Talk:History of Christianity

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/Archive 1

[edit] Someone who just happened by ...

I came to have a look, to see if this article could be a model for History of Islam, and my first impression was, "Omigosh, 2000 word paragraphs." Short paragraphs work much better on computer screens. Short paras and bullet points. Otherwise you get the phenomenon known as MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over). Someone paragraph this poor suffering article, please! Zora 00:48, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removals

I thought I would explain my removal of massive sections of text. The additions were pov, or, and wrong, and the user who put them there has apperantly been banned forever from editing, so it really needs no justification. He was self publishing rubbish. Lostcaesar 16:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Correct Link

I am no expert but the word followers in first paragraph links to Booty_Call_(Christianity). Is it right link?--Webkami 13:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of argumentative text

"Popular legend holds that Constantine I was Christian; he was baptized on his deathbed.

His continued paganism is revealed by the laws he passed. For example, Constantine issued laws confirming the rights of flamens, priests and duumvirs.^[1] Although Constantine passed legislation against magic and private divination, this was driven by fear that others might gain power through those means, as he himself had achieved power through the sound advice of Pagan soothsayers and this convinced him of the perspicacity of Pagan prophecy.^[2] His belief in Pagan divination is confirmed by legislation calling for the consultation of augurs after an amphitheater had been struck by lightning in the year 320.^[3] Constantine explicitly allowed public divination as well as public Pagan practices to continue.^[4]"

Phrases like "popular legend holds ..." and "his continued paganism is revealed ..." are clearly POV pushing born out of some serious ignorance of the issue involved.

Whether C. was a Christian (and when) depends on what you require for being a Christian. We have to go by outwardly events as we cannot look into his heart. Any reference to laws he passed is nonsensical as he was supposed to fulfill his office as Emperor. Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 08:39, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Myth of Jesus of Nazareth

I think the History of Christianity should be changed to at least acknowledge the very real possibility that there never was a historical Jesus of Nazareth, i.e., along the lines of the work by G.A. Wells and Earl Doherty (http://www.jesuspuzzle.com/). The first few paragraphs of "History of Christianity" read much more like the books of Acts (Jesus existed, died, had followers that saw him risen) than a real attempt at history. IBleedOil 03:25, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

This article isn't about whether Jesus existed, but about the history of the religion of Christianity. The question of Jesus' historical existence is addressed in the Historicity of Jesus article. Wesley 04:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Right, that's in the Historicity of Jesus article. There is also a Jesus as myth article. This article only has one or two sentences on Jesus, both well referenced. Lostcaesar 07:39, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I know those other articles exist, but how much more interesting would this article be without any mention of Jesus. The History of Christianity is the history of people who claim to be Christian and should be left as such. Unless you want to blindly believe Christian propaganda, it has nothing to be with a historical Jesus of Nazareth who may or may not have existed. The recent "Jesus Project" work by the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, is just starting to expose that the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, at least the Jesus of Nazareth described in the gospels , is no longer a matter of standard academic acceptance. IBleedOil 03:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

So propose a changing of the article text that addresses your concerns. Since this is probably a controversial topic, I would suggest that you propose a draft here on this talk page first so that we can discuss it before it goes on the article page. --Richard 17:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with IBleedOil. The article needs to be careful about wording things in a way that makes it sound like Christian myth and legend are absolutely historically accurate. I'm not saying we should turn this article into the Jesus as Myth article. But I think that at the very least when the article tries to state something from the bible as historical fact it should include the disclaimer that the "fact" in question is "according to the gospels", "according to Paul”, ”according to Christian tradition", etc. In other words, don't try to make it seem like the bible is the "gospel truth" (pun intended). - Big Brother 1984 19:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have seen these sorts of issues come up on just about every article concerning Jesus. About all this article says about Jesus is that he lived, died, and had followers, and that those followers believed X. We don't say he worked any miracles, only that he was regarded as having done so; we don't say he rose from the dead, only that it was said that he had. I suppose there are some who think Jesus did not exist, but since this is a historical article we would need to see this view from a historian. The article here doesn't take "the bible" as "gospel truth". It just makes a few summary sentences about facts that the historical community is in agreement on, and gives references. Its no more pov to say that Jesus lived, died, and had followers, than it is to say the Halocaust happened - virtually all historians agree on said facts. Also, you shouldn't be changing the meaning of the text if it is sourced, one has to be careful with sourced material - a source says what it says. Now, I know there are some who disupte even this meager ammount of detail, but I don't know of any historians or biblical scholars who do. If you know of some, its best to mention them. We cannot really move forward from there. There are other articles for this kind of debate, but here we need to stick to historical sources I think. The statements are well sourced, and many of the sources say things like "virtually all scholars agree" concerning said point (I though direct quotes in the reference section was overkill, perhaps not). Lostcaesar 21:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Check out this similar passage from the article on Mormonism:

Joseph Smith, Jr. was raised in northwestern New York, where he reported a number of heavenly visions and visitations by angels. In his First Vision, while he was an adolescent during the early 1820s, Smith stated he saw "God the Father" and "Jesus Christ" in the Sacred Grove. Smith also said he had received a set of Golden Plates from an angel, and dictated a translation of those plates, which he published in 1830 as the Book of Mormon. Some time after the translation, according to church records, Moroni returned to collect the plates.

Using your logic, it would be OK for Mormons to alter this passage to read:

Joseph Smith, Jr. was raised in northwestern New York, where he reported had a number of heavenly visions and visitations by angels. In his First Vision, while he was an adolescent during the early 1820s, Smith stated he saw "God the Father" and "Jesus Christ" in the Sacred Grove. Smith also said he had received a set of Golden Plates from an angel, and dictated a translation of those plates, which he published in 1830 as the Book of Mormon. Some time after the translation, according to church records, Moroni returned to collect the plates.

Do you think that this wording is NPOV and encyclopedic just because the general consensus among Mormon scholars is that the story is true? The difference between the two passages are subtle, but significant. Any claim made by a religion which cannot be supported by legitimate archeological or historical evidence can not be worded in such a way that implies that the belief in question is absolutely true. The qualifier, "according to church tradition", is a necessary requirement for any such statement. So, please stop reverting my changes. - Big Brother 1984 03:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

This article doesn't say that Jesus had visions, recieved golden plates, or whatever. It says he died and had followers who regarded him as X and said Y happened, just like the above prefered version in your example. You want the article to say that Jesus did not exist. That's much different. You need historical sources to support what you are saying. For example, one of your changes added "according to the gospels" on the crucifixion, death, &c. That's not what the sources say. They say "according to the historical evidence we can be sure of the crucifixion &c". If we are going "according to the gospels" then we would add a lot more, like the resurrection, transfixuration, incarnation, &c &c. Its not like those scholars are all apologists. I am willing to try and work here a little but were in a difficult position because the only statements being made are minimal and non-miraculous assertions by historians and biblical scholars. If your position is that the article should reflect the view that Jesus may not have existed then I'm sorry but it cannot simply because that is not a historically accepted view, and this is a history article. Lostcaesar 07:16, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with Big Brother 1984.

As a Christian, I believe Jesus existed but, from a totally objective standpoint, there is evidence that suggests that he might not have. This evidence (or lack thereof) is compelling enough that Christian apologists have to address it.

NB: I didn't say that the evidence proves conclusively that he did not exist just that there is enough evidence (or lack thereof) to suggest that he might not have.

So, let's be precise. You would need reliable, historical sources to assert that Jesus did exist and there are only a few such sources (I think Josephus is one of them but I'm not even 100% sure how reliable he is). There are as, I understand it, no birth records, no death records, no death sentence decrees, nor even mention of the Christians in Jewish documents of the time. So the "burden of proof" is on those who assert that Jesus existed.

Now, it may be the case that most Christian theologians believe he existed. We should say that.

It is also the case that some theologians and historians believe that he did not exist. We should say that.

We should summarize here and link to the Historicity of Jesus and Jesus as Myth articles.

We owe it to the reader to present a summary of the debate and then point him at the articles which will discuss it in greater detail if he wishes to delve deeper.

The validity of Christianity as a faith is predicated not only Jesus existing but on Him being who He said He was and who we say He was.

On the other hand, the history of Christianity is the history of Christianity. Even if Jesus never existed, the rest of the history still happened and that's what this article is about. Same holds true for the Mormon church. Its history would still be described exactly the same even if the plates never existed.

IMHO, it is against Wikipedia's NPOV policy to exclude the POV that Big Brother 1984 is positing.

