Talk:Historical Jesus

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  1. December 2004 – November 2005ish
  2. November 2005ish – January 2006ish
  3. January 2006ish – April 2006

Related subpage: Sources
Related talkpage: Jesus/Historical_Jesus

Contents

[edit] What's with the picture

That picture (the clay model) looks ridiculous, surely there has to be something better. Lostcaesar 00:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

For the story of that picture, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1244037.stm Bluap 21:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the Beeb were being unusually asinine. Some guy from the 1st century with no razor? We might was well put up a picture of Josephus since he was around at about the right time too. Could it not be taken down and replaced with one of the very early extant portraits? Or any old picture, that's actually intended to be a picture of Jesus rather than somebody else entirely. --Mr impossible 00:21, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

That picture (the clay model) looks ridiculous, surely there has to be something better. Lostcaesar 00:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

First, it is not a clay model. Second, please don't double-post. You've already said this and no one has responded to it. Third, see the above discussion, and it would be appreciated if you were to contribute to it. :-) אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 03:15, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
If there is something better, by all means bring it to our attention. I'm not terribly fond of the picture, but I don't see a good reason to get rid of it unless there's a better forensic reconstruction to replace it. Wesley 16:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Why on earth should we have a forensic reconstruction of a guy who's not Jesus, anyway? We don't have this forensic reconstruction as an image on our multitude of articles about Judaean contemporaries of Jesus, even though the image is just as appropriate for those people as it is for Jesus. john k 16:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I totally agree with John on this. Out with the fictitious image. Str1977 (smile back) 08:55, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree as well. I daresay most of the "holy pictures" of Jesus don't look at all like him, but at least they were produced as pictures of Jesus. Why would we want one that was not conceived as Jesus? We could just as well add it to the articles on St. Joseph, St. Peter, etc. AnnH ♫ 22:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I too find the reconstructed skull problematic. Also, the forensic scientist who made it intentionally made it look as "African" as possible (but within the range of features assumed to be present in 1st century Israel). Hence the darker skin and curly black hair. At the other end of the spectrum, light skin and straight brown hair was an equally valid choice for the reconstruction. Annoyingly, the publicists of the project were as deceptive as possible, to imply this actually was Jesus and was exactly what he looked like. Nevertheless, that said: The forensic reconstuction is archeologically important and belongs in this article. The "clay model" is an actual human skull from Israel's Roman Period. Who knows? Perhaps its one of Jesus's distant relatives. The skull should be here as an example of what the ancient Jews looked like. However it should be clearly labeled as a contemporary of Jesus whose genetic features may be suggestive of what Jesus looked like, including the roundess of the skull, dark hair, olive complexion, and so on. I feel strongly that a (clearly labled) picture must be here. Haldrik 03:39, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The picture is a forensic reconstruction by one of the world's most reputable forensic artists, taking into account the ethnicity, eye color, and hairstyles common to the period, and due to that, is closer than any icon that exists. :-) Many people have contributed to the infobox over the past few months, and unless there is something more substantial than it being "stupid" it is to stay. :-) אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 01:20, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
It is the forensic reconstruction based on the skull of a guy who isn't Jesus. It is not a picture of Jesus. It is not a picture purporting to be of Jesus. It has no more relationship to a picture of Jesus than a picture of Newt Gingrich does to a picture of Bill Clinton. john k 23:11, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
This is a picture that is statistically closer than any icon that currently exists. It is of someone from the same geographic location of Jesus. Religious icons are not. This is of someone of the same ethnicity of Jesus. Religious icons are not. This is of someone with the average features of a Jewish man from the first century. Religious icons are not. This is of someone with the eye color of a Jewish man from the first century. 99% of religious icons are not. This is of someone with the hairstyle of a Jewish man from the first century. 99% of religious icons are not. With how religious icons and other images that are supposedly "of Jesus" compare, it is like claiming that an image of Mahatma Gandhi is that of Bill Clinton (wrong features, wrong proportions, wrong shades, wrong everything). On this scale of magnitude, your example of Newt Gingrich vs. Bill Clinton is a much closer match, and the similarity is much closer between our forensics image and what Jesus actually looked like. :-) אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 02:31, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
The point is not that this guy looks less like Jesus than paintings of Jesus do. It's that paintings of Jesus are paintings of Jesus, even if they look nothing like him, while a painting of that dude is a painting of some dude who comes from the same place as Jesus, but isn't Jesus. I understand that one wouldn't want a painting of Gandhi in an article about Clinton. But one wouldn't want a picture of Gingrich either. Use of paintings of Jesus is not misleading, because we note what they are, and that they were painted long after Jesus. This picture is misleading because it's pretending to be a historically accurate picture, when it's no more accurate than having an infobox like this:


Bill Clinton
A photograph of someone from the same time and place as Bill Clinton. No first hand portraits of Clinton exist.
A photograph of someone from the same time and place of Bill Clinton. No first hand portraits of Clinton exist.
Are you seriously saying that, in the hypothetical situation of the lack of portraits of Clinton, this would be appropriate? john k 10:46, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Given that we did a few more things than just took a picture of someone else. The forensics image is not a direct image of the man who the skull belonged to (very few forensics images are exact matches). Features, eye color and hair style were chosen to try and best match the people who lived in his community, so perhaps if we were to start with the skull of our friend Newton here, reconstruct his facial muscles and skin, gave him the proper eye color and features (nose, ears, etc.) of someone from the same ethnic background as Clinton who was born in Hope, Arkansas, it'd be closer than any "Billconography" from Asia that may exist where the former President is portrayed as a teenage Chinese diplomat from Beijing. :-) These paintings of Jesus in religious iconography are not paintings of what we historically know about Jesus, so in an article about the Historical Jesus, the forensics image is most historically accurate to what he -would- have looked like. :-) אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 15:44, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree that there shouldn't be later images of Jesus in this article. I just think the forensic reconstruction is a fraud. Also, how on earth do we know what color hair and skin people from the middle east in the first century AD had? There's been considerable ethnic mixing in that area since then. Also Middle Easterners are much closer racially to Europeans than Europeans are to Chinese people...I don't think this article should have any picture. If the forensic image is to be used, it shouldn't be in the infobox. john k 16:02, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

What about Cultural setting of Jesus, as in "this is a picture of an average 30 year old male from the same cultural setting as Jesus" rather than "this is a picture of what Jesus really looked like according to science" ? Clinkophonist 00:06, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Can we rename the facial image as well, otherwise we have a situation a bit like :

A forensic reconstruction of Bill Clinton from surviving archaeological remains of the 20th century
A forensic reconstruction of Bill Clinton from surviving archaeological remains of the 20th century

Clinkophonist 18:39, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Heheh, cool and ironic image. :-) Anyways, this article isn't only about making generalizations about Jesus' cultural setting. It is an attempt at putting together research that has been consistently named under the same title: "Historical Jesus." This isn't "Jesus science," it's a field of research with books such as, "The Historical Jesus" (Crossan) "The Historical Jesus Quest: Landmarks in the Search for the Jesus of History" (Dawes) "Jesus as a Figure in History" (Powell) "The Quest for the Historical Jesus" (Author illudes me for the moment), etc. etc. etc..
As for the image, "A hypothetical reconstruction of someone from the same time and place of Jesus, created by forensic artist Richard Neave. No first hand portraits of Jesus exist," doesn't work? I would think that nails it as not Jesus, but as someone from the same culture. אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 19:37, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I strongly agree with Steve Caruso. The "clay model" picture illustrates important scientific information. Haldrik 03:48, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Bibleref

Template:Bibleref has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Jon513 19:30, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of some content

I deleted some content before because it was duplicate -- Atenea26 21:00 , 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The title

Its a good article but the title is a bit awkward.

It seems to assert that Jesus existed (which Historicity of Jesus claims is disputed rather than universally agreed upon fact), and that its content is a completely factual reconstruction of exactly who Jesus was (c.f. various Christian groups disputing this).

What it does not contain is [[Historical critical analysis of the Bible and early Christian traditions in order to assertain scientifically how much of the Biblical description of Jesus is likely to be true, and a reconstruction of the significant details of Jesus' life based upon this]]

What it actually contains is a Scientific reconstruction of the day to day life of a person of similar cultural background to Jesus living in the same time period and carrying out a similar style of ministry. But that isn't a very good title - its far too long for a start.

I think the article desperately needs renaming, but Im not sure what people think would be more descriptive in regards to its content? Clinkophonist 14:56, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Good points. There is this article Cultural and historical background of Jesus, however it almost exclusively deals with the historical background. Maybe we could change that article to Historical background of Jesus, change this one to Cultural background of Jesus, and then create a new article based on something similar to my outline User:Andrew c/Historical Jesus (except we wouldn't need the "Overview of characteristics" section because the Cultural background article would cover that).--Andrew c 15:52, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
What's wrong with asserting that Jesus existed? Sure it is disputed that he was a historical person, but only by a tiny minority of, well, crackpots, with an obvious axe to grind... Way more than enough reputable historians agree that he existed, to be able to "assert" that there was a historical Jesus. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
What's wrong with asserting that Jesus existed? the fact that its an opinion and disputed by different opinions. Much like how asserting that Creationism is nonsense is also inappropriate in Wikipedia. One could equally argue that the supporters of Creationism are a tiny minority of crackpots with an obvious axe to grind... but to do so would be a violation of several policies [big hint]. Clinkophonist 17:50, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
Well it's also the overwhelming mainstream view that he existed. It's a bit like saying we can't assert Julius Caesar really existed, just because some people might have a "different opinion" that he did not. We can't totally cater to every revisionist theory out there that disputes the generally accepted version of history -- but we can have articles about them, like this guy: New Chronology (Fomenko), who actually thinks Jesus lived in 1054 AD (Check this out for a laugh!) ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 18:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
Andrew c, I think your idea has some merit, though I don't see why there should then be an article under the title "historical Jesus" any more than there must be an article under "historical Napoleon". Clinkophonist 17:52, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

We shouldn't say in articles that creationism is nonsense, obviously. But our articles about scientific topics like the Big Bang and evolution aren't notably inconvenienced by the objections of young earth creationists. The idea that Jesus existed is not especially more controversial than the Big Bang, I don't think, so I don't think that historical Jesus is a terribly POV title. I'd add that this article ought to be seriously rewritten, so that it actually is an article about the "historical Jesus", rather than being an FAQ about what Jesus might have been like. A lot of scholars have written on the "historical Jesus" subject, and we ought to have a good article on it. john k 18:37, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More references

In this article I miss too many references Atenea26 19:52, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dating system CE/AD

The Jesus article uses BCE/BC and CE/AD as a compromise reached a long time ago to prevent edit warring. I would suggest we impliment a similar system. Because the subject is the Historical Jesus (and since a number of historians and secular scholars tend to use the BCE/CE system), I would say leaving in the more "Christian" system seems to invite edit warring. But I could be wrong. I'd propose using the same system the Jesus article uses for a compromise. But if others feel strongly another way, I'd enjoy to hear their opinions.--Andrew c 00:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The Gospels never say that Jesus died at the age of 33. Infact, it only can be inferred from the data that is the Gospels ( the Four Gospels in the Bible can be trusted for their authenticity beyond any doubt) that He might have been 33 & half. And His resurrection henceforth.


I'm happy with whatever keeps the peace and is stable. Consistency with other articles would be nice however. Sophia 19:10, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
As I mentioned on another article, the main problem most people have with BCE being that it is unnecessarily cumbersome only for the sake of some people's politics, if anything writing "BCE/BC" is even more cumbersome to the point of ridiculousness.
As anyone can discern, there's just something about that little E that just gets the dander up of an awful lot of people, no matter what I may think (I'm only one person, but even if you persuaded me to grudgingly accept BCE, it still wouldn't change the fact that there are whole armies of people out there beside myself, who obviously can't stand it and will only get offended by this slap at centuries of tradition, that seems to be directed by a small extreme position!) ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 19:24, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Even the first edits that used either used both (though alternately, not together). It seems there is one particular editor on a campaign to remove the CEs & BCEs from article. --JimWae 21:45, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I have a problem with the replacing of BC or BCE in direct quotations, for example a quote beginning the section on when Jesus was born uses BC/E - was this in the original quote? We ought not to mess with quotes like this. When quoting an author we should use their words. Lostcaesar 12:38, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Literacy and polyglott

The Bible mentions a man criticized Jesus as false prophet and then jesus wrote something in the dust on the ground, which the man read and shut up promptly. This supports Jesus was literate. (Maybe Jesus wrote about a particular secret sin the protester had committed?)

Also, it is a matter of fact that Jesus spoke either greek or latin, since he diaglogued with Pilate without a translator, as evident from the gospels. It was probably greek (the lingua franca of the era) as a noble roman would never become low as to speak in the imperial latin language when addressing a barbarian. Also, greek was the language of international trade and we know jews of the time were already dispersed around the medditerraneum and jews have genetical talent for trade. 195.70.32.136 18:04, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

First, many scholars believe that the pericope of the woman caught in adultery (the beginning of John, chapter 8) is a late addition to the Gospel tradition as many early manuscripts do not have it. Furthermore, according to what is written in the Gospel of John as we have it today, no one in the story actually read what he purportedly wrote. The -tradition- is that there was some "secret sin," but this is also a very late tradition (now popularized by the book Lamb). Either way, it could have been anything in the dirt (the story doesn't specify). It could have been a stirring, spiritual passage from Isaiah, or it could have even been stick-figure duckies and bunnies. :-)
Second, most of what Jesus spoke was in Aramaic, yet in the Gospels we see it in Greek, so it is no "matter of fact." :-) For example, from the same chapter of John that I mentioned above, the True Children of Abraham Debate was most likely in Aramaic. In the same vein, it is highly unlikely that Jesus spoke any more than a few phrases in Greek, probably enough to buy food at a market (although nearly all of the Gospel accounts about him take place in Aramaic speaking cities) or ask where the bathroom was. :-) --אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 21:08, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archives of talk page

I've set up three archive pages and linked them together with archive templates, so now this page is easier to navigate. :-) If there are any discussions that anyone feels that I cut off too soon, feel free to migrate them back here. אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 21:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Jesus" or "Jesus of Nazareth"?

The most common name is "Jesus". This is clearly showed in Jesus article, to which Jesus of Nazareth redirects. Furthemore:

  1. in this same article, "Jesus of Nazareth" is first used in the 3rd paragraph;
  2. calling him Jesus of Nazareth is a POV, expecially in this article where even the existence of Nazareth at the time is challenged.

Hope not to start an edit war on this, but I am strongly supporting my point.--Panairjdde 09:21, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I understand your concerns, however there are some things that I would like you to take into account:

  1. "Jesus" is ambiguous (see Jesus (disambiguation)).
  2. You are incorrect in saying that "Jesus of Nazereth" is first used in the 3rd paragraph, as the very first line of the Jesus article states "This article is about Jesus of Nazareth. For other uses of the term, see Jesus (disambiguation)."
  3. "of Nazereth" distinguishes this article from the 32 other Jesuses here on Wikipedia and has been the convention for some years now.
  4. Just a plain vanilla "Jesus" is akin to having an article "Steve" with no disambiguation. Are we talking Hawking? Jobs? Popes 1-9? Stephen of Armenia? of England? of Hungary? The list goes on. :-)
  5. Lastly, "of Nazereth" is a historical epithet which most Historical Jesus literature gives creedence to and the majority of people who would be reading the article would understand immediately.

I strongly suggest that we keep "of Nazereth" or, at the very least, add a disambiguation link at the top identical to that of the Jesus article. I would be happy with either or both, for the sake of all parties involved. אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 13:05, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

You got me wrong, I was talking about Historical Jesus article, not Jesus one, so the claim about the 3rd paragraph is about this article, not Jesus one.
As far as general distinguishability (does this word really exists? :-)) of "Jesus", it is clear that if we are linking to Jesus we are taliking about him, not Jesus Quintana.
--Panairjdde 13:42, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I do not understand your position at all. How is adding "of Nazareth" not anything but helpful and clarifying? Do I have this right that your argument is that the historicity of Nazareth is questioned (by whom exactly?). Well, some people question the historicity of the Historical Jesus as well, so should we remove "Historical" from the begining of this article? If you can cite some sources that talk about the "Historical Jesus" but explicitly explain how "of Nazareth" is inaccurate, then maybe you have a case. I have Meier's Marginal Jew in front of me, check out page v1.229. I also have the JS's Acts of Jesus, check out their conclusions on page 527. Seriously, why is this an issue again? How is "of Nazareth" inaccurate? Is this article describing the Historical Jesus of Nazareth or a different Historical Jesus?--Andrew c 15:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Pardon, my misread. The reference is about the synagogue of Nazareth. However, my point still holds. If you check Nazarene article, you find that there is some sonsensu around the idea that Nazarene (well actually the Greek Nazoraios) actually was a reference to someting else, before being related to Nazareth (which is not mentioned in any non-Christian source before 3rd-4th century. --Panairjdde 16:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
There is, in fact, absolutely no consensus that "Nazoraios" refers to anything other than the town of Nazareth in Galilee. And, as I understand it, there is in fact evidence that Nazareth existed in the first century AD - it was tiny, but existed. (Also, why would the gospel writers make up a place that didn't exist in their own time?) john k 16:28, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Maybe this is not the place for a discussion about the existence of Nazareth, but at least acknowledge the existence of the problem (Nazarene#Derivation of Nazarene. As regards Historical Jesus, just removing "of Nazareth" is sufficient, don't you think?--Panairjdde 16:45, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
The whole stupid infobox, with its stupid picture of "guy who's not Jesus at all, but lived around the same time as him" should go. john k 17:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
(See above, What's with this picture, for discussion.) Haldrik 03:44, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Of Nazareth poll

Do we keep "of Nazareth" in the infobox?

