Talk:Bart D. Ehrman

Some Concerns

I have tagged the article for a few concerns. First there is a lot of soft promotionalism with name dropping and lists of people he has debated and so on. Secondly, and perhaps more seriously, I think quite a few of the cited sources do not pass WP:RS. YouTube is almost always rejected as a reliable source and some of the others are clearly affiliated with the subject. And although I did not post a tag for it, I am concerned that critics are getting short shrift in the article. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:35, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Most of Ehrman's critics are WP:FRINGE by our book. Mainstream Bible scholars do not depict him as the Nemesis of Christianity. Generally speaking, Ehrman and mainstream Bible scholars are all in the same boat. Tgeorgescu (talk) 03:58, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

That's a fair point. But being outside mainstream thought or holding minority views does not make one FRINGE. That is something we typically apply to subject areas where there is demonstrable right and wrong and where the views or opinions are widely viewed as way outside accepted science & etc. I don't think I have ever seen it applied to religion or theology, though I suppose there might be a case here or there. I'd also take a deep breath before asserting that most mainstream biblical scholars are substantially onboard with the thesis and interpretations of a man who is a non-believer. -Ad Orientem (talk) 04:05, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Believing is what they do during their free time, at their job they have more in common with Ehrman than with true believers. Also, the point is not that the theology of biblical inerrantists would be fringe, but that when they apply their theological assumptions to writing history, fringe is the effect. Tgeorgescu (talk) 04:25, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

I think you may be applying a personal concept of fringe to WP:FRINGE which the community would not likely endorse. I have spend some time at WP:FTN and have no recollection of the guideline ever being applied to religious persons or topics. If you want to argue that his critics are a minority within academia, that might fly, if there are reliable sources affirming that. But I don't think WP:FRINGE would apply. -Ad Orientem (talk) 05:29, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Ehrman is not a theologian, he is a historian. Fringe does not apply to theology, but it applies to history, see e.g. pseudohistory. Tgeorgescu (talk) 05:36, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Tgerogescu is known to edit in favor of their view of what constitutes scholarship. Apparently any Christian university and inerrant facility is "fringe". Let's all keep in mind CHOPSY is not even a Wikipedia guideline WP:ABIAS is a user-created page and not endorsed anywhere else on Wikipedia. Christian views seem to be labeled as "fringe" here even though I do not teach at an inerrant university, CHOPSY scholarship still engages with Christian scholarship (see Jesus and the Eyewitnesses). Furthermore there are methodological naturalism that is applied to history and apriori reject that the destruction of the temple could be a prophecy so therefore Mark HAS to be dated to AD 70, ignoring all other evidence. Wikipedia has an academic bias not a CHOPSY bias and "our book" sounds a lot like WP:OWN to me. Ehrman also goes against "mainstream" and state that Jesus is an apocalyptic prophet. The fact that consensus rarely occurs on critical methods, should call said critical methods into question. Let's take a look at Tgeorgescu's link to the person defending Ehrman. Oh, I see he calls himself a "digital humanist" and is an advocate for humanism. OK, what else? To quote him: " there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of jesus. there is no external literary evidence for the words of jesus until centuries later" is a hilarious way to approach history. Not only is it borderline Christ-myth, but "there is no external literary evidence for the words of jesus" is imposing an extremely skeptical standard to history. If you were fair, then we would know nothing about antiquity. Point to me where we have exact words of people in history that are like this AND have the manuscript evidence to back it up. The manuscript must be as earlier or earlier than the gospels. If it's not, apparently it's untrustworthy. Dr. Ryan E. (talk) 07:21, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm not saying that any Christian university is fringe. Actually, there are Christian universities which play well with mainstream Bible scholarship. To give you the gist of the attacks upon Ehrman, see https://robertcargill.com/2011/02/18/i-stand-with-bart-ehrman/ . As for rejecting methodological naturalism inside the historical method, you have an extraordinarily high standard for evidence to clear: why there are no supernatural events in WW1 and WW2? Why the Book of Isaiah was dictated by angels but not by leprechauns? And so on and on. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:57, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: I actually did read that blog post, quoted the author (who does not employ the methods critical NT scholars use, but employs the method used in his own field of classical and religious studies) in my response to Orientem and also know that you posted a comment there. But a couple of things: Ehrman actually responded to the Ehrman Project on his site and in the comments he said said of the videos he finds "amazing" and others are up for scholarly debate. He, himself, takes a softer view. The Ehrman Project was a response to introducing a counter-point to Ehrman (not saying everything they say is true) "popularizing" studies. Ever wonder why his books are inexpensive, less dense, and all his sites are behind a paywall? He's in it for the money, and he's very charismatic and well-spoken I might add. But other scholars have criticized him as over-sensationalizing (Jesus Interrupted) and fails distinguish between consensus and his own pet theories. Frankly, for example, he stands at odd with the Jesus Seminar that Jesus is NOT an apocalyptic prophet. My problem is this: by apriori presupposing naturalism we are left with finding mass hallucinations left and right and so called guilt and sudden turn of events in Paul and James life, and mass hysteria (all ad-hoc) to get AROUND the evidence. Another piece of evidence is he will state 600000 and 700000 textual variants (which is obviously true) but fail to distinguish that the majority is grammatical, spelling, and proper name errors. As Ehrman says himself (but only in debates and in the FAQ) that if he and Metzger were to hammer out differences they would agree we have the original text reconstructed to 98-99.5% accuracy with very few disputes (unheard of in the ancient world), and Ehrman also says NONE affect any beliefs. He also states in his debate that, no, you don't need to give up faith to accept his findings (his words) and yet university studies taking a course using his content at Princeton refer to the course as "faith buster". I want to ask, who and why is anyone making a claim that WWI and WW2 had miracles? Do you have any records of it you would expect from this time? Do they have manuscript evidence like the Gospels do? An angel in Hebrew and Koine Greek means "messenger" or "messenger of God". Ehrman said well clearly Matthew was built on Mark because his men was changed to an angel, but he disregards the fact that angels are never described with "wings and flying halos" but always as "men dressed in white" which is clearly what Mark says. And what use would it be for Mark to say angel if he wasn't writing to a Jewish audience, Matthew on the other hand was and Jewish people already had a preconception of what was an angel. Also, the Book of Isaiah was not dictated by angels. Dr. Ryan E. (talk) 18:01, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

