Talk:Gospel of John/2018/July

Authorship of John

Here are two issues for your consideration:

1. Early in the authorship section, we have the following statement: "it is meaningless to speak of a single author." But later in the very same section, we are told that "the author of the gospel regarded himself as a Jew, he championed Jesus and his followers as Jews, and he probably wrote for a largely Jewish community." If we accept the first statement, that it is meaningless to speak of a single author, we can't make the pat statement that the author believed this or did that. Shouldn't this say something like "the authors [plural] of the gospel probably regarded themselves as Jews, albeit following a different and Christ-accepting sect of Judaism, and probably wrote for a community composed of like-minded Jews." We need to get across the idea that this happened during a time of sectarian conflict within Judaism.
2. What is the basis for the statement that the author(s) "championed Jesus and his followers as Jews"? If we're going to use this argument to defuse the anti-Jewish tone of so many statements in John (like calling Jews the children of Satan), shouldn't we better explain it and support it with secondary sources?

I don't mean to be petty, but we have to be careful not to brush off lightly the apparently anti-Semitic statements made in The Gospel of John. They remain highly controversial and need to be carefully parsed rather than briefly dismissed. BuzzWeiser196 (talk) 00:00, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Good points here, we'll have to consider them as we revise the article PiCo (talk) 07:46, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Gospel of John/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Cerebellum (talk · contribs) 20:01, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

@Jujutsuan: Hello! I will be reviewing this article. --Cerebellum (talk) 20:01, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

@Cerebellum: Thank you! I'll be happy to help or answer any questions I can. Jujutsuan (Please notify with {{re}} talk | contribs) 20:38, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Alright, here are my comments:

1. Authorship section - feel free to disagree with me, but I think the claim "it is meaningless to speak of a single author" is too strong. The lead of Authorship of the Johannine works says "there may have been a single author", and in Talk:Gospel of John#Author/date/origins, @TomHennell refers to sources that seem to assume a single author.
2. the same title (dominus et deus) claimed by Roman Emperor Domitian. Should this be "the Roman Emperor Domitian"?
3. There is a "citation needed" template in the "Gnostic elements" section.
4. Could you explain the term "Johannine Thunderbolt"?
5. Reference #35, to Theissen & Merz 1998, seems to be broken - when I click on it, it doesn't take me to bibliography. The same is true of #12 (Harris 1985), #13 (Edwards 2007), #14 (Baukham 2007), #15 (Whitherington 2015), and also #19, #27, #28, #33, #34, and #36.
6. On the sentence and who promised to return to take them to a heavenly dwelling<refJohn 14:2-3 the formatting is messed up, I'm not sure what it should look like.
7. John does not contain any parables.[60] Rather it contains metaphoric stories or allegories, such as those of the Good Shepherd and of the True Vine, in which each individual element corresponds to a specific group or thing. Some scholars also find parables in the Fourth Gospel as the short story of the childbearing woman (16:21) or the dying grain (12:24).[61] I think the phrasing here is a little off, since the first sentence says there are no parables it is strange to bring them up in the third sentence.
8. Could you briefly explain "realized eschatology"?
9. In the Differences with synoptics section, I don't think the table with the Routledge information adds that much; the same information is presented in the bulleted list. If you disagree though feel free to keep it!
10. In the Representations section, you either need a reference for the claim that Steve Warner's is the most notable setting of the Gospel to music, or you should remove the claim.
11. There are a few dead links - [2], [3], and [4]. Also, take a look at the external links section and decide if it should be trimmed or if it is ok and that template can be removed.