--Richard 07:40, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Richard, do you know any historians or biblical scholars who think that Jesus never existed? Who? We need sources. The statements that BigBrother has changed are the most throughly sourced sentences in the whole work. There is no debate to summarize for the reader. That's the issue. Virtually all, if not all, historians and biblical scholars agree that Jesus existed. Unless someone shows sources otherwise the passages in the article are not for debate. I am ready to name names - we have a list of scholars who say Jesus existed and who say that virtually all (or all) historians abd biblical schoalrs agree that he did. I am ready to see the other side of this "debate" - name historians who think Jesus did not exist, otherwise the article has no basis for being changed (like the issue of the halocaust - sure there are halocaust deniers, but vitrually no historians are among this group). Lostcaesar 08:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes. This is an "historical article". And therefore, we need to apply some scholarly skepticism to information which comes from an iron age collection of myths. Historians tend to view mythic tales with a high desgree of skepticism, and there is no reason to treat the gospel stories and different from other mythic tales from the same period. I agree with you that most historians would not argue that Jesus didn't exist. But I think a better way to phrase that statement would be that most historians think that Jesus probably existed. The contemporary evidence for the existance of Jesus is extremely weak, and is based primarily on mythic gospel tales and a (most likely) forged passage from Josephus. The earliest source records that Christians posses is the Pauline epistels, and these are almost entirely devoid of information concening a pre-crucifixtion Christ. I'm not going to say that any of this "proves" that Jesus never existsed, but I think that the issue is far from being decided conclusively. As Richard said, the burden of proof is on the people who claim that Jesus existed. Personally, I am still on the fence on this question. But anyone who states with absolute certainty that Jesus existed is expressing a POV, and it is a POV that is based on rather weak historical evidence. And again, since this is an historical article, any such POV should be labeled as such. -- Big Brother 1984 19:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I am sure you have done reserch on the matter and have a good bit of personal knowledge. But here it is not for us to decide the veracity of information. Instead, we can only quote scholarship. What we have are a lot of scholarly sources affirming our sentences, and they don't all say "probably". Now I did make some changes to take your concerns into view. I also left a cookie - there is a sentence that ends "...not without debate from certain scholars." You may add a footnote listing those scholars; it doesn't even say "historians" so you don't have to feel constrained by that criterion. The problem is that right now you have no sources and certainly no historical sources, so I think the lastest changes I made are as far as we can go without historial sources for said view. If anything is to change from here you need to start naming historians or just scholars in general (the latter best ought be footnoted to the aforementioned sentence). Your own personal knowledge, and I do not doubt that it is informed, is unfortunatly no more relevant than my own personal knowledge or interpretation of the text. Lastly, as for your concern about being sceptical concerning the texts, I think we need only note that the article says nothing about any supernatural event other than that they were claimed to have occured by followers, which I would think reassuring to you (and would be if you had seen the article before I worked on it a good bit). The article does mention the empty tomb, but this is just as much an essential part of athiestic "swoon" theories and the Jewish polemic "the disciples stole the body" as it is the Christian polemic of the resurrection (and it is well sourced). Lostcaesar 19:41, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Like I said earlier, I don't want to turn this article into the Jesus as Myth article. I suppose I could start added scholarly comments that disagree with the consensus that Jesus existed, but I don't think that any such comment needs to appear in this article. If I were to add any such statements I can guarantee that somebody is going to revert them, and I wouldn't blame them. This article isn't a debate of whether or not Jesus existed. It is an article about the history of the Christian church. And unfortunately, the only information we have about Jesus' ministry comes to us in the form of myth. The source for most of what we know about Jesus' life comes from the Gospel of Mark and the hypothetical Q document, and neither of these can be construed as representing reliable 1st-person accounts of historical events. Over the past few years, historians have gotten better at questioning generally accepted history which gets its source from myth. Take a look at the article on Noah, Moses, King David, or The Buddha and you will see that great care is taken to state explicitly where information on the life of these characters is derived from. None of these articles automatically assume that the subject in question actually existed, and this is the properly scholarly approach to take.

One other point... You don't seem to have any problem with people who question the validity of the supernatural claims in the gospels, but not those who question any "historically-accurate-sounding" events. I think a great many people make the mistake in believing that you can remove all of the nonsense from a myth and discover a juicy nugget of truth at the center. Historians simply don't operate this way. It is true that many myths are probably based on some sort of historical figure. But one should be careful about looking to these myths to determine history. Try applying this methodology to the Santa Claus myth and try to see how much historically accurate information you can find out about the life of Saint Nicolas. one might conclude that St. Nick was some sort of generous toymaker, but this would be a mistake. Just because a claim isn't patent nonsense, that does not mean that it is automatically true.

But again, my goal here is not to add any comments to this article that would argue that Jesus didn’t exist. I just want make sure that any statement which automatically assumes that he did exist is properly qualified. All other religious claims get this sort of treatment on Wikipedia, and I don’t see why Christianity should be an exception. -- Big Brother 1984 21:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

You said that you could start naming scholars who think that Jesus didn't exist. Could you name any historians or biblical scholars who think this? I know of none, and none have been presented. The crux of the impasse here is that, from what we have before us, there simply is no historian or biblical scholar who has gone into print with the opinion that Jesus did not exist, and as such I have a hard time including this opinion in a historical article. Your analysis of the sources is one I don't follow – the gospels are too early to have given time for "myth" to rise (see historian Sherwin-White, Roman History p. 190 who directly states such). And none of these scholars "assume" that Jesus existed, they conclude it. Why is this different from Buddha and Noah? Because the nature of the sources for those figures is radically different, historically speaking. For the other point on supernatural claims, it seems our opinions about the crudeness of an early enlightenment rationalist approach to the sources (e.g. Jefferson's edition) coincide. I merely mentioned this because I (mistakenly) took your use of "myth" to refer to "miracle", and therefore a quick refutation was to say that the article makes no statements on miracles. Once again you and I could go round with our opinions forever, but the fact remains that all historians and biblical scholars before us say that Jesus existed, and so I see no justification for rephrasing certain passages with words like "probably" and what not. To answer your question, "why does this article treat Jesus differently than other pages treat religious figures?" Its because historians treat it differently (and they do so because the sources are different, though why they do so is little matter to us). And I think your characterization is probably an overgeneralization; for example, the article on Islam doesn't act as if Muhammad may not have existed, rather it takes that as a historical fact. I don't know the evidence for his historicity, but I imagine its different than Buddha, Noah, &c. Each religious figure is different, and thus no sweeping generalization will suffice. Find some historians to back up your aims and we will have some meat to chew on; till then I don't see justification for a change, indeed I think the rewordings probably go too far as is but I am willing to compromise. Lostcaesar 21:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

All, please read the current version of the article and tell me if I have addressed the concerns of all sides. I have taken text from the Jesus and Historicity of Jesus articles. I have not taken any text from the Jesus as myth article as there was no useful summary information to copy. The "Jesus as myth" concept is mentioned with a link to the Jesus as myth article. I think that should cover the concerns of User:IBleedOil and User:Big Brother 1984. Hopefully, User:Lostcaesar will find this treatment acceptable. --Richard 01:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Richard. You added more than I would have been brave enough to add myself. ^>^ But, yes Lostcaesar, I'm sure that you and I could go "round for round" on this subject. I'm in the midle of a debate on my website with a Christian history teacher, and the debate has continued for over a year with about half a million words being exchanged (not an exaggeration). I know more about this subject than I would prefer to know. And while I would not say conclusively that the evidence disproves the existence of Jesus, I wouldn't say that it conclusively proves his existence either. And in any case, even if we were to agree that Jesus existed, it would be a vacuous truth since nothing we know about the guy is historically verifiable.... Please, someone stop me before I write another half a million words. ^>^ -- Big Brother 1984 03:23, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Big B, i don't think that you're using the term vacuous truth correctly. it means tautology, not unverifiable claim of truth. as per "no history", i dunno if anyone else mentioned it, but there is Josephus among others (Tacitus) who make specific mention that someone went by that name as was executed by Pontius Pilate as a criminal. r b-j 05:22, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

But you still haven't given a source from a historian, so what are we to do? Richard, I explained my changes below, but I don't think we should take up all those issues here when there are main articles to do that and when this article is very much in danger of going over the wikipedia size limit as it is (I think it already has, and I've been pondering what do to about it), its ok if we go over a little but we have whole empty sections on the Middle Ages and the like. Lostcaesar 07:50, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for a task force on the History of Christianity and related articles

I have proposed a History task force on Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/General. Please read the proposal, comment on it and consider joining. --Richard 17:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Newly expanded "Life of Jesus" and "Early Christianity" sections

