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Cleaning up first sentence

First sentences tend to get hyper-cluttered. See this discussion at FAC which stemmed from a big mess the WMF made because mobile readers (over half our readers!) need to scroll to get through the alt-name clutter and end up navigating away instead.

I am proposing that we change the first sentence as follows. This doesn't lose any information, it just clears out the alt-name clutter.

Instead of

Jesus (c. 4 BC – c. AD 30 / 33), also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus Christ, was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity. Most Christians believe him to be the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah (Christ) prophesied in the Old Testament.

Do this

Jesus (c. 4 BC – c. AD 30 / 33) was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity. Most Christians believe him to be the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah (Christ) prophesied in the Old Testament. Jesus is also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus Christ.

References

-- Jytdog (talk) 05:39, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but you should put Hebrew/Aramaic instead of just Hebrew in your references. Im sure you can double up using those language tags right? Otherwise I think it should just be listed as the original Aramaic. Colliric (talk) 05:46, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

That seems reasonable. Let's see what others think. Jytdog (talk) 05:48, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Comment I think you have to mention Christ, and preferably explain what that means before mentioning he was a Jewish preacher. I can look more closely at sources, but I have a lot of sources on this topic. I imagine this will end up at RfC, but I would appreciate some time to go through those sources and come up with something fair before it does. I'm puzzled by one issue in the lede - is baptism a Jewish practice? The lede says Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was baptized by John the Baptist and subsequently began his own ministry, preaching his message orally - I'm not sure that sentence makes sense the way we wrote it...Seraphim System ^(talk) 05:52, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm pretty troubled by this also - the lede says Jesus debated with fellow Jews on how to best follow God, engaged in healings, taught in parables and gathered followers. - but there is no mention of the Samaritans? This is hugely important...Seraphim System ^(talk) 06:02, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

It makes this more difficult when lots of issues are piled into a thread. Would you please open separate threads on the baptism and debating things, and please just focus on moving the alt names out of the first sentence in this thread? With regard to waiting, sure, I don't mind. No deadline. Jytdog (talk) 06:08, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Isnt he primary topic for this Jesus Christ - a schismatic figure - Im new to the article - is the consensus on this article that it ia a biography. I think the part about central fgure out Christianity and most Christians believe him to be the Christ has to come first. The part about being a Jewish preacher probably belongs in the second paragraph (where it ia repeated anyway)Seraphim System ^(talk) 06:23, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

A biographical article would put the "Jewish preacher" part first.ScepticismOfPopularisation (talk) 06:36, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

• unclear if folks are agreeing or not, to moving the alt names out of the first sentence... Jytdog (talk) 03:11, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Johnbod's comment above. Adding the Aramaic Yeshua may confuse people and bloat the lead. I support moving this article to Jesus Christ since Jesus Christ redirects here and it would avoid this confusion about historical Jesus ... I think the sentence "Jesus Christ was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader" is not a good first sentence. Something like Christians believe Jesus is the Jewish messiah prophercized in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. (copied from the Christ (title)) article would be better.Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• I'm happy with it as it is now, but am ok with Jytdog's version also. Johnbod (talk) 13:09, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• Most of the comments here have been about other things. We really should start articles with simple, declarative sentences, without alt name clutter per this discussion at FAC. Jytdog (talk) 14:38, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

note on citing aramaic in footnote

So the coding of the footnote uses a template that looks like this in wikitext -- {{lang-he|ישוע|[[Yeshua|Yēšū́aʿ]]}}, which renders like this: Hebrew: ישוע, romanized: Yēšū́aʿ

There is no way to change the "Hebrew" there to "Hebrew/Aramaic" as requested.

There is a separate template for aramaic -- {{lang-arc|ישוע}} , which renders like this: Imperial Aramaic: ישוע

What do folks think of adding that to the note? Jytdog (talk) 03:11, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

If the Aramaic is identical to the Hebrew, I would lean against including it. StAnselm (talk) 18:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Or just drop the inflexible template & do it in text. Johnbod (talk) 02:26, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I think the foreign characters have a pretty bad effect on readability when added to the text, but I would support Aramaic in the footnote. Why would we use Hebrew instead of Aramaic? Although Netanyahu insists that "Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew,", the strong scholarly consensus is still Aramaic.Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:24, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I actually kind of regret bringing this up now because looking at the sources [1] [2] I doubt we are going to be able to reach an agreement on whether to use the aramaic or the Hebrew template. Washington Post says There's scholarly consensus that the historical Jesus principally spoke Aramaic and that is WP:RS so we could use it, if it we wanted to, I guess — but they don't cite any sources [3] — based on the academic sources I am looking at the only consensus seems to be that scholars don't know. Maybe this is why editors decided against adding it in the first place.Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:41, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Please see the well-sourced discussion of language in the body of the article at Jesus#Language,_ethnicity,_and_appearance. Jytdog (talk) 14:39, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Baptism

just found a great source on the context of baptism doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521243773.017 Jytdog (talk) 18:47, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

How is saying "Christian Church" POV?

@ScepticismOfPopularisation: Please explain why you keep changing the lead to say that Jesus's followers later became the "Church" rather than the "Christian Church." Are you trying to suggest that they might have founded some other church, like the Church of Scientology, the Church of Aphrodite, the Church of Satan, the Church of Euthanasia, or one of the many hundred non-Christian "churches" that are around nowadays? As far as I am concerned, the terms "follower of Jesus" and "Christian" are entirely synonymous; the fact that they followed Jesus is what distinguished the first Jewish Christians from their fellow Jews. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:18, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I had the same problem with @ScepticismOfPopularisation:. The term Church is a disambiguation, the only possible link is Christian Church. It is surely not about Justice Church. I will revert it back again. --MaoGo (talk) 11:36, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Well, the belief that "follower of Jesus" and "Christian" are entirely synonymous is a bit simplistic. What about Jews for Jesus, Christian atheism, or Unitarian Universalism which includes followers of Christian teachings? Islam considers Jesus the penultimate prophet. There are rather a lot of different religious and philosophical constructs. O3000 (talk) 14:41, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

@Objective3000: My view is that Jews for Jesus, Christian atheism, and Unitarian Universalism all qualify as variants of Christianity. Jews for Jesus, and modern Messianic Judaism in general, actually has much in common with the original Jewish Christianity, as well as with the Ebionites, who were a sect of early Christians living in the second and third centuries. In fact, the Ebionites actually had far more in common with traditional Judaism than Jews for Jesus does today. (The Ebionites, for instance, rejected the apostle Paul as an apostate and believed that Jesus was just a man, not God incarnate. They also insisted on strict adherence to the Law of Moses, including circumcision and Jewish dietary customs, which they made even stricter by not only prohibiting non-kosher meats, but by flat-out forbidding all meats altogether. They used a version of the Gospel of Matthew that did not include the story of the virgin birth, which they rejected as a heretical interpolation.) Unitarian Universalism actually originated as a denomination of Christianity, although they have since expanded to include beliefs from other religious traditions.

It may sound like I am taking too broad a definition of the word "Christian," but the fact is that all the groups you have mentioned, even Christian atheism, have far more in common with traditional, orthodox Christianity than say, the Borborites did in the late third century and early fourth century; yet no one has any qualms about calling the Borborites or any of the other bizarre Gnostic sects "Christian." That is not even considering the many people in late antiquity who worshipped the Christian God alongside traditional pagan ones and yet still saw themselves as "Christian." Really, the only consistent definition of the word "Christianity" that we can take is "any religion or philosophy that is at least purportedly founded on the teachings of Jesus" and, by that definition, the terms "Christian" and "follower of Jesus" can only be synonymous. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:17, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I just don't see the two as synonymous. Neither does the OED. O3000 (talk) 16:25, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

@Objective3000: I do not have a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary and it is not available for free online, so I do not know what its definition of the word "Christian" is, but Merriam-Webster defines the word "Christian" as "one who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ," which is almost exactly what I just defined it as. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:47, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

The OED includes: “One who exhibits the spirit, and follows the precepts and example, of Christ”. Usage example: “To be a Christian is to act as Christ acted.” Perhaps subtle. But, I think you can call yourself a Christian because you like the non-religious teachings without considering yourself a follower. IIRC, the Texas Legislature ruled that Unitarians are not Christians. I’d rather we not put strict limits on the definition, just as I think you can be an existentialist without being a follower of Kierkegaard. O3000 (talk) 17:09, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

@Objective3000: I think we may be operating under different definitions of the word "follow." The way I see it, "liking the non-religious teachings" to the point that a person would be willing to define him or herself by those teachings would be following them. In any case, I think this discussion has gotten way off-topic and this is starting to seem too much like a forum. My original concern about the article no longer seems to be the subject of debate and ScepticismOfPopularisation, the user I originally addressed this section to, has not yet responded to my request for explanation. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:32, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

That's the problem I have with the word synonym.:) O3000 (talk) 18:35, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Obviously, "Christian Church" is a buzzword used by Protestants, and that is what the article "Christian Church" is even about. And therefore, should not be used. Church, is of course from its history, primarily CChristain in usage, and even the non-Christian groups that use 'church" have some claim on Jesus.ScepticismOfPopularisation (talk) 01:29, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Even if it is the case, when one says vaguely says Jesus followers formed the church it cannot be another than the Christian church in a broad sense. If we want to avoid this ambiguity change church for christian tradition or other hub term that is more general or specify more/eliminate the whole line entirely. In Wikipedia we are trying to avoid links to disambiguation page when not necessary. --MaoGo (talk) 11:14, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