Overall, the article looks good! Considering how much material is out there on this gospel, I'm impressed that @PiCo managed to condense the article from 100kb to 50kb. It's very readable now and it still covers all the bases. I'm putting this on hold for now, but if you can address the above issues I don't see any problem with it reaching GA status. --Cerebellum (talk) 20:32, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Cerebellum & Jujutsuan There currently two discussions about possible deletion of Chapters of John templates on this article. I would recommend wait on officially nominating this article for GA status until those discussions are over. In the meantime, the suggestions by Cerebellum should be clarified and/or fixed etc. There are also quite a few isbn#s missing from those bibliography links. I also noticed a "article name needed" tag at the very bottom of the page, but that's all the issues i'v noticed so far. — JudeccaXIII (talk) 20:55, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

@Cerebellum: Thanks for the review! I agree with several of your concerns.

1. This claim turns out to be unsourced. I've removed it.
2. I think that's a primarily stylistic concern. I tend to prefer leaving the "the" it out, but if you feel strongly I don't object to adding it.
3. I'm not terribly familiar with Gnosticism, but I'll see if I can find a source.
4. "Johannine Thunderbolt" is a term to refer to the Q-Logion in Mt 11:25-27 and Lk 10:21-22. The phrase was coined by Karl von Hase in an 1823-24 lecture series: “wie ein Aerolith aus dem johanneischen Himmel gefallen”, “a meteorite fallen from the Johannine sky” I'll add this reference to the article.
5. I'll take a look at those and fix them.
6. Ditto.
7. I'll clarify that.
8. According to the definition at Realized eschatology, it's "a Christian eschatological theory popularized by C. H. Dodd (1884–1973) that holds that the eschatological passages in the New Testament do not refer to the future, but instead refer to the ministry of Jesus and his lasting legacy. I'll add that explanation and reference, too.
9. I'll merge the table into the list, with appropriate referencing.
10. Would changing it to "notably" or "including" suffice? I frankly don't think it's possible to substantiate that claim; it would be nothing but opinion even if a source said so.
11. I'll check out the dead and external links.
12. (From Judecca's comment) I've fixed the "article name needed" tag.
13. (From Judecca's comment) I'll look for the ISBNs.

I'll get on these issues and comment again when I'm done. In the meantime, I look forward to hearing back from you. Jujutsuan (Please notify with {{re}} talk | contribs) 20:58, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

References

@Cerebellum and JudeccaXIII: I believe I've fixed each problem you guys brought up (besides the TfD still being active until 2 AM UTC tomorrow, and the "Roman Emperor"/"the Roman Emperor" switch—do you feel strongly either way on that, Cerebellum?). Please let me know if you find the issues to have been resolved satisfactorily. Thanks! Jujutsuan (Please notify with {{re}} talk | contribs) 00:29, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Pinging Cerebellum. No rush, just want to make sure you saw. Jujutsuan (Please notify with {{re}} talk | contribs) 21:55, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

@Jujutsuan: Thanks for the quick and thorough edits! Everything looks good now; I'm not too worried about the Roman Emperor thing, it's fine how it is. @JudeccaXIII, I think it is ok to review the article even though the template discussion is underway. If the templates are deleted, the "Gospel of John" template at the bottom of the article retains much of the same information so the quality of the article will not be affected. Let me know if think the templates will cause any other problems we need to address. Other than that, I am happy to pass this article and promote it to GA status.

After reading Talk:Gospel of John#Authorship and historical reliability, I am a little concerned that the conservative viewpoint on John is underrepresented in this article, so I'm going to add a few of @Jonathankempus2's sentences back into the article. However, I don't want to use this GA review to push a POV, so I am promoting the article as-is and any additions I make are unrelated to the review. Feel free to revert or change them. --Cerebellum (talk) 19:02, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Cerebellum! I've nominated this article for DYK now that it's been promoted to GA. For my part, I have no issue with restoring some representation of the conservative viewpoint. Jujutsuan (Please notify with {{re}} talk | contribs) 19:30, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Good article reassessment