I have expanded the "Life of Jesus" and "Early Christianity" sections using solely text copied from other Wikipedia articles. If you have substantive issues with any of the new text, please bear in mind that there is probably at least one other article that will have the same problem. I am not arguing that the other Wikipedia articles are unassailable. I am urging that we try to keep all the articles consistent. --Richard 01:21, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I took this information out because I feel it is making this article way too long. We should not take so much information from other sub-articles and put in here since this is suppose to be a gloss of those articles. There is a size limit to wikipedia articles and I suspect we are already close or over it, and we have major sections, like the Middle Ages, to put text into. Also, the Early Christianity article is full of errors and deserves our attention next - moving its text here is thus problematic (e.g. the "orthodoxy and orthopraxy" is father fringe and dated, I and others have been wanting to clean it up on the Early Christianity page for some time, and thus putting it here is rather unhelpful). I think we should focus on expanding the empty sections. I feel kind of bad just reverting all those additions, but they were just imported from other articles and I don't see us gaining much. If someone wants to know in depth on those matters he can go to the main articles, which we have links to here. For example, such changes resulted in a duplicate sentence "Most scholars of history and biblical studies agree..." which was thus in the article twice in two consecutive sections. Also, a gloss of what Christianity is isn't a bad idea, but that lead comes from the Christianity article which describes, very broadly, Christianity today in all its forms, whereas we are taking a more historical approach and thus we risk anachronisms if we lead in such a way. I hope this all makes sense and my rv doesn't seem unwarranted. Lostcaesar 07:41, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with a mass revert and would like to propose that we work forward from my last revision rather than reverting my changes. Here's what I mean: I understand the points that you make but I think most of what I added needs to be said in some way.

There may be sections which need to be edited radically or even dropped altogether (e.g. the orthodoxy and orthopraxy text) and I'm fine with that. However, the "Jesus" and "Early Christianity" sections need substantial text in order to be at a comparable level with the rest of the article. I do not think we should repeat entire articles or even substantial portions of entire articles here. However, we should provide summaries such that it is unnecessary to read the subsidiary article unless the reader wants more detail.

I'm fine to drop whole paragraphs if necessary but I would prefer that we take what I inserted as an outline for what needs to be there and work on restating and trimming it rather than leaving it all out. Thus, if you agree, I will "revert your revert" with an openness to radical editing of the text itself.

As for the length issue, see my comments below.

--Richard 17:31, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, well I do feel the whole revert was rather crummy but it seemed the least bad thing to do given the problems. Your idea is not unreasonable as long as we take the introductions as working text and all. I do think we will have to cut or substantially change most all of it. And were best without the orthodoxy / orthopraxy text, in my view. Lostcaesar 17:57, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article size

According to this policy, articles should be about 6000-10000 words, or 30-50k readable text. This article at present is 119k and 17,000 words. We still have about a thousand years of history to cover too, with the Middle Ages. Now this is not to panic. On the one hand, some articles can be longer (there is an exception on that page). Also, much of those words are footnotes and so they don't effect the body text at all. Still, we need to be careful. I have been thinking on it. Another policy says we are to use prose and avoid bullets. One option that might help is to move the key dates to the Timeline of Christianity, at least for the sections that already have prose. If there are key events not mentioned in the prove and we think we need to then we can work them in. Thoughts? Lostcaesar 08:02, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the article is too long. I have been aware of this for some time but have been ignoring it because it is easier to figure out how to deal with the length problem once you have a clear idea of how the whole article is organized. I think we are reaching a stable organizational structure now so we can start to address the length problem.

I'm OK with moving the dates to the Timeline of Christianity article. I was hesitant about moving the dates because I didn't want to be overly bold and move all that work without consensus. If there is no objection, we can start moving the dates.

Let's start with that and then re-evaluate. I think the article will still be too long even after we move the dates and the next step may be to move to a model similar to the one used in the History of the United States article. Over there, major time periods have their own article. Thus, there are articles like History of the United States (1789–1849). This article is now structured in such a way that this can be done pretty easily.

--Richard 17:44, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and we can be a little long given the subject, but we should be careful. Moving the key dates seems a good idea - they help us write the prose but once its written I think we can omit them. So for "prose-less" areas lets keep it as a temporary text. Lostcaesar 17:58, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Early Christianity

OK, being an impatient person, I have reverted Lostcaesar's revert. I ask that you be patient and collaborate with me to address any issues in these new sections. I feel very strongly that Jesus' life and early Christianity deserve as full a treatment as any other period in the History of Christianity. I recognize that there is controversy over what we should say about Jesus and early Christianity. If there you have problems with the text, please identify them and let's fix them.

I have started by getting rid of the "No Mainstream Christianity" and "Mainstream Christianity" sections. I actually liked the points made there but it appears that Lostcaesar thinks that there are problems with the discussion of "Orthodoxy and orthopraxy" in the Early Christianity article. I'm assuming that the sections which I deleted are the core of the problem. Please review the reorganized sections and give me feedback as to whether I have addressed the problem for now.

I would appreciate a discussion of what's wrong with the "Orthodoxy and orthopraxy" sections but I figure it's better to remove them and discuss them here than to insist that they stay in the article.

I have created a new article Christian heresy from text extracted from Heresy. I think we should remove the descriptions of individual heresies from this article and just provide a link to Christian heresy. Thus, we could have a one paragraph summary of heresy in early Christianity here and move all the detail into Christian heresy. How does that sound?

--Richard 18:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Well I haven't yet looked since I'm going to wait 'till your done, but I can agree with what is said above, and moving the early heresies to their own article and whatnot. As to the issue of Ordthoxy and Orthopraxy there are the following difficulties. The nature and development of orthodoxy, especially early on, is rather contraversial; several scholars have made their careers on radical interpretations of the events and they are rather loud (obnoxiously so) and there is a risk of drowning out more general scholarship. Furthermore, though there is significant work on the development of doctrine, Bauer's distinction of praxis and doxa has not been widely followed and has found much criticism; on the whole to treat the Early Church in these terms is a dated approach, and we can do better. We should use historians like H. Chadwick rather than theologians like W. Bauer. Lostcaesar 21:11, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm done for now (that is, for the next few hours at least). I still think these first two sections of the article need work but I don't have time to go after it and I will want to talk through some ideas here first. I think your (Lostcaesar's) major concerns as stated above have been addressed so hopefully we can leave the article in its current state.

--Richard 21:58, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Correction, I just realized that although most of the discussion of Bauer's "No Mainstream" perspective has been removed, the words "orthodoxy" and "orthopraxy" are still used in the article. Feel free to rewrite those paragraphs to remove the words if you think that they don't belong here at all. --Richard 22:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Alright, here is a summary of my revisions. They look more extensive than they were. The definition of Christianity seemed out of place, as did the Christian views of Jesus. We have to be careful here; historically, Christian views of Jesus are the end product of a long chain of event and if we lead with them we risk anachronism. I put a quick definition of Christianity in the lead; it seemed the best place for it. I don't know what to do with the Christian views material; I don't think we need it myself. I cleaned up the picture caption. I took the sentence that said "most scholars agree…" and restored the extremely similar sentence used previously; it had better, more, and properly formatted footnotes and its replacement was a real loss. I cut the material about the sources for Jesus, except for a little which I tried to include. Here is why. This article has two sentences on Jesus, and both have tons of refs from secondary sources – why talk more about the sources for Jesus than about Jesus? We don't talk about the sources for our information on Charlemagne. I don't think a discussion on primary sources is necessary, especially since the text was merely introductory (but we don’t talk about the texts, so why introduce them?). If the author wants to know all about the sources that our horde of referenced scholars use to determine the two sentences we give about Jesus, then they can look at the other articles, which we link to. Neither do we need to know that Jesus is an important person in Islam, nor that some theologians have a nebulous concept of "the Christ of faith", which in turn makes other theologians ill-tempered etc.; it’s a can of worms we and our two highly referenced statements need not open. I clipped the sentence that said "a small number of scholars and authors question the historical existence of Jesus". Now this is something we need more discussion on. I think it might could be worked in, but we have a problem. None of the scholars referenced are historians or biblical scholars. In my view, that makes it irrelevant to a historical article. In other words, if its not a view of historians then its not a view we need concern ourselves with - just like we don't concern ourselves with the historicity of the ascension (or even mention it). Other changes: the "origin of the word Christian" was duplicated, so I removed the duplicate, there may have been confusion because I reformatted it from its own section to an attachment to previous prose, since its two sentences. As for the section on early heresies, I kept the great majority of the content, though an edit summary will conceal this since I moved a paragraph around. The main point the new info added was the theories of competing contemporaneous orthodoxies in early Christianity, which is explicitly stated. The bible references to mentions of heresies was moved to a note, whilst the point was retained in the body text. I really think all these changes are good, and I hope we can move forward from here to areas that wholly lack text altogether. Lostcaesar 01:05, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Which areas are that? I thought I'd covered most of them. There is a lot of thinness between 313 and roughly 800 AD. I'm not sure what to add in that area. --Richard 01:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I wrote the "Lostcaesar's recent edits" section below before reading the above explanation. I'm OK with most of the changes and explanation except, as I explain below, for the basic assumption that all we need is two sentences on Jesus. I still think "Historicity of Jesus" deserves a sentence but we can continue to discuss that. I'm a little weirded out by the idea that historians uniformly accept the existence of Jesus but some theologians don't.

