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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Katolophyromai (talk | contribs) at 17:04, 11 November 2018 (→John overtly influenced by Platonism?: adding reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Source Vetting and the Challenges of Writing an Article on a Living Religion

Right now this article does its damnedest to portray Christianity as an exceptional religion that somehow appeared in a vacuum, exactly followed it scriptural narrative, and had no influence from the world around it. It stands as an example of how writing about Christianity in the west presents unique challenges: How many of these "scholarly sources" are in fact defenses of the religion—in this case Christianity—that the author holds? How many of these sources are from Christian institutions? How many of these sources are actually from people working in relevant fields, such as folkloristics, rather than theology and religious studies? This is a real issue with this article as well as Christ myth theory, another minefield of an article. Right now this article is a total mess. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:12, 10 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You are bang on the money :bloodofox:! This article is a joke. Every single opening paragraph ends with a statement that "most historians disagree ..." or similar. The citations are rubbish; they state things like "surely everyone agrees ...", while others are just the opinion of a single person (e.g. Richard Carrier), who was obviously included purely on the grounds that he subscribes to the views presented in the article. The reasoning being that if Richard even agrees, then it must be true! Disaster.
Why do these editors insist on helping the critics of Wikipedia. If we cannot write (or let others write) objectively about things we don't necessarily agree with, then WP will never be taken seriously.
There should be one "Critics" section at the bottom of this article in which objections to the Jesus Myth theory could be placed, with their citations properly reviewed! Imagine if every WP article was like this one, and you were trying to read about the moon landing for example, and were constantly interrupted with advertising from critics. HappyGod (talk) 05:48, 13 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the above comments. This is the single worst article I've read on Wikipedia. No attempt is made at all to adopt a neutral point of view. It's nonsensical. Liamcalling (talk) 01:08, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not to get too echo-ey here, but have to agree with the above. I was curious about the subject, came here, and am left feeling like I need to look elsewhere to get any sort of useful academic view on the subject. 92.238.177.129 (talk) 10:55, 1 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Close Paraphrasing/Identical content

The passage about Porters stance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_in_comparative_mythology#Ancient_Egypt) is identical to one on the Gerald Massey Article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Massey#Criticism). This may constitute Close Paraphrasing as described in the wikipedia guidelines, although it is not paraphrased, but more or less identical. As one cannot edit this article, maybe an admin can look over this issue. (79.255.192.47 (talk) 13:01, 24 September 2015 (UTC))[reply]

Requested move 18 December 2015

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move per request. In a descriptive title like this one, we normally use the parent article's title, unless it would be confusing in context. Here, it is difficult to even imagine a scenario where a person would find Jesus to be ambiguous without Christ appended.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 19:21, 27 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Jesus Christ in comparative mythology → Jesus in comparative mythology – I would've thought this would be sufficiently uncontroversial to do it myself, but a move to this title was reverted a few years ago, referring to talk page discussion. There hasn't been an RM, though some discussion in Archive 1 shows the rationale for "Christ" being that the article discusses Jesus as Messiah. But so do many Jesus articles. I don't think that's a good reason to deviate from the parent article, Jesus, or WP:CONCISE. --BDD (talk) 18:53, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Nomination for Review of Neutrality

