Talk:Christ myth theory

To Do List: Source Verification and Revisions

Use this section to report false, misquoted, and misrepresented citations, and to explain subsequent revisions.

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)

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)

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)

Voorst

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