Talk:Jesus/Archive 82

message: Currently the article says 'Muslims believe that Jesus' crucifixion was a divine illusion' when Muslims have numerous views concerning it. Other common interpretations include the Swoon hypothesis (like in Ahmed Deedat's 'crucifixion or crucifiction?'); that the crucifixion is nothing more than an orally spread myth (such as Imam Al-Alusi or Muhammad Asad); that the Romans crucified Judas by mistake as well as that the crucifixion was a 'divine illusion'. It's not very encyclopedic for one interpretation to be given credence over others when this is far from an agreed point. It would be better for the article to just say Muslims don't believe Jesus was crucified and leave it at that. Kadaveri 19:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Muslim view on Crucifixion 

message: I noticed that the notes section of this article is inconsistent in two ways:  It has extremely long notes for some and short notes for others; and secondly, it has long notes at all:  most of the other articles on Wikipedia have neat and short notes for each note, in a uniform fashion.
I propose a cleanup in the notes section to conform to de facto standard. Scifiintel 01:34, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Also, the sources could be improved if they used the :template: cite style. Some sources also use  "ibid" - that's fine in a printed book, but not in a Wiki, where other authors may introduce material that makes the reference unclear. Better use full references every time. --Stephan Schulz 00:22, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

text: There are sometimes good reasons for extended footnotes, when the flow of the article would be disrupted by digressions, but content is relevant. Paul B 01:54, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes section may need clean up. 

message: Ok, I thought this God Who Wasn't There movie link was going to be a relatively textbook case of removing links which were clearly advertisements, but now we're linking directly to the download off of a torrent site (of file extension that I don't even know about) which is called "thepiratebay.com?" I don't think it counts if you switch from advertisement to a site which, if the title isn't trying to be misleading, seems to be hosting pirated DVD's for download via torrent. How many readers even have the software to download and run things off of a torrent site anyway? If the External Links policy discourages videos from YouTube or Google Video and the like, I really don't see how torrent downloads from sites of questionable legality are a step up in acceptability. Homestarmy 01:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Plus to be "encyclopedic" it would have to have the author(s) and other metadata in plain text with the link so that we could examine the likely level of scholarship. rossnixon 02:24, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done. The user's clearly just trying to find any way possible to include it. --Deskana (ya rly) 02:32, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Why shouldn't I be allowed to include it?  Why are links to both the official site and the move itself off limits?  This film provides compelling critical information about the history of Christianity.  Why do you feel the need to censor skeptical views.  Are you a Christian or something? Delirium of disorder 02:56, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

text: And trying to look up the actual site itself caused my comp to blue screen, spent like an hour checking for viruses or something, not funny, but I didn't find anything. Homestarmy 02:58, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree completely that links to direct BitTorrent downloads from pirate/warez sites is a terrible, terrible idea. However, we may want to discuss the merits of the original link. I believe that a) the claims that the site is an ad aren't strictly valid but b) the documentry isn't that notable, is poorly made, and doesn't focus that much on Jesus (it is equally about Brian Flemming's disdain for his catholic school upbringing). And while we are on the topic of links, as homestarmy mentions regarind Google Videos, can we remove the link to the Google video of Jesus:The Movie?-Andrew c 03:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: On the Jesus film, perhaps linking directly to the studio's site which made it would be better, unlike the film that started this mini-revert war, it is listed for download plainly. Plus, i've seen it before, and if the claims i've heard about it are true, then its one of the most widely translated films in the world, that's pretty notable...(Ok, yea, and I liked it too) Homestarmy 03:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The God Who Wasn't There is not the same film as the Jesus movie that you linked to, Homestarmy.  I don't know what wikipedia editors have against torrents.  Software to download torrents is included by default in most working (ie not Microsoft) Operating Systems.  The fact that the pirate bay made your computer bluescreen makes me laugh.  Visiting a website should never be able to crash your operating system.  You are foolish for using such broken software.  Bittorrent is a great way to distribute large files without incurring expensive hosting fees.  Out of the box, ubuntu downloads torrent files just fine.  You don't need to install any extra software to get it to work.  The film is creative commons licensed and perfectly legal to download.  The fact that the site that hosts it also hosts material copyrighted by assholes (the MPAA) shouldn't be a strike against my link.  I would convert the film to a free format (ogg theora) and host it at wikipedia, since people here have some irrational fear of the pirate bay, but when I tried that with other video clips, wikipedia failed to complete the upload. Delirium of disorder 02:49, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was on the subject of a different link that Andrew c wanted to talk about, while we were on the discussion of the External Links section in general. As for the bluescreen, deciding that I would try to ascertain the type of website this was, I typed in just the URL torrent.thepiratebay.com, (or .org or whatever it was) and about 10 seconds later, my computer bluescreened. But, as I said, I didn't find anything like a virus or something that would of been behind it. Of course, if thepiratebay.com had been a spyware distributing website for real, a mere solitary system crash would of been the least of my worries....but that's another topic. When a reader comes to the External Links sections of our articles, statistically speaking, the chances of them currently using any open-source OS at all, much less a Linux distribution, is extremely low. I clicked on your link and got some crazy file extension that there's no way Windows XP can handle out of the box, and I seriously doubt Vista would know what to do with it either, and those are probably the two major OS's that readers will be using as they look up stuff on Wikipedia. Having the readers of articles in mind is quite important when deciding what to present to them, and sending them off to download torrent files from sites of questionable legality with files that they probably won't be able to run anyway isn't in the best interests of our readers. Homestarmy 03:10, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: A Torrent from "Thepiratebay.com"?