Just an anonymous reader browsing, but I agree with the earlier talk. Worst bias I have personally ever seen on Wikipedia. There is a noticeable lack of inclusion of the mythology of a variety of religions in addition to previously noted issues. If this is an article attempting to compare the mythological life of christ to the lives of other god/martyr figures throughout history, a broader series of topics than the 6 most cherrypicked and disputable instances might be a good idea. Fully agreee with below talk, this article reads like scholars nearly universally agree christ was unique and christianity didn't borrow any themes from his life from other places. That's simply not factual in any way whatsoever. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.37.92.31 (talk) 05:06, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The examples described in this article are the ones that are most commonly cited by supporters of the Christ Myth theory, which has been universally rejected by mainstream scholarship. Real scholars have examined stories about Jesus in the context of comparative mythology, but they agree on several factors:
  1. Behind all the mythological elaborations, Jesus was a real historical figure, which means that the basic details of his life are historical, not mythological (i.e. he really did come from Nazareth, he really was baptized by John the Baptist, he really was crucified under the orders of Pontius Pilate, and so on).
  2. Early Christians drew on Jewish mythology in their creation of new stories about Jesus, not on pagan myths. For example, the reason why Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew gives his first sermon on a mountain, but, in the Gospel of Luke, he gives it on a plain, is because the Gospel of Matthew is intentionally trying to portray Jesus as a "new Moses" and, according to the Book of Exodus, Moses received the Ten Commandments atop Mount Sinai. The flight into Egypt from the Gospel of Matthew and subsequent return to Judaea is clearly modeled on the story of the Exodus. Likewise, the story of the Annunciation from the Gospel of Luke is based on the account in the Book of Judges where the Angel of the Lord tells Samson's mother about the coming birth of her son, Samson.
If we want to improve this article, it should focus less on the whole "Christ Myth" conspiracy theory that Jesus was actually secretly a pagan god-man who was adapted by early Christians (an idea which has been rejected by scholars) and instead focus on how early Christians modeled some of their stories about Jesus on stories found in the Old Testament. --Katolophyromai (talk) 10:53, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This is a notice to let everyone know that I am planning on probably significantly revising much of this article and expanding it. I do not know how soon this will be or how long it will take, because I am probably going to be much busier for the next month or so than I have been for the past few months, which means I will most likely have less time to spend editing here on Wikipedia. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:38, 23 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Katolophyromai. I recommend rewriting this article from scratch. It's not worth your time now (or in the future) to deal with the many barbed problems that the current article presents and promotes. I also suggest that you look first and foremost to classicists and anthropologists of religion for information on this topic rather than, say, theologians. Comparisons between New Testament narratives surrounding Jesus and, say, Dionysus and Prometheus are not at all uncommon, and would be (and are) pretty obvious to a classical audience (or an audience trained in classical studies). Introductory texts in some current classical studies programs make the comparisons pretty clear as well.
For example, ignoring my bookshelf, a quick Google Books search returns scores scholars in classical studies mentioning strong correspondences between Jesus and Dionysus in peer-reviewed works published by university presses (just a quick example: "The correspondence of Christianity and mystery religions of antiquity are perhaps more startling than their differences. Orpheus and Christ share attributes in the early centuries of our era, Dionysus has most in common with the figure of Christ ... Indeed, the association of Christ with the vine frequently led to the use of the myths and attributes of Dionysus in early Christian iconography." (link)). After all, syncretism and diffusion are simply facts of human life.
Currently, Wikipedia is treating this as pretty fringe topic — largely a result of leaning on theologians rather than, say, classicists — and it shouldn't stay that way. We also need a topic discussing what influence this constant discourse has had since, say, the Enlightenment. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:31, 26 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've just pulled a section on divine birth. It seemed to be defending something but it didn't come out and say what it was: was the goal to highlight Jesus's birth from a sky god — Yahweh — and Mary, a mortal woman, as somehow incomparable to the union of Zeus and Semele that produced Dionysus? Of course, Dionysus narratives are frequently compared to Jesus narratives in classical studies, including narratives about their births and early lives. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:38, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The section is not "defending" anything. It is talking about similarities and differences between Jesus and classical mythology. The story of the virgin birth of Jesus was invented independently by the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (or the independent sources they relied upon) in order to fulfill the mistranslated Greek Septuagint version of Isaiah 7:14, which states that a "virgin" (parthenos) will conceive and give birth to a son. The story is rooted in Jewish tradition, not Greek mythology. Early Christians believed that Jesus was conceived without sexual intercourse, which is completely different from how demigods in classical mythology were typically conceived: as the result of a physical union between an anthropomorphic god and a mortal woman. I am planning to add an explanation of the story's Jewish background to the article, but I have not had time yet.
I do not know what your background or intentions are, but there is an enormous quantity of fringe material that has been written on this subject, mostly by untrained amateurs, based on extremely vague and often exaggerated similarities. I certainly will not deny that Christian perceptions of Jesus (especially in later times) were influenced by pagan mythology, but there are a lot of comparisons out there that simply are not valid and are not accepted by mainstream scholars. It will be necessary to provide rebuttals.
In reply to your earlier comment about not using "theologians" as sources, I will briefly comment that the word "theologian" is a highly specific term which fringe theorists have often misapplied as a pejorative to anyone who studies the New Testament, including - for completely inexplicable reasons - critical New Testament historians of the higher criticism variety, who have, ironically, been denigrated for over a century by evangelical Christian apologists as the emissaries of Satan sent to discredit the scriptures. I will be using classical scholars as sources in this article (I already have quite extensively), but, for the parts dealing with the life of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels I will be relying primarily on reputable New Testament scholars, who are, after all, the ones who have spent their lives studying this subject. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:18, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, also, (This is really nitpicky, but it will bother me if I do not say it.) Yahweh was not a "sky god"; he was a national god, which is a kind of deity specific to the ancient Near East. Although Yahweh did eventually absorb some sky god aspects from the chief god El and the storm god Baal, these were always secondary to his primary role as the national protector of the people of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:27, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
First, the section I remove made not a single mention of Jesus. I ask for the courtesy of close attention to what I'm doing and saying. As I said, scholars frequently discuss the many shared similarities between narratives surrounding the lives of Dionysus and Jesus. After all, the New Testament is a byproduct of the classical world, and the circumstances of Dionysus's birth are so unique that the comparison between the two are obvious. A sky god impregnating a mortal woman and producing a demigod was hardly unknown in the classical world, the exact mechanisms in this particular narrative aside. There's plenty of scholarship pointing this out to draw from for this article.
And so follows my second point: I did not say that we should not cite theologians. I said we should be focused on classicists and I'm glad we agree on that point. However, I need to point out that the term theologian is in fact used in the academic world, and there's ultimately a big difference between a theologian and a classicist. This difference is amplified when a theologian is strongly affiliated with, say, an institution like Liberty University. We should be noting scholar backgrounds and identities wherever possible.
As anyone who has followed my work here for the past decade or so knows, I don't bother to discuss fringe sources unless I'm removing them or inserting material discussing them. This is why you'll note that I repeatedly mention classical studies and not someone on the internet :).
Regarding Yahweh — regardless of earlier strata, by this point the concept of Yahweh was long intermixed with El and other notable contemporaries, and thus the sky associations are pretty clearly pronounced. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:40, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The paragraph you removed was the beginning of one of the new sections I am starting. I had not had a chance yet to fully develop it.
I did not say that "theologian" was not a real academic term; it is very much so. I was just saying that it has often been misapplied by people who are unaware of New Testament historical criticism, which is the most relevant field for much of the information in this article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:49, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies for jumping the gun there, in that case. If you're developing paragraphs in a draft page, I'd be glad to help out where and when possible, by the way. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:55, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Another point that might be worth making is that it is only in the later gospels that Jesus first becomes seen as the literal "son of God." He is described as the "son of God" in the earlier gospels, but this is intended figuratively, in the same way that King David is described as the "son of God" in the Book of Psalms. Jews during this time period applied the title to anyone who was seen as especially close to God or like a son to Him, but they did not believe that He was actually capable of having literal offspring. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:15, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sandmel

