bio article. However Celsus isn't quite fringe in that he was clearly a pagan exposed to the arguments found in Jesus in the Talmud, as such Celsus is an important historical reference point for the Pharisee/rabbinical reaction to Jesus between the "are you not a Samaritan" "we are not born of fornication" of G.John and the Talmud. How you link/manage that I don't know. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:46, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi, Celsus is already there, sans Tabor, just search for it in the text. He is in along with Origen in the language/race of Jesus section. History2007 (talk) 07:59, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Yep I saw, it was just in case there was some idea to take him out. :) All good. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:54, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

It is possible that the rabbis of the Talmud were exposed to the arguments found in Celsus, but not the other way around, as Celsus lived hundreds of years before the Talmud was written. This is like saying that John Lock was exposed to Wikipedia's articles on social contract theory. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:28, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

There are even arguments that Celsus and the rabbis may have drawn on as yet unidentified 3rd type of source with no influence either way between the two of them. So the article has not related Celsus and rabbinical statements and is probably best left that way - trying to include that either way will be opening a very specific Pandora's box that should be opened elsewhere, e.g. in Celsus' own page or Jesus in the Talmud etc. But what is widely supported is that Celsus was aware of the New Testament accounts, and the text just states that without fanfare as to how he knew it. But overall, this is a highly specialized historical issue and not a top level item that drives this general page about Jesus. History2007 (talk) 19:43, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
My point wasn't really about what is the real source of the stories, it was about the difference between the (entirely uncontroversial and fairly precise) date of Celsus' work, and the (equally uncontroversial, although far less precise) date for the composition of the Talmud. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:42, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, there is a wide gap. But gaps have never stopped theories when people have to "publish or perish". But by and large there is no solid, or universally agreed on, basis that I have seen for the influence assertions, but as usual there are people who have published something on every possible perspective, e.g. that the stories may have been floating in the river of folklore, before being transcribed. Yet these are all, of course, mostly conjectures with no solid historical support. But again it makes no major difference to this article or the general views on Jesus, given that is a highly specialized discussion on Celsus, rather than Jesus. History2007 (talk) 21:06, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from , 20 October 2011

The historicity of jesus christ has not been proved unequivocally. there is still intense debate about whether jeses was actually a historical figure.

98.202.208.52 (talk) 00:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You're quite correct, although his name is Jesus. Do you have a specific edit request, though? --FormerIP (talk) 00:46, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
No request made. --Jac16888 Talk 01:29, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Biased article

Why is this article highly biased towards the completely unfounded Christian point of view? As the so-called "free encyclopedia" should be free of bias, I ask the Wikipedia community to pay more attention, revert bias and be more objective and not leaning towards your own opinion when writing an article.88.236.124.224 (talk) 15:24, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Would you mind being useful and saying what exactly you have a problem with, or are you just going to complain in a general way that doesn't help and insults a number of the non-Christian editors involved in this article?
The article summarizes what is written about Jesus, with weight given to different views according to how present those views are in different sources. Most of the stuff written about Jesus is written by Christians, in fact noone would know who this Jesus fellow is if Christianity had not come about.
Christian beliefs are only descibed as beliefs, not as solid facts. Rejection of these beliefs is also described. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:36, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Moreover, there is a sizable body of critical, scholarly literature on Jesus written by respected credible academics — and this article represents their views as well, with links to articles that go into much greater detail (just as the article on Christianity is where you actually must go to find out what Christians really think, not here). Slrubenstein | Talk 17:11, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Saying that an article is biased should not be taken as insult to authors (christian or not). If an article is biased in a large sense, then it is perfectly okay to say "the (whole) article is biased". IP 88.x.x.x didn't "assume good faith" with his/her tone, but it was okay for him/her to call the article "(largely) biased". Many articles in WP are indeed like this (largely biased). We need to be allowed to say it generally without the burden of citing specifics, as we would be allowed to do in any OTHER article that we thought was "largely biased". Attempting to bully someone (only slightly) into that extra burden implies, as a minimum, the "bias of defense", that is, that you and/or your other christian and non-christian editors consider this article your own and feel you must defend it. At most, it implies an actual attempt to, um, ah, bias the article.  :-)