message: I suggest to add the following in Judaism's view:
Judaism has no special or particular view of Jesus, and very few texts in Judaism directly refer to or take note of Jesus. One of the most important Jewish principles of faith is the belief in one God and one God only with no partnership of any kind,Devarim (Deuteronomy) 6:4 and belief in Jesus as deity, son of God, or Christ, is incompatible with Judaism.
:: There are many sects in Judaism, and I'm sure they all have their own distinct opinions of Jesus. The same could be said of different sects within Christianity. Perhaps a better idea would be to source quotes from the opinions of the different Jewish sects about Jesus. As for the second point, I don't think it is necessary to add that quote. Christians sprang from a branch of Essene Judaism (the Nazarene's) and all Christians subscribe to belief in one true God (even misguided one's). Some Roman catholic derived denominations hold the belief that Jesus was God incarnate. In which case, they would still only believe in one God. Other Christian groups believe Jesus to be an enlightened powerfull human whom attained miracles through the will of God, still others say Jesus was a Prophet and teacher whom did no miracles. Either way, Christians believe in one true God, and do not subscribe to the idea of Jesus being another rival or co-operating God. I think anyone whom serves 'Gods will' is accepting a partnership with God, although there is no question of who is the server and whom is being served. Christians believe Christ was serving God and thus he accepted willing loving subserviance to God.86.4.59.203 15:25, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  suggestion 

message: I noticed that the section of Jesus states that "For others, Christianity has often been linked to [the] Atlantic slave trade." While that is the truth it is not the whole truth. It is good that the section balances this by asserting the good things as well but the words on the Atlantic Slave trade is slightly misleading.
It is true that Christians were involved but it was not the Christians as if to suggest that there was a conspiracy. In fact, the British ended their participation in the slave trade because of Christian convictions. (A good source of apologetics on this subject can be found here.   I admit, Answers in Genesis can be looked on with some suspicion, but in this regard, they are mostly accurate. After all, we must not let pre-existing bias color our judgements because critical thinking affirms that "even a broken clock right twice a day.") For example, the film Amazing Grace retells the story of how devoted abolitionist William Wilberforce was moved by his Christian convictions to abolish the slave trade in his native Britain.
I suggest that the phrase "For others, Christianity has often been linked to [the] Atlantic slave trade" be modified to "For some, Christianity has often been linked to the Atlantic slave trade yet for others it was Christians, who due to their Christian faith, ended the Atlantic slave trade." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Juangarcia1982 (talk • contribs) 17:38, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How about "On one hand, Christians initiated the herditary slavery of Africans by Europeans. On the other, they later abolished slavery across the globe." Christians have done more to eliminate slavery than they did to expand it. It's not just the Atlantic slave trade that they ended. But they also started it in the first place. Yes, the British ended the slave trade for religious reasons, but they first perpetrated a system of slavery unparalleled in its horror (Caribbean sugar plantations). They also used Christianity to justity slavery while they were up to their eyeballs in it. Jonathan Tweet 00:14, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that the "British" as such were responsible for slavery, or even a particular type of slavery. Are you aware of what the Spanish, Dutch, Portugese and Belgians did? It's also rather misleading to refer to the Atlantic slave trade as "Christian". Yes, Biblical arguments were used to justify it, but they did not motivate it. Imperial economics motivated it. In so far as Christianity was involved it was just that they needed excuses! Slavery has existed under numerous religions. I don't think there is any evidence that Chritianity as such was responsible for - as it were - "industrialising" it. However, there is very good evidence that Christianity was a powerful force in stopping it. So were Enlightenment humanist ideals, of course. Christianity was not the only factor. Paul B 00:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