Recent changes have introduced lots of WP:OR/WP:SYNTH based upon WP:PRIMARY religious sources. Either we revert the changes or remove the article from GA. Oh, yes, Wikipedia:Facts precede opinions is merely an essay, WP:OR is policy. Essays never trump policies. Who are the sources? Eusebius, see Hazel Johannessen (22 September 2016). The Demonic in the Political Thought of Eusebius of Caesarea. OUP Oxford. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-19-109104-9. For Burckhardt, he was 'the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity'.... And other Christian apologists who had a vested interest in believing Papias's story. The WP:RS/AC of WP:MAINSTREAM Bible WP:SCHOLARSHIP is that the Gospel of John is thoroughly anonymous. Such academic consensus/majority view cannot be undone through begging the question based on WP:OR. Tgeorgescu (talk) 03:50, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Best to revert to the text when it received GA status. Subsequent edits need to be properly sourced and cited. WOuld you care to do this?PiCo (talk) 07:01, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

I did revert the problematic edits. Basically, Bdub2018 thought that Wikipedia would be the venue for publishing his musings about Ancient sources and about how biased modern mainstream scholars are. Tgeorgescu (talk) 07:18, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Fine. People tend to get obsessed with the question of authorship for some reason, ignoring what's actually in the book. I've started a general fact-check and revision.PiCo (talk) 08:19, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Everything I wrote was sourced, and I used many sources, not just Eusebius (Irenaeus, Victorinus, Clement of Alexnandria, Theophilus of Antioch, Jerome, et al) with links to all relevant sources for verification. I cited also Frederic Kenyon, David Tobisch, David Sider, Kathryn J. Gutzwiller, along with Monte A. Shanks who wrote a considerable work on Papias that dealt with all extant fragments, and his biased treatment by Eusebius, and John B. Lightfoot. Burckhardt was not one of the sources I used, so I don't see how that is constructive, ascribing to me a something I never advanced. Did you bother to examine the sources, or did you have a knee jerk reaction? Eusebius by himself is one of the main sources for your contention, if you trace your information back to its origin, because he deliberately marginalizes Papias, and is part of the reason of the exploded myth of "John the Elder" being another other than the Apostle (as related by A.T. Robertson, et al.) His statement concerning the gospel is valid because it is corroborated by multiple sources preceding his time, one of whom (Irenaeus) was still able to convers with those who had seen the Apostle face to face.Bdub2018 (talk) 20:56, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

'For Burckhardt, he was 'the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity'..'

Well, we already know that Eusebius was a liar. In his own words: "That it will be necessary sometimes to use falsehood as a remedy for the benefit of those who require such a mode of treatment." With Christian church historians, a lack of morals is to be expected. Dimadick (talk) 08:23, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dimadick: and @Tgeorgescu: I agree that Eusebius is definitely not a reliable historian; indeed, if there were a list of "Top Ten Least Reliable Ancient Historians," I rather suspect he would be on it. However, the view that Eusebius was a deliberate liar is probably erroneous. Burckhardt, I might remind you, was a nineteenth-century pantheist with backgrounds in Protestantism, who had a vested interest to see Eusebius as a deliberate liar because Eusebius's history was one of the main sources supporting the Catholic Church's narrative of apostolic succession. The quote Dimadick provides here is taken out of context; the "falsehood" Eusebius is speaking of here, in the heading for Chapter 31 of Book 12 of his Praeparatio evangelica, are anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Old Testament and he is justifying them on the basis that they help people visualize God, even though he is actually incorporeal. In other words, he is not justifying lying, but rather the use of what we today would call metaphor.

The notion that "a lack of morals is to be expected" when dealing with Christian church historians is an incredibly cynical and unjustified assumption. There are no grounds for assuming that Christians or Christian historians are all inveterate liars. In fact, there are plenty of ancient Christians who have won praise from modern scholars for their honesty. Origen, for instance, has been praised for quoting large portions of his opponent Celsus's arguments with verbal accuracy in his treatise Contra Celsum to such an extent that it is possible to reconstruct most of Celsus's treatise The True Word. If Origen had wanted to, he could have just attributed to Celsus all sorts of pathetic arguments and then shot them all down as a straw man and few people would have noticed, since most of his readers would not have had access to or prior knowledge of Celsus's treatise, but he did not. Instead he chose not only to fairly represent his opponent's arguments, but quote them at length, showing us that Celsus's treatise was actually very well-researched. Among other writers, Adam Gregerman, a Jewish Professor of Jewish Studies, writes: "...Origen's literary method preserves many of the features of an actual religious dispute, above all a clash between opponents. Even at his most dismissive, Origen quotes and responds to Celsus' views."

