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"Based on the criterion of embarrassment, scholars argue that the early Christian Church would not have invented the painful death of their leader.[15]" The point of the worst death was to have the best martyr. i.e.: "Our guy suffered as much or more than anyone ever and still forgives all of you due to his maximum greatness (provided you believe), therefore he is the best." Why wouldn't they invent it? If they said he died of old age or by falling off a donkey, how would that make him a martyr with ultimate bragging rights? D3drturner (talk) 23:35, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The sentence you left out immediately preceding is important. In the most cynical view, the point would not be how much he suffered, but how degraded he was. If they wanted to invent a grody but "cool" death like you imply, they should've said the Romans fed him to lions. It takes active acclimation for us to understand how humiliating crucifixion was in the Roman world, see what happened to Spartacus's friends. Remsense诉00:29, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The point was not to invent a "cool death", but rather a maximum martyr. Crucifixion was the death of the lowest of the low, who were the people that the early Christian Church were targeting the hardest. Under those circumstances, Crucifixion was virtually the perfect option. Wdford (talk) 09:47, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By "cool", I meant "compelling". I think your point is too projective, there's not any evidence that there was this sort of deconstructive narrativizing or that it would be received this way from early converts. The resurrection theology as a direct attempt to interpret historical events within the existing Jesus community makes fewer such assumptions. Remsense诉12:19, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Leszek Nowak as an author was found on Polish Wikipedia (here and here) to be not in accordance with the WP:NOTE and including his musings is in breach of WP:V. Thus, I deleted that fragment. Poivyt (talk) 17:20, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just want to bring up that reference 7, by Stephen Law, is actually an article that question the historical existence of Jesus. So either it should be clarified or removed. 61.101.80.201 (talk) 12:36, 5 June 2025 (UTC) Block-evasion by 58.99.101.165 etc. 184.152.65.118 (talk) 16:03, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From that source:
"The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt."
This is from the wikipedia article. Here it says scholars of antiquity, in the referenced article it says Biblical historians. It's different things. I still think this article doesn't fit in or the sentence in wikipedia should be improved to reflect the biblical scholars, otherwise it is wrong. 61.101.80.201 (talk) 13:18, 5 June 2025 (UTC) Block-evasion by 58.99.101.165 etc. 184.152.65.118 (talk) 16:03, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are four references there, not just one. And I don't think that you've got compelling evidence that there are branches of historical scholarship in which the the historicity of Jesus is widely doubted. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk!15:55, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It does. It repeats a straightforward, unambiguous statement from the cited article—more faithfully than any other characterization of the scholarly community you'd suggest we write instead. In fact, it makes the claim stronger to cite scholars who are individually skeptical but admit Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and the idea that Jesus was a mythical figure has been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory. You have to actually articulate what is written that is odds with the cited source—there are four cited, and it's not actually a problem that each covers some part of the claim, not four identical copies of the entire claim. Remsense 🌈 论17:08, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This only seems pertinent if you are trying to ignore the clear point of the statement. On nearly any article, we could freely cite merely scholars, and no one would take it to me that 1) we are interested in what theoretical physicists have to say about Shakespeare, or 2) that we are misconstruing the situation by not citing them. Likewise, there's no reason one could assume we've included archaeologists studying the Caral–Supe civilization under scholars of antiquity. The point, clearly, is we're signalling that virtually all "scholars that would know" are in agreement; Biblical gives an overly narrow impression. Remsense 🌈 论17:53, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