  1. Yes. For reasons stated above. אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 13:05, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
  2. Can't we remove the infobox entirely, and just leave "topics related to Jesus"? john k 17:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus' childhood

Does anybody have anything relating to the life of Jesus betwen his childhood and the time of his death? There seems to be no records whatsoever... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.134.135.208 (talk • contribs).

The only records that we really have are the Gospels. Many scholars have also worked on reconstructed hypothetical sources of those texts. Not much else, overall. What sources about his childhood other than the late infancy gospels are there? אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 16:38, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

See Infancy Gospel of Thomas (note that this is NOT the Gospel of Thomas) and Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (which is NOT the Gospel of Matthew). Also see Glastonbury Abbey. Clinkophonist 18:30, 25 June 2006 (UTC)


[edit] What's with the picture

That picture (the clay model) looks ridiculous, surely there has to be something better. Lostcaesar 00:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

First, it is not a clay model. Second, please don't double-post. You've already said this and no one has responded to it. Third, see the above discussion, and it would be appreciated if you were to contribute to it. :-) אמר Steve Caruso (poll) 03:15, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
If there is something better, by all means bring it to our attention. I'm not terribly fond of the picture, but I don't see a good reason to get rid of it unless there's a better forensic reconstruction to replace it. Wesley 16:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Why on earth should we have a forensic reconstruction of a guy who's not Jesus, anyway? We don't have this forensic reconstruction as an image on our multitude of articles about Judaean contemporaries of Jesus, even though the image is just as appropriate for those people as it is for Jesus. john k 16:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I totally agree with John on this. Out with the fictitious image. Str1977 (smile back) 08:55, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree as well. I daresay most of the "holy pictures" of Jesus don't look at all like him, but at least they were produced as pictures of Jesus. Why would we want one that was not conceived as Jesus? We could just as well add it to the articles on St. Joseph, St. Peter, etc. AnnH ♫ 22:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I too find the reconstructed skull obnoxious. Also, the forensic scientist who made it intentionally made it look as "African" as possible (but within the range of features assumed to be present in 1st century Israel). Hence the darker skin and curly black hair. At the other end of the spectrum, light skin and straight brown hair was an equally valid choice for the reconstruction. Annoyingly, the publicists of the project were as deceptive as possible, to imply this actually was Jesus and was exactly what he looked like. Nevertheless, that said:

The forensic reconstuction is archeologically important and belongs in this article. The "clay model" is an actual human skull from Israel's Roman Period. Who knows? Perhaps its one of Jesus's distant relatives. The skull should be here as an example of what the ancient Jews looked like. However it should be clearly labeled as a contemporary of Jesus whose genetic features may be suggestive of what Jesus looked like, including the roundess of the skull, dark hair, olive complexion, and so on. I feel strongly that a (clearly labled) picture must be here. Haldrik 03:39, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed "Works and Miracles" Section

This section cites only religious materials to support the idea of Jesus performing miracles. Therefore, it relates to a Biblical Jesus and not a historical one. DoItAgain 15:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I restored the section, as it is about much more than Jesus performing miracles. It also tries to present different scholars' conclusions regarding the 'religious materials', including things like the question of how many years Jesus' active earthly ministry lasted. Wesley 15:58, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
It needs to be edited to stay within the bounds of history. Regardless of how many scholars discuss the Bible, its stories hold no weight in historical discussion. You can summarize the historical debate without summarizing parts of the Bible. It`s a well-written section, but much of it belongs elsewhere. --142.227.45.20 08:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Now that (excluding a source a priori) is not a scholarly take on things, 142.. Str1977 (smile back) 08:54, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Do I really have to explain why you can`t use religious and mythological writings from thousands of years ago that tell supernatural stories as a source for historical truths? I think it`s pretty damn scholarly, myself.DoItAgain 13:32, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Just to play devil's advocate, can you empirically disprove the Bible? If you can't actually SHOW how it is false (besides your own beliefs for or against the "naturalism"), then why should it be denied when other works by those who considered the Emperor to be a god are accepted?128.211.254.142 09:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus Template vs Jesus Infobox

The following is a quick straw poll:

Q: Should we have the Jesus Template at the top of this article, or the Jesus Infobox as it is now?

Template
  1. At this point in time I believe that the Jesus template should take its place. אמר Steve Caruso (desk/poll) 02:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  2. I agree. The infobox is clunky. There is the image controversy, and content controversy. I don't feel that it adds to the article. Personally, I don't think the few facts we can post about a historical interesting are as interesting as the process scholar use to reach these facts. In other words, we may be able to say certain things about the HJ, but the justification I feel is more important than trying to sum things up in a box (and we have to keep in mind that different scholars have different HJ theories, so its hard to make a summary that covers most POV).--Andrew c 02:25, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  3. Remove as per above. Str1977 (smile back) 09:31, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
  4. It's been done, but I might as well add that I agree as well. AnnH ♫ 21:46, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
  5. Shame it was such a short poll. Yes, the Template is cleaner and should be the lead here. Kevin/Last1in 22:09, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Infobox
Other
Comments
  • Remember that we can always revert back to the old infobox, I just figured that the poll was going to go in this direction anyways, given recent complaints about Neave's image on top. אמר Steve Caruso (desk/poll) 22:20, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discrepancy

Why is it that much of an article titled "Historical Jesus" is based on non-scholarly, speculative works like Graves, Eisenmann or even fiction like Messadie? Str1977 (smile back) 09:18, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Because the theory if historicity of Christ is mostly speculative and besides Messadié did actually historical research to write his works. For the same reason, why is that much of the article based on the gospels?-->User:Atenea26

18:40, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus' versus Jesus's

The Thadman has reverted "Jesus's" back to "Jesus'", saying in the edit summary that "Jesus' is proper grammar." I assure you that I am aware that it is acceptable to end Jesus, Achilles, and Brutus with just an apostrophe for the possessive, rather than an apostrophe followed by "s". However, I tend to use that only when a certain grouping of words has come down through the centuries: "Achilles' heel", "Achilles' tendon", but "Achilles's heroism"; "Brutus' Portia", but "Brutus's tendency to use words of one syllable". I never use it for Jesus, for the simple reason that I don't pronounce it as Jesus when it's possessive: I pronounce it as Jeezussez. That said, I wouldn't have changed what was already there except that I was editing the page anyway, and I saw there was a place where there were quotation marks around "Jesus" (not sure why) followed by the apostrophe. In the editing box, the double quotation mark looks quite distinct from the apostrophe, but when the page is saved (at least with Internet Explorer on Windows XP) it looks awful "'. Anyway, I won't revert back.

By the way, I also have a preference for the -ize spelling where words can be spelled with -ise or -ize. For one thing, it is more correct, showing which words come from Latin and which from Greek, Oxford and Cambridge use it, and as far as I know, the -ise spelling is only correct in British English, wherease the -ize spelling is always correct. (That is, unless it's a word which requires -ise, such as surprise, circumcise, etc.) I don't normally change an existing article to -ize spellings unless I find that is has a mixture of ises and izes. Whichever spelling we use, we should at least be consistent, and as the one taking the trouble to make them consistent, I claim the privilege of using the one I prefer. So in the next day or so, I'm going to change "baptise" to "baptize", since there are already some "baptize"s in the article. If anyone objects, speak now or forever hold your peace. AnnH ♫ 21:41, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Heheh, understand how you feel completely, and many times I also use "Jeezussez" when I speak. Reading "Jesus's," however, makes me cringe for some reason (probably because I was raised in an elementary school that had the occasional "grammar Natzi" as a teacher :-) ), and I know that under standard english grammar (for all forms of english that I am familliar with) it's not "proper" per se, and none of the Jesus literature uses the additional "s". :-) As for "-ise" vs "-ize," I agree with you completely. "-ize" appears to be the best way to go, and we should have some sort of standard spelling for this particular article. אמר Steve Caruso (desk/poll) 22:19, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The title of this article does not accurately describe the article's subject matter.

The article assumes the historicity of Jesus. A more appropriate title would be “A Christian's History of Jesus.”

The article asserts "facts" not yet established or proved in the article and does not include any extra-biblical references to found the assertion indicated by the title. The article does not introduce any opposing viewpoints and "general consensus" is a logically fallacious argument. Conspicuously missing is any reference to the earliest Christian sects that believed Jesus was a spiritual being and not an actual person.

Therefore, changing the title to “A Christian's History of Jesus” will accurately reflect the article's content. Theseus14 16:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Which "earliest Christian sects" are these? I can't see how you could have an established Christian sect much earlier than Peter, Paul, Mark, and them, when they believed either that he had definitely existed or that they had personally met him. Plus, the physical record of him.128.211.254.142 09:48, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
The comments above are off topic and are more appropriate in a different article, the Historicity of Jesus. For example, what earlier Christian sects believe or dont believe is irrelevant. The focus of this article is to reconstruct the historical person, along the lines of the Quest of the Historical Jesus. Everything else is irrelevant. --Haldrik 20:56, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
This is not exactly correct. We have Christian views of Jesus and New Testament view on Jesus' life that are exactly what you describe. This article, in places, attempts a critical/scholarly examination of Jesus' life. Maybe that is representitive of "liberal Christianity", and maybe its representitive of the scholarly consensus on this matter, but it clearly isn't the traditional Christian view. My issue with this article and title is that it doesn't describe the Quests for the historical Jesus, nor any of the competing theories regarding the historical jesus (wisdom sage, apocalyptic prophet, mythical jesus, etc), instead offering a cultural background of Jesus, with some commentary on his "life". --Andrew c 20:51, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
The history of the Quest of the Historical Jesus (bios of the various notable scholars) altho relevant, isnt the same thing as the history of Jesus (a bio of Jesus). I hope this article is more about the historical figure and less about people studying the historical figure. Andrew, how do you see the article? --Haldrik 21:03, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
The hypothesis that Jesus never existed has failed, and few (if any) credible scholars subscribe to it. Historians tend to put the Jesus-didnt-exist scholars in the same category as other kinds of fundamentalists. --Haldrik 21:09, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I added a note at the top of the article to help clarify the nature of this article, similar to:

This article about Jesus the person, using historical methods to reconstruct a biography of his life and times.

Feel free to tinker with it. --Haldrik 00:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Notably, the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" is often called "Jesus Research". --Haldrik 00:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Separate article or not (main article?), this article should say something about the Quest.Arch O. La Grigory Deepdelver 02:12, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Something more than a list of 9 names, that is. Arch O. La Grigory Deepdelver 02:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
PS: Here's another list. And yet another. OK, so we have the sources, so who will write about the quest? Arch O. La Grigory Deepdelver 02:17, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

We cannot have an article about The Historical Jesus (HJ). I mean, ignoring the minority, yet relevent mythical Jesus (MJ) POV, we can only say maybe 4 things for sure about The Historical Jesus.

  • Jesus was from Galilee, and most like from Nazareth.
  • Jesus was a traveling preacher and had a following, thought the size of his ministry is unknown.
  • Jesus' ministry ended in Jerusalem, possibly due to a public disturbance, where he was arrested and executed by crucifixion.
  • Jesus' teachings were probably not that radical in relation to the background Jewish culture (if he were an apocalyptic prophet, there were similar figures before him, if he were a wisdom sage, again he wasn't the first of his kind, etc).

Point 4 may be pushing it, but everyone (except MJ-ists) would be able to agree on those aspects. Anything more would lead to debate. We cannot write one single article about the historical Jesus because there are so many different scholarly hypotheses. What we need instead of this article is an article that describes these different theories, instead of either presenting one as The Truth, or using original research to compose a new 'likely' HJ. I stand by my outline (and now that I have some more books, I may be able to contribute to filling out this outline, however, I sometimes lack faith in my writing skills).--Andrew c 15:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

You are absolutely right, except this doesn't present any single theory, it is more a forum for debate on each problamatic issue in the life of Jesus. I would also prefer coherent presentations of the different views and some introduction about what the historical Jesus means and how the historical method is applied to the Bible. Unfortunately, I truncated the only section that was on topic :), but this whole thing needs restructuring anyway. --Vesal 00:28, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quests?

What are these sections about First Quest, Second Quest, and Third Quest? They make no sense. Could someone please put them into context? Asarelah 04:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

They are different stages of the Quest for the Historical Jesus, as outlined by Schweitzer, Crossan and others. I'll let others give the details, but I believe that Haldrik is working on fleshing out the section. Arch O. La Grigory Deepdelver 04:20, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
It just needs to be made clear what the "Quests" where (as in "'The No Quest'refers to..."), who calls them quests, and what the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" was. I'm assuming that its a book or something, but that just is not clear at all from the article. Asarelah 20:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
"Flesh" is a very ambitious word. How about "skeleton". ;) --Haldrik 04:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Ezekiel 37:1-14. Arch O. La Grigory Deepdelver 04:34, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 :D --Haldrik 21:01, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] proposal

I propose taking information from Cultural and historical background of Jesus and Historical Jesus and creating two seperate article: one focusing on history, and the other focusing on culture. I'd also propose less POV titles. For example Cultural background of 1st century Judea and History of Israel, 600 BCE - 150 CE. Reasoning: this article is really long, and this article doesn't really describe the cultural background, and parts of historical Jesus don't really describe the historical Jesus. I would love imput on this, and perhaps better title suggestions. If people agree with this proposal and we get some support, I'd propose creating two sandboxes in my userspace to start this process and I'd urge anyone interested to help contribute.--Andrew c 16:44, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Interesting idea...it has my provisional support. But why not just Late Second Temple period Judaism? Arch O. La Grigory Deepdelver 17:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Have a look at the History of Palestine for a division of historical periods. "Early Roman Period" or "Roman Period" can work. --Haldrik 21:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if Roman Period would work because the Cultural and historical background of Jesus article starts back in ~580 BCE. Look at History of ancient Israel and Judah, I think Arch's suggestion of Late Second Temple period works better.--Andrew c 21:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup tag

Perhaps we should tag the article, or some of its sections, with the cleanup tag in order to encourage more contributions. Lostcaesar 08:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, maybe a very good idea. Ideally the entire Jesus and history group of articles would harmonize much better together. Currently, there is much overlap. I mean take the article Cultural and historical background of Jesus, this has a section about the historical jesus. Then the original Jesus article has a section on the historical Jesus. All these sections are quite different in nature. --Vesal 18:42, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Works and miracles

The paragraph reads:

Jesus, like many holy men throughout history, is said to have performed various miracles in the course of his ministry. These mostly consist of cures and exorcisms, but some show a dominion over nature. Scholars in both Christian and secular traditions debate whether these miracles should be construed as claims of supernatural power (which would be rejected by naturalistic historians, while possibly accepted by others), or explained without recourse to supernatural occurrences. Naturalistic historians generally choose either to see the texts as allegory or to attribute the healings and exorcisms to the placebo effect.

I wonder if this paragraph adds any relevant information. To summarize its points, it says that miracles have been attributed to many holy people, that there is debate as to whether the miracles of Jesus are real, and that "naturalistic historians" say they are not real. The last sentence is tautological in that naturalistic in this context means "denies miracles", and besides it is a philosophical view. This article at its lead asserted that it does not take up theological (and thus presumably is uncomfortable with philosophical) points. I could sum the other points of the sentence as follows: "Some people in history are claimed to have been miracle workers, and people argue over whether Jesus was one or not." That does not seem all to informative. The only really useful information is that Jesus' miracles are part exorcisms, part cures, and part dominion over nature – but that point seems to have potential as informative only if an analysis of such miracles followed, which doesn't. Lostcaesar 17:24, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scholarly methods, the outline, what to do...

About the lead-in, I agree it is more mature now. I would still like it to make slightly stronger points on the problems of applying historical methods on a religious text. But anyway, the historical methods section needs lots of work! Currently the part in the cultural background is better. Anyway, I'm slightly confused, if this article is about scientific Jesus research, it should discuss the methods, the main problems, and then present the different Jesus theories. But I find the current material very interesting, it's like a debate on each issue. These two approaches to the subject don't work very well together, so I wonder what are the plans for this? --Vesal 19:24, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historical Jesus vs Jesus of Faith

I really wanted to insert material that elaborates on this distinction. My quotation from the Modern Catholic Encyclopedia was indeed out of context and therefore removed, but here is the full section, pages 433-434:

"The so called historical Jesus is really the historian's Jesus; that is, the Jesus reconstructed out of literary fragments by historians. The object of the Christian faith is not merely the historian's Jesus but rather the risen Jesus -- the one who says "I died, and behold I am alive forevermore" (Rev 1:19). Following the Gospels, the Catholic Church assumes continuity between Jesus portrayed in the Gospels and the risen Lord; "The sacred authors... told us the honest truth about Jesus" (DV 19). That basic continuity extends backward from the Gospel texts, through the complex transmission of the Jesus tradition and the earliest witnesses and formulas of faith, to Jesus of Nazareth. While admitting the complexity of the Jesus tradition, Catholic theology contends that the tradition is basically reliable and allows us to hear the voice of Jesus, and that behind that tradition there is the strong personality of Jesus of Nazareth who is also the risen Lord."

