Talk:Historical background of the New Testament/Archive 14

message: Over the next few days I will be adding more specific information from critical scholars, specifically Fredriksen, Sanders, and Vermes.  I am sure that whatever I add can be edited, but I ask people to wait until next week by which time I will have put out most of what I want to add.  I am less familiar with Crossan and Meier, and if anyone has read them carefully and wants to add their views go ahead.  Thanks, Slrubenstein   |  Talk 17:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  March 2006 round of edits 

message: In case you haven't heard, there is a drive to improve the Jesus article from GA to FA status. I am personally inviting editors to read over the Jesus article, and please contribute whatever they can. Some editors have mentioned on the talk page that the cultural and historical background in particular is lacking. I hope you can join us.--Andrew c 04:21, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do think this article can help improve the "life and teachings" and "historicity" sections of Jesus. Arch O. LaTalkTCF 04:43, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Jesus]] and [[Wikipedia:Good Article Collaboration of the week|Good Article Collaboration of the week]]

message: There has been a long discussion of the Historical Jesus at Talk:Jesus/Historical Jesus. It's divided into three subpages: Jesus as moral teacher; Jesus as apocalyptic prophet or messiah; and Jesus as Pharisee or Essene. Grigory Deepdelver of BrockenboringTalkTCF 08:13, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Jesus article, the cultural and historical background, and sources

message: I can understand why some people prefer BC/AD in this article.  It is a plausible position, although I reject it - with resepct - for two reasons.  First, the bulk of this article concerns Jewish material, and second, there is an informal consensus here and at the Jesus page, and other pages, that articles on Jewish topics should favor BCE and CE, and articles on Christian topics should favor BC/CE.  I would have no objection to the section on Christianity in this article using both BC/BCE and AD/CE.  However, the bulk of this article is not about Christianity or Jesus, it is about Jews and Judaism. Slrubenstein   |  Talk 13:29, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In my opinion, BCE/CE is the better, more scholarly, usage, and is the common use by historians, Christian, Jewish or otherwise. I have now reformatted the dates in this article accordingly. -- The Anome 13:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think we should use both systems, since the scholarly literature uses both. I think it confuses readers to arrive at an article that uses BC/AD, when they're used to BCE/CE, and that is confuses people to see BCE/CE, when they're used to BC/AD. As a Lutheran Christian who teaches a class for a Christian university on the life of Jesus, I have no problems with either notation. Sometimes I wish that "Denny the Short" had left well enough alone and we could all refer to time since the founding of Rome. ;-). Anyway, why not use both as we do on the Jesus page? --CTSWyneken 14:11, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In my opinion, BC is the better, more scholarly usage, because BCE is a pretentious, pompous, ridiculous looking neologism used solely for the sake of a misguided, biased, "political correctness".  But we don't go by opinions here, we go by policy.  And in this case AD was here first.  That is the agreement, hold to it, or do you want to see BC/BCE wars breaking out all over the place again???  ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 14:40, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: BCE is a pretentious, pompous, ridiculous looking neologism used solely for the sake of a misguided, biased, "political correctness".?? So you think that people who don't believe that Jesus was divine should simply accept his divinity as a matter of form to avoid annoying you? --Leifern 15:33, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: That is a ridiculous attack and mischaracterisation of my words.  Please allow me to speak for myself and do not re-filter everything I say through your own prism.  You have just fabricated a quote by me that I never once said or thought, and put quote marks around it.  You are trying to give the impression that I am the only editor on wikipedia who prefers traditional eras nomenclature.  However, the real Truth is that this debate has been raging on wikipedia on numerous pages and archives devoted to the question, poll after poll has been taken, and in every single running poll, support for BC over BCE runs at slightly over 50%, and does not even break down along any kind of easily discernible religious lines.  So despite your mischaracterisation above, I do not feel alone in supporting tradition over politically correct neologisms. I have conceded the matter on this article, and do not understand why you continue to hound me here.  I could just as easily have stacked the debate by spending an entire hour as you did, contacting well known BC supporters culled from the eras debate pages.  But it is not that important to me, it's really kind of petty, and I don't have the time for such games. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:29, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

text: And yes, you are quite correct that I am a "reactionary" in the sense that I believe it to be often wiser to "react" instead of "act first". There's nothing wrong with being a reactionary, and I'm likely to continue being one.  ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

