Talk:Incident at Antioch

Removed a sentence

This is the sentence I removed: The subject of Gentiles and the Torah was also debated among Jewish leaders, the result being the doctrine of the Seven Laws of Noah and the determination that "Gentiles may not be taught the Torah". I removed it because I believe it was placed there to slander Paul, as if he wanted to hide the Law from the Gentiles. If you read the article they cited, it specifically says the phrase "Gentiles may not be taught the Torah" is inferred from the Talmud, not from Paul's letters. On the contrary, Paul quotes the Old Testament 183 times, which seems to show his support of revealing the Law to the Gentiles, although not for salvatory reasons. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Glorthac (talk • contribs) 01:10, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, all that's required is some clarification to address your concerns, no need to blank an entire paragraph over some misunderstandings. 75.0.10.181 (talk) 16:52, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Credit where due

Idea for this article was originally suggested back in 2006 [2] by another editor. I only stumbled across the suggestion recently, but I concur with it-- the Incident at Antioch is a fascinating subject of study and it should ultimately form a nice subarticle of Paul of Tarsus. --Alecmconroy (talk) 10:04, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good title. At the very least we should get rid of the initial "the". Also, there must have been loads of incidents at Antioch over the centuries, as an important city. It could be "Christian-centric" to describe this as THE incident there. PatGallacher (talk) 12:51, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll give this title the benefit of the doubt but the initial "the" is not normal for Wikipedia articles. PatGallacher (talk) 19:47, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Google "Incident at Antioch" and see what comes up. 75.0.10.181 (talk) 17:05, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Resist projecting later disputes onto this incident

As this article moves forward, it's inevitable that post-first-century debates are going to affect the content of this article (as Incident at Antioch has been part of those debates).

Insofar as possible, though, let's try to maintain a clarity between the "present" context in which the incident took place, and the "meaning of the incident", which continues though history. Instead, maybe those observations belong in a "ramifications" or "implications" or "interpretations" section or something.

What prompted me saying all this was the use of the term "Cafeteria Christianity" as a see also in the summation of Jewish Christian perspectives. It's a good term, I don't want to remove it because it does a good job of conveying that side of the argument (which I think to our readers is going to be the harder of the two to understand, since most modern Christians don't keep kosher.)

But, the danger is just to remember not to let these analogies or later debates intrude too much into the actual description of the event. Which is very hard, because just about every christian religious group since this debate has interpreted the ancient event through the lens of their own theological understanding.

For example-- is it appropriate to say that any of paul's contemporaries viewed him as advocating Antinomianism? I'm going to guess "yes", but I don't know if that's true. It's certainly not far fetched, but Paul is so different from, say, Marcion that I don't know if it's accurate to say Paul was accused of Antinomianism at the time, even though he's certainly been accused of that in later times by various groups.

Anyone know of any good quotes or references that summarize the "Judaizers" (Paul's Contemporaries) point of view? --Alecmconroy (talk) 19:25, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Sure, here's one:

"And some people coming down from Judea started teaching the brothers: "If you aren't circumcised by the custom of Moses, you can't be saved." There being no little division and argument between them and Paul and Barnabas, they arranged for Paul and Barnabas and a few more of them to go see the apostles and elders up in Jerusalem about this argument." —Acts 15, Andy Gaus translation.

Here's another one from the Jewish Encyclopedia: Circumcision of Proselytes:

"The issue between the Zealot and Liberal parties regarding the circumcision of proselytes remained an open one in tannaitic times; R. Joshua asserting that the bath, or baptismal rite, rendered a person a full proselyte without circumcision, as Israel, when receiving the Law, required no initiation other than the purificative bath; while R. Eliezer makes circumcision a condition for the admission of a proselyte, and declares the baptismal rite to be of no consequence (Yeb. 46a)."