@Bloodofox: Sandmel's criticism of comparisons between Jesus and pagan figures is not at all fringe. I hope I do not offend you when I say that I am getting a distinct impression that you are very unfamiliar with New Testament scholarship. The fact is that it is generally agreed that pagan influence on Christianity comes only from the later strata of the religion, after it had become a predominantly Gentile religion largely detached from its original Jewish roots (a shift which happened in the late first century after the Synoptic Gospels were written). Thus, the gospels of Mark and Matthew are usually thought to be either totally free from pagan influence or, if there are pagan influences in them, they are not observable. Instead, the primary influence on them is Jewish tradition. The Gospel of Matthew in particular is known for its markedly Jewish character and it was at one point used by the Ebionites, an early sect of Judaizing Christians. The Gospel of Luke is a bit more of an open question, with some scholars arguing that, in this gospel, Jesus may be starting to show some features of a pagan divine-man; this is, of course, still disputed. The Gospel of John was definitely influenced by Platonism and it may have also been influenced to some extent by Greco-Roman paganism, though even this is still hotly disputed. The parallels between Dionysus and the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospel of John that you refer to are indeed a legitimate area of scholarly inquiry, but it is by no means widely accepted that the Gospel of John was influenced by Dionysus. (Indeed, many scholars have proposed equally credible explanations that the wine imagery in the gospel may simply be based on passages from the Old Testament.)

