Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people who have claimed to be Jesus (3rd nomination)


 * 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   keep. The issue of merging or renaming can continue on the article's talk page. Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:20, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

List of people who have claimed to be Jesus
AfDs for this article: 
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Violates WP:No original research. There is nothing to say that the many people in history who have "claimed to be Jesus" form a notable group. Many people on the page actually did not claim that, but something else such as to be God himself, to be the second Messiah, to be especially inspired by Jesus, or something else. The article also has an unneutral tone in favor the Christian religion over others. Wolfview (talk) 06:19, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete Most of the article is not even about what the title claims. The first sentence says: "This is a list of notable people who have made statements claiming to be the reincarnation or incarnation of Jesus Christ, or the Second Coming of Christ from Heaven in some aspect." Jaque Hammer (talk) 08:35, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * How has this article got an "un-neutral tone"? Please explain with specifics.  I hope that the reason is more than "It discusses a subject that is intimately related to Christianity, and so of course focuses upon Christianity more than, say, Zoroastrianism.".  And if you're going to argue that claiming to be the Christ is not the same as claiming to be God, or the son of God, then you're straying into the territory of a very fine point of Christian theology indeed, wearing hobnail boots.  So the first sentence clarifies details of scope where the title would be incredibly unwieldy if it were to include every single aspect of what has been covered by some two millennia of thought, but for which the title is a reasonable, common name, simplification.  How is that a reason for deletion? And if  can have an article discussing people claming to be the Messiah, including Solomon Molcho, David Reuveni, and Nahman of Bratslav, and people claiming to be (or claimed by others to be) the second coming of Christ, including Ann Lee, Joanna Southcott, and John of Kronstadt, in an encyclopaedia, why cannot this encyclopaedia?  Is Wikipedia to be less of an encyclopaedia than other encyclopaedias?  Uncle G (talk) 14:45, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Rename to "Messiah claimants" if that is the topic. Steve Dufour (talk) 16:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * That article already exists. List of messiah claimants. Editor2020 (talk) 17:02, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Then merge the two lists? I expect that most of the people will be on both. I'm not sure if you can claim to be Jesus without also claiming to be the Messiah. Steve Dufour (talk) 17:06, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * That's the cart before the horse. It's possible to claim to be the Messiah without claiming to be Jesus.  So not all Messiah clamiants are claiming to be Jesus.   does, in fact, explain this. Uncle G (talk) 21:39, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * But are all people claiming to be Jesus also claiming to be the Messiah? If so then this article could be merged into the other without losing any information, or repeating the same information in two lists. Jaque Hammer (talk) 02:59, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think that the two articles should be merged. Doing so would either strip a massive amount of information from the "Jesus" list or turn the well-balanced "Messiah" list into a mostly Christian list. Besides, "Messiah" is a very nebulous concept that is defined differently by many groups who also believe that Jesus was that Messiah. While I do not know whether anyone on the list claimed to be Jesus but claimed not to be Messiah, it is certainly possible that someone has or will make that claim. YardsGreen (talk) 12:32, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep Nom makes four arguments for deletion; I don't believe any of the four arguments apply. First, if other encyclopedias have covered this topic, as Uncle G says, then it is not necessarily WP:OR. Second, the subject is notable, for the same reason. Third, while I agree that not everyone in the list explicitly claimed to be Jesus Christ, this is a reason to remove these people from the list rather than delete the list in its entirety. Finally, I disagree that the article has an unneutral tone, but if nom believes this, the appropriate course of action would be to add the appropriate NPOV tag and perhaps discuss the article's neutrality on its talk page. YardsGreen (talk) 12:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If the article is kept I will certainly follow your advice. I have found that it's bad to remove informtion from an article after nominating it for deletion. One thing I didn't mention is the section on the young man who had been given the first and middle names "Jesus" and "Christ" by his parents. The millions of men in Hispanic cultures also named "Jesus" are ignored. Wolfview (talk) 12:49, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I notice that List of people who have claimed to be Jesus Christ redirects to the article under consideration. Perhaps it would be better to redirect the "Jesus" list to "Jesus Christ" instead? (Assuming that the article is kept.) YardsGreen (talk) 13:18, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * How about "People who have claimed to be Christ"? Most of the people listed do not claim to be Jesus himself. Steve Dufour (talk) 16:49, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "Christ" is just a title, and IIRC, is actually just the Greek word for "Messiah". As you note, claiming to be Jesus Christ is different from claiming to be Christ; those who claimed to be Christ but not Jesus can be added to the "Messiah" article mentioned above. Assuming the article is kept, we can clean it up later. YardsGreen (talk) 04:44, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "Christ" is just a title, and IIRC, is actually just the Greek word for "Messiah". As you note, claiming to be Jesus Christ is different from claiming to be Christ; those who claimed to be Christ but not Jesus can be added to the "Messiah" article mentioned above. Assuming the article is kept, we can clean it up later. YardsGreen (talk) 04:44, 2 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Meets every requirement for a Wikipedia list. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:26, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:27, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:27, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Rename to "List of People who have claimed to be the Messiah", or something along those lines.. not all have claimed to be Jesus Christ, and even in the biblical days other people claimed to be the messiah. --Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 20:46, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. A list is a navigation aid, and does not have to be notable in itself. What counts is that a) readers may be interested in the list b) qualification for inclusion is implied by the title and is clearly defined and c) all entries are either sourced or have blue links to articles that are sourced. This article needs clean-up to meet these criteria. Some entries should be fixed or deleted, the section on "Claimants to being Christ/Messiah, but not Jesus" should be merged into List of messiah claimants. I will do this. "Claimants for being siblings of Jesus" and "People named Jesus Christ" can be dropped, since they each have just one blue-link entry. I will do this too. But the list is essentially valid. I suspect the repeated attempts to delete are due to dislike of the idea that anyone would claim to be Jesus. Not a good reason to delete. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:30, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Out of curiosity, where are those criteria from? I only ask because WP:N has a relatively new (and still under discussion) section on the notability of lists that has different criteria. As for why the article is repeatedly nominated for deletion, the nominators don't seem to be Christian protectionists. All three nominations include reasons that, if anything, indicate the opposite is true. But I see no reason not to WP:AGF with the nominations. YardsGreen (talk) 04:44, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I should have assumed good faith - have struck that comment. I remember those criteria from a lengthy discussion on "silly lists" (such as "List of tall people") some time ago, which I can't find now. They seem fairly obvious. This article did not comply with b) but could be fixed to comply. WP:NLIST and WP:LISTPEOPLE both mention lists of people, but have nothing to say about notability of the list itself, just of the entries in the list. There are a great many lists in Wikipedia which serve as navigation aids, or encourage readers to browse. This seems like one of them. The rule at WP:N seems new, and could affect many other lists with (to me) much less inherent interest and cohesion. For example, the people in a list of graduates from a given college probably do not have a great deal in common, but readers may still be interested in seeing who graduated from that college. The concept of "Messiah claimant" is notable, but most discussion of the concept in books is about the period around the time of Christ, while these list entries are much later. For that reason I would prefer to keep this list stand-alone. A discussion on merging into List of messiah claimants could be done post-AfD. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:27, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * See boxes at right. Quite likely the subject of claims to be Christ is notable in itself, distinct from "messiah claimant". I do not see any books that treat it as their sole topic, but several seem to discuss the concept at some length. Maybe the intro to this article could be expanded to demonstrate notability of the list itself. It does not seem necessary to me. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:00, 2 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep I think this is useful as a reference point. Sure anybody could claim to be Jesus reincarnated but such a statements has such relevance to the Christian world, even if they are fabricated.. As long as those listed are widely covered in reliable publications its OK I think.♦ Dr. Blofeld  20:25, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep -- This clearly a notable topic. That it is not WP:OR is clearly shown by the number of citations from other sources.  I oppose merger with the list of messiah claimants: there is an overlap, but they are different.  It is possible that the article needs to be purged.  For example, Rastifarians make claims for the Emperor Haile Selassi I as a reincarnation of Jesus (or something of the sort), but he himself was a Christian of the Ethiopian church and would presumably have disclaimed any such status.  Peterkingiron (talk) 12:00, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment Merging this with the list of Messiah claimants is a bad idea: Simon bar Kokhba is one of the most important Messiah claimants in history, but he most definitely didn't claim to be Jesus. There are plenty of less famous Messiah claimants who also didn't claim to be Jesus.  Nyttend (talk) 04:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * There could be a case for merging this list into List of messiah claimants, since anyone claiming to be Jesus Christ presumably also claims to be a messiah. The list of messiah claimants is broken into categories (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Other), and the Christian category could in turn be broken into claims to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ (this list) and claims to be a messiah but not Christ. A merger discussion may be reasonable: "What is the best way to organize these lists?". This is an AfD discussion though: "Should this list title and contents be purged from Wikipedia?" I don't see much support for that. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:04, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep though possibly a rename to List of people who have claimed to be Jesus Christ, son of God may be appropriate in order to clarify the content more explicitly. It is a useful, and interesting, reference list and whilst it overlaps with messiahs is substantially different enough to not be mergable. (It also worries me when I see multiple attempts to delete an article, but that was not part of my reasoning here). -AlisonW (talk) 14:21, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep and leave the title as it is; it is perfectly clear and is comparable to many other articles about people who have claimed to be the central figure of a particular religion, such as People claiming to be the Mahdi, List of Buddha claimants, Jewish Messiah claimants, etc. I suppose for clarity it could be changed to List of people who have claimed to be Jesus Christ (adding "Christ" to the name), but that dab does not conform to other Wikipedia usage; the wiki article here is simply titled Jesus, and Jesus Christ is a redirect. --MelanieN (talk) 15:01, 6 January 2011 (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.