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User talk:Wesley/Archive1

This is an archive of my user talk page up through roughly 2004. It seems that the earliest entries here are long gone, and must have been deleted at some point.

Not sure yet, but as I tried to cut from my main talk page and paste into this one, I think that some material may have been duplicated. Either that, or it's late right now and I'm seeing double. Point is that there is quite likely much less actual discussion here than first meets the eye. Also, if you look closely, you'll see that not all of it is chronological. Some of the undated exchanges with SLR go back to 2002 and possibly even 2001, if I'm not mistaken. Wesley 05:33, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Misc
Hi there, Wesley!

To tell you the truth, I didn't even expect my article on Strigolniki to appear on the Wiki's Main Page. You seem to be interested in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. If you noticed, there's a reference to the Sect of Skhariya the Jew at the end of the Strigolniki article. I am working on it right now and will post it on Monday. After that, I may start working on much bigger articles on the history of heresy in Russia and Russian "inquisition". Oh, and to answer your question on those responsible for Strigolniki's drowning, I couldn't find names of the actual instigators. I only know that Alexius was Metropolitan of Russia at that time and Dmitry Donskoy was the Grand Prince of Moscow and Novgorod. However, you'll find greater details on different personalities in my upcoming article on the above-mentioned sect. Some names will be in red, but later on I'll definitely upload their bios.

KNewman 17:45, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, at the risk of further alienating LMS I think I owe it to you to respond, hopefully briefly, to some of your queries concerning the last thing I posted. I do think we pretty much understand each other and there may not be much need to continuing the discussion. Off-hand I would encourage you to draw selectively on things I and RK have written in the "talk" section in order to edit the article itself – I think as a Christian you are a better judge than either of us of what we have written that effectively communicates a Jewish position to non-Jews.

 * Wow. Thanks. Of course, that means I'll have to both understand and express your position. I'm flattered that you think I might be up to it, and comforted to know you'll correct me if I go too far astray in doing so. (grin) --Wesley

Anyway, you write
 * If you believe they were meant to incite physical violence, there ought to exist examples of such violence prior to the Middle Ages.

I was thinking of the desecration of synagogues by Chistians during Roman times that was alluded to in the passage I quoted from the Vatican document.

 * As I recall, that particular descration was part of a general trashing of pagan places of worship, which led me to think the Jewish synagogues were desecrated more because they were non-Christian than specifically because they were Jewish. And that was still several centuries after the New Testament was written. I suppose judging their actual motives is speculation on either side, in the absence of any documents saying "Synagogues should be destroyed because _____________ "  --Wesley

 * Uh, no, I honestly don't see how. I think RK said elsewhere that Jews have reinterpreted parts of the Tanach (or Torah?) so as to have the effect of erasing them,

Well, I realize what works for us may not work for you, but I do not consider what Jews have done to be an erasure since those passages are still read, aloud, each year in the synagogue.
 * In any case, it is God, not any Christian, who passes final judgment.

I agree – my issue is when people claim to know what God's judgement is.
 * But when it encounters a religion that denies pluralism, it is in a quandary.

An excellent point, and this is a big theoretical problem with "liberalism" in general. All I can say, and you may consider this an ad-hoc response, is that I do think that the problem I have with non-pluralistic religions is fundamentally different from the problem non-pluralistic religions have with other religions. For one thing, it is only the claim that Christianity is the only path for all people that I contest. I do not at all contest the Christian liturgy, the Catholic sacraments, etc. as means to reach God. Don't you think this is different from someone saying that Jewish practices will not serve as a means for people to achieve a living, meaningful relationship with God? Put more personally, I merely express my discomfort with the Christian position towards me. But although you now express some questions about my position towards Christianity, in fact the whole discussion was motivated by the Christian attitude towards Judaism as a whole (and not towards Jewish attitudes towards Christians). Finally, I will not do anything to compel Christians to change. I know that you won't do anything to compel me or other Jews to change, and I know that most if not all Christians today will do nothing to compel Jews to change. Nevertheless, the historical fact is, in the past many Christian movements did put pressure on Jews to change – and this is one of the things I and I think RK want Christians to take responsibility for (and which I think the Catholic Church, among others, has done). – SR