I have mixed feelings about discussing the "sources for Jesus". The rhetorical question "why talk more about the sources for Jesus than about Jesus" assumes that we will only say two sentences about Jesus. As I argue below, I think we should say a bit more (though not a lot) about Jesus. But, that notwithstanding, the point about discussing our sources for Jesus is that there is an argument that says we really don't have any "real historical" documents that attest to Jesus' existence. Except for a passing mention by Josephus, there are no Roman or Jewish documents that mention him. I think it is fair and NPOV to mention this point without passing judgment on it.

I also feel that we could revisit the Jewish persecution of the early church a little bit. I'm not sure that is well presented. --Richard 01:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

You might want to look at the article on anti-Judaism, where this is covered in passing. -- Kendrick7^talk 02:56, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lostcaesar's recent edits

Well, it was a bit unnerving to see text disappearing again but let us all assume good faith and work together to improve the article. I think the article is in better shape now than it was a couple of days ago and so we are moving forward.

I am a bit concerned about the loss of the Historicity of Jesus section but I figure we can discuss this issue and maybe, over time, find a way to restore the pooint in a way that is acceptable to Lostcaesar. While I think it is important to say something about this topic, this is not my major concern about the first two sections of this article.

I've not been happy with the "Jesus" and "Early Christianity" sections since I started editing this article but I wasn't sure what was missing which is why I worked on the rest of the article first. I'm starting to wrap my arms around the issue and I'd like to throw out some ideas for your consideration.

I feel like this is a history of Christianity without a history of Christ. While we cannot provide a detailed explanation of the life of Christ, I feel that we need to provide a thumbnail sketch of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as well as the history of the early church.

Given that we don't have space to retell the entire life of Christ or the entire history of the early Church, I've been struggling with what we should say in this article. I think I've figured out at least one principle that will help guide this decision.

At a minimum, the "Jesus" and "Early Christianity" sections should give the reader enough information to help him understand some of the events and trends that happen later in the history of Christianity.

I think we also need to say something about the resurrection and its role in salvation here. Without this, there can be no understanding of Christianity or its history. One sentence will do but there needs to be at least one sentence.

For example, in order to understand early Christian heresies, you have to know that the central Christian belief is that Christ is both God and Man. This, in the Christian view, makes Jesus very different from Buddha or Mohammed.

In order to understand apostolic succession, you need to know that there were Twelve Apostles. We wouldn't mention their names but we need to establish why apostolic succession is important.

In order to understand the filioque controversy, you have to understand that Christians are Trinitarian.

In order to understand the Reformation, you have to understand the concepts of salvation through grace, sola scriptura vs. church tradition, Christ alone vs. the communion of saints etc.

I don't propose to explain each of these concepts in detail. I do think we need to mention them in the appropriate places and then provide a link to the articles which explain them in detail.

I worry that we write as if the reader knows what Christianity is. I worry that the Christianity article is too detailed and technical. Someone commented on one of Christianity-related Talk Pages that the articles were too technical. I do think this is a failing of the Christianity articles. The other is that we assume too much knowledge on the part of the reader.

I don't propose to explain all of Christianity to the reader but we need to hit the highlights and provide links for further reading.

What do you think?

--Richard 01:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Richard I think you are dead on here and now I see what you were trying to do, but I still think there is a better way to go about it. As you pointed out, we simply cannot have a full discussion of the historicity of events in Jesus' life. Now I am beginning to see, though, why you wanted to talk of Christian views &c., and why you wanted to mention historicity, since you want to talk about the resurrection and yet feel the need to hedge such claims (if I interpret your concerns). But we cannot blow up the section on Jesus or go into Christian views in order to accomplish this because what we will have is another Jesus article or another Christianity article. Let me propse a different path, and see what you think. We can talk about the issues are they arise in necessity historically. Thus the papacy gets its first mention in late antiquity, even though we have to backtrack a little go do this. We could talk about apostolic succession in the section on the post apostolic church (indeed we do a little). That helps us sidestep the historicity issue. So we could say "the bishops authority derrived from the doctrine of apostolic sucession, which holds that they are the spiritual sucessors of the apostles whom Jesus appointed to govern the Church." That expresses the belief as soon as it is relevant without fussing with the historicity (for example one editor above found it necessary to cut even the mention that Jesus had apostles). Lets take the resurrection. Now this is tricky because, on the one hand, belief in the resurrection is the oldest doctine in the book (and we basically say this in the "worship of Jesus" section). But the theological articulartion of salvation developed. So we ought to be careful not to apply later theological articulation (say that of Luther) upon the apostolic age. But you are right that we need to talk about it right off the bat and perhaps in more depth than we do. This is something we can work towards, but we can do so in a way that avoids a long discussion about (current) Christian views or the historicity of the resurrection. And thus with the filioque we can mention what is needed when the controversy arises. And on it goes. Now if I were writting this as a self-published text I would have the very first sentence say "Jesus is the Word of God Incarnate", but as is the nature of such colloborative work we do not have such luxuries and must work carefully; to just speak frankly, if we go down the road you are wanted to go what will happen (as my experience tells) is that the article will become either a confused mess of conflicting sentences or a muddle of meangless statments full of qualifiers and ammendments, or perhaps become a shrine to scepticism. Lostcaesar 01:25, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why Jesus was crucified

I'm concerned about this sentence:

According to these, his execution was done at the instigation of the Jewish authorities who considered his teachings blasphemous: "This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God." (John 5:18)

This seems like the old "blood libel" that blames Jesus' crucifixion on the Jews. I fully understand that this is based on Scripture and that this linkage is more or less accepted by Christians. However, my concern here is what value does this statement add to the section? Why focus on this? And why provide scriptural support for this statement and not any of the others in this section?

We state why the Jews were seeking the death of Christ but we don't mention why Pilate sentenced Him. (because of the charge of sedition against the Roman Empire)

--Richard 01:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Because this way we mention the belief that Jesus taught he was God, explaining his execution and subsequent Christian conflict with Jewish authorities. Lostcaesar 01:27, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sections that need more prose

Answering my own question, the sections that need the most prose are:

• Early Medieval Church (476-800)

• Age of Exploration

• Age of Reason

The "Age of Exploration" section would be a great place to add something about missionaries.

--Richard 04:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The high middle ages needs some too. We talk of the crusades and schism, but not the investiture contest or the rise of the papal monarchy. When we leave the papacy in antiquity it is the prime see but still a servant of the emperor (thats oversimplification but you get the idea). We need to get to Innocent III and all the European kings sworn in fealty to him. Lostcaesar 09:11, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Check out History of the Papacy. I will try to work on this topic since I am responsible for almost all of the text that is in that article. However, feel free to copy over stuff if you are so motivated. I may not have much time for this in the next couple of days. --Richard 06:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, we need to fix the biblical canon section. Right now it doesn't get the point across that the canon was basically set in antiquity. Lostcaesar 09:24, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Once again, if you're motivated to do this, go for it. Otherwise, I'll try to get to it later this week. --Richard 06:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History of the World, Part I

Have y'all considered splitting this article up just temporally? -- Kendrick7^talk 16:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC) i'm more of an idea rat

It might be a good idea; I think when we get all the information on the page we can determine legnth, whether things should be purged, or whether we should make the article into multile parts or whatnot. Lostcaesar 16:48, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Along the same lines as Lostcaesar's comment, I have mixed feelings. I would prefer that we get to a point where we feel comfortable that we have got a stable outline with all major topics dealt with before splitting it up. The major reason for this is that we want to be sure that new material won't make us feel like we should change the basic top-level section outline. I think we're in pretty good shape up to the Reformation but after the Reformation, things are a little fuzzy right now. (see my comment on "Organization of this article" below. We're getting close so let's keep plugging away and revisit this question in a week or two. --Richard 17:34, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

No, on second thought, I just realized something that makes splitting this article up less straightforward than I had originally thought. THe problem is that, if we do split this article up, we have to start asking what value some of the subsidiary articles would add. After all, there already are articles on Early Christianity, the Reformation, the Crusades, the Papacy, the History of the Papacy, Revivalism, etc. If we do split this article up, we will need an organizational scheme that encompasses very broad topics like History of Protestantism, History of the medieval Christian church or History of the Christian church during the Renaissance. --Richard 17:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Organization of this article

Up to the Reformation, the section structure seems pretty good. After the Reformation, we move away from non-overlapping, consecutive time periods to something that describes important facets of Christian history. This is my doing but I think we should revisit it and ask if this is appropriate. --Richard 17:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I have attempted to work through some of the material and make it more concise, for length issues and to remove redunancies - so far this is all pre renaissance material.Lostcaesar 09:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Question 1: Is it confusing to the reader to shift from non-overlapping, consecutive time periods to time periods which overlap and are non-consecutive?