@ScepticismOfPopularisation: I do not see why you seem to think that the term "Christian Church" is a "buzzword," and I certainly do not see why you consider it to be POV. It is a general term used to refer to the entire community of Christians. Nonetheless, to appease you, would you like to suggest an alternative term to use instead? We cannot just use the word "church" because that would be too ambiguous, since we would have to specify which church we are talking about. (The word church itself is a translation of the Greek word ekklesia, which just means "assembly" or "gathering". The exact same word was also used to refer to the Athenian Assembly.) Perhaps we could just use the definition of the word "Christian Church," which is "the community of Christian believers"? --Katolophyromai (talk) 11:56, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

It says on your user page that you are a Protestant Christian and that you are possibly biased. I'm not attempting to attacking you, but I think this is one of those cases.ScepticismOfPopularisation (talk) 06:10, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

@ScepticismOfPopularisation: Please explain why you think the use of the word is biased; just saying that I am biased too is not providing an explanation. You keep insisting that the phrase is biased without explaining why. Also, please tell what you think of my alternative proposal, or offer a different proposal yourself. I am trying to sort out this issue and find a wording we all can agree on. What do you think of replacing the term "Christian Church" with "earliest body of Christians" or perhaps "earliest community of Christians" or something similar? --Katolophyromai (talk) 09:25, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Add me to the list of people thinking that "Church" is silly absent a really cogent explanation about why it is "POV". A discussion is to gauge consensus, not to gain unanimity. It doesn't matter if one or two editors think it is inappropriate if consensus says otherwise. Disruption such as long-term edit warring can be dealt with if one editor insists on repeatedly reverting multiple editors. Someone not liking consensus needs to use WP:DR: it's not up to others. Johnuniq (talk) 10:12, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

The terms have different meanings to different people. I see no reason for the second half of the sentence. O3000 (talk) 14:16, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

I just did some poking around and ended up seeing this debate here, but I think that the crux of the argument is, as ScepticismOfPopularisation pointed out, that Protestants use the word "Christian" to distinguish themselves from Catholics, even though, in fact, the Church that was set up in that century was the Catholic Church. Moreover, the linked term "Christian Church" links to a page that says "The Christian Church is an ecclesiological term generally used by Protestants to refer to the whole group of people belonging to the Christianity throughout history." However, since Protestantism did not exist at this time and would not exist for another 1500 years or so, it is most certainly POV to, at the very least, link to a page that somehow links Protestantism with the original Church. (I think this is what is being seen as POV here—there is an obvious attempt to deceptively claim that the "Christian Church" started during Roman times was, in some way, the true Church that has now manifested itself in the form of Protestantism.) Ambrosiaster (talk) 19:29, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

And just to add: One possible solution could be to just fix the article on the Christian Church by removing the phrase "generally used by Protestants." If the argument here by Katolophyromai and others is that the "Christian Church" is not a term generally used by Protestants, then why does the article entitled Christian Church say that? Ambrosiaster (talk) 19:46, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Ambrosiaster: I do not think that is what the article is claiming at all. The term "Christian Church" does not just apply to Protestants; it includes all Christians, and that includes Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, who are definitely Christians without a doubt.

On a side note, the original church that existed in antiquity was neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Eastern Orthodox, nor anything that we today would recognize as any modern denomination. Both Protestantism and the Catholic Church as we know it today are products of the past two thousand years. For instance, both Protestants and Catholics today use unleavened bread for the Eucharist, but, prior to the ninth century, Christians actually used leavened bread. The earliest Christians practiced adult baptism by immersion (like some modern Protestants), but none of them would have believed in Protestant ideas of sola fide or sola scriptura, especially since there was widespread disagreement on what even constituted as "scripture" to begin with. The idea of a set New Testament canon is not attested until the middle of the second century and, until as late as the late third century, most communities still had their own individual sets of scriptures. Many early Christians of the Proto-Orthodox sect considered writings such as The Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and the Epistles of Clement to be canonical, while others rejected the canonicity of works such as the Book of Revelation and the Catholic epistles that are now included in the New Testament. The concept of the Trinity, central to nearly all modern forms of Christianity, did not develop until the late second or early third century at the earliest and was not declared orthodox until many centuries later. Furthermore, the vast diversity within early Christianity makes it absurd to see the term "Christian Church" as only referring to one particular sect. Despite what one might assume based on a reading of the fourth-century church historian Eusebius's propagandistic Ecclesiastical History, Christianity was diverse from its very inception, and the epistles of the apostle Paul reveal just how much disagreement and contention there was, even among the earliest apostles. --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:11, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

You're making a theological argument. Of course, when the Roman Catholic Church was in its infancy, it had different rituals and the canon was not well-established. For example, priests were allowed to marry in the early church. But does that mean that it isn't Catholic? No. It was just the Catholic Church with different rituals and a different canon, but it is the same institution. As time went on, the Church naturally faced new controversies and changed considerably over time. Arguing that that Church was not Catholic because it had different rituals and the canon was not concrete is like arguing that the United States of today is not same United States as 1776 because the United States today has judicial review and is heavily influenced by a number of Supreme Court cases and amendments that systemically changed the country... Addressing the matter at hand, however, I do agree with ScepticismOfPopularisation that, based on the definition provided by the article Christian Church, and, to a degree, based on how Protestants use the term "Christian" to distinguish themselves from Catholics and Orthodox Christians (as a way to say, "we are the true Christians") is, in a sense, why this is a matter of debate here and some are saying it is a POV issue. That's what he meant by "buzzword." I agree that, speaking in terms of the word's denotation, this may not be the case, but the word "Christian Church" connotes something particular about the Protestant-Catholic relationship (and it is even more pronounced when the link to "Christian Church" claims that the term "Christian Church" is used primarily by Protestants, and not by Catholics or other "Christians"). - Ambrosiaster (talk) 20:57, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Obviously, there exist disagreements on these terms. The simple solution is to remove that part of the sentence. Particularly since this article is about Jesus, not Christianity. Theological arguments don’t belong in this article. O3000 (talk) 21:05, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I'd agree. I just read it back to myself again and it certainly is POV. The sentence sort of suggests that his followers formed the "Christian Church" (but since this is a mainly Protestant term, it is implying that this is the "Protestant movement"). There is clearly something wrong with this sentence and removing it might be the best option here, then. Ambrosiaster (talk) 21:14, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

And just to add, as I read it again, I am asking myself, "What is the Christian Church"? I know that there is, as a matter of fact, a Roman Catholic Church, an Eastern Orthodox Church, and a Presbyterian Church, for example, but the "Christian Church" is some sort of broad theological term that Protestants use. There is no "Christian Church," really. There are "Christian churches," but can you tell me what the "Christian Church" is? Ambrosiaster (talk) 21:19, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Simply put, and not as sarcastic as it sounds, it's a brand name. O3000 (talk) 21:23, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

USer:Jytdog. Clearly, the "opinion" that "Christian Church" is a mainly Protestant term is founded upon reliable sources. Particularly those over at Christian Church.ScepticismOfPopularisation (talk) 05:31, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I think early Church may be the most precise link for the disputed line, and would largely resolve what is an otherwise impossible predicament of which Church to link to. Seraphim System ^(talk) 08:02, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

The matter of this discussion is to either leave CC or to find an alternative. Early church is a good solution. --MaoGo (talk) 09:57, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I have changed the sentence to say "early Church" rather than "Christian Church." --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:15, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Better. O3000 (talk) 16:19, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

• Several things:
  • Church is an unacceptable option. That is a disambig page, and there is no way in hell that we will link to a disambig page on a featured article.
  • Everybody here needs to read WP:LEAD. The lead just summarizes the body of the article. The right question to ask is "What does the sourced content in the body of the article already say about this, and how do we summarize that?"
  • No one cares what any one of you think the correct words are here - you are all just presenting "reasoning" based on what you happen to think is more or less correct, without citing any sources or any WP policies and guidelines. What matters are what sources say and how to summarize them per the policies and guidelines - again the conversation should be focused on what the sourced content in the body of the article already says. If any one is not happy with that content or its sources, the thing to do is fix that first. Then work on summarizing it in the lead.
  • The discussion above is not how we do things in Wikipedia, on any level. You are just having a coffee klatch, completely outside the policies and guidelines of this place. You might be enjoying it -- if so please go do it somewhere else. It is not what we do here.
  • If you want to continue to work on improving the WP:LEAD, please base that discussion on the policies and guidelines. Jytdog (talk) 14:11, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

@Jytdog: I checked the source behind that statement, which is E. P. Sanders's 1993 book The Historical Figure of Jesus, which I ironically happened to be already holding in my hands before I even saw the footnote. On page 11, the first page that is cited, he states that one of the few facts about the aftermath of Jesus's life that is so widely agreed upon among scholars that it is "almost beyond dispute" is that "[his followers] formed a community to await his return and sought to win others to the faith in him as God's Messiah." In this sentence, he does not use the term "Christian Church." On page 14, which is the second page that is cited, he states that, later, "Their movement finally separated from Judaism and became the Christian church." So, Sanders does use the term "Christian church," but only on the second page that is cited to support the statement we are debating. I think that our solution discussed above of using the term "early Church" rather than "Christian Church" adequately solves the issue of neutrality and still remains faithful to the source being cited. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:39, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