text: No, not at all. This seems to be half of the problem right here, is a very few people mistakenly thinking that by simply reading the conventional and more common BC, they are accepting anyone's divinity. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's no kind of argument. You're trying to push your opinion with a misguided application of policy. What's this business about AD being here first? It's true that the original version of the article used AD, but that was two years ago and consensus dictates different usage now. If you think the Arbcom case justifies the changes you're making then I'm afraid you're in for a rude surprise. Mackensen (talk) 14:56, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: It IS an argument, becaue your claim that there is now a "consensus" is obviously a fabrication. I would not call the current state of affairs a "consensus". I would call it a "dispute", because you are attempting to circumvent policy. Anyone can look up and see that BC was here first, and for an article like this, it is infinitely more appropriate than the artificial contrivance of BCE. BC has been used for 1000 years longer than BCE. It's not going anywhere anytime soon just because a very vocal minority are telling everyone to start using something else all of a sudden. We have had a site wide ceasefire agreement for a year, not to edit war and to go with the first used format, and as long as the agreement was abided by, I had no problem with BCE appearing in some articles, but now, you are brushing that agreement aside, so the agreement is no going to be longer valid, if you can use specious reasoning like the above to get around the rules. As for the Jewish tag, I am not too concerned about that, it just happened to get caught up in my revert. But the breaking of the eras ceasefire like this, I am very concerned about. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Please see WP:AGF and WP:CIVIL. --Strothra 14:57, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: He is being civil. How about you add to the discussion taking place here? I suspect Slrubenstein is well aware of policy. Mackensen (talk) 14:58, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, since you asked me to add, I feel that the Jewish tag should be added as Jesus was ethnically Jewish/Hebrew.  I prefer to use the term Hebrew for ethnicity.  Is there a Hebrew tag? I'm not sure.  I still do feel, however, that Slrubenstein's last comment was not very cool headed and could have withstood a little more civility. I feel that there's enough of a controversy over Jesus's adherence to Judaism to merit at least a debate over the inclusion of the Jewish tag.  I do admit that the debate here seems to be only coming from one side. --Strothra 15:05, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: As for the AD/BC debate, I feel that AD/BC is certainly more commonly used in both common terms and academic ones.  I was trained, however, in more classical schools of thought regarding history and historical methodology and do recognize that many new members of the field prefer such terms. --Strothra 15:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Please show us where this "stable compromise" was worked out.  ALl I see is a furious debate on this talk page dating to around ONE year ago. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:28, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't tell you how many times I have seen this fallacious argument trying to shame me for not editing article A while I was busy contributing to article B. But for some reason, it never makes me feel ashamed, if that's what to was upposed to do. Or was that an invitation to me to devote more scholarly attention to this article? ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I truly appreciate your substantive reply and, to a greater extent, I appreciate your willingness to enlighten me on some of the background there.  My knowledge of this time period is, to my own chagrin, limited which is why I was hesitant to comment in a substantive manner myself.  --Strothra 15:35, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I've never heard of the existence of a rule that articles on Jewish topics must use BCE/CE. At any rate, it is most clearly arguable that this article, which is tying a discussion of first century Judaism to the founder of Christianity, is at least as much a Christian topic as a Jewish one, even if it doesn't discuss Christianity directly. But the rule, as I understood it, was "don't mess with dates if they're consistent." As Slr explains above (while I was originally typing this comment and got edit-conflicted), this article has been at BCE/CE for a long time, and this has been the consensus position for a long time. As such, whoever changed it to BC/AD was in the wrong, and it should remain at BCE/CE. As to the "Judaism" template, this seems weird to me. Sure, the article is about Jewish stuff. But its title proclaims it to be about Jewish stuff in relation to Jesus. To put a Judaism template on the article seems odd to me. If the article were titled something like Palestine in the First Century, a Judaism template would be appropriate. But the article is explicitly tied to Jesus, and as such, it is about the Jewish background of Christianity, not about the Jewish world of the first century AD. I'm not sure the Judaism template is appropriate. john k 16:04, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "In relation to Jesus".  Who was, throughout his life, a Jew.  Guettarda 16:09, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Eh.  Lots of people who were Jews don't have the Judaism template in their article.  Woody Allen, for instance. Jesus is significant because he founded Christianity (or became the central figure of the Christian religion, which developed after his death), not because he was a Jew. john k 16:30, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Woody Allen's claim to fame is as a movie director, not as a religious figure, so the comparison is iffy.  However, there do seem to be a lot of Jewish individuals notable for their significance to Judaism who apparently don't have the template, such as Hillel, Rashi, Maimonides, Nahmanides, Rabbi Akiva, just to name a few. In fact a closer look at "what links here" for Template:Jew shows *no* individuals linked to this template.  