Talk:Jesus/Archive 14

message: I deleted a section someone added to "historicity" because (1) it was written in a highly POV way, (2) it is a fringe theory that at the most merits only a minor mention and link to some other page, and (3) this is something CheeseDreams pushed obsessively, and, before she was banned, we reached an agreement that it was not appropriate here. Slrubenstein   |  Talk  18:45, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, but I don't see how this is a "fringe theory." The similarities between Jesus and these other Pagan Godmen is very well documented and proven. Whether it means that Jesus didn't exist is indeed debatable, but that idea was simply not posted as fact. It was indeed stated that this was a theory, and so I don't see how it could be considered inappropriate. I don't plan to post it "obsessively" as this other user apparently did, but I do feel that it's an important bit of information that doesn't detract in the least bit from the page. It's no less useful than the idea that "a small minority" of scholars question Jesus existence in real life. It's not at all a small minority. I'm placing the information back on the page. If a majority of people feel it should be removed, I'll remove it.
Dirtygreek 18:53, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It actually is the other way around, most of the pagan idols pointed out as being inspiration for the story of Jesus actually date later than Jesus and the stories written about him.  It makes more sense that the pagans adopted the ideas into their mythologies than the other way around.  And yes, a small minority of historians feel Jesus never existed as a person. GreatGatsby 22:03, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  deletion of material on "pagan godmen" 

message: Yesterday I added a clause stating that the Talmud also mentions Jesus.  Jayjg had a reasonable argument for deleting that clause, and I accepted his deletion.  However, I have been doing more research and have now put the clause in.  The fact is, there are at least some scholars who do believe that certain passages in the Talmud refer to the same Jesus who is the subject of this article.  It is true that the Talmud was not committed to print until the sixth century, but it contains within it texts from the first and second centuries.  Many of the passages that specifically referred to the Christian Jesus and Christianity were censored by the Church in the Middle Ages (or left out by Jewish printers who were afraid of Church censorship), which is why someone who has read the Talmud today would not find these passages.  However, Talmud scholars -- I mean critical scholars, not rabbis -- have identified several earlier manuscripts that contain these passages.  The passages in the Talmud come from the Tosefta, which originates in the second century -- in other words, not much older than Josephus and the Gospels.  If we mention Josephus, who may not even have written the passages ascribed to him, we should at least mention the Talmud.  I added a paranthetical to make clear that the Talmud passages in question should not be read as history. Slrubenstein   |  Talk  15:40, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue is not that the passages themselves exist, but rather that they a) do not refer to Jesus, and b) are too late to be historically relevant anyway.  Regarding a) the references are to various individuals, including a couple of Yeshus, one who lived 100 years before the gospel events, and one who lived about 100 years afterwards.  Various other references are dubious, or based on a later scribal emendation of one manuscript not found in earlier manuscripts.  In any event, if they did indeed refer to Jesus, it would mean that the gospels stories were entirely false in almost every detail. Regarding b), the earliest references are from the second century at best, and probably later.  The whole Jesus in the Talmud = Yeshu was popular at one point, but is unravelling today.  I urge you to carefully read the Yeshu article. Jayjg (talk) 17:27, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: Thanks, Grutter.  Jayjg, with respect I have to disagree with you strongly.  Your position implies either that the only material on Jesus put in the article must be historical (in which case we would have to delete a lot of material from the article), or that the only mythology about Jesus that can be allowed in the article must come from Christianity.  I disagree with both positions.  It is true that there has been considerable work by critical historians and Bible scholars concerning Jesus — anyone who has followed these pages know that I am committed to including their views in the article.  But that does not mean that the article should contain only historically accurate material.  Jesus is an object of Christian mythology (and I am using "myth" in the academic and not popular sense), and that material should be in the article.  Some will say that this material reveals more about Christians than it does about Jesus, but nevertheless I feel it should be included.  But Jesus is also important in Jewish mythology.  Much recent scholarship has explored the ways that the Amoraim and Tanaim were consciously competing with Christianity in the formative years of Rabbinic Judaism, and their stories about Jesus are very much relevant (and if some scholars say these stories are not about this Jesus, I can provide sources that claim that they are about this Jesus.  Both views should be represented, not only one).  Only two religions from the Roman world have survived to this day: Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.  And they emerged and first took shape in Roman Palestine.  For a very long time people, including scholars, have anachronistically claimed that these two religions are so different that there is no meaningful connection between them.  But today, many scholars are revising that view and recognizing how Rabbinic stories of Jesus and Christianity played a role in the processes through which Rabbis saw themselves, and Rabbinic Judaism took shape.  I think one sentence that signals this is very reasonable. Slrubenstein   |  Talk  18:41, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I strongly disagree, but I've tried again by modifying the POV of the existing sentence. Jayjg (talk) 19:01, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm happy with the rewrite. --G Rutter 19:08, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  the Talmud 

message: Which fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to Jesus? Jayjg (talk) 20:55, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm... I did not think that any of them did.  As far as I understand it, the significance of the scrolls is that they reveal some similarities between Jesus' views and the Qumran community, presumably Essenes -- which indicates that Jesus' thought was not so divergent from Jewish views at the time, and suggest, some believe, that he even spent time in an Essene community. Slrubenstein   |  Talk  13:51, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not aware of any of them doing so either.  I think there is a fragment several letters long that some people have rather dubiously suggested might be from a gospel, but even that certainly doesn't mention Jesus.  JimWae, can you explain? Jayjg (talk) 17:23, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dead Sea Scrolls?