That is a better argument, but again per LEAD we should be summarizing the body of the article, and not introducing any new matter. So the relevant question is, where is this discussed in the body? It is a real question. Please actually look. (It is not! in my view there should be some WP:SUMMARY content taken from the lead of Early Christianity and perhaps also Hellenistic Judaism and added to the body. That content should focus at least some on the historiography issues -- how the people at that time shaped the narrative about him and wrote the fundamental texts that everybody wrestles over today. The term Septuagint doesn't even appear in this article, but the writers of the NT wrote in greek and were often quoting the LXX - like when they wrote that strange passage in matthew about jesus approaching jerusalem riding an ass and a colt, where they are quoting zechariah in the LXX. In any case, Sanders should be used there, and the use in the lead just a repetition of that, in case anybody questions the summary content (it is not needed if the lead is just summarizing the body, again per LEAD))

Some of this is touched on in the Jesus#Canonical_gospels section, but i think it would be better if there were some section after his life, where it talks about what happened shortly (in historical terms) after his life. Jytdog (talk) 17:00, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't think there is a specific known date for the birth of the Church, but I can look through some additional sources since I was planning to work on the Early Christianity article anyway. This wouldn't have to be a separate section — it would just expand the section we already have Jesus#Judea_and_Galilee_in_the_1st_century — the section does discuss the Septuagint but not by name. If that section were clarified I think it would be enough. Seraphim System ^(talk) 20:22, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Certainly makes sense in Early Christianity. I don't see why it would work here as this article is about Jesus, and he didn't really form a "church". O3000 (talk) 20:26, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

replying to both... there just should just be something in the body that this is summarizing - where the Sanders source is used in a larger discussion. There isn't now. There are many ways to solve it. Jytdog (talk) 21:49, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Some of the claims could have been sourced using outside sources, but I think that those engaging in the discussion felt that the Christian Church article was sufficient enough grounds for arguing that Christian Church is merely an "ecclesiological term" and not an actual Church (that either exists at present or in a historical sense) and that it was therefore the incorrect term to use in this sentence. Since the word is also, according to the Christian Church article that was used as a reference point, used mainly by Protestants and therefore connotes something about Protestantism (it is a grey area, in other words), it also violated WP:NPOV. Although no one directly linked us to WP:NPOV, one of the users did invoke the policy in the discussion.

In the end, a resolution was reached and the incorrect term, Christian Church, was changed to a more appropriate term, early Church. (You are right that what is most important here is that the summary should reflect the content of the article and that that should be the first priority.) Personally, I thought your closing the debate in a draconian manner and dismissing it as "coffee house klatch" was a bit over-the-top. In the end, a resolution was reached, so I'm not sure if your closure and classification of the discussion (which I admit, could've contained more outside sources to make it airtight) was really fair. - Ambrosiaster (talk) 01:53, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

The conversation was completely wrong and the resulting edit was wrong. It should not be in the lead, as it doesn't summarize anything in the body of the article. This kind of editing threatens the FA status of this article. Jytdog (talk) 02:05, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

If it doesn't belong there, then why is still there? And why not immediately propose deleting the sentence altogether from the outset? When you closed it, you did so on the grounds that it was "coffee house klatch" without sources, and not on the grounds that the discussion was altogether irrelevant because the sentence does not belong in the lead. Had you said that the sentence itself needed to be deleted because it does not summarize the content of the article and that the discussion is therefore meaningless, then the discussion would've ended there. But it did not because you ended it on an unclear basis. - Ambrosiaster (talk) 02:38, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

• the thing is to get things done and done right, so i fixed it, here. That can probably be improved, but now the lead summarizes the body. this was ass-backwards but now things make sense per policies and guidelines. Jytdog (talk) 04:55, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Ok. I can now see it following a logical line. Starts with the birth, ends with the death and ascension, and then proceeds to the posthumous stuff (i.e. early Christianity). Seems the "coffee house klatch" led to some positive improvements for the article after all. Ambrosiaster (talk) 05:16, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Jewish vs. Rabbinic

How exactly is "Jewish" better than Rabbinic as a header?ScepticismOfPopularisation (talk) 04:50, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

it's clearly more recognizable and is a broader term definition .--Moxy (talk) 05:04, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 May 2018

Imperial Aramaic: ܝܼܫܘܿܥܐ ܢܵܨܪܵܝܵܐ, romanized: Isho Nasraya; Alexappachan (talk) 18:17, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. L293D (☎ • ✎) 18:19, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Deity

Has there ever been a talk about linking Deity in the lead or anywhere. I see many source here use the term. Good link for people to understand that Jesus is one of many god like individual's that people follow. Plus it has a section about Christian God definition.-Moxy (talk) 05:08, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Deity is used in a slightly different sense (here), so no.ScepticismOfPopularisation (talk) 02:18, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

I am not entirely sure what you are proposing, but I am strongly opposed to adding another sentence or phrase just for the sake of linking to some article or another. Content has to be purposeful and informative on its own, and, especially for this article in particular, we need to make sure to include the most relevant and important information first and foremost. Linking to related articles comes secondary. If the word "deity" happened to occur naturally in the article, I would have no problem whatsoever with linking to the article on the subject, an article (which, I might note, I actually have written a significant portion of). I am similarly not opposed to adding it as a "see also" link at the beginning of a section or at the end of the article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:44, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Could be added without any great change or addition. Just change the leads odd descriptor of "figure" to a relevant descriptor with a link to more information on this vety topic. ="He is the central figure deity of Christianity:--Moxy (talk) 04:46, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Obviously, some denominations (read:many) don't believe Jesus to be God.ScepticismOfPopularisation (talk) 04:49, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

That is a wonderful POV but how does ommiting a link to an article with sources about this very topic help our readers? As stated before it's clearly a term used all over within the community itself.....Christopher W. Morgan; Robert A. Peterson (2011). The Deity of Christ. Crossway. ISBN 978-1-4335-3118-7. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |trans_title=, |laydate=, |laysummary=, and |authormask= (help).--Moxy (talk) 04:58, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

@Moxy: Accuracy is far more important than linking. We cannot introduce Jesus as the "central deity of Christianity" because, as ScepticismOfPopularisation has rightly pointed out, there are plenty of Christian sects, both historical and contemporary, who believe that Jesus was not God. (Indeed, it is historically likely that Jesus himself never claimed to be divine, since he never does in any of the Synoptic Gospels, our earliest source about his life, and his own Jewish followers would have almost certainly been appalled by the idea of someone calling him divine.) Even those who agree he was divine do not all agree on what sense he was divine in. There are tons of different perspectives on Jesus's divinity: Docetism, Adoptionism, Arianism, Modalistic Monarchianism, Trinitarianism, Monophysitism, and countlesss others, all of which are drastically different from each other. Introducing him as the "central deity of Christianity" simply is not accurate for all forms of Christianity. Also, in terms of linking, there are other articles that are far more directly relevant to this one than deity, such as all our various sub-articles about Jesus. It would not be justifiable to change the definition of "Jesus" in the first sentence of the article just to squeeze in a link to a semi-relevant article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 08:29, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

As an outsider to religions. ...I think I see where your coming from. You keep talking in a singularity...as if to imply there is only one deity in the religion and not all agree about his sayus. As an outsider it looks like Christian Saints and their religious miracles are alot like the many Roman/gresk/ Persian etc... gods and goddesses holding a special place within the doctrine. Are Saints not worshipped as well? I was implying they were many deities with Christian God/Jesus as the head deity. --Moxy (talk) 05:09, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

@Moxy: This is getting off-topic and is starting to turn into more of a forum discussion, but I will answer your question nonetheless because it is still tangentially related to the article. Saints are not "worshipped" in any denomination of Christianity, but they are venerated in some traditions, namely Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. Those Christians who do believe in the veneration of saints do not see them as deities, but rather as a very holy human beings whose righteous actions while they were alive have given them a certain level of prominence in Heaven, so that one can ask them to pray on a person's behalf. The assumption, of course, is that a saint's prayers will carry more weight with God than just those of the average person. The short answer to your question, therefore, is that saints are not in any way seen as deities.

Nonetheless, the comparison between saints and polytheistic deities is, on some levels, valid because, in the traditions where they are venerated, saints do generally have cults and shrines, much like polytheistic deities. Also, the cults of many saints have adopted many stories and features from pre-Christian pagan deities. To give just one famous example, the Irish saint Brigid of Kildare is probably just a Christianization of the pre-Christian Celtic goddess Brigid. Not all saints are Christianized deities, though, and many of them were, in fact, real people who lived and died. It is also very important to stress that the veneration of saints is not accepted in all denominations of Christianity. In fact, most Protestants reject the veneration of saints as heretical, seeing it as essentially polytheism, and a significant number of Protestants completely reject the concept of a "saint" altogether, instead believing that the word "saint" can be applied to any believer. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:40, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Birthdate

According to current historical records Herod died in 4 bc. The slaughter of the innocents took place 2 years before. Therefore the accepted date of Jesus birth is around 6 bc not 4 bc. Tbhighland (talk) 07:46, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

The Massacre of the Innocents is a dubious event, recorded only in the Gospel of Matthew. "The massacre is reported only in the Gospel of Matthew (2:16) and other later Christian writings likely based on that gospel. The Roman Jewish historian Josephus does not mention it in his history, Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 AD), which reports many of Herod's misdeeds, including murdering three of his own sons,

•  Not done: WP:FRINGE O3000 (talk) 13:37, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
•  Not done: Asked and answered: WP:FRINGE General Ization ^Talk 13:56, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 18 December 2018

Please change all references to the name Jesus and replace then with Yeshua or Yehoshua.