The topic of this article however is not about an individual per se, but the "cultural and historical background" which is of course Judaism.  It at least doesn't seem inappropriate, and it makes sense, to have both templates, Judaism and Jesus, in this article. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 17:05, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You are of course right that this is not Jesus (one might add that Hillel and Akiva are important religious figures in Judaism, and that Jesus is not an important figure in Judaism, but since we basically agree, there's no point going into this).  But I still think that the Judaism template is problematic, and I think part of the problem is that this is a rather odd article.  It makes sense to have separate de facto sub-articles like Historical Jesus (although in practice that article kind of sucks) and Christology, and so forth, to deal with different aspects of Jesus.  But this article doesn't really fill that role.  It is an article about first century Judaism and Palestine, which ties in to Christianity, in some ways.  Are there any other articles on wikipedia with a similar nature?  I can't think of any off the top of my head.  We don't have, say, Cultural and historical background of Nazism.  Salient features of that background are discussed in the Nazism article, and those which we can't go into detail about are linked to their own articles, which discuss them in light of themselves, not in context of Nazism.  This seems to me to be the appropriate way to go about these things. It seems to me that the material directly relating to Christianity probably ought to be moved back into the Jesus article, and that the rest of it should be moved to a neutral topic like Late Second Temple Judaism, or something.  Just look at the intro - nothing is bolded, and it opens with a quote from E.P. Sanders.  Is this like any other wikipedia article ever?  The content of this article is mostly really good, but it seems problematic to me that it's being discussed only (supposedly) in the context of Jesus.  john k 20:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I completely agree with you, the context is beyond Jesus.  And yes, there's good content here but it's a bit of an oddball article outside the WP norm.  The subject is more about the conditions that led to the emergence of a new religion, Christianity, rather than about the individual, Jesus.  Most of the content probably should be merged back into the various articles above you mentioned, though realistically those articles are bursting at the seams and this just seems to be spill-over. --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 21:21, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm sure by the same token nobody who wants the template would mind if a link to Cultural and historical background of Jesus were put into the Jewish template, right?  The same arguments would work for that, of course... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:12, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Okay, glad to see you weren't saying that.  I agree with you, though, that this article has long been at BCE/CE, and that this shouldn't be changed. john k 16:30, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Would you all mind hearing an outside voice? If not, I think that if someone finds something offensive, and there is an unoffensive alternative that makes sense, you should just go with the unoffensive material, that being BCE/CE. Thanks, Thetruthbelow (talk) 16:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Given that the BCE/CE format has been in place for a long time, I think it should stay. I don't see who it should offend, especially as the "C" can be read as either "Christian" or "Common". Both conventions can be used and both are valid. In this case the BCE convention is clearly more appropriate precisely because the Jewish context is the main subject. As for the template, what's the problem? The cultural background of Jesus was Judaism. That's what the article's about. Admittedly, we are speaking of Judaism within the Roman empire, following the influences of Persian and Hellenistic culture and in the context of Roman power-politics. But all these non-Jewish traditions are relevant only because of the way they are interpreted, absorbed or resisted from within Judaism. Paul B 17:11, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Paul B, there is no compelling reason to change the long-standing "BCE/CE".  --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 17:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree as well. I don't mind if articles on religious Christian topics use BC/AD, but given that BCE/CE is denominationally neutral (and that C may stand for Common as well as Christian) and increasingly commonly acceptable notation, there is no reason to push it down the throat elsewhere. ←Humus sapiens ну? 18:56, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My dear friend, Humus! you thought of this too! and 20 minutes before I did! How ideas travel from you to me! I mean, I didn't even look at your prior post when I posted mine!  shalom, --Drboisclair 20:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As a Christian scholar I do not feel that it is rude to Christians to adopt the BCE/CE descriptions of these two blocks of time. Christians can be happy that it is our Lord's birth that is the meridian that separates the two eras, whether we call them His era or the time before His era. BCE/CE may be a neologism, but not all neologisms are bad. I myself prefer the BC/AD labels, but out of respect for other people and with a concern to be inclusive as true learning is, I feel that in this article it should retain BCE/CE. As Christians we are taught to attract other people to Christ through sensitivity. This squabble does Christianity a disservice in my opinion. Let us respect one another and compose articles jointly rather than one-sidedly. We would be attracting people to our faith rather than repelling them by being tactful and compromising. I think that SIRubenstein makes a fair and reasonable case for his position.--Drboisclair 19:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