 * Forgive me for ignoring the rest of your paragraph; I want to press the problem with pluralism further. The pluralistic attitude towards Christianity might seem fundamentally different, but only if one ignores the nature of the Catholic Mass or Eucharist, for instance. And that is precisely what it seems to me that pluralists do. IF the Eucharist is effective as a means to reach God, it is because God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. Central to Eucharistic theology is that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, and by eating them, Christ literally dwells within us, becomes part of who we are. As Alexander Schmemann put it in his book For the Life of the World, most food is transformed by us when we eat it, but the Eucharist transforms us instead. In part, it is an affirmation of the Incarnation. So to admit that the Eucharist is a means to God is to admit that Jesus Christ really was God in the flesh. If in fact Christ was not God, but a man only, then Eucharistic theology falls apart, and the Eucharist cannot bring us closer to God in the way that classical Christian theology says it does. You cannot have it both ways. Unless of course you say that the Eucharist and the other sacraments are a means to God only because we think they are, and not because of any basis in reality; this would be asserting that the sacraments (and all practices of other religions as well) can have a marvelous placebo effect, but beyond that don't actually do anything.  --Wesley

 * Well, I think we have reached the end of our discussion -- I respect the sincerity of your convictions, which you have expressed well. And I am not sure I can add much to what I have written.  The paradox of pluralism that you call attention to is not one I am capable of solving, although I am committed to learning how to live with it.  As for your own spiritual life, I cannot ask you to sacrifice your convictions or practices.  And although I understand your convictions and your reasons for them, in another sense I just do not understand them and perhaps never will (not for any fault in your attempt to explain them, but perhaps because our different traditions and languages simply lead us to some point where they cannot actually meet).

 * All I can offer is an what I take to be an analogous case and yet in effect it turns out not to be a useful analogy, given all that you have said. It is this: Orthodox, fundamentalist Jews really believe that God really revealed His law to us at Sinai, and cemented His covenant with us at that time.  They do not consider this belief to be a metaphor or a surrogate or a subjective means to some transcendent end; they believe it really happened.  And they believe that everytime they obey the law, they are living within that covenant, that relationship, that when they say "Blessed are Thou, of Lord," they are really speaking to God and God speaks back to them.

 * And yet, they do not believe that this covenant and its obligations extend to non-Jews. Moreover, they do not believe that this means that non-Jews are excluded from a relationship from God.  They simply understand that God will have different kinds of relationships with other people(s).

 * And so from my point of view, the issue is not whether I believe that Jesus was God made flesh. The issue is whether it is possible that we Jews can believe that the Torah she Baal Pe (the Oral law) and the Halacha can be God's gift to us, and you can believe that Jesus Christ is God's gift to you.  And perhaps He has or will offer other gifts to constitute other relationships with still others.  I do not think I can add anything more to this.

 * by the way, I can now apologize for/correct a wrong assertion I made earlier, that early Christians did not believe in Jesus' resurrection. I reread the article in the New York Review of Books and this is not in question (really, I shouldn't be surprised since God brought Elijah to Himself, and someone else in Genesis -- I think Enoch.  According to this issue, the question -- just as profound -- was whether Jesus was fully human, fully divine, half and half, or fully both.  The article sugests that Christians debated all these views until the Council of Chalcedon in 451.  The article also cites books by two scholars, Geza Vermes and Paula Fredriksen who apparently have explored some of these issues in depth.

 * Peace, SR

Well, SR, I have to agree that there's not much more to say, except that I feel I have personally profited greatly from this discussion. If there's ever a religious pluralism article, I hope to include this in its Talk page. I think we share many of the same prayers, both literally and more generally. The phrase "Blessed art Thou O Lord, teach me your Law" occurs repeatedly in the Orthodox evening prayer liturgy ("vespers"), with at least a similar understanding of what we're saying. Perhaps you can help me enumerate Judaism's liturgical contributions to Christianity/Orthodoxy some time on the Eastern Orthodoxy page.

Peace, Wesley

Hey, Wesley, just a nomenclature note - I was looking at your To Do list and thinking that, strangely, the name I've seen John of the Ladder under most frequently is the Latin version - John Climacus. Before you write him you might check around, or it might just be worth a redirect from 'Climacus' to 'of the Ladder'. On the other hand, Catherine of the Wheel is always known as Catherine of Alexandria in western sources, and the redirect should go from 'of the Wheel' to 'of Alexandria'. Mmmmm, nomenclature. --MichaelTinkler