While stating that the historic personality of Jesus and the risen Lord are the same, it still distances itself from the term "historical Jesus" and refers to it as a non-catholic view, precisely because it does not assume the continuity between the Jesus portrayed in the gospels and the risen lord. As such, I believe it is fair to say that "the historical Jesus" is irrelevant to a religious understanding of Jesus. I guess I'm arguing that this article should be more about the secular view, but I will not edit this article anymore, as its scope seems to be quite different. Maybe the more secular view should be under Quest for the Historical Jesus or Historical Jesus theories. --Vesal 18:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Its not a bad goal, Vesal, and I hope you do continue to contribute to the article since it needs all the contributions that it can get. There are real risks with the source you cite, however. I think it is using the phrase "risen lord" in an unusual context, and I say this because such a phrase cannot properly be juxtaposed with the Jesus of the gospel tradition, since the gospels all record Jesus in his risen form as a historical reality. Hence the only way to talk about the two as separate is to reject this historicity of certain sections of the gospels, an act that is explicitly stated as against the Catholic faith per the reference the encyclopedia (Dei Verbum, I could quote the exact line). Thus I think the trick is as follows. There is a distinction between the Jesus that can be constructed with merely historical methods, and the Jesus that can be viewed with the additional benefit of faith. However, the assumption that the two must conflict, or that one view renders the other irrelevant, is denied by Catholic orthodoxy (even if the historiography of the "quests" seems to take such a conflict as an assumption). At any rate, what we run the risk of here with this source is making a statement, not about the historical Jesus per se, but as expressed in the Catholic faith, and such a statement would then have to be precisely phrased within its Catholic context. This entire approach seems problematic for an article that begins by stating, more or less, that theology is not going to be considered in an axiomatic way. So yes, the essence here is to distinguish just what the historical Jesus aims to be, and then express that. The extent to which history confirms the Christ of faith or not is an interesting and relevant question, but one that is not the central focus of this article.
I wrote more than I thought, and I don't know how helpful that was, but hopefully it was a sketch of the difficulty with the source you are quoting.

Lostcaesar 19:07, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I can clearly see your point. And that's why it might be better to talk about that distinction as part of the history of the quest when the authors in question do take that view, and when it is argued against, etc. That's lots of work, of course. Now, I don't really know what to do about this article... One thing is certain, it is longer than "preferable"  :) --Vesal 21:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Vesal, the more I look around at how the term "historical Jesus" is used on Wikipedia and the Internet in general, the clearer it is that this term means "nonsupernatural Jesus," the secular viewpoint, as you say. It goes back at least to Strauss. I don't know what to say to the faithful who naturally understand their version of the supernatural Jesus to be "historical" in the sense of being factual. The very term "historical Jesus" is biased because it's pretty hard to come out against "the historical Jesus." That's why the Catholic source you cited refers to it as the "so called historical Jesus." But "historical Jesus" is the term that historians have used for over a hundred years to mean "Jesus understood as a nonsupernatural man." That's what I think this article should be about. Jonathan Tweet 14:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Here's an example of the term "historical Jesus" understood to mean "nonsupernatural Jesus." That's what the phrase is used to mean, and that's what an article with this title should be about. [1] Jonathan Tweet 23:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad someone is picking this up. Note that you will have to work out a real solution, because what I propose above is a WP:POVFORK, I simply didn't know any better. Good luck! --Vesal 03:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] topic of this article

I contend that an article entitled "Historical Jesus" should answers this question: "According to nonsectarian/secular/academic historians, who was Jesus?" This article is close, but like a lot of Wikipedia articles it presents a lot of "process" relative to results. The disambig statement at the top says that the article is "about Jesus the person." But here's the introductory paragraph. It is not about "Jesus the person." It is all about the process of figuring out who the historical Jesus is.

In the field known as Jesus research, scholars use scientific disciplines, including the historical method and Israeli archeology, to reconstruct a biography of the life and times of Jesus himself, as a historical figure. This is to be distinguished from the Biblical Jesus, which includes a theological reading of the Gospel texts. The distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of Faith began with the work of Hermann Samuel Reimarus.

If I go to an article called "Historical Jesus," I want to be told right away who he is. Process is interesting and needs to stay in the article, but basic information on the topic of the article should come first. The process is already handled at Historicity of Jesus. Look at this informative line from Jesus.

Most scholars in the fields of biblical studies and history agree that Jesus was a Jewish teacher from Galilee, who was regarded as a healer, was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on orders of the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate under the accusation of sedition against the Roman Empire.

Now that line leaves a lot out, such as what he taught. But we could add a lot of information of this quality. So I'd like to take a crack at changing this article from being about the historical method as applied to Jesus to being about Jesus (as understood by nonsectarian historians). Jonathan Tweet 04:04, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

The article attempts to show various views as to what can be known about Jesus the person based on this historical method. Its not about nonsectarian/secular/academic historians per se, and you shouldn't expect to get one answer to your question, nor a complete answer. It cannot tell you who he is. It can tell you what various scholars think the historical method has to say about who he is. Lostcaesar 07:57, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Views about what can be known historically are welcome at Historicity of Jesus. You say that this article "can tell you what various scholars think the historical method has to say about who he is." Sure, but that sentence is true about Julius Caesar, Hitler, Socrates, etc. Anyone accepting the limited, mortal, unrevealed, provisional nature of nonsectarian historical research knows that an article about the historical Jesus/Socrates/Hitler/Julius Caesar is getting what various scholars think the historical method says he is." Those articles might include controversies on commentaries on method, but they don't lead with that material. If this article isn't the one that tells the reader who (nonsectarian historians think) Jesus was, which article is? Because the Jesus article can't bear that weight. It's already well-loaded with what religious people think about Jesus, as it probably should be. Jonathan Tweet 16:32, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

"Historicity of Jesus" is about whether Jesus exists as a historical figure or not. That is a different article / subject. Obviously, we don't need an article on the Historicity of Julius Caesar because (1) no one doubts his historicity, and (2) if someone did I suppose his views could easily be included on the main page. This article gives what various scholars think the historical method shows about Jesus. As it happens, this is a controversial subject with various scholarly views, and there is no consensus, so in this instance the article cannot respect the field of research neutrally without presenting the field as diverse and to an extent conflicting. It is worth mentioning that the historical method does not exclude miracles or religious scholars (or atheistic scholars). Instead, accounts of miracles may be examined by the historical method just as all other accounts may be. What the method does exclude are philosophical or religious assumptions. For example, the decisions of the Council of Nicene are obviously irrelevant to the subject. So would be a philosophical view that miracles are either false or unverifiable.

Labeling scholars as "sectarian" is problematic, and I could give reasons why we should be careful here, but the simplest and safest thing to say is that a particular scholar's arguments are somewhat independent of the scholar. Arguments are examined on their own merit — anything else is a veiled ad hominem. As for us here, the criteria for inclusion for a scholar are a relevant background in the field, general academic respect, and a relevant point of view. A scholar who says that the historical Jesus rose from the dead because the Creed says so would be one with an irrelevant point of view concerning this article and there would be no need for inclusion. A scholar who says that the historical Jesus rose from the dead because he judges the Gospel of Matthew a generally reliable source is, if he meets the other criteria, worthy of inclusion. Go back over those two sentences and add "not" before "rose from the dead" and we get the same standard for us here. Anything else is a violation of wikipedia neutrality. Lostcaesar 17:26, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

LC, what do you think the topic of this article is? I think it's "Jesus the person, using historical methods to reconstruct a biography of his life and times." But the intro paragraph is not about "Jesus the person, using historical methods to reconstruct a biography of his life and times." I want to change the intro article so that it's about Jesus the person. If I can't do that, then let's change the first line of the disambig paragraph to something like "This article is about the process and controversies involved in using the historical method to construct a biography of Jesus." Jonathan Tweet 00:28, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I would think "what can be known about Jesus the person using historical methods"; what did you have in mind? Really the whole article needs revision. Lostcaesar 00:36, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
LC, I agree, the whole article needs revision. For now, please expand on your view. If you don't think that the topic is "Jesus the person etc.," if you think that the topic is a body of knowledge ("what can be known"), then how would you rewrite the first sentence in the disambig paragraph to reflect that the topic is not a person but a body of knowledge? Jonathan Tweet 00:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I think it is about Jesus the person, insofar as he can be known through historical methods. The lead sentence at present doesn't seem so bad: "In the field known as Jesus research, scholars use scientific disciplines, including the historical method and Israeli archeology, to reconstruct a biography of the life and times of Jesus himself, as a historical figure." That seems ok — I might do something a little different, more like my opening sentence. Lostcaesar 08:14, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Earlier you said that the topic of the article is what can be known etc. Now you say it's Jesus the person, etc. If the topic is Jesus the person, etc., then the intro paragraph should be about Jesus the person. Currently, the intro article is about the historical method being applied to Jesus. So if the topic is Jesus the person etc., then let's make that the topic of the intro article. I don't see how it can be controversial for the intro paragraph of an article to treat the topic of the article directly. The Historicity of Jesus article says "The Historical Jesus is a reconstruction of Jesus using modern historical methods." That's what I want, primarily a reconstruction of Jesus using modern historical methods, secondarily commentary on using modern historical methods to create a reconstruction of Jesus. Now that you and I agree that the topic of this page is Jesus the person etc., let's rewrite to intro paragraph to be about Jesus the person, etc. Jonathan Tweet 14:30, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

My proposed lead paragraph, which treats the topic of the article (unlike the current lead paragraph). "The historical Jesus is Jesus of Nazareth as reconstructed by historians who regard him as a natural man rather than as a supernatural entity. Though these acounts vary, in general they portray Jesus as a 1st-century Jewish sage or prophet who had a following but who did not establish a religion or send his disciples to convert the gentiles. Scholars of the historical Jesus use the historical method and Israeli archeology to reconstruct a biography of Jesus. They debate whether he preached the imminent end of the world, his connection to religious groups (such as the Essenes), and which sayings attributed to him are actually his. The so-called quest for the historical Jesus began with Hermann Samuel Reimarus and continues today with scholars such as the fellows of the Jesus Seminar." LC, I imagine that you will assert that this isn't what's meant by the term "historical Jesus," but if you google "historical Jesus was," you'll see that this is how the term is generally used. Jonathan Tweet 02:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

That isn't a terrible idea. However, I am not sure what I think about excluding the supernatural, and being specific about not establishing a religion. These things are also debated. There are a number of very notable scholars who happen to argue for the historicity of a number of supernatural events (NT Wright jumps out at me). Maybe we could modify yours to be more broad. I like how yours mentions the debates about the different historical Jesus's (wisdom sage, apocalyptic prophet, rabbi, etc).--Andrew c 03:12, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
JT, sorry I haven't been able to give this much attention atm, but my energies are presently consumed elsewhere. I think this move in the intro is basically a good idea, but we need to be cautious about things like "as a natural man rather than as a supernatural entity". That's not what the article is about. The article is about "using historical methods alone to see what Jesus was like" — however, this statement is too argumentative and bold for an encyclopedia, so, properly nuanced, it is about "views on / what can be known about Jesus / what Jesus was like / based on historical methods alone". Some scholars think that historical methods give credence to claims that Jesus wrought miracles, and there is no presumptive basis to disregard those views here, so long as the claims are based on use of historical methods. A scholarly view that Jesus is God because the Creed asserts as much is not relevant, but a view that Jesus is God because the end of Matthew's Gospel is shown to be historically reliable, once historical critical methods are applied to the text, is relevant, so long as it meets the other criteria (as would be the converse). Lostcaesar 00:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, here's another shot: "The historical Jesus is Jesus of Nazareth as reconstructed by historians using modern historical methods. Though these acounts vary, in general they portray Jesus as a 1st-century Jewish sage or prophet who had a following but who did not establish a religion or send his disciples to convert the gentiles. Scholars of the historical Jesus use the historical method and Israeli archeology to reconstruct a biography of Jesus. They treat the Gospels and other early Christian writing as fallible historical artifacts. They debate whether Jesus preached the imminent end of the world, his connection to religious groups (such as the Essenes), and which sayings attributed to him are actually his. The so-called quest for the historical Jesus began with Hermann Samuel Reimarus and continues today with scholars such as the fellows of the Jesus Seminar." I eliminated reference to "nonsupernatural." Andrew and LC, if this doesn't suit you, please compose an alternative. It's certainly true that some scholars believe Jesus founded a religion, but "in general" (as I say) scholars of the historical Jesus don't think so. I don't want to overstate the case, but I don't want to understate it, either. In fact, this intro is weak in that it doesn't point out that, in general, this scholarship treats the miraculous events of Jesus life as ahistorical, but I'm willing to let that slide. Jonathan Tweet 15:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I would say the following:
"The historical Jesus is Jesus of Nazareth as reconstructed by historians using historical methods alone. These methods do not include theological or religious axioms, such as biblical infallibility. Though the reconstructions vary, they generally agree on these basic points: Jesus was an ethnically Jewish teacher who attracted a small following of Galileans and, after a period of ministry, was crucified by the Roman and Jewish authorities in Palestine during the governorship of Pontius Pilate."
This is a bit leaner, but I think the point is the same. I am split over mentioning Reimarus, since I am not sure if the "quest for the historical Jesus", which is actually a seperate article, is really the same as what we are talking about here, though it is related, so I am unsure. Lostcaesar 23:03, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I much prefer adding others' text. I added your version verbatim (I think, but please double-check). I kept reference to Reimarus because it's sourced. Plus it is Wikipedia style to encourage redundance. Jonathan Tweet 04:44, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Cool; Lostcaesar 07:19, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
OK, on to the contentious part. Please find a historian who says that Jesus was "ethnically Jewish" but not simply "Jewish." The phrase "ethnically Jewish" sounds like the sort of term used to keep alive the possibility that Jesus founded Christianity. Jonathan Tweet 07:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I began editing this article because I see some inelegancies of style and a few minor factual errors. The I grew uneasy with the article itself - it began to seem bogged down in trivia, such as the question of whether there was or was not a synagogue at Nazareth (a whole subsection on this?) I started wondering what the original authors/creators had in mind. And I discovered that there's a whole extended family of articles on related topics. And like Jesus' own family, the relationships are obscure. Anyway, I thought it might be useful to summarise here the articles I've come across, how they're grouped (because they really do come in groups), my own brief comments on them.

First there are the articles listed on the Jesus template, some under the section Non-religious Aspects, others under Perspectives on Jesus (though God knows why):

  • Cultural and historical background of Jesus: "The story of a tempestuous time when Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity first diverged." Despite the Sunday supplement introduction, it does give good coverage of the topic, and, more important perpahs, it covers what it says it will cover.
  • Historicity of Jesus:The intro says it addresses "the debate surrounding the historical authenticity of ... Jesus of Nazareth." But it doesn't. Instead it gives an overview of the 'primary texts', so to speak - the Gospels and Epistles, Josephus and Tacitus, that sort of thing. A mediocre article, it lacks both depth (analysis of the documents) and breadth (discussion of provenance, things like that).
  • Koine Greek:This article seems solid enough, but has extremely little to say about Jesus.
  • Aramaic of Jesus:Like Koine Greek, a solid article that stays on-topic. Unlike Koine Greek, it's relevant to the subject of Jesus. A lot of words inside our article could be saved if we simply wikilinked to good qarticles like this (i.e, "Scholars generally agree that Jesus spoke Aramaic with some Greek and Hebrew", with the words 'Jesus spoke' linked to the Aramaic article).
  • Race of Jesus:Oh my God, is my only comment.
  • Historical Jesus:Our article. Jesus as reconstructed by historians. I'll come back to this.
  • Jesus Seminar:Seems to be a good summary. It needs to be linked from inside our article, whatever you think of its conclusions and methods - after all, it does represent one strand of secular understanding of Jesus.
  • Jesus as myth: Not relevant to an article on historical perspectives on Jesus.
  • Criticism of Jesus:Shares with Race of Jesus the dubious distinction of being one of the worst articles in the family. The Jesus-Template family, that is.

What else is there?

  • Jesus and history isn't an article, it's a disambiguation page, and another family of articles. It's members overlap with Jesus-Template - HoJ, HJ, Background and Myth are all there, with nice little one-line summaries describing what they're about (except, of cuorse, in several cases they're not). HJ is said to give "historical perspectives on Jesus' life, ... critical forensic reconstructions of Jesus." There are two extras, Josephus on Jesus and Tacitus on Jesus. Both are excellent articles.
  • Genealogy of Jesus: A bit inclined to preach in places, but other parts contain good material.
  • Desposyni:A good discussion of the family of Jesus. The great weaknes of the HJ article at present is that it ignoers articles like this.

There's much more.

But to get back to the main point, what should this article be about? My own feeling is that we have a duty to remain faithful to the original intention: an article about "historical perpectives on Jesus' life", to quote Jesus and history. That's pretty much a paraphrase of what appears in the intro to the article as it now exists. Doing this would mean following up the ideas of various historians who have addressed the question, from Reimarus to the present. It would summarise their thoughts, and present them in historical perspective. It would concentrate on ideas on Jesus' nature (I mean his historical nature, not supernatural) and teachings. Quest for the Historical Jesus already addresses this - but it's simply a list of scholars. I suggest using that article as the basis for a revamped HJ, as it seems to be in line with the idea of an article treating historical perspectives on Jesus.

I basically felt very much like what has been described above, and I even moved material from this article to the Quest article to develop a Historical view there: my line of thinking was essentially to POVFORK, which I didn't know was a bad thing, but this really needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, I don't have the time right now to do any serious wikipedia editing, but these would be the steps to my ideal HJ article: 1) extend the historical method section considerably and even include some examples of how historians reach their conclusions (of course, here there are many articles to link to, but some particularly illustrative examples historical detective work could be shown), 2) expand the summary of the history of Jesus research (referring to the Quest article, which itself needs expanding, as main), 3) move the current "Biography of Jesus" to a separate article with an appropriate title like "Contentious issues in the Historical reconstruction of Jesus" and summarize it rather briefly (again many of the issues can be linked to), then finally have a section "Contemporary Historical Jesus Theories" to outline the current views in their own terms without debate. The last section is probably what isn't covered by the other Jesus articles and is precisely what other articles expect this one to cover. However, the most difficult step is to find an appropriate name for the current content of this article :) --Vesal 03:15, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What's the difference between this page and Historicity of Jesus?

