Talk:Christ myth theory/Archive 22

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R. H. Charles

Removed: During the early twentieth century, R. H. Charles (archdeacon of Westminster from 1919 until his death in 1931) showed that some sayings of Jesus were borrowed from the literature of intertestamental pseudepigrapha and produced parallels. R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of The Old Testament (2 volumes, Oxford University Press, 1913). ..... what is this doing in the lede? Nothing in R H Charles supports suggests no historical Jesus, he only noted, like others before him, that some of the NT material draws on non-OT sources. And? This belongs in an article on the NT, has nothing to do with historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:34, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Too long

And here is another gleaming example of how the crotchets and sensibilities of the average internet-addicted Wikipedia passioné leave readers with a distorted idea of what ideas, persons, etc., are actually important. Almost everything referenced in this article is marginal pseudo-research. This is longer than the page on Christology and nearly as long as the page on Christ. Please don't tell me that I and others should get to work adding to these other articles. A wiki article should only be so long. Please, someone sane, rational, reasonable agree with me that this page gives reader an outsized sense of this "theory" and its importance. Stealstrash (talk) 06:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Although the page on "Christ" is much shorter than this one, the page on "Jesus" is actually over 1 and a third times as long. The page on Christ is on the theological concept, the page on Jesus is a broad survey of various views about the person. The page on the theory that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare's plays is almost as long as this one, though the view propounded there is equally as marginal in mainstream academia as this one. It is made reasonably clear on this page that this view is not widely accepted in mainstream academia. By the nature of the case, articles about marginal views must cite marginal research. The (relatively) more reputable Jesus mythicists (such as George Wells) are given more space here than the less reputable ones (such as Acharya), and mention of the major historicists 9who maintain the existence of a historical Jesus) such as Ehrman and Schweitzer is given.--WickerGuy (talk) 16:02, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

A Number of Major Refutations of the Christ Myth Did Appear in the 1913-2012 Period

The lead Section concludes with this assertion:

"Since the publication of the 2nd edition of Albert Schweitzer's Quest for the Historical Jesus in 1926, virtually no major New Testament scholar had bothered with rebutting the Christ-myth hypothesis until the publication in 2012 of Bart D. Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, which generated a flurry of online responses."

Ignoring the obvious error about "1926" as being the date of the 2d. ed. of Schweitzer's Quest, this simply seems to dismiss the existence of serious refutations of the Christ Myth thesis published between 1913 and April 2012. Should we not then check on this surprising assertion and have another look at the historical record?

First Wave of Major Refutations of the Christ Myth Outside of Germany (in English & French) from 1912 to WW II

WWI put a damper on the heated flurry of refutations to Arthur Drews's Christ Myth outside of Germany, but they continued unabated, if more sporadically, until WWII. The major critical works all followed the same pattern, weighing the merits of the arguments on both sides to conclude by confirming the historicity of Jesus against the deniers:

But after 1913, we can identify a whole series of refutations by major NT scholars, all of them still considered significant.

  • Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare (1856-1924), a professor at Oxford Un., published his own refutation just one year after the 2d. ed. of the Quest. He obviously did not notice Schweitzer's decisive "hit": The historical Christ, or, An investigation of the views of Mr. J.M. Robertson, Dr. A. Drews, and Prof. W.B. Smith, (1914). He was an Orientalist and Professor of Theology at Oxford. He reads the early Christian texts as showing a gradual deification of a man, pointing to an existing human source.
  • Maurice Goguel (1880-1955), Jesus The Nazarene, Myth Or History? (1926). Son of a Lutheran pastor, he became a Professor of History of Early Christianity in Paris. For him, Christianity started as a mystery cult, with a hero of a recent date, a Jewish faith-healer who came to believe he was the Messiah, and got executed by Pilate. Paul is a confusing patchwork of ideas and remains unexplained.
  • A.D. Howell Smith (b. 1880), Jesus Not A Myth (1942). Howell Smith, son of a Church personality, did not follow his family example, became a director of the Rationalist Press Association, and wrote abundantly on the history of Christianity and the Church. He argues that the early Christian texts never call Jesus a God. The prediction that the Kingdom of God will happen during the lifetime of his listeners is a strong argument for the historicity of the preacher.
  • Archibald Robertson (1886-1961), Jesus: Myth or History? (1946). Robertson's father (same name) was Principal of King's College, London and Bishop of Exeter. Robertson became a journalist/author. His book is a helpful account of the public debate in the 1890-1940 period. It lists the key spokesmen, gives a helpful analysis of their main arguments, while ending by seeking a compromise between both sides. Robertson pits two teams:
- 11 "historicists": Frederick C. Conybeare, Thomas K. Cheyne, Paul W. Schmiedel, Alfred Loisy, Albert Schweitzer, Charles Guignebert, Rudolf Bultmann, Joseph Klausner, Robert Eisler, Maurice Goguel, A.D. Howell Smith;
- against 8 "mythicists": Bruno Bauer, John M. Robertson, Thomas Whittaker, William B. Smith, Arthur Drews, Paul-Louis Couchoud, L. Gordon Rylands, Edouard Dujardin.

Second Wave of Major Refutations, Following G. A. Wells's Own Version of the Christ Myth, During 1984-2010

WWII and its aftermath put a stop to the public debate initially set off by Arthur Drews, until George Albert Wells (b. 1926), a professor of German at Un. of London, reignited it in the 1970s with a series of books directly influenced by his readings of Bruno Bauer, Albert Kalthoff and Arthur Drews in their original German, bursting on the public scene with a new wrinkle in the Christ Myth theory. Major refutations started coming out, resuscitating the debate of "Jesus Historicists" vs "Historicity Deniers".

A whole series of scholars raised their banners by publishing major refutations of Drews's Christ Myth thesis and its Wells reincarnation. The important refutations in 1984-2010 were:

  • Ian Wilson, Jesus: The Evidence (London, 1984) .
  • R. T. France, The Evidence for Jesus, (London, 1986), a gentle critique of G. A. Wells.
  • Morton Smith, "The Historical Jesus" in Jesus in History and Myth, (Amherst, 1986) (ed. R.J. Hoffmann & G.A. Larue), which sees the Christ Myth essentially based on "an argument from silence".
  • Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford 1989) (part of the Oxford Bible series).
  • Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the Gospels (Grand Rapids, 2000), considered by some (but not Hoffmann) the key modern refutation.
  • James Beilby and Paul R. Eddy, The Historical Jesus: Five Views (2009), with “Jesus at the Vanishing Point”, by Robert M. Price.
  • R. Joseph Hoffmann, ed. Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating History from Myth, (2010, Prometheus).</ref>

Note, interestingly, that when major NT historian R. Joseph Hoffmann listed the major refutations of the Christ Myth thesis in his essay "Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus", (New Oxonian, May 22, 2012, note [3]), he limited the "important studies" (that is, Hoffmann's favorites) to only five works:

But Hoffmann omits from that list many historically significant refutations, especially Albert Schweitzer's critique of the Christ Myth in the added chapters 22 & 23 of the 2d edition of the Quest (1913), in disagreement with the lead section of this article, or Robert E. Van Voorst's work.

Current Rapid Wave of Pro and Con Publications on Jesus Historicity in 2011-2012

With the spread of the Internet, the old theological controversy that was raging 100 years ago has percolated down to the public forum and known a recrudescence, (see pro and con Wikiquotes on the "Christ Myth Theory", from the pre-1950s to the 2000s) with a "massive upsurge" of the non-existence thesis, as explicitly characterized by Maurice Casey in "Mythicism: A Story of Bias, Incompetence and Falsehood", (New Oxonian, May 22, 2012).

Both academic and independent scholars have ridden the new boom with publications all aimed at discussing the Christ Myth thesis and its aftermath. The major works published in 2011 and until Aug. 2012 have been:

  • Robert M. Price, The Christ Myth & Its Problems, the first in a fresh wave of dealing with the Christ Myth (Aug. 2011).
  • Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (March 2012), which kind of inflamed the current controversy.
  • Richard Carrier, Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (April 2012).
  • Thomas L. Thompson and Thomas Verenna, Is This Not the Carpenter? - The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus, a compendium of 13 major articles by scholars of the Copenhagen International Seminar, (Equinox, July 2012).
  • Maurice Casey, Jesus - Evidence and Argument, or Mythicist Myths?, (Aug. 2012, Bloomsbury, London). A world expert on Aramaic takes on the Christ Myth, 100 years later.

CONCLUSION: It becomes much more difficult to claim a dearth of major refutations of the Christ Myth thesis between Schweitzer (1913) and Bart D. Ehrman (April 2012). --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 17:15, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

It's true that there were scholarly treatments of the CMT between 1913 and 2012. But these treatments were a minuscule portion of the total scholarly output on the historical Jesus. It's simply not a major focus of scholarship (even now, when there's a clear upsurge in interest, many scholars still treat it as an annoyance), and this is a point worth making in our article.

As an aside, ROO BOOKAROO, could you consider shortening your posts? You're making good points, but perhaps supplying more data than is actually necessary. Concision is often more convincing than verbosity... --Akhilleus (talk) 03:26, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Too many errors in this article

Akhilleus, good point.
But (to put it briefly), this article is so full of egregious mistakes that it becomes clear that it was written by well-intentioned writers who are not professional historians of the subject matter. In many places, this article reads as if it only reflected the current knowledge of American college undergraduates, and not the real knowledge of professional NT historians.

  • Why do they keep mentioning Schweitzer's Quest for the historical Jesus? Which shows they don't even know the book, when it is The Quest of the Historical Jesus? They simply confuse it with Quest for the historical Jesus, which is another, different article, although with desirable overlapping.
  • Why do they mention that Schweitzer's 2d edition was written in 1926? Mind-boggling. Everybody knows it was 1913. Where did they find such an astonishing piece of information?
  • Why do they mention that Schweitzer's 2d edition gave a decisive "hit" to the Christ Myth? When nobody noticed in Germany, and the year after, in 1914, the eminent Oxford professor Frederick Conybeare saw it necessary to write his important critique of the trio of Christ Myth proponents, W.B. Smith, J.M. Robertson, and A. Drews?
  • Are the writers of the article simply retrojecting Schweitzer's later fame in other fields back on the impact of the 2d edition in 1913, when Schweitzer was still a young man, and well overshadowed by the big names in NT scholarship? With Schweitzer being one name they already know well (Lambaréné, Bach's organ music, Nobel Prize) but not Conybeare, Goguel, or France, Morton Smith, Stanton, Van Voorst, which are all landmarks in NT history, but read only by professional historians?
  • Why do all professionals in NT history, such as R. Joseph Hoffmann, consider that the 2d. edition of the Quest of the Historical Jesus did certainly offer valid criticisms, but no more so than the other 62 written in Germany at the time. In fact, it was mainly a review of already existing critiques by other theologians, and had no special public impact in the subsequent flow of critiques of the Christ Myth — not even in Germany, and none in English-language countries, not even in our times — and that the books by Conybeare (1914), and much more so, Maurice Goguel (1925), or Robert Van Voorst (2000) were the real significant critiques? Is the "severe hit" just another fiction invented by Wikipedia?
  • Why was there a plethora of critiques of the Christ Myth between 1914 and 2012 (dozens and dozens of them, seemingly unknown to the writers of this article), much more significant in the profession than Bart D. Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist (2012) — an advocacy of Jesus Historicity against Jesus deniers that most modern top professional NT historians such as R. Joseph Hoffmann consider eminently unsatisfactory?

No wonder that Aramaist Maurice Casey had to produce his own critique, and that R. Joseph Hoffmann sees an urgent need to produce his own "masterly" version of the critique of the Christ Myth thesis — one that can deliver the knock-out punch that Ehrman was unable to deliver, because Ehrman's expertise has been devoted to textual criticism, and not to the Frage nach der Historizität von Jesus Christus, which remains a very special niche of NT scholarship, one to which, for instance, G. A. Wells has devoted 40 years of research, and R. Joseph Hoffman more than 30 years. While Ehrman took only a few months off for his research outside his expertise, doing a rush job with his latest book. --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 12:22, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Feel free to make the appropriate, factual, changes... Ckruschke (talk) 17:32, 6 September 2012 (UTC)Ckruschke
The assertions about the 2nd edition of Schweitzer including the dating were all taken from Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? (2012)--WickerGuy (talk) 18:44, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Why does the article not include any summary of the content of criticism of the theory (as would be normal for an article). For instance, it uncritically accepts (without citation) that Pauline literature is the most direct source about Jesus, when in fact that is very debatable, and many of the oldest manuscripts we have are of the gospels? ie. P52, P90, P104, (c. 150) P64, P66, P77, P103 (c. 200) [1] 22:34, 15 December 2012 (UTC)JR

Actually 150 AD is about a century after First Thessalonians. And most scholars agree that the letters of Paul are the earliest, and likely in the 50-60 timeframe. But those issues are addressed in the article now if you read carefully. History2007 (talk) 22:53, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Come to think of it, the comment by the IP above about a summary of the content of criticism of the theory reflects the fact that such a summary is needed. It is pretty easy to add that in the elements section, and I will do, in a day or two. History2007 (talk) 13:21, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

True until proven false?

This article has a lot of challenges to the existence of Christ, but few if any extra biblical proofs that prove them to be false. Instead, it is littered with dismissive and un-encyclopedic quotes like "dismissed by most scholars" as if that constitutes a debunking. I don't care, as a reader, what "most scholars" (who presumably are paid employees of theological institutions) say, I care about extra-biblical contemporary evidence that Christ actually existed, and how, precisely that debunks the Christ Myth theories presented herein without the constant statements like "this scholar stands in the minority" and other dismissive and irrelevant appeals to the majority. No other postulation is allowed to simply be "true until proven false" as this article seems to really imply. If there is no evidence, the article should state clearly at the top that "There is no extra biblical evidence that Christ existed at all, and thus it is a disputed topic among scholars." If the majority is wrong, its wrong. Mrrealtime (talk) 19:44, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

I think the real issue here is your statement that: "If the majority is wrong, its wrong." The rest of your comment is a reflection of that perspective. You are, of course, welcome to your perspective on the majority view not being of importance, but Wikipedia policies are geared towards reliance on the majority view, e.g. please see WP:RS/AC, and the statement in WP:Due:
  • If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
  • If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
  • If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article.
So if the majority of scholars think that the "speed of light is a constant", that is the view that will be reflected in Wikipedia. There may be a few scholars who argue against that, but the way Wikipedia works, the majority view gets to be reflected and per WP:V any editor's opinion of "right vs wrong" does not play a part in article content. The minority view is also stated (and not excluded) but it is clarified as the minority view, versus the majority view. History2007 (talk) 20:27, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Who does these bloody ratings?

How in the world has this dreadfully written page about a non-topic received a "B-class" rating? The Enoch Powell entry, one of the best-written and most thoroughly researched on Wikipedia, has been given a "C." As always, clear to any clear-headed person that almost everything on Wikipedia is decided by a small group of obsessed persons who are not in any conventional sense well-educated.Stealstrash (talk) 07:57, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Ratings are given whenever an assessment is made. They are not re-rated unless someone takes the trouble to look at them again. Often there are years between ratings. Many articles that have not been stubs for years are still rated as such. Maybe the Powell article deserved that rating when it was given. If you think there are problems with this system I'd agree with you, but putting a note here wont help. You should raise it at relevant policy pages. If this is just an excuse to make a dig at this article, it's a pointless way to do so. It is certainly noty a non-topic. If you think it is poorly written why don't you point to specific problems? As it is, your contribution is something nothing. Paul B (talk) 13:41, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Enoch Powell is rated B class by most of the WikiProjects it belongs to. It's only WikiProject UK Politics that rates it C. They also rate it top importance for their project, which is barmy. (Top importance should be reserved for a handful of articles like Politics of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Scottish Parliament). So you should have a word with them and ask them to re-rate it.Itsmejudith (talk) 15:29, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
"Scottish Parliament": (guffaws).Stealstrash (talk) 23:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
I would rate this article around B- and C+. "B" qualifies as "Readers are not left wanting, although the content may not be complete enough to satisfy a serious student or researcher." C is listed as "The article is substantial, but is still missing important content...". The article has substantial organizational issues and is missing important elements of the discussion. However, I disagree with Stealstrash that this is a "non-topic". The flurry around Bart Ehrman's April 2012 book on the subject shows that is is a live subject!! Also the Enoch Powell article received it's C rating 3 years ago in 2009 (unfortunately the declaraion on the Talk page does not give an exact date right off). The article may have significantly improved since then, not to mention this one may have deteriorated since being given its B rating (which I have not checked the date of). Declarations of ratings certainly need to carry a time-stamp!!!--WickerGuy (talk) 00:40, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
I agree that the topic certainly meets WP:NOTE. Regarding "Readers are not left wanting", does that include that what the reader obtained was correct? This article is overflowing with errors - just loaded with them. History2007 (talk) 20:25, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
Just a note that since my comment above, the errors mentioned have been corrected in the first few sections of the article, excluding the history section. History2007 (talk) 15:07, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Editorialising

An anonymous IP has been adding editorialising material to the article. This is against policy and it needs to stop. It is perfectly OK to add dissenting opinions, with attribution, it is OK to quote notable sources arguing with the sources, but it is not OK for a WP editor to argue with the sources. If the editor feels the present section about bias is itself biased, he or she is most welcome to share their concerns so we can see if we can find a way to deal with them. That's what talk pages are for. Martijn Meijering (talk) 20:11, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Alas that will be the trend all over Wikipedia as the number of IPs increases and new users come in. Look on WP:FTN to see the utter chaos there, across the board from self-healing by pressing your head to free energy, etc. I just reverted him too. Eventually will need permanent semi-protection - or we will need to get the IPs to press their own heads... History2007 (talk) 20:40, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Anyway, IP seems to have stopped now, once pointed to WP:3R but let me note that there may be more of them all over the place in the next 2 months because WMF seems to have started a charm offensive in Jan 2013 with coordinated Op-ed pieces in major newspapers, TV appearances etc. and more and more IPs may just show up and do interesting things. History2007 (talk) 21:33, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Clue me in - what's a WMF? (World Midwifery Federation? Wee Munchkins Foundation?). ANd more seriously, the article needs to distinguish between the idea of a fictional Jesus (one who never existed) and a mythical Jesus (one around whom myths have grown). On analogy with legends, King Arthur may be entirely fictional (never was a 5th century British king, someone made it all up), or there may have been such a king but no Round Table, Guinevere, or promised return to aid his people at a future hour of peril (the legendary part). When legends deal with gods they're called myths, otherwise the same thing.

WMF = WikiMedia Foundation. Many myths do not involve Gods. Like it of not, Jesus Myth is the term standardly used to refer to the idea that Jesus never existed. See WP:NAME. Paul B (talk) 00:09, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Definition of mythicism - scope of article

The lead defines mythicism as "... an umbrella term that applies to a range of arguments that in one way or another question the existence of Jesus of Nazareth or the essential elements of his life as described in the Christian gospels."

There are four sources given and I'm sure they're accurately referenced.

