Talk:Jesus

Christ == Messiah

What's going on here with making some artificial distinction between Christ (Χριστός) and Messiah (משיח)? The two words are merely translations of each other in two different languages with no alteration of meaning at all: "the anointed one". Calling Jesus the Christ or the Messiah is the religious claim that Jesus fulfills the criteria for the Jewish Messiah. That is what makes the allegedly historical person into a mythical figure and alters the subject of this article. However, there is no difference between Christ and Messiah at all. ♆ CUSH ♆ 19:22, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

That's a matter of perception. For very many people with low theological sophistication, "Christ" is treated as a surname with no particular meaning (I bet a sizeable minority would assume that husband of Mary would be properly addressed as "Mr. Joseph Christ"). On the other hand, everybody knows that "messiah" is a religious role, not a personal name. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:44, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Actually multiple references in the article agree with your statement that in modern times it has stopped being a title (as Messiah is) and is part of a compound name. This had been discussed on talk before as well. History2007 (talk) 21:52, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

@Stephan Schulz: This is an encyclopedia. We are supposed to educate people, and not dumb articles down to appeal to the unsophisticated masses. People who think "Christ" to be a surname are uneducatable anyways, and I doubt such people read Wikipedia, or any other source of information for that matter. ♆ CUSH ♆ 21:59, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

@Cush, you're such an angry little man. ReformedArsenal (talk) 22:14, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

This is not a major issue, but:

• Jesus & the Rise of Early Christianity 2002 page 27 ISBN 0830826998 states that: "To accommodate the cultural problems of the Gentiles, the title the Christ quickly became a surname, as in Jesus Christ."

• The Blackwell Companion to Paul by Stephen Westerholm 2011 ISBN 1405188448 page 175 states: "'Christ' is often assumed by scholars simply to be a kind of 'surname' for Jesus, without any particular allusion to his Messiahship".

But again, not a major issue. History2007 (talk) 06:50, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Citation overkill?

I know that the lead section has been intensely discussed, but there seems to be 9 references for the point Scholars have correlated the New Testament accounts with non-Christian historical records to arrive at an estimated chronology of Jesus' life which I am not sure is a very controversial topic; is it not fairly obvious? I know it's a highly sensitive topic, but isn't 9 slightly overdoing it? Anyway, it is discussed more in the body of the article, so I suggest trimming a few of the sources for this point and a couple of other points in the lead. JZCL 20:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. I guess there have been so many questions about all of these references that too many have piled up. I will look through and pick the best ones and reduce that. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 20:05, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

In some cases there are separate citations for separate clauses or phrases in a sentence. It may be simpler to combine several between only one set of <ref></ref> tags. Current footnote number 11 has already combined 12 citations into one footnote link. This article is severely bloated.
—Telpardec  TALK  23:06, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

There is an old saying in software development: "it works, don't touch it". I do not know how that footnote 11 with 12 citations came about, but I think it goes back 2 or 3 years - before my time for sure. There used to be long debates on this page 2-3 years ago it seems, and they added those citations to calm things down, I think. This page gets viewed about 300,000 times a month, yet is pretty stable. I think a reduction in citations will change that situation. And just look 1 or two threads above, we are still getting debate about the basic statements. I think JZCL's point about 9 citations was valid, but that footnote 11 has been there for almost ever it seems and I fear that removing it will generate debate. It does not bite - I promise, I promise. History2007 (talk) 23:58, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I trimmed some anyway, but given that scholars such as Vermes, Crossan, Ehrman etc. have multiple perspectives, I think we should keep references to them to be comprehensive. History2007 (talk) 06:09, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 26 June 2012

Please add the following source:

G Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. I,1971 (English trans from German), Lund Humphries, London, p 135, figs 150-53, 346-54. ISBN 853312702

To the statement: A cruciform halo was worn only by Jesus (and the other persons of the Trinity), while plain halos distinguished Mary, the Apostles and other saints, helping the viewer to read increasingly populated scenes. It explains it in the source and helps the article remain verifiable. 86.148.198.210 (talk) 15:56, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, given that Schiller is in fact one of the best sources on the subject. History2007 (talk) 16:27, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

GA status yet?