OK, what's going on? I pratically got into an edit war with three contributors on the HoJ page, because they (and one of them would be you, Lostcaesar) insist that HoJ is about examining the sources, not debating whether or not he existed, because the "majority" of scholars all agree, even the header on this page directs one to HoJ for disputes about his existence. Is the HoJ page just a POV fork? Seems like these two articles are about the same thing. Would someone please help me find the page that is about the debate of whether or not Jesus existed? And not Jesus-Myth which is about one side of the debate. Any insight into this issue would be appreciated. Thanks. Phyesalis 05:23, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be rude, and thought I acknowledge this next comment will be a little snide: If you want a debate, maybe you should go to a message board. WP:NOT The position that Jesus did not exist, in full, belongs in the JM article. It is summarized in the HoJ article. And is briefly mentioned here and at the main Jesus article. Is this not enough? For what exactly are you looking? Have you come across another topic that treats debate differently that you could use as an example of what you would like to see? What is wrong with the 2 subsections dealing with the JM in the HoJ article? I'm not trying to put you on the defense, and I sincerely apologize if I come off stern. I am just trying to figure out a little bit more in detail your concerns. Thanks!--Andrew c 06:15, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
None taken. I'm not trying to debate it out in an article, but it seems that this article, as opposed to Jesus and Historical Jesus, is for the purpose of going over both sides of the issue, which is not an issue of consensus, but a matter of significant debate. As for the JM subsection, you mean the one that starts out "Many scholars, such as Michael Grant, do not see significant similarity between the pagan myths and Christianity." and then goes on for two decent paragraphs to discount the theory and then ends with a small paragraph summarizing the position? What's wrong with that? A lot. Total POV. A brief mention is not enough, the full spectrum should be addressed even-handedly. I want to remove the POV "most" and "majority", again unsupported. I would like to see this article cover the positive estimate, the negative estimate, as well as a section on scholars and historians who say that the evidence is inconclusive (Because I think these are the actual majority, those who claim otherwise just have an agenda, IMO. Not that I'd write it into the article, NPOV and all). And thank you for not erasing all my contributions. But could you explain what was wrong with my dab header? Just saying it was improper isn't all that helpful. Thank you. Phyesalis 06:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, not this page but Historicity of Jesus. I totally posted this on the wrong page - they're so similar that it gets really confusing. Thanks. Phyesalis 07:32, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Death on a cross" section is terrible

The lay reader should read this header and think "This is where I learn about Jesus' death on a cross." Instead, this is where you see dueling critics and apologists. The cross is of little interest to historians of Jesus. It is of immense importance to people defending the literal interpretation of the Bible and to those attacking such an interpretation. The historical consensus is that Jesus was crucified by Pilate for trouble-making, maybe for whatever it was that the gospels record as the cleansing of the temple. Historians are interested in why he was executed, whether he intended to be executed, and so on. But they don't spend a bunch of time on "Y-shaped crosses" and such. In fact, Markp88 just did a big POV overhaul of the section and I don't care. The material that was there before is also largely irrelevant to the historical Jesus. Jonathan Tweet 03:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. When I saw the recent changes, I also noticed all the fact tags. And the changes made that section all the more argumentative. This shouldn't be a section to rehash debates between believers and non-believers, but instead provide information from the leading scholars about the topic. This section is one of the weakest in the article, and maybe we should start by deleting all the fact tagged stuff, or maybe delete everything and start from scratch.--Andrew c 14:42, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I won't interrupt a "start from scratch" process. Lostcaesar 15:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I've had my own hard work deleted often enough that I don't feel like starting from scratch. If I did it, I'd feel obliged to find a new home for this material. But Andrew, if you want to clean the slate, be my guest. Jonathan Tweet 01:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm going out of town, but I will have computer access. I'll see if I can't pack my Meiers, Ehrman, and Acts of Jesus books, and try to come up with something over the next week. --Andrew c 02:19, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd support a start-from-scratch approach. It's important that a section on the subject be included, but it shouldn't take this form. It should briefly review the fact that early Christians believed that Jesus died on a cross (an important point, given that it was a shameful death), and then cqanvass the facts of death by crucifixion in a general sense - who controlled the process, the possibility (indeed probability) that the Gospels' involvement of the Jewish Sanhedrin was an early Christian attempt to shift blame from the Romans to the Jews, and possibly something about the disposal of bodies - although at that point we're getting into the Resurrection, which belongs to the Jesus of faith rather than the Jesus of history. Just a suggested outline. PiCo 08:51, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I didn't bring my books with me when I went out of town, so sorry about that. I will still try to work something up in the next day or so now that I have returned.--Andrew c 23:27, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] biography

The first several sections are of little interest and are highly detailed. What's important about this guy historically is his ministry, not his home town, etc. Can all this stuff be moved to a spin-off page? Or can the ministry sections be moved to the front, in front of "biography"? Jonathan Tweet 14:56, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

If the article follows a chronological approach, then the family and hometown comes before the ministry. But yes, I agree that that part could be summarised. The ministry part could benefit from drawing on the work of Geza Vermes, putting Jesus into his Jewish context. PiCo 08:53, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I see no reason to follow a chronological approach. Historical Jesus is basically him from baptism to crucifixion. The birth and hometown stuff is relevant to religion, not so much to history. I say, put the most important stuff first. Jonathan Tweet 21:27, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps a rethink on the structure of the article would be useful? I've noticed that it doesn't follow the structure outlined in the introduction, which m,akes the following excellent point about what historians agree on regarding the historical Jesus: "Jesus was an ethnically Jewish teacher who attracted a small following of Galileans and, after a period of ministry, was crucified by the Roman and Jewish authorities in Palestine during the governorship of Pontius Pilate." So perhaps scrap the existing section-divisions (which means scrapping the biography as such), and having these three broad sections: Jesus the rabbi; His ministry; The crucifixion. The 'rabbi' section would cover the social history of Judea in early Roman times, including such things as the various Jewish sects (Pharisees, Saducees, holy men like John the Baptist, Iscariotes, etc), the education Jeus might have had, and expectations of the messiah; the Ministry section would cover what Jesus taught and how it chimed with what Jews believed at that time (Christians sem largely unaware of what it meant that Jesus was a Jew); and the Crucifixion needs to be included because it's central to the change among Jesus's followers from Jewish religious phenomenon to new religion - it obviously can't touch on the Resurrection, but there's a lot to be said about what Jews of the time believed about the resurection of the body and the end of time. In short, there's a lot to be said about the birth of Christianioty in this Jewish-Greek-Roman moment of time, but the article we have just isn't sayiung it. PiCo 10:37, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

PiCo, I like your proposed structure. I'd keep the family stuff in the back as sort of an appendix. Some scholars, such as James Tabor, see the family connection as important. Jonathan Tweet 02:14, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Synagogue of Nazareth

I'd like to delete this section. My problem isn't with anything it says, but with it's relevance - this article is supposed to be about what history can tell us about the historical Jesus, so what's the existence or non-existence of a synagogue at Nazareth to do with that? Is it meant to support the case that Jesus could read? Then put something in the relevant section. Is it meant to say that Nazareth was a big place, big enough to have a synagogue? Just what is it meant to mean? In my view, a whole section devoted to this arcane topic seems more than slightly disproportionate. So should it stay or go? PiCo 08:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you are right that it is just dangling there. However, I think it could be useful if moved to the right section. It does show Jesus as literate, and as versed in Jewish scriptures. It also shows him as involved in a Jewish synagogue, relevant to his title as Rabbi, and connects him to a form of Jewish liturgical practice. It also gives a setting for his hometown conducive to a certain kind of religious significance. Lostcaesar 08:54, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
So you're saying the 'synagogue' section is meant to relate to Jesus' literacy and status as a rabbi. Fair enough, but I don't think establishing the existence or non-existence of the synagogue will help the case - the existence of a synagogue can't prove that Jesus ever really read in it. I think what you need to do is to go to the section that discusses the question of his literacy and put in an initial sentence along the lines of: "According to (chapter and verse), Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth." That would lead into the existing discussion of literacy levels in ancient Judea and the likelihood of a carpenter's son getting a religious education. No-one will ever know whether Jesus really could read Hebrew (bar the finding of an old report card saying "Could not possibly do better"), and I don't think historians would expect to, but historians can tell us the soicial milieu in which he lived. PiCo 10:26, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
PiCo, I'm with you on deleting this section. I've thought about it a while now, and it seems to serve no purpose other than to promote the canonical image of Jesus or to attack it. Bible scholars working on the historicla Jesus take the reference to Jesus in the synagogue to say more about the gospels than about Jesus. Jonathan Tweet 02:12, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I deleted the Synagogue section. LC says that it's main reason for being there was to throw light on the question of Jesus' literacy, but really all it boils down to is that no-one knows for suer whether there was or was not a synagogue there - and even if there was, it wouldn't prove that Jesus read there. The Literacy section further down is the place for material on this topic. (For what it's worth, I'm inclined to believe that he could erad, but I'm inclined not to think it matters).PiCo 08:57, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historical Jesus Controversy

Could we do a spinoff page that covers all the picky, long-winded, nonmainstream ideas that both attack and defend biblical inerrancy? Then this page could focus on history, while the sister page would relate how history has been used to attack and defend the gospels' account of Jesus. Who really cares whether Jesus' siblings were half-siblings, etc.? Christians and anti-Christians, that's who. Jonathan Tweet 21:30, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I think biblical inerrancy is a red herring. I'd just ignore those who want to quibble over each detail of the bible. History simply cannot say anything useful about the details of Jesus' life - the Gospels are the only account of such matters as the miracles, the resurrection, and all the other things which are at the centre of the Jesus story. But what history can do is provide the wider context in which the story took place - who was who in Judea, the beliefs of ordinary Jews, the other rabbis who were like and unlike Jesus (John the Baptist is the most famous, but there were others). PiCo 10:42, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
"I'd just ignore those who want to quibble over each detail of the bible. History simply cannot say anything useful about the details of Jesus' life" Do you mean excise this material from the article? If so, I'd put it somewhere else. Someone obviously cares. Thus, the spinoff page proposal. I'd recommend a section at the back of the article for partisans to go at it, but the article's really long. Jonathan Tweet 15:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I just discovered the article called Cultural and historical background of Jesus, which covers exactly the subject-matter I've outlined above - so scrap my suggestion. That article has a section - a big one - headed "Towards a historical Jesus", which, embarrassingly, is better than this article. So what I now suggest is that we go to that section, study it carefully, and see if we can enlarge on it here. PiCo 07:08, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

PiCo, here's my suggestion. I rewrite the terrible lead section for Cultural and historical background of Jesus. Then we basically port that lead section into a section on this article, with a pointer to the lead article. But what do we do with all the picky quibbling that this page already has? Jonathan Tweet 15:16, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I had a look at the Discussion page of Cultural and historical background of Jesus - tread carefully, it seems there's a lot of sensitivities there! As for this article, I'm still wondering what it should best be about. I'd like to get rid of the petty quibbling. I had a quick look at the archives of the Talk page, and it seems the article has wandered far from what was originally intended. Here's a quote from user Slrubenstein, who is one of the names recently active on the Cultural and Hsitorical Background page (they were discussing a suggestion that this article be deleted): "I am oppposed to deletion. Please remember the history: in an attempt to keep the Jesus article NPOV, detailed accounts of a variety of views were added, and the article became too long for many servers. There was a quick consensus to have the article focus on the Christian POV, with sub-articles on other points of view, and very brief summaries with links as subsections of the Jesus article. The main topics spun off were on the historical and cultural context for Jesus, which placed Jesus in the context of what we know about Jewish history and culture; one on the "historicity" of Jesus, meaning, debates over whether or not Jesus actually existed; this article, and I think one or two more on the critical study of the NT and Christology. I am sure that some of the material in these different articles can be redistributed, and that many of them could use much more development. But we simply can't put all the relevant content reflecting diverse points of view in one article, which means we need subarticles like this. This article should not be an account of Jesus' life according to the NT, it should be about different ways critical historians have reconstructed Jesus' life sans theological interpretations. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:03, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
The topic of this article is relatively well-stated in the disambig statement and in the lead section. See above for a lengthy conversation on this topic. 05:52, 26 November 2006 (UTC)


OK, I'll move my further comments on this subject to the "Topic of this article" discussion.PiCo 01:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's my latest plan for this page and Cultural and historical background of Jesus. This page has a section called "Cultural and historical background of Jesus" linked to the other article as its "main" and Cultural and historical background of Jesus has a section called "Historical Jesus" linked to this page as its "main." Then the material on Cultural and historical background of Jesus that's really Historical Jesus gets transplanted here and summarized there. Jonathan Tweet 03:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds fine, but there are real problems with that material and it will have to be carefully ammended. It is currently in a very young state - its unbalanced, states theory as fact, and only cites one or two sources. So go ahead but with caution. Lostcaesar 09:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
FWIW, I agree with you that the material on the other page in Toward a historical Jesus needs work. I want the material to be on the right page. What do you think is the proper page for a lengthy treatment (or let's say the lengthiest treatment) of methods used in analyzing the Gospels? Quest for Historical Jesus? Historicity of Jesus? Jonathan Tweet 14:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] was historical Jesus Jewish

Historical Jesus was Jewish, and I have an academic source. LC, if you have an academic source showing that "ethnically Jewish" is better for the historical Jesus, bring it. Jonathan Tweet 02:49, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I support removing any qualifications on Jesus' Jewishness - in what sense was he not a Jew? - but the additoin of an academic citation looks like overkill.PiCo 05:26, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
It's overkill, but this is Wikipedia, and there are people who don't want the lead section to say that Jesus was Jewish. Jonathan Tweet 02:07, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I have problems with the removal of the qualifier "ethnically" before Jewish. It is true that recent trends in Biblical scholarship have focused on Jesus' Jewishness, but this is, besides a recent development, not a matter of complete agreement. First, just what one means by "Jewish", in the religious sense, is ambiguous, since there were various currents of religious belief, some more Jewish, some less, in Palestine at the time. Some scholars have said Jesus was Essene, or at least influenced by them, and their Jewishness is at least irregular to an extent. Others have seen Jesus as Gnostic. Much as I think these two views are rather silly, it is difficult to exclude them entirely from the intro which speaks of a consensus. More importantly, other scholars hold that Jesus' teachings were unique, and thus cannot be pegged into just the label of "Jewish". Obviously he came into contact with Jewish authorities over something, and those of the "Jesus as Jewish" camp take pains to show that this need not be because of his teachings per se, an example that there is not total agreement here. Lastly, many Christian scholars hold that he was Christian, the founder of the religion, and this view ranges from the apologetic sense to a more liberal sense. Thus we cannot talk of his religious Jewishness in a consensus sense. It is, instead, the position of one camp, one "stage of the quest", to use that lingo. As the article develops this will become clear. Lostcaesar 13:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I restored the page without "ethnically." The previous version has a citation. If you want to get rid of cited material, first find us a good historical counter-citation, and maybe someone else who agrees with you against PiCo and me. Among scholars of the historical Jesus, there's a consensus (if not universal concsensus) that Jesus was Jewish. Jonathan Tweet 15:27, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I would request that you provide the text being cited, and describe the work as well. The emphasis on Jesus' Jewishness is the theme of one group of scholars, and is currently popular. But I would not say that there is "universal consensus" concerning the work of R. E. Brown, E. P. Sanders, &c., and even members of this group, such as Joachim Jeremias, don’t go as far as you want them to, see Jeremais, The Central Message of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress 1965) pp. 9-30 on Jesus' use of "Abba". Some, much as I dislike it, have contended that Gnostic doctrines could have reflected to some extent the teachings of Jesus, e.g. Pagels, J. M. Robinson, and Helmut Koester. Some have strongly identified Jesus with the Essenes, who could not be called Jewish without some qualifications at least, e.g. Upton Ewing, Charles Potter. Both those views have met heavy critics, but we cannot ignore them in order to speak of consensus. Bultmann, and some who follow him, have said that the historical Jesus was unknowable, this would include his religious practice (instead, the NT tells only of Early Christian doctrines). Then there are those who see unique, un-Jewish (or Christian) teachings rooted in Jesus' life: K. Barth, G. Habermas, D. Guthrie, Oscar Cullmann, Reginald Fuller, C. H. Dodd, W. R. Farmer, N. Geisler, J. P. Moreland, Ratzinger, Hahn, Hans Urs von Balthasar, &c.
Lostcaesar 20:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
LC, you're pretty far from demonstrating anything about the historical Jesus not being Jewish. First, if he was an Essene, or a Gnostic, or even given to remarkable preaching the likes of which the world had never seen before, that doesn't make him not Jewish. Second, you're drawing on sources that aren't strictly historical. Brown? The guy who regarded significant portions of the gospels to be infallible? Habermas? The apologist at Jerry Falwell's university? Ratzinger? This page is historical Jesus. There are interesting questions that scholars of the historical Jesus generally debate, but whether he was Jewish isn't one of them. Jonathan Tweet 02:30, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Quite possibly this is the worst response you have given. Not only did you not provide the text or description of the source you employed, but you only managed an ad hominem against three of the many scholars I referenced (probably the ones you could do a wikipedia search on!), and you mixed in an appeal to your own authority. Lastly, one of the scholars you attacked, R.E. Brown, is one I mentioned in support of your position!! I don't think I really need to respond, but, for what its worth, Ratzinger, besides having one of the most distinguished CV's around, also taught at Tübingen — the very school that many biblical scholars whom you would like to cite, I am sure, attended. Also, Habermas has a PhD in history and the philosophy of religion. You cannot just ignore the scholars who disagree with you when expressing a consensus view! Lostcaesar 03:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It strikes me that it is arguable that in the 1st century AD, "ethnically Jewish" is more or less redundant - cult and ethnicity are not easily separated in the ancient world, and "Judah" was a tribe before it was a religion. john k 07:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Jesus (both the real and the historical Jesus) was Jewish period. That's not to say that he was Jewish in the sense of Rabbinical Judaism or that he somehow belongs to that religion. In his day, separations had not yet become distinct. Str1977 (smile back) 07:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