I don't think it is overly confusing but I wanted to surface the question for us to consider. --Richard 17:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

It is the sort of thing that is not confusing if one already knows the basic history, but is really confusing if one does not. We cannot wholly avoid this but I think we should really try to, and stick with a very chronological approach. We will have to do some overlap and backtracking, but just keep the novice reader in mind. Wiki is for school kids and adults who want an overview of something they don't know anything about.Lostcaesar 09:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Question 2: Should we consider using overlapping and non-consecutive time periods throughout the article starting from the life of Jesus?

I have mixed feelings here. Topics like the Papacy, monasticism, the Byzantine empire and the Crusades span several of the time periods in the current sections so they could have their own sections. However, I don't think we need to do that just yet. In particular, since the History of the Papacy is tightly related to the History of the Church prior to the Reformation, I think it would be redundant and confusing to split it out as a separate section. --Richard 17:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I say we discuss things when they come up. I think it is ok to talk of an antique, medieval, and post-reformation papacy in three seperate sections. Monasticism can be mentioned in antiquity then left until we talk of the cluniac or benedictine or cistercian(sp?) reforms in the middle ages and the dissolution of the monasteries in england in the reformation, &c.Lostcaesar 09:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Question 3: What are the right major sections to have in the post-Reformation part of the article?

I think we have some good sections like Revivalism but the division into sections on the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries seems a bit arbitrary to me. --Richard 17:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I agree; revivalism is good, modernism-liberalism and fundamentalism would be their own sections; we should talk about the anticlericalism of the spanish civil war, the french revolution, and the hostility of the communist regime. Lostcaesar 09:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Papacy and primacy

This section has some problems with it, the most serious of which is the fact that the narrative is in a "Roman Catholic" voice.

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome and the office is the "papacy".

Look at this section from a Protestant perspective. The Pope is the Roman Catholic bishop of Rome.

There is also a problem with discussing the origins of the Papacy in Early Christianity/Imperial Roman Christianity using the verb "is". The practice of deferring to the Bishop of Rome started before the title "Pope" was used. The Pope was head of the Christian church until the Great East-West Schism after which he became head of the Western church. After the Reformation, he became head of the Roman Catholic Church (or Catholic Church, if you prefer).

I'm not arguing that we have to pack all this into the "Papacy and Primacy" section but we do need to be careful to describe what happened and when.

I think I may have been responsible for copying this text from the Pope article or the History of the Papacy article and, as such, suffers from not having been written for the purposes of this article.

On further reflection, I am probably not responsible for the current text. It's not from the History of the Papacy as I had originally thought.--Richard 10:27, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

We probably need a rewrite.

But I still think the section needs some rewriting. See my explanation below. --Richard 10:27, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

--Richard 07:59, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with this analysis. I am unclear exactly what your objections are. I think you are hesitant to use the word "pope" to describe the Bishop of Rome since the actual word papa developed and only became synonymous with the Bishop of Rome at a given historical point. But the sentence in question is simply defining terminology. The Pope is the Bishop of Rome and the office is called the papacy – that's what the words mean. Imagine a reader who knew nothing about this – we would need to explain our words. And I don't think they are controversial. Even from a Reformed perspective, where the episcopate is wholly rejected, this sentence is still true. Maybe I don't exactly understand the objection, but it seems to me that when the word "pope" is used it is for the Bishop of Rome, and it is quite standard in historical texts to call Leo, Damasus, &c. "popes". I think that once it is historically certain that we have a primacy (of some type) for the Bishop of Rome then we may call him "pope".

When we talk about the East-West schism we discuss the attitudes toward the Bishop of Rome in the East, and when we talk about the Reformation we can do the same. When we talk about Antiquity we should describe the Bishop of Rome as he was in antiquity (which we do). I suppose your objection is that the term "pope" carries different connotations amongst different groups in our post-schism-reformation world; but it still means the Bishop of Rome (even if you don't think the episcopate was a divine institution), and the purpose of the section is to place the office in its given historical context. Thus I think we should talk about the papacy in Antiquity, in the High Middle Ages, and post-Reformation as three specific things. Lostcaesar 09:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... I've re-read the current text and perhaps my judgment was a bit hasty. Let me try again to explain my concerns.

My first objection is that to simply say "the Pope is the Bishop of Rome" is too naked a statement. The Pope article says "The Pope is the bishop of Rome and the head of the Roman Catholic Church". It is necessary to add the second clause for the same reasons that we cannot say simply "the Archbishop of Canterbury is the Bishop of Canterbury (or of England)". We must add that he is the head of the Church of England (uh, or maybe the Queen is, my knowledge is weak here).

My second objection which has been tempered by rereading the current text is simply that I would prefer to synopsize the historical development of the concept of the Papacy. Read the first two sections of the History of the Papacy article ("Origin of the Papacy" and "Primacy of Rome") to see how I think it should be treated. Of course, we cannot include that much detail in this article but a summary of those two sections is what I would like to see here.

In place of a summary along the lines of what I just described, the current text simply says "The origins of this concept are historically obscure." This may be true but it glosses over the development of the papacy and its assertions of primacy that are discussed in the first two sections of the History of the Papacy.

I like this sentence which is the first sentence of the "Western Imperial Era 395-476" section of the History of the Papacy article.

By the fifth century, the bishop of Rome began to claim his supremacy over all other bishops, and some church fathers also made this claim for him.

This sentence makes it clear that the Papacy did not simply spring into being as a fully developed concept from the days of St. Peter. Nor was it even a clearly defined concept when Christianity became the official religon of the Christian empire. Glossing over the historical development of the papacy is, IMO, not a good idea.

BTW, what is this about "moving to Milan and then Ravenna"? This is a hole in my knowledge. Please educate me.

The argument that I've read is that the shift of secular power to Constantinople created the necessity and the opportunity for the Pope to assert his own power in the West.

--Richard 10:27, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Even though Constantine moved the imperial capital to the shores of Hellespoint, there would still be emperors in the West located in Rome. Indeed, there are very few times after Constantine where there is not an emperor in the West as well as the East (I think for a couple years under Constantius and maybe one under Theodosius there was only one emperor, but that's it). However, barbarian pressure in the West necessitated the transfer of the western capital from Rome (thereafter sacked in 410 and ransacked in 455) closer to the borderlands and thus the legions (Milan - I think this was sort of "off and on" and unofficial, not sure) and then, after total military collapse, safely behind the swamps of Ravenna (402 - even this did not stop Odoacher). Before this, the West still had an emperor in Rome who was at least equal (theoretically if not practically) to the other Emperor seated in Constantinople, and Rome could maintain its ancient sense of prestige.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual head of the Church of England, but he has no actual authority over his fellow bishops, and, according to the thirty nine articles, "all bishops are subject to princes" – though today seculars lords, the Queen included, stay out of ecclesiastical affairs (and everything else but the tabloids, it seems).

As for the points, I need to reflect on them. The Pope, even in contemporary language, is more than just the head of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox see him as the Patriarch of the West and in some sense as the Preeminent Petrine See (even if just a matter of honor and dignity – the Orthodox are very particular about honor and dignity). Eastern Rite Catholics don't like the term "Roman Catholic Church" very much, at least not in the aforementioned sense, and accept all the papal claims of authority. Anglo-Catholics likewise see the Pope as preeminent, fluctuating somewhere between Eastern Rite and Orthodox positions. Even Anglicans and Lutherans manage mixed feelings on the place of the Bishop of Rome in the Church. Reformed, of course, reject the episcopate altogether so for them the whole thing is a bit moot. I do understand your point, be we have very tricky concepts and language here.

When you talk about the "historical development of the concept of the Papacy", I am not sure exactly what you mean – could you elaborate? The way the article does things now is it starts in antiquity, at a point when there is basic agreement on what everyone considered the Bishop of Rome to especially be; yet it does give some commentary on the primacy of Rome before this. There is dispute on more ancient matters, of course, and I don't know if we can really get into the letters of Clement and Ignatius. I think it is fair to call these matters obscure, and I am worried that anything more would result in a debated topic and thus the inclusion of many poitns of view which would in turn inflate the section needlessly. There are many, many articles that discuss the subject in depth.