Okay then. I piped in here because I too noticed some bias/POV right off the bat. Not that I should be bullied into citing specifics, but one example is in the main picture under "Resting Place" where it says "Traditionally and temporarily", as if "temporarily" is a fact. "Temporarily" implies "risen" and walked "somewhere else" of his own accord, right? Most would not interpret it as meaning he was removed, "still dead", by others and put somewhere else, right? Now, "temporarily" might be given as a "fact" in the citation, but no such citation can be held to be reliable. The only time a citation may be used is if it is reliable. Clearly, in this case "reliability" of most citations is a matter of serious dispute. To state "temporarily" as if it is a fact is an acceptance of a citation as reliable, or a (mis)use of an unreliable citation. No citation giving such a thing as a fact can be held to be reliable. If it is implied to be reliable by its use, it is POV, that is, biased. If it is a (mis)use of an unreliable citation, okay maybe that wouldn't be biased, just a mistake, but given the subject it looks a lot like bias.

Ian.thomson said "Christian beliefs are only described as beliefs, not as solid facts." In the above example, that isn't the case. A belief IS described as a fact. Additionally, he says "The article summarizes what is written about Jesus, with weight given to different views according to how present those views are in different sources". This is not the way to assess reliability and it is not encyclopedic. It's like voting for what gets considered to be scientific fact. If a lot of powerful people write that the sun goes around the earth, should that be given great weight and described as fact? Of course not. The criterion is reliability. Usually, expertise of editors is applied in determining reliability. But, sources containing religious assertions (vs. data-based writings from a history perspective) can never be agreed to be reliable. Anything stated as a fact from such a source is either the good-faith use of an unreliable source, or BIAS. Given the nature of the subject, and the never ending desire of believers to convince (i.e. BIAS) non-believers, it is much easier to give greater likelihood to the prospect of bias rather than the good-faith (mis)use of an unreliable reference. This historic onslaught of bias (in other media) also makes IP 88.x.x.x's defensive tone, well, forgivable!  :-)

108.7.242.49 (talk) 05:28, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

No it is not OK to make a vague and general criticism without stating expliclitly how it could me improved. What is biased exactly? Which alternative viewpoints does the IP want to include?·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 11:21, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

To moderate my above comment a bit, reliability of a citation probably needs to apply only to things asserted as fact. If something is stated as "so-and-so believes X" then maybe "according to how present those views are in different sources" is a good criterion. Ian.thomson was probably referring to this (second) case.