LC, there's nothing ad hominem in distinguishing between scholars who use the historical method to reconstruct Jesus (what this article is about) and those who use both the historical method and faith to reconstruct Jesus (see other articles). Ratzinger's opinion's don't belong on "Islam's View of Jesus" and they don't belong on "Historians' View of Jesus," which is what this article is about. I'm not ignoring scholars whose conclusions I don't like. I'm ignoring scholars whose methods are extra-historical. I'll go to the trouble of quoting you the text once you quote me a historical citation that Jesus wasn't Jewish. Until then, your objection isn't tenable. Jonathan Tweet 16:43, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Note that this article is not alled "Historians' view of Jesus" but "Historical Jesus". Hence it deals with research done in this field and not on mere "views". Just to ensure that this is understood. Str1977 (smile back) 21:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Str, "this article is not called "Historians' view of Jesus" but "Historical Jesus"". Could you please be more specific about the difference between these two topics? To me, "historical Jesus" means "Jesus (according to historians)." Jonathan Tweet 00:45, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mandylion of Edessa

Where does this claim that the papal Mandylion is "considered to be the earliest image of Jesus" come from? It is not a scholarly view, but the province of Turid Shroud theorists and devotees. The oldest images we have are ancient Roman ones, from catacombs etc. Paul B 17:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed content written by me and used without attribution

I put some material in my user space. Someone copied it into the article without any attribution to me. This violates the GFDL. I am removing the material on those grounds, but generally, I don't want my content included in this article. I didn't understand before that the GFDL extends to User pages. Please forgive this solecism and allow me to keep my content peaceably. Thank you. --Peter Kirby 09:32, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I realize you had been working on this article in your user space, but did not realize that it was someone other than yourself who moved the text here, without your permission. That is just bad form. That said, a bit of the information you blanked was simply quotes from other authors. While I acknowledge that you typed up those quotes, and that an article which is just a collection of quotes is clearly not encyclopedic, it may be helpful for the time being to restore some of the quoted content. I totally 100% respect your right as original author to remove the non-quoted material, and would just simply ask, in a peaceably manner, 'why'? Thanks.--Andrew c 17:09, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Please feel free (as if I have to say this...) to adopt the quotes and/or consult the original books in writing a new version of the article. Mostly, I don't think that an article on the historical Jesus on Wikipedia can ever be really good, and thus don't want to contribute to it. I'd be content to finish my article and release it to the Internet otherwise. --Peter Kirby 00:05, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. Thanks for the work you have done in the past, and your tireless work outside of wikipedia (I'm a fan). Maybe one day you'll reconsider helping here. Good luck in whatever you do.--Andrew c 00:31, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jehohanan and Crossan

I removed this sentence: " In 1968, the body of Yohanan Ben Ha'galgol, a man who died by crucifixion in the first century, was discovered at a burial site outside ancient Jerusalem, in an ossuary.[ref]Vasilius Tzaferis, "Jewish Tombs At and Near Giv'at ha-Mivtar," Israel Exploration Journal 20 (1970) pp. 38-59". While interesting when studying ancient crucifixions, it's original research to use this source in this manner. I searched Brown and while this article is listed in his general bibliography, it is not discussed any further or cited directly. Same goes for Crossan and Ehrman. As for the early Christian sources, this information is probably more relevent on the Death and Resurrection page than here. Do we have modern scholars citing early Christian sources regarding the Jew's positions as a major part in their historical Jesus reconstructions? Also, Crossan does not say "I know for a fact that Jesus was feed to the dogs". The title of the chapter is a little outragous, but he argues that those who cared to know what happened to Jesus' body didn't know, and those who did know didn't care. He goes over the historical likelihood of taking bodies down, and what usually happened to crucified corpses. He concluded that historical circumstances are more likely than the tales invented by devout followers (who didn't have the means to get a body or even know where it ended up). I've tried to change the article to reflect this. --Andrew c 16:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't necessarily object to the nature of the changes, and in no way object to the spirit of the edit, but I may wish to discuss some details. I will break this into three groups:
  • Crossan: he said that Jesus was either left on the cross to be rent by beasts, or buried in a shallow grave where dogs would still have scavenged for the body, and also that, by Easter morning, as you said, those who cared wouldn't know where the body was, and those who didn't care wouldn't remember (even the Roman soldiers!). I think both edits reflect this pretty well, though yours is more detailed and tempers Crossan's typically outrageous statements with Ehrman's more subdued and detailed comments. This next bit, however, seems a bit odd to me: "noticing more extravagant burial stories in each progressive retelling (from the Gospel of Peter, through the Synoptics, to John)…" it sounds as if the apocryphal Peter ante-dates the synoptics.
  • Yohanan: the point of this fact is that it shows that first century crucifixion victims were buried, or at least that one was.
  • Death and Resurrection: There will indeed be overlap. If we had two polished articles on our hands, it would be easier to determine which gets what piece of info. As it stands, they both need work, this more than the other. The reason it was put here is because it is relevant to Crossan's position — the Jewish authorities did not say that Jesus' body was consumed by animals; rather, they said it was stolen.
Lostcaesar 16:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Yohanan:And that is original research. This makes the article read "Crossan and Ehrman say most crucified bodied were left to wild animals/mass graves. However, these guys are obviously wrong because a single corpse was found in an Ossuary with a nail through the heel, meaning that it is a remote possibility for a crusified man to be given a burial/entombment." See, this still doesn't contradict what happened to MOST crucified people. It's original research to draw these conclusions from the study. If we can cite a scholar who makes these connnections, that'd be much better. I looked, but not too hard.
    • Death and Resurrection: I still don't get why what Jewish authorities might have claimed about the corpse matters here. Do scholars use this information in their scholarly reconstructions? If so, we should cite that. Like I said, this information is useful generally speaking, but I don't get why it matters in historical Jesus research. Is there a scholar saying that the Jewish authorities were right about the corpse's outcome? Is that a notable position?
    • Crossan: I just read through the chapter today, and it really isn't that outrageous (except for the title: The Dogs Beneath the Cross). Crossan goes into much more detail than Ehrman here. He does say that the Gospel of Peter's story probably has earlier roots than the other. In this version, it has the Jewish authorities (enemies) taking down the body based soley on Deuteronomic customs. However, this idea (says Crossan) doesn't make that much sense because the Jews wanted him dead in the first place. So then in Mark we have someone from the Jewish council who secretly has apocolyptic expectations claiming and burying the body (a scenerio that Crossan believes creates more issues that Mt. and Lk. try to clear up). Matthew explains Joseph is rich (thus having access to Pilate) and a good Christian (motivation). Luke follows Mark more closely, but explains further how someone from the coucil would be sympathetic to Jesus. John explains an extravegant burial by a secret disciple who was scared of the Jews. Crossan believes these 5 accounts show a development that was constently changing to fix things that didn't make sense. Brown, on the other hand, roughly agrees about Mt, Lk, and Jn, but of course thinks that Mark has some underlying history. Ehrman doesn't go into too much detail. He agrees about what generally happened to crucified bodies. He doesn't believe there is any way to really know historically what happened. It is probably that the body was taken down before Easter sunday, but by whom (Jews, Romans, Jesus' family, followers, of Joseph of Aramathia) there is no way to tell. While the discussions are different, Ehrman and Crossan have the same basic conclusion.--Andrew c 18:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Yohanan: It’s a bit rhetorical to say a single corpse was found in an Ossuary with a nail through the heel, meaning that it is a remote possibility for a crusified man to be given a burial/entombment. There are disputes about the findings but I don't think anyone doubts that the man was crucified, or that he was entombed. As for OR, my first thought was its not, since its not like I dug the corpse up. It comes from a secondary source, and is a fact relevant to the matter at hand. But maybe in the sense that the source doesn't mention the hypothesis in question an argument could be made for OR. I'll look around for something more direct, point taken.
      • Death and Resurrection:I've got a source here, where the author uses this against Crossan's hypothesis. Its from a very conservative scholar, and though I might be a little hesitant normally, that we use the one extreme of Crossan, Borg, and Funk, I suppose this other extreme should be ok. I'll plug it in the article, properly nuanced, and look for more info in time.
      • Crossan:The only thing I have to say here is that we need to deal with the matter of the Gospel of Peter a bit differently. If Crossan thinks this ante-dates Mark in some way then he is presenting a very non-standard hypothesis that at least needs to be explained lest it be very confusing. I am not sure we need the parenthetical info myself, but its something we can work on.

Lostcaesar 19:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC) PS, I will say that, slowly, this section is crawling towards getting better, and this process is a good reason why. Lostcaesar 19:41, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for providing a ref for the Jewish authorities. Of course, the response from Crossan would probably be "The Jewish authorities didn't know the outcome of the body any more than the early Christians, they were just responding to Christian claims." The Gospels of Thomas and Peter are obviously later than the canonical text and Crossan isn't arguing otherwise. But that doesn't mean they are completely useless or that it isn't impossible for them to contain earlier traditions. Otherwise, we'd just throw out Luke, Matthew, and John as well. While Crossan's reasoning seems a bit circular, it could, hypothetically, follow that there was an early tradition of the Jews taking Jesus' body down based solely on the reading of Deuteronomy. And Mark tried to explain this a bit further by having JoA a follower of Jesus, and Lk, Mt, and Jn expanded the story even more. But all of this seems like a bit too much detail for a generalized encyclopedia article, because Crossan is just one person. Perhaps the first part of that paragraph could use more work. As for poor old Yohanan, maybe we will find a source using this argument and maybe we won't. If not, we could probably add another sentence to explain why some accept parts of the JoA story. Brown in the Death of the Messiah goes on for a long time explaining what he thinks is and isn't historical and would be a good source. And I agree, this section is shaping up.--Andrew c 20:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I think we should mention Brown. Whether one agrees with him or not he is a voice that contribudes to the material. As for the rest, there may be material in Thomas and Peter, though I've never seen the latter used against Mark before, and the problem with Thomas, of course, is (1) late date, and (2) not a narritive (no deeds mentioned). Much of their usefulness hangs on how one understands the development of the canonical gospels. Lostcaesar 21:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent unsourced repeated edits

The following text has recently been altered by Trencacloscas to include the text in italics: "The historical Jesus is Jesus of Nazareth as reconstructed by historians using historical methods, even when they have no evidence at all of his existence."

This is clearly a POV edit, and it has been reverted twice. The mainstream academic opinion among scholars, Christian or not, is that Jesus did exist. It is POV (not to mention irrelevant to that part of the article) to state that that is true there. If it were relevant, a more appropriate comment might be "although a small miority of scholars think..." or "although Dr. such-and-such FringeScholar argues that..."

I would like to ask Trencacloscas to explain his edits, if he still feels that there is good reason for these changes.TheologyJohn 00:10, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Opinion of scholars in this case is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT without the support of proofs, and the remark of the unexistence of Christ is totally pertinent since there is not a single conclusive proof of the existence of such historical character. The absence of mention of this point makes the article totally partial in my opinion and I also think it goes against the politics of neutrality in Wikipedia. Trencacloscas 20:39, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

You are only correct that there is no 'conclusive' proof if you make 'conclusive' mean a very strong sense, but one cannot find any proof in that sense of pretty much any figure in the ancient world - we have much more evidence for Jesus than for many other figures whose evidence we never doubt. In any case, the text which you keep adding does not refer to 'conclusive' proof, but simply 'evidence' - there is substantially more evidence for Jesus' existence than for many other figures in the ancient world.

Furthermore, this text is not relevant for this article. As it says in the italics at the top of the article, the article is about reconstructing his history - it links to an article about the historicity of Jesus, and that is not a part of this article.

And lastly, and most importantly and relevantly, the NPOV policy of wikipedia, as explained in WP:NPOV, is to represent all published viewpoints (where appropriate, and giving appropriate larger weight to a larger proportion of scholars, etc) and not state that any is correct. We are not allowed to do what you are proposing, which is stating your own opinions based upon original research - forbidden in WP:NOR We are not supposed to say what we think, but represent already existing knowledge.TheologyJohn 21:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Trencacloscas, it's an interesting piece of original research, but against undue weight provisions of NPOV. Only a small minority of NT scholars support the legendary status of Jesus. Even the Jesus Seminar conclude and say there is plenty of textual evidence that Jesus of Nazareth existed. JPotter 05:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Not original research at all. Just proofs. No other reliable source ever mentions Christ outside the NT. Absence of proofs is massive in this case, and makes irrelevant any scholar opinion. This should be reflected. Trencacloscas 04:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

How exactly do you define reliable? If a text is unreliable because it mentions Christ, then you've kind of stacked the deck against rational though.128.211.254.142 10:17, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
What historical method are you using to exclude/ignore NT texts? But of course, more importantly, what are your sources. Information cannot be added to wikipedia articles if it is not verifiable, by citing reliable sources. And we must also keep in mind NPOV, by not giving undue weight to minority views. Help us out and give us some citations. Thanks.--Andrew c 05:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

NT are not historical texts, just literary inventions, you cannot take fables as history. Should we believe that miracles occurred or that the dead have awaken? Do we actually say that Achilles or Orpheus are historic characters? Of course, not. Then, we are not supposed to take those scripts of the NT as an account of actual deeds. From the supposed Jesus, we don't have any reliable, contemporary or independently written sources, no archaeological proofs of his existence, no text written by himself, no objects that belonged to him, nothing, a ghost. Sorry, but no matter the historical method, no proofs exist about this person. That makes any opinion by scholars an unfounded assumption, and that should be expressed in an article dealing with a "historical Jesus". Trencacloscas 19:12, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Without a priori denying those miracles, can you empirically deny them? Merely excluding something that does not conform to your worldview does not constitute disproving it.128.211.254.142 10:17, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Do you have any scholarly references that make your case, i.e., that state that the opinions by scholars of the existence of an historical Jesus are merely unfounded assumptions. If not, then this is just your own original research, which has no place on Wikipedia. If so, could you cite them so that we can see what weight they should be given in the overall article? Thanks, Cat Whisperer 19:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Certainly it is difficult to speak to the deaf: SCHOLAR OPINIONS ARE IRRELEVANT IN THE ABSENCE OF PROOFS. Proofs go first, scholar opinions go afterwards. Since there is no proofs, no scholar claims are valid to assert the existence of a historic character. But just for the sake of answering the ridiculous allegation of "original research", you can check this for starters: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/scholars.html Trencacloscas 06:52, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

The web page you give cites Albert Schweitzer's opinion that "Jesus died a disappointed man." How can someone who you say never existed have died a disappointed man? Most of that page discusses problems with the New Testament and Christianity, but that is completely different than saying that Jesus never existed. -- Cat Whisperer 07:16, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, Cat, I see you don't get the point and refuse to even try to understand, neither even tried to READ. You just cling to a small piece of information and do not consider the problem in its entirety. Those who support the idea of the existence of such "Jesus" have the burden of proof, it is up to them to prove consistently that such "historic" character existed. But unfortunately, these people didn't produce any valuable proof at all. So they go to scholars, which are mainly faith people, and ask opinions, that are completely irrelevant in this case. It is the same case as Atlantis. Do you have proof of the existence of Atlantis? No. Then you go to "experts" and ask them if Atlantis existed or not; their answer is IRRELEVANT, because there are no proofs to support the opinion, just guesses, hipothesis or dubious impressions. I think the NPOV is not respected in this article, since it is conceived without any scientific base. The "proofs" should be pointed extensively before asserting any "historic Jesus". Trencacloscas 20:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I understand that you consider the opinions of experts to be irrelevant to this article. That being the case, Wikipedia is probably not the place where you should be, because here we consider the opinions of experts to be extremely relevant in determining the content of articles; hence the Wikipedia policy of verifiability, not truth. Had Wikipedia existed when a geocentric worldview was held by the experts, it would have been inappropriate to edit articles according to a heliocentric viewpoint. Thus, if you truly consider yourself to be smarter than the experts on this matter, then you need to find some other venue to showcase your brilliance to the world. I was hoping to help you get your viewpoint into this article by working on finding some experts who espouse the same views as yourself, but you do not seem motivated to continue in this direction, which is the only direction that would justify the inclusion of those views in this Wikipedia article. Good luck with your research in this area, Cat Whisperer 21:02, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

It's a neutrality thing. There are no objective proofs, and that should be pointed out. I don't consider myself "smarter than the experts", such "experts" just didn't produce any proofs. Since the NPOV is not respected here, the article fails to remain neutral.Trencacloscas 03:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