Likewise, lack of reliability is not confined to early Christian writers; most ancient historians are unreliable (at least to some extent). Even Thucydides, seen as one of the most objective ancient historians, admits to making up speeches based on the gist of what was said. Eusebius's unreliability is comparable to those of several of his pagan contemporaries. Try reading some of the inanities about Pythagoras flying around on a magic arrow or similarly imaginative speculation in the "historical" writings of Porphyry or Iamblichus (both militantly anti-Christian pagan contemporaries of Eusebius) and then try arguing that historical unreliability is a uniquely or even characteristically Christian trait.

The most likely explanation for Eusebius's unreliability is not that he was deliberately trying to deceive his readers through guile and fabrication, but rather simply that he was a writer with a political agenda writing at a time when there were virtually no standards of methodology for historical investigation. Furthermore, even in Eusebius's time, there were very few written sources covering the period of church history that he spends most of the early part of his history describing. Even the few sources he did have were sporadic, not very detailed, and generally heavily biased in one direction or another. Interpolation was (unfortunately) common for both Christian and non-Christian historians of the time period. Few historians of the era, regardless how well-intentioned, could have written anything resembling an accurate account under such circumstances. While we can certainly hold Eusebius responsible for general carelessness and for taking too much creative freedom with the interpretation of his sources, I do not think we can accurately accuse him of being "the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity" or anything similarly implicative of outright, intentional deception. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:47, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

"Christian church historians is an incredibly cynical and unjustified assumption. There are no grounds for assuming that Christians or Christian historians are all inveterate liars." No, not historians who happen to be Christian. Writers of Church history, like Evagrius Scholasticus, Socrates of Constantinople, Sozomen, and Theodoret. Their historical accounts are rather often coloured by their own religious and political affiliations, and include dubious anecdotes. In Theodoret's case, it is rather hard to miss the bias (or the character assassinations): "It contains many sources otherwise lost, specially letters on the Arian controversy; however, the book is extremely partisan, the heretics being consistently blackened and described as afflicted with the 'Arian plague'." Here is a quote from Theodoret's description of Julian's death: "In the midst of their murmuring and grumbling they suddenly found him who had struggled in mad rage against his Maker wounded to death. Ares who raises the war-din had never come to help him as he promised; Loxias had given lying divination; he who glads him in the thunderbolts had hurled no bolt on the man who dealt the fatal blow; the boasting of his threats was dashed to the ground. The name of the man who dealt that righteous stroke no one knows to this day. Some say that he was wounded by an invisible being, others by one of the Nomads who were called Ishmaelites; others by a trooper who could not endure the pains of famine in the wilderness. But whether it were man or angel who plied the steel, without doubt the doer of the deed was the minister of the will of God." Dimadick (talk) 18:22, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dimadick: I completely agree that they are biased; I never disputed that fact, but saying that ecclesiastical historians are ideologically biased and uncritically accept stories of dubious veracity is entirely different from saying that "a lack of morals is to be expected." Your examples of Theodoret's allusions to the "Arian plague" and his quote about the death of Julian do not prove that Theodoret was intentionally lying, only that he really hated Arians and Julian and that he uncritically accepted rumors that portrayed such groups and individuals in a negative light. It is the sort of cognitive bias that any strongly ideologically opinionated person could easily fall prey to; it does not imply intentional dishonesty. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:11, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

For the point I had made, unreliable is enough, and modern scholars evaluate the reliability of Ancient reports. It does not mean that the moderns are always right, they just are our preferred sources. We as editors are not allowed to act like scholars, we merely have to abstract what modern scholars have written. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:12, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: I thoroughly agree. Actually, now that I think about it, my responses above were probably a violation of WP:NOTFORUM, but I had to correct Dimadick's remark above. I have a tedious habit of needing to correct people; I really ought to learn to just ignore things like this. I apologize. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:03, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

You're rather harsher than I would be, Dimadick.