This article looks pretty good - an almost comprehensive coverage, flooded with inline references and compared with the German article which is a featured article (though not nearly as good as this one, I think this one surely should be made GA status. Reading through past discussions, there may be a few potential improvements, but I think these can be fixed easily enough. 86.167.230.150 (talk) 18:39, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Partially agreed - the article is fairly good. A couple of drawbacks:

• The Bahá'í views section currently has an OR tag. History and Arsenal can probably find reliable sources for this section and change it if it's not too accurate.
• The article is at times very unstable. One of the GA criteria is that there are no edit wars, so yes, you are right in that sense.

Some more experienced editors will probably be able to find more, but yes, I think that it's a great idea and it would be really nice to get this to GA status. JZCL 18:48, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I am not familiar enough with Bahá'í views to do it justice. Please ask user:Jeff3000, as discussed in the archives. He knows that topic better than most other editors around. As for GA status, as I have said before, it means nothing to me, but whoever likes it, can like it. History2007 (talk) 19:02, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I have just looked at why the article was delisted. It can be found here for any editors that it would help. It seems that it was delisted because there were a lot of stubby sections, (sorted) there were uncited sections (I've gone through the article and checked, there are no CN tags or uncited section - except possibly the last point in the lead paragraph). Anyway, the point I'm making is that I think that the main issues have now been fixed and some editiors more knowledgable in this topic than me may be able to get it to that status. I'll ask Jeff3000 for his input. JZCL 19:10, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Also, History, GA status is a way of Wikipedia readers knowing that the article they are reading is relaible and accurate. JZCL 19:10, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I know. Over 90% of the article changed since the delisting anyway. History2007 (talk) 19:45, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I like the idea of getting the article back up to GA, and it does look like a lot of the complaints have been resolved. Unfortunately, the content has been dramatically changed in the interim, making that single fact rather less than telling. Maybe, after the Bahai matter is sorted out, we can ask for peer review again, and I can check the relevant reference sources I can find and check to see if there are any obvious flaws or lacks. If we had comments indicating that this article has what other reference sources have in similar articles, that would I think help the GA reviewer a lot in making his decision. John Carter (talk) 19:50, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed; it's a good idea John. After peer review, the article should definitely be in line to GA status. JZCL 20:13, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Except for the three sections on Bahai , Islamic and Jewish views, I have double checked every single reference in this article. As of March 2011 90% of the items were double checked, changed or modified. The previous review was fr a different article. Not that I am going to spend time on it again, but check the references and you will see that apart from those 3 sections they will be almost 99% correct. Johnbod added to the depictions section (and he often uses Schiller) so the IP caught that one. But the rest should be in very good shape. But let them be checked again and again. No worries. But let me make it clear that I am not that active on these things and will not be spending much time on the peer review issues. History2007 (talk) 20:17, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Jeff has now agreed to look at the Bahai section on Sunday and Monday, so this should be hopefully OK. JZCL 06:52, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

That leaves the Jewish and Islamic views, which might get a bit more dicey, particularly Jewish views. I can try to deal with that material myself on Monday or Tuesday, but I'm not sure right now how much information sources will have on them. John Carter (talk) 17:46, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Review after looking at Jones Encyclopedia of Religion article in comparison, with comments.

• 1) Thee articul, it be long. 252K. The article in the Jones Encyclopedia is too, pp. 4843-4854, or about .1% of the entire frikking encyclopedia. I don't think that necessarily matters for GA, but still, it be long. 586 reference citaions might be a record too, I don't know. That makes it a bit harder to judge everything, particularly considering relative weight and emphasis.
• 2) According to p. 4848, "The most important sources for Jesus are found in the New Testament..." Taking that into account, and AGFing that the NT has been consulted, the section on Jesus's life according to the NT is more or less as good, and based on the best sources available, as one could expect.
• 3) Section 4 about historical views seems good, although it seems to me based on the only other book I've consulted that maybe it might be easier to break that section up into subsections by century, like in Jones, because that might allow related ideas from single scholars to be included as one unit. Otherwise, no real problems.
• 4) Section 5. The Bahai actually aren't even mentioned in the EoR Jesus article, although as an Abrahamic faith they certainly deserve some attention. Surprisingly, Hinduism gets a rather longish paragraph, with Gandhi finding the Sermon on the Mount as described by Tolstoy to be profoundly true, and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's "sophisticated, philosophical interpretation of Jesus." Other Jewish ideas are referenced as well, including the Karaites who thought Jesus was a true Jewish martyr whose identity Christianity distorted, Martin Buber calling him a "great brother" who has a "great place ... in Israel's history of faith," (p. 4845, no citation from Buber given). Pinchas Lapide went so far as to say, while Jesus was not the Messiah, he "expressed belief in Jesus' resurrection and acknowledged him as God's prophet to the Gentiles." (p. 4845). In its section on "Jesus outside the church," 6 paragraphs, it has one longish paragraph on Judaism, a shorter one on Islam, another longish on Hinduism, and then three short ones of the "especially characteristic of modern times" views of Dostoevskii, Nietzche, and Marx.
  