Furthermore, what Sandmel is actually criticizing is not the study of legitimate pagan influence on later Christianity, but rather the massive quantity of material that has been produced - primarily by a regrettable strand of remarkably shoddy scholarship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as some more recent writings produced by amateurs - adducing wildly exaggerated parallels to Jesus based on even slightest superficial similarities (or even sometimes completely nonexistent ones). The "parallelomania" he describes has largely been expelled from mainstream scholarship, but it is still very common among supporters of the fringe Christ Myth theory, who often invent and exaggerate parallels far beyond reality. One representative example of this trend described by Maurice Casey is the notion propounded by some Christ Myth theorists that the word "Christ" is somehow derived from the Sanskrit name of the Hindu god Krishna, despite the fact that "Christ" is an ordinary Greek word meaning "anointed one" that existed long before Jesus and it already has a completely mundane etymology unrelated to Krishna. Another example is the interpretation of a story in which Krishna is killed by being shot through the heel as some kind of crucifixion. Even for the deities who may have legitimately influenced later Christian views on Jesus, there are still all kinds of wild speculations. For instance, there is credible reason to think that Egyptian portrayals of Isis nursing Horus may have influenced Christian depictions of the Virgin Mary nursing Jesus, but, aside from this (at least as far as I am currently aware), there is no evidence to support the idea that any of the other supposed parallels between them that have been propounded over the years thanks to the humorous ineptitude of Gerald Massey have any veracity behind them. --Katolophyromai (talk) 01:28, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Also, keep in mind this article is still very much a work in progress. Any issues you see in the current version may very well be ones that I am aware of and am planning to address in further revisions. --Katolophyromai (talk) 01:46, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'll sidestep what appears to be a personal attack and, again, ask that you look closely at what I've written. First, the section from the article reads as follows:
In a 1962 article, Samuel Sandmel, a Jewish rabbi and professor of Bible and Hellenistic literature at the Hebrew Union College, criticizes attempts to argue that the portrayal of Jesus in the gospels was directly influenced by pagan mythological figures, stating that such arguments are flawed and based solely on vague similarities.
This includes the Gospel of John. We then launch into a section discussing how scholars have identified strong parallels with preexisting narratives regarding Dionysus in the very same gospel. Sandmel is indeed the odd man out here. This stuff from Sandmel used to be in the lead of the article. I don't see why this obscure article from the 1960s is still so prominently positioned in the article.
In fact, I'd argue that a lot of the defenses against Christ-as-entirely-myth stuff needs to be sectioned off into its own article. This isn't what this article is about, and right now the article looks like more of an attack on that position than a straightforward discussion of narratives surrounding Jesus.
Third, the current structure of the article is confusing for the author and, I'd argue, wrong-headed. We need to be approaching narratives regarding Jesus in a chronological manner, from early non-biblical accounts, to biblical accounts, to medieval folklore, and into modern popular culture, tackling topics like attempts at modern era Christians to remove what they deem to be the "myth" versus "fact", full-throttle evangelical stuff, and pop culture stuff like Zeitgeist. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:31, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, I apologize for my initial comment; you have done a fantastic job with all our Norse mythology articles and I was merely stating that the historical background of the New Testament does not seem to be your area of expertise. My plan from the very beginning has been to write this article primarily as a history of mythological developments and influences on Christian views of Jesus in chronological order with a section at the end about general parallels (i.e. similarities that are probably not the result of direct influence) at the end. My writing process is a bit disorganized, however, and I tend to write articles a few paragraphs at a time, adding material in as I go along. The current structure is a temporary stand-in until I compose more material to fill in the parts that are missing. I think that it will be necessary to refute the Christ Myth theory in some places, since that is what most people will jump to when they hear "Jesus in comparative mythology," but I will try to limit mention of it. (It is worth noting that the original title of this article was "Jesus as myth" and it was essentially a redundant fork of the article Christ Myth theory, which is why the previous revision of the article talked about the Christ Myth theory so much.) --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:13, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(wandering in from Egypt) If I may interject something, Katolophyromai's characterization of NT scholarship seems to be correct, based on my very general understanding of it, but I'd like to point out a possible source that pushes back a little against the scholarly consensus: Iesus Deus (2014) by M. David Litwa. I've never gotten around to reading it, and not every connection between Jesus and paganism is "mythology" per se, but it does at least seem to address the nativity stories' resemblance to divine birth myths. And it's not a fringe book, having been reviewed by James Dunn and Larry Hurtado. Litwa's views may not be a significant enough minority viewpoint to include here—you'd have to know the field better than I do in order to say—but I thought it was worth mentioning. A. Parrot (talk) 03:07, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Heavy Reliance on Bart D. Ehrman