My problem is, however, that the second part of this defines rules as "mythicism" a whole host of valid scholarly investigation into the nature and accuracy of the gospels. By this definition, anyone who asks, for example, whether Jesus might perhaps have been born in Nazareth instead of Bethlehem, is propagating the view that Jesus is mythical. That would be nonsensical. For this reason the article has grown to huge proportions and struggles to grapple with the subject of real mythicism, which is simply the idea that there never was a Jesus of Nazareth. I think the definition needs to be narrowed. PiCo (talk) 10:32, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

As usual, you do have logical and valid points. But I am not sure if we can have a two valued determination here, and may have to use fuzzy set membership. The long and short of it is this:
  • Within academia, the "existence debate" is over. Hardly any academics even debate non-existence any more. The only people debating it are the "amateur brigade".
  • But there are those who say that "a preacher" existed, but 99.99% of what is said about him is untrue, or that he lived 100 years before Pontius Pilate, or that Jesus was Julius Caesar!.
G. A. Wells is a case in point. He is still considered a "myth theorist" , and indeed the standard bearer for myth theory. But he no longer denies existence after the Q source arguments were presented to him. So the situation is this:
  • Those like Wells who say that Jesus existed but 99% of the stories about him are untrue are considered "myth theorists".
  • Those like William Lane Craig who think the gospels are 95% accurate are called "apologists".
So we really have a continuum of doubt to belief with each scholar getting a number in the range 0 to 100 for how mythical or apologetic they are. And also note that the founder of the field David Strauss did no deny existence. So denial is really one end of the spectrum. Now what number X (say 88% disbelief) makes someone a myth theorist? I am not sure, but anywhere in the 85% to 99% range may be reasonable. History2007 (talk) 16:05, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm still not convinced, but don't care enough to argue. But you might like this description of how a myth would treat one central point of the gospel story, the crucifixion (bear in mind that in the gospels, Jesus simply dies, like any mortal man - a mythic hero would do it differently): "A mythic savior or celestial hero would defy death on Golgotha, smite his enemies and rise laughing into the heavens..." PiCo (talk) 06:47, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that is one of the criteria various scholars use for arguing that the crucifixion story was not invented, for followers usually don't like to invent embarrassing stories about their all powerful leader and as you said a "superman ending" in Calvary could have also been written as an alternative script. In fact Basilides wrote such a script, i.e. that Simon of Cyrene substituted Jesus at the last minute through some magical act, and Jesus took the form of Simon, and laughed at the crucifixion, but hardly anyone wanted buy that script. So, as you said, a gospel script that includes the Transfiguration could have also included a superman escape from crucifixion. But anyway, different scholars use different criteria and this item usually gets added to the other criteria about the crucifixion. History2007 (talk) 11:55, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Article title

The Title of this article needs to be "Jesus Myth Theory". Christ myth theory is biased and confusing. There is much debate on whether Jesus was Christ or not, Islam for example has him as a prophet, but not a Christ figure and that is just the tip of an iceberg. The entire article is about the historicity of Jesus. Whether he was historical and whether he was god in Jewish dude form are 2 different questions. He would have to be historical to be god in Jewish dude form, so the "Jesus Myth Theory" should be the title because it is the widest scope claim being discussed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Twainstheman (talk • contribs) 03:01, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It may have even been Jesus myth theory at some point, but changed somehow - can not remember. History2007 (talk) 10:26, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
It was "Jesus myth" for years, then there was a long debate and it was changed to "Christ myth". That was in the Bruce Grubb Era. I always preferred 'Jesus myth' for the reasons given by Twainstheman. Paul B (talk) 11:14, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Well said, and "BGE" may need be be added to WP:ERA now. History2007 (talk) 14:15, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Not to point to fine a point on it, but it has been "Jesus myth" for only about a couple of years. For most of the time, however, it has been "Christ myth" and that is simply because that is how the vast majority of the literature refer to it. So for that reason, it should remain "Christ myth" IMHO. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 13:07, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
It makes no difference to me, but whoever wants to do a search based on WP:COMMONNAME can do it. History2007 (talk) 14:14, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
It started life as Jesus-Myth in 2005. That what it was called when I first fatally wandered over here. Then it was changed to Jesus as myth in 2006. The following year it became Jesus myth hypothesis (there was a big 'hypothesis; versus 'theory' debate, oh yea). Then it became Christ myth theory in 2009. So it's actually been variations on "Jesus" myth for about half its lifespan. Paul B (talk) 11:59, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
I have not done a search to see what the COMMONNAME is, and I have no preference on the issue. But if you feel like doing a search you can settle it that way, for that is teh applicable guideline that will end debate. History2007 (talk) 14:08, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
The arguments for and against various titles were thrashed out in Talk:Jesus_myth_theory/Archive_40#RfC_to_move_Christ_myth_theory_to_Jesus_myth_theory and Talk:Christ_myth_theory/Archive_42#Proposal:_rename_article_as_Christ_myth_theory section so unless something new can be added I say stick with Christ Myth theory.216.31.124.226 (talk) 05:37, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
So nice of you to mention that Bruce. I guess you stopped using 216.31.124.112 and now 216.31.124.226 is your IP? History2007 (talk) 13:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
These are probably dynamic IPs assigned by his service provider; every time he turns his dsl modem off and on he'll get a new one in the same range. FWIW I think he's right; scholarship uses "Christ myth theory" to refer to this topic, not "Jesus myth", no matter how logical the latter is. --Akhilleus (talk) 15:45, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
I did a rather crude search on google books. Both phrases appear to be widely used, but "Christ myth" is certainly more common (about three times more common). Paul B (talk) 16:33, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
If I had to hazard a guess regarding the issue, it would be that because Drews used that as his book title others responded to it as such. As a side note, and not that I will touch those pages, a look at that and similar Drews pages shows an unsettling collage of text and pictures with multiple tags on each article, etc. History2007 (talk) 17:34, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Merge this article with Jesus?

Please do excuse me for typing this here. I am just posting this as a formality to get it out in the open; and my apologies are offered in advance. There is a similar post here because there are edits there that seem to want to effectively merge in all the discussion of non-existence of Jesus, 1st century sources, Remsburg-type ideas, myth theory etc. there. I do not think it makes sense. But let us have a general discussion on that please and see what the consensus may be. History2007 (talk) 03:30, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

No. Wikipedia is not the place to promote ideas, whether they be "good" or "bad". There are plenty of reliable sources that support this article in addition to the proposed merge target. Johnuniq (talk) 05:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Argument from silence

It seems to me we need actual sources identifying a particular argument as an argument from silence, otherwise we are engaging in synthesis. Do any sources use that label, or is it jut editors? Humanpublic (talk) 15:26, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

The term is widely used in historical analysis, e.g. see The Argument from Silence John Lange, History and Theory, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1966), pp. 288-301. Quite obvious actually. History2007 (talk) 15:33, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
I see no problem with it, unless it is used incorrectly. But you can consult a dictionary or encyclopedia to check that. Martijn Meijering (talk) 15:39, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Yes, but do any of the sources used in this section apply that term to this question? We should not be applying for them. That is synthesis. Humanpublic (talk) 15:48, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
If you don't know what the sources say, why did you remove them? You do know that removing sourced content can be considered vandalism? If there is a factual argument that can be made for removing them, please state that argument here. All you stated this far is your personal suspicion about sources you appear not to have read, and that is not a sufficient reason for removing them.Jeppiz (talk) 16:01, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that makes it synthesis, any more than summarising does. If you think the term is being used incorrectly here, then we can discuss that. But I have a feeling you have an underlying concern and it may be more fruitful to try to identify that so we can discuss it. Martijn Meijering (talk) 16:05, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Biased article

I frequently see "biased article" banners, and I read the article but can't find the bias. This article put me in mind of a sermon delivered by a true believer - I felt that the author was not presenting facts, but instead was presenting an argument that Jesus was a historical figure.

I feel that at the least, this article should be flagged until it can be rewritten. It might well be better to delete it until it can be rewritten in a neutral tone. Simicich (talk) 08:38, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

You can add such a tag unilaterally. I don't understand why you believe the article is biased, it merely reports attributed opinions as opinions. Martijn Meijering (talk) 11:11, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
I am no expert on the subject, but in my opinion the article is reasonably balanced in content but quite poorly structured (which can perhaps give an additional inaccurate impression of the bias) - it deals with the some of the theories, their refutations and arguments for the historicity of Jesus first and only then gives a reasonable details on the history and development of the subject, arguments of its proponents and various approaches to the theory in the "History of the concept" section. In my opinion, the article would be more useful and read better if the "History of the concept" section is inserted either between "Context and background" and "Myth theories and responses" or after the "Myth theories and responses" section.-87.249.145.69 (talk) 19:58, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

The way it happened is that the history section has not been cleaned up. It is full of semi-sourced and less than accurate items - still hanging at the end there. If and when it is cleaned up, some integration may make sense. But the other side of the coin is that the article is not about History of Christ myth theory, just as Physics and Geology are not about the History of physics and the History of geology, but refer to them.

Come to think of it, the idea of making the long history section a separate article, and having a Main link here further upfront does make sense. Readers of the article on geology do not necessarily want to know about the "history of geology", some of the ideas therein being way too old; they want to know what geology is. But I think the section on "Historical Jesus research and the problem of bias" should stay here. History2007 (talk) 20:33, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

As I wrote earlier, I am no expert on the subject, but reading of the article gave me an impression, that the historical background of the theory and description of its gradual development is very important (if not central) to the proper encyclopedical description of the theory itself - in sections previous to the "History of the concept" various issues are quite often dealt with in the chronological order too; but the "History of the concept" which would give broader insight into the history of the thinking on the subject, and what it is all about, reads almost as a postcript to the article.
I don't think the comparison to the article on Geology is entirely appropriate here - in my opinion the text should preferably be written as a article on a specific (disputed, controversial/or obsolete one) theory on the given field of study, i.e. description of the theory and its development first and only then evaluation of arguments for and against it. More appropriate example here, in my opinion, would be perhaps the comparison either to the Neptunism or Plutonism articles. --87.249.145.69 (talk) 21:23, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
Are there still people who argue for Neptunism? Even 2 scholars? Are there 15 self-published books on Neptunism selling on Amazon now? History2007 (talk) 22:10, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
My point is that rather than duplicating the article on Historicity of Jesus which deals with the historical facts (i.e. How it was/What we know about it/What are the prevailing views in the scholarly community) the article on Christ myth theory should rather be focused, well, on describing of the Christ myth theory and what its position in the scholarly community is.--87.249.145.69 (talk) 19:16, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
A description of its position in the scholarly community is pretty brief in fact: very few people support it. There is, however, a long analysis of the myth arguments that will be published soon, a book by Maurice Casey that takes each myth point and discusses it. I have not seen it, but it is expected very soon, I read somewhere. That may be a good source after all. History2007 (talk) 19:33, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps this article should mostly be the history of the Christ myth theory. As far as modern scholarship is concerned, the history of the Christ myth theory is probably more notable than the theory itself. De Guerre (talk) 04:08, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
If an article is "about the history of subject X" then it should be called "History of subject X". That was why I suggested making the history a page unto itself, and the modern items by themselves for they are really different items. History2007 (talk) 09:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
@History2007: Perhaps a bit more focus on the description of the theory would be more useful for the article after all, rather than current rather poor structure, when the theory and its development itself is described almost as an afterthought, and the article starts with sections describing known facts on the historicity of Jesus/analysis of known sources/(IMO rather obscure and not so much notbale)"Fantasms and myths" and only then starts to describe the development and variations of the theory itself, while sometimes repeating facts mentioned in earlier paragraphs.--87.249.145.69 (talk) 17:48, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Biased Article

Disruptive sockpuppet; discussion under way on WP:ANI
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

What a biased article this is, and can it get any more biased when religious fundamentalists control an article that is about atheism. Too silly to laugh at. Baron master (talk) 01:25, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

"Integrity of Christian religion was challenged at an early stage"

I removed the sentence "That the integrity of the Christian religion was challenged from an early period of its existence is borne out in 2 Peter 1:16, For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We saw his majestic splendor with our own eyes.' as it needs a source which states that that verse demonstrates that there were challenges to "the integrity of the Christian religion from an early period."01:31, 18 February 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smeat75 (talk • contribs)

OK Baron Meister just put that sentence right back in again. I do not want to get involved in some sort of edit war, could someone else please explain that personal interpretation of Biblical texts is not really permitted on wikipedia?Smeat75 (talk) 01:42, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
It's allowed when it works the other way around, I see Baron master (talk) 01:47, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Whatever the rest of the problems, this is clearly OR. Go cite it if you want to include it. Mangoe (talk) 01:50, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Unsourced Interpretation

Lots and lots of unsourced interpretation in this article - any possibility of improving on this ? Baron master (talk) 01:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Please be more specific. I see extensive referencing. —C.Fred (talk) 01:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

"Modern scholarship" or "Christian theologians"

I changed "Modern scholarship has generally dismissed these analogies as without formal basis, and a form of parallelomania laden with historical errors." to "Christian theologians dismiss these analogies as without formal basis, and claim they are a form of parallelomania laden with historical errors."

Someone reverted this change. However, all of the references that are provided for this statement are from works by Christian theologians. "Modern scholarship" is a broad term that could be misinterpreted to represent a much larger cohort of academia than is justified by the sources.

Let's make this article NPOV by providing a more specific descriptor for these sources that more accurately represents their credentials. Why would we want to obfuscate this information? It is not a slander to call someone a "Christian theologian" and it should not impugn their credibility. PeaceLoveHarmony (talk) 20:00, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Paula Fredriksen is not a Christian. History2007 (talk) 20:26, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
It's not slander, but it is none-too-subtle POV, since the edit implies that theologians think this because of their Christian belief, dissociating them from "objective" scholars. So, it is not creating NPOV, but rather POV. Criticism of mythicist parallels to Osiris, Horus, Baldur and indeed the whole concept of "dying and rising" gods can be found pervasively in modern literature - including in general encyclopedias of religion. I guess the sentence might be criticised for being a little too sweeping, since it is widely accepted that pre-Christian Greek ideas influenced the development of Christology. Paul B (talk) 20:41, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree on the first part completely and on the second part (Christlogy) to some extent. I would point out that as a branch of theology, Christlogy was developed too late to impact the mythical Christ issues as such. History2007 (talk) 21:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
The sentence as such is not about mythicism (though obviously the article is). The sentence is about alleged parallels between the Christian concept of Jesus and other divinities. My point was that existing ideas about the nature of the divine in the human can be linked to early Christology. Paul B (talk) 11:33, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, existing concepts do have roots in Christological development. On that point we also agree. History2007 (talk) 13:38, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree with History2007. I simply can't believe how often someone wants to make the edit PLH is suggesting. I've been watching this page for a few years and there has been at least 4-5 attempts. Very frustrating. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 22:00, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
How does one spell frustrating? W-i-k-i-.... ? But that is how it goes... History2007 (talk) 22:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

One problem (out of the many) with PeaceLoveHarmony's post is that "Christian Theologians" are scholars. Theology is an academic discipline, and has been for hundreds of years. Of course, another problem is that not everyone who studies early Christianity is a theologian—in the US, most scholars writing about early Christianity in a college or university will be in departments of Religion/Religious Studies, not Theology. Never mind that the name of the department in which one teaches and researches is not necessarily reflective of one's approach to the subject, nor that one can be in a theology department studying Christianity without professing belief in Christianity...

To put it another way, PCL's argument seems to be that "these sources are all Christians, so they're biased, so Wikipedia has to raise a red flag to the reader." That's pretty silly, isn't it? --Akhilleus (talk) 04:37, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. There shades of Wikipedia:I just don't like it there, of course. History2007 (talk) 12:21, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Beeing a "Christian theologian" gives you hardly more credit in the field of history science than anybody else, therefor it should be made clear that this "majority of scolars" include many religious people (christians), who's main concern obviously is to defend their religious faith rather than finding the true historical facts. Which of course exclude them from being an objective source in this case. I am of the opinion that claiming the title "scolar" you must have a some academic backgound in the subject matter i.e. in the science of researching historical facts. DaNorse (talk) 06:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Leading New Testament scholars these days include agnostics like Bart Ehrman, Jews such as Paula Fredriksen (there are many others), and liberal Christians who reject the classical understanding of Jesus such as Marcus Borg. Also, please learn to spell. It's "scHolar" and "backgRound".--WickerGuy (talk) 07:10, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Srroy, but I dindnt konw that tihs was a dsicusssion abuot splling... Good point! :-/ DaNorse (talk) 12:18, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and of course Geza Vermes, etc.... History2007 (talk) 10:37, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Those are just 4 persons, and I get a feeling they constitute some kind of exceptions. At least Bart Ehrman has a special background in this matter. I still contend that most of the so-called "majority" consist of believers, whose main concern are to defend their faith, and should be disqualified in an encyclopedic article about historicals facts, alternatively they should be flagged for what their true colors are. DaNorse (talk) 12:18, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
I believe all of them have "special" backgrounds. I can't find the reference right now, but I believe it was Jacob Neusner who has stated that virtually all scholars of Christian origins have intense current or former personal commitments to either Judaism or Christianity, or words to that effect. Bart Ehrman is a former fundamentalist, and not just a fundamentalist, a fundamentalist apologist. In addition, his life's work would be without value if it turned out there hadn't been a historical Jesus. Such self-selection by scholars clearly carries a potential for bias, and that has been acknowledged by scholars both inside and outside biblical scholarship, as mentioned in the article. Nevertheless they are still scholars, and the article can refer to them as such.
As for academic credibility of theology specifically, it has none whatever, but you have to be careful to distinguish between theology and religious studies, even though there are clear organisational and historical links between the two and there's always the risk of bias. Do note that even where the overlap is apparent, it doesn't by itself disqualify the source in question.
As far as I'm concerned, the present article strikes a good balance. It fairly refers to scholars who have studied the matter (almost, but not totally exclusively biblical scholars) as scholars, but it also mentions the criticism of their historical professionalism as well as the risk of bias, with mention of opinions both inside and outside biblical scholarship. On some other pages there appears to have been a deliberate campaign to withhold from the reader the fact that the scholars have almost exclusively been biblical scholars, most of them with strong current or former personal commitments to a religion. That is wrong, but I don't see that here.
In short, I believe you make some good points, but it seems to me that the present article already deals with them in a fair and balanced manner. Your proposed changes seem to me to increase bias, not to decrease it. Martijn Meijering (talk) 18:30, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Look, from what I have seen, most people who argue your point have not really done much research on the topic and do not know which scholars support or deny things. You may have, and if so, please provide a list of 7 scholars (I mean real scholars who teach at real academic institutions with real campuses, not self published accountants/attorneys, etc.) who argue that Jesus did not exist. I think in doing so, you will either succeed, provide a list and reduce my level of ignorance, or as you search and search will learn enough about the subject to understand that you will not find such a list. To make it easier, I will provide an analysis of the typical lists that floats on the internet in a subsection below. And please note that if the door to self-published authors is opened, then the flood gates will open with people like Kermit Zarley who have taken a swing at the issues (pun intended) but are no scholars. So those types of golfer/attorney/film-maker/etc. can not be relied upon. There are really less than a handful of scholars who argue non-existence. But if you do have 7 scholars who argue that, please provide a list just for my education. Thank you in advance. History2007 (talk) 13:49, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Analysis of the suggested list of books about the existence of Jesus

This is a list of books typically presented on the internet as the supporters of Christ myth theory. So we can see how many "academics and scholars" there are here:

  • Harold Leidner, 2000, The Fabrication of the Christ Myth. Leidner was a patent attorney (NY University Law school 1939) and amateur scholar. He was an attorney, not a scholar and wrote as an amateur outside the field of law.
  • Robert M. Price: Deconstructing Jesus. 2003. Price is a biblical scholar, has training in the field and denies the existence of Jesus. However, he acknowledges (The Historical Jesus: Five Views ISBN 028106329X page 61) that hardly any scholars agree with his perspective on this issue.
  • Hal Childs, 2000, The Myth of the Historical Jesus and the Evolution of Consciousness Childs is a psychoterapist (not a scholar in the field) but does not deny the existence of Jesus. His perspective is shared by a number of scholars who support the existence of Jesus, e.g. John Dominic Crossan who also said: "those who write biographies of Jesus often do autobiography, but think they are doing biography". Child's perspective is unrelated to the existence question.
  • Dennis MacDonald, 2000, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. MacDonald is a scholar, but does not deny the existence of Jesus as a person, he just argues that the Gospel of Mark was influenced by Homeric elements. He also thinks the Book of Acts includes Homeric trends, but that is unrelated to the existence question.
  • Burton L. Mack The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy. Social formation of myth making. Mack is a scholar who specifically supports the theory that Jesus existed as a traveling sage. Mack was a member of the Jesus seminar, believes that Jesus existed, but holds that his death was accidental and not due to his challenge to Jewish authority.
  • Luigi Cascioli, 2001, The Fable of Christ. Indicting the Papacy for profiteering from a fraud! Cascioli was a "land surveyor" who worked for the Italian army. His book was self-published. His claim to fame was that in 2002 he sued the Church for inventing Jesus, but in 2005 his case was rejected. He was no scholar.
  • Israel Finkelstein, Neil Silberman, 2002, The Bible Unearthed Finkelstein and a Silberman are archaeologists, but they do not deny the existence of Jesus. Their work is centered on archaeological themes and mostly addresses the Old Testament. Hardly anyone lists these two people as Jesus myth theorists.
  • Frank Zindler, 2003, The Jesus the Jews Never Knew. Zindler (who seems to have been a biologist at some point) does not seem to have had any scholarly training or taught at any university on this topic. What he writes on the topic is all self-taught, not scholarly. Zindler's articles have been published by Free Inquiry and The American Rationalist.
  • Daniel Unterbrink, 2004, Judas the Galilean. Unterbrink is an accountant, and his book is self-published by iUniverse.
  • Tom Harpur, 2005, The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light. Harpur (who is a follower of Gerald Massey) argues that Egyptian myths influenced Judaism and Christianity, but he does not deny the existence of Jesus. Harpur's theory is that Jesus of Nazareth existed but mythical stories from Egypt were later added to the gospel narratives about him.
  • Francesco Carotta 2005, Jesus Was Caesar. Carotta does not deny the existence of Jesus, on the other hand he thinks Jesus existed but was Julius Caesar: a very unusual theory, but it does not deny the existence of Jesus.
  • Joseph Atwill, 2005, Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus It is not clear who Joseph Atwill is. He seems to have written one paper on the Dead Sea Scrolls with Eisenman, but he does not seem to have any scholarly background, apart from having studied Greek and Latin as a youth in Japan, according to a review website. No trace of his having been a scholar of any kind.
  • Michel Onfray Traité d'athéologie (2007 In Defence of Atheism): Onfray, has a PhD in philosophy and was a high school teacher. He is critical of all religions including Judaism and Islam and thinks Christian doctrine was invented by Paul. Rather than focusing on the existence of Jesus his work deals with how religious doctrines were created and how they impact western philosophy.
  • Kenneth Humphreys, 2005, Jesus Never Existed. I can find no evidence anywhere that Humphreys is a scholar of any type, and where he was educated. He just seems to run his own website, and his book is published by Historical Review Press, which is Anthony Hancock (publisher), whose specialty is Holocaust denial books. A really WP:Fringe item.
  • Jay Raskin, 2006, The Evolution of Christs and Christianities Raskin has a PhD in philosophy, and has taught some philosophy and film making courses at various colleges. His book is self-published by Xlibris - "nonselective" in accepting manuscripts according to their Wikipedia page. Raskin is better known as a film-maker than a historian or philosopher and his movies have titles such as I married a Vampire. He is no scholar.
  • Thomas L. Thompson, 2006, The Messiah Myth. Thompson is a scholar and a denier of the existence of Jesus. He is one of the very few scholars who still deny existence.
  • Jan Irvin, Andrew Rutajit, 2006, Astrotheology and Shamanism From what I can find neither of these people are scholars and they seem to have a theory that religions are based on the use of narcotics: a pure WP:Fringe idea that seems to have been advocated by John Allegro as well. This is not scholarship, and these are not scholars.
  • Roger Viklund, 2008. Den Jesus som aldrig funnits (The Jesus who never existed). Viklund is an amateur who self-published his book in Swedish and just has his own website. Not a scholar at all.