  

Having said all that, I really can't see anything which might be sufficient to withhold GA based on the text, but some of those might be relevant to FA. John Carter (talk) 21:48, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Apologies in advance

I realize this has been discussed ad infinitum, but as this article is going for GA-status, I feel I have to throw my 2 cents in regarding the BC/BCE situation. I'm not here to argue for either style; I'm here to argue that using both styles makes us look ridiculous as an encyclopedia. And as (I would hope) the goal of every GA is to achieve FA-status, I truly feel that this is going to need to be resolved at some point. My proposal: Go back to the earliest stable version of this article. If it used BC/AD, go with that. If it used BCE/CE, go with that. Then hand out lengthy blocks to anyone who changes the style, in the absence of firm consensus. I realize I'm opening a can of worms here, and I realize many of you will be quick to tell me exactly what I can do with my proposal. But I had to get this off my chest. Thank you, and again, my sincere apologies to those users who have worked hard on this article, and may consider my rant here to be obtrusive and disruptive. I assure you that is not my intention. Joefromrandb (talk) 21:46, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

No worries at all. Is it ridiculous to use both? But of course. Yet, C'est la vie, of course. As for grave digging on what was used first, I think that goes back too far. The best way would be to seek consensus on what should be done now. History2007 (talk) 22:10, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure it is ridiculous. It may be an adequate compromise to an intractable and rather unimportant controversy. I predict that a straw poll would be fairly evenly split - how to achieve consensus from that? Perhaps it is better if we choose our battles, and just leave the status quo alone here. Elizium23 (talk) 22:18, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Consensus for what people think now would be ideal, as would Communism. I do not mean this disrespectfully, only that either requires a lot of work to achieve that a lot of people don't want do or even let happen.

In my own writing, I'll use BC/AD for Christianity related topics, and BCE/CE for topics on which Christianity does not maintain a monopoly. When writing anything about Jesus (who is of central importance to Christianity, but do not maintain a monopoly on Him, however), I alternate based on my audience. As such, I cannot make up my own mind whether I'd prefer to use only BCE/CE or BC/AD.

Splitting between Jesus Christ (the figure in Christianity, using BC/AD) and Jesus of Nazareth (the historical figure, using BCE/CE) would be one (bad) option, but even the Nestorians would be shaking their head at that, as it opens up the door to all kinds of POV abuses that come with content forks.

All this makes me seriously wish we'd just convert to the Human Era and call it a day. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:30, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

For the record, the original usage was BC/AD, which was used for about 3 years before the hybrid usage was implemented. I am on the fence about the issue. I agree that the hybrid usage is a bit clunky, and I would personally prefer the BC/AD usage, but it is a very sensitive issue for many people and if the alternative is a massive firestorm and waste of editor-hours then I think we can live with a little clunk. -- LWG ^talk 23:35, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

So the long and short of it is that changing it will be a large headache. So, let it be then. History2007 (talk) 06:29, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Crucifixion darkness and eclipse

I feel that this article is interesting one and it should be added to [Jesus].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_darkness_and_eclipse

Right? :)

FirstSonOfKrypton (talk) 03:20, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

That article is full of speculation, possiblys, maybes, and probably nots. I'm not sure what you want added, but that doesn't seem a good source for anything certain. HiLo48 (talk) 03:39, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that would be a serious detour. It is mentioned in the Crucifixion of Jesus article, but would be totally peripheral here. History2007 (talk) 06:31, 2 July 2012 (UTC)