Talk:Criticism of Jesus

message: "Instead, "righteous" Joe wants to divorce her secretly, despite the fact that the cat's already out of the bag and showing three months pregnant[15], until an angel comes to him in a dream. Of course, other translations like the KJV, employ the euphemism "put her away privily". In any event, Joseph is dissuaded from his righteous plan to ditch his old lady by being told that his wife has had her spiritual booty rocked by the cherry-poppin “Holy Ghost”. It’s not clear that Joseph would have any idea what the Holy Spirit was, doctrinally speaking, but we’re told that he accepts it."
Do I actually need to say anything else about this passage? 82.33.166.72 (talk) 00:05, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No. And for that matter, several other paragraphs within that section are extremely poor: written as if this is someone's personal essay on the matter, using unencyclopedic language, and theorizing independently (OR). I've removed all such paragraphs, which weren't really informative on the subject in general, but only on the views of the editor who added them.--C.Logan (talk) 22:05, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interesting choice of words 

message: Honestly, the page has like 5 sentences, and a paragraph quote. I'm open to criticism of religious figures, but this page is just pathethic, people. The rape part on the page even said into could've just been an Anti-Christian legend. Way to back up claims. Keero 01:08, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion? 

message: Why no mention of Russell? In "Why I Am Not a Christian" he writes (forgive the giant quote):
"I am concerned with Christ as He appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance, "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come." Then he says, "There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom"; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching. When He said, "Take no thought for the morrow," and things of that sort, it was very largely because He thought that the second coming was going to be very soon, and that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count. I have, as a matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe that the second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early Christians did really believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In that respect, clearly He was not so wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise."
::Good idea. I added it to the best of my limited ability. I am sure that there is a Christian response, which I hope someone more knowledgeable will add.--Timtak (talk) 05:07, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no mention of Nietzsche on the page now. Paine is looking every lonlier. What did Nietzche say? I can only think of cricisms of Christianity (which he calls a religion of the weak, life denying), and one place where he praised Jesus over Paul at least. --Timtak (talk) 05:07, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bertrand Russell? 

message: I remember. 
:"Twilight of the Idols, Morality as Anti-Nature, 1,....il faut tuer les passions. The most famous formula for this is to be found in the New Testament, in that Sermon on the Mount, where, incidentally, things are by no means looked at from a height. There it is said, for example, with particular reference to sexuality: "If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out." Fortunately, no Christian acts in accordance with this precept. Destroying the passions and cravings, merely as a preventive measure against their stupidity and the unpleasant consequences of this stupidity�today this itself strikes us as merely another acute form of stupidity. We no longer admire dentists who "pluck out" teeth so that they will not hurt any more. To be fair, it should be admitted, however, that on the ground out of which Christianity grew, the concept of the "spiritualization of passion" could never have been formed. After all the first church, as is well known, fought against the "intelligent" in favor of the "poor in spirit." How could one expect from it an intelligent war against passion? The church fights passion with excision in every sense: its practice, its "cure," is castration. It never asks: "How can one spiritualize, beautify, deify a craving?" It has at all times laid the stress of discipline on extirpation (of sensuality, of pride, of the lust to rule, of avarice, of vengefulness). But an attack on the roots of passion means an attack on the roots of life: the practice of the church is hostile to life."--Timtak (talk) 08:16, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "83 Saviour and Physician. The founder of Christianity was, as goes without saying, not without the gravest shortcomings and prejudices in his knowledges of the human soul, and as a physician of the soul devoted to that infamous and untutored faith in a universal medicine. At times his methods seem like those of a dentist whose sole cure for pain is to pull out the teet; as for example when he combats sensuality with the advice: "if thy offend thee, pluck it out'- But there is this difference, that the dentist at least attains his object, the cessation of pain in his patient; in so clumsy a way, to be sure, as to be ludicrous: while the Christian who follows that advice and believes he has killed his sensuality is deceiving himself: it lives on in an uncanny vampire form and torments in repulsive disguises."--Timtak (talk) 08:29, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Nietzsche

