Talk:Christ myth theory/Archive 8

message: Just want to pop in here as someone who was involved in the last major round of revisions which deadlocked over personality conflicts.  This article has gotten much better.  Well done guys!  
There is a lot of material from older versions of the article.  I'd recommend going back and looking at times of high activity.  I think you can add a lot more "bulk" on various authors from the archives and the current team looks like they are doing a great job.  jbolden1517Talk 00:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes there was a lot of lot of material from older versions of the article but much of it was removed for good reasons.  Besides the article is still overly long with information that appears in articles getting needlessly repeated or having too much description.--BruceGrubb (talk) 07:38, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: My only complaint is that the "effectively refuted" line somehow made it back in. It's just an "argument from authority", and as such conveys no useful information for the readers. If somebody wants to list a specific refutation, that would be far more useful that merely regurgitating a comment from a theologian. If there is a piece of evidence which demonstrates that Jesus of Nazareth (as he is portrayed in the gospels) actually existed, it most certainly should be included. But simply stating that it is "refuted" without provided further evidence of that refutation doesn't accomplish anything, especially since the quote doesn't specify which version of the theory (the "strong" or the "weak") has been disproven. By saying the thesis is "refuted", it almost sounds like the author is saying that there is some sort of evidence which proves that the water-walking, immortal, dead-raising, leper-curing, son of Jehovah found in the gospels was an real historical figure, and that the gospels should be regarded as historical fact. This may not have been the author's the intention, but there are many people who will most certainly read it this way. Most scholars agree that at least some of the gospel tale is mythical - the only debate is over the exact percentage. But saying that the "myth hypothesis" is "refuted" might lead some to believe that the percentage is equal to 0%. -- Big Brother 1984 (talk) 16:15, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I still think the article title is misleading and OR. A search on the web for the phrase "Jesus myth hypothesis" mainly throws up wikipedia and its mirrors which is very bad form. Wikipedia should reflect the topic - not create it. The lead sentence is quite convolved and hard to read and there is still a lot of duplicated information. I have to agree with Big Brother that the "effectively refuted" quote is pure apologetics and has no place in this article.  Sophia 10:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: While I agree the title is a problem the alternatives are even worse.  Again the problem is that "Christ myth" and "Jesus myth" are used interchangeable even though literally they would mean different things.  This is why I decided to rework the lead and use Remsburg as a reference for it.--BruceGrubb (talk) 23:19, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  well done 

message: Contributors to this article may wish to note Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#When is a peer-reviewed Journal not considered reliable?. EALacey (talk) 20:05, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You raised good points but as I said they nearly echo my concerns with James Charlesworth and that was ruled as a reliable source.  I even cited third party references to bring the validity of the book the Charlesworth used into question something not done yet to keep Fischer out.--BruceGrubb (talk) 22:28, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fischer's article at RS noticeboard 

message: User:Mangoe argues that the article should focus on the modern argument - and most likely have a pro-Jesus, anti-"fringe" POV. I totally disagree. As I understand it, the modern argument is truly dead, and supported by only a few scholars. The historical argument however has huge importance. As you see above, this article is also part of WikiProject Atheism. Questioning the historicity of Jesus was an important step in questioning the authority of the Bible. Now the question is largely irrelevant; those that want to question religion have gone far above this. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 07:50, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is just what is the modern argument of the Jesus myth hypothesis?  Is it Price's there is not enough of the historical Jesus remaining to find, Ellegard version of Mead's inspired by an earlier historical teacher, S Acharya's revival of Dupuis theories, Wells' current 'Paul's Jesus was a myth but there is something historical behind the Gospel Jesus' theory, Doherty's the Jesus of the Gospel never existed, or something else like Thompson?  There is a huge range to the Jesus myth hypothesis some of it more plausible than others.--BruceGrubb (talk) 08:35, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Krohn, that isn't my argument at all. Also, if one takes the Schweitzer/Bauer thesis presented in the article, things happened the other way around: the article is arguing (seemingly using Schweitzer as its authority) that Bauer's doubts about scriptural historicity opened the way to larger doubts. But here's the rub: I'm looking at the 1911 Britannica, and its comment on these theories is "This line of criticism has found few supporters, mostly in the Netherlands"; one presumes they refer to the Radical Dutch. I gather from looking around that Bauer's elevation, as it were, came through Marxism, though Marx's famous quip surely owes nothing to Bauer's doubts. Mangoe (talk) 20:03, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I wish we had more on the Radical Dutch position other than blurb we have.  While it relates to the article it kind of sits there with no indication if it had any influence on what came later.  Albert Kalthoff is also another 'ok that was interesting but did this lead anywhere?' blurb.  Of course in a subject that has had such a varied past I imagine we will have a few lines of thought that didn't really go anywhere or have reappeared in different versions.--BruceGrubb (talk) 02:24, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: If someone has access to Simon J. DeVries, Bible and Theology in the Netherlands (CNTT 3; Wageningen: Veenman, 1968) 52-55, that might tell us more. The "Radical Dutch School" seems to have been an academic dead-end, as far as I can see. There's more info available about Kalthoff, though--Schweitzer is a good starting point. --Akhilleus (talk) 06:24, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Focus of article, past or present? 