108.7.242.49 (talk) 05:52, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

The top part, WP:TLDR, but the last part regarding "reliability of a citation probably needs to apply only to things asserted as fact" is not Wikipedis policy, and is the same as the other case. The issues are explained in WP:RS which should be read. History2007 (talk) 08:34, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
You could be right. I was making a different point though (I think). I was backing off from a previously stronger assertion and probably using a stricter sense of the word "reliable"  :-) 108.7.242.49 (talk) 01:24, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Regarding the temporary resting place example, temporary also implies stolen.
As for religious sources being unreliable, we don't cite the Bible as historical data, but scholarly interpretations which take history into account and read between the lines, something that has to be done with most documents before the Enlightenment.
As for demanding certain responses being "bullying," just saying the article is biased without saying how is a waste of everyone's time and bandwidth. It is not helpful, the wasteful cry for attention is only separated from trolling by intention. Ian.thomson (talk) 11:51, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, if it really did refer to the removal of a (still) dead body from a tomb, then "temporary" is unbiased. However, there are a few context reasons for a reader to expect that that wasn't the intent, and if it wasn't the intent or if it is interpreted otherwise, it is biased. The context reasons are: 1) Given the pervasive story of resurrection, "temporary" strongly suggests that it is referring to the prospect of resurrection. A story of removal of a dead body by theft or otherwise is not pervasive. It is not in the general background knowledge that human beings (necessarily) use to interpret what they read. 2) The cited source is "apologetic" in nature. There are other reasons, but what I'm really getting at is that this should be addressed because reasonable people can readily interpret it as biased, whether it was intended or not.
It is easily fixed: 1) Add an inline note (like an inline citation) after "temporarily" saying it refers to theft from the tomb (if the source supports it) or, 2) Simply remove "temporarily" and put "Initial" before "Resting Place" also with an inline note saying it refers to removal. 3) Any of many other ways that I'm sure you guys can come up with. 108.7.242.49 (talk) 02:14, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
I want to add: it has taken me many years but I am now very tired of people who argue about the lead or in this case the info-box. I have seen this over and over again at a wide variety of articles: people don't like the lead, but never take the time to read the body of the article.
This matters because the info-box like the lead should only summarize points from the body of the article. It is in the body of the article that we explain the different views, identifying the perspective and assessing its weight, and provide sources.
In my view, the only question any of us should argue over with regards to the introduction or info-box of any article is: does it introduce or summarize the whole article accurately and in a clear and graceful style? If it does not, then we make sure that it does.
Similarly, all arguments over neutrality, verifiability of views, reliability of sources, should cconcern itself with the body. If the body violates NOR that is a serious problem. It doesn't matter if the lead or info box are neutral if the bulk of the article isn't. Even if addressing this requires on to read the whole article. If the body complies with NOR, then it is simply a matter of checking to make sure that the lead and info-box actually reflect the article as a whole.
I do not mean to pick on one anonymous user who I believe is acting in good faith. I am describing what i see as a common problem at Wikipedia, and I think that this particular discussion is just one example of a widespread problem. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:39, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Standards apply to the whole article. You seem to be suggesting that part of an article doesn't need to meet standards while the rest does. That's not supportable. Reasonably able people can easily summarize an unbiased article in a way that's unbiased. It just not that hard.  :-) 108.7.242.49 (talk) 01:12, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
i read Slrubenstein's comment above three different times, and I do not see what you're suggesting, that s/he is saying standards don't apply to the whole article. That wasn't the point at all. Ella Plantagenet (talk) 18:06, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
I would just like to add my weight to the people who claim that this article is biased. It is written from the point of view that it is almost indisputable that the character known as Jesus existed.
The section that details the arguments' that Jesus could be mythical, is a few paragraphs long. It starts with the phrase "Although most scholars involved with historical Jesus research believe his existence can be established using documentary and other evidence", and proceeds to give 5 references. It then suggest another 5 authors who disagree. Since we have 5 for, and 5 against, whence comes "most scholars"?
Since we must all agree that the Bible cannot be used as a reliable source for the historicity of Jesus, is there any hard evidence for his existance? It's interesting that nobody would argue that Hercules, Mithras, Adonis, Dionysys, Attis etc. were historic, yet we are apparently all so certain that Jesus was, despite the deafening silence regarding any actual evidence.
I would suggest that the default tone for an encycolpaedia regarding the historicity of characters who are held to be gods, is that they do not and did not exist. Some examples of what I would consider reasonable evidence would be:
  • Roman records of his crucifixion/existance/trial.
  • Records of his presence in any of the countries he was purported to have visited.
  • Records of the presence of any of his disciples.
  • A historian that documented his existance that didn't also believe he was the creator of the universe.