text: p.s. Saying that "Christians initiated the herditary slavery of Africans" is like saying "Christians invented the steam engine". It's just using "Christians" as a synonym for "Europeans". It's misleading unless Christianity itself is seen as a factor. Paul B 00:40, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Some time ago, I actually deleted a line on Christian complicity with slavery.  Now, most of you know I fought long and hard to include as part of Jesus' legacy negative things, so it should be clear to people that the reason I think slavery does not belong is NOT becuase I think Jesus' legacy is entirely positive or the section on Jesus' legacy should include only positive things.  But Christianity's relationship wiuth slavery is just too complex; most historians would say slavery supported an emerging European imperial system that coincided with the decline of Christian political dominance in Europe, and that as many people appealed to Christianity to argue for the abolution of slavory as those who appealed to it to argue in support of slavery ... I think the whole thing at best cancels itself out, at worst is real misdirection. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 13:51, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My bad. It's the Christianity page that should own up to Christianity's promotion of slavery (e.g., a Pope's establishment of hereditary slavery of Africans, with OT precedent backing it up). Even though the Roman Catholic Church is Jesus Christ, the Jesus page doesn't need to refer to what Popes have done in Jesus' name. The abolition of slavery worldwide, however, is an unprecedented advance in human society and morality, founded more or less squarely on Jesus' teaching. Can we reference that somehow? Jonathan Tweet 14:15, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Christianity and the abolition of slavery? 

message: I'm apparently coming in late. Why is there a POV tag on this page? I mean, it's way POV, but it's been way POV since forever, and it hasn't always had the tag. Jonathan Tweet 00:35, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was going to ask about it myself, I don't even remember when it was added.... Homestarmy 01:03, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that it's a fine article. I compared it with that of the 1911 Britannica, and both of them show an acceptable amount of neutrality.  bibliomaniac15 02:48, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I do believe I have discovered the cause: . It appears its over that ridiculous atheist views section, I can't tell if this was just a blatantly lazy blanket revert or not though, because it also removed JT's addition with the sheep thing. Homestarmy 12:54, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV tag? 

message: Now that we're basically having two edit wars at once in between the sheep thing, might as well start this topic too, over the Rejection of Judaism category. What does "Rejection of Judaism" even mean? Judaism isn't exactly the World's Most Monolithic Religion (tm), I barely even understand it myself because its so complicated with the social aspect being tied up with it, and where in the article is it discussed that Jesus explicitly rejected Judaism? This seems very confusing. It's like adding a Homosexuality category to a famous figure without the article actually discussing Homosexuality at all, and quite frankly, the category in question here looks downright unjustified. Now, on to the policy considerations, WP:CAT is (or was the last time I read it) quite clear that controversial category listings shouldn't be used if there's a disagreement over it. Let's get real folks, is somebody really going to read this entire article and really care at all that in the list of blue words at the bottom there is "Person who Rejected Judaism" or whatever? Homestarmy 13:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Christians rejected Judaism some time around Paul.  Some Christians may believe that Jesus rejected Judaism (I do not know, I only mean that I cannot speak for Christians).  Some Jews may believe this as well.  But it is certain that many historians do not think Jesus rejected Judaism. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 13:47, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Christians were pragmatic after the fall of Jerusalem 70AD. At that time, they were still being persecuted by the romans for being associated with Jesus whom was convicted for decension againgst rome. For the Christians of that time, it was expediant to distance themselves from the Jewish revolt.86.4.59.203 16:56, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the tag because it is a controversial new addition that wasn't in the long standing version of the article. Edits of this nature need talk page consensus before adding. I also agree with SLRubenstein. This claim is disputed by more people than just some of the editors of this page. It isn't NPOV to present something as if it were definate, when there is legitable, notable dispute. -Andrew c 17:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Andrew; there is no basis for that category in relationship to Jesus. It is not only inappropriate, it is incorrect. There is no evidence that Jesus ever rejected the House of Israel; to the contrary, there is significant evidence he lived and died as what we would recognize as a Jew. --Storm Rider (talk) 18:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The rejection thing