He wrote trade books. He did not have to dumb those books down, but he had to keep it simple. Also, for the Ehrman Blog, he says it's all for charity and he does not keep a penny. About methodological naturalism: historians of WW1 and WW2 would be booed off the stage for stating wartime supernatural miracles as objective historical facts, but some scholars indulge in special pleading for the Bible. And you cannot have angels on the table and leprechauns, orcs and gnomes off the table. History does not work like that. About the miracles from the Bible: for the historical method these are either principally unprovable, or hallucinations, or simply made up by the writers, same as the miracles of actual Roman emperors. The God of the Bible is true, but the gods of Hinduism are fake is subjective and arbitrary. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:16, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

For the record: Dr. Ehrman's blog (only, no other site) is behind a paywall because it was specifically designed with the twin goals of disseminating knowledge of the New Testament & Early Christianity, and raising money for charity. 100% of membership fees go to various charities, and Dr. Ehrman takes no money for posting 5 or so times/week. To date (4/8/2022), the blog has disbursed $1.5 million dollars to charity. Source: me--I am the paid administrator of the blog (separate fundraising pays for me, the web developer, and web-hosting services), and I am the one disbursing the funds. The blog also hands out free memberships to dozens of people each year who say they cannot pay (we take them at their word). Dr. Ehrman is paid as a university professor, he earns money from selling his books (as does any author), he does paid speaking engagements, and he sells a small number of courses (a la Great Courses). The same can be said of his critics, except for the raising-$1.5M-for-charity part. Elinde7994 (talk) 20:07, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