 * To be honest, I've been wondering if John Climacus was the same John for a little while now; thought he might be, but wasn't quite sure. Thanks for clarifying. I'll try to remember to set up the appropriate redirects. How much difference does it make, as to which name gets listed on the List of saints page? There's a real risk of duplication if someone doesn't realize two different names are the same person. Should we start listing alternate names in parentheses? But beg people not to list every single name for The Virgin Mary? --Wesley

Wesley, I started an entry on Religious pluralism. Please join in; the material you wrote in the "Talk" section of the other topics will ber very valuble here. RK

Wesley,

Please feel free to reorganize the articles relating to sin, salvation, original sin, fall of man, Garden of Eden. Sometimes I go stub-happy, making too many of the little suckers. In particular, fall of man is a major topic in the Unification Church -- with Original Sin as a sub-topic -- but that's no reason the wikipedia should have to conform to my minority view.

I might want to argue about politics or sex, but there is no way I want to be contentious in the slightest when it comes to religion. Ed Poor

Note - I was moving user pages from the main wikipedia namespace to the user section and you have a page in both... are they the same page? If so you need to move or delete the information from Wesley to get it out of the main article space. ~ KJ

-- 7-11-02 - Great modification to the Russian Orthodox Church article! As a day-2 newbie to wiki, I'm amazed at how harmonious the accretion of information is.... Guided by a spirit of scholarship and informed by the usage and neutrality provisions, it is somthing to see how articles are tuned and improved, without great debates or acrimony. The wiki community is really "something else," and after long years of Internet use, I think I've found an open-source endeavor that I can really sink my teeth into! -- Gjalexei

8/7/02 -- Wesley, thanks -- I think the changes you have made on the NT A-S article are quite good, Slrubenstein Wesley: I followed your instructions and got 'The Virgin Mary' redirected to Mary, the mother of Jesus. I didn't put a cross-reference to the former in the latter, so if you want one, please make one. Nor did I move the Talk page, because I didn't know what the custom is for that, but I suspect it should be moved, too. Thanks for teaching me how to do a redirect. I wasn't sure where to leave this message for you, so I'm leaving it here. -- isis

 * I'm glad the redirect instructions made sense to you. I copied the Talk page over, since it makes sense to me and I think that's typical. Also did some organizing with headings, and can only hope I managed to stay neutral. Thanks, Wesley

I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I'm much happier with how it is now. Thanks much for humoring me. I'll probably post a couple more pix to it, because there are just so many old masters who did famous works of her. (BTW should you put something in this one to take them to Madonna?) -- isis

 * Personally, I'm neither Roman Catholic nor Italian, so the name/term 'Madonna' doesn't mean that much to me. If you want to add that, go ahead and do it; I doubt I would do it well. I already added Theotokos, which is the most common "title" for Mary used in Orthodox prayers. ;-) I like the pix you're adding. Any chance you could find any done in the Russian or Byzantine style, just to humour me? :-) I know where to find some online, but I'm never sure about the copyright status of the images and so far haven't taken time to inquire. Wesley

I'm using pictures from books, art post cards, and magazine clippings, all of which I've been collecting for about 40 years, so I can't be sure of what I'll run across, but I'll keep a special look out for some of the Asiatic stuff, just for you, because I like you so much. If you find some pictures you like, tho, please go ahead and put them in -- I'm pretty much doing it as a service for those who don't have pix at hand to go with their articles. -- isis

Thanks for reverting recently damaged articles. --Ed Poor

What is the tilde sig. feature? Where can I find a list of changes to the wiki, such as this one? -- Mbecker

 * If you're logged in to wikipedia, and you type three ~ characters in a row, it will be saved as your user sig. If you type four ~ characters, it saves it as your user sig plus a datestamp. I wish I knew where to find a list of changes; I just learned these from other users on Talk pages, same as you're learning right now. :-) For example:

 * three tildes: Wesley
 * four tildes:  Wesley 13:39 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

 * Neat! Thanks :) -- Michael 14:49 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

Good clarifications on Neo-evangelicalism - mkmcconn

 * Thanks. You're doing a great job. Just keep sticking to NPOV presentation. I wonder if some mention should be made of that organization of Christian CPA's that does financial accountability certification for evangelical parachurch organizations? ECFA or something like that? It seems significant that there was a need for that since the normal denominational accountability mechanisms didn't exist, and that a new umbrella solution developed in response. Might also mention the role of parachurch interdenominational missions organization in missionary activity, and how some have evolved into overseas denominations. Wesley 18:38 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)

