Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Historicity of St Thomas


 * 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 was   delete. postdlf (talk) 05:37, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Historicity of St Thomas

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This article is a POV content fork of Thomas the Apostle, which has been fully protected from editing due to content disputes and edit warring going back several years. (See Talk:Thomas the Apostle, User talk:Vena Varcas and this diff for more info.) After the article was protected, User:Jijithnr proceeded to create Historical St Thomas, which was speedy deleted by User:INeverCry. Article creator represents hamsa.org and tries again by creating Historicity of St Thomas, which is another POV content fork, same content forked, but declined A10 (which I find slightly amusing and puzzling at the same time). I'm not interested in the religious dogma, but would rather focus on the issues pertaining to Wikipedia, i.e., policies and guidelines. Best regards, Cindy  ( talk ) 18:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)  Cindy  ( talk ) 18:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. — Mike  moral  ♪♫  22:37, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. — Mike  moral  ♪♫  22:37, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Please look at the POV of Thomas_the_Apostle page. It violates all historical information available about St.Thomas and is written in a way to facilitate religious conversion of Hindus into Christianity. A large number of scholars, Christians and non-Christians had written about the false propaganda that St. Thomas visited India, especially a place called Mylapore near Chennai in South India. Hindus are forced to bear the blame that St. Thomas was killed by a Hindu Brahmin where as the Acts of Thomas make it clear to anybody that St. Thomas was executed by a Zoroastrian king describes as Mazdai (a worshiper of Ahura Mazda). The place names and names of people mentioned in the acts is clearly Iranian and Indo-Parthian, with no resemblance to south India or Tamil or Sanskrit. Despite my attempts to bring a balance in the article, the admins of this page is adamant with thier biased writing. This situation demands that a new article about St Thomas, which is historically more accurate needs to be created. Invest some time in assessing the historicity of St Thomas before deleting the article on Historicity of St Thomas. There is a growing perception that Wikipedia is a pro-Christian, anti-Pagan, anti-Hindu encyclopedia. The actions of many of its editors who abuse various rules, exceptions and excuses of Wikipedia to protect pro-Christian pages and to delete any page that shows a non Christian pont of view, only strengthens this perception. I am an editor in Wikipedia for more than 7 years. It saddens me to see that the value of Wikipedia is eroding fast. Especially the pages dealing with history and religion are heavily biased. 06:07, 12 June 2013 (UTC).


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Hinduism-related deletion discussions. Jijithnr (talk) 06:36, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Paganism-related deletion discussions. Jijithnr (talk) 07:23, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete as a poorly written WP:POVFORK. Indeed, the main article author admits above that this article is a WP:POVFORK. Any issues with Thomas the Apostle should be handled using the standard conflict resolution processes, not by forking new articles. -- 202.124.74.33 (talk) 10:18, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Standard conflict resolution processes has failed miserably as this issue is ongoing since 2008 and it is debated in various online forums, eroding the authenticity and neutrality of Wikipedia. There are other solutions than deleting such as merging the content of this page with Thomas_the_Apostle page. Merging the content is less polarizing than hard inclusion or hard deletion. This will bring some balance in the point of view of the Thomas_the_Apostle page which is currently writen as absolute history where as it reflect only one of the many traditions about St. Thomas's martyrdom. Otherwise, let there be two articles, one focusing on the historicity of St.Thomas (Historicity_of_St_Thomas) and another (Thomas_the_Apostle) focusing on the dominant Christian tradition. Let then it be explicitly stated in the Thomas_the_Apostle page that the contents in it are based on the dominant Christian tradition and shall not be mistaken for history. This is a very sensible solution and I have found similar solutions working with many other articles of conflicting interest in Wikipedia in my 7 years of experience with Wikipedia editing. This solution is based on mutual respect and should be acceptable to many editors. I am ready to improve the Historicity_of_St_Thomas article further so that no content in Thomas_the_Apostle page is repeated in it and improve it further to meet all Wikipedia standards. Irrespective of whether this article is deleted or not, "Historicity of St.Thomas" and "Apostle Thomas of Christian tradition" are two different topics or sub-topic of some main article and they deserve separate existence as two different articles or as sub-articles of a main article. Jijithnr (talk) 04:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete - POVFORK. Forking articles because one can't sway consensus on the original page should not to be encouraged by forcing a merge.  