I think for the sake of completeness, we should add a few other writers mentioned on various websites and Wikipages, they are:

  • Richard Carrier Not the Impossible Faith and Sense and Goodness without God. He has a PhD in history, but has no academic position and his books are self published by LuLu and Authorhouse. He runs his own website and may seen as a scholar or not, depending on perspective. Not clear what he does for a living.
  • D. M. Murdock (Acharya S) The Gospel According to Acharya S is a self-published author and her web site says she has a B.A. degree. There is no claim or record of her ever having had an academic position and she is not a scholar by any measure.
  • Earl Doherty Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus is a self-published author. He has a B.A. but no advanced degrees and is not a scholar.
  • Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy The Jesus Mysteries . Freke has a B.A. degree and Gandy an M.A. Neither has a PhD or had an academic position. Freke teaches experiential seminars. Neither is a scholar.
  • Christopher Hitchens God Is Not Great.. He had a B.A. degree, no advanced degrees and was a general writer not a scholar.

So really there is one solid academic scholar here namely Thompson and then Price who can be called a non-academic scholar - given that he only teaches online courses on the subject (around $50 per course) at an online website with no campus. Note that G. A. Wells has softened his position of non-existence and now accepts the likely existence of a preacher mentioned in the Q source, although holding that the gospel narratives of his life/miracles are fiction. But just Thompson and Price do not make a long list. There are probably 1 or 2 more people with PhDs who deny existence (say Carrier, but who has no academic post) yet it is quite clear from this list that most of those mentioned are either amateurs or are scholars such as Mack who actually support existence. Most of these people are attorney/accountant/etc./etc. types and not scholars. The funniest one however was suggesting Raskin as a scholar. I did get a chuckle out of that one. But anyway, the results speak for themselves. History2007 (talk) 13:49, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Just for the sake of completeness, I did another search to confirm the situation above, and it seems that the existence debate is really over within academia and only the non-scholarly types are still discussing it. The funniest item I found was this challenge a year ago for Dickson to eat a page of his Bible. I did another search and it seems that based on this ABC news item in Australia as of now no one has found a professor of ancient history or classics at a university who denies existence. And there are plenty of professors out there; many of them non-Christian. The exact challenge seems to be to find "a full professor of Classics, Ancient History or New Testament in any accredited university in the world who thinks Jesus never lived". And no one seems to have found such a professor. So the debate seems to be over within academia. Else we can all call John Dickson and get him to eat a page after all. History2007 (talk) 15:43, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
There is yet one more scholar, namely Thomas L. Brodie, who in a recent 2012 book has argued that the coherence of 1 Kings 16:29 - 2 Kings 13:25 indicates that the Elijah and Elisha stories are a model for the gospels, and a mythical Jesus. Brodie is a scholar in the field, so now there is Price, Thompson and Brodie. His arguments are very different from the others, but this does not dramatically change the balance of scholarship yet, unless several other scholars follow him in the next few years, so only time will tell. As for Dickson eating a page, he does not have to yet, for just as the book came out Brodie either resigned or was fired from his position, depending on which story you believe. History2007 (talk) 20:34, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
One more item suggested by a user later:
  • "Twenty-Six Reasons Why Jews Don't Believe in Jesus" by Asher Norman 2003. Asher Norman: After graduation from the University of Southern California I traveled... upon my return earned a law degree from the University of San Diego School of Law. I have earned my living as a commercial real estate broker.
So Asher Norman is a real estate broker. History2007 (talk) 00:54, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

List of 42 authors

I agree with Paul Barlow that the list of 42 authors by Remsburg does not add much in that section and does not fit there. There is already something about that list of 42 names below in the Remsburg paragraph, and it states that the list was copied by others as well, but that entire section (20h century writers) is desperately asking for help regarding non-WP:RS sources, inconsistencies, etc. I have been really avoiding work on that, but may get to touch it up if no one else does. One should, however, point out that arguments made by Remsburg 100 years ago are only of "historical interest" and do not really apply any more given that Remsburg had most probably never heard of the findings of Shlomo Pines (who was born in 1908) when he wrote his book in 1909. History2007 (talk) 22:00, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I have recently reverted the list being added once again, apparently without any sort of discussion or attempt to receive consensus on the list before restoring it. Per the comments above, and the edit summaries of those who have removed the list, I believe as per policies and guidelines it is now incumbent on any parties who would seek to add the list to discuss why they believe it necessary here, and to receive consensus on the restoration of the list before adding it yet again, apparently against existing consensus. John Carter (talk) 02:14, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
Why do some WP "contributors" tear down and remove information, rather than add to the compendium of knowledge? One commenter wrote "There is already something about that list of 42 names below in the Remsburg paragraph" -- but THE LIST IS NOT PROVIDED! "Something about" is hardly encyclopedic. I provided Remsburg's list in this article, and it's about time. This is the intent of WP, to be exhaustive. Who would NOT WANT TO SEE REMSBURG'S LIST? Geĸrίtzl (talk) 02:21, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
First, I regret to say that the above comment so far as I can tell in no way actually addresses the questions regarding why it is apparently so devoutly believed that the list is apparently necessary to the article. There are several policies and guidelines involved, which include WP:WEIGHT, and also the comments by History2007 above, and apparently by Paul Barlow, which history refers to in passing, which indicate what seem to them, and honestly, to me, to have been not only not addressed, but ultimately completely ignored based, so far as I can tell, because one individual editor does not seem to believe that his particular edit necessarily has to meet our existing guidelines regarding consensus. I would very seriously urge those involved to read WP:CIVILITY, note that using all-caps is a considered a form of "shouting" and is not considered acceptable behavior as per policies and guidelines, and actually respond directly to the concerns which have previously been expressed regarding this material, which, I repeat, apparently has yet to be even attempted. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 02:31, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
John Carter makes some good points here. In addition, I would say that dumping a list of 42 names into the article is simply poor writing; far better to explain what signficance Remsburg's list has, what role it played in Remsburg's own argument and its subsequent impact. However, if we limit ourselves to reliable sources, the impact of Remsburg's list is nil. It doesn't appear in the works of G.A. Wells or Robert M. Price, nor does it appear in secondary sources that deal with the CMT such as Van Voorst or Bart Ehrman. So I see no reason to deal with Remsburg's list in this article, but there may be reason to do so at John Remsburg. But even in that article there's no reason to replicate the entire list—rather, the article should contain a discussion of the list (if it's decided that the list is significant enough to cover). --Akhilleus (talk) 04:51, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
The long and short of it is this: Including the list like a large billboard focuses on the question of why they didn't write about it. Ehrman has pointed out (Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium page 56) that Jesus' impact on the society of his time was almost nil, and hence there was no reason for any author to pay attention to him; and separately has stated that there are hardly any documents for the general public from that time. I will add those at some point after the reverts have calmed down. History2007 (talk) 07:48, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't want to see the Remsburg list. If I would, Google will help me. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:05, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
What's with the tendency toward obscurantism? Joshua Jonathan doesn't "want to see" the Remsburg list - then skip over it and continue reading afterwards! At a minimum, indicate that Remsburg listed 42 contemporary authors unaware of Jesus, not simply. His list is used in many other books (e.g. "Twenty-Six Reasons Why Jews Don't Believe in Jesus" by Asher Norman among others. I vote FOR the Remsburg List. MithrasPriest (talk) 14:24, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
The point is that Remsburg's list is far, far too much outdated scholarship to be included there, and modern scholarship holds that some of the people on that list do refer to Jesus. As I said Remsburg was unaware of modern scholarship of the 1970s, etc. The Wiki-article on Automobile does not list all of the outdated auto-technologies of the 1920s upfront, does it? So adding the list upfront the way it was added before is like adding a summary of the user manual for the Model T upfront to the article on Automobile and telling users to skip it if they don't like it. Then how about the summary of the user manuals for the Edsel too in that article? Listing pre-Watson/Crick ideas upfront in the article on DNA and telling people to skip it is not encyclopedic and runs over WP:Due - pun intended. This is a straightforward case of outdated scholarship that belongs in a bygone scholar's own page (if at all) as Akhilleus said. History2007 (talk) 15:02, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
There's not a thing wrong with his list. All attempts to prove some of those men wrote of Jesus have been refuted in modern times. Strobel is a joke, as well as Van Voorst. And Remsburg's list is used in many modern publications. On your "automobile" argument, why do modern treatments on cosmology ever refer to Copernicus, or Galileo? History is important, and this is history of (guess what) Christ Myth Theory, the very subject of this article.MithrasPriest (talk) 15:38, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Obviously, we do not agree on what modern scholarship holds and how WP:RS is different from what you call jokes. I have to stop fr a while, but let us wait for further user responses. In the meantime, please do provide a list of the "many modern publications" you mentioned which use the Remsburg list of the 42 to argue non-existence. That list would be nice to see. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 15:49, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Sure thing, here are some books I'm aware of that repeat Remsburg's list -- I'm sure there are more (in fact I've seen more but can't remember them): "Twenty-Six Reasons Why Jews Don't Believe in Jesus" by Asher Norman (p. 182), 2003 - "The Jesus The Jews Never Knew" by Frank Zindler (p. 14), 2003 - "The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read" by Tim Leedom (p. 171), 2003 - "In His Name" by E. Christopher Reyes (p. 316), 2010. What do you think about restoring the sentence "Some arguments from silence go back to John Remsburg in 1909 who enumerated forty-two..." but leaving the list out? MithrasPriest (talk) 23:51, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I am sorry, but there is a list above on this talk page that shows most of those who repackage Remsburg are far from scholars in teh field, and Zindler is on that, please see that list. Asher Norman is not on that list, so I will add him there now:
  • Asher Norman: After graduation from the University of Southern California I traveled in Europe, Israel and Morocco for a year and upon my return earned a law degree from the University of San Diego School of Law. I have earned my living as a commercial real estate broker.
  • "In His Name" is self published by AuthorHouse and is far from scholarly. It is a pro-existence book anyway, but E. Christopher Reyes "is a graduate of Cal Poly, Pomona, and attended advanced classes at the University of Bohol, Philippines." and is far from a scholar in the field.
  • Tim Leedom seems to be just a university of Hawaii graduate with no advanced degree and just a writer at a newspaper. Do you have any idea who he is?
So please provide "scholarly academic" type publications that still use the list of42, rather than self-published items that are not WP:RS, etc. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 00:50, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Can you refute all the authors listed by Remsburg, and show that they actually did write of Jesus? I'm sure you can't. To answer your question, the only other modern book I know that uses Remsburg's list is "Who Was Jesus" by D. M. Murdock (p. 85), 2007. That's five that I know of. Again - what do you think about restoring the sentence "Some arguments from silence go back to John Remsburg in 1909 who enumerated forty-two..."? Sound reasonable, or what? MithrasPriest (talk) 01:17, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I would not attempt an analysis of the 42 items here, for a debate between us on that would be WP:OR and not of value in Wikipedia. I will just say that I am sure some did not, but that matters not, for the generally scholarly view, is that the Jewish and Romans sources only paid attention to Christians after they became large enough as a group to be a threat. Those issues will need treatment in the article at some point with WP:RS sources (which do exist), but we should probably wait for the revert games to be over. As for D. M. Murdock, she is the same as Achrya S. and far from scholarly. Her books are also self-published and have so many glaring and elementary errors I stopped counting a while ago. As for the exact sentence, let us get further opinions, but my feeling is that without a qualifier that the list is no longer scholarly it would not make sense. History2007 (talk) 01:29, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts on this. I didn't see that list at the top you were referring to, sorry. Regarding "Tim Leedom seems to be just a university of Hawaii graduate..." did you bother to look at the book? He's editor. The articles are by revered authors. So a University of Hawaii graduate can't compile a respectable book? Sam Harris hadn't even finished his PhD when his book hit the NYT Best Sellers list, for example. Moreover, who is Lee Strobel, very often cited in WP? He is JUST (your word) a Christian author -- and a pastor. Certainly not neutral, and as non-notable of a historian as those I listed that you attempted to discredit as "just" this or that. Asher Norman - lawyer and realtor, is not to be trusted? Joseph Wheless was "just" a lawyer. Obama was "just" a lawyer before getting into politics. Come on, help add information to WP rather than tearing it down. Why are you so against mentioning that Remsberg listed 42 writers of the first and second century? Please explain. MithrasPriest (talk) 01:38, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

The list is above, but the relevant items are:
  • Frank Zindler, 2003, The Jesus the Jews Never Knew. Zindler (who seems to have been a biologist at some point) does not seem to have had any scholarly training or taught at any university on this topic. What he writes on the topic is all self-taught, not scholarly. Zindler's articles have been published by Free Inquiry and The American Rationalist.
  • D. M. Murdock (Acharya S) The Gospel According to Acharya S is a self-published author and her web site says she has a B.A. degree. There is no claim or record of her ever having had an academic position and she is not a scholar by any measure.
Lee Strobel is certainly no academic and most probably far from a WP:RS source here. If he is used elsewhere that is beside the point here, for he is not used in this article. And yes, Asher Norman (lawyer and realtor) is not WP:RS unless the article is about real-estate - this article is not about that topic. The likes of G. A. Wells and Robert M. Price are the main scholarly types who have argued nonexistence - and as you can see they have PhD degrees and respectable publishers. But I will stop now for further comments by other users about sources, etc. I am not the only one objecting, as can be seen above. History2007 (talk) 02:29, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I thought about this a little more, and now I think pragmatism may suggest a mention in the footnote that Remsburg had 42 items on the list may reduce future debate. A couple of the names may be mentioned as examples as well. The fact is that there are (and will be) self-published authors who say things, and the public reads it and wonders why Remsburg's list is not even mentioned. But there are modern (and straightforward) scholarly arguments against Remsburg anyway, and they can be also mentioned as well, so the issue will not flare up again in 3 months. However, Philo was Remsburg's main example, and that has already been included. But as mentioned above Ehrman (page 56) addresses the broader issue of why it makes no sense for a Roman author to mention an obscure preacher, and that needs to be added at some point as well. History2007 (talk) 10:41, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
That list includes Josephus and Tacitus and just reading the rest of this very article makes it clear that they certainly did
mention the person referred to as "Jesus Christ". The reference to "two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author" is outdated, modern scholarship does not regard all the references to Christ in Josephus as forgeries any more, just read the passage "Josephus" here on this very page. Pliny the Younger and Suetonius mention Christians. So the list is inaccurate and outdated. Juvenal, Martial, Lucian,Persius, were satirical poets, the fact that there is no mention in their surviving works of an executed religious trouble maker in an out of the way corner of the Empire they had no interest in does not mean anything. Justus of Tiberias was a Jewish historian whose works do not survive! Therefore his inclusion on this list of contemporary authors who did not mention Jesus is absurd, we do not know what he said.I suppose "Apollonius" refers to Apollonius of Tyana WP article says "Several writings and many letters have been ascribed to Apollonius, but some of them are lost; others have only been preserved in parts or fragments of disputed authenticity" so that is another worthless reference. "The only extant work of Quintilian is a twelve-volume textbook on rhetoric".Lucan's only surviving work is an epic poem about a battle in the Roman civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great."No writings of Epictetus himself are really known." Ptolemy's surviving works are scientific treatises on geography and astronomy. (The) "only surviving work of Silius Italicus is the 17-book Punica, an epic poem about the Second Punic War." Hermogones - who? The link redirects to Hermagoras of Aquileia, an early Italian bishop.Valerius Maximus's surviving work is a collection of historical anecdotes from Greek and Roman history, for use in speeches. Petronius' one surviving work is a satirical novel about life in Rome. Dion of Prusa's surviving works are a collection of speeches and an essay in Praise of Hair. Theon of Smyrna's surviving work is a survey on Greek mathematics. Pomponius Mela wrote a surviving work on geography. Quintus Curtius Rufus, another biography of Alexander the Great which survives in parts, Gaius Valerius Flaccus, a poem about Jason and the Argonauts, Favorinus, a few fragments of philosophy survive, Phaedrus (fabulist), a collection of Aesop-like fables, Damis, a supposed companion of Apollonius of Tyana whose notebooks are quoted by Philostratus and may not even have existed. Columella wrote a major work on agriculture. Dio Chrysostom, excuse me, is the same person as Dion of Prusa, so better make that a list of 41 authors, not 42. Lysias was an Ancient Greek orator who died in the fourth century BC! No works of Apion survive. Plutarch, Arrian,Paterculus,Appian,Phlegon,and Florus were historians of one kind or another, so you could, at a stretch, read some significance into the fact that they do not mention Jesus Christ I suppose although they were mostly interested in high and mighty personages and goings on at the centres of power, not happenings in remote provinces. Pausanius wrote a travel guide to the famous sites of ancient Greece,Aulus Gellius a notebook in which he jotted down whatever he found interesting, once again I suppose you could read some significance into the fact that they do not mention Jesus. The only really significant failure to mention Jesus is in the works of Philo of Alexandria, and that is discussed in the article already. The list is a historical curiosity only, it does not merit inclusion in the article, in fact it is quite ludicrous.Smeat75 (talk) 17:32, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Smeat75's analysis is poor. I'll simply weigh in on Apollonius. Point #1 see Dzielka's book on him (1986), and #2, see Penella, The Letters of Apollonius of Tyana (1979). Spacelib (talk) 00:10, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
All very sensible points. Just to be clear - Lucan and Lucian are different writers. The latter does mention Christians (see Lucian on Jesus). Paul B (talk) 17:47, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, a very good analysis by Smeat75. The real question is which entry on the list is the most laughable - and that will be a hard contest. So some agreement is emerging now that the list (and the works of Remsburg in general) are Model T-era outdated scholarship, and are no longer applicable. As an aside, about two years ago (during the BGE), I said that Remsburg's work is over a hundred years old and can not be relied upon, and I was corrected in that Remsburg had republished in 1912, so it was only 99 years old. But we can now safely say that it is over 100 years old and not applicable any more. In fact, it is hard to find modern scholars who even bother to critique the list any more. But pragmatically speaking, what should be done about the users who read the self-published items out there and think the list is great? History2007 (talk) 18:09, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
"D. M. Murdock is a self-published author" - are you aware that her book Who Was Jesus has a foreword by Dr. Robert M. Price? Show me where Wikipedia says that someone is disqualified from being respectable if they were once self-published. The ridiculous claim "Justus of Tiberias was a Jewish historian whose works do not survive! Therefore his inclusion on this list of contemporary authors who did not mention Jesus is absurd" is really ignorant - clearly, Christian copyists did not preserve his works BECAUSE he never wrote of Jesus. It's a matter of causality. If ANYONE should have written about Jesus, it is Justus of Tiberias, as in Matthew 8 "the whole city" of Gergesa (part of Tiberias) came out to meet Jesus. Smeat75 also says Apollonius is a worthless source because "some of [his writings] are lost; others have only been preserved in parts or fragments of disputed authenticity" - we have a collection of his letters in full in original Greek at the Library of Congress (I believe there are 72), as well as Eusebius quoting Apollonius in "Preparation for the Gospel" in the 4th century. Eusebius was aware of Apollonius, and Eusebius would never have omitted words about Jesus if Apollonius had written them. Apollonius was contemporary to Jesus and should have, but did not write of Jesus. "Pliny the Younger and Suetonius mention Christians" Smeat75 writes - yes, CHRISTIANS were mentioned IN THE SECOND CENTURY -- but Pliny and Suetonius (in fact both Plinys) should have known of Jesus' fame, but do not ever mention him. What significance is it that Pliny and Suetonius, in the 2nd century, were aware of Christians? "I was corrected in that Remsburg had republished in 1912, so it was only 99 years old" - sorry, Remsburg was also republished in 1994 by Prometheus Books and again in 2004. Thus the most recent edition of his work is 9 years old, not 99. "Dion of Prusa's surviving works are a collection of speeches and an essay in Praise of Hair" - EXACTLY THE POINT! He should have written of Jesus, but did not! And yes I'm aware that Dio Chrysostom is a duplicate (Remsburg's error is often propagated, but some authors catch it). So it's "only" 41 silent writers of the time who should have, but did not write of Jesus! Now show me a list of reliable writers of his time who actually did write of Jesus. MithrasPriest (talk) 23:42, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
No, I'm sorry, your logic does not persuade me. You cannot make assertions about non-existent works (Justus, Dion of Prusa, etc).Possibly if you found a reliable source saying the same things you do it might be included somewhere, but "no works of Justus survive which proves he did not mention Jesus" cannot go into a wikipedia article as it is original research. The list is ludicrous, why would geographers, mathematicians, authors of travel guides, etc., talk about an obscure prophet who had been executed as a criminal in a province far removed from their spheres of activity? Not to mention the fact that on that list is a Greek orator who died in the 4th century BC and the first bishop of Aquileia! (although I think that must be a mistake with the linking, I believe Hermogenes of Tarsus, rhetorician, must be meant). Plutarch and those other historians had no interest in a religious extremist, as they would have perceived Jesus, wandering around an obscure province who had been put to death as a common criminal, they were concerned with Emperors and military leaders and so forth, there is nothing odd at all about their failure to mention Jesus.Smeat75 (talk) 01:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Timothy Barnes happens to agree with Smeat75. In "Pagan Perceptions of Christianity" in Early Christianity: Origins and Evolution to Ad 600 edited by Ian Hazlett et al (May 1991) ISBN 0687114446 page 232 Barnes writes: "most inhabitants of the Roman Empire in A.D. 100 were either unaware of or uninterested in the Christians in their midst. Even in Rome, where there had certainly been Christians since the reign of Claudius, the varied epigrams of Martial and the satires of Juvenal make no identifiable allusion to the new religion, though both authors deride Jews and Judaism." That is a WP:RS source, and Barnes is a clear scholar in the field. History2007 (talk) 01:37, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
"Tim Leedom seems to be just a university of Hawaii graduate with no advanced degree and just a writer at a newspaper." Again, his book is a collection of essays, including one by some man named Thomas Jefferson and another named Thomas Paine. Those names ring a bell. MithrasPriest (talk) 23:56, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
"Plutarch, Arrian,Paterculus,Appian,Phlegon,and Florus were historians of one kind or another, so you could, at a stretch, read some significance into the fact that they do not mention Jesus Christ..." - not a stretch at all. Jesus was famous, according to the Bible, "throughout all Syria" (Matt 4:24) and "all Galilee" (Mark 1:28). Why did none of these writers bother recording anything at all about him? MithrasPriest (talk) 00:02, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry but our mindsets seem to be so far apart that I am not sure how to respond. I will just mention that:

  • Murdock/Achrya owns Stellar House Publishing. A forward does not change the publisher. Hence please see WP:SPS. Also see WP:USEBYOTHERS. That is a straightforward policy issue.
  • The joke I made about Remsburg's book being 99 years vs 100 years (correction was by another editor) only applies to Remsburg having revised and updated his book. However he died in 1919 and the reprintings thereafter matter not.
  • Jefferson died in 1826 and Paine in 1809 so I am really sure of the relevance therein.