Hebrew Source: יְהוֹשׁוּעַ Lexicon Key: H3091

Kind Regards CyberVines (talk) 09:54, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Not done Please see WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE. Also, few people spoke Hebrew by Jesus's time; yeah, it might be pretty much the same in Aramaic and various other less anachronistic languages, but that doesn't really matter. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:57, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

"Scholars regard the gospels as compromised sources of information because the writers were trying to glorify Jesus"

Can I see a quote from Sanders that verifies this text? My understanding is that the reason scholars don't consider the gospels to be particularly useful sources for Jesus's biography is not so much that they were trying to glorify him but that they were only trying to glorify him. The low page number implies we are citing an oversimplified summary of a more complicated point Sanders made later on in the same work. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:40, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree. The source section seems outdated. The first sentences are misleading and do not reflect the current state of scholarship. They rely on a book written in 1985, that cannot take into account new important findings and debates, for example Richard A. Burridge's highly influential book on the Gospels as greco-roman biographies must be cited, the same goes with Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses). Thucyd (talk) 20:00, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@Thucyd: You appear to be saying the exact opposite of what I'm saying. My problem is that what the second sentence (one of "the first sentences") is trying to say is muted by clumsy (perhaps deliberately so) use of the conjunction "and" rather than "since" or the like, and what it is trying to say is directly contradicted by a sentence further down that appears to misrepresent an oversimplified introduction to Sanders's book. The problem with the gospels is that they are not biographies and are only interested in making a particular point about Jesus (the "good news" for which they are named) rather than elaborating to their readers about where Jesus was from (they contradict themselves, and each other, on this point in a manner that makes it quite clear he was from Nazareth, almost certainly born there, and had no connection to Bethlehem whatsoever; our article does a pretty shitty job of pointing this out, by the way), what he did in his childhood and adolescence, what his views on various social issues not specifically related to the good news were (he seems to have abstained from marriage and encouraged his followers to do likewise, while also condemning divorce), and so on.

I am, however, curious why you think Bauckham's book is "highly influential" and "must be cited". I've been out of the loop on NT studies for a while, but my understanding was that fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals like Bauckham's book because it basically agrees with what they already believe, but scholars generally don't share his conclusions.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:14, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@Hijiri 88:I won't comment your POV about the authors and their beliefs, it is of no interest on this talk page. It is enough to say that Wikipedia must reflect the current state of knowledge.

Since you know the field, I guess that you won't contest that Burridge's thesis is highly influential and cannot be overlooked.

Regarding Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, it is even more quoted than Burridge's thesis (cf. google scholar). Bauckham's book his indeed "highly influential", frequently described as such, for example here. A special issue of the leading peer-reviewed Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus was devoted to the book in 2008. The burden of proof is on you. Thucyd (talk) 23:03, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Not really, no; unless scholarly consensus on this topic has changed dramatically since Bauckham published his book, there is no requirement to cite this or that particular scholar, and Bauckham is hardly as influential as Sanders or Ehrman. It doesn't really matter how widely cited Bauckham is (among whom? do the citers agree or disagree with his conclusions?), and your citing an article that calls his book "influential" doesn't conflict with what I wrote above about fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals like Bauckham's book.

Anyway, is it your intention to hijack this thread with an unrelated issue about how you feel it needs to cite this or that author you happen to agree with? I made a specific request above and you ignored it to go off on a tangent about something that concerned you.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:52, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Ad hominem again (and unwarranted). The topic has changed dramatically since Burridge and Bauckham (who are Anglicans...) published their books. Many scholars have described them as a paradigm shift.

Burridge, well, it's obvious for everybody: "Few PhD theses can boast a paradigm shift within a field, but Burridge's ‘What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco‐Roman Biography’ could be numbered among the exceptions... He is right to believe that the Graeco‐Roman biographical designation has become a near consensus in Gospel Studies". (Louise Lawrence, 2010, here)

Bauckham: As I said, the burden of proof is on you: "Advanced scholarly praise for this book has created high expectation for readers and reviewers. Hailed as a “blockbuster” (J.D.G. Dunn) and a “tour de force” (N.T. Wright) that “shakes the foundations of a century of scholarly study of the Gospels” (G. Stanton) and promises to be “a pioneering work refuting old and new errors” (M. Hengel). Bauckham’s thorough study of eyewitness testimony to Jesus is a major event in New Testament studies... The heart of the book is a solid advance in the study of the Gospels with which all subsequent studies will have to reckon." (Peter Rodgers, Novum Testamentum, 52, 2010, 88-89). Thucyd (talk) 10:32, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

"ad hominem"? So, are you actually going to provide me with the quote from Sanders or not? Do you even have it? Why are you here? If you want to talk about Bauckham, open your own section. The topic has changed dramatically since Burridge and Bauckham (who are Anglicans...) published their books. I would argue that the topic only changed when you posted about something completely unrelated to what I wrote... Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:37, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The quote from E.P. Sanders: "The main sources for our knowledge of Jesus himself, the gospels in the New Testament, are, from the point of view of the historian, tainted by the fact that they were written by people who intended to glorify their hero". Sanders says something obvious (every historical source is biased and tainted, like Platon and Socrates) and does not use the word "compromised". Thucyd (talk) 11:12, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, now that I've seen the quote I'm more convinced than before that it was an overly simplified statement from the book's introduction; it looks like such a statement. Your concern is completely unrelated, and as far as I am concerned it is a non-issue, since "tainted" is if anything just a stronger/more-inflammatory way of saying "compromised". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:48, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Gospels as biographies of Jesus

I don't see how this is a "paradigm shift" in scholarship: it's pretty much always been a widely held view among laymen that the gospels are biographies of Jesus. If Burridge shifted the scholarly paradigm to be more in line with this lay view back in 1992, then why would Dale Martin say in 2009 that the Popular opinion may think that the Gospels are biographies of Jesus, but they're not biographies, at least not anything like the modern sense. [...] The Gospels aren't biographies. [...] This all demonstrates though that scholars don't read the Gospels as biographies or as even straightforward accounts of events. Did the paradigm shift happen in the one year between then and when Louise Lawrence wrote the above-quoted text? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:48, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

You miss the whole point. The Gospels are *Graeco-Roman* biographies, like those written by Plutarch (which are quite reliable for historians). Thucyd (talk) 11:01, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The biographies of Plutarch are quite reliable for historians now? You mean that historians use those sources like they use the gospels, right, by critically analyzing them and taking from them factual details that seem credible and are not contradicted by other sources as having a high degree of probability of having actually happened? "reliable" is a buzzword used in Christian apologetics to mean something different from how historians (...might...?) use it. Your bias is showing, and not just because you are contradicting yourself in claiming that the scholarship quoted in the article is "out of date" despite being more recent than the "recent" scholarship you want to emphasize; the fact that historians use a particular text as a source of information doesn't mean it is "reliable". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:45, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I am glad to see that you do realize that nowadays the vast majority of NT scholars think that the Gospels are Graeco-Roman biographies.

Additional quote, from Ehrman: "The Gospels of the NT are widely seen as examples of ancient biography" (here).

Another quote: "Burridge’s research has been widely accepted and has produced a new consensus, that the Gospels are a species of ancient biography" (Steve Walton, "What Are the Gospels? Richard Burridge’s Impact on Scholarly Understanding of the Genre of the Gospels", Currents in Biblical Research, 14, 1, 2015, p. 81,[4])

This consensus view must be included in the source section. Thucyd (talk) 12:50, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Stop it. You're taking quotes out of context: Ehrman explicitly says immediately after the portion you quote "So it would help to know how biographies worked in Greek and Roman antiquity." The whole point is that "ancient biography" means something different from "modern biography", but you are clearly trying to blur the line.

I can't make head or tail of what you mean by I am glad to see that you do realize that nowadays the vast majority of NT scholars think that the Gospels are Graeco-Roman biographies. Are you just trolling or something? Nothing I said above remotely resembled that, and nor did anything I wrote in my initial comment justify anything you've written since.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:56, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Ehrman says that the Gospels are widely seen nowadays as Graeco-Roman biographies.