Rather, this needs to be resolved on the original St. Thomas page and the duplicate article needs to be eliminated.  This article isn't even about the historicity of St. Thomas anyhow - it is just an alternative biography. Agricolae (talk) 22:59, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete - misleadingly titled POVFORK. Ansh666 05:04, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * To make myself more clear: This article, as a topic, is fine. This article, as it currently stands, is not. It is a mess of a single POV and much irrelevant info used to further said POV instead of actually discussing in a neutral manner the actual historicity of Thomas the Apostle. As such, I suggest a WP:TNT deletion, for someone down the line who has an interest in writing about the matter. Ansh666 06:20, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I welcome the suggestion of Ansh666 about rewriting the article by more competent editors, but I disagree with him about this being a single POV. This view is held by more than a dozen of authentic scholars, most of them Christians themselves and the Gnostic texts and other archives of the Church history are replete with similar views. They are as old as Christianity itself going back to as old as 2nd Century. In fact, had not this article was tagged for speedy deletion within 5 minutes (!!!) of its creation, I myself could have improved the article further, by exploring further into those archives, satisfying the likes of Ansh666 who seek for better historicity. Regarding the historicity of St. Thomas, scholary openion is divided, with some scholars arguing that he had not preached anywhere beyond Syria and that all the travels of St.Thomas beyond Syria were the imaginative work of the auther of the Acts of Thomas, viz. Bardaisan himself, who got information about the geography and kings of the east and India from the discussions he had with Buddhist monks who travelled from India to Syria. Porphyry states that on one occasion at Edessa, Bardaisan interviewed an Indian deputation of holy men (designated as Σαρμαναίοι, Sramanas) who had been sent to the Roman emperor Elagabalus or another Severan dynasty Roman Emperor, and questioned them as to the nature of Indian religion. The encounter is described in Porphyry http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Porphyry2.html Jijithnr (talk) 09:46, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * You seem to be the only one who thinks this is worth having, mate. My condolences. Ansh666 06:25, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

The content of the page is sufficiently distinct to be considered as a page of its own and cannot be considered as a POVFORK. All the information in the article is sourced and substantiated by references. Any one can look at the content of the page and delete any information not supported by references, rather than deleting the page altogather. I also request those who are in favor of deleting the article to take responsibility to preserve the following points which I strangely find Wikipedia is refusing to admit in any articles it has hosted. I do not blame any individual editor for this strange phenomenon but it raise suspicion to the over all neutrality of its collective Wikipedian editor community. The points are:- In the event of deleting this article (Historicity of St Thomas), these above mention points should be presented in some other article or these information should be added to the Thomas the Apostle to make it neutral. This responsibility rest with the editor/editors who are in favor of deleting this article (Historicity of St Thomas). Doing this, will show to everybody that Wikipedia is a neutral entity and not biased in favor of the dominant Christian view and that it can do justice to Hindu, Muslim or Pagan points of views. Jijithnr (talk) 05:37, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) The Acts of Thomas, (http://www.gnosis.org/library/actthom.htm) makes it very clear that the domain of activity of Thomas was not South India but Indo-Parthia, which is now part of Pakistan. Hence accusing Hindus that a Hindu Brahmana killed St.Thomas in Mylapore, near Chennai in South India is plain wrong. It is un-historical as well as an unnecessary insult to Hinduism, which has given asylum to Christians persecuted in Iran under Zoroastrian kings.
 * 2) Judas Thomas (St. Thomas), as per the Acts of Thomas, was the brother of Jesus and his appearance was very similar to that of Jesus to the point that people can mistake him for Jesus. Refer satetment from Act of Thomas Chapter 1:- And he saw the Lord Jesus bearing the likeness of Judas Thomas. Refer satetment from Act of Thomas Chapter 1:- Lord said to him: I am not Judas which is also called Thomas but I am his brother.
 * 3) Judas Thomas (St. Thomas) was sold as a slave to an Indian merchant Abbanes, by Jesus himself, according to the Acts of Thomas. Refer satetment from Act of Thomas Chapter 1:- I, Jesus, the son of Joseph the carpenter, acknowledge that I have sold my slave, Judas by name, unto thee Abbanes, a merchant of Gundaphorus, king of the Indians.