No offense, but I do not believe you understand what the NPOV policy is. We must present all relevent points of view, without giving undue weight to minority views. You have yet to establish why your personal opinion is notable. I asked for verifiable, reliable sources (all wikipedia policies equally as important as NPOV), and the best you did was cite a questionably notable, questionably neutral, and questionably verifiable polemic website. The fact of the matter is wikipedia DOES care what scholars think more than what you think. I hate to say it like that, but it's an encyclopedia, not a soapbox. Please, find sources for your beliefs, and convince us that they are notable. We can't simply put a disclaimer on this article simply because you are a very skeptical individual.--Andrew c 04:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
The standard one uses to constitute "proof" is itself a personal and subjective mark. You don't think there is "proof" — all that constitutes is another opinion. Lostcaesar 09:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The ways of Wikipedia don't always make sense at first. But suppose Wikipedia had a policy of OBJECTIVE PROOF which stated that the presense or absense of "objective" proof (which would need to be defined somehow) was always a key part of articles, whether or not the experts in the field think so. Then we'd have nuts coming in trying to push their theory that the moon landings never happened, and the so-called moon rocks aren't really objective proof because you can't just look at a rock and tell what planet it came from. The problem is that there is really no objective definition of objective proof; there are only degrees of evidence, which we must rely on experts to evaluate. You don't consider the New Testament to be objective proof, but it has been examined by experts using historical-critical methods that don't presuppose it to be an inerrant, religious document. And so Wikipedia gives the most weight to the opinions of those experts. -- Cat Whisperer 18:20, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Since you offer the example of moon landings, the difference between that and this is clear: from the moon landings we have the rocks to analyze, which indeed can be considered "objective proofs". But we don't have anything of the sort from Jesus, just a fairytale and the repetition and reinventing of the fairytale (NT). The flaw in the supposed "historical-critical methods" is that Bible scholars assume the existence of a Jesus, and begin from there on. The "historical-critical methods" are not directed towards that particular fact. I insist that such objection should be made in an article named "Historical Jesus". You also can check other Wikipedia articles, like "Jesus As Myth" and "Historicity of Jesus" to confirm that such objection is in context. I don't see why the objection should be excluded in the present one. Trencacloscas 10:17, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

But this doesn't change the fact that experts in the field disagree with you. An encyclopedia cannot quote you as an authority. I am sure you can understand. Lostcaesar 10:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Trencacloscas, you're making your case based upon an assertion about what kind of texts the NT are. There is close to unanimity among scholars of the NT, of all religious affiliations, that the NT texts are not of that order. Therefore, even if your argument as it now stands was suitable for wikipedia (which it is not), it would be flawed.
You are correct that there probably is place in this article to briefly mention that there are a fringe minority of scholars who deny Jesus, and outline their views. That shouldn't be done, though, as random commentary stating some dubious minority assertions as fact. If it is not there already, and a suitable thing isn't inserted in the near future, I'll try and insert something. TheologyJohn 12:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
You have ignored our requests to follow wikipedia policy and supply citations of reliable, verifiable sources. I hate to say this, but I am going to have to start ignoring you. I do not want to debate. This is not a debate forum, so our personal opinions on the topic are irrelevent. Calling something a fairytale doesn't make it so. All 5 surviving ancient biographies of Alexander the Great include the supernatural, do we ignore those documents as 'fairytales'. You cannot say the whole NT is fiction, when there are verifiably historical characters, places, and events throughout. Scholars have methods to help determine what in Plutarch's Lives or the Gospel of Mark is most likely historical and what is not. I'm sorry you are so personally skeptical of those methods, but please stop repeating your personal beliefs. This isn't a soap box, nor a debate. We have rules to guide what sort of content should be included and how, and up until know, you seem oblivious to that. Please consider what we all have been saying. Thanks.-Andrew c 15:01, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Since you refuse to reason or debate, Andrew, I take it as a sign of dogmatism and intolerance. No proof, no history. The example of Alexander is weak enough to prove you wrong. Alexandrian sources may include the supernatural (as part of a frame of mind of a peculiar culture) but not rely completely upon it. Can Quintus Curtius Rufus or Plutarch be compared to the anonimous "Gospel of Mark", a document of unknown origin merely attributed by Irenaeus of Lyon to a helper of Paul and Barnabas???? The case is completely different for many reasons. But the main question here remains: Why the criteria of wikipedia policy for the Historicity of Jesus should be different from the criteria of the present article???????????????????????????????????????????????? Why you can actually point the lack of proof there and not here????????????????????? Check this single paragraph about the inerrancy of Bible scholars, for instance: "Scholarly views on the historicity of the New Testament accounts are diverse, from the view that they are historically accurate descriptions of the life of Jesus to the view that they are of virtually no historical value in reconstructing his life. Questions relevant to the matter include: to what extent did the authors' motivations shape the texts, what sources were available to them, how soon after the events described did they write, and whether or not these factors lead to inaccuracies such as exaggerations or inventions". So, the only personal beliefs held here are probably Christian and very dogmatic indeed. Trencacloscas 04:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Trencacloscas, you're assuming is contrary to wikipedia policy - see WP:Assume good faith. I think it's entirely fair for Andrew C not to wish to discuss the truth of the matter when it is, a) irrelevant to the reason he comes on wikipedia (to edit articles), and b) therefore off-topic for the board.
That comment that you mention in the article is different in that it does not state as a fact that there is no evidence, it rather makes statements about the breadth of scholarly opinion. I think it does that slightly badly, and I think I'll reword it, but it's trying to do something very different than what you're suggesting - which is to edit the article to support your own opinions, contrary to the weight of appropriate published literature.TheologyJohn 23:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
While I doubt that it will suffice for our new partner in editing, Trencacloscas, I've added reference to both the skeptical and Christian criticisms of "historical Jesus." We now have criticism in the lead section and as a last word. I understand it to be Wiki practice to give undue weight to minority views because no one has the authority to exclude them (as one might when writing a paper encyclopedia). the official policy is "abundance and redundance." Jonathan Tweet 18:25, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
WP:NPOV#Undue_weight says differently. That said, I think mentioning this in the article is a valid contribution, particularly as it (as it now stands) states that these opinions are minority - which is verifiable useful additional information that wasn't in the article before.TheologyJohn 23:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ironic

Nazereth was not even a town before the 2nd century CE as shown by archeology. And where are these scholars digging up these imaginary historical facts?

Earl Doherty: “The Jesus Puzzle In the first half century of Christian correspondence, including letters attributed to Paul and other epistles under names like Peter, James and John, the Gospel story cannot be found. When these writers speak of their divine Christ, echoes of Jesus of Nazareth are virtually inaudible, including details of a life and ministry, the circumstances of his death, the attribution of any teachings to him. God himself is often identified as the source of Christian ethics. No one speaks of miracles performed by Jesus, his apocalyptic predictions, his views on any of the great issues of the time. The very fact that he preached in person is never mentioned, his appointment of apostles or his directive to carry the message to the nations of the world is never appealed to. No one looks back to Jesus' life and ministry as the genesis of the Christian movement, or as the pivot point of salvation history.”

Let's see some honest editing in the article or admit it is a sham. - Sparky 00:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Archaeology has shown that Nazareth is unlikely to have been a significantly sized settlement, but that doesn't negate it being a small town/village. The Doherty quote is absurd - only the letters attributed to Paul appeared in the first half century according to the vast majority of scholars, therefore the they can only show that even after the gospel story was allegedly invented or whatever, they still didn't use it in letters - making the Paul 'evidence' entirely unconvincing.
In any case, this is irrelevant to the policies of wikipedia, as we have stated again and again. TheologyJohn 01:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
The non existence of Nazareth in the 1st century is held my a very small minority of scholars, including archaeologists. JPotter 20:05, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
That's interesting - I'd heard the opposite a couple of times (well non-existence as anything larger than a small town). Is there any scholarly reading you could direct me to on the subject? TheologyJohn 20:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ministry

I added headers. As one can plainly see from the headers, this vital section is a mish-mash of distinct elements. I'd like to break "Ministry" out into a higher-level section, as it's the material that "historical Jesus" is really about. And it needs serious expansion. Jonathan Tweet 18:42, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problem of the Jesus Seminar

I am not sure if this article should quote from "the Jesus Seminar". Here is why. The Jesus Seminar is, like all seminars &c, a collection of scholars. Now I think we can fairly cite Crossan, Borg, Funk, &c. But there are problems quoting "the seminar". The collection of scholars do not always agree, indeed their peculiar method of "scholarship", which has draw much ire, is based on calculating different levels of scholarly agreement. For example, (its been a while, but I think that) Crossan and Borg differ on the matter of the empty tomb. Thus, I don't see the point in citing the group, as if it speaks with one unanimous voice. It would be like citing "the third colloquium on Gregory the Great", rather than citing Mitchell, Wood, &c. Besides this, other than the three scholars I mentioned, the members are mostly unpublished &c. Lostcaesar 17:14, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm genuiniely curious about dissent by major scholars within the Jesus Seminar. I'd love to see a "not so fast!" section on the JS page that talked about major differences between the individual opinions of noteable fellows and the seminar as a whole. For all I know, the JS was scam, with Funk inviting prominent scholars he disagreed with for prestige and then stuffing the seminar with nobodies that would follow his lead. But I don't have any reason to suspect that's the case, and one might think that the notable figures would have caught on. In any event, contrasting individual scholars' conclusions with the seminar's would be informative. As far as this page is concerned, however, it would be inaccurate to cite the conclusions of the JS as Funk's. In some cases, Funk himself disagrees with the conclusions. While most of the fellows are unknowns, over a dozen are or were leading figures in the field. These scholars got together with the express purpose of reaching and publicizing shared conclusions, and if Borg and Crossan disagreed with some of the conclusions, they were nevertheless OK with participating. If there's another source of better information about what modern scholars think the historical Jesus said and did, I haven't heard of it. To take the work of all these scholars for all those years and to present the conclusions as simply Funk's would be a misrepresentation. If Funk had wanted to write a book about what he thought Jesus said and did, he could have done so with a lot less fuss. Jonathan Tweet 21:34, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not saying we should quote the JS as Funk's conclusions. I'm saying we should not employ material "of the JS", and only use the works published by the scholars individually. Citing the JS on the whole is too problematic, as per above. "If there's another source of better information about what modern scholars think the historical Jesus said and did, I haven't heard of it." - few agree with you on that point. Lostcaesar 23:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Not quote the JS at all? I guess I'm not really ready to give that suggestion any serious consideration. As to the other topic, If you have a better source of information about what modern scholars think the historical Jesus said and did, I'm dying to find out, because it would be dynamite. Don't tease me. Tell me what it is. Jonathan Tweet 04:40, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
If the JS is Borg, Crossan, Funk, and a bunch of nobodies, why quote "it" (as if it had a concensus), why not just quote the former three? How many other scholars actually quote "the JS" in their works? Plently quote those three (even if just to disagree with them), but "the JS" - I haven't seen it. Lostcaesar 09:18, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
LC, everyone hating on the JS, I guess that's the way it's got to be. Christians hate the JS, and they find numerious reasons to keep it off one page or another. Congratulations on coming up with a new reason. "If the JS is Borg, Crossan, Funk, and a bunch of nobodies, why quote "it" (as if it had a concensus), why not just quote the former three?" If that's the JS, then document that that's an accurate description of the JS. And put it on the JS page. "How many other scholars actually quote "the JS" in their works? Plently quote those three (even if just to disagree with them), but "the JS" - I haven't seen it." So what? In WP, we cite plenty of books and encyclopedias that are cited by high school students writing term papers but not by scholars. Jonathan Tweet 14:11, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Alright, I am going to be a little rude here, and I will apologize up front. I am not going to let you characterize me as "hating on the JS because I am Christian". I disagree with the positions of Borg, Funk, and Crossan just as much as that of "the JS" - so why I am saying we are ok to cite them? Where did my hate go? Perhaps, instead, I have a rational argument here that might just worth listening to. You asked me to document the claim that the JS is Borg, Funk, Crossan bunch of nobodies and put it on the JS page - its already there, look at the list of fellows and check at what they have (or have not) published and their credentials. Like I said, the JS does not have a position, it is a collection of various oponions, most of which are irrelevant because they are not the opinions of significant scholars. Lostcaesar 14:43, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

LC, a little rudeness between friends is no big deal. If you look at this list (Jesus_Seminar#Fellows_of_the_Jesus_Seminar) and see no one of merit other than Borg, Funk, and Crossan, then you and I have the same problem that we have when you and I both read a account of hades that contradicts purgatory: we read the same thing and think it means opposite things. If you think that it's not proper to cite a source that's the product of lots of scholars instead of one or a few, just cite me the WP policy to that effect. And if we could return to a previous point, could you please suggest a better source than the JS to let me know what modern critical scholars think the historical Jesus said and did? If you could actually point me to a better source, I'd be genuinely grateful. Jonathan Tweet 15:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scholarly debate on historicity of the Resurection

An interesting scholarly debate: http://www.holycross.edu/departments/crec/website/resurrection-debate-transcript.pdf

Cheers, --Aminz 09:24, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I can see that this article quotes Bart D. Ehrman (the scholar on one side of the above debate) a lot. I think the above source can be very useful. For example William Lane Craig says:

[edit] Argument provided by William Lane Craig for historicity of resurrection

Quoting William Lane Craig:


(I) There are four historical facts which must be explained by any adequate historical hypothesis: o Jesus’ burial o the discovery of his empty tomb o his post-mortem appearances o the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection.

Now, let’s look at that first contention more closely. I want to share four facts which are widely accepted by historians today.

Fact #1: After his crucifixion Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb. Historians have established this fact on the basis of evidence such as the following:

1. Jesus’ burial is multiply attested in early, independent sources. We have four biographies of Jesus, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which have been collected into the New Testament, along with various letters of the apostle Paul. Now the burial account is part of Mark’s source material for the story of Jesus’ suffering and death. This is a very early source which is probably based on eyewitness testimony and which the commentator Rudolf Pesch dates to within seven years of the crucifixion. Moreover, Paul also cites an extremely early source for Jesus’ burial which most scholars date to within five years of Jesus’ crucifixion. Independent testimony to Jesus’ burial by Joseph is also found in the sources behind Matthew and Luke and the Gospel of John, not to mention the extra-biblical Gospel of Peter. Thus, we have the remarkable number of at least five independent sources for Jesus’ burial, some of which are extraordinarily early.

2. As a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention. There was an understandable hostility in the early church toward the Jewish leaders. In Christian eyes, they had engineered a judicial murder of Jesus. Thus, according to the late New Testament scholar Raymond Brown, Jesus’ burial by Joseph is “very probable,” since it is “almost inexplicable” why Christians would make up a story about a Jewish Sanhedrist who does what is right by Jesus.

For these and other reasons, most New Testament critics concur that Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb. According to the late John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”2

Fact #2: On the Sunday after the crucifixion, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers. Among the reasons which have led most scholars to this conclusion are the following: 1. The empty tomb is also multiply attested by independent, early sources. Mark’s source didn’t end with the burial, but with the story of the empty tomb, which is tied to the burial story verbally and grammatically. Moreover, Matthew and John have independent sources about the empty tomb; it’s also mentioned in the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles (2.29; 13.36); and it’s implied by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church (I Cor. 15.4). Thus, we have again multiple, early, independent attestation of the fact of the empty tomb. 2. The tomb was discovered empty by women. In patriarchal Jewish society the testimony of women was not highly regarded. In fact, the Jewish historian Josephus says that women weren’t even permitted to serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law. Now in light of this fact, how remarkable it is that it is women who are the discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb. Any later legendary account would certainly have made male disciples like Peter and John discover the empty tomb. The fact that it is women, rather than men, who are the discoverers of the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that they were the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb, and the Gospel writers faithfully record what, for them, was an awkward and embarrassing fact. I could go on, but I think enough has been said to indicate why, in the words of Jacob Kremer, an Austrian specialist on the resurrection, “By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb.”3

Fact #3: On different occasions and under various circumstances different individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus alive from the dead. This is a fact which is virtually universally acknowledged by scholars, for the following reasons: 1. Paul’s list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances guarantees that such appearances occurred.

Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to his chief disciple Peter, then to the inner circle of disciples known as the Twelve; then he appeared to a group of 500 disciples at once, then to his younger brother James, who up to that time was apparently not a believer, then to all the apostles. Finally, Paul adds, “he appeared also to me,” at the time when Paul was still a persecutor of the early Jesus movement (I Cor. 15.5-8). Given the early date of Paul’s information as well as his personal acquaintance with the people involved, these appearances cannot be dismissed as mere legends. 2. The appearance narratives in the Gospels provide multiple, independent attestation of the appearances. For example, the appearance to Peter is attested by Luke and Paul; the appearance to the Twelve is attested by Luke, John, and Paul; and the appearance to the women is attested by Matthew and John. The appearance narratives span such a breadth of independent sources that it cannot be reasonably denied that the earliest disciples did have such experiences. Thus, even the skeptical German New Testament critic Gerd Lüdemann concludes, “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”4 Finally,

Fact #4: The original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead despite their having every predisposition to the contrary. Think of the situation the disciples faced following Jesus’ crucifixion: 1. Their leader was dead. And Jewish Messianic expectations had no idea of a Messiah who, instead of triumphing over Israel’s enemies, would be shamefully executed by them as a criminal. 2. Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone’s rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the general resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. Nevertheless, the original disciples suddenly came to believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief. But then the obvious question arises: What in the world caused them to believe such an un-Jewish and outlandish thing? Luke Johnson, a New Testament scholar at Emory University, muses, “Some sort of powerful, transformative experience is required to generate the sort of movement earliest Christianity was.”5 And N. T. Wright, an eminent British scholar, concludes, “That is why, as an historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him.”6 In summary, there are four facts agreed upon by the majority of scholars: Jesus’ burial, the discovery of his empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in his resurrection.