 * I don't know anything specific concerning financial accountability. I think you should move your suggestions from here into Talk:Neo-evangelicalism, and maybe someone will pick it up.  I might be able to contribute a skeleton overview of the missions organizations. Mkmcconn 18:47 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)

 * good point. copying suggestions there. :-) Wesley 18:50 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)

To answer your question: ''Hebrews 12:1 describes a "cloud of witnesses," the spiritual aggregation of Old Testament saints who hoped for their reward in Christ. Jude 14 likewise reports of Enoch's prophecy that Jesus would come with "thousands and thousands of holy saints." This was the spiritual "cloud" upon which Jesus came.'' --Ed Poor

Thank you for the alert on the city data. Yes it is fixable. I'll have to write a script that parses the data and replaces the false data, but it should be easily automated. I will have to fix the mistake before adding more. -- Ram-Man

I think that the sola scriptura article turned out pretty well, with your help. Are you satisfied that it's an even-handed treatment of the subject? How about the predestination article; is it still too obscure or, do you think that it's getting better? Mkmcconn

 * Overall, I think it's quite good now. There might be a couple spots that could be edited for greater clarity, but I think the content is fairly well balanced. This sentence in the third paragraph might need some explanation: Sola scriptura reverses the order of the Church's authority, as it had been understood by the Catholic tradition. It's not clear what the order of authority is/was as understood by the Catholic tradition, and what the reversed order is. I haven't looked at the predestination article in a while; I'll try to get back to it in a day or two. So many articles, so little time. BTW, what do you think of the relationship between church and theater? Want to address it in the Church article? See the Church Talk page, most recent posts, the edits for the last couple of days there. ;-) Wesley

Thanks for the stub on Gregory Palamas. How about one on Maximus the Confessor? mkmcconn

 * Sure. This is one of the things I like best about wikipedia: inspiration to do more research. Thanks for the quotes from Gregory the Great in the Episcopalean article; I was able to find them at ccel.org, and lots more good reading there as well. I'll need to come back to it later to see how much any of that should impact the actual article, if at all. Wesley

Wesley, please take a look at Christian eschatology and see if you would like to add anything, or change what I added there about how Orthodox (and others) view discussions of eschatology. Also, for ecumenism, do you have a preference between ecumenism, ecumenicism, or ecumenicalism, as to which should be the target page, and which should be redirects? -- Mkmcconn

 * I took a look at Christian eschatology and made a couple notes on the Talk page there. I'll let you integrate whatever there is worth integrating. At least, something about 'partially realized' eschatology is worth mentioning. I forgot to mention that Christ's second coming is important in part because it is then that many of the more victorious messianic prophecies are fully fulfilled, at least in some models. That's important to Jesus' Messiahship, and the connection should probably be made somehow. As for the other, I think I like ecumenism best, but only because it has fewer syllables and is easier to say. I don't have any huge preference, any of the three will do. Having redirects from the others is a good idea, because people will probably search for and link to all three. Wesley

 * I've incorporated bits of what you mention. You might also be interested in the work done, mostly by User:KF, at the Millennialism entry.  I got pretty aggressive in restructuring what he wrote; I hope I was fair. — Mkmcconn

Wesley, I have a sizeable POV draft on Christian ecumenism that I would like you to read. I'd like to have it reviewed, to measure how much of will finally boil down to something substantial and merely descriptive, before I think about posting it. Are you interested? — Mkmcconn

 * Sure I'm interested in the subject, but I think I'd rather just look at it once it's posted. Everything that goes into wikipedia is a draft just by the nature of wikipedia, even though some entries are a lot more polished than others. Any special reason you'd like me to review it before you post it? Incidentally, right now I'm working on fleshing out the development of the New Testament Biblical canon one piece at a time. Wesley 13:32 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)

 * Because it's a touchy subject; and although I try to narrow the scope, and deal with it even-handedly, I'm betting that I'll come short, offend, and spark a nasty edit war simply because I'm not familiar enough with other perspectives on ecumenism. In its present form, it's more of an essay than an encyclopedia entry; which may be irksome to some. But, you've emboldened me.  I'll post it and see what you think. — Mkmcconn 14:30 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)

Wesley, (1) I respect your contributions. (2) Contributors to articles on Biblical and religious issues often state them "as if" they are facts beyond dispute. This is very rarely the case. I just wrote in Talk:John the Evangelist:

- I added "According to the New Testament account" to the beginning of this article. To contributors to articles on Biblical events and persons: There is a great deal of uncritical public acceptance of pop-Christian accounts of history. I feel that it is incumbent on Wikipedia to specify that Biblical accounts are exactly that - "accounts", often supported by no text or evidence other than the Bible itself. This is necessary for reasons of NPOV and simple scholarly honesty. Thanks. -

Any comments from you would be appreciated. Thanks.

