Talk:Prophet (disambiguation)

Should Jesus be on this page?

Nobody is disputing that Jesus is considered a prophet, in both Islam and Christianity (though the Christian conception of Jesus is a bit more complex). However, this is a disambiguation page. Its purpose is to guide people to the correct article when they typed in an ambiguous name or not quite the right name. From Wikipedia:Disambiguation:

Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", what article would they realistically be expecting to view as a result? When there is no risk of confusion, do not disambiguate, or add a link to a disambiguation page."

Now, if people type in "Jesus," "Christ," "Isa," or "Yeshua" trying to get to the Jesus article, that makes perfect sense. But how many people are going to think "Huh, I want to see the article on that Jewish guy around AD 30- I guess I'll type in 'prophet'?" Most Christian literature doesn't refer to Jesus as simply "prophet" unqualified. If you ever look at Islamic literature, it is shot through with references to "The Prophet," "God's Final Prophet," "According to this hadith, The Prophet said blah...," and so on with no qualification; it's comparable to the use of "Christ" as a term for Jesus.

Plenty of books will say something like "Things looked bad for Abraham Lincoln in 1862. The president, seeking a victory, ordered Grant to press the attack in Virginia." That's just standard English; we aren't going to add "Abraham Lincoln" to President (disambiguation). Most of the Bible quotes you cite seem along these lines.

Now, if there was an article List of people considered prophets, by all means go ahead and add Jesus there. Category:Prophets is probably what you're looking for- in fact, I just added Jesus as a subcat to the "Christian Prophets" subcategory. I'll also note that Jesus is discussed in the main Prophet article. But that's not quite the point of this disambig page. SnowFire 21:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Then dump the section on this page titled "The Prophet" is sometimes used as a title for

Because "The Prophet" is sometimes used as a title used for Jesus (in the same way Muslims refer to Muhammed as "The Prophet" - the Muslim's use of this term is often backed up by refering to the same EXACT passages in the Bible that the disciples of Jesus also refered to when people asked if Jesus was "The Prophet" or when the disciples themselves confirmed for them that he was "The Prophet" foretold by Moses - the same usage of the term, as Islam's), and this sometimes usage should also qualify Jesus to be listed on this disambiguation page - and I provided biblical sources, perhaps now I should also provide secular ones as well that refer to Jesus as "The Prophet"? If you'd like I can submit this issue for a mediation review. I will readd Jesus to the list unless you want to make the section which I am including him in, a bit more specific which would exclude him. inigmatus 02:08, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The "sometimes" is a sop to the fact that you can, in fact, refer to Muhammad as Muhammad and so on. It doesn't change the fundamental disambiguation page standards, which are not "let's free-associate with the title-" only significant possibilities are included, so as not to have ginormous and useless pages of everything. How many people, searching for Jesus, would go to the prophet page- and then conclude not to read the section on religious prophets, click on the "For other uses" disambig page, then come here?

Also, secular sources are not needed; Christian sources that constantly refer to Jesus as a prophet would certainly suffice. I am simply not sold on the fact that this is a significant enough appellation. Take one of your cites for example, Acts 3:30-24:

Moses said, “The Lord your God will raise up for you from your own people a prophet like me. You must listen to whatever he tells you.

This is merely calling Jesus a prophet. Lots of people are called prophets- they do not go on the disambig page! Otherwise we'd have to add Jesus to Carpenter (disambiguation), because he is called a carpenter as well. And we'd have to add Britney Spears to Singer (disambiguation), and "Row Row Your Boat" to Song (disambiguation)... Like I said before, this is valid for a List of people considered prophets article. I am still unconvinced that if I walk into church on Sunday and refer to "the prophet's teaching," I may well get asked "which one" as opposed to having it automatically obvious (as in Islam).

Lastly, even if we do keep "Jesus" on the page, you needn't be so defensive about sticking all those cites right there; it reads oddly. You can just easily have that commented out for editors to note when considering removal.

I went ahead and put a request in over at Wikipedia:Third opinion; seems more productive than having a minor revert war. SnowFire 03:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Third opinion

I am here from third opinion, my opinion is that anyone who was verifiably known as a prophet should be included in this page even if the term prophet is not in their common title. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 03:58, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd just like to point out that from looking at Category:Prophets, that would imply that we'd need to add ~35 people from Islamic Prophets, ~28 people from Biblical Prophets, and 17 people from the Book of Mormon. Now consider that those categories are almost certainly woefully incomplete, and there are plenty of prophets of other "minor" religions that aren't included. I think that there is a distinct difference between a list of these prophets and a disambiguation page for when somebody just wanted the book. SnowFire 05:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can always put the book at the top. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what to say other than that there is a qualitative difference between "different senses of a word" and "things that can be described by the word." This difference is reflected in Wikipedia by disambiguation pages vs. lists. List of Particles is linked from the Particle disambiguation page, but it is not replicated in its entirety there. Chord can refer to a musical chord or a line segment on a curve; that's different senses of the word. However, there is not a list of A, A#, Ab, B, Bb, even if articles on all the musical chords existed. This is made very clear in the Disambiguation page guidelines. SnowFire 22:23, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My third opinion: The page needs a link to Category:Prophets and any references to specific prophets in that category should be removed from this disambiguation page. -Amatulic 21:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, good idea. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 00:19, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very good idea. I support it. Snowfire is right, listing every person known to religions who are called "The Prophet" on the disambig page would unnecessarily clutter it. I was in favor of removing the section listing Muhammed and Jesus altogether from the page, but I think removing the section in favor of a link to Category:Prophets is an awesome idea, and I support this compromise offer. Snowfire, what do you think? inigmatus 02:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the only problem with including a link to the category is that to my knowledge Category links break on some mirrors, so direct links to them should be used with some hesitancy. That said, it is perhaps the best compromise. I used the self-reference tag; see Template talk:Selfref as to why.

As for Muhammad, I would be in favor of keeping him not because he is a prophet, but because he is very often referred to as just the Prophet. A quick glance at Wikipedia over at Islamic_views_of_Muhammad#In speaking and writing mentions how

Muhammad is often referenced with titles of praise:

Al Mustafa, "the chosen one"
Al Rasul, "the Messenger"
Al Nabi, "the Prophet"

And goes on to offer some more common titles. I'm not an expert on Islam, but I have read some books on it as well as the Qu'ran. Like I said before, Islamic writing is simply shot through with references to "The Prophet" meaning Muhammad, as is Islamic speech to my knowledge. I went over to Category:Islamic books and picked one at random, coming up with Bahishti Zewar. Luckily, there happens to be a full translation linked online- look at [1], and you can see references to "prophets" as well as "the Prophet." Sure, this page references him just as "the Prophet Muhammad" sometimes as well as other prophets, but hopefully this should give an impression that referring to The Prophet with a capital P in Islam really does mean Muhammad. I've seen other books with a ratio of more like 80%-20% of other titles vs. just "the Prophet." SnowFire 04:10, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tenskwatawa

I think this page should completely redirect to 1)Tenskwatawa and then a second redirect to 2) Prophet. While the other people on this page are called "Prophet" or "The Prophet _____" Tenskwatawa is the only one who is consistently and historically referenced simply as "The Prophet." This distinction should only be made for the capitalized "T" in "The Prophet" so as to distinguish his proper noun name from the word or adjective form of prophet (both of which are not capitalized). Should any other inadequicy arise from this decision (such as the discovery of a second figure consistently referenced as "The Prophet" without a second proper noun or adjective to distinguish him/her), we should place a third redirect to that person's name on "The Prophet" page.

--Chopin-Ate-Liszt! 07:50, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]