Talk:Historicity of Jesus/Archive 37

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"Virtually all scholars"

Two users seem to take issue with "virtually all scholars" and edit to dispute it. I have a hard time understanding way, given the very clear sources used for the statement.

• "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees".

• "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church's imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more".

• "In recent years, no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary".

Under WP:NPOV, we should give as true a representation of sources as possible. By changing what the sources actually say, we no longer represent them as we should.Jeppiz (talk) 21:45, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

References

This has been discussed repeatedly, and there is clear consensus under WP:RS/AC for this. If someone wants to change it, they will need to build consensus for that change. Gaijin42 (talk) 21:54, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

See WP:OR. We can't express in Wikipedia's voice our own research . So, either we leave the "virtually all" out, or we attribute that to whomever said it. For example: According to Bart Ehrman, "virtually all scholars" [...]. - Cwobeel (talk) 21:56, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Cwobeel, we use loads of statements based on sources without attribution. Are you saying that any time we say something on Wikipedia, we have to insert into the text who says it, not just in references. It will affect readability. As Gaijin42 says, WP:RS/AC explains exactly how to report academic consensus.Jeppiz (talk) 22:00, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

How are these citations WP:OR?

Citations

[T]he view that there was no historical Jesus, that his earthly existence is a fiction of earliest Christianity—a fiction only later made concrete by setting his life in the first century—is today almost totally rejected. G. A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1988) p. 218 It is customary today to dismiss with amused contempt the suggestion that Jesus never existed. G. A. Wells, "The Historicity of Jesus," in Jesus and History and Myth, ed. R. Joseph Hoffman (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986) p. 27 "New Testament criticism treated the Christ Myth Theory with universal disdain" Robert M. Price, The Pre-Nicene New Testament: Fifty-Four Formative Texts (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2006) p. 1179 "Van Voorst is quite right in saying that 'mainstream scholarship today finds it unimportant' [to engage the Christ myth theory seriously]. Most of their comment (such as those quoted by Michael Grant) are limited to expressions of contempt." Earl Doherty, "Responses to Critiques of the Mythicist Case: Alleged Scholarly Refutations of Jesus Mythicism, Part Three", The Jesus Puzzle: Was There No Historical Jesus? Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher. Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (2nd ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) p. xxiii In the last analysis, the whole Christ-myth theorizing is a glaring example of obscurantism, if the sin of obscurantism consists in the acceptance of bare possibilities in place of actual probabilities, and of pure surmise in defiance of existing evidence. Those who have not entered far into the laborious inquiry may pretend that the historicity of Jesus is an open question. For me to adopt such a pretence would be sheer intellectual dishonesty. I know I must, as an honest man, reckon with Jesus as a factor in history... This dialectic process whereby the Christ-myth theory discredits itself rests on the simple fact that you cannot attempt to prove the theory without mishandling the evidence. Herbert George Wood, Christianity and the Nature of History (London: Cambridge University Press, 1934) pp. xxxiii & 54 The defectiveness of [the Christ myth theory's] treatment of the traditional evidence is perhaps not so patent in the case of the gospels as it is in the case of the Pauline epistles. Yet fundamentally it is the same. There is the same easy dismissal of all external testimony, the same disdain for the saner conclusions of modern criticism, the same inclination to attach most value to extremes of criticism, the same neglect of all the personal and natural features of the narrative, the same disposition to put skepticism forward in the garb of valid demonstration, and the same ever present predisposition against recognizing any evidence for Jesus' actual existence... The New Testament data are perfectly clear in their testimony to the reality of Jesus' earthly career and they come from a time when the possibility that the early framers of tradition should have been deceived upon this point is out of the question. Shirley Jackson Case, The Historicity Of Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1912) pp. 76-77 & 269 If one were able to survey the members of the major learned societies dealing with antiquity, it would be difficult to find more than a handful who believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not walk the dusty roads of Palestine in the first three decades of the Common Era. Evidence for Jesus as a historical personage is incontrovertible. W. Ward Gasque, "The Leading Religion Writer in Canada... Does He Know What He's Talking About?", George Mason University's History News Network, 2004 [The non-Christian references to Jesus from the first two centuries] render highly implausible any farfetched theories that even Jesus' very existence was a Christian invention. The fact that Jesus existed, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate (for whatever reason) and that he had a band of followers who continued to support his cause, seems to be the part of the bedrock of historical tradition. If nothing else, the non-Christian evidence can provide us with certainty on that score. Christopher M. Tuckett, "Sources and Methods" in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (London: Cambridge University Press, 2001) p. 124 [A]n attempt to show that Jesus never existed has been made in recent years by G. A. Wells, a Professor of German who has ventured into New Testament study and presents a case that the origins of Christianity can be explained without assuming that Jesus really lived. Earlier presentations of similar views at the turn of the century failed to make any impression on scholarly opinion, and it is certain that this latest presentation of the case will not fare any better. For of course the evidence is not confined to Tacitus; there are the New Testament documents themselves, nearly all of which must be dated in the first century, and behind which there lies a period of transmission of the story of Jesus which can be traced backwards to a date not far from that when Jesus is supposed to have lived. To explain the rise of this tradition without the hypothesis of Jesus is impossible. I. Howard Marshall, I Believe in the Historical Jesus (rev. ed.) (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2004) pp. 15–16 A phone call from the BBC’s flagship Today programme: would I go on air on Good Friday morning to debate with the aurthors of a new book, The Jesus Mysteries? The book claims (or so they told me) that everything in the Gospels reflects, because it was in fact borrowed from, much older pagan myths; that Jesus never existed; that the early church knew it was propagating a new version of an old myth, and that the developed church covered this up in the interests of its own power and control. The producer was friendly, and took my point when I said that this was like asking a professional astronomer to debate with the authors of a book claiming the moon was made of green cheese. N. T. Wright, "Jesus' Self Understanding", in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, Gerald O’Collins, The Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) p. 48 A school of thought popular with cranks on the Internet holds that Jesus didn’t actually exist. Tom Breen, The Messiah Formerly Known as Jesus: Dispatches from the Intersection of Christianity and Pop Culture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008) p. 138 I feel that I ought almost to apologize to my readers for investigating at such length the hypothesis of a pre-Christian Jesus, son of a mythical Mary, and for exhibiting over so many pages its fantastic, baseless, and absurd character... We must [, according to Christ myth advocates,] perforce suppose that the Gospels were a covert tribute to the worth and value of Pagan mythology and religious dramas, to pagan art and statuary. If we adopt the mythico-symbolical method, they can have been nothing else. Its sponsors might surely condescend to explain the alchemy by which the ascertained rites and beliefs of early Christians were distilled from these antecedents. The effect and the cause are so entirely disparate, so devoid of any organic connection, that we would fain see the evolution worked out a little more clearly. At one end of it we have a hurly-burly of pagan myths, at the other an army of Christian apologists inveighing against everything pagan and martyred for doing so, all within a space of sixty or seventy years. I only hope the orthodox will be gratified to learn that their Scriptures are a thousandfold more wonderful and unique than they appeared to be when they were merely inspired by the Holy Spirit. For verbal inspiration is not, as regards its miraculous quality, in the same field with mythico-symbolism. Verily we have discovered a new literary genus, unexampled in the history of mankind, you rake together a thousand irrelevant thrums of mythology, picked up at random from every age, race, and clime; you get a "Christist" to throw them into a sack and shake them up; you open it, and out come the Gospels. In all the annals of the Bacon-Shakespeareans we have seen nothing like it. Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare,The Historical Christ, or an Investigation of the Views of J. M. Robertson, A. Drews and W. B. Smith (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2009/1914) pp. 42 & 95 Today only an eccentric would claim that Jesus never existed. Leander Keck, Who Is Jesus?: History in Perfect Tense (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2000) p. 13 While The Christ Myth alarmed many who were innocent of learning, it evoked only Olympian scorn from the historical establishment, who were confident that Jesus had existed... The Christ-myth theory, then, won little support from the historical specialists. In their judgement, it sought to demonstrate a perverse thesis, and it preceded by drawing the most far-fetched, even bizarre connection between mythologies of very diverse origin. The importance of the theory lay, not in its persuasiveness to the historians (since it had none), but in the fact that it invited theologians to renewed reflection on the questions of faith and history. Brian A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004) pp. 231 & 233 It is certain, however, that Jesus was arrested while in Jerusalem for the Passover, probably in the year 30, and that he was executed...it cannot be doubted that Peter was a personal disciple of Jesus... Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2 (2nd ed.) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000) pp. 80 & 166 We do not need to take seriously those writers who occasionally claim that Jesus never existed at all, for we have clear evidence to the contrary from a number of Jewish, Latin, and Islamic sources. John Drane, "Introduction", in John Drane, The Great Sayings of Jesus: Proverbs, Parables and Prayers (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 1999) p. 23 By no means are we at the mercy of those who doubt or deny that Jesus ever lived. Rudolf Bultmann, "The Study of the Synoptic Gospels", Form Criticism: Two Essays on New Testament Research, Rudolf Bultmann & Karl Kundsin; translated by Frederick C. Grant (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962) p. 62 Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (New York: Scribner, 1958) p. introduction It is the nature of historical work that we are always involved in probability judgments. Granted, some judgments are so probable as to be certain; for example, Jesus really existed and really was crucified, just as Julius Caeser really existed and was assassinated. Marcus Borg, "A Vision of the Christian Life", The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, Marcus Borg & N. T. Wright (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2007) p. 236 To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus'—or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary. Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (New York: Scribner, 1995) p. 200 I think that there are hardly any historians today, in fact I don't know of any historians today, who doubt the existence of Jesus... So I think that question can be put to rest. N. T. Wright, "The Self-Revelation of God in Human History: A Dialogue on Jesus with N. T. Wright", in Antony Flew & Roy Abraham Vargese, There is a God (New York: HarperOne, 2007) p. 188 Even the most critical historian can confidently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and wonder-worker in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, was executed by crucifixion under the prefect Pontius Pilate, and continued to have followers after his death. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1996) p. 121 The historical reality both of Buddha and of Christ has sometimes been doubted or denied. It would be just as reasonable to question the historical existence of Alexander the Great and Charlemagne on account of the legends which have gathered round them... The attempt to explain history without the influence of great men may flatter the vanity of the vulgar, but it will find no favour with the philosophic historian. James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 7 (3rd ed.) (London: Macmillan, 1919) p. 311 We can be certain that Jesus really existed (despite a few highly motivated skeptics who refuse to be convinced), that he was a Jewish teacher in Galilee, and that he was crucified by the Roman government around 30 CE. Robert J. Miller, The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics (Santa Rosa: Polebridge, 1999) p. 38 [T]here is substantial evidence that a person by the name of Jesus once existed. Robert Funk, Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millenium (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) p. 33 Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed—the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. Will Durant, Christ and Caesar, The Story of Civilization, 3 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972) p. 557 There are no substantial doubts about the general course of Jesus’ life: when and where he lived, approximately when and where he died, and the sort of thing that he did during his public activity. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, 1993) p. 10 There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more. Richard A. Burridge, Jesus Now and Then (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) p. 34 Although Wells has been probably the most able advocate of the nonhistoricity theory, he has not been persuasive and is now almost a lone voice for it. The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question... The nonhistoricity thesis has always been controversial, and it has consistently failed to convince scholars of many disciplines and religious creeds... Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted. Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) pp. 14 & 16 No reputable scholar today questions that a Jew named Jesus son of Joseph lived; most readily admit that we now know a considerable amount about his actions and his basic teachings. James H. Charlesworth, "Preface", in James H. Charlesworth, Jesus and Archaeology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) pp. xxi–xxv [Robert] Price thinks the evidence is so weak for the historical Jesus that we cannot know anything certain or meaningful about him. He is even willing to entertain the possibility that there never was a historical Jesus. Is the evidence of Jesus really that thin? Virtually no scholar trained in history will agree with Price's negative conclusions... In my view Price's work in the gospels is overpowered by a philosophical mindset that is at odds with historical research—of any kind... What we see in Price is what we have seen before: a flight from fundamentalism. Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2008) p. 25 The scholarly mainstream, in contrast to Bauer and company, never doubted the existence of Jesus or his relevance for the founding of the Church. Craig A. Evans, "Life-of-Jesus Research and the Eclipse of Mythology", Theological Studies 54, 1993, p. 8 There's no serious question for historians that Jesus actually lived. There’s real issues about whether he is really the way the Bible described him. There’s real issues about particular incidents in his life. But no serious ancient historian doubts that Jesus was a real person, really living in Galilee in the first century. Chris Forbes, interview with John Dickson, "Zeitgeist: Time to Discard the Christian Story?", Center for Public Christianity, 2009 I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus. There are a lot of people who want to write sensational books and make a lot of money who say Jesus didn't exist. But I don't know any serious scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus. Bart Ehrman, interview with Reginald V. Finley Sr., "Who Changed The New Testament and Why", The Infidel Guy Show, 2008 What about those writers like Acharya S (The Christ Conspiracy) and Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries), who say that Jesus never existed, and that Christianity was an invented religion, the Jewish equivalent of the Greek mystery religions? This is an old argument, even though it shows up every 10 years or so. This current craze that Christianity was a mystery religion like these other mystery religions-the people who are saying this are almost always people who know nothing about the mystery religions; they've read a few popular books, but they're not scholars of mystery religions. The reality is, we know very little about mystery religions-the whole point of mystery religions is that they're secret! So I think it's crazy to build on ignorance in order to make a claim like this. I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it's silly to talk about him not existing. I don't know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this. Bart Ehrman, interview with David V. Barrett, "The Gospel According to Bart", Fortean Times (221), 2007 Richard [Carrier] takes the extremist position that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed, that there was no such person in history. This is a position that is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement; it doesn’t even appear on the map of contemporary New Testament scholarship. William Lane Craig, "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?", debate with Richard Carrier, 2009 The alternative thesis... that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him. James D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985) p. 29 This is always the fatal flaw of the 'Jesus myth' thesis: the improbability of the total invention of a figure who had purportedly lived within the generation of the inventors, or the imposition of such an elaborate myth on some minor figure from Galilee. [Robert] Price is content with the explanation that it all began 'with a more or less vague savior myth.' Sad, really. James D. G. Dunn, "Response to Robert M. Price", in James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy, The Historical Jesus: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009) p. 98 Since the Enlightenment, the Gospel stories about the life of Jesus have been in doubt. Intellectuals then as now asked: 'What makes the stories of the New Testament any more historically probable than Aesop's fables or Grimm's fairy tales?' The critics can be answered satisfactorily...For all the rigor of the standard it sets, the criterion [of embarrassment] demonstrates that Jesus existed. Alan F. Segal, "Believe Only the Embarrassing", Slate, 2005 Some writers may toy with the fancy of a 'Christ-myth,' but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the 'Christ-myth' theories. F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (6th ed.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) p. 123 Jesus is in no danger of suffering Catherine [of Alexandria]'s fate as an unhistorical myth... Dale Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) p. 37 An examination of the claims for and against the historicity of Jesus thus reveals that the difficulties faced by those undertaking to prove that he is not historical, in the fields both of the history of religion and the history of doctrine, and not least in the interpretation of the earliest tradition are far more numerous and profound than those which face their opponents. Seen in their totality, they must be considered as having no possible solution. Added to this, all hypotheses which have so far been put forward to the effect that Jesus never lived are in the strangest opposition to each other, both in their method of working and their interpretation of the Gospel reports, and thus merely cancel each other out. Hence we must conclude that the supposition that Jesus did exist is exceedingly likely, whereas its converse is exceedingly unlikely. This does not mean that the latter will not be proposed again from time to time, just as the romantic view of the life of Jesus is also destined for immortality. It is even able to dress itself up with certain scholarly technique, and with a little skillful manipulation can have much influence on the mass of people. But as soon as it does more than engage in noisy polemics with 'theology' and hazards an attempt to produce real evidence, it immediately reveals itself to be an implausible hypothesis. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, translated by John Bowden et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001) pp. 435–436 In fact, there is more evidence that Jesus of Nazareth certainly lived than for most famous figures of the ancient past. This evidence is of two kinds: internal and external, or, if you will, sacred and secular. In both cases, the total evidence is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus' existence. And yet this pathetic denial is still parroted by 'the village atheist,' bloggers on the internet, or such organizations as the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Paul L. Maier, "Did Jesus Really Exist?", 4Truth.net, 2007 The very logic that tells us there was no Jesus is the same logic that pleads that there was no Holocaust. On such logic, history is no longer possible. It is no surprise then that there is no New Testament scholar drawing pay from a post who doubts the existence of Jesus. I know not one. His birth, life, and death in first-century Palestine have never been subject to serious question and, in all likelihood, never will be among those who are experts in the field. The existence of Jesus is a given. Nicholas Perrin, Lost in Transmission?: What We Can Know About the Words of Jesus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) p. 32 While we do not have the fullness of biographical detail and the wealth of firsthand accounts that are available for recent public figures, such as Winston Churchill or Mother Teresa, we nonetheless have much more data on Jesus than we do for such ancient figures as Alexander the Great... Along with the scholarly and popular works, there is a good deal of pseudoscholarship on Jesus that finds its way into print. During the last two centuries more than a hundred books and articles have denied the historical existence of Jesus. Today innumerable websites carry the same message... Most scholars regard the arguments for Jesus' non-existence as unworthy of any response—on a par with claims that the Jewish Holocaust never occurred or that the Apollo moon landing took place in a Hollywood studio. Michael James McClymond, Familiar Stranger: An Introduction to Jesus of Nazareth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004) pp. 8 & 23–24 You know that you can try to minimize your biases, but you can't eliminate them. That's why you have to put certain checks and balances in place… Under this approach, we only consider facts that meet two criteria. First, there must be very strong historical evidence supporting them. And secondly, the evidence must be so strong that the vast majority of today's scholars on the subject—including skeptical ones—accept these as historical facts. You're never going to get everyone to agree. There are always people who deny the Holocaust or question whether Jesus ever existed, but they're on the fringe. Michael R. Licona, in Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007) p. 112 If I understand what Earl Doherty is arguing, Neil, it is that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as an historical person, or, at least that historians, like myself, presume that he did and act on that fatally flawed presumption. I am not sure, as I said earlier, that one can persuade people that Jesus did exist as long as they are ready to explain the entire phenomenon of historical Jesus and earliest Christianity either as an evil trick or a holy parable. I had a friend in Ireland who did not believe that Americans had landed on the moon but that they had created the entire thing to bolster their cold-war image against the communists. I got nowhere with him. So I am not at all certain that I can prove that the historical Jesus existed against such an hypothesis and probably, to be honest, I am not even interested in trying. John Dominic Crossan, "Historical Jesus: Materials and Methodology", XTalk, 2000 A hundred and fifty years ago a fairly well respected scholar named Bruno Bauer maintained that the historical person Jesus never existed. Anyone who says that today—in the academic world at least—gets grouped with the skinheads who say there was no Holocaust and the scientific holdouts who want to believe the world is flat. Mark Allan Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) p. 168 When they say that Christian beliefs about Jesus are derived from pagan mythology, I think you should laugh. Then look at them wide-eyed and with a big grin, and exclaim, 'Do you really believe that?' Act as though you've just met a flat earther or Roswell conspirator. William Lane Craig, "Question 90: Jesus and Pagan Mythology", Reasonable Faith, 2009 Finley: There are some people in the chat room disagreeing, of course, but they’re saying that there really isn’t any hardcore evidence, though, that… I mean… but there isn’t any… any evidence, really, that Jesus did exist except what people were saying about him. But… Ehrman: I think… I disagree with that. Finley: Really? Ehrman: I mean, what hardcore evidence is there that Julius Caesar existed? Finley: Well, this is… this is the same kind of argument that apologists use, by the way, for the existence of Jesus, by the way. They like to say the same thing you said just then about, well, what kind of evidence do you have for Jul… Ehrman: Well, I mean, it’s… but it’s just a typical… it’s just… It’s a historical point; I mean, how do you establish the historical existence of an individual from the past? Finley: I guess… I guess it depends on the claims… Right, it depends on the claims that people have made during that particular time about a particular person and their influence on society... Ehrman: It’s not just the claims. There are… One has to look at historical evidence. And if you… If you say that historical evidence doesn’t count, then I think you get into huge trouble. Because then, how do… I mean… then why not just deny the Holocaust? Bart Ehrman, interview with Reginald V. Finley Sr., "Who Changed The New Testament and Why", The Infidel Guy Show, 2008 The denial that Christ was crucified is like the denial of the Holocaust. For some it's simply too horrific to affirm. For others it's an elaborate conspiracy to coerce religious sympathy. But the deniers live in a historical dreamworld. John Piper, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006) pp. 14-15 I just finished reading, The Historical Jesus: Five Views. The first view was given by Robert Price, a leading Jesus myth proponent… The title of Price’s chapter is 'Jesus at the Vanishing Point.' I am convinced that if Price's total skepticism were applied fairly and consistently to other figures in ancient history (Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Nero, etc.), they would all be reduced to 'the vanishing point.' Price's chapter is a perfect example of how someone can always, always find excuses to not believe something they don't want to believe, whether that be the existence of Jesus or the existence of the holocaust. Dennis Ingolfsland, "Five views of the historical Jesus", The Recliner Commentaries, 2009 The Jesus mythers will continue to advance their thesis and complain of being kept outside of the arena of serious academic discussion. They carry their signs, 'Jesus Never Existed!' 'They won’t listen to me!' and label those inside the arena as 'Anti-Intellectuals,' 'Fundamentalists,' 'Misguided Liberals,' and 'Flat-Earthers.' Doherty & Associates are baffled that all but a few naïve onlookers pass them by quickly, wagging their heads and rolling their eyes. They never see that they have a fellow picketer less than a hundred yards away, a distinguished looking man from Iran. He too is frustrated and carries a sign that says 'The Holocaust Never Happened!' Michael R. Licona, "Licona Replies to Doherty's Rebuttal", Answering Infidels, 2005 Frankly, I know of no ancient historian or biblical historian who would have a twinge of doubt about the existence of a Jesus Christ - the documentary evidence is simply overwhelming. Graeme Clarke, quoted by John Dickson in "Facts and friction of Easter", The Sydney Morning Herald, March 21, 2008 An extreme instance of pseudo-history of this kind is the “explanation” of the whole story of Jesus as a myth. Emil Brunner, The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2002) p. 164 An extreme view along these lines is one which denies even the historical existence of Jesus Christ—a view which, one must admit, has not managed to establish itself among the educated, outside a little circle of amateurs and cranks, or to rise above the dignity of the Baconian theory of Shakespeare. Edwyn Robert Bevan, Hellenism And Christianity (2nd ed.) (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1930) p. 256 When all the evidence brought against Jesus' historicity is surveyed it is not found to contain any elements of strength. Shirley Jackson Case, "The Historicity of Jesus: An Estimate of the Negative Argument", The American Journal of Theology, 1911, 15 (1) It would be easy to show how much there enters of the conjectural, of superficial resemblances, of debatable interpretation into the systems of the Drews, the Robertsons, the W. B. Smiths, the Couchouds, or the Stahls... The historical reality of the personality of Jesus alone enables us to understand the birth and development of Christianity, which otherwise would remain an enigma, and in the proper sense of the word, a miracle. Maurice Goguel, Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History? (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1926) pp. 30 & 244 Anyone who talks about "reasonable faith" must say what he thinks about Jesus. And that would still be so even if, with one or two cranks, he believed that He never existed. John W. C. Wand, The Old Faith and the New Age‎ (London: Skeffington & Son, 1933) p. 31 That both in the case of the Christians, and in the case of those who worshipped Zagreus or Osiris or Attis, the Divine Being was believed to have died and returned to life, would be a depreciation of Christianity only if it could be shown that the Christian belief was derived from the pagan one. But that can be supposed only by cranks for whom historical evidence is nothing. Edwyn R. Bevan, in Thomas Samuel Kepler, Contemporary Thinking about Paul: An Anthology (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1950) p. 44 The pseudoscholarship of the early twentieth century calling in question the historical reality of Jesus was an ingenuous attempt to argue a preconceived position. Gerard Stephen Sloyan, The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) p. 9 Whatever else Jesus may or may not have done, he unquestionably* started the process that became Christianity… UNQUESTIONABLY: The proposition has been questioned, but the alternative explanations proposed—the theories of the “Christ myth school,” etc.—have been thoroughly discredited. Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978) pp. 5 & 166 One category of mythicists, like young-earth creationists, have no hesitation about offering their own explanation of who made up Christianity... Other mythicists, perhaps because they are aware that such a scenario makes little historical sense and yet have nothing better to offer in its place, resemble proponents of Intelligent Design who will say "the evidence points to this organism having been designed by an intelligence" and then insist that it would be inappropriate to discuss further who the designer might be or anything else other than the mere "fact" of design itself. They claim that the story of Jesus was invented, but do not ask the obvious historical questions of "when, where, and by whom" even though the stories are set in the authors' recent past and not in time immemorial, in which cases such questions obviously become meaningless... Thus far, I've only encountered two sorts of mythicism." James F. McGrath, "Intelligently-Designed Narratives: Mythicism as History-Stopper", Exploring Our Matrix, 2010 In the academic mind, there can be no more doubt whatsoever that Jesus existed than did Augustus and Tiberius, the emperors of his lifetime. Even if we assume for a moment that the accounts of non-biblical authors who mention him - Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger and others - had not survived, the outstanding quality of the Gospels, Paul's letters and other New Testament writings is more than good enough for the historian. Carsten Peter Thiede, Jesus, Man or Myth? (Oxford: Lion, 2005) p. 23 To describe Jesus' non-existence as "not widely supported" is an understatement. It would be akin to me saying, "It is possible to mount a serious, though not widely supported, scientific case that the 1969 lunar landing never happened." There are fringe conspiracy theorists who believe such things - but no expert does. Likewise with the Jesus question: his non-existence is not regarded even as a possibility in historical scholarship. Dismissing him from the ancient record would amount to a wholesale abandonment of the historical method. John Dickson, Jesus: A Short Life (Oxford: Lion, 2008) 22-23. When Professor Wells advances such an explanation of the gospel stories [i.e. the Christ myth theory] he presents us with a piece of private mythology that I find incredible beyond anything in the gospels. Morton Smith, in R. Joseph Hoffman, Jesus in History and Myth (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1986) p. 48 Of course, there can be no toleration whatever of the idea that Jesus never existed and is only a concoction from these pagan stories about a god who was slain and rose again. Joseph Klausner, From Jesus to Paul (New York: Menorah, 1943) p. 107 Virtually all biblical scholars acknowledge that there is enough information from ancient non-Christian sources to give the lie to the myth (still, however, widely believed in popular circles and by some scholars in other fields--see esp. G. A. Wells) which claims that Jesus never existed. Craig L. Blomberg, "Gospels (Historical Reliability)", in Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight & I. Howard Marshall, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992) p. 292 In the 1910's a few scholars did argue that Jesus never existed and was simply the figment of speculative imagination. This denial of the historicity of Jesus does not commend itself to scholars, moderates or extremists, any more. ... The "Christ-myth" theories are not accepted or even discussed by scholars today. Samuel Sandmel, A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament‎ (New York: Ktav, 1974) p. 196 Dr. Wells was there [I.e. a symposium at the University of Michigan] and he presened his radical thesis that maybe Jesus never existed. Virtually nobody holds this position today. It was reported that Dr. Morton Smith of Columbia University, even though he is a skeptic himself, responded that Dr. Wells's view was "absurd". Gary Habermas, in Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?: The Resurrection Debate (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1989) p. 45 I.e. if we leave out of account the Christ-myth theories, which are hardly to be reckoned as within the range of serious criticism. Alexander Roper Vidler, The Modernist Movement in the Roman Church (London: Cambridge University Press, 1934) p. 253 Such Christ-myth theories are not now advanced by serious opponents of Christianity—they have long been exploded ..." Gilbert Cope, Symbolism in the Bible and the Church (London: SCM, 1959) p. 14 In the early years of this century, various theses were propounded which all assert that Jesus never lived, and that the story of Jesus is a myth or legend. These claims have long since been exposed as historical nonsense. There can be no reasonable doubt that Jesus of Nazareth lived in Palestine in the first three decades of our era, probably from 6-7 BC to 30 AD. That is a fact. Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1976) p. 65 There is, lastly, a group of writers who endeavor to prove that Jesus never lived--that the story of his life is made up by mingling myths of heathen gods, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, etc. No real scholar regards the work of these men seriously. They lack the most elementary knowledge of historical research. Some of them are eminent scholars in other subjects, such as Assyriology and mathematics, but their writings about the life of Jesus have no more claim to be regarded as historical than Alice in Wonderland or the Adventures of Baron Munchausen. George Aaron Barton, Jesus of Nazareth: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1922) p. x The data we have are certainly adequate to confute the view that Jesus never lived, a view that no one holds in any case Charles E. Carlston, in Bruce Chilton & Craig A. Evans (eds.) Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (Leiden: Brill, 1998) p. 3 Although it is held by Marxist propaganda writers that Jesus never lived and that the Gospels are pure creations of the imagination, this is not the view of even the most radical Gospel critics. Bernard L. Ramm, An Evangelical Christology: Ecumenic and Historic (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1999) p. 159 Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 22:06, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Consensus can't trump NPOV, which is non-negotiable. See [[See also WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV - Cwobeel (talk) 22:01, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:RS/AC (Part of the RS policy) specifically addresses this and says "The statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources. Editors should avoid original research especially with regard to making blanket statements based on novel syntheses of disparate material. Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors."