text: We've had long edit wars over this in the past, including serial bans for JGUK. I think it is a massive waste of time to reinvent the wheel. Consensus at the time was BCE/CE and I suggest we stick to this now. JFW | T@lk 20:34, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a little late for this party, what with the American holiday of Memorial Day and all. It always amazes me that people can be so passionate about an aribitrary dating system, and even more passionate about which arbitrary label to use for the same arbitrary dating system (ie, both AD/BC and BC/BCE have the same starting point, which was probably NOT the year that Mary gave birth to Jesus). I see nothing wrong with BC/BCE. If that is the consensus, then sobeit. Arch O. La Grigory Deepdelver 17:51, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  recent changes 

message: Please note that as of  14:34, 29 May 2006 Codex Sinaiticus has reverted three times.  If he reverts again within a 24 hour period he will have violated the 3RR rule.  The purpose of this rule is to allow heads to cool and allow for discussion.  I hope that my last comments, in response to Strothra, reveal my good-faith effort to follow Strothra's advice that I cool down.  The above section now expresses a range of views by several people.  I hope we can have more cool-headed and good-faith discussion before any more reverts.  I certainly will not revert again (at least not for the next day!) Slrubenstein   |  Talk 15:29, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm certainly well aware of that, man, there's no nee to warn me, notice I have not re-reverted a fourth time in the past half hour that the article was changed to BCE. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your welcome.  And you did an excellent job of stacking this debate.  Congratulations! ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 18:58, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  3 RR warning 

message: Another problem with the "BC/AD" thing is that "Anno Domini" is Latin, and "Before Christ" is English. In order to be consistent you would have to have the time before with the same letters as the time after in order to be consistent: "Ante Domini"--> "Before the Lord" and "Anno Domini" --> "In the year of our/the Lord". Of course, you could have it AC/AD to be consistent. Why not let it be BCE/CE. We can either take it as Common Era or Christ's Era.--Drboisclair 19:53, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I can maybe see "Christian Era", because at least that accurately and honestly describes it for what it really is, i.e. an Era used by Christians (who historically and traditionally have always preferred to call it AD).  If you ask me, you'd think it would sound much more offensive, insensitive and incorrect to take an era blatantly used by Christians, and proclaim that to be "Common Era" for the whole world -- even the non Christian countries, who might otherwise date their eras from some other event.  But go figure.  ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 20:08, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  For me and my understanding it is the "Christian Era": I am at peace in considering that for myself. If someone else wants to think of it as "Common Era" that is good for them. It is interesting that the English have a way of presenting royalty: H.M. can mean His or Her Majesty for the reigning monarch. HRH can be used for Prince Charles or Princess Anne: "His or Her Royal Highness." Amazing things abbreviations are!--Drboisclair 20:34, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about AC/DC? (Ante Christus/Domino Calendaria [Before Christ/The Lord's Calendar])? If we get enough English speaking Muslims contributing, we might get a discussion over using Islamic dates. Personally, I think we should dump the whole thing and go for a secular dating system with a semi-arbitary start point before human history.  I think the astronomers have one. It would have the advantage of all historical dates being positive. WLD 20:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  BCE/CE is good for the above reasons. Even the People's Republic of China has adopted the Western Calendar with either BC/AD or BCE/CE. BCE/CE is fine. Yes, the Muslims began their calendar with the Hegira in,what 722 CE? --Drboisclair 20:42, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm glad you noticed AC/DC was not entirely serious.  However, a problem with BCE/CE is that that particular dating system is centred around the approximate year of the birth of a person who is rather important to at least one of the major religions currently on the planet, which can, possibly, make it difficult to accept for people of other faiths, or of no faith. I am serious in saying that a secular system is preferable, and one where all historical (as opposed to geological) dates are positive, which makes dealing in dates/eras BCE/BC easier to understand. The astronomical 'calendar' I was thinking of is in fact the Julian Day Number (JDN), which counts days from 12 noon GMT 4713 BC, which is not immediately practical.  4713 BC is not before recorded history anyway. Since it is unlikely a more rational calendar system would be generally adopted within my lifetime, the point is moot, anyway. WLD 08:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another perspective on the BC/AD vs. BCE/CE debate