Talk:Theotokos

message: Honestly this article should be titled Mother-of-God and the "Theotokos" article should redirect here. The word "theotokos" is not known to most non-Greek speakers and it is very confusing (not to mention - somewhat unpleasant sounding to English speakers). I am Orthodox and I did not know what this meant until just now. This is the English version of Wikipedia, and main articles should have titles in English where such exist. The term "Mother-of-God" is very well known and deep rooted in the English language and is easy to understand for international users who have English as a second language. That's what the article should be named.
Also, in the opening sentence after Theotokos in brackets the variations of this name need to be listed in all Eastern Orthodox languages. The Greek one is in no way universal and NOT used in the other liturgical languages. 
Not to mention that labeling Slavic orthodox icons at the top with "Theotokos" (instead of the proper Slavic term "Bogoroditsa") could be infuriating as it implies supremacy of the Greek term over the Slavic one. Most Orthodox people in the world are Slavic so if anything, the Slavic term is way more popular and more widely understandable. Which brings me back to the above - just use the neutral and proper English term, it keeps the article from going into lots of murky areas.     
 ~George
: Theotokos can be used as person's name in English-speaking countries; so as name is part of language, is a word in this language (albeit borrowed, non-native root), it is part of English language as well. Like Peter or smth. :) BirgittaMTh (talk) 11:49, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Article Needs reorganization

message: MATIA added the following, which I do not have sufficient Greek to translate.  JHCC  (talk) 14:29, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I don't really know enough Greek for this sort of translation. Regarding Nestorius, I remember our priest reading us a prayer attributed to his later days in which he repents and acknowledges Mary as Theotokos.  Wesley 12:46, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Funny, if you ask the Ethiopians they have a completely different opinion. TCC (talk) (contribs) 05:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: In need of translation

message: I noticed that some Arab Christians used the expression Mother of Allah when talking about the Theotokos. It would be interesting to find sources on this and perhaps include it in the article. ADM (talk) 22:05, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That's probably because "Allah" simply means "God" in Arabic.  I can't say I'd consider a difference in the language used to be particularly notable. Farsight001 (talk) 00:06, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. "Allah" is a literal translation of God in Arabic, so there is no conceptual difference I believe.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.232.205.22 (talk) 03:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Mother of Allah

message: With the development of modern embryology and neonatology, there is a debate within the pro-life movement on whether the embryo and foetus of Jesus should be proclaimed as fully divine and whether it could be venerated as such. This is an interesting theological perspective that is directly related to the Theotokos doctrine, which was promulgated at a time when people did not have the same kind of scientific knowledge about un-born, pre-born and newborn babies. ADM (talk) 10:01, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Embryo/Foetus of Jesus

message: I think this should be mentioned as it is scriptural and people get in a right state over it. 
family of Jesus Mat 12:46-50 Matt 13:55 -56, Luke 8:19-21, John 2:11-12, John 7:3-5, Acts 1:13-14. There are clear distinctions here about the family and disciples, Also they Recognise Jesus's family as being such. I think we need to look at the truth verses tradition even if it costs us in the end, we need to be right before God  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Darthsuma (talk • contribs) 14:35, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia is not the place to get people "right before god". It appears you are trying to insert your own personal interpretations of biblical verses into the article. I'd ask you to review some of our policies and guidelines WP:NOR and WP:PSTS. We need to use care when adding primary sources, and in most circumstances, instead, cite scholars who hold these interpretations. Furthermore, you should take care in writing encyclopedic content. You should follow basic rules of grammar. Your addition to the article was not even a complete sentence, and has poor sentence structure. Anyway, I don't want to discourage you from editing in any way. I just want you to be familiar with our rules, and encourage you to make your contributions that much better. Finally, touching on my first point, you should review WP:NPOV. Wikipedia is not about The Truth, but instead about presenting all notable points of view, in due weight. We don't take sides, or say one view is better or truer (though we can say if one view is held by more people. however, in this case, Catholic + Orthodox adherents clearly outnumber)-Andrew c [talk] 15:42, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mary's other kids 