We have 3 reliable academic sources making this statement. Note the "otherwise" that specifically covers your objection that we need to attribute it.

In any case, this has been stable for years - if you think its wrong, build consensus for that change. Gaijin42 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

(ec) It does not matter if has been "stable" for X years. We always improve articles even stale ones. As to your point above, three sources does not make an "academic consensus". If there is such a thing as "academic consensus", we need an independent source to attest to that fact. We can't make it up ourselves. - Cwobeel (talk) 22:07, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Come on now, that's beneath you. Nobody has said three sources "make an academic consensus". There are loads of sources in the academic census, what the sources we use here is is that there is an academic census. Exactly as RS/AC requires us to do. You are aware that that is the policy for reporting academic consensus, hence its name. What's the problem with following it?Jeppiz (talk) 22:11, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Cwobeel, the problem is that your edit violates NPOV, it does not follow it. Your edit it makes it seem as if this is only Bart Erhmans's view. That is misrepresenting the sources. You should at the very least then add Graham, Dunn and Van der Voorst as well if you want to follow NPOV. Right now you're violating it by diminishing the strength of what the sources say, making it out to be a single person's opinion. That's not good editing.Jeppiz (talk) 22:05, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

As far as I can see the "virtually all" is Erhman's viewpoint. You are welcome to improve that sentence with other attributions. - Cwobeel (talk) 22:08, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

• According to Michael Mann, virtually all scientists agree that Global Warming is real.
• According to the ADL, The virtually all historians agree that the Holocaust happened.
• According to Popular Science virtually all researchers agree that the 911 tower collapse was not a controlled detonation.

Should we be making changes like this throughout the wiki? I think not. RS/AC specifically covers the need to NOT attribute the claim. There are 3 sources making the AC claim. Gaijin42 (talk) 22:11, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Global warming is a completely different subject and we have sources that attest to a scientific consensus. Not the case here I believe. - Cwobeel (talk) 22:13, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

HAve you read those citations above? They are clearly stating that there is a consensus. Gaijin42 (talk) 22:14, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

"Not the case here I believe" As Gaijin42 said, then you haven't read the citations. It is exactly the same thing. What we have here are "sources that attest to a scientific consensus"Jeppiz (talk) 22:18, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I am reading them now. They were hidden because the bottom collapse was missing. - Cwobeel (talk) 22:16, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Also of interest

• RSN from ~1 year ago on this exact subject Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_153#Is_36_years_too_old_for_statements_about_.22modern_scholarship.22_and_what_is_.22now_believed.3F
• 4 year old RSN same subject Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_72#Historical_Jesus:_90.25_of_sources_are_Christian_theologians_and.2For_Christian_Presses
• Another Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_25#When_is_a_peer-reviewed_Journal_not_considered_reliable.3F
• Many discussions from the main Jesus talk about this https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=default&search=virtually+all+prefix%3ATalk%3AJesus%2F&fulltext=Search

Gaijin42 (talk) 22:24, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I have refractored that sentece to make sure it is clear that the majority of scholars accept the historicity of Jesus, and included a minority viewpoint as well (Significant minority viewpoints are needed for NPOV). Hope this works. - Cwobeel (talk) 22:26, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

How you can call these viewpoints "fringe"? They are not fringe, these are significant minority viewpoints, needed for NPOV (BTW, I personally believe Jesus existed as a person, so I am not trying to insert a POV here)- Cwobeel (talk) 22:28, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Cwobeel Jeppiz I believe we should revert to the stable version prior to this flare up. It seems Cwobeel accedes to the WP:RS/AC. In regards to the minority view, it is covered just below in the See also section, but I would support promoting that to a sentence in the main body as it is a valid although minority view. Frankly, I am suprised at the state of this article. the "summary" section in the Jesus article is much better written and fleshed out imo, and directly covers both the AC and minority view Jesus#Existence. I would support replacing this entire article with that section. Gaijin42 (talk) 22:32, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps combined with the relevant paragraph from the lede of the Jesus article as well, which serves as a better intro. Gaijin42 (talk) 22:34, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

By all means, do restore the stable version.Jeppiz (talk) 22:36, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Respecting WP:OR, WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE

Cwobeel, your latest edits are highly problematic and blatantly violate several Wikipedia policies. I will assume good faith, but please read up on the policies. This is what WP:UNDUE states

"Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserves as much attention overall as the majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views (such as Flat Earth). To give undue weight to the view of a significant minority, or to include that of a tiny minority, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject. This applies not only to article text, but to images, wikilinks, external links, categories, and all other material as well.

From Jimbo Wales, paraphrased from a September 2003 post on the WikiEN-l mailing list:

• If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
• If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
• If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article."