"By the fifth century, the bishop of Rome began to claim his supremacy over all other bishops…" - I don’t know about this. What does it mean to "claim his supremacy"? That he was an appellate authority in ecclesiastical disputes (he may have been claiming this long before), that he was the successor of Peter, head of the Apostles (undisputed at the time and a very ancient claim), that he could depose bishops of other important sees (claimed but not without much resistance), that he was the monarch of the church (certainly not claimed at the time)??? I am not saying the current text is perfect by any means, and it certainly does sidestep a lot, but I am unclear how to change this. Lostcaesar 11:25, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Most important traditions to emerge from the Reformation

A previous version of the article stated that:

The four most important traditions to emerge directly from the Reformation were the Lutheran tradition, the Reformed/Calvinist/Presbyterian tradition, the Anabaptist tradition, and the Anglican tradition. Subsequent Protestant traditions generally trace their roots back to these initial four schools of the Reformation.

The current version after Lostcaesar's recent edits states that:

The three most important traditions to emerge directly from the Protestant Reformation were the Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist, Presbyterian, etc.), and Anglican traditions, though the latter group identifies as both "Reformed" and "Catholic", and some subgroups reject the classification as "Protestant".

Lostcaesar, can you explain why you dropped the Anabaptists from the sentence?

--Richard 04:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Because its not clear that modern baptists or any other major group are descended from anabaptists. Lostcaesar 07:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've done some reading (on Wikipedia) about Anabaptists and Baptists and I see your point. Thanks for the explanation. --Richard 23:15, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ministry of Jesus and expansion (c. 1 – 312)

The following text is taken from History of the Catholic Church. I think it does a good job of describing the life of Christ. I propose we insert it or a trimmed-down version of it into the "Life of Jesus" section.

Christianity is based on the person and teachings of Jesus as described in the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These describe Jesus as an observant Jewish carpenter from the region of Galilee, who was both the promised Messiah or anointed one (Christos in Greek, giving rise to the title Jesus Christ) and son of God, in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. Catholicism thus considers itself a successor religion to Judaism with the Christian God and the God of the Jews seen as one and the same.

According to the four Gospels, when Jesus was about thirty years of age (Luke 3:23), he left the town of Nazareth and began a ministry of preaching and miraculous healing. In his preaching, he called for repentance (Mark 1:15), presenting God as a loving Father always ready to forgive. He also called on people to imitate the goodness and love of God towards all. He gained a following of people who saw him as a Rabbi and in some cases wondered if he could be the Messiah; but he aroused opposition from the religious leadership, who saw his teaching as contrary to traditional doctrine and practice, and felt that his hints about his own personal identity were blasphemous.

The Gospels give a detailed account of Jesus' final days, when, probably in his mid-thirties, Jesus was arrested by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem and charged with blasphemy. To the Sanhedrin he declared himself the Messiah, and they persuaded the authorities of the Roman Empire, who ruled the region as Iudaea Province, to sentence him to death, after which he was scourged, beaten, and crucified. The Passion of Christ, thus recounted in the Gospels, tells of the events of Good Friday (beginning on what would now be considered the evening of the day before), which led up to Easter, when, according to the New Testament account, Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples.

To Simon Peter, Jesus had earlier stated that he would entrust to him the keys to Heaven and that upon the "rock" (Latin Petrus) of Peter he would found his Church. The Catholic Church sees its history as beginning at this point, with the Pope as the successor of Saint Peter. The controversy between Rome and the other apostolic churches over what has been called the Petrine Doctrine is one of several doctrinal controversies that continues to divide the eastern and western churches.

--Richard 04:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Christianity, or at least especially Catholicism and Orthodoxy, is not exactly based on the person and teachings of Jesus as told in the four Gospels. It is based on the revelation of Jesus Christ as present in scripture (new and old testaments) and (sacred) tradition.

The gospels describe Jesus as the Son of God, equal to the Father and sent by him so that, by becoming incarnate and thus by his life, death, and resurrection, mankind might be reconciled to God. The above sections go on about Messiahship a good deal and are concerning with essentially trivialities like his age at ministry or his inherited trade. In his ministry he didn't just preach the love of God and the importance of repentance. He spoke of the looming end of the world, the fires of Hell, the destruction of the temple, the coming persecutions, the need to "be perfect", the indissolubility of marriage, &c. His miracles were not just healings and exorcisms, he raised several people from the dead, calmed thunderstorms, cursed a tree, and was transfigured. The entire above passage seems to cut the meat out of the gospels, must like what biblical scholars are wont to do in their search for the kerugma. Lastly, the biblical evidence for the Petrine ministry is more than Matthew 16, and whatever the case if we are going in that direction then we need to mention the birth of the Church in Acts 2.

So, I am not trying to be negative about your idea; rather, I think the above paragraphs are insufficient. Lostcaesar 07:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I've been trying to be conservative in editing the text you wrote since you seemed to have strong opinions about it. Kendrick7 has been rather more bold in making edits. While I might have a quibble here and there, I am generally pleased with the recent edits. Do you like what he/she has done? If not, why not? I hope that the three of us can work together to complete and improve this article. --Richard 22:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Some of the changes I liked and some I thought had problems, but I didn't think of myself as undoing his edits. Some text was lost that needed to go back I thought, and some stuff was moved that seemed odd, but a good deal of his work I left untouched and other things I worked with. Really, I didn't see myself as working with any one person's edits but just looking at a bunch of changes that happened and tweaking them. Your wholesale rv is hard to understand given those points. I will just gloss my changes. I readded the definition of the topic in the intro which had been lost. Likewise I readded the sentence explaining that Early Christianity may be divided into the Apostolic and post-Apostolic Church. I took out the sentence about "antinomian" sense teh technical word doesn't wholly fit the context. There were some minor rewordings, for example for some reason he took out "edition" when describing the LXX - but it was important because it was an edition far more than as a translation. The only major rewordings were these. I changed: "Christianity is based on the belief that Jesus is the Christ, or messiah and thus on his teachings." to the more accurate: "Christianity is the monotheistic religion which considers itself based on the revelation of Jesus Christ." Christianity has a special understanding of "Messiah" far different than that of Judaism, and its important because he was God incarnate revealing the Father. The earlier sentence sounded like Christians think Jesus was a smart guy with some good teachings and, oh yeah, he was the "messiah" (whatever that means). I also changed, "The existence and historical details of Jesus's life are not verifiable through independent sources, though scholars generally agree on a few basic points." Its obscure and possibly false, what does it mean "not verifiable through independant sources"? Whatever the case that is an unsupported judgement that, even worse, is not in accord with the sources that follow, which say instead: "Though the life of Jesus is a matter of academic debate, biblical scholars and historians generally agree on the following basic points". We cannot toy with souces. Whatever the case, I must say I think you were wrong to characterize my edits as directed at undoing anyone's work, since I carefully preserved much of his contribution; thus, need some specific points about the matters at hand. Lostcaesar 08:10, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Ouch. OK, my apologies. Perhaps I failed to assume good faith. I admit that I scanned the diff quickly and it looked like a wholesale reversion. I further admit that I was influenced negatively by Lcnj's comment below and to which I reacted somewhat viscerally. I am going to revert my revert of what I thought was your reversion of Kendrick7's edits and ask him/her to raise any points that he/she disagrees with.

For what it's worth, here's my opinion on the points that you raised

1)I agree with you about the Apostolic and post-Apostolic church. This is an important distinction.

2)I kind of agree with the "based on the revelation" of Jesus except that this means little to those who are not already familiar with Christianity. I think further explanation is needed for the uninformed reader and, yes, it is further explained in the next section so the debate is whether there is enough explanation in the introduction.

3)"Independent sources" - meaning documents other than Christian sacred texts; other than Josephus, there's no mention of Jesus in any "independent" documents from the period. This is enough of a charge that, among others, Christian apologist Lee Strobel addresses it in "The Case for Christ". The historicity issue is so bad that it is not even easy to place Pontius Pilate in Judaea at the time of the crucifixion.

--Richard 08:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I must apologize myself, because I made the mistake of making all the changes in one edit, so it looked as if they were more significant than they were, and it also kept me from properly explaining them, which is indeed my fault. On to the points. On (1) we agree. On (2) you are right, it is vague and thus guilty of the same problem as the previous sentence. We may well wish to explain this in the intro better, but I do think that we will really only be able to cover it minimally, since it is discussed later here and since, of course, there is a whole article on Christianity. (3) This is tricky. I will have to explain in some depth.