The rest of your comments about the list are largely WP:OR and per policy I can not partake in them sans WP:RS sources. Bu I will wait for other editors to respond to you as well. History2007 (talk) 00:06, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

  • "Jefferson died in 1826 and Paine in 1809 so I am really sure of the relevance therein." - Yes, Jefferson and Pain are not relevant today. Are you kidding??? My other comments are not WP:OR, they are verifiable fact. Read Eusebius; look at the Library of Congress. Read the Bible, I gave chapter and verse. MithrasPriest (talk) 00:18, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I can not debate "facts" with you per WP:V, and please see Verifiability, not truth (just an essay) as a suggestion. Please read WP:V and WP:OR. I will have no further comment on debates that would involve WP:OR. Please read those pages. I will stop for a while now. History2007 (talk) 00:29, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

By the way, as an aside, the whole discussion about Remsberg's material being a century old, reminded me of a joke David Letterman had in one of his Top Ten Lists several years ago about the shortage of serious candidates for office and the number one choice ended up being: "We are going to dig up Grover Cleveland and run him again!" But there is a point therein, namely that if Remsberg has to be "exhumed" and presented as a scholar who supports a hypothesis, that just means that "there is a serious shortage of modern scholars who support that hypothesis" else a contemporary professor in a top university (say Oxford, Stanford, Princeton, etc.) would have been found to support the hypothesis. If none is found then the choice is "We are going to dig up John Remsberg and run him again!"

In fact Remsberg's statement regarding "aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author" is a good example of how his material is outdated. I mentioned Shlomo Pines before, but let us consider the statement by George Albert Wells himself (The Jesus Legend by G. A. Wells 1996 ISBN 0812693345 page 48) that most scholars today hold that Josephus made some reference to Jesus in the Testimonium Flavianum which was then retouched by Christians and particularly since Shlomo Pines' discovery of the Arabic version of the Testimonium. So Wells himself admits that most scholars hold that Josephus did refer to Jesus and the 1970s discovery of Pines (Remsburg was obviously unaware of it) does matter. So Remsburg's material is clearly outdated. That is clear. Very clear. History2007 (talk) 09:29, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

And Remsburg was of course also unaware of modern scholarship such as the statement by Timothy Barnes just above here. So Remsburg is just outdated. And in any case MithrasPriest, please look up page 206 of your Leedom book (not that I endorse Leedom) in which he reproduces some Remsburg material intact, with Remsburg stating in the The Christ Myth: "It may be conceded as possible, and even probable, that a religious enthusiast of Galilee, named Jesus, was the germ of this mythical Jesus Christ." Remsburg also states at the beginning of chapter 1 of The Christ Myth: "Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of humanity... is a possible character and may have existed; but the Jesus of Bethlehem the Christ of Christianity, is an impossible character and does not exist." So Remsburg did not even deny the existence of "Jesus of Nazareth", he mostly denied the gospel portrayals of him... So that old list does not really relate to nonexistence in any case. We should probably stop wasting time on it. History2007 (talk) 11:19, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

The article as it stands is a complete misrepresentation of Remsburg: "Some arguments from silence go back to John Remsburg in 1909 who commented on the silence of Philo of Alexandria..." - Remsburg did not simply comment on Philo, he commented on 41 writers of the time and region. Why can't we simply mention that in the article without providing his list? I think we should fix that. Geĸrίtzl (talk) 21:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

This discussion started off with repeated assertions that Remsburg listed 42 authors who should have written about Jesus but did not. I followed the links in the deleted post and found that the list includes the same person twice so now we have 41 authors instead of 42. And who is this Lysias? The only Lysias known as an author that I can find was a Greek orator who died ca, 380 BC, so better revise that down to 40 authors. And why does anyone imagine that a textbook on mathematics, for instance, would break off to discuss religious saviours or miracles, no matter how astonishing? The list is a joke. By the way Spacelib what I said about Apollonius of Tyana is not my analysis, it is the first line of the section "Writings" in the WP article on him.Smeat75 (talk) 07:41, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Come to think of it, I agree with Akhilleus and Smeat75 that there should not even be any mention of Remsburg in that section, with or without his list. You know, one thing that runs through all of these discussions, again, and again, and again is the "lack of academic qualification" for the authors of these suggested sources. One of them is a real estate agent, the other may be dentist or an accountant for all we know. These are not professors in any related field. So let us ask the obvious question: "who on earth was John Remsburg and why is he a scholar of note?" Was he a professor at Harvard? Princeton? University of Kansas? No, not at all. Did he give invited lectures at Harvard or Princeton? No, not at all. He gave lectures to the public, not the respected members of academia. Was he a distinguished member of the American Historical Association? No. He was superintendent of public instruction in Atchison County, Kansas (population 28,000 in his day) and a member of the Kansas State Horticultural Society! (Be sure to click on that link...) He may be of interest from a curiosity point of view, but he was no academic or scholar of note and should just get a small mention in passing in the history section - for academically speaking he is not even a footnote. That is all. History2007 (talk) 22:04, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
Leaving Remsburg aside for a moment and looking at a more general point, since the Christ Myth theory has next to no academic support, notable authors on this page need not necessarily be prominent academics or scholars. Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:17, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
The notable authors are the likes of Wells, Price, etc. who do not make elementary errors in their writing. Why not use those instead of century old outdated items? When reading Wells, one quickly realizes that "this man does have a brain", regardless of agreeing or disagreeing with him. That is a lot more than one can say for the lower-end items. But given that the discussion in this thread is about Remsburg's list we should wrap that issue up before expanding to a wider topic. History2007 (talk) 22:20, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
I didn't mean to expand to a wider topic, I was invoking a wider principle that applies here. I think the criterion is whether Remsburg made a significant contribution to the CMT. Is he often cited by people who advocate the CMT? Or did prominent proponents in the past cite him a lot, or were they influenced by him? I have no idea what the answer is, but if he was influential among adherents of the CMT, then he can be cited, regardless of his academic qualifications. If he wasn't, he probably isn't even worth a footnote. Martijn Meijering (talk) 08:40, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
So let me get this straight. If someone comes along, and he's "just a lawyer" or "just" anything, and does a bunch of research and points out something significant on a subject of history in his book, as Remsburg did, it has no clout at WP -- even if his point is valid -- because he's not a professor or professional historian? Show me the WP guideline that says that we should not even mention a writer at all on such grounds, please. Geĸrίtzl (talk) 00:17, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
I am sorry that is just the usual, well known WP:RS issue: "Academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources" ... "Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable." The heart of it is your "even if his point is valid" qualifier. The way to determine if it is valid, is to check the qualifications of both the author and the publisher, else a 12 year old could write something tomorrow that says all kinds of things about electromagnetism that runs against Einstein, etc. and that can not be used in Wikipedia. Both the author's qualifications and the publisher are considered. That is straightforward WP:RS. And recall that there are thousands of uneducated people on the other side, say golfer Kermit Zarley who has error-laden books - he should have stuck to golf. So Wikipedia would accept Zarley on the process for a good golf swing, but nothing else per WP:RS. You can not have an encyclopedia where golfers write outside golf. That is a straightforward policy issue. History2007 (talk) 00:27, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
That rule does not apply to extreme minority views like the CMT, which has very few academic supporters, who are not representative of the general community of adherents. They are still prominent members, and need to be cited, but academic credentials are not decisive here. If the topic is notable enough to deserve an article of its own, then we can use sources we wouldn't use for other articles. See Wikipedia:Fringe_theories#Notability. For all I know there may be other excellent reasons for not mentioning Remsburg, but this isn't one of them. Martijn Meijering.
Actually that section refers to the "notability of the fringe theory" itself, and but there is no question here that CMT itself is notable; as evidenced by the existence of this article. And there is also no question that the historical views of Remsburg, Drews or Robertson need to be mentioned in the article to show how the ideas evolved over time. But are those century old views representative of "myth theory as it is today"? Only if some modern myth theorists of note use them. So as I had stated below, whatever of Remsburg or Drews' arguments that are used within the past two decaded by the myth theorists can be presented; with the historical items themselves presented as the history of the subject. So Remsburg, Drews, etc. should not be left out of the article, but should be presented as items along the path that led to the current myth theory as it is now. So if Wells/Price/etc. use that list then fine. But interestingly enough Wells takes the opposite approach, he agrees with Barnes that there was little interest on the part of the Roman authors, but uses that point to argue that as a result what the Romans wrote was only second hand based on what they learned from the early Christians, and hence can not be relied upon. So myth theory today is quite different from what it was a century ago. History2007 (talk) 11:28, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
OK, that sounds like a fine argument. Had Remsburg been alive today, he still could not be disqualified by lack of academic credentials, but he's dead, so it doesn't matter. The argument would also apply to other modern authors without academic credentials, provided they are notable. I'm just making this point avoid setting a precedent for excluding notable authors based solely on their lack of academic credentials, especially in articles about fringe / extreme minority views. Martijn Meijering (talk) 11:54, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Ok, so, to ficus on the topic of this thread in any case, we are getting to agree that the "list of 42" is no longer representative of myth theory as it is today, and does not fit. As for general precedence setting, that is probably a much wider discussion. The article does mention a wide range of people among the 20th century writers anyway. So we should probably end this thread about the "list of 42" before we all join Remsburg and Drews on the other side anyway... History2007 (talk) 13:06, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
And let me again point out that the even historically, the argument that "none of these 42 people mentioned him so Jesus of Nazareth did not exist" can not even be attributed to Remsburg, given that Remsburg did not deny "Jesus of Nazareth" but denied the "Christ of the gospels". So this should be a dead issue anyway. History2007 (talk) 11:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
But not all people who have gotten the "Christ Myth" label have said Jesus of Nazareth did not exist. Schweitzer continued to classify James George Frazer as among those "who contested the historical existence of Jesus" even after the Frazer flat out stated "My theory assumes the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth". John Robertson was willing to accept that Jesus of Nazareth was in part behind the Gospel Jesus and Archibald Robertson states that as far as John Robertson was concerned the Christ Myth was not to the deny the possibility of Jesus of Nazareth existing but "What the myth theory denies is that Christianity can be traced to a personal founder who taught as reported in the Gospels and was put to death in the circumstances there recorded" G. A. Wells' The Jesus Legend and The Jesus Myth, despite accepting a Jesus of Nazareth being behind the Q gospel, have been called "Christ Myth" books by Earl Doherty (1999); Robert M. Price (1999); Graham Stanton (2002); Eddy and Boyd (2007); and Richard Carrier (2008).
Pulling from David Strauss and John Fiske Remsburg stated that historical myth included events "distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false" which is reflected to some extent in Biblical scholar I. Howard Marshall's two ways Jesus can be historical.--67.42.65.212 (talk) 06:18, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Even before checking, I knew from the tone of that comment that it was a sock puppet comment, and it is in fact pretty close to 67.42.65.209 there. I guess someone can just deal with that as appropriate. History2007 (talk) 14:11, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
By the way, let me again note that myth theorists such as G. A. Wells and Robert M. Price who are modern proponents of the theory have good sources for presenting the basic concepts of the theory; and there is no policy barrier in the presentation of their views on the subject. In fact, if anything, they are fully aware of the historical arguments, avoid the weakest parts and present the rest in a more logical form. History2007 (talk) 01:01, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Drews overdose, merge tag and length

There is plenty of material on Drews now, in various pages, e.g. Arthur Drews (34k), The Christ Myth (25k) and his Denial book (only 5k) as well as here. There is a merge tag on the The Christ Myth page for it to merge here, having already split off from the Drews page itself. That would obviously not work given that this page is 70k, and per WP:Length it would immediately run over the limit, as well as WP:Due. So we will have to call that a no merge on procedural grounds in any case. Even the material on Drews here is longer than more logical myth theorists such as Bolland or the Dutch school - I guess because they wrote for the intellectuals and Drews for the masses. In any case, this length/merge issue needed to be noted here to deal with the merge tag there in any case. And this article is already at the upper edge of the 60k WP:Length guideline, but probably does not need a split as such just some trimming here and there. History2007 (talk) 15:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Proliferation of Internet "independent researchers" on Christian origins

A special section should perhaps be added to note and describe the impact of the Internet as a new public information medium on the vast proliferation of advocates of one form or other of the "Christ Myth Theory."

The field of Christian origins has become—thanks to the explosion of information on the Internet—a free-for-all for passionate amateurs. Newcomers have jumped in to propagandize their favorite, idiosyncratic, views on Jesus and the Origins of Christianity. Many are amateurs who have at most a B.A. and neither professional experience in scholarly research nor training in scholarly criticism. While many may mention Bruno Bauer, Robertson, Drews, Couchoud, or even Wells as an afterthought, none seems to have read either. In general they have relied on the current summaries of the published scholarship of Drews and Wells, without acknowledging any debt to the pioneers who preceded them. Unlike Couchoud and Wells, very few Internet researchers have been able to tap the huge font of German criticism.
They operate on the fringe, ignored by academic scholarship. Indeed, amateur Internet activists glory in their puffed-up achievements, trumpeting sensational breakthroughs never spotted before by academics. Such self-generated ideas find acceptance only among a fascinated, but uninformed and ignorant Internet public — which is, in fact, the readership they cultivate, thus avoiding entanglements with professional scholars and never being required to present papers in peer-reviewed Journals.
The new crop of Internet amateurs includes Dorothy Murdock (The Christ Conspiracy), Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries, 1999), Earl Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle, 1999), Tom Harpur (The Pagan Christ, 2004), Joseph Atwill (Caesar's Messiah, 2005), Kenneth Humphreys (Jesus Never Existed, 2005), René Salm (The Myth Of Nazareth: The Invented Town Of Jesus, 2008), and a multitude of their proselytes.

Internet activists call themselves "independent researchers", animating their blogs with endless discussions of Jesus's existence and of early Christian history, and offering a multitude of historical speculations with endless idiosyncratic ruminations. Their works—if printed at all— tend to be self-published, thus escaping the control and discipline of the academic and professional editors at major publishing firms. Generally, Internet researchers in Christian origins avoid direct confrontation with academic experts in peer-reviewed journals.
They claim that their positions are "avant-garde", but their activity is mainly geared towards the sale of their books, pamphlets and DVDs, thus enabling them to make a living in the field of biblical studies without academic research qualifications.
Though marginal and on the fringe, these passionate amateur researchers in effect are actively amplifying the publicity for the non-historicity thesis outside universities, on Internet sites aimed at "rationalists" and "free thinkers" and among the public at large. --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 19:41, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

The internet trivialization of knowledge syndrome is not limited to this topic. There are self-appointed experts that give similar web-based advice on a range of topics from amazing health remedies to financial market speculation. In fact there was a 15 year old boy in NY who had a pump and dump business (he would do it early in the morning before going to school) and only paid something like a $300k fine for he was under 18 and still kept some more. So Achrya, Doherty, etc. are small fry compared to the big time internet self-appointed experts. History2007 (talk) 21:13, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Allison quote

An IP objected to the quote: "We wield our criteria to get what we want...We all see what we expect to see and what we want to see....". I do not see that statement as having any problem, for Allison is a highly respected scholar, and the quote has full attribution. History2007 (talk) 14:18, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Given no response, tag can go away. History2007 (talk) 13:44, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

James the brother of the Lord

It is true that Paul did not know Jesus. But he writes that he met "James the brother of the Lord". Therefore it is impossible to say that Paul lived a long time after Jesus and that he did not know much about Jesus. It is also impossible to say that Jesus did not exist because non-existing people don't have siblings. --131.220.75.93 (talk) 15:20, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

If only things were that simple. As it happens the statement you refer to comes from Galatians which is one of the epistles that are held to be authentic. Some of the others are not. The statement that Paul knew Cephas is also in Galatians, as it happens. So those argument would go to support existence, but are never used just on their own, but in support of other, longer lines of reasoning. History2007 (talk) 07:31, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
It is possible to say that at best Paul knew about Jesus from hearsay. But, Paul never makes that claim. He says he knows Jesus from scripture and visions. Paul actually says nothing about the personal life of Jesus or events in that life like the gospels do (Paul's writings predate the gospels.) The statement about James is some evidence, but it hardly conclusive, especially when considered against other evidence, or the lack thereof. We know for example, that those who copied the Bible made errors or added information after the fact. There is some evidence to suggest the brother reference is an error. Robotczar (talk) 19:35, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
You have interesting "opinions", but that's all they are. Unfortunately for you, even critical scholarship (let alone Christian tradition and other early Christian writings) does not support most (any?) of these opinions. Ckruschke (talk) 16:38, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Ckruschke

Questions regarding notability, synth, etc.