When you take sources saying that there is an academic consensus and you twist them to make it out to be a majority versus a minority, you're violating WP:OR, WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE. What we have here is an academic consensus (WP:RS/AC]] with only a WP:FRINGE opposition. There is at one or two academics within the field who take latter position, that is a clear example of fringe and not a majority versus a minority. Furthermore, we even have sources saying exactly that and you gladly misrepresent them to push your WP:POV The policy above is very clear.Jeppiz (talk) 22:36, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I think the second point is met. It is easy to name the adherents of this minority view, and they are notable voices (although clearly in the minority). If we clearly identify that the view does not have wide acceptance, there is no problem there. Gaijin42 (talk) 22:39, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Jeppiz: cool it, please. I am not trying to "push my POV", as my POV is that a Jew named Jesus existed in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, and was executed by Pontius Pilate. Minority viewpoints, if significant, can be included per WP:NPOV. - Cwobeel (talk) 22:48, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

• Gaijin42 said: "WP:RS/AC (Part of the RS policy) specifically addresses this and says "The statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources. " Actually...the very first source, Did Jesus Exist? by Bart Ehrman actually states this in the introduction in more than a manner of speaking but...what he says is that most experts are of the opinion....but then quickly balances that with all the experts still only hold an "opinion" not anything as a fact (very much paraphrasing).--Mark Miller (talk) 08:18, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Mark Miller Last time I checked "opinion" was a synonym for "view". If most scholars have that opinion, then most scholars hold that view. Gaijin42 (talk) 14:09, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Gaijin42 The problem with that is that an opinion is not necessarily the product of sound methodology. This exact issue has been discussed here ad nauseam in the past. The reason that the "virtually all scholars" language should not be in Wikipedia's voice is that none of the quotes given as the basis for that statement provide anything but entirely anecdotal evidence. Take the Burridge quote for example; he is clearly speaking to his personal experience and recollection and not to any methodology such that someone else could follow to the same conclusion. Not that I think he is wrong, but this does not establish a fact adequately to speak in Wikipedia's voice. Furthermore, none of the quotes provided are from publications that, as far as I can tell, are peer reviewed academic publications. They are from popular titles that are not necessarily subject to editorial over site. If one of the quotes mentioned a scientific survey of the scholars in question, then that would be adequate to establish the fact enough to use Wikipedia's voice. This is why it was eventually agreed upon in the past to use the more appropriate "(author)says...." format. To be clear, this is not a cometary on the what the majority of scholars believe and the information should be included. This is strictly about the propriety of the style and delivery of the statement relative to the quotes provided.Blackthorne2k (talk) 17:35, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Near unanimity

So how near are we talking here? Is it 98%, 99%??? It's obviously not 100. But how many holdouts are there?? And "scholars"? Who are they? Exactly who is counted and who isn't? Just scholarly people in general? Does this statement count mathematical scholars, architectural, artistic, environmentalist scholars who have never studied Jesus at all and who's opinions on Jesus' existence are as scientific as anybody's opinions on the internet??

These statements are what we call weasel statements. We should be communicating something precise. If it's a unanimous opinion, say it's a unanimous opinion. If it's a majority opinion, say it's a unanimous opinion. Saying "most" or "majority" is far more encyclopedic, since it only requires us to look for a vast amount of sources with few dissenting. "Near unanimous" is an opinion unless we have the exact number of scholars who have commented on the issue and can consider our number of sources as close to the total.

I'm guessing a lot of you will feel that saying a "majority" far underplays exactly how much of a majority there is. Well how about: "The widespread consensus is that Jesus existed historically". That sounds good to me. However, I urge you all to provide your own alternatives since there are probably hundreds of phrases better than the one currently in the article.

Would you all agree with adding "almost everybody" to other articles? Because that's exactly what we're doing here. It's silly, unencyclopedic, weasly and unnecessary. The English language is rich and expansive and can provide an adequate replacement. Feedback 08:00, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Near unanimity is more accurate than either widespread consensus or unanimity. It is a fair summary of the sources we have on the WP:RS/AC as well as the minority opposing view. Martijn Meijering (talk) 14:45, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

See section 23 above. Expand the citations listed and then come up with a %. I'm flexible about the exact percentage as long as it's >99% and <100%. Sound good? Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 12:47, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Feedback, I think you make a good point. As you say, "scholars" is vague. While it's probably meant to imply "scholars who have written on subject" or something similar, it can be misunderstood and I agree we should change it. What the actual source says is much clearer "Virtually every scholar of antiquity" which makes it clear we're not taking about scholars in general.Jeppiz (talk) 14:29, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I believe we have several sources only one of which says "scholar of antiquity". I object to that term however, since it's highly misleading and tendentious, and in addition Ehrman cannot be regarded as a reliable source on the opinion of all scholars of antiquity, as that is not an actual discipline, but a term that encompasses a number of disciplines. That said, I believe we should be more precise about the views of various groups of scholars. Obvious contenders for groups that deserve to be mentioned separately are (ancient) historians, the majority among biblical scholars and academic CMT proponents. Martijn Meijering (talk) 14:45, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Feedback, I appreciate the point you are making. I've seen this throughout Wikipedia--Its using Wikipedia's voice to make a point that is close to our own heart, or that we think is important, but its our own point. There is a certain message that is trying to be sent with this. Unless there are scholarly quotes confirming this unanimity, its OR in a sense and drawing conclusions or our own idea to support a certain POV. Prasangika37 (talk) 20:40, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm glad you asked for quotes. See section 23 above. Expand the citations and you'll get the quotes. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 20:42, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Prasangika37, luckily there are scholarly quotes confirming this unanimity.Jeppiz (talk) 21:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps then a nice middle ground is "Scholars note there is near unanimity"... If we have the citations then that is that! I think this would be nicer and less controversial than just outright saying "There is unanimity" Prasangika37 (talk) 21:13, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

How is that an improvement over what we have? How is what we have even a problem? Per WP:RS/AC we can state there is a consensus if reliable sources say so. We know the consensus isn't absolute however, so we say near unanimity. What's the problem? Martijn Meijering (talk) 21:26, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Finding that perhaps its a compromising space for all parties, as to avoid the extreme of each person having it exactly their way. I guess if its something that can unilaterally proven then its okay to use Wikipedia's voice, but this was a suggestion as a method to have a middle way. Prasangika37 (talk) 00:36, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

A middle way of what? I'm not arguing that we change what the sentence says, just to change how it says it. "Near unanimity" is subjective in nature. Someone might believe that Half+1 is near unanimous. Others might believe that three-fourths+1 is near unanimous. There is nothing being communicated here outside of "there's a majority". And if that's what is being communicated by this sentence, then that's what we should write. Feedback 19:54, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

It's silly, unencyclopedic, weasly and unnecessary. Bullshit. If reliable sources say "every trained scholar in the relevant field except Price and Carrier -- neither of whom have teaching positions at reputable universities -- accepts this as historical fact" then that's what we should be saying. We can't just add original commentary like "a minority of the world's six billion people have expressed an opinion on the matter, and those who have are overwhelmingly Christian". That assumes a bias on the part of scholars who we have no reason to assume possess such a bias. And we also can't just change "unanimity" to "consensus" when all the sources say "unanimity"... Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:26, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Our sources do not in fact say unanimity I believe, though near unanimity strikes me as a very accurate summary of their views. As for Price and Carrier, a teaching position is not a requirement for a reliable source, let alone a notable view. And of course there is Brodie as well, and a handful of scholars who lean towards mythicism, are agnostic about it or encourage more study. Hence near unanimity, rather than plain unanimity. As for bias, the risk of bias is very real and it is properly identified and sourced in the lede. Martijn Meijering (talk) 15:41, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

"Near unanimity" is not accurate at all since it has subjective meaning to every person who reads it. We need to communicate something of absolute meaning here. "The academic consensus is..." makes far more sense to me than saying something as arbitrary as "almost everybody believes this". Feedback 19:54, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

I see no arbitrariness and subjectivity here. Academic consensus is much vaguer than near unanimity. Martijn Meijering (talk) 20:20, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

How so? The presence or absence of a consensus is an absolute. "Near unanimity" is an opinion. How much of a majority does it take to be near unanimous? It's a matter of opinion, which has no place in an encyclopedia. Feedback 05:36, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

The policy of WP:RS/AC deals precisely with this The statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources. Editors should avoid original research especially with regard to making blanket statements based on novel syntheses of disparate material. Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors. Of course we cannot make any such claim ourselves, so we can only use it if it's sourced. In this case, fortunately, it is sourced. We have highly credible sources (peer-reviewed publications by established experts in the field) that say precisely that "virtually all" scholars of antiquity take that view.Jeppiz (talk) 13:42, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

"Have no reason to believe possess such a bias" is so blatantly and obviously false as to indicate that you do not have and probably never have had any intention to actually discuss the subject.—Kww(talk) 15:33, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

I am appalled that any current administrator would make such a transparently judgmental statement as the above comment, and suggest that that individual make some effort to familiarize himself with the topic and reviewing WP:NPA before once again displaying the arrogance and ignorance which seem to be to be extremely visible in the comment above. John Carter (talk) 18:59, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you are appalled, John. For Hijiri88 to claim that we have no reason to believe obvious facts after this lengthy of discussion is evidence that he is simply not listening. To say that he thinks the bias is manageable? Fine. That the bias doesn't render the sources invalid? Fine. To say that there is no reason to believe they possess a bias? That shows that he simply isn't reasoning about the topic. There's no "ignorance" in my comment at all. Hijiri88 is being an obstacle to discussion, not a participant.—Kww(talk) 23:08, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

@User:Kww: When it comes to the historicity of Jesus (only the question of whether or not a man named Jesus existed in history, mind you) Christians are, it seems, less biased than atheists. The fact that every single person who denies historicity has the same basic theological viewpoint, but people who accept historicity come from all theological backgrounds, means that we would be going well beyond violation of WP:NPOV by stating or even implying bias on the part of Christian scholars in general, without directly stating that virtually everyone who argues against historicity is an atheist (by Eugenie Scott's definition of the word: not simply "absence of belief in god" but specifically hostile toward religion, in this case Christianity in particular). I would go further to point out (only on this talk page, of course) that virtually all of these apologists against historicity are from English-speaking countries and their parents, the school they attended, or something else was Christian. The guy who made the movie The God Who Wasn't There is a pretty good example, his argument being essentially "my mommy made me go to a fundamentalist Christian school and I hated it therefore Jesus of Nazareth never existed". How about we insert that material in the article as well? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:20, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

@User:Kww and @User:Hijiri88, could I recommend we skip all the talk about "Christians are always biased" and "Atheists are always biased". It does not bring us forward. In this case, as in any other case, we should go by what the sources say. Speculations about the motives of people based on their religion or lack of religion or previous religious experience is completely irrelevant as they remain personal speculations. We have been at this for weeks now. Kww thinks the sources are biased, that is his personal point of view and he's perfectly entitled to it. But we do not change an article because a user, admin or not, has a POV about the sources and want to reinterpret what the sources say (WP:OR). That has nothing to do with being "obstructionist" and it certainly isn't a "Christian" view. It's the policies we apply throughout Wikipedia. So as long as Kww offers nothing than his personal mistrust in the scholars of the field (in other words, no reliable sources), we don't change the article and the continued refusal to accept the core Wikipedia principles of WP:POV, WP:TRUTH, WP:OR and WP:RS/AC all at once does start to look borderline disruptive at this stage. But that is no reason for name calling or wild implicit speculations about Kww's motives. I don't agree with Kww on this particular issue but see absolutely no reason to question his motives with I'm sure are genuine concerns.Jeppiz (talk) 13:42, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Jeppiz, I've offered the biased demographics of the sources used in this article. We've got sources to the effect that biblical scholars are using suspect methodologies. Portraying it as just my personal opinion and as a refusal to accept "core Wikipedia principles" isn't much more helpful than Hijiri's repeated mispresentation of my arguments and strange logic (obviously, not many people that believe Jesus of Nazareth did not exist also believe he is the son of God anyway, though there are one or two small sects that don't see the positions as contradictory). I'm not trying to misrepresent what the sources say. All I've asked is that you not portray Biblical scholars as representing the general class of "historian" and that you clearly label Christian sources and Muslim sources as being Christian and Muslim. What is it about clearly labeling the sources according to potential bias that bothers you so?—Kww(talk) 15:58, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Once again, I don't you're trying to misrepresent anything. I have no doubt about the good intention of your motives. The only problem is that somehow you've convinced yourself that there is something "Christian" about this, and that the consensus is either a consensus among "Christian scholars" and/or "biblical scholars". In both cases, it's quite simply wrong. The main source (by a non-Christian professor) says quite clearly "scholars of antiquity". Personally, I have no idea if the person Jesus existed or not. All I know is that virtually every scholar of relevant fields think he did (as a person, not as a deity), that we have sources saying exactly that, and that the fringe opposition is little more than, in the words of the leading (atheist) historian in (thoroughly secular) Sweden "conspiracy theorists". I'd not use that label myself, but it certainly is an extremely small minority. Nothing has this far been presented to contradict that fact. (Whether Biblical scholars are using "suspect" methodologies or not is beside the point in this thread though certainly relevant for the article as a whole.)Jeppiz (talk) 16:24, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

@User:Jeppiz: I never said all atheists are biased. Most of my friends are atheists (read: don't believe in deities, not specifically opposed to religion in general or any part thereof) and all of them accept that a guy named Jesus existed. What I said was all adherents to the Christ myth theory are biased. I even have a super-reliable source for this claim, written by the foremost historian of this area -- it's in the afterword for Ehrman 2012. Given that there are no reliable sources that say "all historians who accept the historicity of Jesus are biased based on their religious beliefs", but reliable sources do say "all adherents to the so-called Christ myth theory are biased based on their religious beliefs", it is utterly ridiculous to go around adding "who is a Christian" to the name of every historian who cannot be demonstrated not to be a Christian, but not pointing out that the only people who deny historicity are people with a theological bone to pick with (modern American) Christianity. 219.105.34.154 (talk) 23:25, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I urge all those who wish to discuss bias on the part of Christians and atheists to read the last few pages of Bart Ehrman's recent book Did Jesus Exist, ISBN 978-0-06-220460-8, published in 2012. Given that the agnostic Bart Ehrman is one of the most recognized and influential experts on the topic of early Christianity, and also, unfortunately, an author of popular works like this one which often tend to contain some overstatements to help get popular attention, I think we can reasonably say that his conclusions are probably reflective of the academic consensus, even if his opinions are more clearly personal opinions or maybe in some cases sensationalist attention-getting statements as if often the case in at least some popular works. On page 337 he says "It is no accident that virtually all mythicists (in fact, all of them, to my knowledge) are either atheists or agnostics. The ones I know anything about are quite virulently, even militantly, atheist. ... [T]he mythicists who are so intent on showing that the historical Jesus never existed are not being driven by a historical concern. (continuing to page 338) Their agenda is religious, and they are compliant in a religious ideology. They are not doing history. They are doing theology." This is a rather strong statement but it does seemingly indicate that at least one of the leading experts in the field recognize that the mythicist/Jesus never existed arguments are not primarily applications of reasonable historical methodology.

It is also I think reasonable to point out to at least some of the newly involved editors that there actually does exist such a thing as historical methodology, and that simple accusations of "bias" against those academics who engage in historical research does not in any way address the matters of real concern, which are whether the methods they use are reasonable within their own academic discipline. On that basis, there does not exist any rational claim for systemic bias or countering systemic bias by looking for research by Buddhists on this topic than by Jesuits. History is its own discipline and it has its own academic methods, and the research conducted is to be primarily viewed on those methods, not on any accusations of bias made unless those accusations are also related to directly stated questions regarding methodology issues. Luckily, Ehrman devotes most of the previous material in the book to examining the methodologies of both the mythicists and non-mythicists and indicates that the arguments of the mythicists are much more problematic in terms of methodology and assumptions than those of the non-mythicists.

It is also I think worth noting that there does seem to me to be some sort of question involved not so much relating to the biases of the academics involved but of the editors involved. Some editors new to the discussion who have perhaps seemingly not reviewed the archives seem to have perhaps based their comments and conclusions at least in part on the basis of arguments by atheists or theists of assumption of bias on the part of academics who do not share the personal opinions regarding theology that those editors themselves have. In effect, I do see that some recently involved editors may well be more interested in promoting the "talking points" of theism or atheism than in actually dealing with the more substantive matters, or, more bluntly, intentional or unintentional POV pushing. Such behavior would be problematic from any editor, and can in some cases raise questions about whether their input here was really to help improve an encyclopedia or to promote their own biases.

Lastly, I think it might be important to add some information on the recent history of not necessarily related religious historical research and the New Age movement, broadly defined, regarding the recent history of this topic. The era when the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi codices were still only recently discovered was also the early period of the New Age movement, and I think there can be seen a bit of a tendency of the "New Age" atheists to think that in the early days of the research of those documents that they might be evidence against the existence of Jesus. As research has progressed, that believe is no longer as academically tenable as it was before that research, although understandably it generally takes a while for apologists of any sort to change their "talking points". But it may well be worth ensuring that the article contains at least a paragraph relating to the academic and popular uncertainty of the early days of the New Age and the documents above, and how that relates to the recent history of this topic.

Sorry for blathering on like that. John Carter (talk) 17:10, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for this point. I think its very well taken and is extremely useful for the article at hand, particularly the first paragraph regarding Ehrman. Prasangika37 (talk) 00:01, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

E.P. Sanders

If no one can provide a page number in E.P. Sanders's work The Historical Figure of Jesus supporting the following tagged passage, I will remove it: "Although some claim that all four canonical gospels meet the five criteria for historical reliability...".

I could not find support for this statement in Sanders's book. It is also not clear if Sanders himself is being paraphrased (in which case "some" should read "one") or if Sanders stated that "some" scholars agree to the idea in the phrase.

I could have missed the relevant passage in his book. If so, I welcome its addition. But without a page number to point to it, I will strike it after a few more days. Airborne84 (talk) 21:54, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

@Airborne84: You could be right on this one. None of those phrases are actually in the book, but I assume someone is inferring that point from reading the text closely. I wouldn't be surprised if you could infer that though (that he thinks there is some reliability to the gospels), but I didn't see anything about specifically speaking to the five criteria etc etc. Prasangika37 (talk) 21:06, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks @Prasangika37:. I'll pull it for now since it does not appear to accurately reflect Sanders's work. Thanks! Airborne84 (talk) 10:39, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Which Jesus?

The opening phrase is currently "The historicity of Jesus is the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth existed as a historical figure". This presents a logical problem - which of the *possible* Jesuses of Nazareth is that question referring to? Could it refer to someone whose life was very much as described in the Canonical Gospels, but was not from Nazareth? Could it refer to someone from Nazareth who was not called 'Jesus' in his time? Could it refer to a multitude of real people, each of whom inspired some of the Bible stories? To somone about whom the baptism and crucifixion were true, but nothing else is? Someone called Jesus, who was never crucified or baptised?

There is a basic problem with talking about "Whether X existed", where X is a multi-dimensional range of possibilities; You have to consider what your Minimum Viable Jesus would be for the answer to the question to be 'yes'.