Bdub2018 seems to be taking his approach from his reading of John 21:20-24:

20 Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” 21 When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” 22 Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” 23 So the saying spread abroad among the brothers[a] that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?” 24 This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.

This is not a statement that the beloved disciple was the author of the gospel - in fact it says he was dead when the gospel was written. ("Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”). What it does say is that he left written notes regarding Jesus and that these formed the basis of the gospel: he "has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true." Of course, the fact that the community believed these writing to be true does not mean that they were, nor does it mean that they (the community) have used them (the writings) accurately.PiCo (talk) 08:30, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

The Disciple whom Jesus loved is an anonymous character in a single work of the New Testament: the Gospel of John. Who the heck he (or she) was has been debated for centuries. Assuming he was not a fictional/legendary character or someone never recorded by other sources, the most prominent candidates for the role are John the Apostle, John the Evangelist, Lazarus of Bethany, Mary Magdalene, and James, brother of Jesus. We know next to nothing about their biographies, so when each of them died is at best unclear. At least we know that John of Patmos can't be connected to the Gospel of John, due to having a different "theological outlook" than the Gospel. Dimadick (talk) 12:30, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

The subsection on authorship as I've just rewritten it says only that (a) it wasn't written by John the Evangelist, whoever that person might have been, and (b) it was the product of a community and of two to three revision. It's only two sentences, which is a bit short - I'll try to lengthen it with something on the Johannine community and early Jewish-Christians, but first I'll finish reviewing the entire section, the second part of which deals with sources.PiCo (talk) 13:13, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

"The work is anonymous" "it wasn't written by John..." This position stems from a 19th century assumption based on John not being identified by name in the gospel itself. This assumption is superceded by literary evidence that authors of that time period did not normally identify themselves in the body of the work, but rather on a leather tag called a titulus or syllibos which was attached to the work. The title and author would also be written in a subscription at the end of the document, which would be preserved in the center of the roll in case the titulus was lost, and in an inscription at the beginning on the front or back of the first papyrus sheet. See Kathryn J. Gutzwiller, A Guide to Hellenistic literature, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, p.44. All copies of John have come down to us in this norm. Additionally, it was common for authors to identify themselves in the third person when referring to themselves in the body of their works (Cf. for instance Josephus, Wars, 2.20.4-6; 2.21.1-10). This is why the extant historic evidence is important in establishing authorship, rather than opinion and speculation.Bdub2018 (talk) 14:46, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

If you have a reliable source saying that John the Evangelist, or anyone specific, wrote the gospel, please let me know. PiCo (talk) 15:38, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Irenaeus of Lyon, who was a student of John's disciple Polycarp, in a section referring to the Apostles, writes, "Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia." (Against Heresies, 3.1.1) This testimony is reaffirmed in 3.11; that he remained at Ephesus and died there in the time of Trajan is related in 2.22.5 (mentioning also bishops in Asia had related this info concerning John's gospel based on conversations with the Apostle John; "Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles also") and 3.3.4. Please see sources. What you want from me is a tertiary source indicating I am reading these correctly? I was informed I cannot cite any ancient writer or combination of ancient writers, that while these are normally considered secondary sources in standard academics they are primary according to Wikipedia, that these must instead be cited through secondary (really, tertiary) sources from the last 50 to 100 years. If I do not follow these rules (even though they seem to me to exaggerate Wikipedia policy) I am told I will be "de facto banned." Now, I observe that certain articles which you all or some of you have had a hand in, as they stand, violate these criteria, but were reverted to anyway and those editors were not also castigated for doing so as I was. In them, these sources are cited misleadingly on several occasions. So I am left with the impression that the rules are being applied specifically to eliminate sources that challenge a favored POV. Please advise.Bdub2018 (talk) 18:41, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Ancient writers often made biased or inaccurate claims. Wikipedia mostly relies on modern, secular scholars. That said, Polycarp has attracted some attention concerning his role in the formation of the Christian canon: "According to David Trobisch, Polycarp may have been the one who compiled, edited, and published the New Testament." Dimadick (talk) 21:41, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