To cut a longer story short, Ehrman has objective knowledge about the Bible. He is not paid to teach atheism, he is paid to teach objective facts about the Bible and the history of Christianity. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:56, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia isn't a forum I don't wish for this discussion to dissolve into a debate about your and my worldview and views on God/resurrection theory. Some things I noticed: I never said Ehrman "dumbed" the books down, just that he offers a very biased view which received fair criticism from scholars that do not hold his views, no matter their background, and opinions about people/criticism does not need scholarly consensus. Take a look at Bill_Gates#Primary_sources where lists mainly lay articles. Obviously everyone is biased, but Ehrman goes further by blurring consensus lines with his own pet theories and rarely mentioning opposing views. I believe you don't need to accept inerrancy to be a Christian (the early apostles didn't even have a "New Testament" just the writings of the gospel writers and Paul/others. As for special pleading, nothing is off the table in history, otherwise you taking a position of skeptic, and not a historian. For example we take the biographies of Roman emperors and the like containing miracle stories as historically reliable. Since we're discussing criticism of Ehrman from people and not only from (but including) critical scholars, these people shouldn't be discounted. For angels, leprechauns, orcs, gnomes. 1. Gnomes and leprechauns are literally stated as fantasy literature 2. Orcs by J.R.R. Tolkien (a Catholic) wrote this in his fictional story. My question is: who is claiming any of these are true, what evidence do they have, do they take place in real proven cities, with real minor details being accurate Pool of Siloam, and 1st person letters (Paul). When evaluating a claim in history, one must not presuppose anything. For example, you don't presuppose "The moon landing did not happen because the technology of the day would make it impossible". Why apply an extremely skeptical position to the Gospels? Is Josephus treated this way? Tacitus? For the gods of Hinduism, etc, a strong historical case for these are never made. Where are the hallucination theories regarding all these other Hindu gods? The reason scholars posit hallucinations is because they except bare minimum facts to be true. Even Ehrman says he accepts Jesus was crucified (Muslims reject) and earliest beliefs were that Jesus rose from the dead. When it comes to inerrancy (which I don't necessarily agree with), you can't say a document is not inerrant from the beginning. Just like you can't posit that it is inerrant. For example all the events that Josephus mentions could be a completely accurate account. Just like a list of US Presidents here on Wikipedia could be a completely accurate account. Regarding WWI and WWII, what miracle claims are we talking about? Dr. Ryan E. (talk) 21:50, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I almost laughed out loud when you said 'Ehrman has objective knowledge about the Bible". What about his disagreements with the other scholars? And by what standard are you calling anyone really objective? For example he disagrees with Gerd Ludemann's theories, Ludemann even states in his Inquiry his whole purpose for writing is to convince people to change their minds about the Resurrection. What makes Ehrman so much more objective? Dr. Ryan E. (talk) 21:50, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Anyways my original comment was addressed to @Ad Orientem:, I think the article reads like an ad. Dr. Ryan E. (talk) 21:52, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

If it looks like an ad you should present suggested edits like "change A to B". Otherwise I no longer know what we were debating. And, yup, Jesus has historicity, while the historicity of Yahweh is on a par with the historicity of Shiva and Vishnu. In your worldview it makes sense that angels are real, but their reality isn't an objective truth. So, objectively seen, angels and leprechauns are in the same boat: there isn't a shred of evidence for any of them. Tgeorgescu (talk) 03:27, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, you see to be shifting the goalpoasts and bringing up red herring arguments. Dr. Ryan E. (talk) 09:07, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm having trouble finding (not following, just finding) the debate in all these words. The tag on top of the article mentions three points:

* This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. (February 2020)

* This article may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject, potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral. (February 2020)

* Some of this article's listed sources may not be reliable. (February 2020)

I'd like to see whoever put the tag there expand on this, or at least give some examples from each bullet point. Otherwise we go nowhere.Achar Sva (talk) 03:34, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Achar Sva: I started addressing that at #Neutrality, independent sources and such. Basically I said it's tag bombing. Tgeorgescu (talk) 03:40, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Achar Sva: Please see my opening comments at the top of this section where I explain my concerns. -Ad Orientem (talk) 03:42, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Ad Orientem, thanks. In that paragraph you raise three specific points:

* First there is a lot of soft promotionalism with name dropping and lists of people he has debated and so on.