The more practial way to consider the subject of the Historicity of Jesus is to look at events of stories considered to be about Jesus and to ask if they have basis in reality, which is what part of this article does. That way you don't have the logial problem of trying to both define and confirm the existence of something at the same time.

So, it would seem to make sense if we could avoid the false dichotomy of "did Jesus exist, yes or no?"- unless there's a consensus on a definition of Jesus.

The fact that the concept of Jesus has such a range also ties in with the problem with phrases like "Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed" - Statements like that are often repeated (and hence highly referencable), but actually meaningless unless you first pin down which Jesus you are talking about.Happypoems (talk) 05:54, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

That's a good and valid point. The academic consensus is that there existed a Jesus who came from Nazareth, was a Jewish apocalyptic prophet who thought judgement day was about to come, gathered a small local following in Galilee, but when he went to Jerusalem he was caught and executed almost immediately. That's what meant when the article later says almost all scholars agree. It's of course very different from the Jesus who was conceived by holy spirit, born in Bethlehem, did many miracles, preached that he was God and was resurrected from the dead. Almost all of those same scholars who agree on every detail about the first would also agree to reject every detail of the latter. Logically, this article should be about the first.Jeppiz (talk) 13:13, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm personally not sure that the consensus extends to all those points, but rather that he was born (at some point), lived and preached in various places for a while, and then got crucified. The greater majority of academics agree with the apocalyptic preacher aspect as well, but there is I think good reason to believe that there could be at least six separate articles on Jesus as a mystical guru (or whatever), Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher, Jesus as a political activist, Jesus as a social reformer, Jesus as a magician, and any number of others. I am not myself sure that it would necessarily be the wisest thing to do to create separate articles on all those "versions" of Jesus, as I am not sure how much attention they would receive and by extension how liable they might be to POV pushing over the long term. Also, there are relating to them real questions regarding what sources are most relevant to which theories, and several of the proponents of these theories also seem to be promoting some combination of one or more of these separate theories. But it is still a not unreasonable question. John Carter (talk) 23:40, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

It would seem unhelpful if there were to be a bunch of competing articles each with a different definition of Jesus. I think there's almost the opposite situation now though - This article (and others) don't quite give a clear starting point of 'This is what we mean when we talk about Jesus' (from a historical POV). Was it Voltaire who said “first define your terms”?

As it seems there is a small set of events on which there is a broad agreement that they are 1) likely to have happened, and 2) relate to the same individual, then maybe that would be a good baseline /starting point for the article? 212.44.62.180 (talk) 15:07, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

The question of which elements are believed by whom appears to be covered in quite a bit of detail in Historicity_of_Jesus#Events_widely_accepted_as_historical Gaijin42 (talk) 15:14, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there is a lot of good material in the article - I think it's devalued a little by the first sentence starting it down the road of 'did he exist or not?' 31.48.190.28 (talk) 19:58, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

I just want to say that "Did He exist or not?" is the sole purpose of this article. That is what "Historicity" means, by all standard definitions. Obviously, in order to address that we must have a minimalist sketch of who he was and list the aspects of his life are considered proven by historians, and why those are considered proven. That is all that should be here: more speculative portrayals of his life and theological consequences should be addressed under Historical Jesus, or Christianity. Mwenechanga (talk) 19:35, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Agree with what you say about the scope of the article; I just feel that dichotomic phrases like "Did He exist or not?" and "Whether he existed" have the potential to mislead, for the reasons already stated. Obviously a single lead sentence can't be expected to express the whole article, but there is a special problem when considering the historicity of Jesus due to the breadth of what you might mean by 'Jesus'.

If we were considering the historicity of Atlantis, we could first state we were talking about Atlantis as first mentioned in a work by Plato (As opposed to, say the resort in Dubai of the same name), then establish that that was a fictional work, and take that as evidence that Atlantis was not a historic place. For Jesus, what could we first state as a definition or indicator of what we are talking about? If it's not easy to state it upfront, could we at least zero in on one? Or is there more than one such definition? 212.44.62.180 (talk) 16:06, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

@Mwenechanga And stating that, you've shown that you haven't understood the objection here. If that's the sole purpose of this article, and yet the entire question is left so ill-defined, then the entire article is meaningless. What does "JESUS EXISTED!!" mean if we haven't even defined what "Jesus" means, let alone "existed"? Were there people in Palestine around the time called Jesus? Yes, obviously. Were there Jesuses in Palestine at the time who spoke against the Romans and preached an apocalyptic religion? Most likely. Were there Jesuses who spoke *against* fighting the Romans, on the grounds that the Apocalypse would soon come anyway? Yes, most likely. And so forth. Which of these are your "Jesus"? What means that your Jesus "existed"? What makes your definition of "Jesus", and your definition of his existence, mean more than someone elses? You always have to define your parameters, or else you're merely propagating limpid mythology with a brittle veneer of historicity.86.178.5.85 (talk) 23:19, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I think what would need to be established is the aforementioned "Minimum Viable Jesus" (MVJ). Doesn't the article establish the barebones points on what (most scholars agree) are MVJ's actions?--Tataryn (talk) 23:31, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I didn't get that impression from the article as it stands. Which parts were you thinking of? The point about MVJ is that it's a definition of Jesus - a set of things that must be true of a real person for them to be considered to have been Jesus. What the article seems to do is follow the pattern of stating that there's a general agreement that Jesus existed, and then looking at the level of agreement on different parts of His life. That would be fine except that the number of things actually agreed on seems to be very few - in one place the article states the Baptism and the Crucifixion - compared to the number of other things that would commonly be seen as part of the essence of a Jesus figure, so a sensible definition doesn't even 'come out in the wash'.

The way the text in the article is ordered at the moment, its logic is begging the question (in the sense of petitio principia) in a way that limits the article. One thought that would occur to anyone concerned about the existence of Jesus might be, for example, how we know that the person involved in the reported Baptism and the reported Crucifixion were one and the same *real* person. But there's nowhere for that to go in this article, because we've already stated many times that it's basically agreed that Jesus existed, and created a presumption in the reader's mind of a single real person.Happypoems (talk) 14:28, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Part of the problem with this thread, I'm afraid, is that it is really not easy to figure out exactly what is being asked. Having checked most of the recent scholarly sources available to me on this topic recently (not including the several-thousand page Handbook I mentioned above) the broad consensus of historians is that the Jesus who died on the cross is the Jesus the gospels describe as being baptized by John the Baptist. Beyond that, about the only things the academic works seem to agree on is that he did something to get crucified, probably preaching of some sort, was at some point born, because people kinda need to be born to live and be crucified, and somehow or other managed to stay alive in the intervening period between birth and crucifixion. I am unaware of many if any scholarly sources which indicate that the Jesus baptized by John wasn't the Jesus crucified, if you have any please produce them. Like I said before WorldCat has here links to the table of contents of each of the four volumes of that work, and we possibly could, if anyone wanted to create them, probably have virtually a separate article here for every work there. This is, ultimately, one of the leading subarticles of the article Jesus, and it pretty much by nature is going to be basically a collection of summary sections as per WP:SS of its various spinout articles. And some of those spinout articles will themselves have any number of further spinout articles. All that taken into account, unfortunately, WP:WEIGHT and other considerations really limit the amount that can be said about any particular aspect of this topic in this one article. John Carter (talk) 17:45, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

This thread itself seems to have been followed fine by its contributors so far..? But if you are asking "what's your point" - i.e. how I'd hope the article would change - what I'd like to see is an extra level of detail on the core topic of the article. One reason I started a thread named "Which Jesus?" because *if* the topic is, as currently stated, addressing the binary question of "Did He exist or not?", then a definition of "He" would be a good place to introduce some of the required detail. Whether or not the article is seen as a collection of summary sections, it should deal directly with its stated topic.

Following our aside, could you explain how the scholarly sources do tie the Baptism to the Crucifixion, or indeed establish historicity of the Baptism ? I'm not blessed with such access to sources, but there's nothing I can see in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_of_Jesus that suggests any mention of the Baptism in a source known to be contemporary to Jesus' life?Happypoems (talk) 00:05, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

It is not up to Wikipedia editors to make the call. Reliable sources make the call and we simply record what they say. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:27, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, as most here will know, original research is not permitted, and I'm not sure where anyone gave the impression they wanted any original research..? 31.51.137.221 (talk) 09:06, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

The "starting point" for who Jesus is the Jesus article, which fairly clearly covers the broadly consensus academic opinions regarding the matters of the life of the individual in question. The matter of the baptism by John is connected because (1) it is included in the gospels as relating to the same Jesus and (2) it is not entirely in keeping with the alleged motivations of the authors of the gospels, which is to describe the preeminent position of Jesus in the world. It shows Jesus acknowledging that John was in a position to give grace in some way to Jesus, through baptism, and in general such details which do not serve the apparent purpose of the writer of that work are thought to be considered accurate. John Carter (talk) 16:46, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

The Jesus article does contain reference to a range of different views on the subject; I still don't think it manages a single and clear definition, which is what is needed if you are going to consider historicity as a stark, "yes or no" question, which is what this article consistently (and somewhat insistently) does.

Thanks for the expansion on the Baptism. I'm still personally finding a big gap between the historical significance of being part of three of the Gospels' content (The Gospels having the time gap issue that they do) and, for example, the statement of James Dunn (..." 'almost impossible to doubt or deny"...). The 'motivations'/'embarrassment' thing doesn't on the face of it seem to count for much, as Jesus' humility is portrayed in a number of ways in the Gospels. Things like that are why, as someone coming to the article to learn, I want to know of the scholarship behind a statement like Dunn's. Stuck on its own, just as a conclusion, it sounds like rhetoric rather than scholarship.Happypoems (talk) 21:49, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Embarrassment is a criterion for historicity not just in Jesus studies, but in historiography in general. Material in Thucydides, for example, which would be an embarrassment to Athens, is treated as likely true. People who write about a figure have a reason for doing so, and will not fabricate information that clashes with their purposes.--TMD Talk Page. 23:55, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, my '..' quotes around 'embarrassment' were out of place. I do understand the concept.Happypoems (talk) 18:19, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I can understand the wish to see the matters of historic methodology and specific details discussed. Unfortunately, and I think this is unfortunately, we do have only one rather shortish article to cram all the basic information into. And, again unfortunately, I think the idea of a straight "Did Jesus exist - yes or no" question might be a bit wishful thinking. The academic answer seems to be that Jesus existed as somebody who got crucified for doing things some people didn't like. Saying much beyond that gets into areas of dispute. It would certainly be possible to create a whole series of spinout articles on the various books which have been written about the topic and I suppose the question of historicity of various aspects of the story of Jesus. I acknowledge that the existing article is more than a little inadequate compared to just about any reference book dealing with the topic. But it is a bit of a problem finding out what various subtopics are and aren't yet covered at due length here yet. The only way I can think of to see to it that our coverage is really comprehensive is to examine the various reference sources and what they cover at what length. But there is a rather scary number of such reference sources related to religion, and it will take a while to do so. John Carter (talk) 22:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

The demand for an Ehrman quote

I should point out that The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings is on at least its fifth edition now, and there are substantial differences between editions. The text cites the 1999 edition; I have been able to look at the 1997 edition and can tell you that Tacitus isn't mentioned on the cited page. Surely we should be citing the current edition, but on the other hand we do not need to include a quotation in the text to verify this. Mangoe (talk) 18:16, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Unless whomever added that tag comes back with a valid reason, please feel free to remove it. Airborne84 (talk) 07:00, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I saw you did that and were reverted. Since the tag has been there only since September, I recommend contacting who placed it there and asking what the concern is. Or simply obtain the quote and note it on the talk page if too long for the article. I also agree with the reverter in that you will get best results here using civility with the other editors. Thanks. Airborne84 (talk) 07:04, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

We probably don't need an inline quote, we often put them in the reference itself, a bit like a footnote. So even if the quotation is a couple of lines long, it wouldn't interrupt the flow of the article. The reader would only see the text if he clicked on the numbered link. I'm not sure what you mean by a valid reason. I thought the tag merely meant "I'd like an exact citation", not "I'll remove the text if I don't get one". Seems like a reasonable enough request, and it strikes me as discourteous to remove it, especially without a good reason.Martijn Meijering (talk) 11:38, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Historicity - Wikidefined.

Reading through this article. I'm appalled at the bad information and inaccurate sources cited. I see that "Josephus on Jesus" is cited as being evidence of Jesus existence. I have happen to read the Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus Flavous. I can say that there is no mention of Jesus by Josephus. Except for one paragraph which to this present day thinking is a forgery. The paragraph in question on (18.3.3 63) In that book. This wiki article is citing a controversial source, but passing it off as proof using weasel words and ambiguous statements. Out of the hundreds of pages of Josephus documenting and describing events in the Antiquities of Jews. There is no mention of Jesus then out of the blue, His writing style changes and he write that Jesus was the Messiah... It is highly suspect and therefore controversial and should not be passed off as evidence and should not be included in this wiki article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.58.13.250 (talk) 06:36, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Almost no scholars think the entire paragraph is a complete forgery. They believe that Christian scholars have added to the passage, not that they fabricated it. Regardless, the original version was recovered from an Arabic version of the text which reads "At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to themafter his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders."--TMD Talk Page. 16:28, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

"Almost no scholars think the entire paragraph is a complete forgery." - source, please.

"Regardless, the original version was recovered from an Arabic version of the text". Nope, there's no reason to suspect that this isn't a "Muslim retcon" of the earlier "Christian retcon" (or outright invention).

Basically, since we have no version of Josephus prior to the "tampering", we can't know whether the Testimonium Flavianum was "improved" of wholly invented. Indirect evidence of the latter can be garnered from the fact that Origen, despite quoting this very work of Josephus, markedly failed to note that it contained the TF and its "sure-fire" argument for Jesus. It is only with Eusebius that references to a TF with something on the line of its current content appears. (see for instance: http://infidels.org/library/modern/scott_oser/hojfaq.html and for an explanation which accepts the "improvement" scenario: http://infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/mckinsey.html)

Mojowiha (talk) 08:08, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

If you want a survey of sources, Josephus and Modern Scholarship by Louis H. Feldman shows that scholarship is on a bell curve, with few scholars believing that the passage is entirely authentic and few believing that this is entirely an interpretation. The atheist Peter Kirby, while not believing the testimonium to be authentic himself, admitted that scholarship is trending away from his own position and toward at least partial authenticity. So the scholarly consensus is strongly against the notion that this was a complete forgery.--TMD Talk Page. 16:43, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

And the statement "there is no reason to suspect this isn't a Muslim retcon" is weasely as hell. Do the majority of scholars who study the Arabic version think that this is a Muslim retcon? I know that Shlomo Pines, probably the leading scholar on this (and not a Christian), sure thinks it is authentic. Islamic scholars in the Middle Ages believed that Jesus was Messiah, but did not believe that Jesus was crucified. Yet the Arabic passage states that Jesus was condemned to be crucified, and that his followers believed that Jesus appeared to them after his crucifixion. There is no reason a medieval Muslim writer would leave that passage in while removing the sentence "he was the Christ." --TMD Talk Page. 16:46, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

If you want sources, please see the Josephus on Jesus article. Also since this is a spin-off article, it would probably best to take the discussion there. My $0.02. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 12:45, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

And Infidels.org is not a scholarly source.--TMD Talk Page. 16:28, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

And New Testament scholars are not historians, yet are frequently cited in favour of the historicity of Jesus, despite the fact that NT scholarship has a decidedly pro-Christian, and in several cases biblical literalist, bias (Gary Habermas springs to mind as an example of the latter). So, what? Mojowiha (talk) 20:25, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

And where is Gary Habermas cited, may I ask? Nowhere. Your comment is nonsensical. Where commentators are not legitimate historians or established in other relevant fields (archaeology, ancient languages etc) they should not be cited, whether they are pro or anti Christian. Defending quoting from an unreliable source for one view is not achieved by pointing out that there are also unreliable sources for the opposite view. Paul B (talk) 20:42, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, I assume you'll be hastening to remove all the references to, say Craig A. Evans for the reliability of Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum as not being a wholly later invention, since Evans is not only an Evangelical Christian who believes in inerrancy, but also not a historian, but a theologian, right? I was simply pointing out that dismissing infidels.org as "not a scholarly source", while gladly citing Evangelical New Testament scholars' opinions to back up the veracity of the TF seems to me to be a double standard. To cite Evangelical scholars who believe in biblical inerrancy and/or literalism in favour of the historicity of Jesus (as depicted in the NT) is about as impressive as citing Muslim scholars who believe in Koranic inerrancy and/or literalism in favour of the historicity of Muhammed (as depicted in the Koran). Oh, and Habermas is cited in Josephus on Jesus, btw. Mojowiha (talk) 21:34, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Mojowiha, your arguments seem to rely quite heavily on WP:TRUTH. At Wikipedia we use reliable sources and infidels.org is not a reliable source. Any academic speaking about their own field is a reliable source as per Wikipedia's policies. That does not mean they are right, it does not mean we have to use them, but they are at least possible to use. I would not use Craig A. Evans in almost any article, because his positions are usually WP:FRINGE and contradicted by most other experts in relevant fields, though that is a different discussion. What matters here is that you need to stop making arguments based on what you happen to believe and start using sources. At Wikipedia, we will always pick a well-sourced error over an unsourced truth. Like it or not, but that's how it is and it has nothing to do with this article.Jeppiz (talk) 22:05, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Was that long post really necessary? After all, you could've just paired it down to "At Wikipedia, we will always pick a well-sourced error"... - sorry, I couldn't help yanking your chain for that one ;-) Mojowiha (talk) 22:14, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Lol, guilty as charged :-) Yes, I do tend to write too long, always. Jeppiz (talk) 22:45, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

" Any academic speaking about their own field is a reliable source as per Wikipedia's policies" is not true, Jeppiz. You would be hard put to find policy that supported the concept of blindly following individual academics.—Kww(talk) 12:06, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