message: So, now can we discuss the changes and build consensus before starting another edit war? Please list the POV issues with the article. Please make a proposal regarding an athiest view section. Thanks.-Andrew c 21:54, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I can tell, it appears Lisboa is in no mood for debate on the subject. Homestarmy 15:51, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The biggest POV issue on that page that I see is the gospel narrative section. Who thinks that the four gospels are where you should look if you want to know who Jesus is? Christians. In fact, the implication that two very different sources (synoptic gospels and gospel of John) combine meaningfully to present a unified image of Jesus is Christian POV. The gospel section should be replaced with "Jesus (as reconstructed by historians)." Then the gospel section can be summarized for those who want to know what the Christians' holy book says about their God. I've never suggested this change because it'd never happen. But you asked about POV issues. Jonathan Tweet 22:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, Lisboa doesn't appear to of asked at all, just repeatedly reverted to his own special little version which apparently took precedence over any other edit made to the article after his edit.  Homestarmy 02:08, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Welcome back Lisboa 

message: Some redlinked name appears to of somehow deleted the history of Jesus, redirected the article to the new compleatly undiscussed title which will most likely skew search engine results all across the board and mess up links to this article, and done the same deletion to the talk page. I can move the content back to the original title, but the history will be lost in the redirect, can anyone somehow revert this name change? Homestarmy 18:37, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind, the page move was reverted, though he's apparently a page move vandal. Homestarmy 18:53, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: What the???

message: Hey this article is amasing, and i really can't find anythign wrong with it, and it's got one heck of a lot of inline citations.  so with all that i think that we should nominate it for FA status.  Any Thoughts????
peace out-Threewaysround 21:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Depending on how FA voters consider whether or not the article adequatly covers the topic, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to solve FA style concerns. However, many of the far-reaching debates concerning this article have to do with scope, and what precisely it should focus on, or how much certain things should be focused on, etc. etc. . I'm just saying, make the FA nom if you want, but some reviewers may find extremely far-reaching objections which deal with content that may not be simple to solve in the time frame of an FAC. Plus, I think one or two of the other perspectives sections still have citation needed tags.... Homestarmy 21:33, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually, I just removed all of the citation needed tag problems, my explanations are in my edit summaries, mostly all I did was remove the sentences for various reasons, dunno if people will be happy with that....However, I shall, barring some increadibly inconvienent happenstance, take a close look at all FA type comments. Homestarmy 23:32, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I wish you would have waited until we could discuss this before you nominated, but oh well. We've been working for over a year since the last FA nomination and have developed a worthy article. There are still a few rough edges to be polished, but nothing that should prevent this article from achieving its deserving status. I encourage everyone to continue following the to-do list, and most importantly, help clean up some of the few citation issues remaining on the article. Also, please voice your opinions, both supporting and opposing, to the article's FA candidacy. (The link is at the very top of the page.) —Aiden 05:08, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the first two deficiencies located in the nom stem entirely from the lack of, well, scholars that warrent idenfication as "some", since at most I think there's like two that have been found across various pages. At best, the first sentence is not defended adequatly to remain in the article in its present state, even if a citation was provided, it would at most be "a couple of", not "some" scholars. Quite frankly, that seems very silly to me to make at most two people be the only "scholars" explicitly named in the article at the expense of all others, especially because, as far as I can tell, the scholars in question propose things which are hardly considered serious by almost every other scholar. Ordinarly, I wouldn't force the issue, but since this is an FA nom, if nobody can cite the first sentence identified in the nom with enough scholars or something that indicates enough scholars that are greater than "some" scholars, i'm going to remove it. Homestarmy 13:43, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I've noticed most nominations these days often focus heavily on actually improving the article to FA standards, because people find all sorts of little MoS things in most articles. When people respond to people's comments in a timely manner, most articles seem to pass, there's a ton of stuff people find that often need to be dealt with in really any article. Homestarmy 15:48, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Aiden seems to of taken care of the first thing, now for the second thing, at the moment, the statement in question about "various parties" arguing that everything identifying Jesus from antiquity is useless is so vauge as to be nearly useless in and of itself, and since the first paragraph in the section only has references for people countering that opinion, I think that paragraph might just very well be removed compleatly until someone can actually find real references for the non-cited side. The second paragraph is almost the same, it doesn't give anything from either Wikilinked article showing how people considered every source on Jesus's life to be suspect, and if the hagiography word is being used in the negative sense, this appears to be incorrect, because that article indicates that the word can mean that a work is too reverential about a subject, it says nothing about the work actually containing mistakes or being unreliable in any way. The third and fourth paragraphs seems fine though, but then that's a pretty tiny looking section.... Homestarmy 01:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured article nomination.... maybe 