* Secondly, and perhaps more seriously, I think quite a few of the cited sources do not pass WP:RS. YouTube is almost always rejected as a reliable source and some of the others are clearly affiliated with the subject.

* And although I did not post a tag for it, I am concerned that critics are getting short shrift in the article.

If the advertising equals the name dropping, Ehrman is a public figure as well as a scholar, and he does get involved in these debates, so I think a good case can be made for naming the people he debates with - though perhaps it could be presented in a different way (maybe a separate section, Public Debate or something?)

On sources, I don't see how we can document his public debates without mentioning You Tube - the cite establishes merely that the debate took place. Are there others?

As for Ehrman's critics, it would be nice if this part could be presented as a single summary rather than a series of quotes, but I don't know how it could be done. Anyway, Ehrman has far more supporters than critics in the world of biblical scholarship - it's just that the public is ignorant of modern biblical criticism.Achar Sva (talk) 04:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Ehrman has far more supporters than critics in the world of biblical scholarship Source? Have you only limited your reading to scholars that agree with you? Dr. Ryan E. (talk) 08:22, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The article quotes Micheal Licona saying "his positions are those largely embraced by mainstream skeptical scholarship," which should establish that most scholars support him (or he supports them). And before you jump in about the "skeptical" qualification, any good scholar is skeptical, it's what makes them scholars. (The opposite, I imagine, would be a credulous scholar, though I can't quite see what his his credulity would consists in).Achar Sva (talk) 08:41, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I do not wish to go into this argument again, but as I said above, the state of NT "critical" scholarship is crazy as Crossan pointed out “Historical Jesus research is becoming something of a scholarly bad joke". Bruce Metzger, textual critic disagreed strongly with Ehrman's views. He is a "textual critic" but textual critics operate on the presupposition of being skeptical and simply confirm presuppositions under the guise of objectivity. And suddenly you discount Mike Licona? He's an American New Testament scholar, by "skeptical" we mean someone who rules out the resurrection as presented in the New Testament apriori. If you exclude this prior to examining the evidence, you've just completely adopted a whole new standard used by historians of other fields when evaluating other sources. We can absolutely table the issue of miracles, but we cannot just avoid evidence. 09:07, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I said that Licona says that most scholars support Ehrman. Licona, by the way, is a skeptical scholar himself, hence his problems with inerrantists.Achar Sva (talk) 09:12, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree with what Licona says, to a certain extent. I mean Vermes clearly could never support the resurrection since he was Jewish, and Elaine Pagels (heavily criticized) promotes a very odd view of the Gnostics. It would be interesting if skeptical scholarship actually had good arguments. If you've ever read Fredriksen’s From Jesus to Christ, you'd know what I mean. She starts contradicting herself page to page, paragraph to paragraph, and then even sentence to sentence. What's wrong criticizing the critics? As Ehrman said, no one gets a degree to say "Mark wrote Mark". You have to say something "inventive" and "fancy". All I'm saying is you can't discount someone because they are Christian and accuse them of not being objective, because no one really is in this case. Dr. Ryan E. (talk) 09:26, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Awery, just a bit of housekeeping. When you post new comments to this thread, the newest comments need to be put at the bottom of the thread. That's the only way others can easily keep track of how the conversation has flowed. The Harvard Theological Review probably is a prestigious forum. On the other hand, the paper on Daniel that you want us to use was not published by the Harvard Theological Review. It was published by JISCA, an outlet for advocating conservative religious views. This fits with the general trend we've already observed here -- the folks saying that Daniel was written in the sixth century don't publish in mainstream outlets, generally speaking. It's entirely possible that MacGregor has published all sorts of stuff in reliable outlets. JISCA, however, isn't what most editors here would treat as a WP:RS outlet. When a journal is dedicated to a particular religious view, that matters. Just as, for example, Wikipedia does not make use of articles published in Journal of Creation when dealing with the subject of creationism. The question I'd like to see answered is, have any defenses of a sixth-century date been published in mainstream academic outlets. And if they have been, are they the work of a tiny fringe group of scholars, or do they represent a significant number of scholars. So far, it looks as is the 2d-century date for Daniel assuming its present form is the scholarly consensus, although of course there are hold-outs in the religious world, just as there are hold-outs on creationism. Because of WP:FRINGE, Wikipedia generally doesn't make much use of those who hold out against academic consensus. I don't want to speak for Tgeorgescu here, but I don't think he's saying that Christian scholars are automatically disqualified due to their personal faith. Indeed, almost all biblical scholars that Wikipedia cites are either Christian or Jewish. There's only a handful of non-Christian, non-Jewish biblical scholars out there. We don't sideline the views of Christian scholars on Wikipedia, it's that we sideline the views of WP:FRINGE scholars, those whose views have been overwhelmingly rejected by the academic mainstream. Alephb (talk) 21:14, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

