Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Book of spells of serpents

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Delete as unverified. I cannot ascertain that the sole provided source is itself considered reliable, i.e. creates a citation trail, and no other sources have been offered. ~ trialsanderrors 06:19, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Book of spells of serpents

Book of spells of serpents (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

There is a {{hoax}} tag on the article. I don't know if this is encyclopædic at all. I am thus nominating this article. It needs sources, etc. Hoax? Or truth? TTV (MyTV|PolygonZ|Green Valley) 23:07, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• Weak Keep I'm not sure its a hoax in the sense that someone is playing a trick on Wikipedia (still might not be true though). I found it mentioned here (not sure how that plays out as a source for an article though). All the rest for a google search are wiki-mirros. And I did a prelim search of more reputable-looking sites on "apocrypha" and could find no mention of this book. However, that doesn't mean its a hoax -- I know I have a book around here somewhere about Paul, but I doubt I'll find it. If someone with a real knowledge of the subject can provide a book cite, I'll stay with keep. If not, I think it's in violation of WP:V I posted a message on the talk page of one of the page's editors about this Afd, who according to user page studies theology. Dina 23:27, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, but amend. As noted in Talk:Book of spells of serpents, there are signs that this lost book once existed and was ascribed to St. Paul. This much is all that is asserted by the first paragraph up to and including "no known text has survived". To that point, the page is not a hoax, and should be kept.

What remains in doubt is the subsequent text, the "citations needed" statements about that book's contents; if sources for these cannot be found, I think it would be better to delete them than the whole article.

I don't know whether these statements are true, but they don't seem implausible. If St. Paul actually wrote a book with that title (and the assertion that he did is an old assertion), the Ophite heresy (which is accurately described there) would have been its probable topic ("Ophite" coming from the Greek word for serpent), and Paul would have written against it.

I wish the writer(s) who posted these statements would come back and source them, just so I can read the cited texts. – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 23:32, 19 Nov 2006 (UTC).

• Delete - Could very well be a hoax. Better to have no information than unverifiable information. Wickethewok 16:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)Withdraw pending more info. Wickethewok 03:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Please read Talk:Book of spells of serpents on that point. After discussion, Eupolis left up the "hoax" tag in regard to "the material that goes beyond the title", not in regard to the entire article. If unverifiable, only that material — not the entire article — should be withdrawn. (You wouldn't delete the entire article on George Washington because the cherry-tree story turned out to be a hoax.) – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 01:20, 21 Nov 2006 (UTC).

• Are there sources then? If the sources say its a hoax, its fine. Even the fact that its a hoax should be mentioned even someone can cite that, but right now I don't see any sources. I assume there are some? Wickethewok 03:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, although it is possibly not a hoax: after all, people are willing to believe that Paul wrote other stuff, and that the stuff attributed to him is true. People also believe in things like this and this, so why not assume that many people believe in some other apocryphal bollocks? But unlike the Nag Hammadi gospels, say, this has no external verificaton. It must go. The Crying Orc 09:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

By that reasoning, we should delete all mention of lost books, this being only one of many listed there. And please note that the Gospel of Judas was a lost book, too... but just this year a translation of recovered portions was published. (The original was apparently found around 1960, and spent a couple of decades being shopped around before it found a wealthy buyer.) Come to think of it, the whole Nag Hammadi trove was "lost" until it was found. So were the locations of Troy and Knossos. Far from making these "non-notable" topics, it made them fascinating mysteries, that scholars dreamed of finding, and that made the discoverers famous. – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 12:10, 21 Nov 2006 (UTC).

Listed among apocryphal books attributed to Paul

In the 19th century Muslim anti-Biblical text The Great Debate, or Revealing the Truth (MSWord file) (HTML in Google cache):

The Books of Paul
The number of books ascribed to Paul, apart from those included in the New Testament, [emphasis added] is fifteen.
1. The Acts of Paul.
2. The Acts of Thecla.
3. The Epistle to the Laodiceans.
[...]
13. The Sermon of Paul.
14. The book of Spells of Serpents. [emphasis added]
15. The book of Acts of Peter and Paul.

Some of these texts still exist. Whether or not this particular book ever actually existed, clearly the claim that it once did is not a recent one. Accordingly, the entry is not a hoax, and the tag for deletion should be withdrawn. (Copied over from Talk:Book of spells of serpents) – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 11:18, 21 Nov 2006 (UTC).

Note: I refactored the heading formatting to be bold because I seem to recall that it causes problems with AfDs to have headings within discussions.

I see your point about apocryphal books. However, there are two things we have to look at here:

1. Time at which the (encyclopedia) article is written.
2. Reliability of sources.

The thing is, a copy of this book has yet to be found. For all we know, it won't. Similarly, writing about existence of the Nag Hammadi scrolls before they were found would have been a bit weird, don't you think?