"...new Testament scholars are not historians" says Mojowiha - but they are, actually.180.200.189.80 (talk) 09:14, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Only rarely. We know of only a handful of cases. Martijn Meijering (talk) 09:48, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Granted, the two disciplines are not strictly the same thing. Yet New Testament scholars often train as historians, and when they pursue topics that relate to history, they put those skills to use. It is not correct to try to maintain an absolute separation when there is continual overlap. Besides, it is increasingly common in many fields of endeavor for there to be such overlap of skills and knowledge between disciplines. Why should it be different here? If those Bible scholars pursue questions of historicity, they are entering the field of history as well as Bible, and are speaking as trained scholarly experts and may be used as WP sources. Evensteven (talk) 02:19, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

If you can reassure me that NT scholars often train as historians, the most of my opposition to calling them historians will disappear. But I strongly doubt this is the case. Do you have any evidence for this? Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:59, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

From what I know, I'll agree that New Testament scholars may "often train as historians", but the problem is that some of the stuff you can get published as an NT scholar (in theological journals) would basically be laughed or booed off the stage if presented to a roomful of historians. That you even have such a thing as inerrantism in NT scholarship is indicative of the difference (because inerrantism is a downright anti-historical concept). I agree that not all of NT scholarship necessarily suffers from this problem, but it needs to be factored in when questions of "scholarly consensus" among NT scholars is cited. It simply has to be remembered that a consensus among NT scholars has at least some aspects of a consensus among theologians and is thus not directly equivalent to a consensus among historians, archaeologists or other academic fields. The problem is that such an adjustment would probably run counter to both Wikipedia policy on neutrality and fringe views, because the overwhelming majority of NT scholars are theologians and professing Christians (as the minority who aren't will be quick to point out). This is again a rather unsurprising consequence of both the nature of the field of study (believers are basically more likely to take up the study of their faith) and its tight connection to theology (I can't think of that many NT studies institutions which aren't run by Theology departments). Being that closely connected to theology also means that issues of controversy quickly becomes issues of faith and orthodoxy to a degree rarely found in other academic disciplines. Mojowiha (talk) 20:59, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Some of the above is reasonable. I would particularly agree that much of what is found in theological journals is probably not optimum material for this article. But there are a rather large number of more or less historical journals which cover this same time period as well. Unfortunately, I can also say that as someone who has been involved with the topic of early Christianity for some time, there are a lot of clearly Jewish scholars who have also studied this basic period (not surprising, considering it is virtually the same period as the fall of the temple). Few if any of them seem to be in the "Jesus never existed," and they would have no clear reason to hold with that as a point of religious belief. The best approach in topics such as this is to consider the comparative acceptance or rejection of the methodologies used by the various individuals of whatever belief, if any. Historical methodology is a fairly clearly defined concept, even if the specific methodologies of individuals varies dramatically, and there has been significant discussion in several sources regarding the pluses and minuses of the various methodologies used by historians. On the conclusion of the ongoing ArbCom, I hope to make available to some degree some of the material in the rather massive, 3 or 4 thousand page Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus published by Brill here. This, together with the recent Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus, should provide some indications of what should be covered in this, the main article on the topic, and hopefully what weight to give it, as well as indicating at least a few direct spinout articles and spinout articles of those spinout articles and others. John Carter (talk) 21:53, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Specifically atheist/agnostic views on the historicity of Jesus

There is I think a good reason to believe that some content regarding the serious questions regarding the historical existence of Jesus could well be included in another article. I have started a discussion at the page Talk:Religious perspectives on Jesus#Atheist views and would welcome any input anyone might have regarding what if any content regarding this topic should be placed here, and perhaps what should be placed there. John Carter (talk) 19:46, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

If we are to remove atheist views from this page, what should remain here? Smacks of POV-forking to me. Martijn Meijering (talk) 17:34, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Not entirely looking to remove content. But, to the extent that some views of academics might be seen as being "atheist" in nature or perhaps advocated only or primarily within the atheist community, they would also be reasonably described as "religious views" and also relevant to that article. I acknowledge that one of the big problems we have with a lot of content, specifically determining how much content on a topic to place in one article and how much in another, would be a problem here as well, but that problem could be seen, perhaps, as already being one faced by the majority of child articles of any major topic anyway. I wish I could find a single source which provided a good, non-controversial guideline of a full and really comprehensive structure for all material relating to Jesus. The only one I have found to date is the Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus, which clearly is about the historical Jesus, not necessarily including the question of the historicity of Jesus, which it overlooks. And I don't see a specific subtopic related to this article in Encyclopedia Britannica article on Jesus at all. And the Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus is primarily about the "historical Jesus" as well. I honestly am having trouble seeing exactly where to place this article in any sort of "outline" of the topic, and am also, honestly, grasping at straws regarding how to find ways to structure the content in a way which makes it most easily accessible for the reader. The closest comparison I can find in wikipedia is the article Global warming controversy, and I don't know how to place an analog to that in a possible "outline" format either. John Carter (talk) 18:07, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

This sounds like a good way to circumvent a variety of problems we have seen here, particularly the war between inserting Atheist or agnostic points of view and removing them. Instead, we can simply link over to article to make it clear there. Thanks. Prasangika37 (talk) 19:00, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I added my two cents over there, because I think splitting atheists off by themselves is very weird when there's far more than 2 categories. We talk about Abrahamic vs. and non-Abrahamic religions, but in this case the split is a bit more complicated, specifically because Judaism does not need to recognize Jesus at all. All the other Abrahamic religions require that Jesus existed at least as a man, or else it fundamentally reshapes the religion. I would say the categories would be "belief systems that count Jesus among their significant religious figures" and "belief systems that do not count Jesus as a significant religious figure," where Judaism, non-Abrahamic religions, and nonbelievers all fall into the second category.

Further, if the majority of the second category reject a certain fact of Jesus' life, then that fact is by definition a religious belief rather than a historical fact, which is the entire point of having a historicity page. The ideas put forward on this page should be agreeable to atheist scholars, other non-christian scholars, simply due to the historical evidence. For the most part, I think this is done successfully, because there's little scholarly dispute over the basic existence of Jesus. Still, nothing on this page should belong to any particular faith, since this is a historicity page. Mwenechanga (talk) 19:27, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

You will actually note that the proposal on what I tried to set up on the main discussion page, the other one, specifically was developed to include not only atheists, although that was the initial reason for the suggestion, but also the other faiths which have actively said either through official documents of some sort or through major leaders of those faiths something about this individual. And while I acknowledge that Judaism does not need to recognize Jesus, the apparent quotes in the Talmud more or less indicate that they do recognize him as at least extant and in some way relevant to Judaism, which is enough for them to be included in the group which basically is clearly predisposed to recognizing his existence as a religious figure of some sort. Honestly, I think for most religious figures of the older major world religions, the model I set forth on the other page, with appropriate changes for the individual faiths as required, might be the best way to go for most of those figures. They tend to be the ones who are more likely to be specifically addressed in some way, to some degree or another, by the other major and minor world religions. John Carter (talk) 19:50, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Why is the final clause in the lede needed?

"there should also be more scholarly research and debate on this topic" I realize this is supposed to refer to the recent cases made by European scholars, but it seems this line could (should?) apply to every topic on Wikipedia. What does it add but words?

The majority view is that this is a settled issue and has been for some time. Some scholars are now disputing this and we are reporting that neutrally, as we should. Martijn Meijering (talk) 18:14, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

As a bit of an aside, I think I've seen evidence that the "Copenhagen school," which published one of the recent books relating to this topic, might well meet at least basic notability guidelines in its own right. If anyone wanted me to e-mail them what I can find on the topic, I would be willing to do so if they gave me an address to send it to, preferably though e-mail so that the address wouldn't be broadly disclosed. I'm not entirely sure that "certain scholars" is a particularly good phrase to use myself, because the word "certain" is so far as I can tell among the least definitive words I can think of, and without a better indication of the possible number and variety of scholars involved it could be perhaps considered maybe not worthy of inclusion in the lede, maybe, but, having said that, at the same time I can't see any really good reason to remove the clause as a whole. John Carter (talk) 18:22, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

@Mmeijeri: Perhaps you could add that aspect to that line? It might be more helpful. Essentially "Scholars believed the issue of the historical Jesus to be settled, but recently..." as that can give some clarity. We can just take that from another location in the lede or relocate the statement to another spot. On its own does make it a little funny.Prasangika37 (talk) 22:39, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I think it might also be maybe, if it can be sourced, worth indicating that the discovery and early questions about the dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi codices may have played a role in the question of the historicity of Jesus. In both cases the original dates of the works in question was finally determined well after their discovery, and as I remember in the early days there were questions about them being possibly more or less contemporary with the alleged historical Jesus and possibly an indicator that the historical Jesus may not have actually existed. Finding sources for that might be difficult, however. John Carter (talk) 22:38, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Problems with the ending

The ending seems to suggest that the polarity is between those who accept the historicity of Jesus and those that suggest a legendary basis. This I feel is a straw man argument. In fact it would seem that there are historical elements mixed with legendary elements. Or how does one explain rising from the dead, raising Lazarus, feeding the multitude, conversations with the devil, walking on water, birth miracles, accounts of his trial (from a non-existent third party view point) or other inconsistencies. John D. Croft (talk) 12:23, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Very good points there. There does seem to be a bit of a polarity between those who complete reject Jesus's historical existence and those who reject only some of the admittedly fabulous and Fantastic stories associated with him. Unfortunately, a lot of the details of the historical accuracy or lack of same of individual stories might fit best in articles on those stories. John Carter (talk) 17:48, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Copy of statement on the arbitration page regarding proposed decision in the case

This is a copy of the message I've just added here:

I'm not sure this is the right place for this message, but here it goes anyway. Today I received a courtesy message that a proposed decision had been posted. This is the first I had heard since the start of the process. Until today I had been under the mistaken impression that nothing had happened in this case, even though I had the Arbitration page on my watch list. I thought this was because Fearofreprisal was the only one who really wanted this case and that he had abandoned the process. I had wondered whether I should have mentioned this on the article Talk page. Unfortunately I have therefore not been able to participate in the deliberations. I'm sure this is my own fault, not being very familiar with the procedures, but I suspect others may fall victim to the same circumstances in future. It might be good if a better notification procedure were devised. I also wonder how many of the named participants were aware that discussion was in fact taking place. I'll post a copy of the message on the article Talk page. Martijn Meijering (talk) 10:29, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

"Near Unanimity among Scholars"

The sources used for this statement, "There is near unanimity among scholars that Jesus existed historically," cannot and do not properly represent the depth of research in Near Eastern Studies. The sources all state an 'opinion' of unanimity. I have carefully gone through the talk page and noticed that someone has compared this to global warming. The difference is that you could find ten thousand papers on global warming and very few would put forth its non-existence. In that case the unanimity is quantifiable. This is not the case for our sources. As it stands, the best we can say from our sources is that a small sample of sources seem to claim that the existence of Jesus is unanimously agreed upon. If you can arbitrarily pick a handful of articles on a topic and half of them disagree, then there is no unanimity regardless of what a few scholars may claim. There is a complete, utter, total, and inexcusable lack of empirical data of any sort of consensus. Every single cited consensus statement is by religious leaders, people believing in what they write, or people soundly refuted in accuracy upon inspection. Not only is this an inexcusable attempt to appeal to the popularity of an argument, but its conclusion is also incorrect. The bottom line is that consensus needs to be verified and made empirical by taking a sample set that represents all of the researcher's opinions in the field. If we then find that this is the case then the statement of near unanimity would be verified. (MaxusOG (talk) 18:53, 25 December 2014 (UTC))

The relevant Wikipedia policy is WP:RS/AC, which says that we need a reliable source who makes a claim about a consensus, which is what we have in the article. There is a legitimate question as to which scholars can cover which relevant fields though. Originally we had people claiming a majority of historians considered the historicity of Jesus a fact based on the authority of a statement by Bart Ehrman, who likes to call himself a historian, but does not in fact have historical training or hold a position in a history department. More recently we have had new citations by actual historians to the same effect, so that objection has been dealt with. We can and should still name dissenting opinions, but the majorities of historians and biblical scholars have been sufficiently covered. We can and IMO should point out that unlike biblical scholars, ancient historians have largely ignored the question. Maybe there are other relevant fields that deserve separate mention. Martijn Meijering (talk) 20:25, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

I understand that we can, under the given policy, safely state this is the academic standpoint but the fact is that it is not and it would benefit the accuracy of this article if the statement was minimally altered to reflect the difference in scientifically agreed upon unanimity and false unanimity implied from a select few sources. Despite the fact that the citations do fall under the purview of this policy, there are numerous respected sources that disagree with this standpoint. This is never the case in true academic unanimity. This essentially means that the unanimity put forth by Ehrman and the other sources’ authors, is effectively a personal opinion which has not been verified by the field itself. It is additionally a personal opinion that has been systematically used to imply unanimity where none exists, thereby weakening the research in opposing viewpoints over the past five or six decades. The article will not suffer from the removal of the statement that there is ‘near unanimous agreement.’ It can only benefit from this. Wikipedia is meant to provide unbiased information and as it stands, this article puts forth that Ehrman’s opinion represents the true opinion of the field…which it certainly does not. This can be seen through many publications including but not limited to, Viklund’s “Den Jesus som aldrin funniest”, Thomphson’s “The Messiah Myth”, Raskin’s “The Evolution of Christs and Christianities”, and Humphrey’s “Jesus Never Existed”. All of these publications are as recent as the sources cited for the given statement. I’m sure you’ll refute this by stating that these are largely publications resulting from Biblical minimalism; however, Biblical Minimalism has only recently become an accepted academic standpoint and thus it is impossible to state any “unanimity” regarding the historicity of Jesus as the opposing viewpoint has only become acceptable academic research in the past two decades. Further research is undoubtedly needed to show unanimity. There is unanimity amongst traditional biblical scholars but not amongst all scholars studying the Historicity of Jesus. MaxusOG (talk) 21:08, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

'this article puts forth that Ehrman’s opinion represents the true opinion of the field…which it certainly does not. This can be seen through many publications including but not limited to, Viklund’s “Den Jesus som aldrin funniest”, Thomphson’s “The Messiah Myth”, Raskin’s “The Evolution of Christs and Christianities”, and Humphrey’s “Jesus Never Existed”.' I'm sorry, Maxus, but with that statement you lost all credibility. Of those only Thompson is a scholar, the others being conspiracy theorists with blogs. As far as Thompson goes, he is not an expert in the actual historical area in question, and also accepts that he is arguing a minority viewpoint (and 'Thompson' is not spelled with a second h). There is in fact a discussion of this in the FAQs, if you care to check it. What the statement says is that among people who actually have training and expertise in the relevant field, which is what WP exists to summarise, there is near unanimity. Of course, there are fantasists, liars and pseudo-scholars out there who think differently, including those two that you cite and probably a dozen others including Earl Doherty, Acharya S and Joseph Atwill. You can find that in any historical field, from my own of German studies to the fate of the Princes in the Tower to the causes of the Great Fire of Rome. But this does not alter the simple fact that among people who meet the actual definition of the word 'scholar', as they mostly agree on (please spot the irony) there is near-unanimity of historicity. So the statement is accurate and it should remain.86.149.145.145 (talk) 14:00, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree with your point, but I wonder what you mean by "the relevant field". What in your opinion is the relevant field? Martijn Meijering (talk) 14:14, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

A fair question, to which I would answer that in my view at least the relevant field is those people who study and are trained in the era of the classical Middle East. For various reasons, most of them historical legacies of organisation dating in some cases from the eighteenth century, this field is often lumped together in university departments with theology under 'New Testament Studies'. This is of course one of the reasons why there is a history of confusion over whether such people are or are not historians (as a secular historian, I would say personally that they probably are, as long as the field they are working in is not solely textual interpretation of the Bible). Brodie would definitely meet that definition of a scholar in the relevant field, along with probably Price. Thompson, however, is an expert on the ancient Middle East, which is a slightly different field - as I understand it, his speciality is the archaeological record of about 1000 BC compared to the Biblical patriarchal narratives, which led to the rise of Biblical minimalism. That's not to say his views are necessarily invalid, merely that they should not be presumed to be based on expertise in that particular field (and bearing in mind the differences in the quality, variety and relative date of the sources, may leave him vulnerable to honest error). Just as, for example, I am an expert on European history between the wars and can talk cheerfully for hours about the social impact of Hitler's policies or the implications of Appeasement, but know next to nothing about the Taiping rebellion and the square root of nothing about the Hussite Wars or Charlemagne.

It is only fair to point out that I am no expert in this field, indeed quite the reverse - I stumbled across this topic purely by chance - and therefore I have no special expertise to set me apart from anyone here. So feel free to disagree with me entirely!

Hope that is of interest109.156.158.49 (talk) 08:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 January 2015

The claims made in the opening statement for the section:

"There is near unanimity among scholars that Jesus existed historically"

This is dishonest at best, and strait lying at worst. Provided proofs are links to christian-historians - both articles write and agree that there is no peer-reviewed accepted evidence of Jesus at all, and that many if not most historians disagree with the historocity of Jesus.

Proof number 7, infact, is an op-ed that attempts to discredit historians and scholarly figures who agree that Jesus did not exist without offering any proof to the contrary. To quote: "Today's ardent Jesus-deniers remind me....When Richard Dawkins says "a serious historical case" can be made that "Jesus never lived at all,...It isn't just bestselling atheists like Dawkins who make this faux pas. A measured journalist like ABC Radio National's Michael Cathcart.....The Christian writings are not revered by the secular historian...Josephus is the most important. It is widely recognized that this first-century Jewish aristocrat's references to Jesus have been "improved" by a later Christian copyist.."