Cheers, --Aminz 09:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Craig is not a scholar of historical Jesus, and he does even claim that most scholars of the historical Jesus agree with the four facts that you cite. We don't really care what the majority of scholars say. As Ehrman points out in the debate you cited, the majority of historians don't agree. This is the historical Jesus page. On the Jehovah's Witness page, it's not appropriate to put what most Christians believe into the lead as if it represented the JWs. On the historical Jesus page, it's not appropriate to put what most scholars (mostly Christians) believe into the lead. The debate you cite is not a historical debate, it's a religious debate. This material, since it's a counterpoint from outside the scope of this article, belongs in the criticism section. Jonathan Tweet 14:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Craig's style was quite scholarly (my impression at least). --Aminz 18:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Two points: (1) Craig cites certain scholars for his points and even if we determine that the debate ought not be used, we could trace down the sources he used and consider them, and (2) I thought we were using historians and biblical scholars - look at what you (JT) said above about the JS - not exactly a pannel of distinguished historians! Consistency is important. Lostcaesar 19:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I am sorry but I don't understand the difference between historians and biblical scholars. The above arguments honestly sound scholarly to me. --Aminz 08:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I see no reason why in principle we should not to use Craig, but I do not know his work especially well. This article certainly uses historians and biblical scholars. Lostcaesar 09:46, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

The William Lane Craig argument is completely based on assumptions, starting with the "four independent sources" which are neither independent nor traceable to "eyewitness testimony". History is supposed to be based on facts, not just Christian propaganda. Once again, scholars or historians cannot be trusted in this case, for they are not able to certify the existence of a character like Jesus without any direct proof. Trencacloscas 11:46, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand. Can someone explain please what is the difference between biblical scholars, historians, etc etc. Trencacloscas, please explain how can one think that Jesus didn't even exist? Where did those great teaching came from then? --Aminz 13:00, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
This is the historical Jesus page, or, "Jesus (considered historically)." Craig might be scholarly, but he's not a scholar of historical Jesus. He says most scholars agree with his four facts, but not most historians. Ths issue isn't whether one's a scholar but whether one approaches the description of Jesus historically. The JS fellows approach the issue historically (what's genuine in these texts? what's invention? what's invented that's in line with the genuine and what's contrary? etc.). I don't think that the JW's are reliable sources for describing Jesus, but on the "Jesus according to JWs" page they get their say. Y'all might not think that historians are reliable sources for describing Jesus, but that's this page. Craig's comments and such are a counterpoint to the historical Jesus view, not part of it. Jonathan Tweet 14:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
The only thing that I can add is that, by the existing Judaic laws at the time, no dead bodies were to be allowed to be exposed overnight. Sorry, I don't have the sources available right now, but the members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Judaism should be able to find sources. On that basis, I think that the point regarding Joseph of Arimathea, a well-to-do member of the Sanhedrin, following Judaic law regarding disposal of corpses, can reasonably be considered verifiable. I wish I had copies of Biblical Archaeology Review available, as I am certain that this subject is discussed in depth in at least a few issues of it, but I regret they're unavailable right now. I do think that that source would probably be counted as being among the most accurate and universally acceptable by all sides, given its sensitivity to religious issues, however. Badbilltucker 01:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Addition to the end of "Controversial Details"

I've added some information and I'm new to all this so I wasn't quite sure if I did it right, or if I followed the rules.

The following is what I posted and has an outside reference as well as one on wikipedia (can wikipedia sources be used?)

HERE IS MY ADDITION:

There is a non-Christian source that mentions Jesus' crucifixion. Emperor Vespasian had a court historian named Flavius Josephus who wrote about these events around 37-97 AD:

"At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders." (Arabic translation) [1] [2]

(NOTE: my first edit - not sure how to do it correctly - please help. user name FinalNemesis)

I'm guessing someone will make edits to that to make it 'legit'??

FinalNemesis 15:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Please do not take this the wrong way, but I have removed your contribution. This article is about what scholars think about the historical Jesus. There is an article called Historicity of Jesus which details the ancient sources on Jesus. There is a large section there already about Josephus. Becuase your contribution was a large quote from a ancient primary source, instead of a scholarly synthesis, I felt that it was off topic for this particular article. I hope you understand. Thanks for contributing to wikipedia. Technically speaking, the coding in your edit was pretty good. You got your wikilinks and references down. In the future, you may want to consider further formatting your references using Wikipedia:Citation templates. You copy and past the code which matches the type of source you are citing (i.e. book, or webpage, or journal). Then you fill in as much information as you know, and delete the fields you leave blank (if any). If that is too confusing, you can use Magnus' tool where you enter the information you have and it will generate the code for you. Anyway, good luck!-Andrew c 17:57, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually that's not exactly in the HoJ article. He is using a quote from an arabic copy of Josephus that varries significantly from the Greek in a few places and which certain scholars have hypothesized is wholly genuine, i.e. that its textual history is independant of the Josephus text that cointains disputed passages. I didn't add this little bit to the HoJ article because I only know of it from one secondary source, and didn't know how much scholarly currency it had. Lostcaesar 19:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


With this new news from Lostcaesar could we reconsider including that quote? If it was reworded a bit to point out that some scholars believe that quote to be textual history. Could we work on finding a few solid sources for that quote to have it added?

P.S. Thanks for the tips, when I have more time I will look into your suggestions. Also, just because I'm new doesn't mean I don't understand the idea of peer review! I'm glad someone voices up - we will all learn together as editors and hopefully create the most accurate information. Also, Why does this whole article not really have any sources? FinalNemesis 15:16, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus as head of the House of David?

I know that the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail alleges this possibility, and that some aspects of Jesus' life and career can be seen to make more sense on that basis. Would anyone think that inclusion of this allegation would be appropriate? Badbilltucker 02:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Of no historical interest"

Why is this phrase repeated in this article? Who decides what "is of historical interest"? It seems like blatant POV to me. Grover cleveland 06:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problematic

I got two problems with this article, two main ones. First, if this deals with the historical Jesus, why is this part of the christianity portal? It should, if anything, be part of a historical portal. Very minor though, seeing as being part of the christianity portal is rather logical. Still though.

But the real problem here is this:

"The historical Jesus is Jesus of Nazareth as reconstructed by historians using historical methods. These methods do not include theological or religious axioms, such as biblical infallibility. Though the reconstruction" (these are the first sentences btw.)

But all over the article it clearly states that schoolars of the historical Jesus only use the bible. Really. The birthplaces is based on the bible, the year of birth, status, family, and as far as I see, every nook and cranny of his life. There is little to none other-than-the-bible-sources. Which kind of renders the line I quoted obsolete.

And I think that is big problem. Discuss. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PutBoy (talk • contribs) 04:33, 23 February.

[edit] material from CaHBoJ

This material is from the historical Jesus section of Cultural and historical background of Jesus. It's too detailed for one section on another page and belongs here if anywhere.Jonathan Tweet 16:03, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

According to Fredriksen, two events in the Gospels probably happened: John's baptism, and Pilate's crucifixion, of Jesus. These events are mentioned in all four gospels. Moreover, they do not conform to Jewish tradition, in which there are no baptized and crucified messiahs. They are also embarrassing to the early Church. John the Baptist's prominence in both the gospels and Josephus suggests that he may have been more popular than Jesus in his lifetime; also, Jesus's mission does not begin until after his baptism by John. Fredriksen suggests that it was only after Jesus's death that Jesus emerged as more influential than John. Accordingly, the gospels project Jesus's posthumous importance back to his lifetime. One way this was accomplished was by minimizing John's importance by having John resist baptizing Jesus (Matthew), by referring to the baptism in passing (Luke), or by asserting Jesus's superiority (John).

All four gospels agree that Jesus was crucified by Pontious Pilate, and this fact is consistent with Jewish accounts of Roman cruelty in general and Pilates cruelty in particular. However, it was problematic for the early Church for two reasons. First, crucifixion was the penalty for political insurrection, but the Church claims that Jesus died for theological reasons. Second, crucifixion was a Roman punishment, but as the early Church turned from the Jewish community to Gentiles for converts, it needed to distance itself from rebellious Jews and criticisms of Roman rule. Thus, while Fredricksen calls into question the divergent gospel accounts of the Jewish role in Jesus's death, she accepts the basic claim that Jesus was crucified.

Aside from the fact that the gospels provide different accounts of the Jewish role in Jesus's death (for example, Mark and Matthew report two separate trials, Luke one, and John none), Fredricksen, like other scholars (see Catchpole 1971) argues that many elements of the gospel accounts could not possibly have happened: according to Jewish law, the court could not meet at night; it could not meet on a major holiday; Jesus's statements to the Sanhedrin or the High Priest (e.g. that he was the messiah) did not constitute blasphemy; the charges that the gospels purport the Jews to have made against Jesus were not capital crimes against Jewish law; even if Jesus had been accused and found guilty of a capital offense by the Sanhedrin, the punishment would have been death by stoning and not crucifixion.

Both the gospel accounts and [the] Pauline interpolation were composed in the period immediately following the terrible war of 66-73. The Church had every reason to assure prospective Gentile audiences that the Christian movement neither threatened nor challenged imperial sovereignty had, despite the fact that their founder had himself been crucified, that is, executed as a rebel.

Given the historical context in which the Gospels took their final form and during which Christianity first emerged, historians have struggled to understand Jesus' ministry in terms of what is known about first century Judaism. According to scholars such as Geza Vermes and E.P. Sanders, Jesus seems not to have belonged to any particular party or movement; Jesus was eclectic (and perhaps unique) in combining elements of many of these different – and for most Jews, opposing – positions. Most critical scholars see Jesus as healing people and performing miracles in the prophetic tradition of the Galilee, and preaching God's desire for justice and righteousness in the prophetic tradition of Judea. (According to Geza Vermes, that Jesus' followers addressed him as "lord" indicates that they likened him to notable miracle workers and scribes. see Names and titles of Jesus)

However, many of Jesus's teachings echoed the beliefs of the Qumran community (which was probably a branch of the Essenes) and of some of the Pharisees. In Jesus' day, the two main schools of thought among the Pharisees were the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. Jesus' assertion of hypocrisy may have been directed against the stricter members of the House of Shammai, although he also agreed with their teachings on divorce (Mark 10:1-12). In general, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is stricter than the teachings of the House of Hillel. [3]

Finally, Jesus's declarations that the kingdom was at hand echoed popular apocalyptic views and the political views of the Zealots.

Many scholars argue that it is likely that, like most Jews, Jesus believed that the restoration of the monarchy would be accomplished by God, not by any movement of Jews. However, he did believe that this restoration was imminent. Jesus was enigmatic at best about his claim to actually be the presumptive monarch. That he speaks of twelve disciples is probably symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel, and thus a metaphor for "all Israel". According to Geza Vermes and other historians, that his follwers referred to Jesus as "messiah" and "son of God" indicate that they believed he would assume the monarchy upon the restoration of the kingdom (see Names and titles of Jesus).

Talk of a restoration of the monarchy was seditious under Roman occupation, and Jesus would have entered Jerusalem at an especially risky time, when popular and mob emotions were already running high. Although most Jews did not have the means to travel to Jerusalem for every holiday, virtually all tried to comply with these laws as best they could. Thus, during these festivals, such as the Passover, when Jesus came to Jerusalem, the population swelled – and outbreaks of violence and riots were common. Critical scholars suggest that the high priest feared his talk of an imminent restoration of an independent Jewish state would likely spark a riot. Maintaining the peace was one of the primary jobs of the Roman-appointed High Priest, who was personally responsible to them for any major outbreak of violence. Critical scholars therefore argue that he would have arrested Jesus for promoting sedition and rebellion, and turned him over to the Romans for punishment.


  1. ^ http://www.westarkchurchofchrist.org/library/extrabiblical.htm
  2. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus
  3. ^ Neusner, Jacob A Rabbi Talks With Jesus, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000. ISBN 0773520465. Rabbi Neusner contends that Jesus' teachings were closer to the House of Shammai than the House of Hillel.

for this cut material

Jonathan, are you saying this material has been removed from the original article? If so, it certainly looks appropriate to put it here. If not, there seems no reason to have articles duplicating each other word for word. PiCo 10:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed this material from CaHBoJ and want to incorporate it here. I'd sure appreciate some help! Jonathan Tweet 20:21, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I've started doing some edits to the article to include this material and am making notes as I go:
  • Tightened the lead, including: (1) moved the intro from the section "Overview of scholarly methods" up into the dab (and slightly enlarged the dab); changed "Jesus the person" to "Jesus the man" (I'm unashamedly non-PC about calling a male person a man); and took out the para about the opposition of those who don't like the application of historical scholarship to Jesus (this article is about the historical scholarship, not about the opponents).
    • Comment: The lead is still not complete. For example, I think the area of minimal scholarly agreement extends to Jesus' baptism, and it looks odd to start and end a survey of scholars with Reimarus.
  • Removed the first two paragraphs of the "Cultural and historical background" section, as they amount to statements of the obvious. Replaced with a para about the nature of the historical evidence and what secular historian can and cannot hope to achieve.
  • Started a new section, "Jesus' Jewish background", and put some of Jonathan's material from CaHBoJ into it. Made the last para of the existing "Cultural background" section the first para in this new section.
  • Put the rest of the CaHBoJ material into the Biographical Details section.
    • Comment: This still needs a lot of work - references are needed for many statements, and it relies far too heavily on Fredriksen...and there's a quote at the end that's unattributed, tho I guess it must be from the same Fredriksen.

Anyway, I hope this can serve as a starting point. PiCo 07:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed the following text. At first I tried to fix it, but it is just too problematic.
All our information on the life of Jesus comes from the four Gospels and some of the letters of the apostle Paul. None of these are contemporary, eye-witness accounts; all date from decades after the events they describe. Nor are they unbiased: all are from the small band of early followers who believed passionately that they and their teachers were privy to the most momentous event in Jewish and human history, the coming of the messiah who would restore the house of David and usher in the kingdom of God. Secular historians can therefore do little to add to the picture of Jesus presented in these sources. What they can do, rather, is to place that picture in the context of the cultural and historical background to which Jesus belonged.
Problems are as follows. It is not necessarily true that all information on Jesus comes from the canonical Gospels and Paul. Its perhaps to lengthy here to address but the situation is at least slightly more complicated than that. Also, it may well be that Matthew or John are at least in part eyewitness accounts and at the very least eyewitness sources may stand behind (at least parts of) the texts. Indeed, this is an important topic in the field. Besides the possibility that Matthew is early, Paul certainly is early and again the passion narratives, creedal statements, and hymns may well be quite early, all of which is not represented in the text. Lastly, the bias of the sources is perhaps not properly explained, as they (and at least certainly John) held a more radical position on just who Jesus was. Lostcaesar 08:19, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I have no problem with your removing that para. It was my attempt to write an introduction to the section: perhaps it needs to be refined, or perhaps no introduction is needed at all. But let's continue to look at the overall structure and content of the article.PiCo 09:17, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, it seems to me that the article Quest for the historical Jesus could usefully be merged with this one. Any comments?PiCo 09:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
If you look at the page history, that article used to be a stub for a book of the same title. And then, without discussion (or maybe little discussion) and editor decided to create that. I had a proposal a while back for what I envisioned this article to be, and I wanted to have a section on the historical study of Jesus, mentioning the "quests". So I wouldn't oppose a merge, but we have to consider article length, and whether we could write a detailed article on the history of the "quests".-Andrew c 15:02, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jewish reclamation of Jesus

I have been trying to post information about the reclamation of Jesus for Judaism by Jewish scholars. I have been trying to find a suitable article to append this to. I posted here on the recommendation of someone who deleted it in the "Judaism's view of Jesus" article. Jayjg has been deleting these submissions. Here is the content of my submission:

There had been also a number of pre-war works emphasizing the Jewishness of Jesus written by Jewish scholars such as Joseph Klausner (Jesus of Nazareth), Leo Baeck (The Gospel as a Document of Jewish Religious History) and Constantin Brunner (Our Christ).

I feel that this is a significant dimension of scholarly understanding of Jesus that is grossly neglected. Suggestions? Barrett Pashak 04:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

These are three works written over a period of two decades, the earliest almost 90 years ago, the most recent almost 70 years ago. Only one of the authors had any influence on Jewish religious thought, and even then only over a minority (Reform Judaism), and there is no indication that his views of Jesus ever became part of any doctrine. According to whom are these works related? According to whom are they significant in Jewish thought? From what I can see, you happen to have found 3 old works about Jesus which happen to have been written by Jews, written in a specific milieu of pre-war WWII Germany, and tried to generalize that to indicate that Judaism has somehow "reclaimed" Jesus. This, of course, is original research and WP:NPOV#Undue weight. Jayjg (talk) 19:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for replying. I provided these three authorities as a kind of probe. There are many others. And I chose older writers because they really initiated this process of normalizing Jesus within Judaism. There are other more recent Jewish writers liked Jacob Neusner and Geza Vermes who are covering the same ground.