That was exactly my point. Nothing more. The end for me. Thank you. Thucyd (talk) 14:24, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Reminder: we have already a paragraph about this topic, with top reliable sources in the "canonical gospels" sub-section: "One important aspect of the study of the gospels is the literary genre under which they fall. Genre "is a key convention guiding both the composition and the interpretation of writings". Whether the gospel authors set out to write novels, myths, histories, or biographies has a tremendous impact on how they ought to be interpreted. Some recent studies suggest that the genre of the gospels ought to be situated within the realm of ancient biography. Although not without critics, the position that the gospels are a type of ancient biography is the consensus among scholars today." Thucyd (talk) 10:13, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Okay, so ... what's the problem? Do you think the above is not neutral or detailed enough? I find the text you added to be worse than the above on both fronts, and I'm not arguing to change any of the above. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:03, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

The source section is now clearly misleading due to the fact that it does not mention ancient biographies. We can take the sentence from the canonical gospels sub-section, slightly rearranged: "Although not without critics, the position that the gospels are a type of ancient biography, *not biographies in the modern sense*, is the consensus among scholars today". Can we agree on this?Thucyd (talk) 08:09, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the problem. The fact that the authors thought they were writing a form of literary work common in the Greco-Roman world does not make them more or less useful as sources for information on Jesus's biography; can you find a modern scholarly source that specifically says the canonical gospels are awesome sources because they are "ancient biographies"? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:36, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

This causal relationship ("awesome sources because") was never the point. The fact that the Gospels are ancient biographies is of course primordial for historical and hermeneutical reasons, especially to understand some features of the sources (cf. for example Michael Licona, Why are there Contradictions in the Gospels: What we Can Learn from Ancient Biographies, Oxford University Press, 2016).

We simply have to mention the fact that the Gospels are ancient biographies, because that's what wikipedia is all about: inform the reader of what the academic consensus is. And there is no doubt that we have an academic consensus here. Thucyd (talk) 13:05, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

But we already do mention that they are ancient biographies. The question of why you want to emphasize it more than it already is, specifically in the section discussing the problematic nature of the primary sources (a point on which all the best scholars agree with what we currently say), is being posed, not the question of whether the gospels are ancient biographies. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:47, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

We say in the source section what they are not (modern biographies), but you do want to say what they are (ancient biographies). It's very misleading and we must correct that.

Now that you realize that our sources are, according to the consensus, ancient biographies, and that the nature of thoses sources is, according to the consensus, primordial for historical and hermeneutical reasons (cf. all the references above), you have no argument against this improvement.

Given the fact that you are higly interested in this topic, you should read Burridge. The 25th anniversary edition has just been published. Thucyd (talk) 07:50, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

It's very misleading and we must correct that. How is it misleading? In my opinion it would be misleading to describe them as "ancient biographies" in a manner that implied they were anything like modern biographies.

you have no argument against this improvement Martin's lectures are the best sources presented in this discussion thusfar, and he essentially says "They're not modern biographies; they'r kinda like ancient biographies; ancient biographies are not especially useful for understanding the lives of their subjects". You have not addressed this concern.

Given the fact that you are higly interested in this topic, you should read Burridge. I live in Japan, and so would need to privately import the book, and doing so without a credit card (I've been working as a contract employee for years, so the two times I applied for a credit card it was a waste of time) is complicated. Show me where I can download an e-book and the price will be added to my phone bill, then maybe. But it would only be an interesting read, and would not change my opinion on this matter.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:07, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Dale Martin's remarks are clearly not the best sources!!!... They are not even peer-reviewed, contrary to all the articles and books I quoted.

The burden of proof is on you. Due to the fact that you do not have access to recent academic publications, you should reconsider your position.

If you do not quote here recent peer-reviewed articles or books, I will make the needed changes.Thucyd (talk) 15:07, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Dale Martin's remarks are clearly not the best sources!!!... They are not even peer-reviewed, contrary to all the articles and books I quoted. You clearly do not know how to properly assess sources for our purposes. When two sources both say the same thing, but one says it in a manner that more resembles an article in a general encyclopedia and the other is a book on the subject that clearly says a lot more than we need to (or, rather, anything it says that we quote it on would be taken out of context and distorted), then the former is the better source. On top of that, referring to open courses on the official YouTube channel of Yale University as "remarks [that] are not even peer-reviewed" appears to indicate that you either do not understand the sources or are deliberately misrepresenting them as being somehow "less" than they actually are. The burden of proof is on you. Due to the fact that you do not have access to recent academic publications, you should reconsider your position. What on earth are you talking about? I have all Bart Ehrman's recent books, but I'm not interested in throwing money away to appease someone who is trolling me on a Wikipedia talk page. What buying this or that book would do to ameliorate this problem is something you need to demonstrate. If you do not quote here recent peer-reviewed articles or books, I will make the needed changes. If you do not engage in constructive discussion on the talk page, then all your edits need to be reverted as counter-productive edit-warring. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:18, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Gentle reminder: a peer-reviewed source is not a lecture given in an university nor a popular book.

For example, Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus is a popular title, not an academic work.

Let me give you an example, since you appreciate Bart: "Bart Ehrman’s widely-used introduction to the New Testament states in 1997: ‘Scholars have come to reject the view that [the Gospels] are totally unlike anything else…some of these investigations have suggested that the Gospels are best seen as a kind of Greco-Roman (as opposed to modern) biography’ (Ehrman 1997:52). Burridge’s influence is clear, for Ehrman cites What are the Gospels? as ‘[a] thorough study that emphatically argues that the Gospels are best understood as a kind of ancient biography’ (Ehrman 1997:55)" (from Steve Walton, "What Are the Gospels? Richard Burridge's Impact on Scholarly Understanding of the Genre of the Gospels", Currents in Biblical Research, 2015, accessible here)

Still waiting for your peer-reviewed sources. Thucyd (talk) 16:52, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't need "peer-reviewed sources", since your peer-reviewed sources don't actually contradict my "popular sources"; you just want to to quote them out of context to draw a conclusion that they don't. Stop trolling and go build the encyclopedia. I have no idea why you brought up Misquoting Jesus, which is ironically one of the few books Ehrman has written in the last two decades which I haven't read; it would seem Ehrman and Misquoting Jesus are hot-button topics for you, I guess? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:08, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Lol. No problem at all with Bart, believe me. He agrees with me on Burridge and, contrary to you, he admits the fact that knowing the genre of those sources is primordial for historical and hermeneutical reasons. Thucyd (talk) 18:47, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

contrary to you, he admits the fact that knowing the genre of those sources is primordial for historical and hermeneutical reasons HA! There's a world of difference between saying that "it is important to know the genre" and saying that "I know the genre, and that genre makes these sources reliable for historical purposes". Ehrman, like virtually all non-fundamentalist scholars, recognizes that the gospels, as ancient-as-opposed-to-modern biographies, are highly problematic as sources for the historical Jesus. As for being "primordial for hermeneutical reasons", that is completely beside the point, and your suddenly bringing it up well over a week into this discussion just comes across as more trolling. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:52, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I would be suddendly bringing up "primordial for hermeneutical reasons"? lol. That was already my sentence on December 16, then 18 December, and finally 19 December!!! For your information, there are pages on this in Burridge's seminal book.

Your own distinction between fundamentalists (meaning???) and others is also beyond ridiculous.

Those two elements, and your inability to provide peer-reviewed sources, show beyond reasonable doubt that your are not really interested in our discussion and in the current state of scholarship, but in safekeeping your ideology and prejudice. Thucyd (talk) 08:39, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Please retract the above off-topic personal attack, and stay on topic. This is the talk page for our biographical article on Jesus, not a forum for you to talk generally about interpretation of the NT texts. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:31, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

" *Graeco-Roman* biographies, like those written by Plutarch (which are quite reliable for historians)."

Plutarch as a biographer was mostly interested in exploring the moral virtues and vices of his subjects, rather than giving a full account of their lives: "As is explained in the opening paragraph of his Life of Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with history so much as the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of men. Whereas sometimes he barely touched on epoch-making events, he devoted much space to charming anecdote and incidental triviality, reasoning that this often said far more for his subjects than even their most famous accomplishments. He sought to provide rounded portraits, likening his craft to that of a painter" Dimadick (talk) 19:33, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, but the (side) point is of course "quite reliable for historians". All new testement scholars are now well aware that there are different approaches between modern and ancient historians, modern and ancient biographies. Thucyd (talk) 23:59, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah, okay. So when you say the gospels are reliable for historians, you mean ancient historians. Good. So now that we've established that you are trying to insert obscure/misleading terminology into the article, can we drop this whole affair? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:03, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

1)No, I meant "quite reliable" for modern historians.

2)In my edits in the main page, I never talked of reliability. This fuzzy word is your obsession, not mine. That's why I say it's a side point. I just want to repeat in the main page that the Gospels are ancient biographies.