On other words - this article keeps repeating a cycle of claiming 1 - that "secularists" still claim Jesus didn't exist. 2 - their opinion is irrelevant (ad hominem) and 3 - that "true historians" believe Jesus did exist. I don't believe this should be used as proof that "There is near unanimity among scholars that Jesus existed"

the second source, a book written by a christian historian, references Jesus crucifician has proven historical fact. This is used to assert that historians "unanimously" believe this. Again a false premise, as simply - On the Historicity of Jesus Sheffield Phoenix Press ISBN 978-1-909697-49-2 pg 257-258 - clearly asserts there is NO Archeological evidence of Jesus. Other sources state that there are no sources of Jesus' historicity outside of christian religious texts. This is clearly stated in

This entire article from the ground up is written from christian-apologist perspective, and should be removed out-right.

Polaronbeam (talk) 14:19, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

 Not done No consensus for edit, has been discussed to death. See WP:RS/AC for the policy on such statements, and in particular see source by Bart D. Ehrman, currently ref #8, an Athiest, who writes "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees, based on clear and certain evidence" Gaijin42 (talk) 14:28, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

@Polaronbeam:, you may want to look at the beyond-extensive discussion about this exact topic in the archives instead of inviting the exact same discussion again. I am not saying you are definitely wrong, but that it would be far more effective to review the lengthy conversations that have existed. This would be helpful as it involved multiple points of view of people who know this topic very well and are quite aware of the whole of relevant scholarship on the issue. If you still conclude there is a cogent point you can make, then bring it to the table and perhaps it can be discussed? Prasangika37 (talk) 16:45, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Way forward

Hi everyone. Now that the arbitration is over, I again point out that the article as it stands not only extensively duplicates existing articles, but it also duplicates itself. I propose as a first step that we merge all the sections of Events widely accepted as historical, Historical Jesus, Quest for the historical Jesus and Christ myth theory into a single section, and then clear out all the internal duplication. Are there any objections? Wdford (talk) 16:24, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

I like the idea of this, but am concerned it will be too large of a section. Could you propose what it would look like? Maybe it would work, or maybe it would be too burgeoning. Prasangika37 (talk) 20:38, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Any follow up here @Wdford: ? Prasangika37 (talk) 17:11, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I have left this question open for quite a while, and it seems like nobody else is too concerned by this proposal. What say I make the changes and then we can see how it looks? Obviously it will need to be fine-tuned, but how about I go ahead and take the first step? Wdford (talk) 18:39, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I say go for it. Prasangika37 (talk) 19:15, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Do it. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 19:16, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

The first draft has been uploaded. Once the bots have caught up with the orphaned refs, I will polish it a bit further. Please help. Wdford (talk) 18:03, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I've done a handful of polishing maneuvers--Didn't change content except removing a few words that I felt were unnecessary or unhelpful. Prasangika37 (talk) 22:55, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Pro-Christian bias

While the majority of scholars do believe Jesus existed, people like Richard Carrier are not quacks. This needs to be noted.

Thevideodrome (talk) 08:23, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

This article reads like one big appeal to authority

"virtually all scholars agree..." it's like a propaganda article to convince Wiki readers to side with "generally all scholars think..." What would be helpful to readers would be a clear section with a bullet item list that indicates evidence (and not poll results of "virtually every scholar") that Jesus existed. Emphasis on CLEAR evidence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.183.249.2 (talk) 15:00, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

• Well, if virtually all scholars agree with proposition X, then we should probably report that virtually all scholars agree with proposition X. Drmies (talk) 15:02, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

• True enough, but since very few historians comment on this topic, and those that do possess notable bias, the article should reflect that. I've given up attempting to repair this thing, but the article does present biased sources without comment.—Kww(talk) 15:09, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

This article is a tautology. Jesus existed in history because virtually all scholars agree he did (never mind mentioning what evidence they base that on, or what religion they happen to swear allegiance to. There is no meat in the article, no smoking gun, no evidence. The informed reader will conclude there is zero evidenced (other than those promoting the christian religion) that a historic jesus ever existed. I came to the article thinking I would find historical evidence and I found nothing other than one appeal to authority after the next. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.183.249.2 (talk) 15:07, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I have been reading the archives, looks like this article has been a propaganda piece for a long time and any attempt to make it legitimate has met a brick wall. Oh well. Not all wiki articles can be good ones and sadly some serve as propaganda. One day it will catch up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.183.249.2 (talk) 15:10, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Appeal to authority is exactly how Wikipedia works. See WP:RS; WP:FRINGE; WP:V. However, the article does also explain the reasons that these authorities give for their opinion. You are entitled to disagree with them, but your disagreement is not relevant to the content of the article. Paul B (talk) 15:15, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

You can bullshit other people but not me. This article is pure propaganda and a low point for Wiki quality. You ignore competing arguments as if you were ignoring fringe thinkers, as if those in the minority were pseudoscientists. Again, what this article lacks is historical evidence for Jesus and instead stands as a beacon for the herd. Are any of your so-called "virtual" majority NOT Christians? I don't have the time to try and improve the article and based on the archives I'm guess Christians have managed to control the article and keep any legitimate edits out. I don't have time for that. Cheers! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.183.249.2 (talk) 15:29, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Not only Muslims believe Muhammad existed. Not only Buddhists believe the Buddha existed. If you actually check, you will see that several of the sources quoted are non-Christians. Some are atheists; some agnostic; some Jews. There's nothing special about believing that a Jewish apocalyptic preacher from Galilee existed. It's quite banal. Paul B (talk) 15:38, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

• As Paul B said, all of Wikipedia appeals to authority (WP:RS, WP:OR), that is one of the most fundamental principles here. Another important policy is WP:SOAP, so if you're only here to accuse people of "bullshitting", "propaganda", and "bias" without providing any sources, be prepared to have your comments removed. While you will no doubt decide it's conspiracy to censor you, it's not. You want to argue your opinions, start a blog. You want to edit Wikipedia, engage in constructive discussions using sources.Jeppiz (talk) 17:01, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

• Disruptive and snarky as our anonymous contributor might be, he's correct that the article fails to deal with source bias properly. Always has, and efforts to correct it have always been dealt with as if they were attacking Christians. The article is ascribed primarily to Christian sources, and fails to note that this issue is essentially undiscussed outside of religiously motivated academia.—Kww(talk) 17:29, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

"primarily to Christian sources"? Who are Bart Ehrman, Amy-Jill Levine, and Michael Grant? Geza Vermes and Robin Lane Fox? And wait, why must we assume that one's scholarship is "religiously motivated" if one studies early Christianity and is a Christian? --Akhilleus (talk) 17:40, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

• Be that as it may, Kww, there is not much we can do about it. Most academic fields are very limited and this one is no exception. (As it happens, the claim that virtually all scholars believe Jesus existed is actually made by a non-Christian scholar). A bit surprised an admin thinks we should disregard the scholarship in the field (and apologies if I misunderstand your point, but that seems to be what you suggest) or "correct" it. Throughout Wikipedia, we rely on the available sources, and I don't think this article is any different (apart from being one of those articles where some opinionated users don't agree with the academics, but that is not very rare either). This has nothing to do with protecting Christians, and I doubt a Christian would find anything "Christian" about this article.Jeppiz (talk) 18:03, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I regret to say that the nature of the comments of Kww and others in the earlier history of this subject continues to raise what some might not unreasonably see as competence issues. There seems to be a belief that somehow there is a huge mass of Buddhists, Hindus, neopagans, shamanists, atheists, agnostics, Zoroastrians, or others who, against all logic, choose to devote their academic life to the study of religious traditions which have little if any relevance to their own beliefs. I have never seen anything in academia or outside it to support that apparently devoutly held belief of theirs. However, they seem to be for the most part incapable of believing that their presupposition could be wrong. For better or worse, much as some of them might choose to ignore that fact, the radical diversity within the purported Christian West (and many of the promoters of this argument seem to instinctively equate those two terms), which so far as I can tell actually exceed that of the eastern groups, is something that they also, for whatever reason, choose to ignore. I personally think at least one of these editors is engaged in ideologically-driven POV pushing, possibly of a rather obviously tendentious nature, but is incapable of recognizing it, which to my eyes raises serious questions regarding how much trust he deserves from the community.

Martin, whose edits in this topic I consider exemplary, obviously, seems to agree with what would be called the standard approach of academia to this subject, that the evidence, such as it is, is probably enough to think that someone who more or less fits the description of the subject exists, although that evidence is itself much less than we would want or even accept under other circumstances. It could well be wrong, but the evidence, such as it is, is more or less sufficient to assume he existed, in some form, for the purposes of historical study. Unfortunately, we can't always choose to remake history into our own images, nor can we create historical evidence on our own, and, in the several cases where the available evidence is insufficient for historians to make relatively absolute statements, they go with the best bet available, based on what evidence does exist.

This isn't the only example of such purported historical personages whose contemporary documentation is inadequate. Alexander the Great and a few others come to mind as well. However, some of the "evangelists" for these "alternative proposals" (which are sooo popular in some parts of the West) may be too closely tied to their own prejudices to realize that they are just prejudices. John Carter (talk) 18:18, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Actually, John, my point has always been that there is not "a huge mass of Buddhists, Hindus, neopagans, shamanists, atheists, agnostics, Zoroastrians, or others who, against all logic, choose to devote their academic life to the study of religious traditions which have little if any relevance to their own beliefs". This is a topic of study that people enter precisely because it is related to their own beliefs, and, unsurprisingly, they come to the conclusion that the beliefs they had prior to beginning their studies are well-supported by evidence. It's a source of inherent bias, but the article treats them as unbiased. And, as always, I must point out that "biased" is a neutral descriptor, not an attack. We all hold biases, and it's quite possible to be biased and correct simultaneously.—Kww(talk) 19:22, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Sure, Kww, but the problem is that you're clinging to a prejudice that is repeated ever so often here but doesn't any more true despite repetition. There are a number of non-Christian scholars in the field, Akhilleus already mentioned Bart Ehrman, Amy-Jill Levine, Michael Grant, Geza Vermes and Robin Lane Fox. (I realize this post is wasted, as it doesn't matter how often this fact is repeated ad nauseam).Jeppiz (talk) 19:37, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I've never made that claim that there were no non-Christian sources, Jeppiz, simply that they were grossly underrepresented. If there wasn't a bias based on religious preferences involved, you would expect to find that Christians, Muslims, and Jews constituted roughly 50% of the people studying the topic. That it is somewhere in the high 90% range is indicative of a significant bias in the pool of sources. Once again, that doesn't render them wrong, but it is worthy of note in the article, and we should be suspicious of people analyzing evidence and coming to the conclusion that it justifies their religious beliefs. —Kww(talk) 19:52, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Which non-religious sources, that are not anti-religious bigots or nut jobs, are being underrepresented? And if we all have biases, then all of the articles on Wikipedia are biased. Consequently, there is no point in mentioning biases in this particular article since it can easily be assumed to exist in all articles? Finally, this entire section is pointless, really, since these concerns are already addressed in the FAQ. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 20:29, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

That strikes me as being an intentional misreading. If a group is represented in your sample of sources in a significantly different proportion to how they are represented in the world population, that's a sign that that group has a particular interest and that your pool of sources is skewed. It's not that the sources are out there an editors here are not representing what they say, it's that the editors of the article are refusing to note that the pool of sources they have is biased.—Kww(talk) 21:13, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Like Bill the Cat 7, I'm afraid I find Kww's last remark incomprehensible. If "bias" is any research field without equal world wide representation, then there is a bias everywhere. I bet American academics are overrepresented in studying US history, Irish academics overrepresented in Celtic mythology, Hungarian academics overrepresented in Hungarian philology etc. I really don't think that this rather natural situation in worthy of note and it's certainly not unique in any way.Jeppiz (talk) 20:57, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

It's worthy of note primarily because religion is a factor in a minister or priests self-identity. Religion is an important aspect to a priest or minister's life, and has the ability to distort their judgment in ways that few other topics can. We do routinely note nationalistic biases, such as the Turkish and Greek perspectives over Cyprus, China over Tibet, etc.—Kww(talk) 21:13, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

We only note those biases when there are clear nationalist or other conflicts. We don't routinely add riders about, for example, American historians, commenting that Americans will be biassed, when using them to source content on the Vietnam War, the life of Thomas Jefferson or whatever. Non-Christians have no more reason to deny Jesus' existence than non-Muslims have to deny Muhammad's, and the overwhelming majority of them in the relevant field do not. Paul B (talk) 13:02, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Your whole phrasing indicates the problem: it isn't a matter of "denying" his existence, it's a matter of making an objective evaluation of whether the evidence supports him having actually existed. Someone that believes him to be divine is far more likely to conclude that he exists than someone that believes that he was, at most, a carpenter's son. Believing someone to be divine is a virtually insurmountable bias in favour of concluding that he exists.—Kww(talk) 13:41, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Your whole phrasing indicates the problem: it is about the denial of his existence. In fact it's perfectly possible to believe that he was divine but did not exist (No need to go into the various versions of the "divinely inspired dream" model). But that's not what this whole debate is about. It's about your need to assert that a bias must somehow be noted when there is no justification in Wikipedia policy; we do not assume that scholars somehow must be biassed. We would only note differences between "Turkish and Greek perspectives over Cyprus" where there was clear evidence for them. But your statement that such differences are "routinely noted" is simply false, for the reason I gave. We do not "routinely" assume bias on the basis that it somehow must exist. Otherwise we would "routinely" assume that American historians cannot be trusted to comment on American history. We don't, and we shouldn't. Paul B (talk) 13:54, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I fear this discussion is not really advancing. Kww, is there any scientific opinion held by the non-Christian academics in the field that is contested by Christian academics and excluded from this article? If so, please state them.Jeppiz (talk) 13:52, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not asking for some differing views to be included more prominently than they are. All I've ever asked is that the views presented here are qualified as representing the view of a largely Christian group of scholars, and it be noted that the topic is not widely studied outside of religious academia. It's a case of silence vs. loud pronouncements, not competing pronouncements. Phrases like "There is near unanimity among scholars that Jesus existed historically" are overstatements when viewed from the perspective of just how few scholars there are opining on the subject that are not religious scholars of some kind. Similarly "virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed" is a pretty strong statement (especially given a term like "scholars of antiquity", which I would like to see a precise definition of). There are numerous examples of that throughout, where instead of presenting the material as the conclusion of a noticeably biased group, it's presented as if it were a widespread topic in secular academia. And, no, Paul, this isn't an issue of my need: to think that people don't have a bias towards believing that evidence supports their own beliefs and interests defies the very definition of bias.—Kww(talk) 14:57, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

It is your need, because you think that you, by some sort of personal deductive reasoning, can decide who has bias. Your argument that "to think that people don't have a bias towards believing that evidence supports their own beliefs and interests defies the very definition of bias" assumes that we must presuppose bias, since it is a generalised statement about humanity. That would open the door to assuming that every author's presumed bias must be noted on the basis of what your (or presumably any other random editor) personal take on what is "common sense" says must exist. Paul B (talk) 15:05, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Well Kww, if there isn't a single case in the article where "Christian scholarship" differs from "non-Christian scholarship", I'm not sure what we're discussing. As an admin, surely you're aware that we will not write that the academic field has a bias based on you thinking there is a bias. (And Paul B, please stop inserting your comments between existing comments. It makes the discussion very hard to follow.)Jeppiz (talk) 15:10, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

What on earth are you talking about? I haven't inserted my comments "between existing comments" except in the same way that everyone has - and you just have, by inserting yours between mine and Ian's below. The rule is that we place comments under the one we are replying to, inset further, unless using outdent. That's what stops debates becoming confusing and it's the rule I've followed. Paul B (talk) 15:14, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

@Kww: That's nice. You do understand two points, I hope. (1) That you have to provide reasons as per policies and guidelines for those changes. (2) I believe in your case, and as per the archives of this page, the primary concern is your inability to deal adequately with your own obvious and apparently rather clearly stated bias, and rather tendentiously belabouring the fact. I note that you as an individual strongly oppose material of a broadly "pseudoscientific" nature, and, unfortunately, by the standards of historical research, the argument against the existence of Jesus is about as strong as the argument of the theory of evolution being a fallacy. The reliable sources accepted by the academic media in neither case become unreliable simply because some individuals find that they do not give what they consider sufficient weight to their own opinions. The evidence does exist, and the historians in this case are the ones who are nonbiased, because they are the ones who know the field. Those who have displayed little if any awareness of the methods of the academic study of history and insist that their opinions, basically, take priority over the standards of the most directly appropriate academic field are the ones who are most clearly biased because they are, basically, asserting a tautology. I very strongly believe that there is more than sufficient reason to raise concerns at one of the appropriate noticeboards, or perhaps at ARCA, should tendentious editing of much the same nature as that put forward by the pseudoscience buffs continue on this page. John Carter (talk) 15:13, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

And, as always, the argument comes down to people arguing that biases don't need to be labeled on religious topics, despite the fact that we routinely and habitually label biases on other topics. To label a priest, reverend, or minister as being unbiased on the topic of the existence of Jesus Christ for the reason that he also takes the title "historian" is simply ludicrous. That is, as I maintain now and always have maintained, a completely separate question from the question of whether he is right. He may well be right, but that does not remove the bias. I am not asking for the article to proclaim any of the "Christ myth" theories to be true, or to state that no reasonable person could interpret the evidence in favour of his existence, or any such thing: simply to note that the people used as sources are generally speaking in favour of their own religious beliefs. If there's any "tendentiousness" here, it's the constant refusal to note source bias in the article.—Kww(talk) 15:25, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

You keep saying that we "routinely" ascribe bias, but we do not. We only ascribe bias when there is independent evidence for it. If a the majority of Christian historians were saying one thing, while Jewish and non-religious writers were systematically saying something quite different, then we would have reason to note the difference, as in your case of Greeks and Turks. But they don't. We don't just assume there must be bias, as has already been noted. Paul B (talk) 15:34, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

