Talk:Ethiopian eunuch

The only analysis is queer analysis?

Leaving aside McMeill's way-fringey claim, the assessment section is hopelessly unbalanced. For one thing, the connection to present-day Ethiopian Christianity goes unmentioned. There's plenty of other theological material out there, and I'm pretty sure that most theologians don't take the passage as an endorsement of, um, alternative sexuality. Mangoe (talk) 13:40, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Your section header is untrue - the rather short assessment section nonetheless also contains analysis of the significance of race and of the story's role in the narrative structure of Acts. Anyway, why don't you add the connection to present-day Ethiopian Christianity and the other theological material? (The analysis of what the eunuch was reading, for example, or any of many other things.) That would be helpful. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:27, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

This is all the more slanted that the man is not gay, he's a eunuch, that is, a kind of cripple, not a sexual deviant/minority. To boot, describing him a "gentile" is an abuse since there had been Jews living along the Nile valley right down to Ethiopia (and not just Kush between Sudan and the Cataract) for a very long time... there are any number of African peoples who claim Jewishness, and the Ethiopian Falashas have been deemed Jewish enough to make tha Aliyah since the 80s. --Svartalf (talk) 15:17, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

As the article makes clear (but could it be clearer in this regard?) some scholars note in the context of this story that "eunuch" is not used in the Bible only to refer to those who have been deliberately castrated. And we do include different opinions on his religious status, but if you have more sources, that would be cool too. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:27, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Undue concerns

As due weight is an NPOV concern, it behooves the user adding an undue tag to discuss the issues on the talk page so that we can find a way forward, rather than leaving the tag up permanently as a badge of shame. JohnChrysostom, since you own many commentaries, perhaps you can add other interpretations of the story so that the LGBT interpretation would not form so large a part of the section. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:53, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I didn't add a piece here, because I thought the man above me expressed the sentiment well, which was never adequately addressed (although I take it from the intercourse that it indeed was even more unduly-weighted before he added certain other details). When reading an article with NPOV or UNDUE, I don't believe it is in the best interest of the editors nor the encyclopedia to merely throw in an equal amount of material of other weighting or an opposing POV: doing such, we eventually end up with a bunch of articles filled with (likely POV) minutiae, that are detailed out of all proportion with what they deserve (i.e. an LGBT editor comes here and adds some actual Greek exegesis, so on and so forth, until it's as long as "Gospel of Luke" itself). My point was, that, out of the eight commentaries I own on Luke Acts (including NIGNT, NJBC, Farmer's, Sacra Pagina, NAC, NTL, Brazos, and Fitzmyer's [who helped write the NJBC] two three volumes in Anchor), I can find no mention of this - and those commentaries stretch from conservative (NAC) to technical (NIGNT), to liberal (NJBC, AYBC), to mainstream (SP, NTL, Brazos), which seems to indicate to me, that any mention as large as current is unduly-weighted, and any mention (such as, to bring to mind a recent example, quoting Eisenman's James the Brother of Jesus as if it were accepted scholarly fact) of such interpretations without a caveat, such as, "Common among gender theorists [although I wager a feminist reading is more common", or, "A novel interpretation put forth by these two respected academics", or "A common reading of this pericope amongst queer theorists"... etc. is likely POV (as the POV is not, insofar as I can tell, one that made any inroads in to mainstream [conservative, mainline, or liberal, pastoral or technical] hermeneutics or exegesis).