The word "independent" is being used in a rather strict sense here, which is itself ok but ought at least be defined. The Christian sources have an independence all their own. John is independent of the synoptics, each synoptic, though related, is itself distinct, and we can even say that Luke is only indirectly related to Matthew through Mark, since Luke seems not to have known the former text. The Letters of Paul are independent of all these. Furthermore, the texts quote creeds and hymns which are themselves independent. Lastly, a couple gnostic texts, problematic as they are (and they are very historically problematic), do at least point to Jesus as a real person. They are all Christian sources, of course, but it illustrates the point that we have to at least clarify what "independent" means. However, even in the clarified sense, there is Josephus, who is of course independent, and very few scholars reject entirely both of his mentionings of Jesus (most reject parts, but few all). The real point he, however, is that we have walked into a messy area without sources. I could name quite a few biblical scholars who do think that the existence of Jesus is independently verified by Josephus. So we have a problem with the factuality of the unequivocal claim. Moreover, the problem here, really, is that historians don't fret about this sort of "independence". Historians are wholly used to having only one source, with its biases and the like, mentioning a set of historical events. Still, historians are able to build knowledge of such things as Agricola's conquest of Britain (pace Tacitus) or early Anglo-Saxon England (pace Bede) and the like. In short, to say that a given historical figure is only mediated by biased sources and thus is unknowable is, historically speaking, unjustified. Since we don't have space to explain this dimension of historical investigation, we run a significant risk of misinforming the reader via supposition and inference.

Let me conclude by saying what a pleasure it is to work with an editor who operates in the spirit of collegiality, and that I only hope I can live up to the example. Lostcaesar 10:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Life of Jesus

The last sentence of this section reads as follows:

According to these, part of the cause for animosity between Jesus and the Jewish authorities was that his teachings were considered blasphemous: "This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God." (John 5:18); whatever the case, this would clearly be a problem for the Early Church.

What is the intent of the last clause "whatever the case, this would clearly be a problem for the Early Church."

This seems to be a new addition and it seems unclear and a little bit off the point.

--Richard 15:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I removed this para; it didn't make a lot of sense in context with the rest of the section. -- Kendrick7^talk 21:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, actually you removed more than the phrase that I was questioning but that's OK with me because I never liked the paragraph anyway. However, Lostcaesar seems to think it is important and I expect he will re-explain his rationale for writing that paragraph. --Richard 07:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Lostcaesar and I am happy to see the re-inclusion of such pertinent details. No editor should remove the contributions of other editors in this article, without first disputing such contribution and obtaining consensus. Lcnj 07:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Nonsense. Such a sentiment goes against the Wikipedia principle of being bold. If you look at the edit history, Lostcaesar has been "mercilessly editing" my text and removing much of it without first discussing it here. For the most part, I have agreed that his text was an improvement on mine and accepted it without discussion. In a few cases, I had concerns about his text and I raised them here on this Talk Page. In some cases, I understood and accepted his rationale. In others, I disagreed with him but, since he seemed to feel more strongly about it than I did, I was unwilling to go "toe-to-toe" with him.

Kendrick7 has now entered the collaboration and has made further "improvements" to the article. Some of them address the issues that I raised. In general, I think Kendrick7's edits improve Lostcaesar's text although I can imagine that there is room to debate specific issues.

If Lostcaesar is dissatisfied with Kendrick7's edits, it is incumbent on him to discuss those edits with Kendrick7. Nobody owns this article. Not me, not Lostcaesar and not Kendrick7.

--Richard 07:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, Richard, if you notice when I went through recent edits, some of which were Kendrick's, I respected his removal and did not re-add the text, since we are talking about it. So I don't understand your above comments.

I was responding to Lcnj's comments which I think were off-base.

However, I apologize once again for judging your recent edits too harshly and too quickly. Part of my rash reaction was probably based on coming to this article with a lousy mood driven by stuff going on with other articles. I may have been predisposed to see conflict and bad behavior where there was none. --Richard 08:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

That aside, the point of the sentence is to express the following: (1) Christians said that Jesus died because he claimed to be God and the Jewish authorities thought this blasphemous, and (2) The Early Church likewise suffered from the same tension with the Jewish authorities because of their claims about Jesus' divinity. Maybe there is a better way to say those points, and maybe they ought not be said, but I think the above sentence is pointing in the right directions. Lostcaesar 08:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the point you are trying to make is worth making especially now that I understand your explanation of the end of the sentence. Here are the things I don't like about the specific sentence in which you try to make the point.

First, this article only quotes Scripture twice and this sentence is one of them. In this case, the use of Scripture seems a bit stilted and might work better if we only cited the passage reference rather than quoting the actual text.

Second, the word "clearly" is unnecessary and begs the questions "Why is it clear?" or "Who said it was unclear?"

Third, I would say something on the order of "this opposition from the Jewish leadership would result in persecution of the early Christians". This makes it clear what problems the early church faced.

Fourth, I don't like the use of the phrase "whatever the case", especially not in the middle of a long sentence. I think you are trying to say "whether or not Jesus was actually guilty of blasphemy, these charges would continue to be the basis of Jewish persecution of the early Christian church" or "although Christians did not believe Jesus was guilty of blasphemy, these charges etc..."

In general, I think this sentence is one in which it helps to spell out what you mean to say rather than to write it too tightly and obscure its meaning to the average reader.

--Richard 08:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think you are right on all four points. If you wish to make the changes, I would encourage that. Lostcaesar 10:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Claim 1 is the theological Anti-Jewish view, it should not be stated without the overwhelming historical view that Jesus was crucified by Pilate for sedition, i.e. claiming or not denying to be King of the Jews and the temple incident. Claim 2 is false, the Early Church was not prosecuted for claiming Jesus to be God, it was prosecuted for breaking the law (Antinomianism), for claiming that Jesus was a crucified, dead and resurrected Messiah, a notion foreign to Judaism, and for claiming Resurrection of the dead which was rejected by the Sadducees. It should also be pointed out that the lead prosecutor was Paul of Tarsus. 68.123.64.52 19:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] World's largest religion

It would be useful to know when or during which epochs Christianity is the world's largest religion. I suspect this has been continuously true since ~500AD, though the current lead makes it sound like this didn't become the case until recently, or at least after the start of the Age of exploration. My last version tried to make this lest temporal and ambiguous. -- Kendrick7^talk 23:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Thats a good points I hadn't thought of. I don't know when it became the world's largest religion. I would have thought at the age of exploration. I suppose it partially depends on the population and religious constitution of China, perhaps the only competator to Christendom in this regard. Lostcaesar 08:19, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Private penitence" section seems out of place in this article

I've been musing on a concern about the scope of this article for some time. The recent insertion of the "Private penitence" section has helped to sharpen my thinking. It seems out of place in this article because it is the only discussion of actual Christian practice. And yet, it seems reasonable that the "History of Christianity" could cover the history of Christian rites, liturgy and practice. The problem is that doing so would lengthen an already long article and would almost certainly cause the article to lose focus.

From a more general perspective, it seems to me that when we say "History of Christianity", we can mean many things. I have identified a few different subtopics that might be better treated in separate articles.

First, I think this article should focus on the geographical and political evolution of the various Christian churches and denominations as well aa their interaction with external entities, most notably governments and rulers but also other religions. This is primarily an institutional view of Christianity. If we agree on this definition of scope, we might consider changing the article title to "History of the Christian church", emphasizing "church" as the institutional aspect of the Christian religion.

I think there could be a separate article titled "History of Christian theology" which would discuss the historical development of various doctrines such as the dual nature of Christ, the Trinity, various heresies, etc. This article would be a theological view of Christianity.

There could also be an article on "History of Christian rites and practices" that could discuss the historical development of Christian worship liturgy, sacraments and religious practice. This article would be the place for the "Private penitence" section.

Being bold, I'm going to remove "Private penitence" from this article but I won't create History of Christian rites and practices yet as it would look like a very silly stub if it only had "Private penitence" in it.

--Richard 16:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I might try and work a sentence in about it under Irish missionaries, though, if that's ok. Lostcaesar 16:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you must, I suppose I can tolerate it but I wouldn't think it to be the most important thing to mention even there. I'm more interested in the assertion that Thomas Cahill makes that the Irish, especially the Irish monks, "saved" Western civilization in the "Dark Ages". What do you think of his theory? Seems to me that this would be a much more important concept to present in this article. --Richard 17:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

My opinion of Cahill's theory is that he is wrong becuase he ignores the scholarship in Visigothic Spain (Isidore of Seville), Italy (Cassiodorus), Anglo-Saxon England (Theodore's School, also Monkwearmouth-Jarrow), Theodoric's Langobard Northern Italy, and southern Gaul (Gregory of Tours). I think it is based on a dated treatment of scholarship among the barbarians. Hey, now that I think of it, maybe we should put some of this in the article under the sections about barbarian conversion. Lostcaesar 17:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] False statement

This statement is false:

"What is clear is that between 367-405 the New Testament, as it stands today, was fixed (perhaps by a synod of Pope Damasus I) and, together with the Septuagint books, became the undisputed biblical canon until the Protestant Reformation."