75.0.10.181 (talk) 17:21, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Authenticity of 2 Peter

Simply googling this subject reveals that the vast majority of scholars deny authenticity, not just some. Even orthodox scholars freely admit this, though they disagree with this majority view. Per WP:BRD the consensus text needs to be restored. Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:22, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

No, you can't appeal to BRD to keep the word "majority", since the whole sentence is a recent addition. Having said that, "some" is a terrible word - I think we should have "most". StAnselm (talk) 22:28, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Recent? I think it's been in there for more than a year. Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:30, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

No, I was referring to this edit made yesterday. StAnselm (talk) 22:32, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Oops, I must have mistaken this edit with another one I saw yesterday. Never mind the BRD argument then. I still disagree with this edit, as does the Wikipedia article on 2 Peter. I'm not sure we should change vast majority to most if the sources say vast majority. I think you'd object to that if we did the same thing with Ehrman on the historicity of Jesus. Not saying most would be terrible. And for balance we can certainly cite some scholars who disagree. Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:35, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

There is one source that says "vast majority". I wouldn't want to get caught up with the authorship issue in this article - that is why I added the wikilink. And I still think "most" is a good compromise position. StAnselm (talk) 23:00, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

I chose the word "some" because my source chose the word "some". The OSB itself does not maintain any certainty about authorship (though it does about canonicity). It cites the internal evidences that would support Peter's authorship, but acknowledges that "some modern scholars" still think it is pseudonymous. I cannot speak to why they said "some"; I don't know. And I can't say I have a personal view about how many scholars think it's pseudonymous; I don't know that with any certainty either. One scholar or one editor may have a conflicting view, but I was clear in my edit that the source's wording was "some", and that the source was produced by a substantial group of Orthodox scholars. It is also clear that Daniel Wallace (the other source here) acknowledges the evidence of Peter's authorship that the OSB points out. In these two sources, there is agreement wider than any discrepancy. We're really not at odds about authorship. The issue is the weight of scholarly opinion about authorship. So, I think there needs to be something more to indicate that a stronger word than "some" is warranted here. An editing consensus is of course what we're looking for, but only after we have sufficient indications of scholarly consensus. And that is why the sentence added yesterday was overstatement. Evensteven (talk) 00:21, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm also not seeking to go down a sectarian road, but it may well be that there is view in Orthodox scholarship that is not shared widely in Protestant scholarship (it happens), and I don't know where Catholic scholarship or official positions lie. If we find those kinds of dichotomies are in evidence, though, it might be easier here in resolving how to state scholarly opinion, to resort to identifying the groupings instead of the weight, neutrally of course. My reading of the OSB does reveal an affinity for Petrine authorship, but again, not insistence. If Orthodox scholarship were firm or uniform about authorship itself, I would expect the OSB to have said so. Evensteven (talk) 00:39, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, re activating this. To what extent is it legitimate to quote Wikipedia itself, as the 2 Peter article says 'most' and the Authorship of the Petrine epistles article says 'great majority'. The sources could be reposted, eg Ehrman and Brown's respective summations of the balance of scholarship, but that seems like overkill. If 'critical scholarship' or 'academic scholarship' helps, then that could be used.Matruman (talk) 23:55, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

It's not really legit to quote WP. But if the same basic statement is made in two articles, backed up by sources, I see no problem with re-using the sources for that statement in both places. It is not redundant to do so. No reader of one article can be expected to search around WP for sources that back up statements in another article. And a reliable source is a reliable source is a reliable source. No overkill. For purposes of source backing, each article is its own entity. Evensteven (talk) 05:32, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the help on that. The two sources in the 2 Peter article are Brown, who says it is the book which is most certain to be pseudepigraphical, and Ehrman, who says "most critical scholars". Given that it is a smallish point in this article, I'd propose changing "some" to "most critical scholars" and referencing Ehrman? Although, FWIW, Brown's Intro to the NT has Catholic imprimatur and nihil obstat.

You're welcome. And your approach sounds reasonable to me. Since the changes would refer back to both sources, I'd be sure both are in there. Evensteven (talk) 18:11, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Hm. There seems to have been agreement amongst editors as of 12 Nov 2014 that "most critical scholars" would be the most accurate characterization, but the entry currently has "some" and the "dubious/discuss" tag is (still? again?) attached. Is there any reason I should not move on the consensus position above? Mikalra (talk) 23:38, 15 November 2016 (UTC)