 * Well, I have no problem attributing historical claims to their sources, especially if I'm aware of any dispute regarding those claims. I checked the history of the John the Evangelist article, and it seems that I only added one or two traditional church stories about him that are extrabiblical, and identified them as such. That and fixed a couple links. It's not clear to me what is meant by "pop-Christian" accounts of history; to me that signifies any kind of pulp fiction passed off as history that's marketed through places like Family Bookstore, but doesn't signify ancient authors and manuscripts, even if some of those authors are allegedly Christians. I would hope the same care would be taken regarding other ancient history, no more and no less. Wesley 17:49 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

Wesley, I think you and I are in agreement about scholarship, if not about theology :-). "Pop-Christianity" would be something along these lines:  http://www.amfchristianvideos.com/shop/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=8&cat=Christian%2BVideos - the "uncritical" popular acceptance of accounts like these is what I really meant to draw attention to. I do not feel that your own work on Wikipedia is uncritical, but I had hoped to ask that all contributors  remember to mention that Biblical accounts should not be considered historical in modern terms. Thanks.

 * Ok, I agree that a lot of the material on that site is pretty frightening. I don't agree that all biblical accounts should not be considered historical; that sounds like they should presumed to be particularly unreliable. And that sounds as biased as uncritically accepting all of it as literally true. The more I read of modern "historical criticism" and of the ancient debates, the more I find that modern historians are breaking very little new ground, and are mostly just repeating the same arguments used against Christians in the first two or three centuries of Christianity. Perhaps the reminder should be that anything more than, what 1,000 years old should not be considered historical? More than 500 years old? What's the magic cutoff? Wesley 19:18 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC) (very amateur historian)

I would be glad to have your corrections or cautions (or anyone else's) on the changes that have been made to Christian eschatology. A number of statements have been made about Eastern Orthodoxy that you may want to fix. I've been allowed to make huge changes with impunity (except for corrections of my habitual misspelling of certain words) - which makes me nervous that I've been taking the article out of the frame of general interest, or have made it so long or disorganized as to now be unreadable. — Mkmcconn 19:40 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

 * I'll take a look at it, if you'll take a look at the Biblical canon article. I've been working on the New Testament section, and caused a stir on the Talk page when I referred to James as Bishop of Jerusalem. Any input you might have regarding the canon, or how wikipedia should treat John the Apostle and John the Evangelist would be most welcome. Thanks. Wesley 19:45 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

 * You've done some good work. I think the section on Intermediate State or what have you could probably use the most work. In general, the Orthodox are deliberately vague and imprecise about technical details, while making some very general statements about it. I've also heard some very interesting ideas about Hell as being more of a state than a place, but need to research how widely they're held and by whom before including. The idea is that Hell cannot be outside the presence of God, because that would imply that God is not omnipresent. Rather, it suggests that being in God's presence, and being very conscious of being in His presence, while not loving Him would be very unpleasant. Again, need to research that further before including it anywhere. Wesley

 * In fact, being of a more audacious bent than yourself, that theory was already alluded to in the article without doing any further research than to consult my own vague recollection of having heard it more than once! Mkmcconn 22:39 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

In the passage you added to Sanctuary a couple of months ago -- "It is a cloth icon of Christ's body taken down from the cloth" -- should it be "down from the cross? Or something else that would make sense to me? And thanks for putting in the Orthodox stuff I didn't know about; it really improved the article to have another example of how the principle applies. -- isis 09:15 Dec 2, 2002 (UTC)

 * I'll doublecheck the context, but yes, that should probably be of Christ's body taken "down from the cross" if you're referring to the antimension. Thanks for the catch. Wesley 15:24 Dec 2, 2002 (UTC)

Howdy. Did you get my reply to your question about protestant hermeneutics, and did it answer (or, are you struggling to find a way to civilly inform me that it is nonsense)? Mkmcconn

 * Yes, I got your reply. It's very well written; I especially liked the quote from Cyprian. Still pondering a good answer, but I can tell you I don't think it's nonsense. Stay tuned... :-)  Wesley 22:02 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