message: Why didn't you input the protestant's opinion of this article, and how these Consensus made? If someone tell the reason, I can refer on the making of Korean article. - Ellif (talk) 03:20, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  I have a question 

message: The article begins by claiming that "theotokos (Greek Θεοτόκος) is a title of Mary, mother of Jesus, used especially in Eastern Christianity". This is factually incorrect. Maybe the article means Greek Eastern Christianity? Russians, Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians etc. do not speak Greek, they don't use Greek as their liturgical language and therefore do not call her theotokos. In Romanian her title is născătoare de Dumnezeu, bearer [forth] of God, she who gave birth to God. Her Russian title has a similar meaning. In both cases the titles use usual words combined in a usual way with no special technical meaning. There has never been a time during the last half millenium when most Eastern Orthodox spoke Greek. Imerologul Valah (talk) 14:10, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I fail to see your point tbh. Of course the article by saying "the title" means the original Greek title and its various vernacular translations. It spends a lot of time going into the various Slavic translations. I didn't include discussion of the Romanian translation because I didn't have references on it, but clearly nobody has kept you from adding such a discussion in the appropriate place.  The entire point about "the Church" is that it is a diachronous entity spanning two millennia. The important decisions regarding the terminology were made in the 5th century, and obviously both the terminology and the language of the discussion were Greek. This would still be the case today even if every single Christian for the past "half millennium" had been monolingual in Klingon. --dab (𒁳) 05:14, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Most Eastern Orthodox are ''not'' Greek 

message: In the final paragraph of the Iconography portion of the article, the second sentence reads: "The tradition of Luke the Evangelist being the _____ [sic] to have painted Mary is established by the 8th century." The missing word may have been "first."  I do not know what the intended word was, but there is an error of a missing word(s).
Torcher01 (talk) 14:55, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Noting that this was fixed some time ago. Klbrain (talk) 06:01, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing word (apparently)  

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Theotokos is a Greek Christian term that most English speakers will not be able to relate to. Why name the article Theotokos in Greek when you have an English equivalent? "Mother of God" is the most widely accepted translation of Theotokos and Deipara. Mother of would be more suitable and appropriate from an encyclopedic& reader friendly for non-Christians on "English Wikipedia." Nolicmahr (talk) 13:05, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: , Eastern Christians typically leave this term untranslated, and so the preponderance of reliable secondary sources on this topic will call her "Theotokos" rather than "Mother of God". Elizium23 (talk) 13:06, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: So this article is only for Eastern Christians? What about Western Christian POV "Deipara" and "Mater Dei"? It's been reduced to a footnote. There ought be a separate article for "Deipara"/ "Mother of God" as used by Western Christians who are not familiar with the Greek term. Nolicmahr (talk) 13:14, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

text: Mother of God is the common ground. English speaking Eastern Christians will agree that this phrase is the widely accepted English rendering of Theotokos Nolicmahr (talk) 13:17, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a separate article, Catholic Mariology. The Theotokos article is chiefly about her veneration in the Eastern Churches, so yes, it does take an Eastern POV as compared to the Western Catholic one, of which there is plenty of documentation in other articles. So why do you have to attack this one? What do you have against Eastern Christianity? Elizium23 (talk) 13:19, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not an attack or war, it's a discussion on wiki. Mother of God and Mariology are not the same topics. You cannot take down an article on the EU simply because there's already a page on Europe. The name of the article ought to be a common one, with both Western and Eastern POVs represented equally. Nolicmahr (talk) 13:30, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it shouldn't. We editors have chosen quite prudently that the topics are separable and deserve independent coverage, and that's how we've set it up. Elizium23 (talk) 13:32, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename to Mother of God/ God bearer 

message: Using a current Chaldean Catholic liturgy that says “Mother of God” to claim that this goes back to the third century doesn’t make sense. This isn’t part of the original text of the Liturgy. 108.174.97.50 (talk) 15:20, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Syriac Tradition