I'm noticing a very heavy reliance on works by Bart D. Ehrman, a theologian. This is particularly notable so far in our section on Mithras. Ehrman is by no means a specialist on the topic of Mithras and classical mystery cults, and I believe that we should be using superior sources than Ehrman's general audience-aimed book length argument for the historicity of Jesus (Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, notably published by HarperCollins's HarperOne imprint rather than an academic press).

There exists many, many peer-reviewed works by classicists on this topic and the general topic of mystery religions in the classical world and their influence on Christianity, and I see no evident reason to lean so strongly into Ehrman's book. Surely we can do a lot better. Additionally, when scholars interject opinions, we must be very careful about attributing those opinions to maintain neutrality. I've noticed a few incidents where that hasn't been the case so far in this article. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:17, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Bloodofox: Ehrman is a widely respected expert on early Christianity who has written dozens of both scholarly and popular works on the subject. He is not a "theologian" in any traditional sense of the word; he is a secular agnostic. In fact, his strongest critics are all Christians who accuse him of being anti-Christian. He describes himself as a "historian," not a "theologian," a descriptor which is clearly borne out by his works, which are almost all about history, rather than theology (which is hardly surprising, considering that he does not believe in God). The worst criticism I have read about him from other scholars is that a few have accused him of merely parroting the scholarly consensus in his popular works, which, for our purposes, is actually a good thing. There is no rational excuse for why he would not be considered a reliable source. --Katolophyromai (talk) 00:30, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! Well, looking at Ehrman's CV, it appears that he is indeed a theologian, regardless of how he'd prefer to phrase it (Ehrman, for example, received his PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary). Whatever the case he's certainly not a classicist, and for discussion regarding classical mythology and classical mystery cults, I believe we should be referring to scholars in classical studies, preferably in peer-reviewed works. Currently Ehrman is cited dozens of times in this article. In time, I'll go through the article and bring in superior, peer-reviewed sources to replace Ehrman's general audience book. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:14, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
His background is in theology, but he can hardly be considered a "theologian" since he does not believe in any kind of deity and the fundamental assumption behind the entire field of theology is that a Deity of some kind exists. Here is an article Ehrman wrote on his blog about the relationship between Bible criticism and history: [1]. In any case, I will admit it is probably better to cite an expert on Mithraic cult for information about the cult itself, but, for information about the cult's relationship to early Christianity, it is perfectly acceptable, and indeed necessary, to cite scholars on early Christianity. (Ehrman's expertise includes the history of Christianity up to the fourth century, as he himself even mentions in the article I link to here.) I do not understand your insistence that we should only cite classicists and not scholars on early Christianity, since this article is at least equally as much about early Christianity as it is about classical antiquity. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:25, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I'm afraid that's not quite accurate. One does not need to maintain any specific religious beliefs to gain entry to any academic field, which includes theology (as controversial as the field may be). For example, see Wikipedia's own category on atheist theologians. Classicists are authorities on classical culture, whereas theology is a far shakier field in this regard. We are therefore wise to turn to classicists when discussing figures such as Mithras or Dionysus, and we should really be sticking to peer-reviewed stuff as a rule of thumb, as I suggest above. The bar is far higher for peer-reviewed works than otherwise, particularly in a field like classical studies. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:53, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have added citations to a work solely devoted to the Mithraic Cult, published by the Oxford University Press, to support the information in the section. Nonetheless, I still insist that Ehrman is a completely reliable source of information about early Christianity and its relations to other religions. I do not think it should alter his level of credibility depending on whether you happen to consider him a "theologian" or a "historian." (I personally still insist that "historian" is a far more accurate descriptor, since history is what he primarily concerns himself with.)
By the way, you keep talking about "peer-reviewed" works, but technically books do not undergo peer-review; that is only for journal articles. Instead, academic books are checked for accuracy by their respective publishers, not usually by a panel of the author's peers. If the publisher does send a book to be checked by the author's peers, they usually only send out a representative sample, not the whole book. (see, for instance, [2], [3], and [4]). They do undergo a fact-checking process, but it is nothing like a traditional peer-review as most people often think of it. I found this out the hard way also, when another user explained this to me during a particularly intense argument after I mistakenly referred to academic books as undergoing "peer review." I just thought I would let you know this for future reference. I understand perfectly well that you are referring to books published by reputable academic publishers. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:02, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Katolophyromai: I've been through this process with an academic press myself. From experience, your description is correct. The key point is that, generally speaking, beyond that early peer review (which usually consists of a few chapters, an outline, and a few other items), the fact-checking process is generally a lot more thorough than with non-academic presses. Some presses are far more hands-on than others. That said, that initial peer-review can make a big difference in the final product. All things considered, we're best off sticking to peer-reviewed articles wherever possible. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:06, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I will agree with that. I understood what you meant. --Katolophyromai (talk) 22:10, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Alan Dundes

