Talk:Gospel of John/2010/November

Κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγέλιον

The proper translation of Κατὰ Ἰωάννην εὐαγγέλιον, (or τὸ εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην) is John's gospel or the Gospel according to John. It is often referred to as the Gospel of John in common parlance. (Although this is technically not accurate it is acceptable.)

However to shorten it to John is wrong. No source in the early church ever referred to this gospel as Ἰωάννην. More importantly shorting the Gospel name to John is very confusing to the lay reader. In this article "John" sometimes refers to the man named "John" and at others times refers to the Gospel of John (and even once to John the Baptist!)

I would suggest for purposes of this article that:

1. "John" always refer to John the apostle
2. The "Gospel of John" always refer to John's gospel (or the Gospel according to John)
3. "John the Baptist" always refer John the Baptist

Therefore I would request an admin. to make the following correction.

• Change the opening paragraph from

The Gospel of John (often simply John) is an account of the public ministry of Jesus, from his witness and affirmation by John the Baptist to his death, burial, Resurrection, and post-Resurrection appearances. It is fourth of the canonical gospels, after the synoptics Matthew, Mark and Luke.

• To

The Gospel according to John (Greek τὸ εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην) commonly referred to as the Gospel of John (Notwithstanding the name, it is an anonymous gospel) is an account of the public ministry of Jesus, from his witness and affirmation by John the Baptist to his death, burial, Resurrection, and post-Resurrection appearances. It is fourth of the canonical gospels, after the synoptics Matthew, Mark and Luke.

My proposed change does not change the 'content' but does add 'clarity' for the lay person. - Ret.Prof (talk) 13:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Ret, I have no objection to the change you request, but it highlights a deeper problem with the lead, which is that it states, without attribution, the minority view in which the book was actually written by John. We need to deal with this overstatement. Dylan Flaherty 15:57, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Hi Prof, I deleted the Greek because your two variations are neither in editions of Nestle nor in the gospel's original author(s); all variations of the title AFAIK are added by editors and not counted as part of the text. (In that diff I even mistakenly attributed "Gospel According to John" to KJV, but it uses "... S. John" instead; I don't know offhand where GAtJ originates verbatim except as a corruption of KJV.) In short there are so many names in both languages and none of them are original with the gospel's authorship that this is inappropriate to dilate upon in the lead and distract the layperson from the predicate of the lead. To engage a little harmless OR, if the author(s) had any title in mind, in keeping with Jewish tradition it would probably be "En arche".

I would have no problem with discussing all the titles in an early section, which is common to many articles like this, but you'd need sources for your Greek versions, and you'd need to explain why "John's Gospel" differs from "Gospel of John", as they are taken as synonymous in English in such a widespread idiom. WP:USECOMMONNAMES is the guiding policy here, and "John" is probably the most common name for it of all in English; it's just an ambiguous one. I agree that if "John" appears alone it the text it should be very carefully disambiguated as to whether it refers to the gospel or one of the various "John" constructs presented as the author (Ben-Zavdai, Beloved, Elder, Evangelist, let alone John the southern Baptist), but I can see usages where "John" could refer to the gospel unambiguously, such as already in the present lead.

Dylan, the lead does not state without attribution the book was written by John. It appears you're confusing the common name "Gospel of John" with an attribution, and/or reading "John" in the third graf as a person rather than a book, as the context makes clear. This of course does affirm that the word "John" there, although already disambiguated by ordinary context standards, should be better disambiguated to remove even pedantic misinferences. JJB 16:23, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

We should consult the manual of style. What I've typically done when referring to titles of short works is to italicize then. In this way, we could easily distinguish between John, the possible author, and John, the work itself. Again, this is just one suggestion; we really must look up the locally correct one in the manual. Dylan Flaherty 16:30, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I would prefer that the Greek be kept out of the first line and put in a first subhead. Other tertiary sources don't go into that level of detail, and the average reader doesn't need it. If the first sentence has a bunch of funny characters in it, the reader's eyes might bounce off. I've done a lot of "customer-facing" writing in my career, and it's important that the first sentence be easy to read and informative. However, I can't cite any particular guideline or policy, and I appreciate the patience that other editors show me, so I'm not going to make an argument out of it. Leadwind (talk) 16:35, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

That's very practical. When someone with limited curiosity on the topic encounters the Wall of Greek, their eyes glaze over and they're likely to run away. I agree that we should delay the Greek just a bit. Dylan Flaherty 16:43, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, as you are right for the Gospel was not written by John. It was written by "a group" evidenced by the authors referring to themselves as "we". Also the Greek was not done by me and should be checked. It looked right to me, but my my Greek and Hebrew are superficial at best. But I stand by the edit for clarity. Please feel free to smooth out the wrinkles as it were. Cheers - Ret.Prof (talk) 19:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)^^^^^PS the Greek checks out. I also shortened the "Wall of Greek". I wouldn't want their eyes glaze over and to run away. (The readers not their eyes) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ret.Prof (talk • contribs)