3)If you are interested in this current debate (how, when and why modern historians can assess the reliability of ancient sources) you should read the in-depth dialogue between Bart Ehrman and Mike Licona on the historical reliability of the New Testament. It's online for free, so you have no excuse this time. Thucyd (talk) 08:39, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 January 2019

Factual error correction request: Please replace "Jesus" with "Joseph" in the following three sentences of the "Genealogy of Jesus and Nativity of Jesus" section: "The Gospels of Matthew and Luke offer two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus. Matthew traces Jesus' ancestry to Abraham through David (1:1–16).[108] Luke traces Jesus' ancestry through Adam to God (3:23–38).[109]" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.51.157.191 (talk) 21:49, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Not done You don't trump WP:RS. Tgeorgescu (talk) 07:28, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

The ancestry of Joseph, not Jesus, is what is directly listed in the references named in these sentences (Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38). These references can be read here: https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Luke-3-23_3-31// and https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-1-1_1-16// . Third-hand sources are inappropriate in this case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.51.157.191 (talk) 02:26, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Both verses present the ancestry of Jesus, beginning (Luke)/ending (Matthew) by stating that Jesus is the son of Joseph. Read them again. General Ization ^Talk 02:35, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

If you claim the Bible states something, you must either directly quote it or paraphrase the information precisely, which is not being done in the entry. The Bible verse quoted is explicit upfront that Jesus is not a biological descendant of this line (Luke 3:23 explains that the genealogy given is because Jesus "was supposed the son of Joseph"). By omitting Joseph, these statements are inconsistent with modern English usage of the term "ancestry" and give the deceptive impression that the Bible states that Jesus is a biological descendant of David. Jesus' claim to the house of David is an important topic in Christianity, and Wikipedia should be in the business of clarity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.51.157.191 (talk) 16:08, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

As I am moving on this dispute, I need to be even more direct: Your statement that these Bible references begin/end "by stating that Jesus is the son of Joseph" is incorrect by a plain reading of the references. (Also, such a statement would obviously up-end Christian theology).74.51.157.191 (talk) 04:55, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Read the New Testament in Greek, and a good portion of the problem goes away. See also Romans 1:3 and Joachim or https://christianity.stackexchange.com/a/61413. In any case, this type of thing has been discussed for literally thousands of years. I'm quite sure a notable book has been written discussing this. Find it and then perhaps we can use it to write a sentence disputing the claim. Your own research/analysis is not going to cut it. ResultingConstant (talk) 17:21, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

My aim is not to engage conspiracy theories. The plain language in the referenced Bible passages state the lineage from Joseph, not Mary. If there are scholars who dispute the authority of the Authorized King James Bible in Christianity or who believe a lack of a definite article in Greek proves a reference to Mary, they can open up a separate edit request.74.51.157.191 (talk) 04:55, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 17:33, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

off-topic ramblings about dna and personal interpretations of scripture

I'm not sure exactly what is being argued here. My wife and I are adopting a child. His DNA comes from his birth parents and if you trace his DNA lineage, you would trace it back through his birth mother and father, to their parents, etc. Once the adoption is complete, his legal lineage will come from me and my wife - when you adopt a child, they are every bit as much legally your heir, with equal standing to any natural children you may have. So the Bible traces Jesus's legal lineage through His adoptive father (Joseph) and His DNA lineage through Mary. --B (talk) 12:41, 9 January 2019 (UTC) @B: First off, wow, a single letter username! In any case, this is important for religious reasons, as the prophecies of the Messiah say that he will be "of the flesh" of David. So Joseph's lineage doesn't really count for that purpose, and a "straight/naive" reading of the bible only lists Joseph's lineage. The traditional (catholic/orthodox) answer is that Mary is also of David's line, but that requires relying on either extra-biblical sources, or parsing through euphamism/translation to have the second Joseph bible lineage really be Mary's lineage as described in my link above. The various textual difficulties and traditions are complex, and this line of argument is brought up often by various groups (Jewish groups arguing that Jesus is obviously not the Messiah, Athiests trying to say its obvious made-up contradictory BS, various offshoot Christian movements, etc) ResultingConstant (talk) 16:16, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Collapsed per WP:TPO and WP:NOTFORUM. Mathglot (talk) 07:50, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

rfc on Jesus' ancestry

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The book of the generation of this RfC. Jimbo begat Bomis; and Bomis begat Nupedia; and Nupeia begat Wikipedia; and Wikipedia begat User:JimboWales (now called User:Jimbo Wales) and User:200.191.188.xxx; and User:JimboWales begat the article Jesus and User:200.191.188.xxx begat Talk:Jesus (now called Talk:Jesus/Archive 1); and, many years later, Talk:Jesus begat Talk:Jesus/Archive 132#Semi-protected edit request on 6 January 2019 requesting to replace Jesus' ancestry with Joseph's ancestry; and the semi-protected edit request did not begat any edits (not done) but it begat this RfC asking Do these Matthew and Luke verses give the ancestry of Mary or of Joseph? among other questions; and this RfC begat near-unanimous consensus that this RfC was malformed because it did not propose any edits, did not cite any sources, and asked a question that would be irrelevant no matter how it was answered, because regardless of whether editors answered "Mary" or "Joseph", the article must follow reliable sources and not editors' own interpretation of Matthew and Luke; and the consensus begat a close request; and the close request begat this closing statement. Amen. Leviv ich 03:51, 21 February 2019 (UTC) (non-admin closure)

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Bumping thread for 15 days. Awaits Closure.―Matthew J. Long -Talk-^☖ 21:21, 20 February 2019 (UTC) RFC Do these Matthew and Luke verses give the ancestry of Mary or of Joseph? If Joseph, should Wikipedia entries regarding ancestry claims be clarified when the topic individual (Jesus) is not the biological descendant of the claimed ancestor (David), or if the verses contradict/do not support the claim of biological descent? 04:31, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: the verses explicitly state that they are giving the genealogy of Jesus, tracing his ancestry through Joseph to various figures of symbolic importance in Jewish tradition. Elsewhere Jesus is described as "the son of Joseph". There are different ways to reconcile this with the theological claim that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and that Joseph did not have relations with Mary before the birth of Jesus. One interpretation would be that the Evangelists did not view these positions as contradictory; a more skeptical view would be that they were unable to resolve the conflict and so ignored it. It doesn't really matter which you prefer, because in the end that's what the Gospels say. And they're the main sources for the accounts of Jesus' life. He's mentioned by other sources, but apart from religious ones, few of them provide much detail. And the non-religious sources certainly don't make any claims about him being the son of God, in some sense other than the general observation that all men are sons of God. Ultimately whether Joseph is treated as the father of Jesus is a theological question that can't be resolved simply by resorting to the plain language of scripture. The Gospels clearly treat him as though he were, even though they also provide support for the contrary opinion. It's not Wikipedia's job to unravel theological knots, although of course you can report what scholarly literature has to say on the subject. P Aculeius (talk) 23:43, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

These verses do not use the word "ancestry." That word was used by the Wikipedia entry author. Only Matthew 1:1 (King James Version) uses the word "genealogy," but it then proceeds to define the word as "Lit. generation." It is informing the reader that the passage will explain the generation of Jesus. The passage closes with the virgin pregnancy, Joseph taking Mary as wife, the virgin birth, and the naming. In other words, using this single word to imply that a biological line of Jesus is given is highly misleading, since a different definition is explicitly used by the Bible. Even if the Bible hadn't bothered to define the word, it is still misleading to write an entry that implies a biological line of descent to Jesus when the passage clearly gives the opposite to be the case. So we are back to: There is nothing in either of these passages supporting a biological descent of Jesus from David, and the current entry is misleading by not stating that it is actually Joseph's line when the source material gives Joseph's line. Please recheck the Matthew and Luke wording and report back. If you do not contradict, it will be taken as agreement. To your other points, Jesus's legal status vis-a-vis Joseph is not in dispute, only the claim of biological descent from David from these passages. 74.51.157.191 (talk) 04:22, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I'd say that the distinction you're trying to draw is artificial. "Biological descent" is a scientific term that's only recently been added to our lexicon, and has no particular connection to the Gospels or other scriptural material. The source material describes the generations or genealogy (your interpretation of "literal" is dubious, because most words have multiple applications, particularly in languages other than English, where there aren't as many alternatives to provide subtly different meanings; you say that the word doesn't mean "genealogy" in the original, but what alternatives would have been used in the original text at the time it was written if that meaning were intended by the author? Even if other words were theoretically available, what words are used by contemporary writers in the same language to describe the two concepts, and were they clearly distinguished, or blended together? I see no evidence that this has been investigated) to or from Jesus.

Resorting to the text, Matthew begins with (KJV): "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Not "The book of the generation of Joseph". The second and third clauses further reinforce that Jesus is being called the son of Joseph, not "the son of the Holy Spirit, which is one with God, and he had no other ancestors in the male line". After all, if Jesus wasn't considered the son of Joseph, then it wouldn't make sense to describe him as the son of David, and the son of Abraham. You could argue over whether Mary's descent could justify this, but since it isn't presented in this chapter, that clearly isn't the author's intent. More modern translations give "genealogy" rather than "generation(s)", implying that "genealogy" is closer to the original intent, at least in modern English, which is the opposite of your contention. The Gospel of Luke says, "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli". This passage clearly calls Jesus the son of Joseph; the parenthetical, "as was supposed" does not mean, "but was not"; in plain English it means "yes it was". And it's pretty much the same in every translation. There's no ambiguity. The Gospel of John also refers to Jesus as "the son of Joseph" multiple times.