@Katolophyromai:, I'd like to thank you for bringing in material by Alan Dundes on this topic. It's something I've been meaning to do. I think we should consider bringing in some of his commentary regarding the approaches of theologians and folklorist neglect of this material, as he makes some unique and very on-topic points. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:22, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am highly skeptical about placing full trust in Dundes for anything, since (1) he is folklorist, not a New Testament scholar or historian of early Christianity (or even a classicist for that matter), and (2) his works interpret essentially everything through a very, very Freudian lens, which sometimes leads him to bizarre, highly fringe conclusions, such as that Jesus's resurrection is, in fact, a symbolic for him regaining an erection and that it represents a triumph over his father and him fulfilling his secret desire to have sex with his mother, the Virgin Mary. Nonetheless, I will see what I can make of him. Some of his work might be useful, if supported by other works. --Katolophyromai (talk) 00:09, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your concerns about Dundes's fondness for psychoanalysis. It's not something I'm particularly fond of myself, and it falls outside of the topic of this article, anyway (it's not exactly comparative mythology).
That said, Dundes remains a major and highly influential figure in folkloristics, and while we shouldn't lean on him at every turn, his comparisons and discussions in the lens of folkloristics (myth being a genre of folklore, after all), merits inclusion. I'll take a closer look at the piece. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:22, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think Dundes ought to be fine as a source, as long as he is cited critically and in light of what other scholars have written on the subject. (After all, I already cite Károly Kerényi, whose early work on Greek mythology is terrific, but whose later work sort of went off the Jungian deep end.) I think I will mention Dundes's argument that Jesus fits the mold of an archetypal folk hero, which is mentioned in several of my other sources (although not quite as much as Sandmel's article on "parallelomania", which is mentioned by a considerable number of them as well). I will, however, have to note that other scholars have criticized Dundes's analysis of Jesus as flawed, since he takes unrelated stories from different gospels and meshes them together syncretically without apparently realizing that the four gospels all portray Jesus in radically different ways. --Katolophyromai (talk) 22:17, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Remove Christmas