Now, you state that all this constitutes original research. Yet there is definitely an existing body of knowledge that can be called "the Jewish reclamation of Jesus." In fact there is a recent monograph with that very title: The Jewish reclamation of Jesus / Donald Hagner (1997). Additional resources on this topic include a study by the Vatican and a comprehensive German survey. And these are just writings by Jews. There is of course a wealth of new research written by non-Jews about Jesus as a figure within Judaism. There does not seem to be a comfortable place in Wikipedia to place this work. This is remarkable when the wealth of pages devoted to Jesus are examined. Even fringe outlooks like Jesus-as-myth are accorded multiple pages. Yet the single most important development in recent NT scholarship, the normalization of Jesus within Judaism, is given no attention. Why is that? Barrett Pashak 20:30, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Donald Hagner's book, which you cite, is written by a professor of New Testament Studies, so presumably offers a Christian viewpoint. The Amazon link that you provided does not show any reviews of Hagner's book. Are you aware of any reviews have been written in academic journals? Per WP:FRINGE it is not reasonable to include every single viewpoint in Wikipedia, unless it has some currency in the outside world. It is possible that people who want to follow this work have to be able to read German. EdJohnston 22:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't see any reviews of Hagner's book, although there are blurbs by Yechiel Ecksteinand Alan F. Johnson. There are also quite a few citations that can be found in Google Books. These and his academic status puts him miles ahead of, for example, Earl Doherty, whose theories are given ample room here on Wikipedia. Hagner's book is basically a literature review. The important thing is that there is a substantial body of work by Jews claiming Jesus as an important figure within Judaism. This includes Jewish American writers like Scholem Asch and John Cournos. Barrett Pashak 23:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
It's not clear to me that Jewish denominations have "reclaimed" Jesus in any way. Authors who happen to be Jews can write what they will, that doesn't make their works a "Jewish reclamation". I don't know what Neusner had to say on the topic, but Vermes certainly wasn't writing as a representative of Judaism or Jewish thought. Asch was a novelist and Yiddish writer, not a theologian, and Cournos was similarly a poet and novelist. You seem to be mostly focussed on a small number of early 20th century ethnic Jews who felt some sort of need to personally re-evaluate their own feelings about Jesus; I'm still not seeing any impact on Judaism. Jayjg (talk) 23:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
So you do not think it important that a number of recent Jewish thinkers assert that Jesus is a pivotal figure in the history and self-understanding of Judaism? You do not believe that this historical fact is worthy of any attention whatsoever? In fact, do you see it as the responsibility of Wikipedia to explicitly suppress any discussion of this matter in its pages? Barrett Pashak 05:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
You have phrased this as though there were a movement within Judaism, to reclaim Jesus. The above commenters appear skeptical about your claim there is a substantial body of work by Jews claiming Jesus as an important figure within Judaism. I didn't notice any proposal in the above to suppress discussion. This is Wikipedia, our discussions are endless... EdJohnston 06:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

My own sense of the matter is this: there has been little to no effort by Jews to "reclaim" Jesu. I would not be surprised if, in versy specific ecumenical settings, Jewish leaders appeal to Jesus's Jewishness as a way to build inter-faith bridges - my point is that such efforts are isolated and contingent and not to my knowledge reflections of any larger sustained movement. If you really want to find out my advice is: contact the major Jewish organizations in the US and Uk - I don't know the UK very well but in the US, the AJC, United Synagogue, Rabbinical Assembly, and their counterpart organizations for Reform and Orthodox movements, and ask if they have published anything on this. My guess is you will either get a couple of press releases or resolutions at best, I doubt anything published - and you may get nothing. I think we need to distinguish all this very carefully by attempts by scholars - some oe whom happen to be Jewish, some of whom may be Christian, many of whom are likely secular - who have more forcefully argued that to understand the historical Jesus must involve seeing him in his Jewish context. This is not a "Jewish endeavor" and it has no effect on contemporary Jewish theology or religious practices - it is an exercise in historical research. I have done enough research on this to feel fairly confident, but admit I have not done sustained and exhaustive research and may be at least partially mistaken. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:18, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, the literature surveys that I linked to certainly do point to an "effort by Jews to reclaim Jesu." And this includes people like Martin Buber, who certainly cannot be considered "secular". In any event, my interest in this is strictly as "an exercise in historical research." Do you not feel that there is a place in Wikipedia for discussion of this exercise? Remember that I originally posted this as an article entitled Jesus as Jew, so it was to have included non-Jewish writers as well. The article was rejected on the basis that "no one denies that Jesus was a Jew." But this consensus, if it in fact exists, is recent and of considerable importance. Why is there no article about it when there are several on Jesus as myth? Why, in fact, is no mention of it permitted in Historical Jesus? Barrett Pashak 16:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Personally the entire enterprise sounds patronizing to both Christians and Jews alike, and sounds like the kind of blunder a secularist would make in a misguided attempt to say something ammicable to religions which he cannot understand. Lostcaesar 14:58, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
It looks to me more like cultural reappropriation by Jewish thinkers of one of their own key figures who had been misappropriated by Gentiles. Barrett Pashak 16:22, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Are we talking about members of the Jewish race or followers of the Jewish religion? There are Jewish people (race) who are Christian, and they certainly would not wish to "reclaim" Jesus "for the Jews" (religion) - whatever that would mean. Lostcaesar 17:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I would suggest you look at the Vatican document that I linked to. It's an easy read and gives a good summary of the people and viewpoints that are involved here. Barrett Pashak 17:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
That's not a "Vatican document", its a document from a journal that happens to be hosted on the vatican website. Lostcaesar 19:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Er, the journal, Tertium Millennium, is an official Vatican publication. Follow the links. Barrett Pashak 19:24, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't think that the Vatican would be considered the most reliable source on the relationship between Judaism and Jesus, though I'm sure it's very pleasing for them to think that Jews are "finally coming to their senses" regarding Jesus. Most of the writers listed are not writing as theologians, but as (at best) historians; they do not come representing Jewish thought, but rather representing the thoughts of individual Jews, which is something quite different. Indeed, as pointed out earlier, most of the writers you mentioned earlier were neither theologians nor historians. And while Vermes might well be a respected historian of Jesus, and (today) identifies as a Jew, one could hardly avoid the thought that his being raised as a Catholic, and becoming a Catholic priest, might have had an affect on his views. It is clear that a small number of authors who are Jews have attempted to posit some sort of new understanding of Jesus; ecumenism, assimilation, and various other factors no doubt have contributed to that. However, this minor sociological phenomenon does not really indicate any sort of change in the relationship between Judaism and Jesus. Jayjg (talk) 01:06, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
The question is whether or not "this minor sociological phenomenon" merits any mention in Wikipedia. Barrett Pashak 02:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh, yeah, and in weighing your opinion, you may want to consider the following quotation:
Jesus was respected and even revered by many modern Jews….
Jewish enlightenment brought about a new tolerant attitude toward Christianity, especially with regard to Jesus. The famous Jewish historian of the nineteenth century, Heinrich Graetz, describes Jesus as a true Jew who led the simple people back to an authentic and unostentatious Judaism. Jewish theologians of the twentieth century, such as Constantin Brunner and Martin Buber have taken a particularly positive attitude towards Jesus.--“The Non-Jewish Jew”: The History of a Radical Typology / Shmuel Almog
Barrett Pashak 03:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I do not know of many modern Jews who revere Jesus. I have read a fair amount of theology (though I admit it trickled down by the 1980s) and much of what Buber wrote and I don't remember any evidence that any of them revered Jesus, that Jesus had any significant impact on their thinking, or that Jesus occupied a major place in their theology. Rosenzweig probably comes closest to giving importance to Jesus via Christianity (i.e. not the historical Jesus) but this does not a major philosophical trend make. I made a number of points above and Barrett Pashak has not responded to any of them, so I conclude he has no response. I'd say this is a dead issue. Slrubenstein | Talk 09:57, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I concur. The material above is representative of a handful of scholars who hold the hypothesis that a proper reconstruction of the "historical" Jesus depends on associating him with this or that Jewish movement. It does not represent the Jewish faith or people, for whom I see little reason that they would desire such a "reclamation", nor is it relevant to Christianity, which of course holds that the historical Jesus is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Lostcaesar 10:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Looking back at this discussion, I am now unclear about Barrett Pashak's main point. Is it simply that Jews believe Jesus was Jewish? If so, this is a noncontroversial claim; not only do we not need three quotes from or references to Baeck et. al, it even seems strange to single them out - virtually all Jews think Jesus was jewish. Is it to claim that the historical Jesus must be understood in his Jewish context? If so, we would do better to cite actual historians who have written authoritatively about Jesus in this way, such as Vermez, Crossan, Sanders (eachof whom have contributed more to the scholarship on Jesus than Baeck, Klausner, or Brunner). Or is it to claim that an appreciation of the Jewish Jesus is important for an enriched understanding of Judaism? If so, I think this is at best a marginal claim made by a tiny number of people ... I am not even sure that Jesus is that important to Baeck's theology (I have read work by him, not the others). Slrubenstein | Talk 12:15, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Here is what Buber has to say about Jesus (from Two types of Faith):
From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother … My own fraternally open relationship to him has grown ever stronger and clearer.


Here is what Baeck has to say about the Gospels (from "The Gospel as a document of history". In Judaism and Christianity / Leo Baeck. Philadelphia : Jewish Publication Society of America, 1958. p. 101-102):
Judaism may not pass it by, nor mistake it, nor wish to give up all claims here. Here, too, Judaism should comprehend and take note of what is its own.
For further information, see "Our Brother Jesus," a review of Brother Jesus: The Nazarene Through Jewish Eyes by Sohalom Ben-Chorin and Jesus Through Jewish Eyes edited by Beatrice Bruteau.
See also "The Quest for the Jewish Jesus" by David Novak. In 'Modern Judaism', Vol. 8, No. 2 (May, 1988), pp. 119-138.
If Jesus's Jewishness is so "uncontroversial", why will you permit no elaboration of the subject in Wikipedia? Besides, it is not uncontroversial for those who deny Jesus's historicity.
The Jewish reclamation of Jesus is just one dimension of the assertion of Jesus's Jewishness. As you point out, Gentile scholars make the same assertions. The question is, why is this assertion, the most important development in recent NT scholarship, not given any more attention in Wikipedia than bare acknowledgement, whereas the fringe "Jesus-as-myth" theories are accorded ample space?
If I fail to address an argument that you regard as important, please repeat it with emphasis. Chances are that I took it is as trivial. Barrett Pashak 16:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I asked you what your main point is and proposed three. Do I need to emphasize the question again for you to consider it non-trivial? I just asked it and you have just ignored it. As to your most recent comments: "If Jesus's Jewishness is so "uncontroversial", why will you permit no elaboration of the subject in Wikipedia?" is a non-sequitor. The main article on Jesus clearly identifies Jesus as a Jew, and the article on the historical and cultural context of Jesus goes into great detail about his Jewish heritage. This uncontroversial topic has been covered, fully. And I know of no important study of Second Temple Jewish history that claims that Jesus had a major influence on Jewish history. As to the Buber quote: belongs in an article on Buber, but I would ask for context. Is he merely making an ecumenical gesture, or is he explaining a profound influence on his thought? Please, do not provide your own opinion which cannot be included in Wikipedia articles. Do you know of any secondary source on Buber that has explained the influence of Jesus on Buber's thought (see WP:ATT)? As for the Baeck quote, again, belongs in an article on Baeck. Baeck can say anything he wants (wanted to) - but his saying what Judaism "should" do does not mean Judaism has done it, and Baeck had no authority to speak for all Jews. Let's take the proposition seriously, Judaism "should" make claims on the Gospels. Okay, I already asked you to provide statements from United Synagogue, the Rabbinic Assembly, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations and the Rabbinic Council of America, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and Central Conference of American Rabbis about the extent to which they have been influenced by Jesus and the Gospels. You have proven that a handful of individuals have addressed the "Jewish Jesus" but none of this is evidence that major jewish communities are reconsidering their beliefs and practices via a re-claiming of a Jewish Jesus. You have provided no evidence of that. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Your claims that the question of Jesus as Jew is "uncontroversial" but that it has still been "covered, fully" is a non-sequitur. The fact is that the assertion of Jesus's Jewishness is neither fully covered nor uncontroversial. As I said, Jesus mythers regard it as untenable, and so do many antisemites. Traditionalist Christians also find it impossible to see Jesus as wholly and exclusively Jewish. For that matter, it is also true that some Jews find the assertion of Jesus's Jewishness problematic.

Both the links for further study that I provided above offer commentary on Buber's views on Jesus. You can also try a GoogleBooks search of Buber+Jesus.

You yourself distinguished this as a scholarly matter, so I see no reason for you to demand that I contact religious organizations.

To summarize my main points:

  • Recent NT scholarship is concerned primarily with the normalization of Jesus as a Jew.
  • Many recent leading Jewish thinkers perceive Jesus as a pivotal figure within Judaism.

Barrett Pashak 17:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ancient Primary Sources for Jesus

I'm uncomfortable with the recently added "Ancient Primary Sources for Jesus" section. This article is supposed to be about what historians think about the historical figure "Jesus of Nazareth". While sourced, this new section relies only on primary sources. This article should not present primary sources, but instead filter these sources through notable, reliable historians. Maybe this content would fit better in the historicity article, because that article is basically a summary of the sources. What do other think? Does this section have a place here? Is it ok to have so many primary sources in an article about what scholars think?-Andrew c 22:54, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

The section is OR, taking a personal reading of several ancient texts, extracting data, making a synthesis, and presenting it. It is a forgivable mistake, one I myself made in my first few edits, and is probably good faith - but it is not apt for an encyclopedia. Lostcaesar 07:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

The section seems to present a very one-sided view of certain primary sources. Using secondary sources would help to make the section more balanced. For example, the possibility that the Panthera name is a corruption of parthenos, the Greek word for virgin (see F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, ISBN 0802815758, pp. 57-58) is not mentioned. -- Cat Whisperer 14:24, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

There are lots of mistakes. For example, the text says that the father was "a Roman soldier called Panthera, nicknamed the 'Panther'", seemlingly misunderanding that panthera is the nickname. Lostcaesar 14:38, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I see I'm not the only one rudely surprised by this material. It should all go away, but it's referenced material of some interest to other topics. I particularly like the image of the aerial battle! Where should it go? It's not OR, though. This is good, solid material on a separate topic. It should go on Criticism of Jesus. That's what it is, not texts that historians consult to figure out who Jesus was but Greek and Jewish propaganda. Jonathan Tweet 14:45, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Jonathan Tweet, I was going to let your edits go until I read what was written here. I disagree that ancient texts ALWAYS need to be filtered. There are a couple of mistakes in the section, but lets try to fix those rather than wholesale deletion. I think we need to discuss it more before we get rid of whole sections. Orangemarlin 15:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Orangemarlin, please find one serious contemporary scholar who regards any of this ancient material as germane to a historical biography of Jesus. If none, then the material doesn't belong here. Jonathan Tweet 15:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
<arbitrarily removed indents>I'm not getting into a revert war with you guys. But, I think you are all pushing a POV that would be better served with rewriting rather than mass deletion. Of course, I'm absolutely certain that Jesus did not exist (except Jesus is my gardener, so I know he exists). I think this article more or less makes me feel comfortable with my certainty. Orangemarlin 16:25, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't see it as a pov issue, rather its a matter of OR. The section has no secondary sources, and unmediated interpretation of primary sources is against wikipedia policy. Lostcaesar 16:28, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with those who classify this section as original research. Wikipedia policy WP:OR states that original research includes:

  • [the introduction of] an argument without citing a reliable source who has made that argument in relation to the topic of the article; or
  • [the introduction of] an analysis, synthesis, or interpretation of published facts, opinions, or arguments without attributing that analysis, synthesis, or interpretation to a reliable source who has published the material in relation to the topic of the article.

Additionally, if this original research leaves the reader with the impression that the non-existence of Jesus historically is a viable opinion of scholars, then it is poor quality original research. -- Cat Whisperer 22:18, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

LC, "unmediated interpretation of primary sources is against wikipedia policy." Exactly, that's why we need to take the OR elements out of this section and just leave the primary sources. This work is a good addition to WP. The question is Where should it go? The answer is Criticism of Jesus. This work cites primary sources without analyzing them or presenting a novel interpretation. Here, in your lap, are these primary sources. The only bits that verge on OR (OK, might be OR now that I think about it) are the parts where the author says, "So and so writer considered the story significant enough to rebut it. . ." We don't know that so-and-so wrote that because he thought the story was significant enough to rebut or whether he made it up in order to have something to write about. Descriptions of primary sources are a great addition to a page on this topic (not this one). Jonathan Tweet 00:23, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I said: " That's what it is, not historical information for the open-minded but propaganda." I can now see that it sounds as though I'm calling the paragraphs "propaganda on the part of the bad editor who put it there." I mean, the swell editor found cool propaganda from two "enemy camps," the Greeks and the Jews. It's great material, but it doesn't relate to Jesus of history. It relates to ideological battles in the first century. Let's mention both depictions on this page but leave the details on the Criticism of Jesus page. Jonathan Tweet 00:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lewis's trilemma & Craig

An editor cut out my reference to the trilemma and someone else's reference to William Lane Craig. The trilemma reference I think is valid as Lewis was specifically targeting the academically popular idea of Jesus as a man (historical Jesus). But it's not spot on, so OK. The quote from Screwtape is nice. Let's not allow the reader to mistake this for one of Lewis's literal books; it's fiction, narrated by a demon. The Craig thing seems worth including. Craig is definitely attacking historical Jesus head on. He deserves some mention here. If the previous text is weak, then it should be improved. Craig does criticize the current image of historical Jesus as contradicting what most Jesus scholars believe. Is it a stupid thing to say? Maybe, but if it's the best Craig can do, it's right to mention it. Jonathan Tweet 01:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Craig is not a critic of the historical Jesus, in that he does not object to the use of historical methods to discern facts about Jesus. His position is that a historical analysis of the Gospels will show them to be historically accurate and the resurrection to be the most probable historical reconstruction of what happened. His arguments would belong in the body of the text, then. Lostcaesar 07:56, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Agreed, once someone can show that he, like other historically-oriented Christians, applies the historical method to the gospels, treating them as fallible human documents shaped by historical trends and human agendas. If he's another Spong and Crossan, he belongs in. If he's another Brown (historical analysis, but only to a point), then no. I've gotten the impression that he's more of a "gospel truth is history so my Jesus is historical" sort of guy. Jonathan Tweet 15:14, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Why is brown excluded? Lostcaesar 18:08, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Brown uses doctrine as well as historical methods to analyze the gospels. He regards them as infallible as they pertain to salvation. So, yes, he uses the historical method, but he bases his conclusions on faith as well as on historical analysis. An interesting case, with some interesting conclusions, but not playing by the rules. A rule of historical analysis is, don't use doctrine in place of historical methods. Jonathan Tweet 13:28, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Where does Brown, or Craig for that matter, say that they "use doctrine in place of historical methods"? Lostcaesar 15:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
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