So, we then have to move on to reliable sources for the existence of the book at some stage. There are none. I see links to some neo-Nazarene site, but that, in my opinion, does not equate with a scholarly work.

Incidentally, I have my (private, very slight and quiet) doubts about the authenticity of this 'Gospel of Judas'. I find the timing to be awfully odd, coïnciding with that dreadful Da Vinci Code and the surrounding mass idiocy. The woman who 'found' it (in a safety deposit box or somesuch) also seems to be of the opinion that she was somehow 'destined' (by Judas!) to do so. It has not been offered up to the scholarly community at large to study, but has rather been ratified only by a small team (who were cherry-picked for the purpose).

Moreover, even to link this 'book of serpents' to Paul is problematic. For example, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus was proven by the Renaissance philologist Isaac Casaubon to be a forgery perpetrated in the second or third century (as opposed to being of a more Mosaic epoch). Given that the article says that the mention of this 'serpent book' is on a 6th century list of heretical works, there is no proof that it was not just some cleric getting carried away in his fervour to condemn. Saying that it is mentioned in other works is worth nothing without specifying which works these actually are.

The 19th century Muslism piece is a tad more convincing, but because it is probably based on faulty documentation before it (like the 6th century list — I doubt the book got 'lost' in the 19th century) renders it equally unreliable.

So I am not saying that this should be deleted because it is a lost book. My point is that there is no reliable, verifiable way of differentiating it from a hoax (which it may or may not be — it may just be a symbol of man's ability to delude himself), and as such, it is not worthy of an encyclopedia article. The Crying Orc 12:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

"Given that the article says that the mention of this 'serpent book' is on a 6th century list of heretical works".... Whoa. Pause. Stop. Rewind. That's not what the article says. "[I]t appears in a 6th century list of works that were considered non-canonical", yes, but other texts have been non-canonical without being heretical. In fact, right under New_Testament_apocrypha#Lost_works, where this particular book is listed among others "mentioned in many ancient sources, but for which no known text has survived", the next section is A note about orthodoxy: "While many of the books listed here were considered heretical (especially those belonging to the gnostic tradition--as this sect was considered heretical by most Christians of the early centuries), others were not considered particularly heretical in content, but in fact were well accepted as significant spiritual works." And then Evaluation points out: "among historians of early Christianity the books are considered invaluable". I think that makes the topic notable enough for inclusion. Drop the unsourced claims, sure. Leave the stub (up to "no known text has survived"), because that much was known already. Then if the claimants ever do come back with sources, they can simply revert the deletion of their text and add citations.

"Moreover, even to link this 'book of serpents' to Paul is problematic." Problematic, yes, and that's directly addressed in Non-canonical Pauline Epistles, which (unlike Book of spells of serpents) has a "Bibliographic Resources" section for further reading. But Book of spells of serpents links to Non-canonical Pauline Epistles, and thereby to those resources. – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 14:12, 21 Nov 2006 (UTC).

• Merge with Ophites (stripping out the unverified information), unless the bulk of the entry can be sourced. It's been established the title itself is not a hoax. Drjon 17:57, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Once the unverified information is stripped out, there will be no mention of "Ophites" (since the discussion of the book's contents will be gone). So why merge with Ophites, rather than with Lost work, New Testament apocrypha, or Pauline epistles? Please note that deleting will not only put redlinks in those articles, but also remove this entry altogether from Category:Lost Apocrypha, reducing that category's value as a list. This would take us the opposite direction from Wikipedia policy, which has been toward the use of categories rather than "list" articles. – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 22:57, 21 Nov 2006 (UTC).

Challenged material commented out.

Since the citations requested on 5 November 2006 have not been provided, I am commenting out the challenged portion of the topic article (rather than simply deleting it), so that it may more easily be restored in part or in whole if and when citations are found.

Since the "hoax" tag referred only to this material, it is included in the commented-out portion and no longer shows a hoax warning at page top.

Does this also resolve the deletion issue?

• If so, may we close this topic and remove the deletion tag?
• If not, what else needs to be fixed? – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 02:53, 22 Nov 2006 (UTC).

• Weak keep As long as verifiable sources can be found, then it can be kept. --SunStar Net 17:06, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

• delete until more verifiable sources can be found. 69.140.173.15 16:51, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

  See "Challenged material commented out" above. The article as it now stands is cited. – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 03:21, 27 Nov 2006 (UTC).

• Something from a word document at "allah.com" is not a reliable source. The policy is looking for multiple independant sources to ensure freedom from bias. If those sources do not exist, then the material cannot be included in Wikipedia. - 152.91.9.144 03:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.