message: Editors here should have been notified by Akhilleus that he has taken discussion of this article to the WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard, and that some separate discussion has occurred there . Moreover, since Mangoe has come to edit in response to that notice, the process seems to amount to WP:Canvassing. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 13:13, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Fringe theories/Noticeboard

message: Just a note on why I reverted in the Dupuis section: we have a secondary source that tells us Dupuis rejected Jesus' historicity: George Albert Wells, "Stages in New Testament Scholarship," Journal of the History of Ideas 30 (1969) pp. 147-160. On p. 159, Wells says: "And Dupuis has even dispensed with the hypothesis that there was a historical Jesus." That's pretty clear, and even if a Wikipedia editor comes to a different conclusion by reading snippets of Dupuis on their own, we shouldn't prefer original research to published scholarship.
Even if the quotes weren't being used to give an impression that Dupuis allowed for a historical Jesus, I'm not sure they would belong: this article has too many direct quotes that don't help to illuminate the subject.
Volney does indeed allow for some kind of historical founder of Christianity, but he's so vague that it's not clear whether he means Jesus of Nazareth, or some other guy. If you look at scholarly reactions to Volney, it's clear that in his day and later he was viewed as denying Jesus' historicity. 
On both Volney and Dupuis, it should be remembered that these are antecedents to the Christ-myth theory (the phrase Schweitzer uses is 'great forerunners'), rather than exponents of the full-blown theory. They're thus part of scene-setting for figures such as Bauer, Robertson, Smith, and Drews. --Akhilleus (talk) 18:24, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "And Dupuis has even dispensed with the hypothesis that there was a historical Jesus." is NOT the same as saying "Dupuis rejected the historicity of Jesus entirely"  The proper relevant synonyms for "dispense with" are 'to get rid of; do away with', 'To manage without' and in some dictionaries 'render needless' and 'dispose of' so Wells' quote would be more accurately stated as 'And Dupuis has even done away with the hypothesis that there was a historical Jesus.' or 'And Dupuis has even managed without the hypothesis that there was a historical Jesus.' depending on the context that the sentence was in.  The first is more an argument against a historical Jesus which better fits what Dupuis was actually doing as he has issues with Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius.  Interestingly Dupuis takes Suetonius at face value and points out this creates a conflict between him and Tacitus and the simplest solution is to throw both of them out.  Saying that he answered 'no' to his own question "Shall we look for testimony of the existence of Christ, as philosopher or impostor, in the writings of heathen authors?" is a better representational of what Dupuis said then a questionable paraphrasing of Wells' actual comment.  When in doubt quote as much as is possible and reasonable.--BruceGrubb (talk) 22:54, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Are we in for another few months where you complain about the representation of a source you haven't even read? Let's remember something, BruceGrubb: the material on Dupuis was written by User:EALacey, at User:EALacey/Jesus myth hypothesis; you yourself put it in the article with this edit. I'm sure that EALacey read Wells' article and has represented it faithfully; I'm sure of that because I've also read it, and Wells says that Dupuis did not think there was a historical Jesus. (This is also what other scholars say about Dupuis.) So, if you want to contend that the text in the article misrepresents what Wells says, please do us all a favor and go read the article; then maybe we'll have something worth talking about. --Akhilleus (talk) 02:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: By the way, there's a later article by Wells ("Friedrich Solmsen on Christian Origins," Journal of the History of Ideas 34 (1973) 143-4), which is a response to Friedrich Solmsen's response to Wells' 1969 article. On p. 143, Wells says "The question of a date of birth I mention in connection with the views of Dupuis, who did deny Jesus' historicity on grounds which--as I clearly state--I regard as inadequate." Again, that's pretty clear. --Akhilleus (talk) 02:17, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Dupuis

