speaknoevil

What do people think of the Jesus-related articles on wikipedia? For example--

Jesus Myth

Cultural and historical background of Jesus

Historicity of Jesus Christ

Resurrection of Jesus Christ

orangebaw

I dont much care. Christianity is a man made religion, that's all there is to it.

Chuckling Atheist

I like Wikipedia. Most of the time, people get stuff right. And when there's an inaccuracy, someone's usually there to correct it.

It gets a bad rap unfortunately. I wouldn't make it my sole source for a given subject, but I have no qualms about using it as one of them.

Chuckling Atheist

I think any religion is a man-made device.

Roger Pearse

My experience has been rather less positive, particularly on articles where people have strong views. All the articles relating to the origins of Christianity seem to have some bigoted weenie squatting on top of them, reverting any change with which he doesn't personally agree. This makes them worthless as a representation of the hive-mind, and particularly worthless when it comes to representing educated opinion. No educated and busy person is going to waste time on an edit war with a weenie; consequently these pages reflect hearsay with bias.

I well remember seeing, in the Josephus on Jesus page, a bold statement at the top of the page that the short passage (in Ant. 20:220) was also considered controversial (copied, clearly, from some not-very-educated webpage). Both Feldman and Whealey in their surveys of the literature tell us that the authenticity of this has hardly ever been denied in scholarly circles (Emil Schurer was an exception, ca. 1900, but that's pretty much it). My attempts to correct this were met with determination that it should not be changed, and even a complaint about me changing it! I have other things to do, and eventually left them to it.

Such a process -- ignorant and bigoted people fighting for something that they in fact know nothing about in support of a political or religious opinion -- means that the content of Wikipedia must always be considered no more than hearsay at best, and quite possibly nonsense at worst.

It's better on uncontroversial stuff, which has a reasonable chance of being edited by an honest enthusiast and not corrupted by a weenie bigot.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

speaknoevil

The Josephus on Jesus article looks pretty fine to me...

Roger Pearse

No doubt. That is the problem.

All the best,

Roger Pearse