Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Authorship and Date of the Synoptic Gospels and of Acts


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the debate was Delete. --F a ng Aili 說嗎? 04:43, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Authorship and date of the synoptic Gospels and of Acts
Created by a new user (I thought new users couldn't create articles? - this new user must have been waiting around just to create it - its one of their first edits). It seems to be an attempt at introducing a particular bias. It fails to mention any of the Q Gospel, Synoptic Problem, or Markan Priority, suggesting a complete unfamiliarity with the topics and/or an attempt to circumvent mentioning the academic consensus. The authorship/date of the synoptics is extensively discussed in the Q Gospel, Synoptic Problem, and Markan Priority articles, as well as the articles for the Synoptic Gospels themselves - Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark, and Gospel of Luke, so this just seems like an attempt to fork the content and bias it. Clinkophonist 17:52, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. POV Fork, OR. I don't think the author's unfamiliar with the topic; the "attempt to circumvent mentioning the academic consensus" is clearly what's going on here. If there's anything supportable here, it needs to be part of the existing articles. Fan1967 18:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak delete. POV risk Tony Bruguier 19:02, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Neutral. I don't think there'd be anything wrong with having an article on this subject, but the current material is virtually unsalvageable, and it'd probably have to be rewritten from the ground up.  The main author of the page seems to be determined, as Clinkophonist says, to ignore the scholarly consensus, and has adamantly refused several requests for specific citations which I've made on the talk page. As I noted there, he seems to be determined to present the debate as though it is one between fundamentalists and radical Jesus-myth type theorists, ignoring (or at least downplaying) the academic mainstream consensus - note the statement that the Gospels could have been written any time between the crucifixion and Irenaeus, for instance. john k 19:44, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Neutral comment: Someone's persistantly removing the multitudes of fact templates. 68.39.174.238 21:46, 15 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I just don't see the consensus you folks seem to. The topic is heatedly debated, with a lot of conservative scholarship placing the Synoptics between 40 and 70, while more liberal scholarship tends to put them somewhere between 65 and 130.  I've heard people declare that the so-called consensus is 65-70, as if the overlap of the two camps gave us the actual dates.  The Catholic Encyclopedia, for example, tells us Mark was written c. 50-67 AD.  Earlychristianwritings.com, a secular site, gives c. 65-80.  With Matthew and Luke the differences are often quite a bit more marked.  I don't see any consensus at all, just a jumble of hypotheses and speculation. --hurtstotalktoyou


 * On the other hand, I agree the article could use some improvement. I would appreciate some help in that, but instead it gets defaced by citation needed tags after nearly every sentence, including those which already have a citation!  The talk page is decorated with the ever-constructive "this article is bollocks," and then it gets put up for deletion, with reasons wiki standards indicate require merely revision.  --hurtstotalktoyou


 * Wikipedia needs an article that discusses Synoptic authorship in detail. I understand some of your objections, and I've already re-written it (nearly from the ground up) once, which seemed to be a step in the right direction.  I'd love to work on it some more, to the point where most reasonable people can agree on its content, and the disputed tags can be removed.  More than that, I'd love some help, which, with few exceptions, is the exact opposite of what I've been getting so far.  --hurtstotalktoyou


 * It already has articles that discuss Synoptic authorship in detail: Synoptic Problem, Two-source hypothesis, Markan Priority, Aramaic Primacy, and Q document. What you are doing is creating an extremely biased fork. This is forbidden - see Content Forking. Clinkophonist 12:42, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but none of those articles discusses the dates of authorship--they don't even mention them in passing! That's not surprising, since none of them need to do so in order to investigate their respective topics.  See, the reason I began this article is because I was curious about what wikipedia had to say about dates and authorship.  Much to my surprise, the only mention of dates I could find were on the individual Gospel pages themselves, and not in great detail.  I also noticed two articles on Johannine authorship and Pauline authorship.  So, thought I, I'll write up a little piece of Synoptic authorship.  It's a widely discussed topic, I mused, so I'm sure I'll get lots of help and input.  At first I did get some help, albeit very little.  Now I'm fighting off vandalism from the guy who wants the article deleted.  Fantastic.  --hurtstotalktoyou