message: I fixed the following passage:
:A number of historians have seriously questioned whether Jesus ever really lived, and while most religious and secular scholars presume his existence, many find the question of his existence undecideable by historical means alone. 
The problem with it is that it sounds redundant, because it is poorly organized.  It contains three claims: (1) A number of historians have seriously questioned whether Jesus ever really lived, (2)most religious and secular scholars presume his existence, (3) many find the question of his existence undecideable by historical means alone.  Obviously the first and third claim go together -- people who seriously question Jesus' existence are also likely to find his existence undecidable by historical means alone.  I do not want to delete content, so I will not delete one of these redundant claims.  But it is poor organization to have a "jesus didn't exist" claim followed by a "jesus did exist" claim and them followed by a "Jesus didn't exist claim."  This isn't a debate (or a tennis match) -- we just want to communicate different positions.  So I put claims (1) and (3) together.  Also, I deleted the following: "However, ancient historical and mythological figures are often portrayed only from references written centuries after their deaths."  What is the point of this here?  Maybe ancient historical and mythological figures are often portrayed after their deaths (or what they claim is the date of their deaths).  So?  All that matter here is Jesus.  The fact that one person's death was not recorded until centuries later does not prove anything, one way or the other, concerning another persons' death.  And if this is a point specifically made by a historian concerning Jesus, well, let's put it in the historicity section -- it is extraneous here.  We have communicated two views: some believe he existed, some do not.  A detailed catalogue of the reasons belongs in the body, not the introduction. Slrubenstein   |  Talk  21:36, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  tightening up the intro 

message: My 2c. I've never liked "Common era". Who has it in common with whom? Whatever we call the years, they're dated from the presumed birth of Jesus. I'm an atheist and I don't give a fig about AD meaning "anno domini". It's just a pair of letters. I don't see any great need to replace them, and I don't like the fabrication of a "common era" to do so. It does have some currency though, so it has to be considered. The stuff about offending the nonChristian is utter bollocks. You'd need a very thin skin to get offended at that! I don't see anyone agitating for dates to be given in other calendars.
But that's just my opinion. Had I seen it on the page when I came to it, I certainly wouldn't change it. My view is we should go with whichever was used first. There's precedent for that on Wikipedia and I think it's a good way to resolve what is otherwise an intractable argument. I'm not going to go back and look but my small voice is added to the clamour for whichever it was. Grace Note 04:54, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Grace Note - I concur that an anti-Christian POV is often driving the BCE/CE use, especially when it is being intentionally used to supplant an existing and long standing use of BC/AD. If JimWae was writing a new article and started out with the BCE dating system from the beginning I wouldn't be inclined to object as much, but here he is clearly imposing BCE/CE as a preferred alternative to BC/AD and in doing so giving deference to it on NPOV grounds that are inconsistent with wikipedia's official policy of neutrality between the use of AD and CE. Wikipedia says either is acceptable so long as it's consistent within the same article, thus when JimWae claims that CE is more neutral than AD he is asserting his own personal POV that conflicts with wikipedia's style manual. Rangerdude 07:07, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

text: I don't believe it is neutral as it happens. It's defiantly antiChristian. It uses the Christian system of dating and pretends it is something else. I think I argued that you are not required to "swallow" Jesus is lord. It takes a special kind of mind to feel oppressed by the letters "AD", which, as I noted, are just letters for most of us. Grace Note 05:34, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

text: The idea, which you imply, that to continue to use the BC/AD notation that we are all familiar rather than some new-fangled politically correct one makes us all bigoted Christian-POV-pushers is as offensive as it is crass. I'm not interested in your political theorising. I'm interested in NPOV - and that means using usual terms to discuss usual concepts. We don't then try to deconstruct the terms, feign offence and claim everyone should adhere to our politics if we don't want to slur you. Get real! And think outside America - where this terminology is very rarely used and little understood. Kind regards, jguk 06:17, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

text: Then the important thing is to be sensitive to our readers - and they (as a whole) will be more familiar with BC/AD than anything else. I'm not interested in risking offending the majority for the sake of a few with political agendas, jguk 07:03, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

text: It is sterile because people are needlessly politicizing it. I am uninterested with these sort of religious/political or politically-correct explanations and considerations; I am uninterested with what people here like or dislike themsleves; I am even somewhat unintersted in what is common and even what is generally used in most highschools. The only tendency of use for AD/CE I'm interested in is that of the critical scholarship most applicable to the field/s in question, here, for this article's topic. That's for Wikipedia, in Simple Wikipedia, the standards may well shift in an oppositie direction. Also, there could and probably should be a footnote or something to that effect qualifying AD/CE either way (as opposed to just internally linking it); it seems very pertinent to such an article. El_C 07:25, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  CE or not to CE