message: It looks like the reason for the gap is because the Jesus series template is inside that top box which contains the main picture, in a preview, when its not in the box, the article doesn't get deformed in the same way, but then the box makes a large gap at the top. Why is the image even in that wikisyntax box anyway, its just a bunch of text under the image.... Homestarmy 22:51, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The page looks fine on my browser (winXP Firefox 2.0). The image and the Jesus template are placed in a table. The reason for this is to avoid stacking vertical templates. If that code wasn't there, both the image box and the Jesus box have a float right applied to them, so they would appear side by side. Forcing them into a table insures that they will be stacked one on top of each other, thus avoiding the stacked/side by side template issue. Please tell me what browser you are using and describe this 'gap' in more detail. Thanks.-Andrew c 22:55, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: When I preview a version without the table, the result is the same as with the table. I'm guessing that someone has hardcoded a clear tag into the image box template, or figured out some other way to avoid the stacking issue (or my recent browser upgrade renders better than my previous browser). We may be good to remove the table from the top of the article if it corrects the issue you are experiencing, and the vertical stacking issue is no longer an issue.-Andrew c 23:00, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just changed the positions around, before, it actually was stacking the templates on my screen, (the chronology and Jesus templates) creating a large space between the Chronology header and the content. I'm using IE 7.... Homestarmy 23:08, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The large gap near the top

message: Oddly, the line "Most modern Biblical scholars hold that the works describing Jesus were initially communicated by oral tradition, and were not committed to writing until several decades after Jesus' crucifixion." doesn't actually seem to have an equivalent anywhere in Historicity of Jesus, which seems strange to me, because it sounds kind of obvious. Would this stuff more properly be in Historical Jesus? It might make more sense for the whole section on sources to be summarizing Historical Jesus instead of Historicity of Jesus, or even both articles, since Historical Jesus probably has more material about sources too. Homestarmy 02:07, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the way we have the articles set up, the bulk of the historicity article deals with the sources (I even once proposed renaming it to something like Sources for Jesus' life or something like that). There isn't much about the sources at the main HJ article (just a note about non-canonical sources). Not sure where I am going with this. The idea in the sentence fits under both topics, but since we discuss sourcing in great detail over at historicity, it seems better suited there. I also agree that the sentence sounds pretty obvious. I'll dig up a reference.-Andrew c 03:19, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, I suspect that more people work on this page than on the linked pages.  These linked pages were created not when this article reached a "pretty damn good" state, but simply when this article reached a "way too long" state.  This means that linked articles are not always as good as they could be, and unless someone vigilantly makes sure that any change they make here is also made in the linked article, they will periodically fall out of synch. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 11:49, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Oral tradition

message: If there is a section on questions on reliability of sources, shouldn't there a a section on arguments on reliability of sources? There are more, much more scholars who support the latter view, isn't it? Kleinbell 05:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Balancing questions on reliability

message: "Encyclopedia of Islam, Jesus article" Is all that it reads, and its used in three places, what is this supposed to mean? Was there once some main reference at the bottom, because I don't see it anywhere. Homestarmy 21:16, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's one of Aminz's references. —Aiden 07:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, in its current form, it doesn't look like a reference at all. What Encyclopedia of Islam? Why "Jesus article"? There's no Encyclopedia of Islam here. Homestarmy 12:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: What's reference 96?

