Talk:Jesus and textual evidence

message: Notice: This is a daughter article of Jesus Christ - It was taken from the mother page made to alleviate the size of the older article.
WhisperToMe 07:18, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note 

message: I've removed the mention of the Epistle to the Laodiceans from this list because it has no information about Jesus Christ; it is little more than a patchwork of passages from Paul, & some harsh critics would state it has no information about anything! Likewise, the Acts of Paul and Thecla probably lacks any information about Jesus, but since I haven't taken the time to read through it, I'm leaving it in.
I had to qualify this section to mention "the early tradition of his teachings" because a number of the works quoted here -- 1 Clement, Epistle of Barnabas, the writings of Ignatius & Polycarp -- are only of importance to trace the oral tradition of the sayings of Jesus. (There are several sayings of Christ in these works that either not in the gospels, or quoted in a different form.) I can attest that 1 Clement or Barnabas mention in memorable detail any events of the life of Jesus, & from the secondary literature I've read, I doubt the other two would either.
Now that I think about it, the works of Justin Martyr should be added to this list because Helmut Koester uses his works in discussing those traditions. Since I also remembered the Gospel of Peter, I'll edit this article another time in a row. -- llywrch 16:21, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be worth mentioning that according to tradition, Ignatius was a young child and among the crowds who heard Jesus' preaching. This would make him quite old at the time of his execution, but it's not entirely unreasonable. I agree that neither Ignatius nor Polycarp add much in the way of biographical detail that is not already found in the Gospels. Wesley 03:01, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: "Non-orthodox early Christian sources" 

message: Mention of Josephus being a Jewish Pharisee would be balanced. And that the passage is different in an 10th century Arabic version discovered by professor Shlomo Pines. - Sparky 21:14, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: Josephus 

message: Jayjg changed the latest likely date for the authorship of John to 120, from 190. Why? I had understood John to be a later addition than 120, although I don't have a source off-hand. Do you have a source?  – Quadell (talk) (help) 03:45, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
:Because fragments of it dating to 125 exist; see Gospel of John article.  Also see anonymous comments above. Jayjg 18:56, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: By the way, the original page put the end date at 100, it was Rev of Bru's changes that bumped that to 190.  I thought 120 was a conservative number, given the dating of the earliest fragments. Jayjg 19:14, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The real reason is the latest possible plausible date for the Gospel to actually have been written by an eye-witness. P.s. THERE ARE NO "EARLIEST FRAGMENTS" known from before about 300AD, so if these were to affect the dating we should really state "320AD" as the authorship date. CheeseDreams 20:28, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gospel of John 

message: This guy seems to be trying to bias any/all articles relating to christ. Please keep an eye on him. Sam [Spade] 21:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:The Rev of Bru|The Rev of Bru]] 

message: Does anyone know who (in the Vatican) precisely stated that the entry on Josephus was spurious? "The Vatican" is pretty vague and also doesn't give the timeframe. I was looking for this information in the Catholic Encyclopedia, but it wasn't there, so it was presumably in the 20th century. Mpolo 20:41, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
:I think it should be removed until we find a reference for it. Sam [Spade] 14:32, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it should stay. CheeseDreams 11:31, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It would have probably been the archivist at the vatican. I am sure you could e-mail the vatican and ask if you doubt it. CheeseDreams 11:31, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vatican and Josephus 

message: So, Sam, USE A TALK PAGE.
*Explain why you dispute the FACTUAL ACCURACY of a page about arguments for and against the validity of, and the content of, Sources of Jesus?
*Explain why you dispute the NEUTRALITY of this page, given that it presents both sides of each argument?
If you do not, I will take it that the addition of the totally disputed tag was in error. CheeseDreams 07:44, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Totally Disputed 

message: Sam, I was in the process of merging this article with Sources of Jesus, until you started interfering with that article and reverting my changes.
Sam, the Cultural and historical background page, is NOT about evidence or historicity. That has already been agreed by the majority of people discussing it. CheeseDreams 07:48, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merges 

message: In order to try to work out the relationship between all the various pages and hopefully get some consensus, I have opened a WikiProject to centralize discussion and debate. We've got several "conflicted" pages at the moment, and without centralizing discussion, it's going to get very confusing. Please join the project, if you're interested in the topic, and start discussions on the talk page. (We need to create a to-do list, but I think the current state is too conflicted to decide even that.)  Mpolo 10:49, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
:Its only really conflicted because of people like Slrubenstein and Sam (in fact pretty much just them). Everyone else just edits things to NPOV, or inserts counter arguments, resulting in NPOV. CheeseDreams 21:19, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject Jesus 