message: One direction we can take this article in is to really focus on the anti-virgin birth stuff.  Virgin birth was a big issue from the 1870s to 1940s.  It played a central role in things like the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy.  AFAIK none of the other historical Jesus articles take a good look at the anti-virgin birth focus since this is less of a hang up for modern readers possibly a result of the massive use of assisted procreation?  
The Paine section could be expanded to deist critiques which also are so dated they don't get discussed.  And this material would seem to fit well with the virgin birth issues, i.e. deist ideas became incorporated into liberal Christianity in the later part of the 19th century.  
As far as Russel and Nietzsche I think that content belongs under atheism.  The focus of their critique is entirely different.   jbolden1517Talk 13:33, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: As requested, I have deleted this section.  It is really not about Jesus anyway. Grantmidnight (talk) 14:45, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  What to do with virgin birth 

message: It is a rather strong criticism of Jesus to say 'you also are not true' as Mother Teresa did.
She is well known, so indeed is the quote. The quote absolutely is relevant to this article.
Pma jones (talk) 21:49, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That is not criticism of Jesus. It is like saying "Oh, if God isn't real then I'm not going to Heaven and when I die I will do just that." That wasn't criticism of God. And your particular quote refers more to God than Jesus the man (she merely worries at the thought that God might not exist and thus Jesus would not be really Him).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.247.154.58 (talk) 02:41, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mother Teresa 

message: I check pages listed in :Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of :Criticism of Jesus's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "ReferenceB":
From Historical Jesus: "Herod family." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005
From Historicity of Jesus: Bruce M. Metzger's Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament:  is missing in some important early witnesses,  varies between the Alexandrian and Western versions.
From Religious perspectives on Jesus: Catechism of the Catholic Church §541–546
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 12:26, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphaned references in [[:Criticism of Jesus]] 

message: Historicity Section
Doesn't this belong in the Christ myth theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory) since it is not actually criticism Jesus the person but arguing whether he existed or not?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.34.215.226 (talk) 01:14, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Went ahead and removed the historicity and Jefferson sections as they don't seem to be actually criticising Jesus. Tameamseo (talk) 16:19, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The positioning of Aquinas as a critique is just surreal, just unbelievable. Aquinas would be the last to criticize Jesus and the quote is totally out of context. Nietzsche was a critic as was Russell, etc. Those are well known critics. Aquinas promoted the "Perfection of Christ", and argued he exemplified perfection in every possible sense. Aquinas was no critic. I wonder how this material gets into these articles and stays there, just with WP:Primary sources, and totally incorrect.... History2007 (talk) 12:09, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some stuff should go 

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thread_title: File:Bertrand Russell 1950.jpg Nominated for Deletion

message: I was somewhat surprised that in Hitchens' section, there are no mentions of his criticism of the Crucifixion (he referred to it "vicarious redemption") and that Jesus of Nazareth thought it moral to do so, or is that something more befitting 'Criticisms of Christianity'?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tengen Toppa (talk • contribs) 04:01, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Christopher Hitchens 

message: It seems to me than none of these points is a criticism of Jesus himself. In fact, Jesus comes off as being perfect and blameless. Compare the article of criticisms of Mohammed. There are some very damning facts on Mohammed. On this page, however, the authors come off as petty slanderers. Jesus was the son of an adulterous country girl? Are you kidding me??? I wonder if this page was simply added because someone thought it was necessary to "balance" the page on Mohammed. It only makes wikipedia look amateurish and silly.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.106.232.209 (talk) 19:04, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel no need to get emotional about it. These quotes are evidently confirmed to have been said by the authors/researcher/scholars who had big name in the world after all. Bladesmulti (talk) 19:09, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

text: Do you have suggestions for this page to make it more "balanced" and less "amateurish and silly"? There is nothing really constructive to work with from "this page sucks" comments... Ckruschke (talk) 15:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Best would be, to just add more criticism if you find, Ironically, the Criticism of Christianity is bigger than Criticism of Islam, but this page is few times smaller than Criticism of Muhammad. Bladesmulti (talk) 06:35, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm pretty sure that the relative page sizes, though interesting in passing, are irrelvant. As you are the editor bringing up issues you see in this page, please post your suggested edits here. Ckruschke (talk) 14:31, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this article gratuitous? 