Thanks, but that is not a check-out; most of the first links are mirrors of this article, which represented only two Greek titles among several potentially sourceable. As I said, they're not in my editions of Nestle. I'll be happy to collaborate on an English and Greek variant list for first-section inclusion, but yours need to be reliably sourced. JJB 20:42, 21 November 2010 (UTC) I should add that your footnote is unduly redundant with the second graf's reminder that the gospel is technically anonymous. The text of this article betrays an exceedingly strong desire among editors to move this gospel as far away from any historical John as possible. This is glaringly betrayed by the very simple article on The Shepherd of Hermas, where I must scroll down even to find out who any Hermas was, and where discussion of whether Hermas even wrote it is quietly relegated to even later in the article, and yet IMHO the evidence of Hermas's authorship is even less than that of John's. Nobody argues the phrase "Shepherd of Hermas" is an implication a real Hermas wrote it! Imagine how the following reductio ad absurdam would look!

The Shepherd According to Hermas (Greek <wall of Greek>) commonly referred to as The Shepherd of Hermas <ref>Notwithstanding the name, it is an anonymous deuterocanonical</ref> is an account of five visions, twelve mandates, and ten parables. The work's authorship is anonymous.

Why there is such a (ahem) religious movement to neglect POVs in this article is above my pay grade. JJB 20:56, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for checking out the Greek (NB Koine Greek). You saved an old guy a trip to the library. - Ret.Prof (talk) 23:02, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not exactly a young man, myself, so I sympathize. But I hear there's this thing called the "interwebs" that uses a system of tubes to bring information straight to your home. The details elude me, but I figure it's worth giving a try before you make a trip. Best of luck with that. Dylan Flaherty 00:08, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Dylan, this is a complete incivility. Ret.Prof was in fact the one who Google-checked the issue, but did not sign in the expected place. But even if he hadn't said that the comment would be disruptive as having no article-improvement value. JJB 14:55, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Stephen Harris

[Link to amazon, shows many/most of his books]

[Understanding the bible]

[The New Testament:A student's Introduction]

[Exploring the Bible]

[The Old Testament:An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible]

All these books are published by McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. McGraw Hill is known as a publisher of quality academic books. They don't publish anything which is substandard and do not have any pro x$ tilt that I can see. I have some chemistry books from McGraw Hill, I find them to be pretty high quality.(this doesn't imply I am a chemist!) I hope others can agree on the quality of McGraw Hill's academic books. This should be enough to show that Harris is mainstream. And association with JS does not make anyone fringe. Lots of leading mainstream academics were associated with it and continue to be leading mainstream academics. eg. Fredriksen, Crossan, etc.-Civilizededucation^talk 09:45, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

thanks for the references CE; My problem is that none of the titles inspire confidence, and none is specific to the Gospel of John. "Introduction" in the context of biblical studies has two distinct applications. One (derived chiefly from German practice) describes a comprehensive and systemataic survey of the scholarly context. A second (derived chiefly from English language practice) describes a summary survey for first year students and the infomrmed public. The first sort of Introduction is highly relevant and citable. The second sort may well be citable in the absence of anything better; 'textbooks' being one of the categories that Wikipeda recognises as authoritative sources. But if we can cite the views of the prominent scholars in the field - Sanders, Vermes, Brown, Rowland - I don't think we should use what are essentially secondary works. TomHennell (talk) 11:26, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I think a scholar is prominent only if he has produced academic books, had them published by academic presses. The more, the better. Being prominent/significant in other ways does not count for much on Wikipedia?-Civilizededucation^talk 12:50, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Harris's book is a university-level textbook, high on the list of reliable sources. And for a topic like this one, with secondary sources disagreeing, WP:Balance says that it's important for us to look to disinterested secondary and tertiary sources. Voila, Harris's book is a disinterested tertiary source useful for helping us get the balance right. If someone can offer a better university-level textbook that disagrees with Harris, then it's a live issue. Leadwind (talk) 15:13, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