message: Regarding note 90, "Recently ,OA has shown that the 'i' in Christus was actually changed from an 'e' and "Accordingly, the scribe originally wrote about Chrestiani, Chrestians.",", this is not correct. The article does not show that the "i" in Christus was changed - only that the "i" in Christianos was changed. The last part of the sentence is correct, but "Christus" ought to be changed to "Christianos"./83.252.208.200 (talk) 08:22, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note 90 

message: are there diffs for various proposals here?  --Ludwigs2 02:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably the best thing to do is read the lead of the article and then the talk page section just above this one. --Akhilleus (talk) 02:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

text: It can be argued that even within the non-historical crowd there are those who would agree with the "gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically" part as they point out conflicts between the Gospels themselves (synoptics vs John, details of the various Gospels of where Jesus when and when, etc) and with history (Mark vs Luke) as basic for there view. Stibbe who is a staunch historical Jesus supporter states in John as Storyteller(Cambridge University Press) "The real issue is therefore not whether Jesus existed but how much the gospel of John actually tells us about the historical Jesus."  I should note as far as google books is concerned Stibbe is the only author who actually quotes Stanton's passage.--BruceGrubb (talk) 08:51, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

text: I think the best definition is that the character of Jesus spoken about by Paul and other Christian early epistles is not meaningfully historical.  Which is to say that while there may have been an earthly man or men for whom some small fraction of the gospel stories is true, the 1st century epistle writers did not have this  person in mind when they wrote of Jesus.  They were writing about someone they viewed as existing in the distant past and/or on another plane of existence.   The connection between the Christian faith of the epistle writers and any recent (for them) historical person is accidental.  jbolden1517Talk 03:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Commentary

message: I suggest deleting the current RFC, and then reposting it to a new section summarizing the issue. I came here from the RFC and it would take me an hour to read the article and wade through all the talk page. BTW, the RFC is double-posted. 
My first impression is that the intro of the article was not clear. I would change the article title to "Jesus myth theory" and write the first paragraph something like this (add refs as necessary):
The Jesus myth theory (also known as the nonhistoricity hypothesis or Christ myth) is the contention that Jesus did not exist as a historical person and that the story of Jesus developed as a myth among early Christians. To support the theory proponents have documented similarities between stories of Jesus and those of Krishna, Adonis, Osiris, Mithraism, and a pre-Christian cult of Jesus within Judaism. Some authors attribute the beginning of Christianity to a historical founder who predates the time Jesus is said to have lived.
Cuñado ☼ - Talk 19:23, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The article's name originally was Jesus myth theory but it was changed to its current title because there is at best one reliable source that uses anything along the lines of  Jesus myth theory and it actually uses the term  ""Jesus Myth" theory"" and there has not been any evidence that this source is used by any of the others.  Futhermore claiming that Jesus myth theory, nonhistoricity hypothesis, and Christ myth are synonyms when there is evidence that they are NOT always used that way is POV and not allowed.  Mack is a primary example of someone who uses  Christ myth in a different manner as is Remsburg and several others I have cited over the last two years.--BruceGrubb (talk) 13:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Start over with RFC 

message: I restructered the info in the "Other Writers" section.  The original kept flipping back and forth and I thought it would read better as one unit. jbolden1517Talk 14:06, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Combining the 3 earl doherty refs and 2 Freke and Gandy