As several editors on the talk page, including me, have said over time, this specific article has, at least historically, not met our basic guidelines for its own individual notability. The fact that there are (or were, anyway) no reliable sources which discuss the specific topic of this article, the "theory" of some form of "Christ myth", as their own specific topic at any great length, the article faces almost endless problems of OR and SYNTH regarding what content should be included in it and what shouldn't. I imagine that there are similar cases elsewhere in wikipedia of articles which are "good ideas," maybe, but fail notability. In such cases as these, what should be done? Personally, IMHO, I think that there might be a way somehow to find closely related content which is maybe more consistent with academic sources, like, in this case, “Distinctive views of Jesus in the “alternative” community in the 19th century on.” I choose this sort of title because it more or less confirms to the precedent of the Fahlbush Encyclopedia of Christianity, which has extensive coverage of theological and religious developments in that period, and almost all these opinions seem to come from that basic time period. That's a real bear of a title, though, isn't it? If, as I think is probably the case in most of the theories/hypotheses included, they all share some basic points in common, and many of them repeat, to some fairly significant degree, their predecessors, it might make sense to have some sort of content on the developments and changes in a core belief, but how to do that if there aren't any independent reliable sources which seem to address something like the non-notable stated topic of the article? John Carter (talk) 15:45, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

There are several reliable sources that discuss the subject of the article--I've pointed out many of them in many posts over the years. Most of them are cited in the article. One prominent example is a book by Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. (HarperOne, 2012), which entirely concerns the Christ Myth Theory and the reasons why it has no academic currency. Another book, by Maurice Casey, professor of New Testament at the University of Nottingham, is coming out in January 2014: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/jesus-evidence-and-argument-or-mythicist-myths-9780567447623/. There's a subject here, and it's one that's getting quite a bit of popular and academic interest. I do note, however, that "mythicism" is a more common term than "Christ myth theory" in current discussion, so if there's some good way to change the article title to reflect that, it may be worth exploring. --Akhilleus (talk) 01:52, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarfication there. The second book, presumably, will be able to establish the notability, when it comes out, as it probably will. There is a question in my eyes regarding whether the scope of this should be perhaps broadened to include theories like Morton Smith's "Jesus the magician" theory, which is another modern, somewhat speculative?, theory about Jesus, and other modern theories/conjectures about Jesus. I also have some personal reservations about the use of the word "theory", because that word tend to be used to describe things which have some sort of scientific evidence to support them, and many of these proposals are rather speculative in nature. Also, as indicated by The DaVinci Coce and some other works, there is to my eyes a bit of a significant population today which seem to be to some degree or another predisposed to entertain or accept speculations of this sort. This group, from what I can tell, is more or less often described as a form of "alternative" community. Baigent himself in one of his recent bookjacket cover bios is described as being a leading voice in the field of alternative Jesus studies. Maybe something like "alternative views of Jesus" or "modern hypotheses about Jesus" might be more neutral and maybe include some of the other speculations about Jesus which don't necessarily regard him as a myth, like Morton Smith's Jesus the magician work. John Carter (talk) 15:39, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Voorst

This nobody spammed this article with auto-quotations THIRTY times!177.205.172.191 (talk) 01:46, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Constant Appeal to Authority

This article makes multiple statements saying that "modern scholars almost all agree that Jesus existed". So what? How does people believing something is real matter in this context? If you want to refute the Christ Myth Theory while writing about it, provide references that refute it, or at least attempt to. Why make all these statements concerning what scholars believe to refute it? Scholars in 2008 mostly believed that giving mortgages to people who couldn't afford them was OK. Wickorama (talk) 06:31, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it is about refuting anything. It is about representing the scholarship on the topic, which is one of the goals of this encyclopedia. I'm not sure if anyone is saying that mere and simple people believing something is real matters in this context. However, presenting the on-topic stated positions of scholars is sine qua non for meeting the goal of representing the scholarship. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 07:29, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
The article should not "represent" scholarship as an entity. And, the article suggests that this "scholarship" entity (actually, some scholars) find the theory "laden with errors". Okay, state the scholar and the errors instead of trying to represent scholars as some sort of official unit with an opinion. Even saying "many scholars" or "most scholars" is not valid unless somebody decided who these scholars are and polled them. "Some scholars" probably "some Bible scholars" would be much better. I tend to agree that "scholars", whoever they are, opinion has minimal validity unless these scholars can be shown to be independent of the Christian belief system, which raises issues of bias. It would be much better to mere say what a particular scholar says and reference that instead of pretending there is some sort of overwhelming consensus among independent (i,e. non-Christian) "scholars". The discussion should be about what the evidence is from history, not what some have concluded about it. Robotczar (talk) 19:15, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
I think you may be interested in reading Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:NOT#Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. The article really is just about what some have concluded about it (specifically, what reliable sources have concluded about it), and the discussion here is supposed to be about the article, not the topic in general. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 17:17, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I am concerned with the appearance of bias in the article, linked with denial of misfeasance by Catholic Medieval copyists. I think that the Inquisition shows that people were killed for making accusations of misfeasance and malfeasance, using religion as a shield for abominable behavior, and that this may have influenced the copyists unduly. Making arguments based on popularity does little but confirm my misgivings. Attempting to eliminate all mention of copyist mal- or mis-feasance only makes it obvious you're not being honest. Lying for jebus is not exactly what we had in mind for a free and honest publicly sourced encyclopedia. 207.177.235.66 (talk) 02:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

If you describe of what exactly the bias consists, where this denial of malfeasance occurs, and where arguments based on popularity occur, then maybe we can work to address these issues. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 02:35, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Paul-Louis Couchoud

There's been what I see as an effort to turn Paul-Louis Couchoud's bio into a fork of this article. Others may not see it this way but I thought I'd mention it here. The editor in question has been reverted by myself and another editor. Dougweller (talk) 10:08, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Modern scholarship has generally dismissed these analogies as without formal basis

The sentence "Modern scholarship has generally dismissed these analogies as without formal basis, and a form of parallelomania laden with historical errors" does seem to be excessively POV given that the sources that support this statement at best suggest that those individual historians reject Christ Myth Theory for those reasons but not historians in general. Could we identify which historical errors (if any) are involved in this theory?

The claim about parallelomania does not appear from a 'mainstream historian' but from the Jesuit Preiest Gerald O'Collins. It seems to be somewhat dishonest to attribute to 'historians in general what are in fact the words of a single priest!

And could somebody even explain to me what is meant by an analogy lacking "formal basis"? This seems to be an odd and somewhat arbitrarily applied criteria. --81.157.90.31 (talk) 00:05, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

This article is so bad it's funny. This is just one example among many of the problems this article has and, unfortunately, is exactly the sort of article one is going to end up on an American-centric, crowd-sourced format such as this. By the looks of it, it's going to need to be rewritten from the ground up by someone with an actual background in the appropriate fields (i.e. mythology, history of religion, Greek religion, early Christianity, and Semitic religion).
For example, it's perfectly mainstream in academia that Dionysian ritual and myth influenced early Christian material. Isn't this "Christ myth theory"? And yet it has been "dismissed"? Where does the "myth theory" begin and end? And who decided that comparative mythology no longer applied to the figure of Christ? Who bestowed this special status and why? What is the agenda of the page as it is written, exactly? Meanwhile, these statements do need to go until they are rephrased to the point of comprehensibility. :bloodofox: (talk) 09:19, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
I should note that there are tables producing comparisons between tales of Jesus in early Christian mythology and earlier material on Dionysus in modern university level introductory texts to Greek mythology, for example. This isn't the only example of a well known motif in the Classical world strongly paralleling and far pre-dating the existence of Christian material. Elsewhere parallels are drawn between Prometheus's crucifixion-like binding by Zeus (this particular angry sky god action due to Prometheus acting as savior of mankind) in Prometheus Bound (415 BCE) and to Christ's crucifixion. Comparative mythology is alive and well. It has advanced well beyond the arguments of Müller and Frazer, despite what this article and related articles would have the reader believe. Using a "dying and rising god" straw man seems to be a tactic employed here, as well as mentioning "Christ myth theory" as a large body of theories and then dismissing it over and over as the rejection of the existence of Jesus as any sort of historical figure.
I'm an ocean away from my library, but this material to be introduced is crucial to this article—Christianity being essentially a product of Hellenic society—and I'll be able to drum up sources as time allows (there are plenty). Meanwhile, I urge readers to not let this article turn into an apologetic "'Mainstream scholars' say that Christ was exactly as he appears in the bible and no outside influences contributed to our understanding of Christ in modern Christianity!" :bloodofox: (talk) 10:12, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
A couple of comments. First, I think it worthwhile to note that I am in the process of getting together not only lists of articles, but also named subarticles, of all those articles in the first and second editions of the Eliade Encyclopedia of Religion. Many of the topics you mention, as well as a number of others, are discussed somewhere in some of those articles, and I have noted that many of those articles don't even seem to exist here yet. Second, as per previous discussion, this is more or less a separate, distinct, topic itself, which merits a separate article, and this title is probably among the better titles for that article. Third, a lot of the things you discuss are probably of what might be called a "broad topic", like sky gods and dying and resurrecting gods, which are probably more relevant to other articles here or not-yet-here, and probably shouldn't be in this article for WEIGHT reasons, etc. Yeah, a lot of our content regarding all religious material tends to be written from the perspective of a single religious grouping, rather than from the perspective of the academic study of religion. But, unfortunately, there aren't that many people around here who took "history of religions" type courses in college, and I think I might be one of the few who did. When I can get that material, and some other material, finished, and maybe help develop some of the content on those topics that we don't have yet, that will help a lot. But, believe me, it takes a while to go through reference books page by page like seems to be the best way to proceed in developing such lists. John Carter (talk) 17:04, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Need for a definition of "Christ myth"

I've shortened the lead sentence so it reads Christ myth "is the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed." I did this because the article as it stands is including a great deal of very mainstream scholarly discussion as "Christ myth" - for example, the majority of modern scholars would seriously question the virgin birth stories in Matthew and Luke, but they aren't mythicists.

We really, really need a decent definition. There are four references cited at the end of that first sentence. The first, Ehrman, should be reliable but unfortunately I can't access it on google books. The second is a long web posting by G.A. Wells which I don't think is useful - he's speaking only for himself, and I can find a concise definition in it anyway. The third one, Theissen, also has no definition of Christ myth-theory, and in fact doesn't even discuss it in the same sense as this article. The last one, Voorst, looks promising, but the range of pages given is 7-11 and page 7 has been dropped for me. Nevertheless, at the top of page 8 (first page I have from that range) he seems to be saying that Christ-myth is the position that Jesus is a completely mythological figure.

Anyway, I think we need a good definition before the article can be written. I've found one in Van Voorst's 2002 entry in the encyclopedia "Jesus in history, thought and culture" (page 658) - it's now the 5th source referenced at the end of the first sentence, but I'd like to drop the other four and make this our starting point.PiCo (talk) 03:48, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

As the Definition link in the infobox shows this is not the first time this issue has come up and as that long mess shows there isn't any kind of agreement as to the exact definition of the Christ myth theory. Using one author (Voorst) to try and define this would just open up a POV can of worms that no one really wants.
Besides as the article points out Voorst's claim that Wells' Jesus Myth was not a Christ myth book is challenged by Doherty, Carrier, and Eddy-Boyd who all state it is a Christ myth book even though the book expressly states the hypothetical Q gospel is based on a historical Jesus.--216.31.124.157 (talk) 06:17, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

In a recent exhaustive elaboration of the position, one of the leading proponents of Jesus mythicism, Earl Doherty, defines the view as follows: it is “the theory that no historical Jesus worthy of the name existed, that Christianity began with a belief in a spiritual, mythical figure, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction, and that no single identifiable person lay at the root of the Galilean preaching tradition.” In simpler terms, the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity.

— Ehrman 2012, p.12
--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 06:29, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
I agree that we need a solid set of quotes regarding definition(s). Right now it's a total mess that implies that "Christ myth theory" must deny any historical basis for Jesus. For example, it's quite possible to regard Jesus as having been a historical figure with a lot of motifs from myth and folklore stacked up around him, see, for example, the Jefferson bible, and then there's discussion in classical studies regarding how much the cult of Dionysus influenced the figure of Jesus—but this doesn't quality as "Christ myth theory"? If not, then what? :bloodofox: (talk) 12:25, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Agreed. Price for example believes that some of the gospel narrative is based on narratives about Simon bar Giora and Jesus ben Ananias while the preaching is simply a historicisation of various Cynic and rabbinic teachings that were floating around at the time. Neither of these historical figures can be usefully said to have been the historical Jesus. Martijn Meijering (talk) 17:59, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Disagreed. There seems to be an assumption, which I believe is not warranted by the evidence. This title, which I admit is flawed, is the one that has, over the years, been agreed on as apparently the most neutral and common title for this particular topic, which is the academic discussion of whether or not the allegedly historical Jesus was in fact historical. It seems to me that other editors are trying to read into the title something about how the article should, by its title, incorporate content relating to other mythic elements which may or may not exist in the academic literature, which is a separate matter entirely. I realize that some might take this as being really a fine point, but this is more about the "Christ myth" theory, that Jesus and/or the religious Christ were a myth which may or may not have had any or much historic basis, than about another topic which is similar. However, that similar topic, about the possible mythic origins of some of the aspects of the Jesus story as it is related to us, is another matter. I am not yet myself sure that separate topic has ever been demonstrated to be notable (but I assume it is) or whether those mythic elements would necessarily be best placed here as opposed to elsewhere. That article might better be titled "Myths in the Christ story," or "Theories of Myths in the Jesus story," or something similar. Yeah, honestly, if there were such a separate article, I might myself consider moving this one to some other title myself, to make for more easy indicators of what content goes where. But that is a separate matter. This particular topic, as currently structured, is apparently notable enough, and has received enough independent attention, to merit an article somewhere, and this title was the one which was determined appropriate. If others wish to create other articles on those other topics, I wouldn't in any way disagree - in fact, I think there are a lot of subjects relating to religion of all sort we don't have covered yet. But it would probably be best to give some idea of what other topics exist first, and what titles they might have, before changing this one's title. John Carter (talk) 18:22, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
I agree that the definition shouldn't be so wide as to include theories that merely posit mythological elements, as that includes basically all critical scholars. I was merely trying to say we shouldn't make it so narrow that it excludes people like Price. Martijn Meijering (talk) 07:03, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
On one of the many previous occasions that this issue arose, the article John proposes, "Myths in the Christ story", was in fact created. It was named Jesus Christ in comparative mythology. The creator, user:Dbachmann, hoped that the creation of a separate article would clear up the distinction between the two topics. Unfortunately the new article became something of a dumping ground for idiosyncratic and fringey theories of various kinds. However, it has always been clear that this article is about the "non-existance hypothesis", as it has also been called, and that the title is simply the most commonly used name for this hypothesis. The evidence for this has been repeatedly provided in the archives. It's also worth noting that altering the topic in the way bloodfox and others before him have tried to do clearly serves an ideological agenda, and is overwhelmingly promoted by editors who are sympathetic to the theory and want it to seem more reasonable and mainstream. Arguing that all allegedly "legendary" or "myth like" features of the Jesus story are properly dealt with under this heading is a way of changing the topic to achieve that result. However, it is clear that sources do not use the phrase "Jesus-Myth" or "Christ-Myth" in this way when the phrase is a proper noun describing a defined position on the life of Jesus. Most non-fundamentalist scholars argue that Jesus' life has been described in a way designed to fit a symbolic narrative, and may even use the word "myth" in the same way as we speak of the myth of the Blitz, for example. But that's not the name of a theory. It's a separate issue. When Michael Grant says "To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars.'", he is using "Christ myth theory" as a proper noun, to name the theory that is the topic of this article. He is not saying that scholars have again and again "answered and annihilated" the view that there are mythic aspects to the Gospel narratives of Jesus' life, a view he would support. Paul B (talk) 19:37, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
And, FWIW, I think it worth noting that although Michael Grant was what might be the first professional author of academic works not employed at a university, his work is still very highly regarded, with as I remember his biography of Saint Peter being counted, for instance, the best work on that subject of the 20th century, which is a fairly good commendation. John Carter (talk) 21:01, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you everyone for your input.

So there seem to be two positions,the first that this article should be limited to the idea that Jesus never existed at all, the other that it should be about the myths etc that grew up around a historical Jesus.

The second seems to me be covered by the existing article Jesus Christ in comparative mythology - or at least it should be. That would let this article focus much more effectively on the first definition. There's also the article Historicity of Jesus to consider - like JC in comparative mythology, it has a section on Jesus as myth, and there's a lot of unnecessary repetition going on. So my suggestion now is to restrict this article to Jesus-never-existed, with Jesus-lived-but-Christianity-has-a-lot-of-myths for the other material. Martijn Meijering, since you're the major person wanting to include the second type of material in this article, how do you feel about that? PiCo (talk) 08:37, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I explained myself badly. Like you I'm against a broad definition that includes anybody who believes there are some mythical elements, because that is so broad as to be useless, as you pointed out. I just want to qualify it a bit so that it should not exclude those who believe it contains some reworked material based on historical figures like Simon bar Giora and Jesus ben Ananias. Wells' later work is a more difficult case, since he believes the Q material does go back to a Galilean teacher. I think that should fall outside the definition, but Wells' changing view should still be mentioned as relevant to the discussion. I think Paul Barlow was the major proponent for the broader definition, but I can't find his contribution right now. Has he deleted it? Martijn Meijering (talk) 09:25, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
PiCo, the problem is if Rationalwiki's Jesus Myth theory article is accurate the term "Christ Myth theory" or its synonym has been used regarding people who were willing (Robertson and Drews) or did accept (Frazer) the existence of a flesh and blood Jesus in the 1st century but did not accept the Gospels as an accurate description of the life of that man as well as those who say there is no flesh and blood Jesus to be found. So that just mean we are going to have more POV issues on this article if we try cherry pick definitions.
Mmeijeri, I understand your concern but Wells' current view would be Christ myth by the definition given for John Robertson ("The myth theory is not concerned to deny such a possibility. What the myth theory denies Christianity can be traced to a personal founder who taught as reported in the Gospels and was put to death in the circumstances there recorded") or by Walsh (1998) and Dodd, C.H. (1938) where the Jesus myth starts first and "reports of an obscure Jewish Holy man bearing this name" are added later.
The problem is that the term "Christ myth theory" and all its synonyms have been applied in different ways by different authors to the point that IMHO it has really lost any real meaning. If you want to preserve NPOV you can't cherry pick which author's definitions and-or views you use and which you chuck out a window. For example, if you take Schweitzer as the definitive defender of the Historical Jesus position in the early 20th century you are also stuck with Schweitzer putting Frazer ("My theory assumes the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth") in the "who contested the historical existence of Jesus" category as late as 1931.--216.31.124.161 (talk) 14:16, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
The "rational wiki" article is edited by Bruce Grubb, who promotes this POV unrelentingly. He has been topic-banned for his repreated misuse of sources, hasn't he Bruce? Paul B (talk) 15:35, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Paul Barlow (talk · contribs); you state that "it's also worth noting that altering the topic in the way bloodfox and others before him have tried to do clearly serves an ideological agenda, and is overwhelmingly promoted by editors who are sympathetic to the theory and want it to seem more reasonable and mainstream." Observe WP:GOODFAITH; don't try to pick fights with other editors. It won't work to your benefit here. You need to rescind this statement and apologize immediately. I am doing nothing of the sort and you have no grounds to assume any such thing, even if doing so would somehow strengthen your position. Have a little respect for other editors here.
Second, it's clear from this talk page that this article needs a straightforward definition that makes it completely clear what this article is about. This article is, as is stands, an incoherent, confused mess that requires unification. Just look at the opening paragraph alone:

"The Christ myth theory (also known as Jesus myth theory or Jesus mythicism and others) is the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed but was invented by the Christian movement around 100 CE.[1][2][3][4][5] The most sweeping version of the myth theories contends that there was no real historical figure Jesus and that he was invented by early Christians. Another variant holds that there was a person named Jesus, but the teachings and miracles attributed to him were invented and symbolic references. Yet another version suggests that the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament is a composite character constructed from multiple people over a period of time.[2][3][4]"