 * Don't AFDs normally get more votes than this? At any rate, I kind of agree that there's no particular reason not to have an article on this topic.  None of the articles Clinkophonist cites deals explicitly with this issue, and it seems plausible to have an article with that title. That said, the current article is completely inadequate.  Clinkophonist, why don't you work with me to try to make the article decent and have it cite mainstream scholarship, instead of trying (fruitlessly, it would appear) to get it deleted? john k 18:23, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. Heck, we could turn it into a stub and build off that, if you folks are so unsatisfied with its current state.  I'm honestly not working off any bias or OR, here.  I'm just interested in the topic, and I thought it would be fun to work on a page that seems needed in the wiki world. --hurtstotalktoyou
 * It would be better to put the material in Synoptic Problem, which is entirely about their authorship, which dates they have etc. The Synoptic Problem is completely affected by the order of the dates, what circumstances they could have been written under (i.e. the issues during the time they were written), and who could have written them - if they were actually written by Matthew-the-apostle and Mark-assistant-to-Simon-Peter then an interdependence would be unlikely, bar what would be expected for reporting the same events, so they are clearly issues that belong in that article. Clinkophonist 22:10, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep, improve Reviewing the edit history shows that there is general improvement over the less than two weeks this article has been in existence. It would be helpful if more users were contributing (not reverting).  While the Synoptic Problem could discuss the dating issue, it does not do so at all, and need not do so.  The subject matter is of sufficient significance to have an article in Wikipedia.  Specific discussion about how to improve the article is better left to the talk page for the article. GRBerry 22:38, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Strong Delete  The fact that the title and focus of the article has changed is, in my view, strong evidence that it is poorly concieved and unnecessary.  This topic is, and should, be covered in the entries for the seperate books.  There is not enough commonality to justify a sumary article.  While there has been improvement in quality, the basic redundancy of the article makes it a prime candidate for deletion.  Any important information or references can be merged into the appropriate articles. Eluchil404 21:38, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * That's really not true. The article began as a personal essay on Synoptic authorship.  I worked in some material for John just before I submitted it as a wiki article, forgetting it was already covered in the Johannine article.  I was in the process of removing references to GJohn when I realized I should probably include Acts, since it is so closely related to the Synoptics.  Throughout it all, the focus has remained on the Synoptics.  In any case, the individual Synoptic entries don't cover authorship with much depth, nor should they.  This article is a collection of hypotheses and theories regarding the composition of four works which are extremely closely related.  Inserting those discussions into every one of the Synoptic entries would be extremely redundant and somewhat distracting, in my opinion. --hurtstotalktoyou
 * Questions of relationships between the synoptics are and should be covered in the Synoptic problem. There are no issues of authorship common to them (and not common to the rest of the Biblical corpus) not best covered there.  There dates are also not necessarily closely linked.  The order of composition is covered in the Synoptic problem while manuscript and patristic evidence is unique to each book.  The real issue here, in my mind is WP:NOR and WP:V.  The article seems designed to synthesize the actual evidence fo the dates of the Gospels rather than simply record what previous scholars have published.  That's not what wikipedia is and on such controversial subjects is guarunteed to lead to edit wars as people fight about what 'facts' are true.Eluchil404 18:56, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, I wouldn't worry about edit wars. That's common with a lot of wiki pages, but it's never any reason to delete an article.  Moreover, it usually seems to result in a better article.  Most importantly, though, I cannot stress enough I am not trying to advance original research.  I know better than to think my opinion trumps an entire field of scholarship.  All I'm trying to do, here, is document the gamut of scholarly opinion, from the minority Christian fundamentalists to the extremist secular scholars.  I do believe that's appropriate for wikipedia.  --hurtsotalktoyou


 * Delete per WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. Stifle (talk) 23:34, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. The nominator says "It fails to mention any of the Q Gospel, Synoptic Problem, or Markan Priority, suggesting a complete unfamiliarity. . ." But the article does now mention the Synoptic Problem and Markan Priority, and doesn't mention Q because that's outside of the scope. It needs citations, but it has lots of good information that, if true, should be kept. Sarah crane 16:01, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep. Change it, tweak it, improve it, merge it; do whatever you'd like to bring it up to standards.  WP should have an in-depth discussion of Synoptic composition.  It's a rich and interesting subject with a long history of investigation.  It deserves an entry.  --hurtstotalktoyou

''This AfD is being relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that a decision may usefully be reached. Please add new discussion below this notice. Thanks!'' F a ng Aili 說嗎? 00:10, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Weak keep it doesn't seem like a POV fork to me but it needs serious work. No real sources, it doesn't tell me why I care, completely inaccessible to an outsider. Kotepho 00:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete OR - CrazyRussian talk/contribs/email 01:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOT, as well as above. Morgan Wick 03:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete --Ter e nce Ong 04:50, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. Still reads like OR. Will change my vote if it's written more like Wikipedia and less like Wikibooks. Fagstein 05:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, it's original research. It doesn't matter how well written or poorly written an article is, Wikipedia is not a primary source.    Proto    ||    type    09:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak delete there is plenty of scholarship on this issue, which we ought to report. A good, verifiable, NPOV article is certainly possible. But it is probably best done on the articles on the books themselves. A general dating article on the gospels would also be fine, but no need to limmit it to the synoptics. --Doc ask?  12:22, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete, per WP:NOR. Most of the content of this topic is better covered at the specific articles for the synoptic gospels.  Assuming that someone wanted to collected WP:V information about this in one central article I can't see a real justifiable reason for rehashing what is already in other articles.--Isotope23 19:12, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep capable of becoming a good article. AfD is not the place for content disputes. - M ask [[Image:Flag_of_Alaska.svg|20 px]] 02:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as WP:OR. I have no clue or opinion about the substance of the issue, but "no original research" is non-negotionable. Sandstein 05:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.