References

@Dimadick: I understand that the ancient writers made biased or inaccurate claims. I also understand that modern scholars on all sides make biased or inaccurate claims. However, I should be able to state, in a Wikipedia article that "Irenaeus says, 'Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia,'" without fear of reprisal or reverts as this is factual statement without interpretation, and Wikipedia policy allows me to do so without it requiring removal (see my latest comment at the end of the page). There is no de facto ban on usage of primary sources in Wikipedia policy. I should be able to state that "according to Irenaeus, John wrote his gospel to refute Cerinthus," (AH 3.11.1), because it is a factual and accurate representation of the source without interpretation. Primary sources are allowed by the policy so long as they are not interpreted. As this is what Irenaeus says in both statements, these statements are factual and verifiable. SYNTH states, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion NOT EXPLICITLY STATED by any of the sources." If all the sources directly state something, then it is not a violation of SYNTH to note it.

Just for the record, Bdub2018 seems to desire to violate policies in a big way. Of course we cannot allow that and there can be no negotiations about that, so I will knee-jerk reject WP:DRN about performing WP:OR on Ancient sources. I did not say that he did only WP:OR, I stated that I have reverted copious amounts of WP:OR. If he wants to reinstate scholarly sources, it should be clear if they are reliable and minority positions should be labelled as such. Performing his own analysis on Ancient sources is simply not allowed: not to him and not to anybody else who does not publish WP:RS through the proper scholarly venues. His attempt to challenge the WP:RS/AC that the Gospel of John is completely anonymous is lame, pathetic, bad taste. Wikipedia does not work that way. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:32, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

While his/her activity so far is alarming, Bdub2018 is a relativery recent editor with barely a month of experience. Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers applies. Dimadick (talk) 22:49, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

I have been on the talk section, and am not currently performing any edits on Wikipedia pages, nor have I since Tgeorgescu said I was engaging in personal research and violating policy. Since that time I have asked for clarity, as the policy does not state the same restrictions I received from him, in the way that he states them, and it is not equally applied to me and to existing articles. I have now read them several times. Calmly explaining would help a good deal, because I am seeing a double standard in the text of documents being reverted to containing the same type of "personal research" I am being accused of, but it is considered ok. So I asked why the double standard. What I read from Wikipedia policy did not match what I am hearing, nor do I have any intention "to violate policies in a big way." If my intention was to be non-compliant, I would have ignored and persisted in editing.Bdub2018 (talk) 23:09, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