As for skeptic, one is either skeptic or does pseudoscholarship, see Mertonian norms for details. The resurrection of Christ, if you believe in it or not, is certainly unhistorical: no historian worth his salt could ever affirm resurrections as objective historical fact. Most Christian Bible scholars would certainly agree with that. Real-life resurrections are part of theology, not of history. You believe such theological claims based on your own religious faith, you don't believe them as a matter of positing historical facts in history journals based on historical evidence. Harris, Mark (9 March 2017). "Science and Religion @ EdinburghScience and Religion @ Edinburgh". Geology, naturalism, and the problem of miracles. Retrieved 25 February 2020. For, if there's one thing that indisputably unites the natural sciences, it's the conviction that 'there will be no miracles here'. And... you're right: "Mark wrote Mark" is not a tenable claim in mainstream Bible scholarship. (This has nothing to do with juvenile tantrums by PhD graduates.) Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:00, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm done arguing, because you operate on pre-supposed assumptions unhistorical: no historian worth his salt could ever affirm resurrections as objective historical fact which just shows how biased secular scholarship is, ruling out things apriori without even looking at the evidence. I do believe the Gospels are *generally* historically reliable, and a strong case for earlier dating than listed here has more evidence than for the later dates (mainly based on Jesus being impossible to predict the temple's destruction). Saying something "is certainly unhistorical" means it did not happen in history. You must now back up your positive claim. you don't believe them as a matter of positing historical facts: as someone said don't let the atheist tell you what your own beliefs are. I see a perfectly reasoned and parsimonious conclusion of historicity without having to posit multiple mass hallucinations without suggestion and a non-existant prior belief becoming a central theme. And then a conversion of a skeptic to be *another* hallucination or *ad-hoc* explanation. I also do not apply a double standard to historical texts because they contain miracles. If I accept Hannibal's crossing of the Alps based on historical criteria, then it logically follows applying extreme skepticism is unwarranted. one is either skeptic or does pseudoscholarship is a blatant lie and false dichotomy. A skeptic is someone who distrusts always. Talk about a conflict of interest. You become WP:FRINGE like Richard Carrier. And Carrier/Mythers are WP:FRINGE because it goes against even secular understandings of who Jesus is. "Mark wrote Mark" is not a tenable claim because of Publish or perish at CHOPSY and Funding bias (see linked studies on those pages. You love to trot out the old Alephb quote. He's wrong because 1. creationism itself isn't inherently in conflict, creation science is (and the attribution to Intelligent Design as a science and is primarily promoted by Ken Ham's organization. On the other hand, we're talking Christian universities here, and scholars with PhDs. Many of these find the Gospels to be generally historically reliable, and it's Mainstream academic. It's just not mainstream "critical" and CHOPSY is on a Wikipedia Essay, not an oversight by any type of general consensus overall. It is most certainly not a WP:POLICY and not absolutely not a hard and fast rule because Wikipedia only has WP:GUIDELINES and no rules. This discussion has been interesting, and I know you won't change your mind, but I hope to point out some flaws with methodology here. One major point to make is Ehrman is used quite a bit as representative of critical scholarship, yet he disagrees with many of the Jesus Seminar's views (also critical scholarship) and many academic views (Biblical/NT scholarship outside "critical, but not WP:FRINGE). Doing a simple search on Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels there is clearly a large Ehrman bias. I mean He's mentioned/cited 17 times, and Metzger only 4! Ehrman's lesser known views that *none of the variants affect any core doctrine* and his tendencies to exaggerate claims as if *everyone* agrees with him (can we trust the NT? > well compared to what???, in "Misquoting Jesus" he gives a very emphatic "No"). He conveniently leaves off the fact that compared to the Illiad at Josephus we have more manuscript sources for the Gospels. I mean people say Josephus leaves out Herod massacring boys, how do you know this wasn't removed by a later redactor who was anti-Christian? See this argument from silence will never stop. In fact, Wikipedia should have an article on Christian scholarship criticism of Critical scholarship and include theologians and Christian scholars (inerrant or not). Have a good day! Dr. Ryan E. (talk) 02:37, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