For one, this seems contradictory. The first sentence is a flat, straightforward statement: 'in this theory, Jesus never existed'. Note that "theory" is in singular rather than plural. In sentence two, we hear about "versions" for the first time; i.e., there are multiple theories here, with a range of interpretations. The first sentence should make it clear that this theory isn't so straight forward. The rest of th article just goes on and on this way, making it unclear exactly what is being criticized and supported. Chaining together a bunch of reference tags also doesn't help; put the references together under one tag and then explain what each one says exactly. :bloodofox: (talk) 16:30, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
"Observe WP:GOODFAITH; don't try to pick fights with other editors. It won't work to your benefit here. You need to rescind this statement and apologize immediately.." blah blah blah. This is the kind of preposerous "offence finding" that frankly bores the hell out of me. There is no violation of good faith is regognising that you have a neo-paganist agenda that is manifest in your every editorial intervention. That is simply a fact. I have more trust is editors who are honest about their viewpoint than in those who immediately press the outraged-victim-of-GF-violations button, as you have done. In fact that is a form of bullying, creating a chilling effect on debate, which honest acknowledgement of the ideological conficts that fuel disputes is not. Paul B (talk) 16:43, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Wow! And now the debate gets fragmented. Nowhere have I claimed to be a "neopagan", and you have no right nor basis to attempt to slag me off as some sort of 'nutty neopagan'. You've read Wikipedia:No personal attacks, right? I have no idea what you mean by "neo-paganist agenda" (!), but I suppose you can attempt to scrub up some kind of definition of whatever that might be. Anyway, when I want to talk to you about my religious beliefs, if I have any at all, I'll do so elsewhere. Meanwhile I'm waiting for that apology. Good faith isn't a suggestion, it's a policy. When you're here on Wikipedia, you're expected to discuss article content, not your amateur psychological profiling of editors. :bloodofox: (talk) 16:56, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
You cannot be serious. You edit from a clear discernable viewpoint. There's nothing wrong in that as such. You will wait forever for an apology, because none is required. I merely said that a particular viewpioiunt on this articxle is linked to an ideological point of view. That's true of numerous articles and is often, quite properly, openly addressed and discussed on talk pages. Paul B (talk) 17:07, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
I invite you to define what a "neo-paganist agenda" is exactly and what that "clear discernable viewpoint" is, but doing so here will only further fragment an already fragmented discussion. Your accusations and personal attacks against me don't need to be on this talk page. Instead, let's see how such behavior goes over at the administrator's noticeboard: I've opened a thread there. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:12, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't like to get involved in this topic, but I don't see Bloodofox as coming from a "neopagan" perspective, and agree with him on two points. First, about stringing together citations: the practice fails to show how the sources relate to each other, and in a combined note, you can make it clearer how they complement each other, or differ in nuance. More important, this article has completely lost its way. There is no longer any delimited scope to differentiate it from (as was pointed out by PiCo above) Jesus in comparative mythology and Christian mythology or questions pertaining to Historicity of Jesus. I happen to agree with Bloodofox's insistence on a mythographical approach, and with his sane and uncontroversial statement that it's quite possible to regard Jesus as having been a historical figure with a lot of motifs from myth and folklore stacked up around him. "Myth" as a synonym for "falsehood, fiction" is a lexical item, not an encyclopedia topic, and "the Christ myth" to mean "Jesus never existed" is a polemical slogan, not a scholarly methodology that can be distinguished from historicity questions. I'm inclined, however, to think this article has become a lost cause. If the scope is so impossible to define, maybe it just needs to stop existing. Or maybe it could be dismantled into articles on specific theories attached to individual scholars, or even those typically dreadful articles on a single work of scholarship. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:31, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Firstly, my comments about bloodofox's perspective derive from long experience of his editing pattern, not from his particular intervention here. However, that's all pretty marginal. The rest of your comment stems, I think, from a serious misunderstanding of the debate. Your point about the meaning of "myth" is familiar, and, I'd suggest, irrelevant in this instance. Indeed I already addressed this point by analogy with the Myth of the Blitz. What matters is that the phrase 'Christ-Myth' theory has come to be used by scholars to refer to a particular viewpoint, also called the "non-existence hypothesis". Of course there are many variations of it, but that's a separate issue. There are multiple explanations of the supposed mythic sources for the story, but thay are all defined by the fact that the story of Jesus is best described as a myth, rather than an (in varying degrees unreliable) account of the life of a real person, whose deeds have been exaggerated. There may or may not have been a real person behind the myth of, say, Hercules/Heracles, but no-one would deny that that person is little more than a cipher, if he existed. The story of Hercules can only be approached as a myth and analysed in such terms. That Christ-Myth position takes the same view. As with Hercules, it doesn't really matter whether or not there was real person "behind" the myth, because the source of the myth is what matters. The person is just the grit that generates the pearl, unimportant in itself. Mainstream scholarship dioes not take that view at all. Paul B (talk) 17:39, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
I can't really recall editing much with Paul Barlow in the past. But it's clear that he's decided at some point that I am a "neopagan" (unclear semantic value here) and that I am operating with a "neo-paganist agenda". All very mysterious and, frankly, unwelcome. Paul, knock it off. I'll let you know when I want to have a personal chat with you about whatever my religious beliefs may be or even the lack thereof. Keep your half-baked attempts at amateur psychoanalysis of your co-editors to yourself. Meanwhile you're welcome to discuss article content, preferably with reliable sources and clearly as possible.
Secondly, I'm with Cynwolfe here. This article is a real mess and is all over the place. That much is obvious from the talk page. I'm beginning to wonder if Paul's aggressive attitude towards other editors isn't playing some hand in this. I'm looking forward to what John Carter may be working on here. Meanwhile, it appears that other editors are going to have to expect to be jumped on and attacked by Paul Barlow if they want to put some time in this. It might be wise to, as John Carter states elsewhere, to begin working on another version of this article in a sandbox and then see how it goes from there if any progress is going to be made. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:52, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
I only see one person trying to ratchet up personal conflict here, and only one person with an "aggressive attitude towards other editors" determined to concentrate on such issues. It is not helpful. Paul B (talk) 18:52, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Keep your discussion on the edits and not the editors and we'll get along just fine, Paul. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:55, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
PiCo was pointing out a problem with a definition which Bloodfox created, which is why PiCo then reverted it: [1]. Of course it is possible to regard Jesus as a historical figure with myths associated with him. That is the position of every Early Christian historian. Of course that is not with what this article is dealing. This article is dealing with the fringe position that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist. Taking that statement by itself, is it entirely clear how to interpret it? No. But that's true for every definition. The definition just has to be an accurate reflection of the reliable sources under a normal interpretation, not under every interpretation. If a reader needs more clarification, she will have to read more. This is the case for pretty much every topic: What is metaphysics? What is a game? You won't know exactly what metaphysics or a game is by reading the first sentence of an encyclopedia article. The same is true here for Jesus mythicism. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 18:01, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
To be clear, the sentence was adjusted to agree with the sentence after it. They still make no sense together. Then again, neither does much of this article when taken as a whole. What this seciton clearly demands is a section on terminology and usage, detailing exactly who has said what and where; if there's one thing this talk page makes clear, it's that we need definitions for this page to make any sense at all. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:06, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Does this change make more sense: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christ_myth_theory&diff=567851191&oldid=567637339 --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 18:35, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
It makes more sense than the previous version, but consider the two sentences together. According to the first sentence, it's just a single, straight-forward theory. Then the next sentence says that it's more complicated than that but doesn't really say how, just implying that it has 'levels of intensity' ("sweeping"). We also need some sort of link to Jesus Christ in comparative mythology due to the current confusion regarding the title. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:47, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I like putting the link to the comp myth article in a hatnote. To address the point Paul made with the Hercules example, in fact we don't occupy the article Herakles or any of the related articles such as Labours of Hercules with lengthy discussions about whether there really was such a person, and whether he could actually hold the world on his shoulders. We describe the myths of Herakles, and particularly in the case of Hercules in ancient Rome, we describe the religious practices associated with the figure. In other words, we take more or less an approach of social constructivism: that the meaning or reality of Herakles is socially constructed, and independent of a fact-fiction dichotomy. When I search "Christ myth", I get a lot of polemical books, most of which use the phrase merely provocatively to mean "Jesus Christ never existed, and I'm gonna prove it". The hatnote at historicity of Jesus, however, seems to make a useful distinction that this article should be about the mythical Christ—that is, not an argument that "Jesus never existed, and here's why", but rather a mythographically sophisticated approach along the lines of "According to Christ myth theory, the narratives pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth provide a mythical rather than historical basis for Christianity." I also find the use of the word "invent" in the intro to be misleading and polemical. From a perspective of history of religions or mythography, it's naive, and implies the deliberate fabrication of a story at a particular time and place. That, however, is how a fiction is created, not a myth, which develops in complex, organic relation to a belief system. (I could make comparisons with Mithraic studies: It would be beyond blockheaded to explore the development of that mythos as a question of whether Mithras ever existed, or as an attempt to discover the individual founder.) The non-technical use of the word "myth" as a synonym for "fiction, lie, fabrication" calls the scholarly methodology into question, because it reveals that the scholar isn't actually concerned with myth in the first place, but rather with the question of historicity. But those questions belong at Historicity of Jesus, which obviously should not be an assemblage of evidence to support the view that Jesus was historical, but rather a neutral examination of the nature of the historical evidence. There's a fundamental distinction between the kinds of questions that can be addressed through methodologies pertaining to myth and those pertaining to history. That seems blurred here, and that's why I no longer understand the scope of this article. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:33, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

More specifically, if we want an article on the "non-existence hypothesis", as Paul called it above, we should have an article called Non-existence of Jesus hypothesis, or something. As anyone who's ever gone near Creation myth knows, you can't get anywhere unless you're clear that "myth" is a field of intellectual inquiry with specific methodologies. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:02, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
As a practical matter, if you are even slightly skeptical of the historicity of Jesus, you're branded a mythicist. So, a number of scholars believe there was an itinerant preacher, associated with miracle work (not rare at that time), who is the closest to being identifiable as Jesus. But, they feel it isn't historically valid to identify him as Jesus. They are branded "mythicist." Strangesad (talk) 20:08, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree with above comments that the article is confused and problematic. I think this comes down to a major excluded middle problem.

The article gives the impression of having been partly written as a polemic intended to convince the reader that Jesus existed. I'm not accusing any editor or editors of having done this deliberately. Fact is, most of the sourcing on this topic is likely to be polemical one way or another (i.e. you will not find many floating voters specialising in this area). So, if an article is constructed using the sources too uncritically, it is likely to itself end up as a mish-mash of polemic.

The article appears to set out a formal argument that academic opinion favours the existence of Jesus, by listing the four positions on the question it is possible to take Christ_myth_theory#Variations_on_a_theme. The first of these says that Jesus did not exist, but it is unpopular with experts. The other three say that Jesus existed. Ergo, dear reader, Jesus existed.

Except it skips a possible stance that it ought to have considered. It is not really possible to be sure whether Jesus did or didn't exist - it is a question of probability which is not properly amenable to analysis. I would say that this is the most commonsense position, and would certainly emerge as the mainstream position among historians, had we the resources to run a survey, even if it is one less frequently argued for in sources (because, if you take this position, you are not likely to write books arguing one way or another about the existence of Jesus).

So, the Jesus existed/Jesus didn't exist debate represents only two poles of a spectrum. But, on the question of the status of the be debate, the article only seems to be interested in what participants in that debate have to say. But they are obviously not the best witnesses. The article needs badly to take greater account of outside views and commentary. Formerip (talk) 21:27, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

There's no real reason that this article should contain the Christ_myth_theory#Variations_on_a_theme section. All that's needed is a brief statement of the academic consensus that there was a historical Jesus about whom the New Testament provides some biographical information (at a minimum, that he lived in Palestine in the early 1st century CE). Detailed statements about the range of opinions about the historical Jesus belong in the (you guessed it) historical Jesus article. --Akhilleus (talk) 21:53, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
I trust your judgment on this, Akhilleus, but if I understand your following comment correctly, I'm all the more convinced that the article is a misbegotten POV fork, and has no reason to exist independently of Historicity of Jesus. Cynwolfe (talk) 04:38, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

The subject of this article and the title of this article

Aargh, not this dispute again. What this article is about is the idea/theory/hypothesis/proposition that there was no historical Jesus, and the stories about Jesus in the New Testament are fiction. Famous proponents of this view, beginning with Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews, are covered by this article. Drews wrote a series of books about this idea, which he called die Christus-mythe, in English translation "Christ myth". Writers following upon Drews (or refuting him) variously refer to the Christ-myth, the Christ Myth Theory, the Myth Theory, and so on, to refer to the idea of Jesus' ahistoricity. Modern proponents tend to call themselves Mythicists, and refer to the idea as Mythicism or Jesus Mythicism. Cynwolfe is quite right to indicate above that the use of "myth" in this sense is non-technical and non-academic, but the idea of Jesus' ahistoricity is itself non-academic. This line of thought uses the word "myth" in its most simplistic sense, as fabrication, partially because the idea springs from a simplistic analysis of the evidence of the New Testament. Van Voorst's coinage "non-existence hypothesis" is great, but no one uses it but him. WP:NAME indicates that an article about the non-historicity idea has to use "myth" in the title.

As I've said many times, looking at the title and deciding what the subject should be based on the meaning of the words in the title isn't a good idea here. There is a coherent subject--the idea that there was no historical Jesus. There's an identifiable body of proponents of this view--most are listed and covered in the article as we have it. There is academic coverage of the subject--aside from early 20th-century treatments, there's the recent book by Bart Ehrman, a forthcoming book by Maurice Casey. It's true there isn't *much* academic coverage compared to other aspects of the study of the historical Jesus/early Christianity, but that's precisely because the non-existence idea is such a non-issue in academic publishing.

Also, I don't understand Strangesad's post above...who's an example of scholars who "believe there was an itinerant preacher, associated with miracle work (not rare at that time)..." but "it isn't historically valid to identify him as Jesus"? --Akhilleus (talk) 21:47, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Wells and Elgard. Strangesad (talk) 02:56, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
So where does that leave Price's position that some stories about real historical figures may have been reworked into stories about a fictional character called Jesus? Is that a CMT? Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:11, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
I think so. The key is that Jesus is a fictional character; the materials used to fabricate him vary according to the myth theorist. However, I think that Price has been either unclear or slippery about exactly what he thinks--often, it seems as if he's saying the CMT is a interesting/plausible/likely idea, rather than something that he definitely believes. --Akhilleus (talk) 22:14, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
In his podcasts he is quite clear that he doesn't rule out that there was a historical Jesus and certainly doesn't regard it as a ridiculous theory. If there was a historical jesus, Price thinks he was probably something like a Zealot, as proposed by SGF Brandon. However, on balance he finds it more probable that Jesus is a later historicisation of an originally mythical Christ-figure. Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:53, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Restructuring article to begin with historical overview

Back to definitions: I'm not trying to railroad anyone here, but I think that if I don't edit boldly nothing will happen.

I've re-written the lead using the narrowest possible definition, sourced to Voorst. (Ehrman's definition is longer but essentially says the same thing). The rest of the lead, which I felt was over-long and inclined to argue cases instead of simply present them, I've replaced with a brief historical overview from Voorst, including his summary of the three major arguments used by mythicists from Bauer onwards. At the top of the article I've expanded the existing hat-note to direct readers to other articles on associated but different aspects of the study of the historical/mythological Jesus and the reliability of information about him.

This at least will give everyone the chance to criticise something concrete :) PiCo (talk) 03:12, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

It's been drawn to my attention that, according to my user=page,I'm retired from Wiki. How very true. This will be my last post. Best of luck :) PiCo (talk) 05:58, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I was hoping you would be coming out of retirement. Martijn Meijering (talk) 08:19, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
We are going to need luck with you retiring and History2007 vanished. I hope you after you have had a break that you will be back.Smeat75 (talk) 13:15, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
The triple hatnote much improves matter, as does the rewritten intro. Could we, however, consider explaining somehow that the word "myth" here is used in its colloquial sense as a synonym for "fiction, fabrication", and not in the sense of mythos? Something like (just brainstorming): "'Myth' in this discourse is used as a synonym for 'fiction, fabrication', and Christ myth theory is not an attempt to analyze narratives pertaining to Jesus Christ within the academic field of comparative mythology". Just so people like me don't bother you. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:09, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
I think Price at least uses the word myth as in "Greek myths", not as fabrication. Martijn Meijering (talk) 16:13, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
Quite right. That's why I keep being confused by this article, and the methodologies attach to the proponents of the supposed theory, which, as Paul noted above, is more a hypothesis than a theory. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:30, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
I've pointed out elsewhere around here, exactly where I forget, that the Fahlbush Encyclopedia of Religion, which I went through for the purposes of making a list of articles and subarticles in it, seemed to me at the time to rather regularly use the word "hypothesis" rather than "theory," even for the beliefs of some of the larger Christian groups. I tend to agree with Paul and Cynwolfe, that the word "theory," which rather clearly implies that it is in some way "scientific," is probably not the best one to use here or in a lot of other places, and that "hypothesis" or something similar would almost certainly be preferable. John Carter (talk) 23:50, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
I've come back. I'll retire after this article is settled.
I've added a hatnote defining the use of "myth" in the title of this article - fiction rather than symbolic narrative. Price might give us problems later, but we have to include him in our discussion.
Moved "history" section from bottom to top - it seems the most important part of the article, giving details on the ideas of the various theorists.
Deleted "contexts/backgrounds" entirely, as "historical background" covers the same ground in more detail. "Contexts/background" does cover areas not touched in "historical background", such as the Three Quests, but I think that really belongs to other articles.
That should be enough for now - don't want to be too bold all at once. PiCo (talk) 04:27, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't know why you are retiring PiCo but I ask you to consider coming back after you have had a break. Rather unfortunately, it seems to me, WP has become a very important source of information and in the field of the Bible/ Christianity and so forth, without you and History2007 here it seems inevitable to me that the quality of information WP offers in the area will decline drastically. You could just look in on a few of the most important articles on your watchlist from time to time, maybe? I hope so, and in any case thanks for all you have done. Smeat75 (talk) 12:51, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

expanding/consolidating section on the three arguments used by mythicists

Yesterday I moved some material (and deleted some) so that the article begins with a section on tracing the history of mythicism. Today I'm going to consolidate material to create a new section dealing with the three major arguments used by mythicists, as identified by Voorst and more or less confirmed by Price, though Price isn't quite so encompassing as Voorst. I'll detail individual edits here as I go.

  1. Deleted subsection "Variations on a theme", since it defines myth more widely than this article now does.
  2. Shortened subsection "Elements of the Theories", which is now the lead subsection for the section "Myth Theories and Responses". For details see the edit summaries.
  3. Rearranged existing material so that there are now three subsections on each of the three broad mythicist arguments. (The section on "Elements" points out that not all mythicists advance or support all three arguments). These sections are inflated and repetitive - they need to be cut back severely. They also need to concentrate on the actual arguments advanced by mythicists - there's a fourth subsection on "mainstream objections", the objections shouldn't be in these three subsections. PiCo (talk) 04:56, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Article edited down

I've deleted the section that would have dealt with the three prongs of the mythicist argument, because it's mostly not about the mythicist arguments at all, but about why they're wrong. That's not what the article should be about. The existing section tracing the history of mythicist arguments in terms of major exponents is actually quite good and detailed, and seems balanced and representative. I didn't write it, I just found it there. My advice is to leave it, it's far better than what used to follow.

Incidentally, when I read books by Price, I find that he doesn't seem to be a mythicist at all in the sense of denying that Jesus ever existed - he just argues that the NT documents aren't a good guide to what the real Jesus may have said and done. That's a far cry from denying that he existed.

Anyway, the article is now much more readable. Does anyone think it now lacks anything major? 09:37, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I think that is a vast improvement. Thank you and thanks for all you do and I hope will continue to do. Since this is virtually a new article now I am removing the "disputed" tag. Smeat75 (talk) 13:38, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
The latest edits are good changes, but I think it will still be necessary to have a section dealing with the "prongs" of the mythicist argument, because in the past a number of readers have wished to see such a section. It's easy to see why--not everyone wants to read through the entire history, but they still want to have an idea of what types of arguments are used to say Jesus didn't exist.
As for Price, I agree that in much of his printed work he takes the position that the NT isn't a reliable history of Jesus, but in some publications and in podcasts he makes it clearer that he leans toward nonexistence. I don't think he's every said that Jesus definitely didn't exist--rather he says that it's more probable that Jesus didn't exist. But he's regarded as an advocate of nonexistence by scholars like Ehrman and Beilby/Eddy. --Akhilleus (talk) 21:54, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Smeat75. @--Akhilleus, I agree that a "prongs" section seems desirable on a priori grounds, but researching it would involve a lot of work, and it would have to avoid turning into a description of the arguments against a mythic/non-existing Jesus, which is what the deleted sections mostly were.
I started turning references into harvref/sfn format, but that's also a lot of work, and very dreary. There are advantages to that format - it makes editing easier because you can't create redlink refs, plus it removes a lot of code from the text. I might continue this from time to time.
Let me thank whoever put all the work into creating the text that now remains - it wasn't me, I just found it there - it seems to me to be excellent work. PiCo (talk) 02:42, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

No, thise does not work. This article is intended to show some of the theories and evidence for the non existence of J in a historical sense. You have simply deleted most of that evidence because you don't agree with it. It's not about what you agree with. Allot of this stuff has been debunked, but that does not mean it doesn't belong here in this section. Kind of like how 9-11 conspiracy theory wiki still shows the evidence to support the claims, even though the claims are known to be false. I will begin re-inserting some of the pertinent information you have deleted.Greengrounds (talk) 03:25, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

The 63,000 character "Fringe" reverts and the retired user Pico

The 63,000 character reverts and downsizing for "fringe" please explain which citations are fringe and we can start there.