 * 4) It is acceptable to consider St.Thomas's visit to South India and his martyrdom in Mylapore Chennai as a very popular  Christian belief (but not as History) and it must be presented with similar tradition of St.Thomas visit and martyrdom in other places like Brazil.
 * I have several comments in response to this, and then I will step away. Your four most important points all address disputed aspects of the biography of Thomas, not the historicity of Thomas.  The talk of an insult to Hindus indicates some unsupportable sense of religious collective guilt, and suggests that there may be WP:SOAPBOX motivations.  It is not the responsibility of those favoring deletion of a WP:POVFORK to force a new consensus on the original article the fork was created to bypass.  It is up to you to bring about a new consensus on the Apostle Thomas page, to address the issue through WP:Dispute resolution, or to accept that the community consensus is not in favor of your position and move on, and if you can't do that, step away. A POVFORK is not the way to go. Agricolae (talk) 14:03, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * If you find content in (Historicity of St Thomas that is also present in Thomas the Apostle then you can delete them. I have no problem in it on grounds of POV FORK. But if you delete content in Historicity of St Thomas that is not found in Thomas the Apostle and if it is well sourced (I am not making it up, nor is this my original research. It is all there in Christian apocryphal texts) then they must be preserved in some form, either by merging it with Thomas the Apostle page or as a separate article. If you delete this page and fail to do this courtesy, then it means you are using Wikipedia rules as a cover to hide uncomfortable information. You are also helping to spread false information about St.Thomas's arrival and martyrdom in South India. You are thus indirectly helping the Christian missionaries in South India who work for converting unsuspecting Hindus into Christianity. I also agree with one of your suggestion and can rename the article as "Disputed aspects of the biography of Thomas" or create a new article with that title Jijithnr (talk) 04:55, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment @Jijithnr, I'm sincerely puzzled by your statement above, "The content of the page is sufficiently distinct to be considered as a page of its own and cannot be considered as a POVFORK." Please see this report. How do you explain the identical content used in Historicity of St Thomas? Is it not copied from the Thomas the Apostle article? Do you honestly believe that the two articles are distinct from one another? I can understand your desire to present a biography of Thomas from the viewpoint of other faiths, but this simply is not the way to go about doing so. Cindy  ( talk ) 13:25, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * If you find content in (Historicity of St Thomas that is also present in Thomas the Apostle then you can delete them. I have no problem in it on grounds of POV FORK. But if you delete content in Historicity of St Thomas that is not found in Thomas the Apostle and if it is well sourced (I am not making it up, nor is this my original research. It is all there in Christian apocryphal texts) then they must be preserved in some form, either by merging it with Thomas the Apostle page or as a separate article. If you delete this page and fail to do this courtesy, then it means you are using Wikipedia rules as a cover to hide uncomfortable information. You are also helping to spread false information about St.Thomas's arrival and martyrdom in South India. You are thus indirectly helping the Christian missionaries in South India who work for converting unsuspecting Hindus in Christianity. You are saying:-"This is simply not the way". I pray then what is then the way? As many as four years (since 2008) different editors and eminent scholars even with a doctorate degree has pointed to the admins of (Historicity of St Thomas page, to bring a balance into the article. They have not done that. There was two murder attempts upon Ishwar Sharan for showing the Christian Church that they are wrong about St. Thomas's arrival in South India, showing well attested Christian sources. Huge amount of money is spent to implant this legend of St.Thomas arrival and martyrdom into South India inculding by producing a big budget movie. In freelancer.com, a collaborative job portal, jobs are posted to freelancers asking them to work as Wikipedia editors who would write articles in favor of Christianity, defending Christian articles and deleting any article favoring a non-Christian view. When you have hundreds of admins in Wikipedia with strong bias in favor of dominant Christian viewpoint what hope is there to bring other point of views into Wikipedia? . Jijithnr (talk) 04:55, 17 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete: Blatant POV fork, packed with fringe "alternative history" (Jesus had a twin brother????????), OR and synth based on primary and unreliable sources, abuse of sources, and a good dose of just plain WTF. Nothing here worth saving or merging. Delete in its entirety, and flush twice. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 06:09, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Are you surprised to know that Jesus had a twin brother? That means you have little knowledge of the ancient Christian texts, especially Gnostic texts and apocryphal texts like Acts of Thomas. These are not some bogus propaganda created by Hindus or Pagans. Go to your nearest Church and ask and they would be able to tell you more about this. Or else make a single Google search and you will get your answer in one second. Here it says:- Refer satetment from Act of Thomas Chapter 1:- And he saw the Lord Jesus bearing the likeness of Judas Thomas. Refer satetment from Act of Thomas Chapter 1:- Lord said to him: I am not Judas which is also called Thomas but I am his brother.04:55, 17 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete - basically per Dominus Vobisdu. This is almost entirely original research from someone who just doesn't seem to get that Wikipedia doesn't exist to host his fringe theories. The suggestion that this is somehow a "Hindu, Muslim or Pagan point of view" that needs coverage for balance is not at all supported by reliable sources. Stalwart 111  12:10, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * This is not original research since I am just quoting information already present in well recognized Christian web sites containing Gnostic and apocryphal texts. Nor are these fringe theories. These are discussed and written elaborately by more than a dozens of Christian scholars and modern scholars as well. Are you also suggesting that http://www.gnosis.org/library/actthom.htm is not a reliable source? Jijithnr (talk) 04:55, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * It may well surprise you to learn how many of us here have a pretty good understanding of Gnostic and apocryphal texts. But I digress... you still haven't explained how your mis-titled Historicity of St Thomas is in any way what it claims to be. We already cover Thomas the Apostle at Thomas the Apostle, the Acts of Thomas at Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Thomas at Gospel of Thomas and Saint Thomas Christians at Saint Thomas Christians. Thomas the Apostle already includes most of the information you seem to be trying to present (though badly) including his time in India and historical references to him (that which might actually be considered the Historicity of St Thomas). What you've done is create another article that synthesises various claims together into one large, unwieldy (and frankly unnecessary) mish-mash of original research. Stalwart 111  05:19, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Maintaining what Wikipedia calls “the neutral point of view” (or NPOV) is relatively easy when writing about science topics or otherwise objectively verifiable subjects. But in other topics, such as politics, religion and history, bias and controversy inevitably arise. “The neutral point of view is much more of an article of faith in the way Wikipedia is organized than a tested proposition,” - Dr. Shane Greenstein Jijithnr (talk) 10:08, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * That's really not accurate, because at the end of the day all we're doing is regurgitating what reliable sources have said about things. You seem to have decided that certain articles "aren't neutral" because they don't also cover your particular literal interpretation of certain apocryphal texts. Your solution seems to be to create a bunch of articles that present your view, despite the fact that it's a view not support by reliable sources. That's not what Wikipedia is for. Want to blog about religion and ancient texts? Go for it. Want Wikipedia to host your blog? Not going to happen. Stalwart 111  10:44, 17 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment - by the way, I've also nominated the biographies of certain characters whose articles are entirely reliant on text from the Acts of Thomas (Abbanes and Misdaeus) at Articles for deletion/Abbanes. A single apocryphal source isn't anywhere near enough to make either character notable. Stalwart 111  10:44, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Wow! Now you are saying, the Acts of Thomas is not a relaible! If Acts of Thomas is discarded, then what basis is there in the story of Apostle St.Thomas? What basis is then there is for his visit to South India or any where in the world? Do you deny the following statement of Jesus? I, Jesus, the son of Joseph the carpenter, acknowledge that I have sold my slave, Judas by name, unto thee Abbanes, a merchant of Gundaphorus, king of the Indians. If no why? If yes, why can't it deserve a Wikipedia article? Jijithnr (talk) 11:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Where have I suggested it's not reliable? What I suggested was that a single passing mention in an apocryphal text isn't enough to substantiate the notability of a merchant who bought a slave, no matter how notable that slave might or might not have been. We've been having a reasonably nice chat on your talk page but you're jumping all over the place now. Just calm down - I'm happy to keep the conversation going but this is not the place for that, or for an ongoing conversation about another AFD. Stalwart 111  12:39, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Then keep it as a stub. In fact I have kept the stub tag on the article which some editor skilfully removed. Keep it as a stub until more information about the topic is found. Jijithnr (talk) 17:41, 17 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete Obvious pov fork. Dougweller (talk) 13:44, 17 June 2013 (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.