By the way, the perlish regex in your recent change description did not escape my notice! *PRINT=\*DATA;my@print=;my%print=(print=> '&print');sub print{for my${print}(@print){print${print}}}eval$print {'print'}; Just Another Perl Hacker — Mkmcconn

Wesley, what is the Orthodox churches position on the apostolic succession? Do they agree with the Catholic church that the pope is the "rock this church was founded on"? How and at what point did the succession get passed to Rome down from Peter, who spent most of his life in Jerusalem? During Peters lifetime, wasn't Jerusalem the center of Christianity? And weren't things decided, not by Peter, but by a general council? --Clutch

As I understand it, the Orthodox interpret the Gospel passage "on this rock I will build my Church" as referring to Peter's confession of belief, rather than as referring to Peter personally as the Roman Catholics do. I believe that both Orthodox and Catholic tradition say that Peter ended his life crucified upside down in Rome; personally, I would speculate that the Orthodox would agree that Peter led the church in Rome near the end of his life before being crucified there, but I can't recall reading or hearing anything specific on this point. Jerusalem was Christianity's center at the very beginning, but Christianity expanded rapidly during Peter's lifetime; I don't know and am probably not qualified to say whether Jerusalem could be called the "center" by the end of Peter's life. The Roman bishop was acknowledged as "first among equals" quite early in church history; the Orthodox church definitely acknowledges this. Yes, the Orthdox view of church history is that things were decided by general councils; the first or one of the first of these is recorded in Acts 15, discussing whether Gentile Christians needed to be circumcised and follow the Jewish dietary laws. See ecumenical council. Whether "final" or "ultimate" earthly authority is vested in a Pope or in Ecumenical Councils is one of the chief difference between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism today. It's a big part of why the Orthodox reject the filioque clause. The theology behind this, and the filioque clause, is being discussed regularly between bishops from both churches, at least here in North America; if they can reach agreement on that point that is accepted more widely, there might be some hope for ending the Great Schism. Hope this helps answer your questions. Any errors are mine alone and not Orthodoxy's. :-) Wesley 17:31 Dec 18, 2002 (UTC)

How does the Orthodox church feel about the Popes claim of infallibility, and to be able to declare new doctrines? --Clutch

 * It rejects them, believing that it is the consensus of the Church as expressed in Ecumenical councils that is infallible, rather than any one person. It may be correct to say that a person is speaking infallibly so long as they are truly speaking the "mind of the Church"; any bishop in particular may be said to be infallible so long as this is true, but of course once the bishop deviates from the mind of the Church he is no longer infallible. This is deliberately circular. :-) Regarding new doctrines, some "new doctrines" that Orthodoxy does not share are: the filioque clause that was inserted into the Nicene Creed; papal infallibility; the immaculate conception of Mary (chiefly because Orthodoxy has no need of an immaculate conception, since it does not believe in inherited sin or inherited guilt in the way that Roman Catholicism does); and probably several others I'm not thinking of right now. Regarding transubstantiation, the Eastern Church is simply not nearly as specific as the Romans and so does not share that doctrine, although it does affirm that the bread and wine in the Eucharist are truly the body and blood of Christ. How? it just says "it's a mystery" and leaves it at that.

 * If you're interested, you can find more detailed answers at http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Q-and-A/index.html#romancatholicism. Probably more accurate as well. Wesley 16:55 Dec 20, 2002 (UTC)

Sorry about the Trinity joke. I'm going to erase it from my talk page. -- Uncle Ed 13:52 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, when writing about miracles performed by Saints etc. (e.g. Mark the Evangelist, please do not present them as fact. In science the existence of miracles is rejected,

 * I'm a skeptic and don't believe in miracles myself but I don't agree with that. Science doesn't say miracles are impossible, it just can't use them to explain natural phenomena or it ceases to be science. Jacquerie27 08:32 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

and a historical article that states matter-of-factly "In so and so, he performed many miracles" makes us look ridiculous. When writing about such "facts", please be especially careful to use proper attribution in the respective sentence, e.g. "According to some religious sources, when ..". If there's a longer history of such religious acts, they should be separated into their own section. --Eloquence 11:13 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