message: Sam, what particular points are you disputing here? As I said, I went through (and edited a lot) to try to remove bias towards ahistoricity. The section on the letters of Herod and Pilate is probably overkill, since there are probably about three people on the planet that think that these are reliable, unbiased sources. (In fact, I got tired of editing it and left another two or three paragraphs in a comment...) The section on the rest of the sources indicates what is said and what arguments are leveled against them, linking to the more complete articles where they exist. In that, it seems to be pretty balanced and not to take a position for or against. Mpolo 08:24, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)
So, Sam, USE A TALK PAGE.
*Explain why you dispute the FACTUAL ACCURACY of a page about arguments for and against the validity of, and the content of, Sources of Jesus?
*Explain why you dispute the NEUTRALITY of this page, given that it presents both sides of each argument?
If you do not, I will take it that the addition of the totally disputed tag was in error. CheeseDreams 10:58, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I am beginning to be concerned that the addition of yourself is the largest error. As far as Mpolo's comments, more on that when I have the time. if your quite confident (speaking to Mpolo, and/or other non-partisan editors) that the article is satsifactory, feel free to remove the tag. I can always restore it if need be. Sam [Spade] 22:00, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not sure I understand you. Either you are stating that my existance is a problem, or some particular passage. Would you please explain which passage it is that you have the problem with, if this is indeed the correct understanding? CheeseDreams 22:43, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Totally disputed 

message: My goodness, how many can we include in one body of literature? 
# The Gospel of John is seen by some as being written by an apostle, however, many others dispute the authorship for a series of reasons.
# The Gospel of John is seen by some as being written by an apostle, however, many others dispute the authorship for a series of reasons.
# Some Christians proclaim that the lack of references to Yeshu, and the difficulty in associating the name with Jesus, is due to the fact that Christianity was a negligable group when the Talmud was predominantly created
# Some scholars suggest that the second paragraph is merely describing Christian beliefs that were uncontroversial (i.e. that a cult leader was put to death), so had no reason not to be assumed as fact.
#  Some scholars consider this text to also be a forgery or to be in error, since the author, Agapius of Hierapolis seems to be quoting from memory.
# Many scholars consider it odd that a man of such significance as Jesus should be missing from historic texts and records, since lesser figures are, unless, that is, Jesus didn't exist, or was insignificant.
# This has led to the conclusion by many critics that some Christian, possibly Eusebius himself, falsified the text
# However, those who oppose this claim argue that many of the commentators commented on other Middle Eastern events, and many, especially the geographers, travelled to the region and that reports of miracles might have been expected to arouse more interest.
# Many scholars consider it odd that a man of such significance as Jesus should be missing from historic texts and records, since lesser figures are, unless, that is, Jesus didn't exist, or was insignificant.
# Christians proclaim (source?) that this evidence is precisely what became the New Testament, wheras others dispute this, stating that one would expect at least a handful of non-Christian witnesses.
My oh my, but aren't there many unattributed assertions. - Ta bu shi da yu 07:50, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weasel words 

message: The presentation of Tertullian's view as a counterpoint is a bit misleading, because he's arguing against something that Tacitus did not say—in that part of his work, anyway. The brief passages on Christianity in the Annals nowhere mention the donkey's head. That claim, which is the target of Tertullian's argument, comes from a section of the Histories dealing with the ancient Jews and is just a repetition of an old anti-Semitic legend dating back at least to the 2nd century BC. (I suppose it's possible that the Annals originally did claim Christians worshipped a donkey's head, that Tertullian saw an edition that made this claim, and that the story was later expurgated—but that's just a guess, and it's not likely, either. If a Christian scribe had removed such a claim, he probably would not have left the unflattering remainder of the description in place, and he certainly would not have overwritten one unfavorable description with another.) I removed the quotation (see #Head of an ass for its substance); the following is the the text used to introduce it:
:One of the early church fathers, Tertullian, in his tract the Apologeticum, stated that Tacitus was wrong (in fact he wryly states that Tacitus was not being tacit in his account):
—Charles P. (Mirv) 17:17, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tacitus 

message: This is just to inform people that I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC and AD represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view.  In other contexts, I argue that they violate our NPOV policy and we should use BCE and CE instead. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate for the detailed proposal. Slrubenstein   |  Talk  14:30, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  announcing a new policy proposal