Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Gospel of Jesus' Wife/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 10:55, 18 June 2017 [1].

Gospel of Jesus' Wife

Nominator(s): MagicatthemovieS

This article is about the Gospel of Jesus' Wife, a text which implies that Jesus was married, but that scholars believe is a modern forgery.MagicatthemovieS (talk) 02:04, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Midnightblueowl

The citations are a little all-over-the-place in terms of format. They really should be fully standardised if we are to have this as an FA. Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:58, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

Do we have any academic sources that can be cited? At present we lean very heavily on the mainstream media? For me this is a real concern and a barrier to this article reaching FA status. If there are academic sources out there, they must be used. Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:58, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk) The academic sources about this gospel are used in the article.

The use of academic sources is very few and far between; as far as I can see it, only one academic article on the subject is used, and even then it is only cited three times. That's not really enough. Midnightblueowl (talk) 15:57, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The article has a quotation in the lede: "a gospel probably written in Greek in the second half of the second century." Do we really need this quotation here, or can it just be paraphrased? Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:58, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

There is also quite a lot of direct quotation throughout he article. In many of these cases, we can paraphrase what the cited individual says just as easily. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:04, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

"the papyrus is medieval" - "medieval in origin"? Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:58, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

Both of the "Notes" contain no references to support the information contained within them. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:03, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

The first paragraph of "Provenance" is largely unreferenced. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:07, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

"then-communist East Germany" - a minor point, but the term "communist" may be regarded as misleading at this point (East Germany never regarded itself as communist per se, but rather a socialist state etc). I would cut the "then-communist". Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:07, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

"claimed that the Gospel of Jesus' Wife was real." - again, a minor point, but the artefact is of course real in that it exists. Perhaps better wording would be "was a genuine ancient text" or something like that. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:09, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

"to make The Da Vinci Code a reality" - I think it best to explain that this is a novel, as some readers will not be aware of what this is. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:10, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

"Professor Craig A. Evans of the Acadia Divinity College, suggested that the "oddly written letters" were "probably modern"." - There is no direct citation presented for this statement. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:12, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

"By the end of 2014 there was a general consensus that the papyrus was a fake"... and several sentences later "By the end of 2014, there was widespread scholarly consensus that the papyrus was "a fake."" Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:13, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

The whole "Initial evaluations" section could do with a re-organisation; at present it feels a bit all-over-the-place, jumping back and forward in time. Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:13, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. MagicatthemovieS (talk)

Oppose: Recusing as coordinator as I have a few concerns about this one. Following on from Midnightblueowl above, I would like to see a far greater use of scholarly articles, of which there are plenty, as a quick search on google reveals. There seems to have been no movement on that one, and for a topic such as this one it is essential to use scholarly sources. Also, the main article which this should be mentioning, the article by King, is currently a dead link. There are other issues:

Several statements are given citations to sources which cannot support them. "A revised version of the article appeared in the Harvard Theological Review in April 2014, together with several scientific reports on the testing of the papyrus" is sourced to the article by King, which cannot support the idea that a revised version of an earlier article was published along with other reports. And "Also in September 2012, numerous news services announced that the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, had declared the fragment counterfeit. As of 29 September 2012, all that L'Osservatore's search engine identified on the subject was part of an article dated 28 September 2012 by Professor Alberto Camplani of Sapienza University of Rome protesting against "the excessively direct link between research and journalism [which] had already occurred before the conference"." is sourced to the article which is being mentioned. I'm afraid we can't have circular referencing like this in FAs; I would even argue that this is borderline OR.
The structure is odd here: The main body begins with "After Professor King's announcement of the existence of the papyrus fragment at the International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome on 18 September 2012" without clarifying who King is, or what the papyrus is. Starting with this publication might work in a newspaper article, but it is not encyclopaedic. It would make more sense to begin with the discovery, provenance, etc.

I hope to strike this oppose as this seems an interesting article, and the kind of different topic which it is good to see at FAC. But the major point for me is sourcing. Sarastro1 (talk) 21:19, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose at this time (sorry). Some good work has gone on here but I just think that there really needs to be a far greater immersion in the academic sources. There also needs to be standardisation of the references; at present a variety of different formats are in use. I would also question the validity of certain sources, such as an article found on Scribd. Midnightblueowl (talk) 15:57, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose from IndianBio – I did correct several formatting and date issues with my edits here. However there are still outstanding issues in terms of accessdate missing, and in terms of some of the sources being used. A quick spotcheck revealed quite a bit of close paraphrasing also. Sorry I cannot support the article at this point. —IB ^{[ Poke ]} 05:37, 13 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Closing comment -- I'd like to see the issues raised by reviewers worked on outside the pressure of the FAC process, so will be archiving this shortly. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:54, 18 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 10:55, 18 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.