message: One hurdle we have hit with the FA nom is the question of reference standardization. The use of citation templates must be subject to the approval of editors here. Since we are only using 4 citation templates, it seems best to just convert them to a non-template based citation. If anyone has any comments regarding citations standardization, or diagrees with removing the 4 template uses, please bring up concerns here. Thanks.-Andrew c 14:25, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the niv and Qu'ran cite templates are fairly simple to use, I think we should keep those, especially since they are for something unique that is cited so much in this article. Only two of the links use cite web, but i'm not sure if FA nom's expect cite web to always be used or not.... Homestarmy 14:32, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, yeah, I forgot about the verse templates. I wasn't talking about them. I like them as well and feel no need to loose them, just the citeweb, citebook stuff.-Andrew c 15:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems easier to convert them than make everything else use those templates. Homestarmy 18:43, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree we should streamline the references, but I do think we should keep our NIV/Quran cite templates as they are. How we should go about it, I'm not sure. —Aiden 06:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since there's only two cite webs I think, it seems more reasonable to just convert those to normal, but citebook is different, i'm pretty sure that's used several places, and I don't really know exactly how much information in a book cite there's supposed to be for FA purposes. Homestarmy 12:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Cite book is used once, cite web is used thrice. I think it'd be safe to simply convert them over to non-citation templates. Another thing I have been thinking about, we should make sure that footnotes that reference books that have a long entry in the references section should be in shorthand format. And we should make sure that books that are cited more than once are moved to the long reference section and replaced with shorthand.-Andrew c 13:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think FA's need to be anal about citations. There should be a useful inline reference system (e.g. Reference goes here), but wether the actual references are generated via citation templates or by hand is (or should be) irrelevant). I think the citation templates are much easier to maintain, and guarantee some consistency, but for the reader only the result counts. I would certainly not recommend to transform template-cites to handmade ones.  That's not an improvement, as far as I'm concerned. --Stephan Schulz 13:43, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But they demand that the citation style be consistant, irregardless of what it looks to our readers. Converting every book and website to those templates would not be fun, and then it would be very difficult for other people to just throw in new citations in the future, since the templates aren't exactly self-explanatory to use. Homestarmy 15:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, i'm turning the cite webs into the format of the other cites then. Homestarmy 15:16, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standardizing references 

message: Can anyone answer a question about what it is called during the life of Christ? We have B.C which stands for before Christ and A.D. which stands for After Death. Anyone one knows how this came about?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.165.76.78 (talk • contribs).
:Actually, AD stands for Anno Domini which is latin for "in the year of the lord" and our article Anno Domini goes into detail about how this system, and the names, came about.-Andrew c 03:33, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New Section

message: No matter what you put into this article please remember to respect Christians and their beliefs. A friend of mine who is Christian recently opened the 'Jesus' page and found slightly disrespectful content.But man! I'm a Christian and didn't see anything wrong with it.--4H 08:03, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is subject to a high amount of vandalism, and perhaps your friend was visiting the page during a time when a vandal hit, but no one had reverted them yet. If you find issues with this article, feel free to raise your concerns here, or jump right in and fix them yourself. Thanks for your comment.-Andrew c 15:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  General Respect 

message: Can someone translate the following for me please.
""the Jews intended to destroy the person of Jesus completely; in fact, they crucified only his nasut, his lahut remained alive"
Thanks JHJPDJKDKHI! 07:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  translation 

message: Jesus had long hair and a beard,wore sandles, was non violent, hung out with the dregs of society and "railed" against the man.In addition, he was a drifter agaist materialism and fed the poor.The other day i was with a freind and we saw a hippy,the simularities of this hippy and the most common pictures of Jesus were uncanny.--Crabsoup 09:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But did Jesus drive a van? —Aiden 04:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope. Can't see any hippy vans here []. rossnixon 02:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jesus as the first hippy 

message: Based on his parents and the country his parents lived in, would Jesus have been born white like he is in paintings, or more like arab or summat? I know it must have been discussed here before, but the page doesn't mention his ethnicity and I am not looking through 100 pages of talk JayKeaton 08:06, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We have an article on this called Race of Jesus. It's listed in the infobox in this article. Even if you type "black Jesus" you get directed to the article. Paul B 11:43, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Black Jesus

message: Can people who know much of the history of the canonization of the Gospels comment here?  Thanks Slrubenstein   |  Talk 18:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  query