If it is as good as you say Leadwind, then you may be right. I can only find three copies on COPAC, however, (none of them the current edition) which tends to make me still a little wary. There are a lot of supposed introductory textboods for bible students out there; and most a vary partial in their coverage of the field. Maybe Harris is the exception. Does he provide a reasonable chapter on John, and does he fairly represent the main topics of shcholarly debate? Do Sanders, Vermes, Rowland and Brown feature in the bibliography? TomHennell (talk) 17:22, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I personally used an earlier edition of Harris when I studied the "Great Books" of Western tradition and consider it solid. His bibliography is pages long, with subsections by topic, and each chapter has suggested reading. If anything, the sources lean toward the conservative. Names I recognize include Brown, May, Metzger, Guthrie, Catchpole, Dodd, Vermes, Bultmann, Barrett, Hengel, Theissen, Robinson, and Fitzmyer. I find Harris to be in accord with what I read in Sanders, Vermes, Ehrman, etc. If he leans one way or another, Harris reports less skepticism than I see in other sources. His chapter on John, like most of his chapters, is designed more to describe the content of John than to rule on what's historical, and in the case of the author's identity he describes both views without taking an explicit stand. I've never seen anything in Harris that flat out contradicts what I see in secondary sources, whereas the secondary sources contradict each other on many points (Sanders v Vermes, Vermes v Ehrman, etc.). Leadwind (talk) 22:01, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

first, majority view; second, balance

Now that we have established the majority view, we should also make sure that the majority view gets majority treatment. I'm afraid that currently the minority view is far overrepresented. For example, the article includes lines such as this one: "Recent scholarship by Christopher Rowland in particular has emphasized an emerging view that John is equally historical with the synoptics." Rowland died in 1967, so what this recent scholarship might be is not well understood. Leadwind (talk) 04:32, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

It's recent as compared to 70 CE! Dylan Flaherty 05:16, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Wrong Christopher Rowland; Christopher Rowland (theologian) is very much alive, still in post, and the most prominent British scholar in the field of early Christian studies. His view that John and the synoptics are of equal historical value is certainly mainstream; and, if not yet the majority view, not far off it. TomHennell (talk) 11:00, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think it's helpful to trumpet that we have established the majority view while Roman and Tom remained silent and while I did not object to a sentence speaking of what appears from presented sources to be the current plurality, without reference either to Roman's other sources or to the prior majority still represented by Rowland et al. I don't know why the view that John is equally historical is "emerging", as it tracks back through centuries of sources, including the scholarly sources in any given era. JJB 14:50, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

My bad on not checking the wikilink better. In any event, now that we've established the majority view, we just need to be sure that it gets majority treatment. Leadwind (talk) 15:09, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

@JJB, sorry if it seemed like I was ramming this through, but I'd already checked with Tom. He put a very cogent summary of the majority view on my talk page. It's worth a look. Tom obviously put a lot of thought into summarizing a lot of scholarship. As for you and Roman, we are patiently waiting for you to join in. Any time you feel like consulting a commonly accepted reference text and telling us what it says about John, we'd love to include that information. Honestly, we'd love to have you as contributors instead of detractors. Leadwind (talk) 00:53, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I may be able to contribute sources, but on this topic I have mostly been relying on analyzing and evaluating what's been presented by others, as (frankly) it takes less time; and when I do have time I concentrate on the formatting and organization problems, as they have been largely unaddressed while the POV-slinging has been going on. Don't know what happened to Roman, because I'd have to dig his sources up out of history if I were going to present them. JJB 01:29, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The first point I would like to make is that we really aren't concerned with the "majority" view as per the section title, but rather with presenting what might be called the consensus academic opinion on the subject as being the primary subject of discussion in this article. Other articles, such as maybe Calvinist views of the Gospel of John (fill in the name of any other group as appropriate) can certainly reasonably be established if such is the subject of multiple independent reliable sources and, hopefully, if there is some sort of consistency or comparatively limited scope of such articles. Obviously, if the views of for example Catholic academics are as diverse and of the same types as the broader consensus opinion, there is no real purpose served by having the child article. WP:FRINGE and WP:DUE are however serious concerns for articles of this type. I think, in general, most individuals would agree that the discussions of this book in what are generally thought of as reference sources are probably among the least biased and probably most clearly reflect the most consensus academic opinion. This is not to say that any individual sources are necessarily perfect - I've seen how, in some cases, even Encyclopedia Britannica can have a bit of a bias, although a clearly understandable one, toward sources and information most reflective of sources and views in the English-speaking and European worlds, where the bulk of its sales take place. But, in general, I think it is pretty much generally agreed that the amount of weight to give any material in an article like this is best determined by consulting the relevant reference sources, including specialist encyclopedias and reference works, and more or less structuting the article in rough proportion to the "average" of the reference sources consulted. John Carter (talk) 19:12, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

JC, Thanks. Yous say, "I think it is pretty much generally agreed that the amount of weight to give any material in an article like this is best determined by consulting the relevant reference sources." Indeed, I hope that we're finally at the point where the editors now agree on this policy. Leadwind (talk) 15:30, 24 November 2010 (UTC)