If I have made an error (which I often do) in my interpretation of NPOV and WEIGHT (insofar as merely throwing up text to "water down" what's already there), and/or merely have the bad luck of thinking my commentaries are representative (I have no assurance that they are), and that this reading is less rare than I have figured, please do let me know. I attempt to follow, in this as in other edits, NPOV, WEIGHT, and VERIFIABILITY (not truth), for no matter how true it may be, it would be as me going to the article on the Koran and replacing the entirety of it with the conclusions of Wansbrough, Crone, Cook, and Ibn Warraq, and to a lesser degree Noldeke, and to call that "representative of consensus". St John Chrysostom ^Δόξα_{τω ^Θεώ} 23:02, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. I don't actually see a problem with adding more commentary - the article isn't bound to remain a stub forever, and with the addition of more commentary or the expansion of the tradition section it could become very good. We have articles on other sections of the Bible that include quite a lot of information about current and historical interpretations of the text. That said, I will trim the existing paragraph a bit. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:35, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

And when you're done, I'll get to closely paraphrasing drawing inspiration from some of those commentaries I riffled through like a madman last night for additional exegetical ideas. Thank you (hopefully those aren't "famous last words") for a painless talk-page experience (the last one I dealt with - which was also my first extended talk-page interaction - which had any parallels at all was Talk:Genesis creation narrative about six months ago, and I'm surprised it didn't head to Arbcom [not that half a dozen editors didn't attempt to get them to take it]). St John Chrysostom ^Δόξα_{τω ^Θεώ} 09:10, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

What did you think of the edit I made? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:04, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I've not seen it yet - let me get back to you in a couple of hours, when I have more time than necessary to merely sneak a look at WP. St John Chrysostom ^Δόξα_{τω ^Θεώ} 18:54, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

You went further than I would in some areas, and some of the rewordings aren't perfect (namely, the sentence about radical grace, which I think - although can not define - could be phrased better than either version), but, those are small things to nitpick about; the edit is more than acceptable. Please consult with me or the page as I add additional exegeses to assure that it remains acceptable to WP:V, WEIGHT, and NPOV, for it could conceivably become weighted in the opposite way (if the section becomes ten paragraphs long), with that interpretation fading in to obscurity, instead of a balanced presentation. St John Chrysostom ^Δόξα_{τω ^Θεώ} 21:35, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Glad you more or less liked, looking forward to seeing what you write. :) –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:44, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Road of Travel?

Is anyone aware of a source for the ancient road the EE traveled or is it assumed that he traveled from Addis Ababa North through the mountain trail then followed the Nile? If this exists, it would be IMO a quality addition to the article. Additionally, I couldn't find the Collab header under the community project page so I decided to post this here. Coachbricewilliams28 (talk) 14:58, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

My recent research leads me to believe that his actual residence was in Nubia somewhere around the base or mid Nile area thus cutting his travel down to only about 1500-1600 miles assuming the Nile was followed up to the Delta region. Coachbricewilliams28 (talk) 09:06, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Just following up because if the capitol of this ancient civ was Axum, then the road traveled ideally would not be up the Nile, but up the coast. Again, I'm hoping there is some cool historical record perhaps of a trade route that would add a more educated guess into the mix. Coachbricewilliams28 (talk) 00:58, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Revert

Rm unsourced commentary. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:52, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Again. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:50, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Revert

Reverted spurious removal of sourced material. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:23, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Relation with LGBT

What is the relationship between the article topic and LGBT? As I saw, the article is perhaps unrelated to homosexuality and the category is tagged. The Supermind (talk) 14:57, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

The section on sexuality was rewritten to remove all the references, and then the resulting unreferenced section was later removed. I have restored it now. StAnselm (talk) 19:19, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Ouch, I missed that back in April. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:07, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

"Ethiopia"

Hmm. Nothing about the possible identity of which "Ethiopia" is meant here. While the Amharic & Tigrayan Christians believe this person came from the Kingdom of Axum, the fact he was part of the court of Candace suggests to Western scholars that he came from Nubia, a kingdom along the middle Nile in the territory of the modern Sudan. -- llywrch (talk) 01:03, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Correct; this is nothing more than a tradition influencing the translation at this point. Thankfully, textual critics have bigger issues to tear their hair out over to care about this. I wouldn't mind help with a source on my comments above in the "road" header. Coachbricewilliams28 (talk) 09:59, 4 July 2023 (UTC)