message: In counterargument, the Christian anarchist Simone Weil argue that Jesus see slaves as people voluntarily dedicated to God: "In Christ's mouth, this word (slavery) is a astuteness of love. Slaves are men that wanted from the bottom of their heart give themselves to God as slaves. These slaves didn't stop for a second to beg to God to agree in keep them in slavery".[10]
This is not criticism of Jesus, it has nothing to do with the article. Also
this comes from a 1940s book from a well known Christian convert and apologist. Poorly sourced.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bagist (talk • contribs) 10:04, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange paragraph 

message: === Leszek Nowak ===
Pole Leszek Nowak (born 1962) from Poznań claims that Jesus had a mental disorder. In the years 1998-2000 he wrote a study in which, based on his own history of religious delusions of mission and overvalued ideas, and information communicated in the Gospels, made an attempt at reconstructing Jesus’ psycheLeszek Nowak, Prywatna Witryna Internetowa Leszka Nowaka at Internet Archive (Polish) with the view of Jesus as apocalyptic prophet.Analysis of fragments of the New Testament books for Jesus as apocalyptic prophet: Leszek Nowak, "A great mistake and disappointment of early Christianity" at Internet Archive (Polish) He does so in chapters containing, in sequence, an analysis of character traits of the ″savior of mankind″, a description of the possible course of events from the period of Jesus' public activity, a naturalistic explanation of miracles.
-- Wikipek (talk) 06:30, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I cannot determine if this is a notable author, particularly since the works you cite aren't available except from archive.org and don't appear to have been reviewed anywhere. Anyone can study anything and write about it, but we cannot include everything written on the subject by just anyone. Unless these works have received recognition by a community of scholars or the mainstream press, we probably can't reference them in this article. What other information can you provide? ~Anachronist (talk) 07:39, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK I understand. These requirements are not met. I do not have more information on this subject. Of course, this was just a suggestion and now I understand why this text does not meet the conditions required to be included in the article. Wikipek (talk) 19:11, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the suggestion, though. If there are any scholarly works that have been published and cited elsewhere that discuss the possibility of a mental disorder, we can include it. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:39, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for interest. Scholarly works on Jesus' mental disorders are presented in this article – "Mental health of Jesus" (pl.wiki) (see References to this article). But I will not help here. I am weak from English and mainly use a Translator. Wikipek (talk) 22:31, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion to be added to section "Criticism by author" 

message: Pole Leszek Nowak (born 1962) from Poznań claims that Jesus had a mental disorder. In the years 1998-2000 he wrote a study in which, based on his own history of religious delusions of mission and overvalued ideas, and information communicated in the Gospels, made an attempt at reconstructing Jesus’ psycheLeszek Nowak, Prywatna Witryna Internetowa Leszka Nowaka at Internet Archive (Polish) with the view of Jesus as apocalyptic prophet.Analysis of fragments of the New Testament books for Jesus as apocalyptic prophet: Leszek Nowak, "A great mistake and disappointment of early Christianity" at Internet Archive (Polish) He does so in chapters containing, in sequence, an analysis of character traits of the ″savior of mankind″, a description of the possible course of events from the period of Jesus' public activity, a naturalistic explanation of miracles.
-- Wikipek (talk) 06:30, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I cannot determine if this is a notable author, particularly since the works you cite aren't available except from archive.org and don't appear to have been reviewed anywhere. Anyone can study anything and write about it, but we cannot include everything written on the subject by just anyone. Unless these works have received recognition by a community of scholars or the mainstream press, we probably can't reference them in this article. What other information can you provide? ~Anachronist (talk) 07:39, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK I understand. These requirements are not met. I do not have more information on this subject. Of course, this was just a suggestion and now I understand why this text does not meet the conditions required to be included in the article. Wikipek (talk) 19:11, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the suggestion, though. If there are any scholarly works that have been published and cited elsewhere that discuss the possibility of a mental disorder, we can include it. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:39, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for interest. Scholarly works on Jesus' mental disorders are presented in this article – "Mental health of Jesus" (pl.wiki) (see References to this article). But I will not help here. I am weak from English and mainly use a Translator. Wikipek (talk) 22:31, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Leszek Nowak 