I propose removing the Birthdate section of this article. There has never been notable mythology around Jesus' birthdate, so I reckon this is out of the scope of this article. Of course, we should check if anything needs to be merged into Christmas#Choice of December 25 date when deleting. Daask (talk) 14:39, 26 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean "There has never been notable mythology around Jesus' birthdate"? The birthdate itself is part of the mythology. When most people think of Jesus, "born on December 25" is always one of the first things they think of. The section is completely within the scope of this article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think that you two may have different meanings of the word "mythology" in mind. Paul August ☎ 15:10, 26 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The title of the article is rather vague, for several reasons. One is that "comparative mythology" could refer to all kinds of things. The word "mythology" itself can have all kinds of different meanings depending on a person's cultural background. The second problem is that, when we say "Jesus," that does not just refer to the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, but rather all the views that anyone over the ages has ever had about Jesus. (Indeed, it would also include views on Jesus by practitioners of Graeco-Roman paganism, by second-century Gnostics, by early Muslims, medieval Catholics, and even present-day Mormons.) For this article, however, I have been trying to focus on the Jesus of early Christianity, since I think that is what most people reading the article will be looking for information about. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:35, 26 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I should perhaps note that I am still working on this article and that there is still much more that needs to be added. The greatest concern of mine at this point is that I am still trying to decide how I want to handle the vast array of fringe theories that have been promulgated on this subject, such as Gerald Massey's argument that Jesus was totally copied off Horus (and that King Herod was apparently actually an Egyptian snake-god), Joseph Atwell's insistence that Jesus is actually based on the Roman emperor Titus of all people, Richard Carrier's argument that the Sumerian goddess Inanna was "crucified" (she definitely was not, and this coming from the person who wrote our article about her), or those zany ideas linking Jesus with the Hindu god Krishna. We definitely need to address these sorts of ideas, since they are the comparisons that most people reading the article will be most familiar with, but I am still trying to decide exactly what would be the best modus operandi for discussing them. I have a general idea in mind, but I am still working on the details. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:52, 26 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Katolophyromai: In my opinion, it is unnecessary to include more on fringe theories than you mention here. There is a separate article on the subject in existence already that this can be linked to so it doesn't need to be covered extensively here. I note this article is missing some research applicable to this subject. Birger Gerhardson did research comparing rabbinic Judaism to early Christianity and it deserves a mention. Samuel Byrskog has done work comparing the practices of ancient historians and applying it to early Christianity. Richard Bauckham has completely shifted the paradigm in early Christianity research. am not accusing you but there seems to be a bias on Wikipedia quite often in these various articles toward mythicism using Bultmann and form criticism from the mid-twentieth century which has since been largely undermined from the last fifty years of orality studies. Bultmann (form criticism) is a valid historical reference but not so much a good critical reference. Literary criticism created a dramatic shift in the 80's and biblucal criticism has continued to move on reflected in the work of those mentioned here and many others whose ideas are not included here. Jenhawk777 (talk) 15:46, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

John overtly influenced by Platonism?

The first sentence under the section of the Gospel of John says;

"The Gospel of John, the latest of the four canonical gospels, was influenced by ideas from Platonism.[74][75]"

The problem is, as it seems, that when I checked two the sources offered, both don't say this at all. On pp. 47-48 of Stephen Smalley's John: Evangelist and Interpreter, Smalley writes;

"There is no reason to suppose that John was heavily dependent on Platonism because his Gospel shows familiarity with occasional ideas which were current coinage in the Jewish-Hellenistic environment of his day, and shared indeed by other New Testaments writers."

The other source, Stanley Porter's book, says on pg. 103 that Greek origin influences of logos theology "has generally been dismissed in recent thought." This means that the lead sentence doesn't look like it accurately reflects its source. Perhaps it can read something like "The Gospel of John did not directly borrow from, including in its Logos theology, Platonic sources, but these sources likely influenced earlier Jewish deuterocanonical texts which John inherited and expanded his own Logos theology from." The sentence in the lead of this page that says "The Gospel of John bears overt influences from Platonism" certainly needs to be changed, if not removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.49.181.61 (talk) 05:53, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have attempted to correct the wording to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding. To be clear, though, even if John was influenced by earlier Jewish texts that had been influenced by Platonism, that is still influence from Platonism; it is just not direct influence. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:03, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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