If GM engineers were to conclude that a particular General Motors fuel injection system was the best fuel injection system ever, would you seriously require editors to find specific statements from competitors about that fuel injection system before qualifying the statement? Or would you tend to think that we should phrase the claim as "GM engineers concluded that ..." even in in the absence of such contradictory statements? Wouldn't that be the standard practice for cases of an obvious bias on the part of the speaker?—Kww(talk) 15:49, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

It's not a real analogy, since only Christians believe Jesus was, as it were, "the best person ever". This article is about whether he existed. But let's just run with the analogy. If most engineers from other companies were also saying the that it was the best, we would conclude there is no bias, and that it's probably true, especially it only a few hard-line promotors of rival systems said otherwise. Again, the point is we can't just assume there must be bias. Paul B (talk) 15:57, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I agree that if most academics from other religious persuasions were saying that that the evidence was sufficient to conclude he existed, there would be no need to qualify it. However, academics from other religious persuasions are largely silent on this topic. Muslims, by the way, also consider Jesus to be divine, to the point that they believe him to still be alive in corporeal form, never having been crucified.—Kww(talk) 16:41, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia summarizes mainstream academic sources. In effect, this site is "one big appeal to authority." An appeal to authority isn't a problem when the authority actually knows what they're talking about. For example, anti-vaccers, moon-landing skeptics, Indigo children, and 9/11 truthers -- all of them are a problem of not listening to authorities who know what they're talking about. Pointing out what could be a fallacy in a particular context doesn't automatically win an argument, especially if that particular context is a red herring (see Argument from fallacy). Ian.thomson (talk) 17:48, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I could not have argued it better. - Cwobeel (talk) 16:46, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

@Kww:, regarding your rather inappropriate strawman ("the argument comes down to people arguing that biases don't need to be labeled on religious topics"), I don't see anyone making the argument. What this discussion is about is that you, an individual Wikipedia user, thinks that all academics in the field are biased, and you want us to insert that. No, it's not going to happen. You're not an authority, and your personal belief that there is a bias is irrelevant. This corresponds quite closely to anti-vaccination debates, there are always people like you claiming all the scientists are paid by the big medical firms and that's why they are all biased. We're not changing it there either, individuals' personal belief that all experts are biased is as WP:UNDUE as it is WP:OR and WP:POV.Jeppiz (talk) 17:41, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Are you arguing that it isn't the role of Wikipedia editors to deal with source bias? WP:BIASED exists for a reason: Wikipedia editors are expected to deal with source bias. And no, I'm not asking for a statement in the article that accuses individuals of being biased, I'm simply asking that the characterizations be softened and that statements be be correctly attributed. And no, saying that believing something to be divine causes a person to be more likely to believe evidence supports its existence is not the equivalent of big Pharma conspiracy or anti-vaccination theories. People on this page tend to act like I'm ranting and raving that the only reason people would believe Jesus existed is because of their religion. I don't say that, and am not asking that the article say that. I'm simply saying that phrases like "there is near unanimity among scholars that Jesus existed historically" are too strongly phrased when the scholars used don't represent a broad cross-section of scholarship.—Kww(talk) 18:09, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

On the contrary. There is a broad cross-section of scholarship which is why statements such as "virtually all" are appropriate and accurate. What makes you think there isn't such a broad x-section? Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 18:19, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Because your cross-section overrepresents members of a specific set of religious faiths. That's not "broad" by any conventional definition.—Kww(talk) 19:15, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

and really, it's "put up or shut up" time. Give us some "unbiased" sources who say that the consensus is something else, or that there is no consensus. It seems like every time this comes around, Kww, you drop in the same complaint. If you know the field well enough to be making the complaint seriously, then you can provide some unbiased contrary opinions. Otherwise it's just your WP:OR opinion that the field is hopelessly biased. I think that's unfounded, but in any case it isn't our place to second-guess the field. Mangoe (talk) 18:51, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I drop in the same complaint periodically, and, as always, it isn't addressed, and people demand sources that they would not demand in any parallel case. If I demanded sources supporting the contention that General Motors employees possessed a bias in regards to General Motors products, people would laugh. Here, you demand sources indicating that Christians possess biases in relation to Jesus of Nazareth, and seem serious. What exactly would you require in terms of a source substantiating that people possess a bias about the things they worship?—Kww(talk) 19:15, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

@Kww:, if this many people patiently take the time to point out why you're wrong, perhaps it would be good to take a moment to listen and to question whether it's everybody else who is wrong and just you who are right, or if maybe, just maybe, all the others may have a point. You keep saying there's a "Christian bias" in the sources, but when I've asked you if there is a single aspect that non-Christian scholars dispute, you cannot come up with any. You also keep ignoring the rather long list of names that have been given, of leading scholars in the field who aren't Christian. It appears you just don't WP:HEAR anyone else, you just keep repeating you think there's a bias, so then we should say there's a bias.Jeppiz (talk) 19:50, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't keep repeating myself, I try to get people to address the point I'm making. You ask me about what "non-Christian scholars dispute." When have I ever said that there's a group of non-Christian scholars disputing things? I haven't. What I've said is that the people researching this topic are predominantly Christian, which no one refutes (except by providing a handful of non-Christian examples, which in no way refutes the statement that the field is dominated by Christian researchers, especially when those "non-Christian" examples include ex-priests). What I've said is that worshiping something creates a biased POV about it (a stance directly supported by WP:BIASED, for what it's worth), which is irrefutable. What I've said is that because this article draws heavily on biased sources, it should note the existence of that bias, and not represent the statements of that subset as representing more than it does. One of the big issues that I see is that people seem to see the word "bias" as meaning "absolutely unreliable" or "incapable of making a decision counter to interests." It doesn't: it means that there exists a stronger likelihood to find in one direction than another. I would love to hear the counterargument, by the way: what's the argument in favour of the proposition that worshiping something creates absolutely no tendency at all to be more likely to believe that the existence of that thing is historically supported? That's a pretty wild statement, and I've never seen anyone provide any support for it.—Kww(talk) 22:39, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

You do however consistently seem to ignore policies and guidelines, among them in this case WP:EXCEPTIONAL. You also regularly place yourself, who so far as I can determine have shown no particular grasp of the methods of the academic study of history in a position to arrogantly pass judgment on the conclusions of the professionals in the field, which is honestly one of the most amusing things I see around here, because it is, for all practical purposes, in the academic world anyway, no different than arguing for creationism. And it is also obviously worth noting that, somehow, the only people who do seem to argue for the position of non-existence or questionable existence are those who share your own religious beliefs. You also seem to regularly ignore the fact that the relevant academic field, in this case history, rather regularly accepts the existence of people whose existence is even less well documented than Jesus's, including Pontius Pilate. In all honesty, as someone who has reviewed the academic literature relevant to this topic, which I do not believe you can say of yourself, you seem to be arguing for a conspiracy theory, much like those of many of the people who reject the "science" you so clearly place above all else. BTW, it is worth noting that the field of history is not necessarily a "scientific" one, which further weakens your argument. In short, much as I regret it, you seem to have displayed a remarkably consistent tendency toward WP:IDHT and [{WP:TE]] to, basically, promote the religious opinion of a small group of people from among the group which hold your own religious perspectives. It is very, very hard not to see that as perhaps indicating serious WP:POV problems. Also, FWIW, it would be unreasonable to assert that the members of the Christian-Islamic community necessarily have the same problem. The question here is not "whether Jesus existed," but "whether the standards of the field of the academic study of history are such as to support the contention that the historical existence of Jesus meets the standards of acceptability." It would certainly be possible for me, as a Christian, to say that the academic world of history has questioned the existence of Jesus and remain a Christian, considering we are not talking about his existence, but the academic acceptance of the hypothesis of his existence. Unfortunately, however, for some of the now older atheists and agnostics, including Richard Dawkins in his earlier days, the non-existence of Jesus is apparently one of the lynch-pins upon which their agnosticism/atheism is based. Combine that with the fact that as Ehrman has said in his book, that atheists are also about as socially segregated as the Jehovah's Witnesses, it makes it that much harder for them to acknowledge that the small group they joined at the cost of basically rejection of a society which observes Christmas, Hanukkah, and the like, is one which they joined for reasons which the most relevant academic discipline considers poorly founded. Those "Jesus never existed atheists" are even more dependent on their contention than the religionists are. And it very much does seem that you are allying yourself with them, over and above the members of an academic community whose standards you seem at best weakly aware of, as a form of atheist/agnostic solidarity, which raises very serious questions about your conduct. I regret to say those questions may be even serious enough to have this matter taken to ARBCOM again. John Carter (talk) 23:52, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

He made his point: the field is dominated by Christians, so it may have a Christian bias. However, in order to include such information in the article, he needs a reliable source for verification. Otherwise "worship demands historicity" is original research. I think that there are Christian theologians and historians for whom such claim does not apply: Christians are baptized in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not in the name of the historicity of Jesus. There were heresies which did not assume a historical Jesus and there are Christian scholars for whom the historicity of Jesus is moot. There are even Christian theologians who claim that the whole historical Jesus enterprise is a hoax. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:54, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. And, as I said above, I don't think I would be the only person who would say that it is possible for some qualified academic historians to say that the reasonable application of the standards of their discipline do not support their personal beliefs. There are some Hindu and Mormon academics I (vaguely) seem to remember reading who have so far as I can remember clearly said as much. That does not necessarily mean they are wrong, just that the evidence does not support it. If they can say that, it is unreasonable to assume that others from other religious systems could not do the same. John Carter (talk) 00:03, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

See e.g. Richard Dawkins about Kurt Wise at [1]. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:37, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Incidentally, Tgeorgescu, handling source bias via attribution and avoiding excessively broad characterisation of sources is not a violation of WP:OR. Were I to ask that the article to be modified to include something that indicated that the sources could not be trusted (or anything remotely similar to that), it would be. To present Ehrman's statement (roughly "everyone that you should take seriously thinks I'm right") without attributing it is one problem, and to present the conclusion of a group dominated by Christians without noting that it is dominated by Christians is another. Both fall under the umbrella of our normal manner of dealing with potentially biased sources, and do not constitute "original research". The General Motors analogy comes to play again: we couldn't (and shouldn't) make negative statements about GM engineers, but there's a significant difference between "GM engineers conclude ..." and "engineers conclude ...".—Kww(talk) 23:35, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

And, John, if I had ever said that Christians could not do the same, or asked that the article be modified to indicate that Christians could not do the same, that would be a relevant point. Certainly, Christians are capable of looking at the evidence and coming to the conclusion that the evidence doesn't support their beliefs. My contention is simply that they are more likely to come to the conclusion that it does than to come to the conclusion that it does not. That's what a bias is: not some absolute incapacity or inability, but only a tendency that needs to be monitored for and taken into account.—Kww(talk) 02:30, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Paul B (talk)said: Regarding the quote: "If you actually check, you will see that several of the sources quoted are non-Christians"

Frankly, that seems a secondary matter. The article is about the historical evidence for Jesus' existence, not about the opinion of modern Theologians and Biblical scholars on the question. Where is the evidence presented in this article? Sure ' let's have opinions from relevant experts (i.e. historians, as opposed to, say an expert in in post-colonial Australian history, as one cited "authority" here is. The point that was being made that this piece is puffed out with (one-sided) opinion rather than the facts it should. Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 05:00, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Akhilleus (talk):"...primarily to Christian sources"? Who are Bart Ehrman...(et al)"

Well in the case of Bart Ehrman, I note that he is quoted thus: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees, based on clear and certain evidence". I think it relevant thought, that it is simply the historical existence of the man Jesus he refers to, not any of the claims of words or deeds attributed to him since. I know that it is just the historicity that the article addresses, but given the nature of the topic it needs to be made clear that he is not speaking of the "Biblical Jesus" - especially with the preponderance of pro-Christian leanings in this article. If the same kind of selective quote-mining applies to the other non-Christian contributors, then they don't have much credibility.Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 05:00, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

The consensus view differentiates between the Christ of faith and the historical Jesus. While the Christ of faith is a theological construct, the historical Jesus is a person who really existed and the New Testament is the primary source for his life and deeds; of course, it has to be analyzed critically, like any other embellished historical source. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:02, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

The historical Jesus, according to academia today, seems to have been someone who got crucified for doing some things the government obviously didn't like, after some time as an itinerant preacher who may have done some things that the not particularly knowledgeable people of old Israel though at the time might have been miracles. And, considering their psyche at the time, it might not have taken much to get them to become "believers." Not wanting to go into all the details, which get disgustingly confusing, academia seems to agree that he did something like most of the things he is attested to having done during his "ministry" period, many of which might have been rather ordinary events blown out of proportion by the gullible natives, and probably visited most of the places he is said to have visited. The order of events and comments is hopelessly muddled, of course, and some of the statements attributed to him are almost certainly distorted as well. The miracles may not have been real "miracles" either. More or less like a lot of other oral history. John Carter (talk) 01:32, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Information re: custody of historical sources, Presumption of alteration?

If it is known that many historical sources were altered by Christians, doesn't that create some presumption of alteration regarding the rest?

And - wouldn't it be important to note what sources were in Christian custody? Were Tacitus's annals in Christian custody? That would surely bear on opportunity for alteration. I think it would be important to know for how many years various sources were in Christian possession. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.101.139.52 (talk) 13:23, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Are you familiar with WP:OR? We make exactly zero presumptions. If there is a reliable source that makes presumptions, we can discuss whether it's relevant for the article.Jeppiz (talk) 14:17, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I question the value of the Michael Grant quote in the article:

If we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.[51]

This quote is so vague it is difficult to be understood. Is he referring interpreting texts about pagan deities who are centerpieces of major world religions? With no examples this quote is meaningless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.109.84.5 (talk) 14:30, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

'This quote is so vague it is difficult to be understood [sic]. Is he referring interpreting texts about pagan deities who are centerpieces of major world religions?' No he's not and the quotation is crystal clear to anyone with a normal command of English. He is saying quite simply that the evidence for the existence of Jesus is as good as the evidence for many if not most notable people in the Classical world, with the side note that these people were of course 'pagans'. The implication is that the existence of Jesus is questioned for religious, rather than for historical/methodological reasons.86.148.181.169 (talk) 15:15, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the quote: "we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned"

Can you then give examples of a "pagan personage" whose actual existence "is never questioned"? If it is meant to mean "the evidence for the existence of Jesus is as good as the evidence for many if not most notable people in the Classical world" then it is palpably untrue; such facile and demonstrably false Bible Belt Congregation claims are not worthy of citing in what aspires to be a credible source of information. Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 04:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

"pagan personage" sounds a bit old-fashioned, but try Cylon of Athens, Solon, Periander, Draco (lawgiver), Appius Claudius Caecus. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:58, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Well the first thing that strikes me is that those all lived half a millennium or more earlier than Jesus was supposed to, so one would naturally have difficulty in establishing the historicity of anyone from that era. Comparison with a contemporary such as Caesar Augustus would be more appropriate, and such a comparison instantly shows what a wealth of detailed records of the time are available from the Romans' records and the likes of Plutarch, Josephus and Philo of Alexandria (who was in fact a contemporary of Jesus, but never mentioned him in his writings). The earlier "pagan personages" you mention were still better recorded than Jesus, and as there do not appear to have been any subsequent attempts made to alter these figures from ones of civil and military renown into supernatural deities, there is less reason to doubt a record that states that such and such person ruled at such and such a time. They all have equal or more credible historical credentials than the two, possibly three brief references in historical documents that establish Jesus' existence, but they don't require more as there are no extraordinary claims made on their behalf, such as they rose from the dead, or are god. Would it matter if Cylon of Athens was discovered to be purely mythical? And really, getting back to the original point - does anyone beyond a few scholars actually regard them to be proven, historical figures> And as I intimated, would anyone actually care much either way? Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 05:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Beg your pardon, but I have a hard time even taking this serious. Are you really suggesting that an appropriate comparison would be between the emperor of the World's leading state and a carpenter in a small village in some rural backwater far from the capital? So by the same logic, we should have about equal coverage of Napoleon Bonaparte and of a sheep herder living in Coutens in 1812? Or equal coverage right now of Barack Obama and a plumber in Berea, Nebraska?Jeppiz (talk) 12:57, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

"Are you really suggesting that an appropriate comparison would be between the emperor of the World's leading state and a carpenter in a small village in some rural backwater far from the capital?"

No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that someone else comparing the evidence for Jesus' existence with that of notable mythological/historical figures of 500 or more years earlier seemed inappropriate, and if such a comparison were to be made, I should have thought that comparison to a contemporary figure would be fairer. It would appear that you are under some misapprehension as to my meaning.Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 02:32, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Events Generally Accepted as Historical

Passing over the dubious title of this section (if it were accurate it would be a very small section indeed) I will simply say I am somewhat concerned about the following sentence: "Geoffrey Blainey notes that "a few scholars argue that Jesus... did not even exist," and that they "rightly point out that contemporary references to him were extremely rare" I'm not sure why such prominence is given to the views of an Historian whose expertise is almost wholly in the field of (mainly post-colonial) Australian History? Especially as his assertion that "contemporary references to him (Jesus) were extremely rare", as contemporary references are in fact non-existent. Both the weight given to the opinion of someone with no expertise in the field and the desperately misleading misinformation inclines me to think the article would be better off with this sentence removed. Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 04:21, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

The information is hardly "desperately misleading", but I certainly agree that it would be much better to cite and quote someone who specializes in early Christianity. --Akhilleus (talk) 04:32, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Do you know of any contemporary accounts of Jesus? As far as I am aware there are none, thus "desperately misleading" is really rather a mild term for the assertion that "contemporary references to him were extremely rare". Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 05:14, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

It depends how you define contemporary. It's not a word that has a rigid defintion, since there is always ambiguity about what counts as "of the time". There are no clearly contemporary accounts of almost anyone, including superstars like Julius Caesar - if by that you mean actual documents dating from his life. There are, of course, in Caesar's case, accounts that are believed to have been written by people who were his contemporaries, and there is material dating from the general historical period. Of the first, the same is probably true of Jesus. Paul was his contemporary, and his principal letters are generally accepted as authentic. The latter - general historial period - is certainly true. Paul B (talk) 20:55, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Also, although some of the more directly expert editors like Akhilleus would probably know this better, there seems to be a pronounced lack of documentation of a lot of the first century of Israel. A lot of the documents seem to have been in the Jerusalem Temple precinct, and that was destroyed. We can't know what the content of the documents which seem to have maybe been destroyed with it were, obviously, so we are more or less obliged to go on what we have, inadequate as most of us might find it. This, unfortunately, happens rather often over the long years of history. John Carter (talk) 00:17, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

"It depends how you define contemporary. It's not a word that has a rigid definition"

It's pretty straightforward. To be a contemporary is to have lived at the same time. There are no records of Jesus from either Biblical or non-Biblical sources until many years after his death. That's why the statement that they "...were extremely rare" is unwarranted.