The WP:ONUS is upon you to show why Wikipedia should not kowtow to CHOPSY. I did not say WP:ABIAS would be part of the WP:RULES, however it is a common sense heuristic about the ideals of Wikipedia: you have to fulfill an extraordinarily high standard of evidence in order to posit that Wikipedia should give the lie to CHOPSY.

After the Enlightenment, history (Ancient, Medieval and Modern) got purged of all supernatural events. Did I get this wrong? Yet somehow there is special pleading that it would not apply to the history of Christianity. I know that Graham Twelftree - The Historian and the Miraculous on YouTube begs to disagree, but, as far as I know, he is WP:FRINGE.

The Jesus Seminar is/was minority opinion by design. Some of the scholars associated with it are bona fide scholars, but the seminar itself is either minority or fringe.

About being a skeptic/critical scholar, even inerrantists pose nowadays as critical scholars, because they know that being uncritical is disreputable. And no, being a skeptic does not mean one doubts everything he reads without having a good reason for doubting it. Critical, as Ehrman explained, means that you analyze all the facets of a given story and then you make your own judgment about that story. He does doubt that scholars who invariably rubber-stamp theological orthodoxy would be critical. Tgeorgescu (talk) 04:09, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Apriori without even looking at the evidence Which reliable evidence? On the contrary, evidence is needed to seriously consider it. But we seem to be in WP:FORUM territory at this point... —PaleoNeonate – 04:14, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

But we seem to be in WP:FORUM territory at this point - true. I really can't figure out what changes to the article are being proposed or discussed here. Guettarda (talk) 12:38, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Guy Williams

Who is Guy Williams, and why should he be relevant diff? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:46, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Atheist Inquisition

That Ehrman's atheism is insincere—what's this, atheist Inquisition? tgeorgescu (talk) 22:30, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

... what? — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 12:10, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

@HandThatFeeds: There were several edits stating that Ehrman is an insincere atheist (fake atheist). tgeorgescu (talk) 12:35, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I missed those edits. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:06, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Academically conservative

Bart, if anything, is academically conservative. Most of his (non-text crit) positions are academic orthodoxy from the 1980s. [...] Virtually all of his positions were mainstream in the 1980s and have a substantial following today.

— BombadilEatsTheRing, Reddit

Does anyone know WP:RS to that extent? tgeorgescu (talk) 06:37, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Tendentious

@Joortje1: I'm saying this nicely: you're moving in the direction of WP:TE. tgeorgescu (talk) 13:30, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Wow, that escalated quickly! This was after a single edit? StAnselm (talk) 16:00, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

@StAnselm: The editor had other problematic edits, but I tried not to meddle with those. tgeorgescu (talk) 13:06, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the friendly warning, I’ll do my best to act more sensitive.

Sorry about the length of this reply. I took some time to think about the atmosphere surrounding the historicity of Jesus topic and whether I wanted to invest more time on improving the related pages, and I found a few points that I'd like to share here.

I suppose the warning has more to do with some of my comments on Talk: Historicity of Jesus than with actual edits, but it makes sense to judge them together. Granted, even in the heat of the moment I should have chosen more civil ways to express myself than using “credulous pigheaded individuals" for biblical scholars, and than comparing Ehrman to Trump.