So what we come back to is that you're trying to force a distinction that none of the Evangelists made, and which seems to be textually contradicted by three of the four main Gospels. You're relying on terminology that didn't exist until modern times, and wading into a theological discussion that can't be resolved simply by resorting to the relevant scriptural passages. The only other sources that might explicitly state Jesus' descent, i.e. non-religious ones, would tend to assume that Joseph was his father, whatever else might have been said of him. So I'm not seeing any evidence to support your argument. P Aculeius (talk) 14:21, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

The important concession on your part is that these references do not give a descent of Mary from David. The gist of your argument is one or all of the following: 1) there is no difference between biological paternity and legal paternity, or at least 2) the ancients did not know the difference, or that 3) “supposed” the son is equivalent to “is” the son. The second point encompasses the first, and it is too absurd to be debated. The ancients did understand the concept of bloodlines and illegitimate births. Ironically, the very passage in question disproves you; Matthew 1:19 shows Joseph understood siring. In the New Testament, we find Jews questioning whether Jesus is descended from David. My distinction between blood and legal descent is supported, not contradicted, by these and other Bible passages. As for your third argument, if the ancients did know the difference between blood and legal lines and therefore the New Testament authors made it a point to state that Jesus is considered (“supposed”) “the son of Joseph” after stating he did not father the child, which I acknowledge they do, then Wikipedia should also make this distinction in the entry. You don’t want to misrepresent the concepts in the Bible, do you?74.51.157.191 (talk) 03:47, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Also, as a minor point of order, “γενεσεως” and “generationis” were the words used in all Greek and Latin Bibles, respectively, both of which mean “generation.” The word for genealogy or pedigree in these languages is different. The 21st Century King James Version even fixes it back to “generation,” as does the Douay-Rheims, the Catholic counterpart to KJV.74.51.157.191 (talk) 03:59, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, but you've misunderstood substantially everything I said. I'm not arguing that there was no distinction between biological and legal paternity; I'm saying that you're forcing modern terminology, with all its cultural baggage, on what is, in essence, myth (in the technical sense, not implying anything about the truth of the story). It's perfectly reasonable to infer from the plain language of the Evangelists that they considered Jesus to be the son of Joseph, even though he was conceived through the Holy Spirit before Joseph "knew" his wife. They simply chose not to make the distinction you're choosing to make, either because they did not think it essential to do so, or because they could not unravel the theological knot created by the apparent inconsistency—perhaps both. That says nothing about the ancients being too stupid to understand the concept of illegitimacy. The word "supposed" here is relevant because it seems to have been taken out of context to support your argument. If the text read, "the supposed son of Joseph" or "whom they supposed to be the son of Joseph", then it would support your argument. But it says, "being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph", which means that not only was he "supposed" to be the son of Joseph, but that he in fact was the son of Joseph, notwithstanding the circumstances of his conception.

You could argue endlessly on why this was so (could the Holy Spirit have used a sample of Joseph's DNA? Was it simply a miracle?), but those details were irrelevant to the Evangelists, who simply describe him as the son of Joseph, and provide a genealogy (and to be honest, whether you use this word or "generations" doesn't appear to be relevant either; the meaning in this context is the same) that assumes that Jesus is the son of Joseph. I simply don't see any grounds for making the distinction you want to make. I'm not saying that it's not a valid point of theological inquiry; merely that it's not a matter you can resolve through the text of the scriptures, and that as stated it comes down to your personal interpretation, rather than a reporting of scholarly investigation and discussion. If you can find scholarly writings that discuss this particular issue, feel free to add them to the article in the appropriate places. But at this point you're simply trying to modify the article based on your understanding, rather than what the sources themselves say. P Aculeius (talk) 14:28, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

This is argument 3) but more wordy. Per the passages cited, Jesus is not of the bloodline of Joseph, and Mary also is not of the bloodline of David. There is consensus on this by everyone in this talk section. This Wikipedia entry gives the opposite. Whether you see any grounds for making the distinction between blood and law in this context is irrelevant as the authors of the New Testament themselves made the distinction in the very passage cited, the Jews questioned it in subsequent New Testament passages (your dismissal of their status borders on anti-Semitic), and you are not the only audience for Wikipedia entries. Wikipedia entries should not be misleading to a global audience. Also, your interpretation of the word "supposed" is WP:OR, and the word "generation" was singular not plural; the burden of proof is on you to establish that it means the same thing as the modern English word "genealogy" in any context. 74.51.157.191 (talk) 21:52, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I think this debate has passed the point at which it serves any purpose. You're ignoring what I actually said, and arguing that the language of the scriptures means the opposite of what it says. Explaining why the plain language doesn't support your argument isn't original research, but your proposed changes to the article based on your interpretation of scripture would be. I never said that Mary's descent isn't set forth in the New Testament; I made no assertion about it, other than that it isn't given in the passages at issue, and therefore the assertion that Jesus was "the son of David" and "the son of Abraham" must depend on his being the son of Joseph in these passages. You can argue about "biological descent" and "bloodlines" until the cows come home, but that's not based on the text of the Gospels, which fail to make any such distinction, and certainly don't use that terminology. I don't have any burden of proving to you that two words used to translate the same word mean the same thing in that context. The burden is on you to show that the scriptures say exactly what you're alleging they do—not merely that you could interpret them that way, since that would be original research unless cited to an independent source. You also might want to avoid using the phrase "disruptive personal attacks" to avoid the core issues in this debate, particularly after alleging that the arguments set forth by one of the editors who disagrees with your interpretation "borders on anti-Semitic". That takes real chutzpah! But I think I've said all I need to in this discussion, and think I'll sit back and let the rest resolve itself. P Aculeius (talk) 22:13, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

If I am not allowed to introduce the word "bloodline" because the New Testament does not, then by the same logic, the Wikipedia entry author is not allowed to introduce the word "ancestry" because the New Testament does not. ("The Gospels of Matthew and Luke offer two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus. Matthew traces Jesus' ancestry to Abraham through David (1:1–16).[108] Luke traces Jesus' ancestry through Adam to God (3:23–38).[109]"). Bottom line is these intro sentences are misleading. At a bare minimum, "from Joseph, husband of Mary" (to distinguish from the other Josephs in the line) should be added in front of "to Abraham" and "through Adam," in sentences 2 and 3, respectively. Why oppose that? 74.51.157.191 (talk) 23:11, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

• Wikipedia should state what reliable unbiased sources state. An encyclopedia is not a venue for editors' speculation or for individual editors' personal exegesis of Biblical texts. Softlavender (talk) 05:51, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

At dispute here is whether the Wikipedia entry is an accurate write-up of the passages cited. The passages give that Jesus is not of the bloodline of Joseph, and no line of descent from David to Mary is given in the New Testament. There has been and is no dispute on these points. We are all in agreement as to these facts. Therefore, the Wikipedia entry should be corrected because it is misleading, and the burden of proof is on my interlocuters to prove why it should not be corrected. So far, no one has offered any reasoning as to why it should not be corrected, other than the claim by the guy above that he and, by his WP:OR inference, the 12 Evangelists, do not care about it. 74.51.157.191 (talk) 21:52, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

"12 Evangelists"?. I thought there were only four.Smeat75 (talk) 22:10, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

So even fewer people potentially agree with him then. 74.51.157.191 (talk) 23:11, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

It's really hard to take you seriously when you invent something like "12 Evangelists", attributing it to someone who said nothing of the kind, then treat it as proof of your argument when somebody questions it. P Aculeius (talk) 16:19, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

You are not required to take anyone seriously. You are required to respond or to yield to the proof that was just presented. 74.51.157.191 (talk) 17:12, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

We should not be performing our own primary-source write-up of any remotely-controversial biblical passage, fullstop. We should rely on secondary sources - that is, we should cite scholars, religious leaders, or other reliable sources, and cover what they say, impartially documenting all noteworthy disagreements to the extent that the people involved pass WP:DUE and aren't WP:FRINGE. Rather than performing your own analysis of the Bible (or demanding that people here do the same), you should search for high-quality analysis from reputable sources and use those. --Aquillion (talk) 05:01, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

• What P Aculeius and Softlavender said. WP is not a Sunday school lesson.Smeat75 (talk) 15:23, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

You have not contributed any rationale or arguments in this comment. Therefore we must assume that you agree that the sources give that Jesus is not of the bloodline of Joseph and that no line of descent from David to Mary is given in the New Testament. The question is what to do about the entry wording, given that the entry is misleading to Wikipedia's non-Christian and Christian modern English-speaking audience. 74.51.157.191 (talk) 21:52, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

• Agreeing with P Aculeius, Softlavender and Smeat75. The IP fails to understand how WP works, and seems unable to WP:HEAR what others say. This is ever so slightly moving towards disruptive territory, and it has long since crossed in WP:OR. We report what scholarly sources say, period. Jeppiz (talk) 17:10, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

These are disruptive personal attacks; please stick to rationale or arguments. No original research is being requested to be entered, only a correction, the factual correctness of which all in this section are in agreement with. We will assume you are in agreement with the factual correctness of it too since you did not dispute it in your comment. We are now up to four people, at least three of whom are opponents, who agree that the sources give that Jesus is not of the bloodline of Joseph and there is no line of descent from David to Mary. Please elaborate on why Wikipedia should not correct the entry. 74.51.157.191 (talk) 21:52, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

The IP also fails know how to create a workable RfC. The RfC cites sources and then fails to link to, quote, or specify the text of the sources, yet it then asks the readers to speculate on said sources, under the unproven assumption and presumption that such decisions or speculations are relevant to this Wikipedia article. Softlavender (talk) 23:04, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

The official Catechism of the Catholic Church gives that Jesus is not of the bloodline but of the "messianic lineage" of David.