Is someone engaging in Wikipedia:Sock puppetry or is this a joke? You can't delete that much content without using the talk page, retire as Pico did and when it gets put back, two other people all of a sudden show up and revert the whole thing on "fringe" sourcing claims without explanation.Greengrounds (talk) 10:02, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Please calm down. The last thing you can accuse user PiCo of is having an apologetic religious agenda, as you can tell by reading the history of his contributions. Martijn Meijering (talk) 10:14, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
Do you see the evidence of PiCo's painstaking, carefully considered and sourced work here on this talk page and the thanks he received from other editors? Did you really think you could just undo all that at the press of a button, with the edit summary "reverted to older version before apologists erased the whole article. It is for showing the theories, not for showing mainstream scholarly opinion)?"Smeat75 (talk) 11:36, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
That was a reply to Greengrounds, right? If so, then your post was indented one level too far. Martijn Meijering (talk) 11:51, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Not one of you can point out a single line that you erased and why it was erased. Greengrounds (talk) 11:48, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

And sMeat, i'm sorry that you misunderstood again, but what I was saying is that the article is ABOUT a "fringe" theory. It is not ABOUT the historicity of Jebus. It is about the different theories of the Jesus myth. Therefore, a citation from Robert Price is relevant in this article. So why did you erase the Robert Price citations?Greengrounds (talk) 12:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Your edit summary stated that the article should just explain the theories, not put them in the context of mainstream views ("reverted to older version before apologists erased the whole article. It is for showing the theories, not for showing mainstream scholarly opinion"). I referred in my summary to WP:FRINGE which clearly states that all articles on fringe theories should put them in context with the mainstream view. You seem to have had some trouble understanding that. Read the policy. It's amazing, BTW, that you seem to think that people who defend mainstream scholarship are "apologists". As Smeat75 has pointed out, just reverting edits that were discussed and generally approved on the talk page is outrageous. Paul B (talk) 12:07, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I sure wish I could find out what the theories are from this article. There was 63,000 characters on that topic, but you just erased it. You also erased the said refutations by mainstream scholars. Right now all that's left is a list of people who supported the theory, but we are not allowed to see what their theories are, are we? You erased the sections on Myth theories and responses, Elements of the theories, and Mainstream objections, didn't you? I invite you to put some of it back, as the 63000 characters you erased were not all "Fringe". For example Price and Bauer would be considered fringe in an article on the historicity of jesus, but this is not an article on the historicity of jesus, is it? It's an article on CHRIST MYTH THEORY. D.M. Murdoch would be considered fringe among her peers in this context. But Bauer and Price and others that you deleted are not. Again, please clarify which entries are fringe and why, so we can do this properly.Greengrounds (talk) 13:21, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I reverted your change because you just dumped changes that had been discussed and approved by other editors. In fact I agree that those changes were problably too radical, and that a summary of arguments is a good thing, but your approach is totally inappropriate. I did not "delete" Bauer and Price. I reverted to a text that was preferred for editiorial reasons (it was sharper and more readable). As for Murdoch, a good case can be made that her views should be represented, as she is a well-known exponent of CMT. The views of notable exponents or notable theories should certainly be described. Paul B (talk) 19:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
To do it properly would be to take the section which you wanted to add back in to Talk and discuss it. However you chose to disparage a previous editor who was roundly respected and just dump the whole section back in thereby undoing concensus. Since you chose to not take that path, I'm not sure how you can blame the other editors for undoing your edit. You are demanding context on a whole host of Christian Wiki pages trying to make sure to beat the readers over the head with the "Fact" that Jesus and his acts are a myth, but on the ACTUAL Christ Myth Theory page, you don't want context. And all this in the last week. And when your wholesale changes meet disagreement, you cry foul and decry all the "Christian Apologists". I'm really struggling to understand your actions and motives... Ckruschke (talk) 15:23, 29 August 2013 (UTC)Ckruschke
I have opened a thread about Greengrounds' edits at AN/I,Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Anti -religious POV-pusher engaged in disruptive edits, if others would like to comment there.Smeat75 (talk) 15:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
Disruptive as ususal. Please try to add something to wikipedia rather than just trying to block other users from editing.Greengrounds (talk) 22:29, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Ckruschke (talk), As I mentioned to Barlow and as HE BROUGHT UP, it was nice to have the arguments presented by mythicists so we can see what the arguments are, and it was nice to have see the rebuttals by other scholars. The sections I brought up were the sections on Myth theories and responses, Elements of the theories, and Mainstream objections. The other sections such as reliability of old testament texts were nice, too but unfortunately that's where Pico won all his fan fare. Anyway, given that the user Paul Barlow has just stated here that he agrees the changes by Pico were too radical, can we start by adding the 3 sections I highlighted. Then if there's something in particular someone doesn't like, it can be discussed here.Greengrounds (talk) 22:29, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

It's not that notable scholarly views cannot get described, but your behavior is problematic. I would say seek User:Davidbena's contributions and seek what he was told by veteran editors, since the same arguments apply to your edits. The only difference is that he is a religious POV-pusher while you're an anti-religious POV-pusher. I don't say all your edits could be rejected wholesale, but you have engaged in lots of contentious edits inside articles which were already the product of past hot debates. Unless you understand that your behavior can be seen as problematic, I suggest to edit less contentious articles in order to gain experience of how to edit Wikipedia articles and only then approach contentious articles. That POV-pushing is not allowed can be learned from WP:Advocacy and WP:BATTLEGROUND. I suggest reading these guidelines. Also, I would suggest reading some basic textbooks about the historical Jesus, i.e. written by mainstream scholars, not by mythicists. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:49, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Let me know if it happens again. I'm not "POV" pushing by the way. I'm trying to introduce information to wikipedia that is well referenced and relevant to the articles. Now, if we could get back to some discussion that is relevant to this article that would be great.Greengrounds (talk) 00:32, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

So far, what I'm seeing is the consensus is that Pico's edits were "too radical" as said by Paul Barlow, and obviously I agree. I've mentioned 3 sections at minimum that I would like to see re-introduced. They are as follows: Myth theories and responses, Elements of the theories, and Mainstream objections. Let's start with what Elements of the theories. Here it is as it was before being removed:

Elements of the theories

Bruno Bauer laid down the three broad arguments followed by most later Christ myth theorists:[2]

  1. The New Testament texts, and especially the gospels and the Pauline epistles, have no value in establishing the existence of Jesus;
  2. The absence of Jesus from non-Christian sources that date to the first century show that Jesus did not exist, and the few second-century Roman mentions fail to establish it;
  3. Christianity was syncretistic and mythic from its beginnings.

Later authors do not always acknowledge Bauer or agree with his specific positions.[2] Among contemporary proponents, Robert M. Price sees the three pillars of the myth theories as:[3]

  1. There is no mention of a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources.
  2. The Pauline epistles do not provide evidence of a recent historical Jesus.
  3. The story of Jesus shows strong parallels to myths of dying and rising gods.

G. A. Wells has changed his position several times on various issues: he currently regards the Q source (a hypothetical collection of sayings of Jesus used as a source in the gospels of Matthew and Luke) as reliable, and rejects Price's dying and rising gods argument.[4]

To me, this section simply outlines the theories as presented by Bruno Bauer et el, and it does not claim that these theories are correct. We've already pointed out that the Myth theories are "debunked", we do this in the lead. So we simply provide outlines of the theories by some of it's proponents. I do not see how this is giving undue weight to using a fringe source. Any problems with re-inserting this section as is? Greengrounds (talk) 00:38, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Blogs are not acceptable sources

IP 110.175.13.9 inserted material sourced to a blog,[2], but blogs are not reliable sources, see WP:RS "Anyone can create a personal web page or publish their own book, and also claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable."Smeat75 (talk) 05:58, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

However, blogs are acceptable if they are by authors who have in other contexts been peer-reviewed. Hence, blogs by New York Times reporters or known academics are considered acceptable! Furthermore, this is a guest post by Hector Avalos who is very much a recognized academic!!! I would therefore say this is acceptable!--WickerGuy (talk) 15:28, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
It might be acceptable in some circumstances, but this edit was blatant promotion of a non-notable person. Paul B (talk) 15:48, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Oh, your correct. It is the reviewEE, not the reviewER that is being cited. I should have looked more carefully.--WickerGuy (talk) 17:43, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

On a similar note I question the appropriateness of one of the External Links: The Credibility of the Bible - "Article discussing falsification hypotheses about Jesus' life, message and resurrection". This appears to be an anonymous evangelical web site on a blog-like level. The unidentified author of the article doesn't even directly discuss the Jesus Myth theory. Muzilon (talk) 19:47, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting that Muzilon, that had no business being here, I have deleted it.Smeat75 (talk) 22:06, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Problematic edits to lead

User:Wickorama has been making edits to the lead that I think are highly problematic: first, repeatedly inserting the information that Van Voorst is a theologian and pastor ([3]), which is clearly meant to call into question the reliability of his statement that the CMT has no academic acceptance. Second, he has been expanding the lead to say that there are no contemporary documentary sources ([4]), which is clearly meant to support the truth of the CMT. The basic problem here is that the lead is not supposed to be a place where the CMT is debated--it's supposed to be a description of the CMT, which includes the information that it has no academic acceptance. Wickorama's changes make the lead argumentative rather than descriptive, and reduce the value of the the text to the reader. --Akhilleus (talk) 08:49, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Van Voorst really seems to irk some people. I've tried replacing his overview of the scholarly consensus with the more stilted (but otherwise pretty much the same) views from Ehrman and Casey, since they are both atheists, and maybe the argumenta ad homines will stop. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 09:00, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't think we should remove Van Voorst. Perhaps have Van Voorst, Ehrman, and Casey together. I also don't think the article should note *anyone's* religious affiliation. When editors and readers are choosing sources based on their religious beliefs, they are perpetrating religious bigotry. The appropriate criterion for using a source is whether they're regarded as an expert on a subject. --Akhilleus (talk) 12:03, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't think Van Voorst should be removed either. Perhaps the quote from classical historian Michael Grant used in the main Jesus article could be added " Michael Grant (a classicist) wrote in 1977, "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary" although we had to fight for months with an editor who kept taking it out on the grounds that it was out of date. However, as far as I know Michael Grant is the most recent secular historian, not a professor of religious studies or the NT or self-published author or blogger or so on, to consider the question "did Jesus exist?" Thank you Akhilleus for dealing with the problematic edits.Smeat75 (talk) 14:03, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

False statement about Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" removed

The passage which was recently inserted in the section "Other contemporary writers" - In 2012, Bart D. Ehrman published Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. While his conclusion was that he did, this book is significant with regard to the Christ Myth Theory, because for the first time a book authored by a believer in the historical existence of Jesus acknowledged the Christ Myth Theory is incorrect and I have removed it. Classical historian Michael Grant (the use of the word "believer" in this context is inappropriate) wrote a book in 1977 "Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels" in which he termed the hypothesis that Jesus never lived an "extreme view." He charges that it transgresses the basics of historiography: "if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned." Grant summarizes, after referring to Wells as an example: "modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory." These positions have been "annihilated" by the best scholars because the critics "have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.[5]Smeat75 (talk) 13:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

The Christ Myth theory has been "acknowledged" by those who disagree with it ever since it was formulated. Paul B (talk) 10:50, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Just noticed that I forgot to sign my comment above, so I added my signature, which is why my comment has a later timestamp than Paul B's reply.Smeat75 (talk) 13:45, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
The believers sure do like to crow victory. But in any event, I eliminated the reference. If you want to say it wasn't the first to acknowledge the Christ Myth Theory than it is not a Christ Myth Theory book and should only be used for the quotes you all love where Ehrman proclaims that no one teaching at a divinity school or in a religious studies program says that Christ is a myth. Wickorama (talk) 10:02, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
This article is titled "Christ Myth Theory", not "Proponents of the Christ Myth Theory" or "Arguments in Favour of the Christ Myth Theory." It is not an article to push the idea that there was never such a person as Jesus, it should include both notable proponents and scholars who have refuted the idea. I put back the van Voorst quote that was in the lead that Wickorama removed,not in the lead but later in the article, he took it out, I put in the Michael Grant quote above, he took it out, I put in a quote from John Dominic Crossan, he took it out, with edit summaries that say they do not belong in the article because they are not "believers" in the Christ myth theory. This is unacceptable to me, the article is now not neutral, I am not going to edit war about it but I am not going to accept it either. I would like to hear what other editors think and I am tagging the article with "neutrality disputed".Smeat75 (talk) 15:19, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
It has two blanket statements from two different people saying it is complete bunk and has been proven wrong and nobody that's anybody believes it, and the one's that do are extremists. What more could there be to add to that in terms of an opposing view. It was stated previously in this talk page, that it is legitimate to make an appeal to authority on this article by quoting Erhman and others about how nobody teaching believes the Christ Myth Theory. This was said to be a function of Wikipedia - to show what scholars think on the matter. Those two paragraphs in the front can be added to if you want to "show what Religious studies scholars think" with regard to the theory if you want to add addition "what Religious studies scholars think" quotes. But I don't article the article for Christ Myth Theory (or any other article) is a place for editors who believe in alternative theories to try and debunk the subject matter in the article. The Historicity of Jesus article has a small section on the Christ Myth Theory. If you want to talk about people who believe Jesus existed, make a separate section like that and title it "Historicity of Jesus Theory". Wickorama (talk) 00:27, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Another attempt to obfuscate the fringe nature of the CMT. I think all of the above references put in by Smeat75 and removed by Wickorama should be restored. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 17:21, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
You already have two quotes in the article from two people saying no one of any substance believes it, that it is the view of extremists, and that it is "demonstrably false". What exactly more than that do you want? This is not the place to try and prove the Christ Myth Theory false anymore than the Historicity of Jesus is a place to prove that he is a myth. Two religious studies people are quoted giving an extreme negative view of it show "what scholars think of it". If you need more negativity from professors, add to those paragraphs or make a amall (like Christ Myth Theory section on Historocity of Jesus article) detailing the Historocity of Jesus Theory.

Wickorama (talk) 00:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I've read Wikorama's above statement several times, and I still can't make any sense of it. Ehrman is an expert who discusses the Christ Myth theory. It's a book that can legitimately be used throughout the article. Paul B (talk) 17:38, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Erhman, a man with many years of Christian religious training, is already quoted giving the "view of Religious scholars". Erhman's book reference belongs in a list of people who believe in the Historicity of Jesus. The Historicity of Jesus has a section on Myth Theory. If you believers in the Historicity of Jesus want to state on this page that many people believe he existed, over and above the two quotes that already "laugh at" the Christ Myth Theory in the opening part - put a section on Historicity of Jesus Theory and quote Erhman and all the many other believing authors in that section - in the same fashion that the Historicity of Jesus article has a small section in Christ Myth Theory. Wickorama (talk) 00:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Like Paul, I'm struggling to make sense of Wickorama's comment. Ehrman and other scholars who have written about the CMT are the kind of sources that this article needs if it's to have any hope of portraying what actual experts think about this theory. On the other hand, I don't think it's necessary to have paragraphs on Ehrman, Hoffman, et al. in the "contemporary writers" section, because the focus of this article should be on the CMT theorists themselves. This doesn't mean I support what Wickorama is doing, though--he's going through with a wrecking ball, whereas I think some sections should be reworked. --Akhilleus (talk) 21:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
You've already got two quotes from "actual experts" giving a blanket denunciation of the Christ Myth Theory. A total blanket denunciation. A complete and total blanket denunciation. Readlly, what more does there need to be? If you need 1000 denunciations, then make a separate section on the Historicity of Jesus Theory in this article and quote all the believers in it there. Wickorama (talk) 00:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Response to Wickorama at 00:27 above - first of all, it is not really "an appeal to authority" to quote Ehrman and other experts who reject the CMT, it is summarising what reliable sources say. A very important quote, in my opinion, is the one from Michael Grant as he was a very eminent classical historian, not a religious studies professor or such and it is directly relevant to this article as he discusses the CMT, yes the source is now 36 years old, but if anyone else knows a historian of ancient history who has addressed the question since then, please let us know, AFAIK there aren't any. The question of Jesus' existence and those who dispute it is discussed in the Historicity of Jesus article, see [6]. It seems to me that you are asking for this article to be a WP:POVFORK, with one article, Historicity of Jesus, saying he did exist, and another article, this one, saying he did not. That is not allowed on WP, see WP:UNDUE "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of, or as detailed, a description as more widely held views." Since there are far more scholars who dismiss the CMT than support it, this article must make that clear to be WP:NPOV. Would you find it acceptable to have a section with "Criticism of the CMT" or some such title with the Michael Grant quote and others including "Van Voorst, Ehrman, and Casey together" as suggested by editor Akhilleus on this page at 12:03, 11 October 2013?Smeat75 (talk) 01:16, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I got edit conflicts trying to post my last message, and I see that Wickorama does agree to a section on critics of the CMT, so that is something we can work on.Smeat75 (talk) 01:32, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I put the quotes I consider essential, Michael Grant, Crossan and van Voorst, into the opening "Historicity" section created by Wickorama, if the article remains stable for a while I will remove the "neutrality disputed" tag.Smeat75 (talk) 13:02, 19 October 2013 (UTC)


Recent additions to "Historicity of Jesus" section

Wickorama, you have added various unsourced statements which are more like personal editorialising than parts of a neutral encyclopedia article, for instance Historicity refers to the study of alleged past persons and events to determine if they are historical or mythical - "alleged past persons" is not appropriate unless cited to a WP:RS and also the dichotomy, a "past person" is either historical or mythical needs a reliable source. Also Although all known Christian and secular references to Jesus were written more than a decade after his alleged lifetime, alleged,again, does not belong in there unless you are citing a reliable source which uses that word and that sentence is linking to reliable sources which state that Jesus existed and is clearly intended to cast doubt on their accuracy, ie it is more or less saying "these so-called experts say that Jesus existed, the dummies, even though there are no references to him in his lifetime." It is not appropriate to insert your personal views like that here as it would be if you were writing your own blog. Also I am not really clear why you want that section right at the beginning, it is usual to have a "Criticism" section after the main subject matter has been presented, not before, but in fact according to WP:CRIT The best approach to incorporating negative criticism into the encyclopedia is to integrate it into the article, in a way that does not disrupt the article's flow. The article should be divided into sections based on topics, timeline, or theme – not viewpoint. Negative criticism should be interwoven throughout the topical or thematic sections" which is what I tried to do but you removed my edits and said they should all be in one section. The lead, by the way, will have to include some statement that the CMT is rejected by mainstream scholarly opinion.Smeat75 (talk) 05:40, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I reverted Wickorama's latests edits; I don't think they're helpful.
I don't think it's a good idea to have a separate "historicity of Jesus" section, even if the editorializing noted by Smeat75 were fixed. First, the label is wrong--no mainstream scholar studies the historicity of Jesus, they study the historical Jesus. Second, the first major section of the article should be an explanation of the subject of this article, the Christ myth theory. If there's going to be a section explaining why the theory hasn't been accepted by the mainstream, that should be at the end. (I would rather not call this section "criticism", either, because criticism sections are usually ill-considered hodgepodges rather than well-thought out explanations of problems with the article's subject.)
The most important problem with the current form of the article, though, is that there is no indication in the lead that this is a non-mainstream theory. And that's an essential fact to note about the CMT. --Akhilleus (talk) 08:08, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree that we should delete the "Historicity" section, and replace it with a section at the end that says "The theory of non-existence does not enjoy much mainstream support, although most of the details in the gospel stories are not considered to be historical either - attach 10 references - see Sources for the Historicity of Jesus for further details." Then we can summarize this section in one line in the lead, and achieve all the needed objectives without unnecessary duplication. Wdford (talk) 08:57, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Wdford, over at the "Historicity of Jesus" talk page I pointed out that your idea of splitting articles according to their point of view is not allowed on WP. Maybe you didn't read it, so here it is again - The generally accepted policy is that all facts and major points of view on a certain subject should be treated in one articleWP:POVSPLIT. You can't stop people adding reliably sourced information and scholarly views, whether for or against, on the Christ Myth Theory to the Christ Myth Theory article.Smeat75 (talk) 21:09, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Well then we'll just have to live with all the duplications and overlaps, won't we? Wdford (talk) 21:38, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

References

Why does this article call what are "references" on the other Wikipedia articles - Notes? And then adds "References", a list of publications, and then follows that with "Further Reading" a list of publications? Wickorama (talk) 23:20, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

That is actually the nearest we have to a standard approach in longer articles, and the best one. Johnbod (talk) 02:23, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Is this a published standard documented by an article? At what point does an article get too long to use a References section for references and then go to Notes section for references? Wickorama (talk) 00:26, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Needs mention of Joseph Atwill

and his "Covert Messiah" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.78.188.4 (talk) 15:54, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Disruptive editing by Dickie birdie

You are engaging in an edit-war. If you keep this up, you are likely to be banned from editing. The docetism issue has been discussed before, and considered off-topic for this page. I won't revert you again, but someone else probably will, and if you revert that revert again it will likely result in a ban. We can always discuss this agin, but you cannot unilaterally impose your changes on this article. Martijn Meijering (talk) 18:09, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

  • Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies; Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies; Epiphanius, Panarion - do we need to compile a collection of sources that the idea of a mythical and incorporeal Christ that Christians believed in dates from long before the 18th centuries. These facts are to be found in standard reference books and surely should be included on Wikipedia. Dickie birdie (talk) 19:04, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
"Incorporeal" and "mythical" are two totally different concepts. The Docetist theory is rather like one of those old episodes of Star Trek in which trans-dimensional beings create a hologram-like "body" for themselves in order to communicate with humans. It doesv not dispute the accuracy of the accounts of Jesus' life in the Gospels, but states that his body was purely spiritual, not material in form. Christ Myth theory is the totally different view that the events described in ther Gospels did not happen at all. Paul B (talk) 19:11, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
The Christians believed that the positions held by Basilides, Marcion etc were mythical and that's why they refuted them. Dickie birdie (talk) 19:17, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
In that case you might say that orthodox Christians espoused a CMT of sorts, in that they said that the gnostics' Jesus was mythical. But gnostics did not espouse the view that Jesus was mythical, just that he did not have a physical body. In their view it was apparently possible to have a spiritual body.
There is a link between the CMT and gnosticism however. Price for instance believes that the belief in a historical man Jesus arose from adapting earlier myths about a celestial Jesus, or perhaps earlier myths about other celestial beings. We would call such beings mythical, but the ancients who believed in them would not have.Martijn Meijering (talk) 20:00, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
You have made my point, the fact that there were Christian groups out there who believed in a Jesus Christ that was incorporeal, without a physical body, shows that the physical Christ did not exist to them, and that the idea of a mythical Christ dates from well before the 18th century. The idea of a Christ without a body can only be mythical. Irrespective of whether this involved devotional religious worship. Dickie birdie (talk) 09:52, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
Not only Price but Michel Grant (see Talk:Christ_myth_theory/Archive_39#Grant though there was a debate regarding if this was an accurate description of docetism or a continuation of the supposedly 'mistaken" idea it related to the Christ Myth theory (see Talk:Christ_myth_theory/Archive_39#Docetism) Looking through the archives is a good idea as odds are the idea has come up before.--67.42.65.212 (talk) 05:47, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
I have reverted the article to the original page, but it does not give all the facts. Dickie birdie (talk) 19:23, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
I don't really follow you. Orthodox Christians didn't accept these views, no, but you are using the word "mythical" simply to mean "wrong" here. You could equally say that they thought the view that Jesus was a normal human being was "mythical". Paul B (talk) 19:36, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
I have updated the article on Gilles Quispel Dickie birdie (talk) 19:56, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
Just to add, the events in the Gospels were interpreted as not being historical in nature by the Gnostics, Docetists and Marcion, Basilides, Valentinus, Saturnilus, et al. All that is required is accessing the literature. Dickie birdie (talk) 09:41, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Problems With Using Voorst as a Source In This Context