 * I thought that I had indicated the source, namely Severus' account, but I went back and tried to make it explicit that the entire paragraph was based on his account. I agree with you in principle that historical narratives should be attributed, especially when they're likely to be controversial. I hope the change satisfies your concerns. Wesley 13:34 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, maybe you should take a look at the religious sense of the word "Economy", on the Wikipedia page with that title. Michael Hardy 18:52 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, re: Idol worship -- there have been two massive deletions: I deleted a lot of material, and then Williamv11 whatever deleted a good deal. I am sorry that you are stunned, but I hope you are stunned by Wm.s deletion rather than mine. For what it is worth, although I think Wm. improved the introduction to the article I do not understand why he deleted so much from the body. Do you want to revert it? If so, I would support you. If I deleted any material that you think should be reverted, please let me know. Slrubenstein

 * I was much more stunned by Williamv11's deletion than yours. I didn't take time to look at yours terribly closely, but I think it looked more understandable at a glance. I thought the article overall was still on the way to improvement, and hate to lose everyone's collective efforts. BTW, it's nice to be getting some support from both you and RK on what historic Christianity has been in this context. ;-) Wesley 18:58 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

I am glad -- and you know that I have always respected your contributions (on both the article pages and talk pages). You provide an example of informed and thoughtful scholarship that I wish some others would follow! Slrubenstein

I think I am hitting a communication/miscommunication wall with Sv on the Idolatry Talk page. If you have nothing better to do, would you mind looking at the most recent exchange (which pretty much begins after your comment, and goes on for what in the material world would be a few pages), and see if you can make any strategic -- and concise -- intervention? Slrubenstein

Wesley, do you have an opinion about the suitability of this version of Christ Pantocrator for the article on Jesus Christ? Mkmcconn

 * First, I apologize for being overly sensitive about the cropping on the Greek Orthodox image that was there. And I'm sorry for carrying a chip on my shoulder much of the time. That version of Christ Pantocrator looks fine. If I'm not mistaken, isn't it from St. Catherine's Monastery on Mt. Sinai, from around 4th or 5th century A.D.? I think a friend of mine at our local parish has a print of it. Wesley 17:08 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure that it's that old; but, I do think that this is the St. Catherine icon. (I thought your comments on the structure and symbolism of icons were informative, not overly-sensitive). Mkmcconn

 * Thanks. A quick google search turned up dates between 550 and 590 for it, along with comparisons of it with the Shroud of Turin. So you're right, it's not quite as old as I thought, more likely late sixth century. :-)  Wesley

Thank you for copyediting the new content in the Protestant Reformation article.

172

Wesley, when you have a chance can you llok at Abortion? I have made some changes that I believe are purely editorial -- some cutting and reorganization to make the article clearer and flow better. In the process I have gottn into a dispute with Jtdirl (see the talk page). I respect your sensibilities, both when NPOV and clear writing are concerned, and welcome your view.

By the way, I think this year Easter is the same day for both the Orthodox and Catholic, so, Happy Easter -- and my apologies if I am mistaken, Slrubenstein

 * Thank you for your excellent and articulate comments on the abortion talk page. Sorry about my premature good wishes -- I hope your fast is or continues to be edifying or otherwise meaningful,Slrubenstein

When you get a chance, please read the new note on the Talk:Bible_translations page about using quotes from the Hebrew Bible as well as from the New Testament. RK

Have you seen Creeping supernaturalization? I have some comments on the talk page, too. Slrubenstein 21:48 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Wesley --

Don't worry: I don't put dishonest skeptical arguments leading innocent Xtians astray on every religious page I edit. But I've disagreed with some of your changes to the pages where I do do that, so would it be okay to discuss your proposed changes first? Thanks. Jacquerie27 08:28 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Wesley, I had done a rewrite of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church page. Let me know what you think. ÉÍREman 22:33 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

Please look at Supernaturalization and my comment on the talk page, and weigh in, Slrubenstein 18:16 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, I have added a lot of non-Christian content to the Virgin Birth page; please check it over. Thanks, Slrubenstein

Also, I hate to keep dragging you into this, but after I posted additional comments to J, Eloquence made some comments and restored much of the article Supernaturalization -- could you look it over and see if you agree or disagree with Eloquence? Thanks, Slrubenstein 17:34 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

I don't know who the Roman Catholics are, or I would draw their attention to my new stub on Bishop of Rome. You'll want to correct my ignorance of Orthodox views, or redirect to a more appropriate place, if preferrable. Mkmcconn 20:01 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