Not that this can totally redeem me, and not to say that they started it, but I’d like to point out that these remarks were embedded within statements that were intended to clarify how I experienced their tone in the presented citations. To give examples that I believe are somewhat typical (there are many): Talk:Historicity of Jesus/FAQ#Quotes has a section in which Ehrman and several colleagues equate people who express doubts about the validity of HoJ arguments with holocaust-deniers. I strongly doubt that this is a proper scholarly comparison. I happen to live in a city that houses plenty of evidence and many reminders about the large-scale deportation of Jews, I have visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, I met a survivor, saw the tattooed number on his arm, and read his personal memoirs about the camp. So, both intellectually and emotionally, I feel quite shocked by the extremely contentious comparison (imagine how people feel who have personally suffered and are simply not impressed with the reasoning of historicists).

I am not a mythicist, but I do doubt the amount of weight given to purported evidence, and I do take issue with certain unscholarly qualities of the HoJ article and many of its citations, especially with the one-sided polarised tone, and the general lack of nuance and balance.

Since these talk pages should focus on improving articles, I’d like to suggest a source that can be used if anyone likes to address the tone of Ehrman and colleagues in the related articles. What I called pigheaded and Trumpian has been better described as unjustified disdain and unjustifiable confidence by Tom Dykstra in ‘’Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship’’ (Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies Vol. 8. No. 1 (2014) The Ehrman WP-page already contains the Daniel Wallace quote that Ehrman "overstates his case by assuming that his view is certainly correct", but Dykstra puts better words to it and places such problems in a wider context.

Dykstra's review is by far the best evaluation of the historicity topic that I've read, with plenty of references to sources, clear analysis, scholarly tone. Very WP:RS (a paper reviewing existing research, from an academic journal, relatively recent, author with History Ph.D). I recommend others to look into it and see if they can use it to improve related wikipedia pages (I'm not sure if I'd like to do it myself).

To elaborate on my reason for the contested edit on the Ehrman page: To me, the citation that I deleted immediately looked like somebody was trying too hard to counter criticism. This touches upon the concerns about promotionalism and especially the short shrift for critics that Ad Orientem expressed on this talk page. When I checked, the quote turned out to be part of the line “While his thinking is hardly original, as his positions are largely those embraced by mainstream skeptical scholarship, he is a gifted communicator with the ability to present complex positions in a lay-friendly manner,” from a piece entitled "Fish Tales: Bart Ehrman's Red Herrings and the Resurrection of Jesus". The point of mentioning consensus is unoriginality, but in the wikipedia article this was used as defence against criticism on Ehrman’s depiction of scholarly consensus. (Also note that Licona features twice in the list of holocaust-comparisons and may thus be one of those biblical scholars who tend to exaggerate when trying to make a certain point). It looks a bit out of context WP:RSCONTEXT and close to WP: SYNTH. Although less specific than the reddit claim, this citation seems better suited to address the “Academically conservative” topic above this one. Or check the Wallace quote "Misquoting Jesus for the most part is simply NT textual criticism 101". Joortje1 (talk) 18:47, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Ehrman is "Mr. Academic Consensus". So, of course, if the academic consensus is wrong, he is also wrong. But that's a truism. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:51, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

To which of the mentioned sources are you refering, and to what statement? I'm afraid I have much difficulty understanding your point. Does it have anything to do with improving wikipedia articles? WP:TALK#TOPIC Joortje1 (talk) 12:58, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

None of what you posted really has anything to do with improving the article. Your personal experiences don't help us. Make a clear, concise suggestion for improving the article (with sourcing), or else we can drop this. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 13:56, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Some of this could probably have been addressed at better places (my user talk page, for instance). However, I did reply to something stated here, which was a reaction to my edit on the article. My comment did clarify why I think the edit was an improvement, in that process it did suggest 2 sources the user seemed to ask for (granted, in another post), it did suggest to use 1 additional source that I think is more important, and why. Once again, sorry for its length (I'll work on discussing in a more concise manner). Joortje1 (talk) 14:59, 10 October 2023 (UTC)