Your comments regarding "contemporary" references to others are not, I would suggest, germane to the topic, as the Historicity of Jesus is all that this article does - or should - address. I do accept however that an explanation of the nature you have given regarding the difficulty of contemporary records would serve the article better than the quote from an expert in post-colonial Australian history implicitly claiming the existence of contemporary records of Jesus that is currently in place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by El Badboy! (talk • contribs) 02:52, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

St Paul "lived at the same time". He was contemporary with Jesus. As I have already said, if you want actual documents literally from his lifetime, you won't find any for almost any historical figure of the period, even kings, so that's a straw man argument, and it's pretty certainly not what Blainey meant by "contemporary references". I don't know why you - speaking as such an expert - wish to belittle a distinguished historian such as Blainey. Yes, he's a generalist, not a specialist in the period, but the comments are unproblematic. Please use the same signature in your posts. Paul B (talk) 09:30, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

"St Paul "lived at the same time". He was contemporary with Jesus"

I think you are being disingenuous. When Paul is asserted to have lived is not, as far as I can see, relevant to the issue at hand. There are no contemporary accounts of Jesus. If you are saying that there are, then I would much appreciate your providing the sources. Your statement "if you want actual documents literally from his lifetime, you won't find any for almost any historical figure of the period" can be disproven with a few mouse clicks within Wikipedia itself, but again, that is irrelevant as this article is concerned on with the historicity of one person.I think that unless there is good reason given to retain the factually incorrect quote from a source of dubious relevance soon, it should be removed.Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 07:50, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

You seem to be missing the point about the definition of "contemporary". It's not uncommon to see "contemporary accounts" refer to accounts written by someone who was alive at the same time as the person/event that the account is about--see List of contemporary accounts of Samuel Johnson's life as an example on Wikipedia. Plato's dialogues are sometimes called contemporary accounts of Socrates, even though they were written after Socrates' death. So I don't see any reason to remove the quote; if, however, you can find a different source that you think is better, you might have an easier time convincing other editors to replace the Blainey source. --Akhilleus (talk) 14:55, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

I am not missing the point; you appear to be evading it. The term "Contemporary" already has a definition, your own attempt to redefine it is neither here nor there. Can you cite ANY expert in the relevant field (i.e. not the unqualified person cited here) who asserts that there are ANY contemporary references to Jesus.

And I should point out that as an encyclopaedia, it is the role of anyone who wants to insert information to demonstrate it's appropriateness, so I don't need to "convince" anyone, they need to do the convincing. Thus far you have presented nothing to suggest that the person cited has any relevant qualification, or that the factually incorrect quote of his that is cited has any value to this article.Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 15:09, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Stronger Sources

As I started to review the sources on this WP article, I noticed that a large portion of the article is based on sources that haven't been peer reviewed and have been published by private publishing houses. Since peer reviewed articles/books do exist on the subject, I believe more of an effort should be made to reflect those peer reviewed sources which are generally more tamed in their assertions.Scoobydunk (talk) 01:44, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

List of evidence on the existence of Jesus

I created a new section that includes a table where people can add documents that either confirm or deny the existence of Jesus. It includes columns to add references to those who support or reject the document. I believe this is a very clear and simple way to give pure information and let readers make up their own mind, based on the list of evidence. Hopefully, any bias the rest of the article may have can be ignored by those who just want the list. Humanoid (talk) 06:05, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

This table ignores the fact that all of these sources listed thus far are challenged to varying degrees, as is explained in detail in the section that precedes it and the section that follows it. This new section is thus incomplete, unbalanced and seriously POV - it's interesting that some editors consider this to be "pure" information and free of "bias". It is in effect an internal POV fork. Those who want to ignore unpalatable reality don't need to come to Wikipedia in the first place, they can just believe whatever they want. Wdford (talk) 08:37, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

No, the table does not ignore that these sources are challenged. That's the whole point of the last column, where I put a reference challenging every one of the gospels, and made the column extra wide so that there's space to put more challengers in there. Yes, the table is incomplete, that's how collaboration between different people works, one person starts something, the next adds to it, and the next person adds even more to it. It's never going to be complete, but continuously improved by many collaborators. I don't know what side you're on in the debate, but it seems that you don't want people to find the relevant information quickly. If you think that table is biased, then add to the table so that it goes more in your favour, without deleting what others put into it. There's lots of space to add more rows and columns in there. Humanoid (talk) 15:22, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

That table is a POV magnet of enormous proportions. If you want to create a "List of evidence on the existence of Jesus", you may need an entire article List of evidence on the existence of Jesus, but in this article it will be anything but messy. Tagged accordingly. - Cwobeel (talk) 15:30, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I did consider creating a new article, but I figured I might as well start the table small within this article, and when it gets big we can split it off into a separate article. But if nobody adds to it, and it never grows, it can stay within this article. I'm also thinking of adding more modern sources, but not sure if it should be in the same table as historical sources, or a separate table in the same section. Humanoid (talk) 15:35, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Nonsense! We already have a properly-worded section called "Sources of historicity", which in turn summarizes a main article called Sources for the historicity of Jesus. Why do we need to duplicate this material even further? What does this table offer that the existing section called "Sources of historicity" does not already include? BTW you have boldly added some duplication, you have been reverted, now please remove your table until you have achieved a consensus to include it on some agreed basis. Wdford (talk) 17:51, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

• Comment I'd like to add my support to the overwhelming consensus that this should not be added, and that it is not POV. There is no such thing as "evidence on the existence of Jesus". Yes, virtually all experts agreed he existed. They arrive at that conclusion after careful studies of all available sources, I've never heard a single serious scholar claim that any one source is "evidence" in itself. We could compare with a trial where there are ten witnesses, all telling the same story but with slight variation. A judge and a jury may conclude that the none of them is completely right, some may be wrong on more details than others, but that there is a true story that is corroborated by the totality of witnesses. (This is a very common situation in courts). The same goes here. The experts agree Jesus existed, but they also agree that none of the sources can be taken at face value. Calling them "evidence" is not appropriate. All that is relevant in the suggested section is already addressed in the article, in a more NPOV way.Jeppiz (talk) 18:01, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

It looks like you are confusing the word "evidence" with the word "proof", or at least something close to proof. Those 10 witnesses you speak of, each and every one of them is providing evidence, by themselves. Look up evidence in wiktionary. Anything that is presented in support of an assertion, is evidence. Humanoid (talk) 03:05, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

People, who are interested in the truth and come to the article to find it, want to know: "Show me the evidence that jesus existed, so I can make up my own mind on whether or not he existed.". The table does exactly that, it just shows them evidence and lets them make up their own mind. The rest of the article just talks about what "scholars" think. Counting the number of times that words beginning with "scholar*" appear in the document reveals that it appears 52 times at this moment. This article is supposed to be about the "historicity of jesus", not "what christian scholars think about the historicity of jesus". Searching most other articles, like for example the wikipedia article on "quantum mechanics" shows that the word "scholar" appears zero times. That's the way a good article is written. Just give us the claims and we can make up our own mind. If you're going to keep all those references to scholars in the article, you should rename the article accordingly. The table made many things clear that is not clear in the rest of the article. Like for example, it shows that every document that claims jesus existed was written many decades after jesus supposedly died. It also makes clear that the gospels were written anonymously, which is something most people don't know. And most importantly, it lists the documents clearly and concisely, instead of having that information embedded into one of the most horribly written wikipedia articles I've ever seen. The article clearly has a pro-jesus bias, and that is clearly why there is opposition to my table in the false guise of npov. There's nothing biased or pov about the table, both people who believe jesus existed, and those who deny it, agree that the documents in the table claim that jesus existed and are evidence. (Don't confuse the word evidence for proof.) But those who delete the table want to make that information difficult to find so people are only left reading what the article says, which is about what "scholars" believe. Humanoid (talk) 03:00, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Given the existence of Sources for the historicity of Jesus, a table of evidence here would be redundant. Rklawton (talk) 03:06, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I moved the table to Sources for the historicity of Jesus. Humanoid (talk) 07:10, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

a) Thank you for removing that table.

b) The article makes it clear (including in the lead section) that the "evidence" is very weak, and that scholars are reduced to teasing out "facts" from material that is generally believed to be full of fiction - including the gospels.

c) If you feel that this is not sufficiently explicit, then please propose better wording. The lead section in particular is a result of much compromising, and can certainly be cleaned up further and focused better - so suggest a specific improvement :) Wdford (talk) 08:22, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't object to stating that there are no eyewitness accounts about Jesus, but this has to be put in the perspective that about Pontius Pilate there has been found just one lousy inscription and he was the most powerful man in that area for many years. I think that Ehrman makes this point somewhere. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:58, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

It is however rather disingenuous to make that comparison with recognising that all that was claimed about Pilate was that he was a local politician. Were it alleged that he conjured miracles and rose from the dead there would undoubtedly be a higher standard of evidence for those claims required. Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 19:18, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Roman emperors were alleged to have performed miracles; this does not mean that they did not exist. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:25, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

There are two issues - did such and such a person exist? And then, if they did, did they actually do and say the things ascribed to them? No-one believes Roman Emperors did miracles and no-one worships them on that basis, no-one bombs clinics because they clam a dead Roman Emperor told them to, so such claims are irrelevant. However, with JC the miracles and the divinity ascribed to him are central. We accept that Roman Emperors existed because there is sufficient evidence to accept that they did. We do not believe they performed miracles, because there is no evidence to support that - and as an extraordinary claim, it would require extraordinary evidence. There is less historical evidence that Jesus existed, and none that he performed miracles. so I really think the comparison is invalid. One of the problems with this article is that there seems to be some sort of inherent and totally unwarranted assumption that a scholarly consensus that Jesus PROBABLY existed as a real factual historical figure is inevitably an acceptance of the truth of all the other claims made regarding him. Of course I do understand the problem here that if one disregards the supernatural claims made of him, there would be no interest at all, or even any relevance in whether or nor he actually existed.Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 00:38, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

This is straying a bit far from Ehrman's point. Ehrman is objecting to a common argument that the Romans kept meticulous records of political and legal affairs, so Roman sources surely would have mentioned Jesus if he had actually existed. Ehrman points out that we have no detailed records of the governorship of Pontius Pilate, who was from a Roman perspective the most important person in Judea during his term in office (26–36 CE). As far as Roman literary sources, we only have a passing mention in Tacitus' Annals, written in the 2nd century CE, and as far as archaeological evidence, we have an inscription and some coins. If a powerful and wealthy governor leaves this little trace in Roman sources, why should we expect Romans to have recorded anything about Jesus, who from a Roman perspective was a nobody? (This is on pp. 72–75 of Ehrman's book.)

I agree that it is an unwarranted assumption that if Jesus probably existed, then all of the other claims about his miracleworking and resurrection should be accepted too. It's entirely possible to say that Jesus existed, but as an ordinary human being. That's the claim that most scholars who study the historical Jesus make. E.g. Crossan's claim that Jesus worked no miracles and that his body was eaten by wild dogs.

By the way, it's certainly the case that Roman emperors were worshipped—they had temples and received sacrifices, and in some stories of martyrdom Christians are condemned to death precisely because they refuse to sacrifice to the emperor. Obviously Roman imperial cult isn't an important religious practice today, but it was a pretty big deal during the first few centuries of Christianity... --Akhilleus (talk) 03:35, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

"It's entirely possible to say that Jesus existed, but as an ordinary human being. That's the claim that most scholars who study the historical Jesus make"

Then shouldn't this article reflect that? It's a rather significant distinction, isn't it? Anyone coming to this article to try to establish just what the scholarly opinion on the historicity of Jesus is (and after all, isn't this why this article exists?) wouldn't get that impression as far as I can see, and it really looks as though that is not by chance but by design.Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 04:09, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry I'm not reading the whole comment chain, but from which source are you taking this quote?Scoobydunk (talk) 06:23, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

I was commenting on the point made by Akhilleus in the previous entry in this section.Tarquin Q. Zanzibar (talk) 17:24, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Tarquin, the article should definitely not give the impression that the scholarly consensus is that Jesus truly performed miracles or was actually resurrected. Can you point out specific passages of the article that you think are problematic, so we can work on changing them? --Akhilleus (talk) 04:38, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Current "Christ Myth Theory" section is absurd.

A reader would come away with the idea that not only is there no support among scholars for the CMT, but that it was a thing that just popped up in the Soviet Union, then died out.

This is absurd. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CC00:67E0:C5C9:DBE0:1D6B:E3AE (talk) 03:13, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree. As the section stands now it's frankly unacceptable for an article that wants to be taken seriously. I'm no supporter of Christ myth theory and, while interesting, there is a lot to criticize about it. But this is absurd, and frankly misleading. There is more to it than it's history in Soviet Academia. It has a history in scholarship, literature and debate. It may not have much support in Academia at this time, which is pointed out exhaustively in the article, but it had at times more going for it than is suggested here. I have noticed before that discourse on this subject in Wikipedia is often painfully defensive. It needn't be. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 10:11, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Here is how this section now reads:

The Christ myth theory is the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels.[102] This theory has very little support among scholars.[103] The theory enjoyed brief popularity in the Soviet Union, where it was supported by Sergey Kovalev, Alexander Kazhdan, Abram Ranovich, Nikolai Rumyantsev, Robert Wipper and Yuri Frantsev.[104] Later, however, several scholars, including Kazhdan, had retracted their views about mythical Jesus and by the end of the 1980s the support for the theory became almost non-existent in Soviet academia.[105]

I am removing the entire section referencing the Soviet Union, as it is inappropriate here, and would require much more material on CMT in other regions and/or time periods, if that was the way we were going. Recognizing that there is overwhelming opinion here that wherever CMT is mentioned, it has to be characterized as having little support, I will leave that alone for now.

I ask that the section not be restored without some discussion here first as to its appropriateness.

As the information is appropriately sourced, consensus is required to remove it. You were Bold, and have been Reverted. Now we Discuss. As for my take on it, we include sourced data, whether we like it or not. Scr★pIron^IV 00:27, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for that information. I did not know that inappropriate edits are OK so long as they are appropriately sourced.

This section, as has been stated, is horribly misleading and out of balance. However, I have no interest in fighting the overlords of this article about this. Keeping this section at its current level of quality probably serves a purpose.Jrwsaranac (talk) 01:16, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Please do not think that I a supporting its existence, or that I am some overlord; I am just trying to support the rules in place for removing sourced content. Why do you think it is "absurd?" What sources do you have to refute the inclusion of this information? These are the questions we need to answer to change it. I am personally unfamiliar with the Soviet ideology (or dogma?) on the topic. Scr★pIron^IV 02:22, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I have absolutely no expertise in Soviet ideology on historicity. I assume the information on that topic contained in the article to be wholly accurate. If accuracy is the criterion for continued inclusion, then all is good. No edit necessary.Jrwsaranac (talk) 02:59, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Rather than "accuracy" it is more a question of what WP:RS reliable sources have already reported. All we do as editors is to distill the information that others have reported into concise information for an encyclopedia. Personally, we may not always agree, but we do try to be neutral. Scr★pIron^IV 03:52, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I think the real question here is one of proportion: reliable sources may have said this, but is it the most important thing to report about the subject? There is a main article, Christ myth theory, in which the reception of the theory in the Soviet Union plays only a very small part. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:55, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the way the article looks now may lead people to believe that CMT is mainly a Soviet thing. Which it wasn't. Gerard von Hebel (talk) 07:24, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

It's mainly a fringe theory which virtually all scholars dismiss with contempt. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 12:02, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The Soviet stuff should go. It's completely marginal. Paul B (talk) 12:16, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Bill the Cat 7, you repeat a common trope among editors of this page and similar. But the validity, level of acceptance, and emotions that CMT evokes from some scholars, is irrelevant to the particular issue being discussed here.Jrwsaranac (talk) 14:21, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Jrwsaranac, yep, you're right. Not sure what I was thinking but I wrote that before my morning coffee. It's true, of course, but not relevant to this thread. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 15:11, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

How about shortening it by combining the last two sentences:

The theory enjoyed brief popularity in the Soviet Union. By the end of the 1980s, however, the support for the theory became almost non-existent in Soviet academia.

If even that is considered too much, I don't have a problem with it's removal. Thoughts? Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 15:17, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Bill the Cat 7. In the absence of balancing material on the history of CMT in other regions and eras, I advocate for complete removal of the material on Soviet history. I think it is potentially appropriate in the separate article on the subject of CMT, but not here.Jrwsaranac (talk) 16:50, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

This section (as well as the rest of the article) is not good. An ultra-fringe position like "global warming denial" is given a much better summary in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.161.42.138 (talk) 07:54, 27 June 2015 (UTC)