Talk:Cultural and historical background of Jesus/Archive 1

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Contents 1 Jesus and the religious groups 2 Son of Man 3 A general point 4 Duplication

Jesus and the religious groups

The section "Jesus and the religious groups" takes a POV, including assuming Jesus exists. Could someone render this NPOV please? CheeseDreams 09:34, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This whole article is written from that point of view. I added a link to the article on theories that Jesus did not exist in the lead section and removed the NPOV tag. (Those tags should be stuck at the beginning of the article, not in the middle of a sentence, I believe.) I think that the article would become unreadable if every use of the word "Jesus" had to be qualified. Mpolo 10:55, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

It was more the phrase "Jesus was Special, perhaps even Unique" that seemed extremely POV to me. I put the tags where they were so that it was clear which segment of the document was not NPOV, rather than having people have to read the whole thing to notice. CheeseDreams 10:58, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, the phrase does say why it used that term. But I don't see any problem with "being bold" and softening this. The point seems to have been that Jesus is the only known Jewish rabbi who didn't belong to one of those groups. But the wording is not the best. Mpolo 16:58, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

Urm, does Paul not count as a Jewish rabbi? Though Paul is identified as a Pharisee, his history of attachment to the Temple actually implies him as being a Saducee, wheras many of his letters indicate Essene leanings. In addition, there are also Jesus ben Ananias, who was just mad. CheeseDreams 19:49, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Son of Man

In the Son of man article it is quite clear that the Hebrew's understood the term to be perfectly ordinary as a reference and not at all apocalyptic. Therefore the phrase "apocalyptic Son of Man" implies a POV. CheeseDreams 09:38, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Look at the use of "Son of man" in the book of Daniel, where it is an apocalyptic title, then compare Matthew 26:64, where one of the apocalyptic visions of Daniel is quoted by Jesus with reference to himself. I reworded the statement in this article to reflect that "Son of man" doesn't have to be apocalyptic. The fact that it can be apocalyptic means that it would be POV to take it out. Mpolo 13:35, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

A general point

Is it possible to remove the mention of Jesus from this article, as it is rather irrelevant to the subject matter, and to change the article to Cultural and historical background of early first century Palestine? (but keep the links which point to it) CheeseDreams 11:02, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, the article was created specifically as a daughter article of "Jesus". That is, the only reason the information is in the encyclopedia at all is to free up space in that article. We don't have an article on Cultural and Historical background of Palestine at the time of David, for instance. And the points of Jesus' relationship to his cultural ambit would totally lose their place if he is excized from this article... Which would force us to repeat a good portion of this information back there so as to give it context. Mpolo 13:39, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

My point was that Jesus only seems to be in the article in phrases like "in the time of Jesus". This seems somewhat irrelevant, and we could just put "in the early 1st century" instead. CheeseDreams 15:12, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Except in the section you object to above, which says how Jesus related to each of the political/religious groups of his time. I have no problem in principle with turning "in the time of Jesus" to the early 1st century, but the purpose of the article, and indeed the only way anyone is ever going to find this article, is to complement the Jesus article. Mpolo 16:58, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

It is also background to the 1st Jewish revolt against rome, a significant historic event, and should be accessible from whatever that page is called too. As well as providing background to the Zealots, John-the-Baptist (note that Christian perspectives on John the baptist are not the only ones, there was a large 1st&2nd century religion composed of followers of John the Baptist as Messiah), and Simon Magus. CheeseDreams 19:49, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Duplication

Is it further possible to tidy the article up a bit and reduce the section on religious factions to summaries, pointing to the main articles Sadducees, Pharisees, Essene, Zealots CheeseDreams 11:04, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Those sections are there to give context to the part about Jesus' relationship with these groups. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, so we can have a certain amount of overlap to make things easier on the reader. Mpolo 13:39, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

I was bothered by the rather large extent of the section. I.e. it seems a bit too big, given that these things have their own articles anyway. CheeseDreams 15:13, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

They can probably be reduced, just as long as we provide context. Mpolo 16:58, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)