message: While many authors criticized Jesus, it is worth noting that none of the sources, as I can tell, examines the "Criticism of Jesus". It is no surprise that the result is a huge synthesis of criticism made by various authors. I 've tried to find out modern literature on Criticism of Jesus, but found none.  I 've done this mini search as I am interested in translating the article in another lang. but without being definitely notable, I am hesitant.Cinadon36 12:16, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notability issue 

message: I check pages listed in :Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of :Criticism of Jesus's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "SN":
From Charles Binet-Sanglé: 
From Mental health of Jesus: 
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 04:42, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphaned references in [[:Criticism of Jesus]] 

message: A couple of years ago, here, you changed the lead of this article, by changing a general introduction to an immediate start of a description of the criticism of Jesus reported in the Cristian gospels.  Thus, you changed a relative start of the article:
 * Jesus of Nazareth is a central figure of Christianity. Christians believe that he was (and still is) divine, while Islam considers him to have been a prophet, messenger and the Messiah. Since the time in which he is said to have lived, a number of noted individuals have criticised Jesus. ...
to an absolute one:
 * Criticism of Jesus has existed since the first century. Jesus was criticised by the Pharisees and scribes for disobeying Mosaic Law. ...
Now, you introduced the subject in boldface already in the first sentence, and this I think was an improvement.  You also added more of the detailed criticism to the lead; which may or may not have been an improvement.  In general, in my opinion, article leads should be more of content summaries, rather than immediately starting detailed exposition; whether or not your additions was too detailed for the lead and should be shifted down could be open to discussion.
However, you also made another change which I think was not so good.  The older version started by stating what "Jesus" in this context is, and noted that it is the central figure in Cristian
faith, and an important one in Islam, and a bit about the different ways these two world religions in general see him.  Thus, much of the criticism concerns the way he is presented in the Christian New testament (and, to a much lesser extent, by the Moslem Quran), whether or not these descriptions are true ones.  Now, you completely removed this.  Instead, you start by mention the criticism which according to the New testament (and in this case mainly the Gospel) Jesus was subjected to already in his lifetime; and you formulate it as if these Biblical descriptions are undisuted truths.  In my opinion, this impression is completely wrong.  There exist rather divided opinions about to what extent the descriptions of these events in the Bible are exactly true testimonies from eye witnesses, or partly reconstructed afterwards from now lost sources, or partly extended in manners accepted and expected by its contemporary audience, or 'borrowed' from stories about other important figures, or completely invented.  Partly, such division of opinion follows religious convictions; and partly not.  Actually, the truth or falsity of the Bible's description of the life of Jesus is not very important for this article.  Anyhow, it is rather widespread, and provides some description, which does include criticism from contemporaries; and that should be reported in this article, exactly as a description.
So, what I'm saying is that it is wrong to write
::"In the first century, Jesus was criticised by the Pharisees and scribes for disobeying Mosaic Law";
(if there has been no preceding relativising explanation), but right to write, e. g.,
::According tho the description of the life of Jesus in the Gospel, he was criticised already in his life time by the Pharisees and scribes for disobeying Mosaic Law".
(I hope you see the difference.)
My question to you is: Was this effect of your changes by intent, or simply a mistake?  If it just was an unintended consequence of your other changes, it shold be easy to fix it.  On the other hand, if it was intended, then I would like to see an explanation of why you think this "absolutisation" was a good effect of change.
I'm sorry for not having reacted to this earlier (I simply did not see it before), and I do understand that you may feel it a bit hard to remember exactly what you thought then.  If so, it is quite OK if you just answer whether you think it is OK that I "relativise" the text a bit, although this partly may revert your edit.
Regards, JoergenB (talk) 20:05, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was presenting the view that the account in the Gospels are undisputed a mistake?