The bottom line is, given the miracles, and general fuss that Jesus was supposed to have caused, it is very unlikely that such a character would leave such a void of evidence. Also, there was argument even around the time Jesus supposedly existed that he was mythical, the Cathars for example believed he was mythical. How could this be if he was alive and famous? It would be like people today arguing about whether Elvis existed.
Similarly, the 'evidence' for Jesus existence, all comes way too late. We have Josephus at ~95CE (likely forgeries since he wasn't Christian, yet still refers to Jesus as the Christ or 'anointed one'). Then it's Hegesippus at ~170CE, and then Pliny the Younger at ~112CE. If we take the Elvis analogy again, it would be as though nobody would decide to write anything about Elvis until 2037. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HappyGod (talk • contribs) 09:31, 2 October 2011 (UTC) HappyGod (talk) 09:39, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, the arguments above are classic WP:OR and personal views. The Jesus myth theory does have some supporters, but they are a distinct minority, as its own article states. Wikipedia uses the general scholarly consensus as expressed in WP:RS sources, and there is a preponderance of respected scholars who support the historical existence of Jesus - regardless of if any miracles were performed. The miracles are Christian belief, and logically speaking they should not be used to either support or deny the historicity of Jesus as a historical figure. If and when the Jesus myth theory gains widespread scholarly acceptance, the situation may change, but as of now it does not have it, as the WP:RS references clearly indicate. History2007 (talk) 10:19, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Precisely. If HappyGod is so interested in telling historians how to work, she should get a doctorate in history and write a thesis on Jesus and then publish her views. In the mantime, our responsibility is not to make our own judgments about the sources but rather to present all significant views. We do say that some people believe Jesus never existed but as history2007 says, this is a minority among scholars. Our introduction not only identifies the views (views, not "truths") of the major religions. We also provide a concise an accurate account of what most critical historians/academic biographers of Jesus agree on, and a brief account of the diversity of views among such scholars. It wouldn't matter if every active editor working on this page personally believed Jesus never existed - we have to provide an accurate and proportionate account of the major views. We also provide sources, so if anyone doesn't understand why it is that most historians hold this view, they can, well, get the book and read it. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:22, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
"The Jesus myth theory does have some supporters, but they are a distinct minority, as its own article states" - Weasel words and citation most definitely required! Also, using another wikipedia page as evidence is a circular argument to say the least.
I note that both critics also spectacularly miss the point of my complaint and are typically patronising and arrogant. It is up to us to ensure that we not only provide references, but provide reliable references. And who exactly are charged with making sure that they are? Well, that would be you and me. So if I'm able to provide logical reasons why some evidence is bogus, why should that be discounted?
It is not enough to provide a few links to some historians that say that Jesus exists and then make a blanket statement that "most historians ...". If you want to make that statement, back it up with facts. Where is the poll that asks contemporary historians on their view? You can find just as many who do, than those who don't. I'm just asking that we be intellectually honest in what is supposed to be an objective document. HappyGod (talk) 15:24, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
There you go: highly implausible. Please read more, search more, opine less. History2007 (talk) 15:32, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Using another Wikpedia page as evidence is not a "circular argument" at all. Pointing to a page that goes into the matter in more detail and provides citations is entirely reasonable. "Reliable references" refers to actual scholarly sources, not what you consider to be "logical reasons". As a matter of fact I find your reasons wholly illogical, but this is not a forum for discussing them. See WP:TALK. The links are not to some historians who say that he existed (note the past tense - only believing Christians think he "exists" in the present tense) but to historians who say this is the general consensus of scholars. Most historians consider that the figure who appears in the NT does not in any way resemble a mythological being. The idea that "records" of such an obscure person should still exist demonstrate how little you understand of what we can reasonably expect from historical material from the era. Paul B (talk) 15:35, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
It's interesting and unfortunate that you guys insist on patronising editors in order to defend your article. It's not ok to use other wiki pages, because that would be original research. You could simply have two pages that back each other up, and that would be ... circular.
There were about 40 historians active at the time Jesus supposedly existed. They mention loads of characters from around that time. I recently enjoyed a book detailing the lives of the first 4 ceasars of Rome, as well as many of the contemporary politicians of that era, including Pilate, Cato, Herrod, Augustus. All of whom are well documented and mentioned in numerous separate documents. Basically, if you exist and are famous, you get mentioned. It is for this reason that people are now also beginning to question the existence of Plato (and rightly so in my view).
Of course, Plato's article will no doubt be a more objective read on Wikipedia. HappyGod (talk) 16:43, 2 October 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by HappyGod (talk • contribs)

