Talk:Book of Elchasai

Hayil Kesai
There was already a page for this article at Book of Elchesai that was made into a redirect. You might want to mention that the book is believed to have been a Jewish apocalypse that was written in Aramaic in Babylonia during the Greek-Jewish war of 116-117 CE and only later adopted as a source text for Christians. Hayil Kesai is Aramaic for the "Hidden Power" that is thought to have been one of the two giant angels. There's a lot more about this in the Elcesaites article and some older versions of the Ebionites article from around summer of 2011 with reliable sources. Also, the primary source references are useless WP:OR here. They need to be subordinated to reliable secondary sources which refer to them. Ignocrates (talk) 19:26, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Regarding primary sources
Please see WP:PSTS. This article fails WP:V because it is completely dependent on primary sources. Peter Kirby's website is not a legitimate source, although it's fine to use "Early Christian Writings" as an external link. Ignocrates (talk) 23:39, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't The Book of Elchasia be the (only) primary source?
 *  Bfpage &#124;leave a message 16:53, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry I didn't respond to this question sooner. The Book of Elchasai is not the only primary source. In fact, it doesn't even exist as a source. The writings of the Church Fathers are considered primary sources, even when they comment on earlier sources such as fragments of the Book of Elchasai. Otherwise, we could argue that Jesus is the only primary source for all of Christianity; everything else is ultimately a secondary commentary that can be traced back to his words and deeds. Ignocrates (talk) 20:02, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Peter's site is in plenty of Biblical articles on Wikipedia, plus the site references original sources from church fathers to modern-day scholars; also, the site applies to WP:PSTS via Tertiary source as it does not violate WP:OR because there is no original sources authored by Peter Kirby. All information is referenced from church fathers and scholars in the site. -- JudeccaXIII (talk) 01:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * It may be true that "Peter's site is in plenty of Biblical articles on Wikipedia", but his website is essentially a blog. Peter compiled this information when he was a college student. He is not a scholarly source for any of this information, and primary sources are not allowed to stand alone like this. If you can't abide by Wikipedia policies and fix the article by using reliable sources, per WP:RS, I'm going to ask that your new article be reviewed for possible deletion. Ignocrates (talk) 02:35, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * As I said before, Peter referenced legit and liable sources from scholars and church fathers. He has not published anything in his own work or opinions what so ever. The site is another encyclopedia referencing none of Wikipedia what so ever. -- JudeccaXIII (talk) 03:15, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I understand that, but Peter Kirby's website is not a reliable tertiary source. An encyclopedic article on the Book of Elchasai would be considered an acceptable tertiary source for the lead or to use as a review to introduce a new topic. The content in the body should be mostly if not exclusively based on reliable secondary sources. Ignocrates (talk) 03:24, 27 October 2014 (UTC)


 * It should be removed from any articles it's used in. It's a personal blog by someone who isn't a well recognised authority in the field. Am I doing the wrong search? doesn't show anything. Dougweller (talk) 19:22, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * It's the Early Christian Writings website. Appears on par with the Internet Sacred Text Archive and John Bruno Hare.  Using ECW as a repository of primary sources would be fine where citing primary sources is appropriate (like quotes), and I could see linking Kirby's original material in the external links, but he should not be cited as a source (except maybe on bobsledding, though that's probably a different guy). Ian.thomson (talk) 19:34, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * It's very common to link to Early Christian Writings as an external link. I did that for the GEbi and GHeb articles. Using it as a source is another matter, and it should be removed. I disagree with Ian slightly about using ECR as a source for quotations of primary sources. Since an editor can't comment on the quotes from ECR (other than to say they exist), the primary sources would have to be mentioned by a reliable secondary source first, and even then could only be used in the same context as the secondary source. In that case, the primary sources can be subordinated as notes within the secondary reference. The link to NewAdvent is even more problematic because that creates an NPOV problem. I don't use NewAdvent for that reason, even in external links. Ignocrates (talk) 19:55, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Ignocrates, Dougweller & Ian.thomson, I replaced both links with more reliable ones, better improved, I hope. -- JudeccaXIII (talk) 00:51, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't want to discourage you from contributing, but the two new sources you added have problems for different reasons. With respect to the first source, it is encyclopedic and David Aune is rock-solid as a scholar. The problem is that David Aune is the editor, not the contributing author. The author of the article is not named. That's why we can't use encyclopedic sources like the Encyclopedia Britannica. The same applies here as well. The second source is the Gnostic Society's website, which is not a reliable source. Please consider getting editor help at the Teahouse or Village Pump and using the sources Ian provided. Ignocrates (talk) 03:12, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * http://gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html is the official website of the Nag Hammadi Library for Gnostic documents and reference #1 is from a google book source from a scholar's encyclopedia which applies under WP:PSTS under Tertiary source. See also: WP:WITS — JudeccaXIII (talk) 04:23, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I can say this, this article isn't easy to explain and the sources are very descriptive in a complicated form. — JudeccaXIII (talk) 09:39, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Some secondary and tertiary academic sources

 * Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels by Petri Luomanen, Brill Publishers, 25 Nov 2011 -- Cited for all the relevant material I could find (16:45, 1 November 2014 (UTC))
 * Gnostic Revisions of Genesis Stories And Early Jesus Traditions by Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, Brill, 2006
 * The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity, edited by James C. VanderKam and William Adler, Uitgeverij Van Gorcum, 1 Jan 1996
 * Harvard Studies in Classical Philology edited by Albert Henrichs, Harvard University Press, 1 Apr 1980
 * Jews and Christians?: Second-Century 'Christian' Perspectives on the "Parting of the Ways" by Tobias Nicklas, Mohr Siebeck, 24 Jul 2014
 * A Companion to Second-Century Christian 'Heretics' by Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen, Brill, 2008
 * The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy by Yuri Stoyanov, Yale University Press, 11 Aug 2000
 * Matthew's Christian-Jewish Community, by Anthony J. Saldarini, University of Chicago Press, 16 May 1994
 * The Origins of Jewish Mysticism by Peter Schäfer, Princeton University Press, 24 Jan 2011
 * The Anointed and His People: Messianic Expectations from the Maccabees to Bar Kochba by Gerbern S. Oegema, A & C Black, 1 Aug 1998

A casual perusal of these seem to establish notability. If someone else doesn't summarize and cite these in the article at some point I may get around to it. It'd also be worthwhile to see if anyone has full access to these books, as some of them have full chapters dedicated to the topic. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:41, 28 October 2014 (UTC)



Luttikhuizen's 1985 book is much more comprehensive than the paper. I don't see any actual quotations by the early Church Fathers, only paraphrases of the contents of the original book. Ignocrates (talk) 23:18, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Help
In good faith I created a new category "Church History" which I attached to many other articles and to the article The Book of Elchasia. It has now been nominated for deletion. Please participate in the discussion here: WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 October 31

Thank you so much.
 *  Bfpage &#124;leave a message 11:06, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Additional sources
There are quite a few books dicussing this subject to some degree available on Google books as per here and here. Some of them are encyclopedia type sources, but in those cases the sources they include in their bibliographies (if they have them) should be among the better sources available. Also, in some rare cases, when the encyclopedic article itself is of real length, such as signed articles on the topic several pages or longer, those articles in the encyclopedias often do qualify as secondary sources by our standards, as they are basically article-length in and of themselves. John Carter (talk) 20:50, 17 November 2014 (UTC)