User talk:Ret.Prof/Celsus

This userspace draft on CELSUS is now complete. The proposed edits to Celsus will be submitted shortly. Please leave comments on talk page.

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Lead

There are no refs in the lead as per WP policy. Sources come later in the article.

I reverted my edit. Please fix your mistake. Ret.Prof (talk) 13:46, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

No problem, just wanted to be of help! 174.92.80.65 (talk) 13:49, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Update

The main problem is that this article is very out of date. Therefore I have used a more recent edition of Contra Celsum by Henry Chadwick. I have also added a substantial amount of new material from the following sources:

1. Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus outside the New Testament, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000. pp 64-74
2. New Catholic encyclopedia, Volume 3, Edition 2, Thomson/Gale Pub, 2003. pp 329-330
3. Frank Leslie Cross & Elizabeth A. Livingstone, "The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press, 2005. p 314
4. Craig A. Evans (ed), Encyclopedia of the historical Jesus, Publisher Routledge, 2008. pp 603-604
5. Bernhard Lang, International Review of Biblical Studies, Volume 54, Publisher BRILL, 2009. p401
6. Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of His Life and Teaching, Bloomsbury Academic, 2010. p 276

Ret.Prof (talk) 12:23, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Not actually a draft for review as we already have Celsus

as we already have Celsus. I have no idea what the purpose of 'draft' is. Dougweller (talk) 12:26, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

These are proposed edits to that article. Please carefully read Celsus then User:Ret.Prof/Celsus to see if my proposed edits are a step in the right direction - Cheers Ret.Prof (talk) 15:24, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Celsus on Jesus

The article gives the impression that Celsus exists only to provide a witness to Christianity. Everything else that is known about Celsus as a historical figure is ignored. The same is true for the current article in main space. Ignocrates (talk) 21:52, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Good point. It does need expanding. Cheers - Ret.Prof (talk) 03:27, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

There is not much written about Celsus that is not linked to his attack on Jesus and his followers. If you find any reliable source that I have missed, please let me know. - Ret.Prof (talk) 14:50, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Comments

I assume you are planning to replace the current article with this article? That is generally not a good idea, as it can be very hard for editors to work out what the changes are. Also, most of your references need to be fixed. E.g. footnote 24 is not actually linking to the page cited. It would need to be http://books.google.com/books?id=sa3DAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA21. And it's not generally accepted practice to have the highlighted text in the citation url. Finally, I would oppose the inclusion of the picture into the article, given that the Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera article says "The hypothesis is considered extremely unlikely by mainstream scholars." StAnselm (talk) 22:05, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

A few more things. There is significant original synthesis in the article, such as "if one factors out the negative bias, then this independent source provides us with indirect evidence regarding the historical Jesus". The statement "Celsus was a detached pagan observer, interested in, but with no strong feelings about, religion" is uncited, and contradicts the lead's claim that he was "anti-Christian." The stuff about "If his were the only authentic source to survive until today, and had to be read alone" is a rather dubious conditional statement. The statement in the lead that "some scholars now believe this discourse confirms much of what historians know about Jesus" is vague (which scholars?) and uncited. (Citations do not need to be in the lead, but this claim isn't cited anywhere else in the article either.) StAnselm (talk) 06:32, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Good advice! I will work on the issues you have raised. Also rest assured I am not going to "replace" the article with my version! I am going to propose my version and my edits only when there is consensus! Thanks for the taking the time to help! Cheers - Ret.Prof (talk) 12:33, 11 October 2014 (UTC)