As I told you, no source older than 100 years is a WP:RS for scholarly claims. If in doubt, you may ask this question at WP:RSN. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:20, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Bdub2018, ancient sources aren't used, that's correct. I'd prefer you to consult books published in the last 20 years rather than the last hundred, because scholarship changes its collective opinion within that time-frame. Rather than arguing about this, I suggest you research recent scholarship.PiCo (talk) 23:38, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dimadick: I am prepared to explain him/her the WP:RULES and in fact I did so. What I am not prepared is to compromise fundamental policy. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:25, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu: No offence intended: Wikipedia policy wording differs from your explanation. I am new. For all I know, you are someone with their own interpretation of rules expecting others to follow. E.g., You say 100 years. Another says 20. Neither is in the policy. For instance: WP:IAR states "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." This is explained in WP:COMMONSENSE, "Wikipedia has many policies or what many consider 'rules'. Instead of following every rule, it is acceptable to use common sense as you go about editing. Being too wrapped up in rules can cause loss of perspective, so there are times when it is better to ignore a rule. Even if a contribution 'violates' the precise wording of a rule, it might still be a good contribution." In an article that discusses authorship of a nearly 2000 year old document is an exceptional circumstance where the sources nearest to the time are pertinent. Additionally in WP:NOR, primary sources are defined as "original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved." Secondary sources, "provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's analysis," etc. Ancient writers (not specifically covered in the policy) fall under secondary sources by these definitions. Yes, the ancient writers are subject to bias, I agree. So are modern scholars; Cf. Ehrman's statement of Eusebius concerning Papias and his overall reception in Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene p. 7 vs. Eusebius' actual overall assessment of Papias' information which he recommends to those "fond of learning". Ehrman's statement about the posterity of the writing is also flat wrong; the books were extant still in the 15th century. Additionally, if I follow your interpretation of ancient sources as primary sources, "primary sources are allowed, but not with interpretation . . . Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation." It is not interpretation to state exactly what the sources say. E.g., "Irenaeus says John lived at Ephesus and remained their permanently until the days of Trajan" (citing AH 2.22.5) is a factual statement with no interpretation. It is what the source says. On your user page you write, "Till here this is simply reading what the Bible has to say, literally, without any kind of "interpretation" (other than the purely literal one). The Bible is a print-published source, peer reviewed by Dr. Jerome of Stridonium and Dr. Martin Luther (they established two different canons for the Bible; both such canons regard as valid and authoritative all verses quoted in this argument)." In the same way, Irenaeus Against Heresies is a print-published source, peer reviewed by Eusebius of Caesarea and many other writers, and his statements are taken literally. SYNTH states, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion NOT EXPLICITLY STATED by any of the sources." If all the sources directly state something, then it is not a violation of SYNTH to note it. So again, I cannot escape the sense of a double standard at play.Bdub2018 (talk) 02:30, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

About the Bible on my user page: I had added a footnote stating "It's just tongue in cheek; don't take it seriously. Actually, you should never WP:VERify claims to WP:PRIMARY religious sources." I have answered you on my talk page the following: Here we do arguments from authority big time. If we remove the appeal to authority, Wikipedia will crumble like a house of cards. Didactic explanation: [5]. You should mind that WP:RULES use the terms WP:PRIMARY and WP:SECONDARY another way than you have learned in school. As I have stated: if you fail to understand this, you may consider yourself de facto banned, see WP:CIR. We're an encyclopedia, we are not an outlet for publishing original research. We follow modern WP:RS/AC, not our own analysis of Ancient sources. This applies to all editors, you have not been singled out for special treatment. Our purpose as a WP:MAINSTREAM encyclopedia is to render what is taught at WP:CHOPSY: if your own analysis cannot be taught as fact at WP:CHOPSY it does not belong here (actually no WP:OR of Ancient writings belongs here at all). You are not allowed to fill Wikipedia with your own analysis of Ancient sources, this is a ground-rule which all editors have to obey. No amount of WP:Wikilawyering will change that. You either acknowledge this a ground-rule and promise to obey it, or you are heading to being banned from editing Wikipedia. I cannot ban you, in fact there is a single editor able to ban you from Wikipedia, that editor is you. Tgeorgescu (talk) 04:37, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