Why would the contemporary historians bother with a Jewish daylaborer street-preacher who lived in the boonies, only had a few dozen followers while living (no more than a hundred), died only a few years after gathering followers, and was executed as a common criminal? It's like expecting CSPAN to give coverage to a homeless guy I talked to who thought he was Moses. And how and why would a few dozen people simultaneously make up such a figure and begin convincing others that such a fellow existed without being called liars by the people who would have executed Jesus? Ian.thomson (talk) 17:03, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually Ian, Jesus supposedly drew crowds of many thousands, and 'a multitude' aparently saw him bodily ascend into heaven after having risen from the dead.

Even if you secularise it, and exclude the mythical aspects, he was also the subject of a major public trial that involved a Roman prelate, and the upper-echilons of the Jewish elite. HappyGod (talk) 14:32, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

If you don't want to be patronised, then try to learn something about Wikipedia before posting garbled comments. The pages you were pointed to are policy pages. You say "it's not ok to use other wiki pages, because that would be original research". No. See WP:OR. It's not OK to use them as sources in an article, because of the rules of WP:RS. That does not mean we can't point to policy pages on the talk page or indeed to other articles. You are completely mixing up unrelated issues. The number of "forty historians" is plucked out of thin air - or more likely the internet. There is no reason why any of these guys should have mentioned an utterly minor preacher and/or petty criminal in an obscure corner of the empire. Other messainic figures such as Theudas and Judas of Galilee are not mentioned by these forty historians, any more than even major Jewish figures like Gamaliel. Even the most famous of all Jewish religious leaders, Hillel the Elder, is not mentioned in any contemporary "records". Are all these people mythical? Paul B (talk) 17:10, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I'll leave it at this entry as I'm clearly not going to find any love in these talk pages :-)
But I will correct you Paul, as in your haste to make a punchy comment you did not read my entry properly. When I said that you cannot use other WP pages as evidence, I was not talking about policy pages at all. If you read what I wrote, I objected to the main page for the 'Jesus Myth' theory being used to corroborate what I consider to be bias on the 'Jesus' page, mkay?
It's pretty straight forward as to why this can't be allowed to happen. Since anyone can edit/author any page on Wikipedia, if you were to allow this circular corroboration, you could simply author/edit any old wiki page to prove damn near anything.
And finally, to answer your question; No, I don't think Hillel the Elder or Judas were historical figures either. If you compare the stories of Joseph and Judah to Jesus and Judas, you see that the latter is simply a retelling of that earlier tale. The names are even identical as Joseph is Jesus, and Judah is Judas in Hebrew. HappyGod (talk) 14:32, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
You seem to have difficulties of comprehension. No-one pointed you to the Jesus myth page, at least not on this talk page. History2007 pointed you to several policy pages. He also mentioned the concept of Jesus myth. However, there would be nothing wrong with pointing you to a page that provided more information. If you think that Hillel the Elder (and Plato!) are mythical you have lost touch with any sense of reality about ancient history. You also seem to be confusing Judas of Galilee with Judas Iscariot. They are two different people. It's not uncommon for different people to have the same given name you know. My given name is the same as Paul Robeson and Paul Revere. Is that supposed to prove we are all the same person? There is very little resemblence between the stories of Joseph and Judah and of Jesus and Judas unless you have a very active imagination or a desperate desire to believe this stuff. Paul B (talk) 09:55, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Paul, read this slowly: "The Jesus myth theory does have some supporters, but they are a distinct minority, as its own article states". He was referring to the 'Jesus Myth' main article page.
Also (I'll use the hebrew names):
  • Joseph betrayed by Judah for 20 shekels of silver, Joseph betrayed by Judah for 30 pieces of silver. Both were the price of a slave at the time.
  • Joseph and his 12 brothers, Joseph and his 12 deciples.
  • Both were without sin.
  • Both were the favorite son of their father.
  • Both taken to Egypt to avoid being killed.
  • Both started their ministries at age 30 (See Lord Raglan's 'The Hero')
  • Both had miraculous births (Hero pattern).
  • Both not recognised by their brethren (Hero pattern)
  • Both became royalty (Hero pattern)
  • Both falsely accused, fed the hungry, resisted temptation, hated for their teachings, silent before acccusers