Since Robert_E._Van_Voorst is a theologian, and not a historian, it is problematic to use him as a source for this material, which deals specifically with the historical validity of the Jesus character. Being a theologian, his views are most certainly biased in this regard, and we should consider using more neutral and scholarly texts (published by major Universities) as sources to use instead. Spirit469 (talk) 00:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

So I've reverted your change of the van Voorst claim. The change you made created a statement which wasn't sourced, whereas the one before was sourced to van Voorst. Now you say that Voorst cannot be used as a source. Obviously other editors here disagree. Perhaps you can explain clearly why you think he cannot be used. You identified a few things: he is not an historian, he is a theologian and thus most certainly biased, it is not neutral enough, it is not scholarly enough, it is not published by a major university.
The requirement that a source be published by a major university, is not one with which I agree. This would mean anything solely published by Wiley-Blackwell, Walter de Gruyter, etc. would be excluded. I think systematically excluding them would be a mistake as these publishers have similar editorial practicses to the major university press, and so there is no reason to exclude them. And works which are widely discussed for this topic would be excluded as a result. For example, Did Jesus Exist? by Bart Ehrman would be excluded, because it is solely published by HarperOne. In fact, no books of the proponents of the Christ Myth Theory could be cited at all, because none of them are published by any university presses let alone major ones.
I think it is scholarly enough and neutral enough. That's why scholars have given the book good reviews. For example: Helen Bond (University of Edinburgh), The Expository Times (April 2000), 111 (7), p. 238; Eugene O. Bowser (University of Northern Colorado), Library Journal 125.9 (May 15, 2000), p. 100; Barbara Spensley (University of Leeds), Novum Testamentum, Vol. 44, Fasc. 2 (Apr., 2002), p. 186. Also, the statement is corroborated by other scholarly sources. Note though that these journals are not published by major universities, so you may not take them seriously. Novum Testamentum is published by Brill Publishers. The Expository Times is published by Sage Publications. The Library Journal is a more complex case.
I'm not convinced that he is most certainly biased because he is a theologian. If he is biased, then I wouldn't expect him to receive those good reviews.
Finally, I think he is an historian. The book is clearly a history book because in it the author is looking at historical sources and trying to reach historical conclusions. The book is also listed as "history" by journals and libraries. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 02:44, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
Probably worth mentioning that Richard Carrier has said several times that Van Voorst is the best available treatment of the subject. --Akhilleus (talk) 09:08, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
"I was eagerly hoping for a book I could recommend as the best case for historicity (but alas, that title stays with the inadequate but nevertheless competent, if not always correct, treatment in Van Voorst’s Jesus Outside the New Testament and Theissen & Merz’s The Historical Jesus)." (Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic Carrier's blog) So Carrier does not says that Van Voorst is the "best" but rather Van Voorst is "inadequate but nevertheless competent".--67.42.65.209 (talk) 07:21, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Strong myth variant

The article Historicity of Jesus duplicates a lot of what is in this article, but goes even further to make mention of a "strong myth variant". This does not appear to be included here, in the main article on the myth topic. Should it not be added here, for completeness? Wdford (talk) 09:23, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

No. The historicity of Jesus article is confused on this point (as it is on many others). What that article calls the "strong myth variant"--"the notion that Jesus never existed" is the Christ myth theory. If anything, the section in historicity of Jesus needs to be rewritten. (Although as i believe you know, I don't see a rationale for that article to exist in the first place. --Akhilleus (talk) 16:50, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
That's what I thought. I will summarize this section at the Historicity of Jesus article accordingly. If we can trim that article down far enough, it will eventually make sense to merge what remains into something else. Wdford (talk) 21:32, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
Actually, while generally the Christ myth concerns itself with the idea that Jesus didn't exist as a human being (per Price's "For even if we trace Christianity back to Jesus ben Pandera or an Essene Teacher of Righteousness in the first century BCE, we still have a historical Jesus" in his 2012 The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems pg 387-8) there are variants that simply deny that "Christianity can be traced to a personal founder who taught as reported in the Gospels and was put to death in the circumstances there recorded" (Robertson, Archibald. (1946) Jesus: Myth or History?) so I understand this whole strong vs weak myth argument. It is just that the majority of the Christ Myth materila deals with the Jesus didn't exist as a human being side of the concept.--67.42.65.209 (talk) 07:06, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Neutrality tag

Would somebody please explain why there is a neutrality tag here, and what exactly the problem is perceived to be, so that we can address it? Wdford (talk) 08:04, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I have not followed the details, but there is a comment at "13:02, 19 October 2013" above that has some hints; it looks like the tag was added four days earlier. I suggest the tag be removed if no explanation arrives soon. Johnuniq (talk) 08:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I put that tag on the article at a point when the lead did not mention that mainstream historians do not question that Jesus existed and the quote from Michael Grant, the last classical historian as far as I know to address the matter, had been removed along with the quote from Crossan. Now that these have been restored, I will remove the tag, since I am the one who put it on.Smeat75 (talk) 13:45, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

One reason to question the neutrality of the article is that the first 4 sources in the lede--forming the basis and introduction of the concept--come from one critic (Van Voorst). I doubt the article Jesus could be introduced primarily by Satanist sources. Beyondallmeaning (talk) 21:04, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

One sentence I find very objectionable is the following Most modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, and most biblical scholars and classical historians see the theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted. The reason I find this objectionable is that I believe this overstates the case and leads casual readers to conclude that this is a matter that is studied by ancient historians in general. This is misleading, because with very few exceptions, those who have studied the question are NT scholars. In addition, most NT scholars are Christians or former Christians and the problem of bias is widely acknowledged, both inside and outside the field. What we can and should say is that most NT scholars are dismissive of the theory and perhaps that very few if any historians in general support it. This is not a question that has been examined by "most scholars of antiquity", and the article should not imply it has been. There is no reason to insist on a verbatim quotation from one of the sources if it's unattributed, but if we do want to have one, Grant's formulation is much preferable to that of Ehrman. I would prefer attributed quotations as we have now, in which case they should of course be verbatim. Martijn Meijering (talk) 21:23, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Of course, the wording "Most modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, and most biblical scholars and classical historians see the theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted" echoes closely Van Voorst's statement "biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted". The only problem I see here is one of attribution--it needs to be clearer that this wording (which I think should be restored) is a quote. (Also, it seems that our article quotes Van Voorst inaccurately--there should be a "the" in there before "non-existence".) This statement is echoed by Ehrman and Stanton (both quoted in footnotes). Graeme Clarke, a classical historian not quoted in our article, has stated "Frankly, I know of no ancient historian or biblical historian who would have a twinge of doubt about the existence of a Jesus Christ - the documentary evidence is simply overwhelming." [7]
Now, I'm not attached to any particular wording, as long as the article makes it clear that this theory has no significant acceptance in academia, meaning not just New Testament studies, but ancient history--as I have said many times, any straightforward application of the methods usually employed in studying ancient history would tell us not only that Jesus existed, but that we can figure out something about what he did and thought. In fact, ancient historians such as Michael Grant have told us exactly that! I find it odd that editors are so determined to dismiss the specific statements of our sources that ancient historians don't doubt the historicity of Jesus, as if their judgment trumps that of reliable sources. I find it even stranger that this is an issue worth slapping a NPOV tag on the article over, but I suppose tags are cheap. --Akhilleus (talk) 00:16, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Can I clarify why the neutrality tag was put back on the article, Mmeijeri? If you would have put it there regardless of "Beyondallmeaning"'s comment, OK, but if you restored it because of that comment, then it should be removed because "Beyondallmeaning" is actually the indefinitely blocked User Strangesad as an SPI has just confirmed [8].Smeat75 (talk) 00:40, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
I added it because of my own objection, not the previous comment. I do think the previous argument has some merit, though it was needlessly harsh, but it's not something I'm overly worried about. Specifically my objection is to implying that the consensus against the CMT is wider than it is. It is true that it has next to no support in academia, and the article states that, but it is not true that there are many ancient historians who publicly oppose it. Outside NT scholarship the matter is hardly ever discussed. Very few if any ancient historians support the CMT but similarly very few oppose it. There could be many reasons for that, but it's not our job to speculate about that in the body of the text. We should make sure we state the known facts (very little academic support, strong dismissal from NT scholarship, many claims of support beyond NT scholarship, but coming almost exclusively from NT scholarship itself) without implying things that have only been claimed, but not reliably established, are true. We should definitely quote Ehrman's strong claim of support, perhaps in a footnote as now, or perhaps even in the lede, but as an attributed opinion. If we do, we could juxtapose it with Grant's less sweeping statement. Martijn Meijering (talk) 12:52, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
I understand Mmeijeri's position. Part of the problem is several people called "Christ mythers" were not of the Jesus didn't exist as a human being bent but rather the Gospels story is akin to the stories of Robin Hood or King Arthur and other then telling us Jesus existed (at some time) tells us effectively nothing about the man (Remsburg's "small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false" portion of historical myth); G. R. S. Mead and Alvar Ellegård are examples of this.
It certainly doesn't help that people who do accept a flesh and blood Jesus in the 1st century are called "Christ Mythers" by their contemplates. Frazer by Schweitzer (1912, 1931) and Wells post Jesus Myth (1996) by Doherty (1999), Price (1999, 2005), Stanton (2002), Carrier (2006), and Eddy-Boyd (2007) are examples of this.--67.42.65.209 (talk) 08:36, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
There does not seem to be any effort being put in to trying to do something so we can take the neutrality tag off this article, so I am going to boldly revert the last paragraph of the lead to a version which in my opinion is more neutral. Currently it says "In recent times the theory has had very few adherents in academia" which carries a strong implication that there are a lot of other adherents in other places beside academia with overtones of negativity towards academia which is not something WP should be doing, academic sources are to be preferred as WP:RSsays - When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources. The previous version said "Most modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, and most biblical scholars and classical historians see the theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted" and that is an accurate and neutral statement with a lot of references. Then the current version says "With few exceptions, academic study into the historicity of Jesus is confined to New Testament scholarship" - no, this is not sourced to anything and it is just somebody's personal opinion, it should not be there. Are we seriously saying that historians don't bother to study Jesus? Then again the present version says "Most biblical scholars see the theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted" with the implication that biblical scholars say this but others do not. There is no source for that, please provide a reference for the implication that this is a view supported only by biblical scholars. And the present version omits any reference to classical historians, that is unacceptable in my opinion.Smeat75 (talk) 21:13, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't see how you could think the previous version is more neutral than my bold edit. I can see how it might be improved, but I don't think a revert is very helpful, but as I made a Bold move, you're welcome to Revert it so we can Discuss. I don't think the remark about very few adherents in academia is at all suggestive of wider support outside academia, let alone strongly so, but I agree we shouldn't imply anything of the sort. So if there is worry about that, I'll be happy to find a form of words that doesn't. However, as it stands the text suggests something that is patently false, namely that there has been substantive study of the whole issue outside biblical scholarship. I can dig up citations to that effect, but are you seriously suggesting there has been serious study outside biblical scholarship? If you think not, a cn tag would be the proper remedy, not reverting. As for negative overtones against academia, to the degree they are there, they are unintentional. To the degree I'm critical it's because most of the HJ research has not been sufficiently academically rigorous in the eyes of notable scholars both inside and outside the community and we have plenty of citations to that effect.
I strongly disagree that the "most scholars of antiquity" from Ehrman is neutral, to me it seems like blatant propaganda. We can of course quote Ehrman on this, but with attribution, either speaking for himself or for biblical scholarship. Hardly any scholars of antiquity other than biblical scholars have studied the matter, and it is totally misleading to use a term that suggests a much wider group when in fact a much more accurate term (biblical scholarship) is available. Given the doubts about the academic rigour and worries about bias coming from notable scholars combined with a prima facie case that the claim is blatantly misleading, we cannot allow Ehrman to speak with the voice of Wikipedia. Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:23, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Akhilleus above posted a link to a newspaper article which contacted several classical historians and asked them if they had any doubts about the existence of Jesus. The answer was no and Emeritus Professor Graeme Clarke, whose speciality is Classical (Ancient) History and Archaeology [[9]] said "I know of no ancient historian (emphasis added) or biblical historian who would have a twinge of doubt about the existence of a Jesus Christ - the documentary evidence is simply overwhelming." I think WP:ITA is relevant here - Since fringe theories may be obscure topics that few non-adherents write about, there may only be a small number of sources that directly dispute them. Care should be taken not to mislead the reader by implying that, because the claim is actively disputed by only a few, it is otherwise supported. The CMT is not "obscure" but it should not be implied that because few historians have bothered to refute it in print, they have no opinion on the matter, note that Clarke only made that statement because he was asked, if there were classical historians who disagreed with Michael Grant's 1977 assessment of the matter, they would certainly say so. They have not, so it must be taken as the final word, as of now, on the question. I would not have a problem with attributing the "most scholars of antiquity" to Ehrman in the text.Smeat75 (talk) 00:03, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed the newspaper article, thanks for reminding me of it. I'll read it and see if it changes my mind. I'm not sure I'll find a lot of time until and maybe even during the weekend, but I don't think there is enormous time pressure. Martijn Meijering (talk) 17:40, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
If anything, the phrase "Most biblical scholars see the theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted..." isn't strong enough. Something like "virtually all scholars dismiss the CMT with contempt" is really more accurate. "Most" can mean 51/49% but in reality, it's something on the order or 99.99/0.01%. However, "as long as the article makes it clear that this theory has no significant acceptance in academia, meaning not just New Testament studies, but ancient history..." as Akhillius has said, I'm good with that. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 21:38, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree with your point about contempt, although we probably want to find a more encyclopedic term to describe it. As for 99.9%, I think that's true, and the article should make that clear. The reader shouldn't come away with the impression that there's a majority position and a minority position without realising there is indeed almost unanimity. My main concern is that the reader shouldn't come away with the impression that the issue has seen much serious scholarship outside NT circles either. That concern seems totally compatible with the one you're expressing. Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:28, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Do note that the "effectively refuted" is actually a citation from a reliable source, but by all means let's find a source that lets the reader understand how centemptuously dismissive most biblical scholars are of this issue. As a further side note, AFAIK Grant takes the question of historicity seriously and argues it needs careful scrutiny, it's just that he thinks the issue has been adequately studied and that it is no longer tenable to answer the question in the negative in the light of that study, not because it is obviously false. Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:44, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
I've attempted to address this by bringing some direct quotes from the footnotes up into the body of the text. EastTN (talk) 20:22, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Textual Analysis, Aggregate Recovery

Besides the details of historical analysis, evidenciary evaluations for the contemporaneous events, the corruption of the historical record by religious, and Euhemerian apologetics, there is also an important development left unaddressed by this Wikipedia article: textual analysis for character. The primary expositor for this was Alan Dundes in "Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore ", in which he averred his expert opinion that the canonical gospels feature characteristics common to *oral tales*, implying their failure as journalistic or narrative accounts (being more aligned to folktales and mythology in this evaluation). In *combination* with the lack of contemporaneous confirmation of the events in question, all the more reason is given to align with scholars like Price and atheists in disputing the basis for any Jesus ever to have existed.

With numerous gospels (Jesus stories) recovered during the course of the last few hundred years after attempted destruction by Christians, these (Gnostic, primarily, but some others also; cf. Pagels' "Gnostic Gospels" and others) have also given reason (as featured within the wonderful "Alternative Christs" by Olav Hammer) to set out a pile of Christian hero stories next to one another and weigh them all equally in the face of religious enthusiasm. Doing this, we are left with little to support the Christian convention. By 2200 there will be no scholars with any credibility who think the Jesus character was ever more than fiction. This is also the case for Gautama Buddha, accounts of whom were not put into writing until hundreds of years after his supposed existence, yet the state of historical research and critical thinking at this point in human history is nascent, developing, and in need of an overhaul.-- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) (talk) 05:41, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Interesting opinions - you know this isn't a forum for discussing our view points - right? Is there a point in here - somewhere - about improving of the page within your largely OR treatise? Ckruschke (talk) 15:11, 26 November 2013 (UTC)Ckruschke
Perhaps you can return in 2200 and change the article to reflect the consensus that will apparently exist then. Unfortunately we will all have to wait until then, as the article is supposed to reflect the current academic consensus. Paul B (talk) 20:34, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I would add to your list of historical myths also the Hebrew Bible characters/legends of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, to begin with Genesis and Exodus; but the list continues with Moses, Joshua, King David, and King Solomon, not to mention most of the prophets too. warshy (¥¥) 20:53, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
You do realise this pronouncement has nothing to with the topic of the article? Paul B (talk) 21:13, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
How many times does Bart D. Ehrman need to be quoted in an article that primarily does not call for Christian propaganda? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.188.65.168 (talk) 01:49, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Only 2 times, once, his own, 2nd time, it was others who wrote about him, no he's not a propaganda. Bladesmulti (talk) 02:26, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Mainstream Rebuttals

I'm curious as to why this section just lists a few historians and their assertions that the Christ myth theory is refuted instead of actually listing the evidence or proof they have that make the theory invalid. From what I've read, John Dominic Crossan's argument is the only one listed and it says Jesus is real because Josephus and Tacitus both agree that he was crucified or at least he says that this proves his crucifixion occurred. I think this section should actually list the evidence or arguments that scholars make denying the Christ myth theory instead of just their assertions that it's rubbish. Their assertions hold no value in understanding the merit of the theory and its flaws and this whole section, the way it is written, would be equivalent to me making a section on Obama's article titled "Worst President Ever" and then just listing assertions made by several conservatives merely emphasizing that point. In essence, only one rebuttal is actually given in this section and the rest is are just opinions that this theory doesn't matter and is only held by the minority, which is not a rebuttal. Scoobydunk (talk) 02:24, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

No one is insulting Jesus Christ here, so why we would need Obama - "Worst President Ever" just for retaliating? I don't think we can add 100% full writings of the people who have been listed here, we have only highlighted what highly recommended thinkers had suggested or claimed. As long as they are sourced, you can simply pave your way, for discovering "evidence or proof". Bladesmulti (talk) 03:54, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
You've missed the point. It's not about insults. It's about what qualifies as a rebuttal and what is just unfounded assertions and my extreme example was to indicate how silly and inappropriate just listing a bunch of assertions of biased/unbiased sources is. Looking through the talk discussion and the article, the contributors of this article have spent a lot of time making sure readers come away with the notion that most religious and historical scholars consider this theory rebutted, instead of focusing on educating people on evidence and arguments that actually refute this theory. This section is, essentially, a giant appeal to popularity and authority and does not offer any information on what the rebuttals actually are. Just like someone did with John Crossan, you should be easily able to find a topic sentence or summary that represents their argument instead of just quoting their assertions that "it's been rebutted." Them asserting it's been rebutted is not a rebuttal itself and that is what is severely lacking from this section. Scoobydunk (talk) 04:28, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
Following what I see to be more common practice in titling article sections (regardless of whether the topic is "mainstream" or not), the section has been retitled "Criticism." Certainly you would expect a bit more rebuttal in a rebuttal, with a discussion of evidence and detailed argument, rather than a parade of names, wouldn't you? But there was a nice paragraph of criticism in the top of the article that is now able to add some argumentative writing on the banners for this parade of scholars in the "Criticism" section. The solemn reassurances that nobody takes this seriously have been retained at the top. --Peter Kirby (talk) 04:31, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
  1. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri
  2. ^ a b Voorst 2000, p. 9.
  3. ^ Price, Robert M. "Jesus at the Vanishing Point" in James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy (eds.) The Historical Jesus: Five Views. InterVarsity, 2009. See p. 55 for his argument that it is quite likely Jesus did not exist. See pp. 62–64, 75 for the three pillars.
  4. ^ Wells 2004, p. 50.
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