See Biblical canon for details. 68.123.64.52 19:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

What is false about it? Lostcaesar 19:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Why are there Orthodox Churches that have different cannons, and why where there canon lists and biblical manuscripts that date after the 5th century that include non-canonical works as if they were canonical? -Andrew c 03:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I tightened up the section. Hopefully the new ending allays some of your concerns. -- Kendrick7^talk 05:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I put in some subtle clarifiers and added details that the previous wording lacked. We might want a tweak here or there but we need more details, for example on when those variant canons appeared, and how prevelant they are / were. Lostcaesar 08:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks like it bears repeating, see Biblical canon for details. 75.0.5.158 08:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I have been told that a sentence I added was "bogus" and "not at all supported by the ref". I think this called for me to defend myself. The added sentence read:

What is clear is that, between 367-405 the New Testament, as it stands today, was fixed and, together with the Septuagint books, would become the accepted biblical canon for Latin and then Greek Christendom until the Protestant Reformation.[ref]Catholic Encyclopedia, Canon of the New Testament[ref]

Now I don't think this sentence is perfect, but it certainly is not bogus and certainly is supported by the ref, which reads, in the section called The Period of Fixation (A.D. 367-405):

So at the close of the first decade of the fifth century the entire Western Church was in possession of the full Canon of the New Testament. In the East, where, with the exception of the Edessene Syrian Church, approximate completeness had long obtained without the aid of formal enactments, opinions were still somewhat divided on the Apocalypse. But for the Catholic Church as a whole the content of the New Testament was definitely fixed, and the discussion closed.

I insist that my interlocutor assume good faith and also would request that he actually read the source quoted before attacking my integrity. As for the above comment, wikipedia articles do not cite other wikipedia articles as sources as express policy. Lostcaesar 09:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The Catholic Church is not the only Christian Church. 75.0.5.158 09:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

And, if you want the details, the standard reference for the NT is: Metzger, Bruce. Canon of the NT ISBN 978-0-19-826180-3 75.0.5.158 09:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

And, since you refuse to read Biblical canon, I give you one referenced example from it that should help you see the problem:

Nicephorus: the Patriarch of Jerusalem, 806-815, in a Stichometria [1] appended to the end of his Chronography rejected Esther, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Maccabees, Psalms of Solomon, Enoch, Didache, Barnabas, Hermas, Clement, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of the Hebrews, 3rd Corinthians, Acts of Paul, Revelation, Apocalypse of Peter.

75.0.5.158 09:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

So you have nothing to say about your accusation? As I wish not to encourage your patronizing, I will avoid replying to the (otherwise irrelevant) comments above until you have something to say for yourself concerning your editorial remarks. I find it wholly ironic that you here discount the source, whilst, in justification of removing the sentence, you expressly used that very same source! Lostcaesar 09:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Calm down. I don't discount the source, here the Catholic Encyclopedia. My simple claim is that the NT canon was not fixed for all of Christendom in the period 367-405, and the Nicephorus cite is proof of that claim. In addition I draw your attention to: According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Canon of the New Testament: "The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council." 75.0.5.158 09:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

You claimed that the sentence was "bogus" and "not supported by the ref at all". But I can get over this without issue so long as you have no desire to stand behind the claim. Now, as for the sentence, as I said I don't think it is perfect. But it does correctly state that the canon was fixed at that time. It does not exactly claim universal and immediate acceptance of this canon. But it is clear by evidence of the Latin Fathers in the fifth century that, for the West, the canon was a done deal, without question until the Reformation. In the East, the situation may or may not have been more fluid but the one acceptable source we have before us says that, besides revelation, the Greek Church had already accepted the standard canon. The Stoichiometria is not indicative of the position of the Greek Church nor do I see how it applies to the matter of the canon since it is merely a line numbering of verses in certain texts that Nicephorus attached to his Chronicle, and whatever the case its use is original research without secondary citation. I am open to clarifying the sentence as sources become available, but the point should be made that a standard canon was by and large accepted everywhere in the fifth century.

As for the matter of Damasus's synod, I find your change of "especially" to "only" fraught with problems. Even if the antiquity of the Decretum is rejected (and not all do so) the issue of the canon could still well have been handled by Damasus at the said time, which is corroborated by the canon of the Vulgate (Jerome's humanism aside) and the wholesale acceptance of the canon in the fifth century Latin West.

The quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia about the Council of Trent is only referring to dogmatic definition and in that sense it is correct but highly misleading. The Immaculate Conception was only dogmatically defined a short while ago, but its universal acceptance obviously predates its dogmatic definition. Lostcaesar 10:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Let me make it simple. Your claim: "a standard canon was by and large accepted everywhere in the fifth century" is false, plain and simple. Read the references provided for details if you are truly interested. 75.0.5.158 10:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry my friend, but its your responsibility to provide a reference to support your claim, as I have provided one to support the above sentence. I am not here to argue. I am here to provide correct information. You may be right. But all I have to go on, besides your opinion and personal conviction, is a source that contradicts you. I would like more sources to go on, but you give no quotations or any otherwise usable text. I need you to be academic here. Lostcaesar 11:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you need help parsing your reference:

"In the East, where, with the exception of the Edessene Syrian Church, approximate completeness had long obtained without the aid of formal enactments, opinions were still somewhat divided on the Apocalypse. But for the Catholic Church as a whole the content of the New Testament was definitely fixed, and the discussion closed."

Catholic Church = Roman Catholicism

Apocalypse = Book of Revelation

In the East = Eastern Roman Empire

Edessene Syrian Church = Peshitta (excludes 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude, Revelation)

Also, no mention is made of the Ethiopian Orthodox, but little may have been known of Ethiopia in the West when the Catholic Encyclopedia was written. In addition, Third Epistle to the Corinthians held some status in Armenian Orthodoxy for some time. Also worth a mention is Epistle to the Laodiceans.

See Biblical canon for details. 75.14.210.149 23:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

You are the one who mistook the reference, since you failed to understand the difference between "fixation" of the canon and "dogmatic definition" of the canon. Again, you mistake the article's terminology, confusing "Catholic Church" with (anachronistically) the "Roman" Catholic Church, though in the article Catholic Church clearly refers to the then undivided Latin and Greek Christendom of Antiquity. This is because you fail to actually read the text. For what it's worth all your referring to the Biblical Canon article does is insist that we make the same mistakes it does. Your thoroughly patronizing attitude and unwillingness to assume good faith are forgivable, but your inability to provide appropriate sources for your assertions puts us in the difficult position here of having little room to go forward. Though I am under no obligation I will refrain from adding the sentence so long as it only has the Catholic Encyclopedia article supporting it, though there is no reason why I should other than my desire to be courteous to your concerns. But unless you actually contribute to the academic process here I will be unable to take your concerns into further consideration when I update the section with more sources. Lostcaesar 23:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Obviously, this section needs to be a summary of what is in Biblical cannon; we can't go into too much detail about the Diatessaron or whatever. -- Kendrick7^talk 23:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disputing the addition of "their God" instead of "God"

I am not sure why would anyone add "their God" instead of "God". I dispute such addition. This is an article about Christianity and Christianity is one of God's religions. Their no need to isolate Christians by implying that they have "their God". Please discuss here and let consensus be reached. Lcnj 22:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Strong support for just "God" not "their God". Lcnj 22:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Which is why I had originally reworded it thus. Presupposing the existence of the Christian God here is POV. I'd be perfectly happy to go back to linking out to holy books instead and let another article worry about POV issues. -- Kendrick7^talk 22:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand how the current text presupposes the existence of the Christian God or how the new text does not. Lostcaesar 23:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

You need to clarify that this is talking about a particular god. You could also say "divinely inspired". -- Kendrick7^talk 23:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

So you would be ok with it saying "regarded as divinely inspired" instead of "regarded as inspired by God"? Lostcaesar 23:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

For the record, the problem with "holy books" is that Christians have lots of holy books besides the bible (e.g. hagiography = lit. holy writings). Lostcaesar 23:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Divinely inspired is ok. -- Kendrick7^talk 00:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

ok sounds good. Lostcaesar 00:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 20th C section gone?

Revivalism links (under 'See also') to this page as "History of Christianity#20th Century and Beyond" but there doesn't appear to be anything here along those lines? Natebailey 13:06, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

There has been a lot of restructuring, and the revivalism material is its own category (Revivalism 1720-1906). Lostcaesar 17:14, 25 February 2007 (UTC)