I'm not saying that they're identical, just another retelling of a stock standard 'hero pattern' tale. HappyGod (talk) 03:06, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Half of these parallels are totally spurious. Joseph did not have a miraculous birth. It is meaningless to say that Jesus was "the favorite son" of his father (anyway, is that God or St Joseph?). Equally it means nothing to say that both were "not recognised by their brethren" (in what sense was Jesus not recognised by his brothers?). Joesph did not become royalty. He was a vizir, or sort of prime-minster. There is nothing about Joseph being "hated for his teachings". And anyway, there is no parallel betrween Judah and Judas, since the other brothers wanted to kill Joseph, but Judah saved his life, the opposite of what Judas did. I'm sure this is all just copied off some website, but it's not suited here. The Jesus myth article or Jesus in comparative mythology might be better places to discuss this material. And then you should say where it comes from. Paul B (talk) 14:22, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
I have not searched, but I wonder if we can find an ELIZA type Chatterbot somewhere on the web to engage HappyGod. Then he can just type his personal type comments and theories there, the program will generate a suitable question based on the keywords etc. and the happy conversation can take place calmly without consuming time here. Maybe we should do a search, there are plenty of Chatterbot out there.... History2007 (talk) 14:44, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Your statement about policy and editing is fully correct. Being mythical is neither supported or contradicted by being mentioned in contemporary records, just as not being mentioned neither corroborates or refutes mythical status. I actually think that the argument with the best support is that most and possibly all of what we know about Jesus is myth, but I acknowledge that this is not the mainstream view (yet?). That is what matters, not whether editors here find it likely or unlikely based on their knowledge of the evidence.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:25, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, Wikipedia is not about the determination of truth (whatever it may be), but providing a summary of scholarly sources. History2007 (talk) 17:30, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
HappyGod, your postings are degenerating to WP:Forum, and are purely "personal opinions" without a single WP:RS source and hence irrelevant to Wikipedia. Please avoid the use of Wikipedia talk pages as a forum for the discussion of personal views. You are welcome to discuss such matters at the closest bar to you, with the patrons there, but Wikipedia talk pages are not intended for such conversations. History2007 (talk) 17:22, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
HappyGod, let me elaborate on what History2007 has said. You've obviously done a lot of research. It doesn't matter (until you provide appropriate sources). Even if you are correct. Wikipedia is about verifiability via expert reliable sources in the appropriate fields (which, nothing personal, you are not) given due weight based on the prevalence of the beliefs so as not to unduly promote theories considered to be fringe theories. I am hoping those links will help you understand. Also, it would be helpful if you could put your new proposals at the bottom of the section.
Now of course, you actually may have a list of reliable sources someplace for what you propose... if that's the case, then bring those into the discussion, so the community, as represented by those who choose to edit this article, can help determine (with you) the proper weight such things should be given. Keep in mind though, it may be no weight, a little weight, or perhaps even a lot of weight - or it may be deemed that another article is better suited for this (as indicated elsewhere on this talk page). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 03:24, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Robert. First off, thanks for bringing a voice of reason back to this discussion, and for not playing the man instead of the ball.
I would actally really enjoy doing what you suggest, but I suspect that it would be a huge waste of time. I don't think this article is a level playing field, and no amount of references I include, is going to change that any time soon.
I'm happy to take small wins. I admit that I ventured into opinion there a few times, but I certainly wasn't alone. All I'm asking is that the phrases that say things like "Most historians ..." be replaced with something more objective; like "A common view among western historians ..." for example.
There's no way to defend the current text. Can we really say for sure that most historians from India, China, Abu Dharbi, Ethoipia or Mongolia agree? Of course we can't. That kind of language would have a 'weasel words' tag on it in 5 seconds if it were on any other page. HappyGod (talk) 14:36, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
If you think some of the sentences contain weasel words, then you are free to tag them or open up a discussion about them. The main point is that you understand that all wikipedians, regardless of beliefs, creed or nationality have to play by the same rules. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 14:41, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
Actually since this brouhaha stared I have expanded the mythical section 3 or 4 fold, to cover the various approaches, history, etc. so this type of comment should not come up again in 9 months. History2007 (talk) 15:23, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
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