:::::::::@Tgeorgescu:It seems from your comments both here and on the RS Noticeboard that you yourself are violating Wikipedia policy against bad-faith Wikilawyering and multiple policies of Civility (see WP:NPA Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence, WP:POVRAILROAD Policy misuse, false narrative, and incivility; WP:BITE WP:POINT). Policy bombing and threatening to target a fellow editor with reversion by promising a de facto ban rather than seeking appropriate avenues of dispute resolution, and specifically summarily targeting and undoing their revisions across multiple entries, violates the policy against WP:HOUND Hounding and is a form of Incivility WP:POVRAILROAD, specifically, "repeatedly reverting edits without discussion or explanation (peremptory deletions)." While it seems that Bdub2018 has not followed policy to the letter by introducing original research and to some extent synthesis, assuming such acts were done in bad faith and not generally misunderstanding WP policy, violates the policy of Assuming Good Faith WP:GOODFAITH. While you may be right in various instances concerning the letter, it does not give you the right to operate in a manner inconsistent with the spirit of the encyclopedia itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help).B.robertrit (talk) 23:02, 2 July 2018 (UTC) WP:SOCK comments stricken

@Tgeorgescu: I don't feel you are acting reasonably, or in good faith. WP:VER refers us to the policy of WP:PRIMARY, which does not state you should never use "religious sources" (primary sources, in this case). It says you can use them, so long as you don't interpret them or synthesize WP:SYNTH them to produce a conclusion not stated in the sources. The policy holds that as long as they are stated without interpretation, and without conclusions not stated in them, they may be used. You were right originally according to the rule, but you know that; now you're making a new rule of your own and simply placing Wiki-jargon to justify it, because you were caught in what very much appears to be a double standard. I'm not fond of people constantly raising the bar, or making things up as they go. Are you affiliated with Wikipedia? Because it seems to me you have your own set of rules, and only care about making sure they are applied the way you want them to, and if they don't abide by your set of rules, their edits are reverted. By your threat of "de facto ban", I understand that to mean whatever edits I make, you intend to revert. Is that correct?Bdub2018 (talk) 04:43, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Since you are not prepared to take my word for it, I have opened a topic at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Gospel of John. And yes, any WP:OR based upon Ancient or Medieval sources is banned from Wikipedia, and it has been like that for a long time. So, yes, anything smacking of your own analysis of Ancient or Medieval sources will be knee-jerk reverted. Tgeorgescu (talk) 04:47, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a lot of rules and guidelines and some of them are contradictory. To that I agree, particularly when some editors rewrite them without seeking consensus. One of the core policies, however, is Wikipedia:Neutral point of view:

• Prefer nonjudgmental language. A neutral point of view neither sympathizes with nor disparages its subject (or what reliable sources say about the subject), although this must sometimes be balanced against clarity. Present opinions and conflicting findings in a disinterested tone. Do not editorialize. When editorial bias towards one particular point of view can be detected the article needs to be fixed.
• Indicate the relative prominence of opposing views. Ensure that the reporting of different views on a subject adequately reflects the relative levels of support for those views, and that it does not give a false impression of parity, or give undue weight to a particular view. For example, to state that "According to Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust was a program of extermination of the Jewish people in Germany, but David Irving disputes this analysis" would be to give apparent parity between the supermajority view and a tiny minority view by assigning each to a single activist in the field.

Bdub2018, If you want to add a different perpsective or conclusion to various articles, you will have to find reliable sources suppporting these perspectives. And probably to indicate how prominent these perspectives are. See for example the articles on the Large Stone Structure and Stepped Stone Structure. They are remains of ancient buildings in Jerusalem, but professional archaeologists and scholars have produced multiple, conflicting theories on when were they built and by whom. At best we can present the conflicting views in a dispassionate way. Dimadick (talk) 07:27, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

By the sheer amount of policies cited at [6], this user cannot be a newbie. E.g. WP:POVRAILROAD, which was the subject at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive828#Response to the POV Railroad. Bdub2018 also mentioned "publicly shamed" at [7]—how can that be: there can be no libel against an anonymous nickname. Conclusion: either way, he is an editor which has returned expressly in order to stir trouble. Oh, yes, Bdub2018 is B.robertrit, both have been indeffed for WP:SOCKing and WP:NOTHERE. I mean: a certain day he behaves as a total ignoramus of WP:RULES and one or two days later he behaves like a professor of WP:RULES. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:28, 7 July 2018 (UTC)