God called Joseph to "take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit," so that Jesus, "who is called Christ," should be born of Joseph's spouse into the messianic lineage of David.³⁴ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.51.157.191 (talk) 22:29, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

• I am not seeing a proposed edit here, but think one is not warranted anyway. The article section on Genealogy and nativity is clear from the start that the two books have differences, and gives highlights from both. That seems like DUE covering in line with WEIGHT of coverage. Puzzling over the question of this thread is loosely interesting but seems moot as not a common enough topic to be DUE a mention, much less trying to find and show all significant positions. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 14:52, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

"The passages give that Jesus is not of the bloodline of Joseph" Joseph as a character, appears only in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. There is a single, brief reference to him in the Gospel of John (which has no nativity narrative), and no reference at all in the Gospel of Mark (which starts with an adult Jesus). The myth of the Virgin birth of Jesus is absent in the gospels of both Mark and John. The narrative which insists on the virgin birth is Matthew's, while Luke's narrative is more vague on the topic. As noted in our article:

• • The Book of Luke differs from Matthew in depicting a virginal conception rather than a virgin birth (there is nothing in Luke that suggests Joseph did not have sexual relations with Mary after the angelic visit). ... Luke's virgin birth story is a standard plot from the Jewish scriptures, as for example in the annunciation scenes for Isaac and for Samson, in which an angel appears and causes apprehension, the angel gives reassurance and announces the coming birth, the mother raises an objection, and the angel gives a sign."
• "The fact that the virgin birth is mentioned only by Matthew and Luke is considered to produce doubt as to its truth by scholars such as Jürgen Moltmann. He writes: "In the New Testament, Christ's 'virgin birth' is related only by Luke and Matthew. It was unknown, or considered unimportant, in wide areas of early Christian belief (the Pauline and Johannine sectors, for example). But from the third century onwards it became a firm component of the Christian creeds and theological christologies." He also writes: "The virgin birth is not one of the pillars that sustains the New Testament faith in Christ. The confession of faith in Jesus, the Son of God, the Lord, is independent of the virgin birth, and is not based on it." "Moreover, we find the confession of faith in Christ in Christian traditions which know nothing of the virgin birth, or do not mention it." He concludes: "that the virgin birth does not provide the justification for confessing Christ." Dimadick (talk) 15:05, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

References

Jesus had 2 parents, four grandparents, 8 great-gp, and so on. Matthew lists 40 generations of them from Abraham, which means that by the time we get to Perez the father of Hezron he has 68,719,476,736 (68.7 billion) ancestors all alive at the same time. That's quite a lot.PiCo (talk) 06:27, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, that sounds impossible, but of course when you think about it, everyone living today has had around 40 generations of ancestors just since the year 800. And there certainly weren't 68 billion people living then! This is an example of a phenomenon known to genealogists as "pedigree collapse", whereby if you can trace your lineage far enough back, you'll see the same names appearing over and over again in different branches. That's because for most of human history, people lived in the same relatively small communities for generations, and became related to almost everyone around them, making it rare to marry someone they weren't at least distantly related to. Even if someone moved to a new area, within a few generations they'd be related to most of the people there. Geneticists tell us that if we go back a few tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, the whole human population consisted of at most a few tens of thousands of people, and that everyone living then, who has living descendants today, is almost certainly the ancestor of every person now living. It doesn't take a miracle for Jesus to have had 40 generations of ancestors. It would be a miracle if he hadn't! P Aculeius (talk) 15:09, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

The bible places the birth of Abraham at roughly 2000 BC (1946 AM actually); with 40 generations to Jesus, this allows "generations" of 100 years - women are having babies at age 100 on average, some older, like Sarah, some considerably younger, like Mary, who was 13. Even allowing a lot of teenage pregnancies, seems a little improbable.PiCo (talk) 21:32, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

The Bible doesn't use an absolute chronography; it merely reports the generations and occasionally peppers its pages with commentary on the length that various persons lived or reigned. Until modern times there was no systematic attempt to harmonize these with actual history; we have Archbishop Ussher to thank for that. But using your date, your arithmetic is off. If Abraham was born in 1946 BC, and Jesus in 4 BC, then the span of time covered, 1,942 years, divided by forty generations from Abraham, equals 48.5 years per generation, not 100 years. This would still be quite high by today's standards, but it's not impossible by any means; it says nothing about the age at which the mothers of each generation gave birth, and we might reasonably suppose that on the whole they were several years younger than their husbands, although there's no reason to assume that they were all teenagers; they could have been any age. Note however that, according to Genesis, Abraham was one hundred years old when he begat Isaac, which alone brings the average generation down a little. Perhaps more importantly, Luke gives fifty-five generations from Abraham to Jesus, which, after you account for Isaac being born about 1842 BC in your reckoning, gives an average generation of 33.5 years, somewhat reasonable even by today's standards. And again, it says nothing about how old the wives were when they gave birth. I'm not claiming that either of these lists are accurate or reflective of genealogical fact. Merely that there's nothing inherently impossible about them, whichever route you follow. P Aculeius (talk) 14:05, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Apologies for the wonky maths - never was my strong point. For time-reckoning in the Old Testament, see the article Biblical chronology. But the real point I'm making (or rather operating from - I'm not really making any points) is that the Old Testament isn't real history. There never was an Adam or an Abraham, the regnal periods of the kings in 1 Kings are made up, and Matthew's 40 generations (made up of 3 units of 14, which is another piece of numerology) represents a cosmological history.Discussions like this are just silly.PiCo (talk) 23:25, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

They're anything but silly; myth isn't about detailing minute facts, but explaining larger truths about the universe. Understanding how myth develops from a combination of oral tradition and symbolism is an academic tradition of venerable lineage. The Greeks discussed such ideas at great length, long before the birth of Jesus. And I don't believe that anybody here has been arguing that the Old Testament needs to be treated as "history" in the modern sense. However, it would be a mistake to dismiss the accounts of events contained therein as purely mythical occurrences without a factual basis. While certain traditions bear the hallmarks of myth, and have no obvious connection to known persons and places, others appear to relate to individuals or events that are known from independent sources. While the traditions relating to Adam have obvious mythological significance, and little connection to "history", those relating to Abraham seem to dimly recall actual events, places, and persons known from multiple sources, and they do not seem to represent a constructed myth, but rather a collection of stories relating to an actual figure, or possibly multiple figures that have become assimilated. All of the details are up for debate, of course, but I think there's a reasonable scholarly consensus that there's some factual basis for some of the traditions relating to Abraham, including his probable existence. Simply because certain details, such as a number of generations or a line of descent, serve a clear mythological purpose, doesn't mean that they were simply made up by the author; more often existing knowledge or traditions are edited to suit the purpose of the storyteller. But that doesn't make them fictional, or unimportant. This discussion was a request for comment on the genealogies: specifically whether they're contained in the scriptures, and whether they should be included in the article if they're "false". They are clearly given in the scriptures. But as many editors have pointed out, it's not our place as editors to determine whether the scriptures are true or false, as if that were even within our power. We report what is said, and can qualify that by saying that it was said, and by whom, and what other scholars have said about that. But we do not editorialize on the contents of either the scriptures or the scholars who discuss them. Ultimately the reader decides what essential truths can be gleaned from the facts we report: not the fact of Jesus' descent, but the fact that the scriptures give it, in multiple versions. P Aculeius (talk) 04:05, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

• Comment there's a theological dispute here, but I'm not sure what the editorial one is. Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38 both clearly refer to the ancestry of Joseph. Excessive details about this should be in Genealogy of Jesus. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:11, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Pretty sure the person requesting comment outlined the issues. That editor's contention was that the article shouldn't refer to the ancestry of Jesus, because the two passages in question refer to the ancestry of Joseph, not of Jesus, since Joseph wasn't Jesus' father. The problem with this is that both passages explicitly state that they're giving the ancestry of Jesus, not just Joseph, and Joseph is identified as Jesus' father, notwithstanding the proposer's contention that since Joseph hadn't "known" Mary before the birth of Jesus, he couldn't be his father. Does this apparent contradiction pose a theological quandary? Of course. But the sources still say what they say, and the article shouldn't be rewritten in order to exclude the genealogies based on an editor's personal interpretation of the Gospels, and opinion of Jesus' paternity. That's not how Wikipedia works. P Aculeius (talk) 02:58, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Now I see the problem. You actually believe that the Bible is ambiguous whether Joseph could have fathered Jesus and that the Bible states that Joseph is Jesus's father. You view it like an amusing Hollywood story where a woman got pregnant and everything is implied, and the virgin birth is a face-saving device invented by Christians and has no direct textual basis. This is fantasy. The Bible specifically states that Joseph did not know Mary before the conception of Jesus in one of the very passages we have been arguing over: Matthew 1:18; also in Luke 1:34 in case there is any doubt. Please read these. The two passages do NOT state that they are giving the ancestry of Jesus, and Joseph is NOT identified as Jesus' father. Nowhere in the Bible does it claim that Joseph is Jesus' father. The virgin birth is not a theological quandary in Christianity. The quandary was explaining how Jesus could be the Messiah since He was not begat by Joseph and therefore not in the line of David. This isn't my personal issue. It is a real thing in Christianity that the Church had to develop a response for. I posted it above; please read it. I will be proposing a revision to the paragraph that should satisfy all parties, unless your aim is to mislead people into thinking that Christianity and the Bible hold that Joseph is Jesus's actual father.74.51.157.191 (talk) 03:10, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

• Use secondary sources. The Bible is a primary source for matters of Christian faith; given how controversial it can be between denominations, we cannot perform any meaningful interpretation of it ourselves. The appropriate thing to do in a case like this is to find secondary sources and cite them (and if there's disagreement, describe which groups think what, for the ones that pass WP:DUE and aren't WP:FRINGE.) Wikipedia is not the place to perform your own Biblical exegesis. --Aquillion (talk) 05:01, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.