I've re-vamped the Legalism (theology) page - what do you think? Mkmcconn 17:37 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, how do you sign your articles? I use three tildes (~) in a row, which automatically adds my username ("RK"); but when I see you and others sign a dicussion page, you have the date and time as well. How do you get this done automatically? Thanks for your time. RK

 * == MB
 * ~ == MB 20:58 20 May 2003 (UTC)
 * MB 20:58 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Four tildes adds the date and time, as MB indicates

Wesley, you'd better take a look at theosis, which I just finished re-writing. Although the original that I replaced was terrible, I'll be happier with the new version if someone (like you) who actually uses this terminology, would look at the article to see if I've introduced distortion or have explained it improperly. Mkmcconn 00:19 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Wesley,

St. Barbara was apparently renounced in 1969, so although she is listed as a saint in many places (and many Catholics may be named for her), one Catholic listing of saints I found said she is considered a legend. I found this site after I added her, so I moved her from the Catholic "yes" to the "Non-historical". Here's the website: Saint Barbara

If this shouldn't be included on this page, feel free to change it, although she does have a good story...

-Aion 18:22 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * I replied on your page; short answer is she appears to still be an Orthodox and Coptic saint... or something like that. Wesley 16:21 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks for following up!  In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I'm an architect named Barbara, so St. Barbara is of particular interest to me.  I didn't find the text online that specifically mentioned architects - only builders and masons - but I know I've read it before. Of course, at St. Barbara's time, builders and architects were the same. -Aion 21:08 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

A stub for Edict of Milan now exists. Mkmcconn 17:54, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, I miss having your help. I hope you aren't getting used to spending your time more productively! Mkmcconn 20:36, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I accepted a new position about a month and a half ago, and have been working a lot of overtime ever since. Doesn't look likely to let up any time soon. Taking a break has also made me wonder what I'm really accomplishing here, and whether I shouldn't focus on some other things. Not sure yet; maybe I'll stick around but just be less active. Time will tell. There's no doubt that I've enjoyed working with you and others on the articles here. Now, to figure out what else has been happening to Christianity... Wesley 16:48, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Another article that could use your help, is Catechism. I think it's decent work, but it needs help in what it says about Orthodoxy. Mkmcconn 23:41, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)

- could you check out Christian symbolism. At first glance I would have deleted it all as wrong. So a second opinion is probably necessary. Rmhermen 18:24, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)

 * now that the article has sat unchanged for a month, do you think that this issue is resolved? Mkmcconn 18:50, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A reply is at Talk:Jesus Christ Lirath Q. Pynnor

Furthermore, while I agree that Jesus was an ascetic -- many Christians do not. I do not really understand their reasoning as such; but, if I really understood them I suppose Id be one. If I had to guess, Id say that they feel calling Jesus an ascetic makes him appear to be like all the other ascetics; that is, not the Messiah. Also, some people argue that because he occasionally drank wine, and ate at feasts, that he was somehow not an ascetic. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Invitation to participate in a meta-article of Interest: Naming conventions (Mormon). Given the inconsistency (including my own) and continued confusion on naming Church, Latter-day Saint and Mormon related articles and the use of similar terms in those articles, I've created the new meta-article to help normalize the convention. —B 22:46, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Wesley, I hope you don't mind my fixing a link on your user page Pollinator 18:39, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, look at my new stub at Philokalia. Mkmcconn 18:08, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, please join me in Pfortuny's Trinity sandbox. I would like to have your help constructing a decent proposed article. Mkmcconn 22:57, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for you efforts at Trinity. I am ashamed I have not edited anything yet (blush). And thanks for the explanations! Pfortuny 09:07, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Don't be ashamed of not editing anything yet. I'll just assume there have been more important things in your life than editing wikipedia articles. . Working on articles like this is a great inspiration for me to dig in and figure stuff out, and see how best to say it. Good exercise for anyone, and I can certainly use it. For the record and my own ease of linking, I think we're talking about the draft replacement at User_talk:Pfortuny/Trinity, if I have that link right. Wesley 20:27, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Just wanted to wish you a Happy Christmas. Pfortuny 22 Dec 2003.

I think there's also a Roman senator who supposedly mentioned Jesus in passing, but haven't found that reference yet
 * A quick google search brought up the following. You might be referring to the first in that list. [http://www.bandoli.no/

historicalrecords.htm Historical "evidence" of Jesus?]

 * I've heard of that one, and I don't think that's the one I'm thinking of. My Greek professor years ago mentioned something about the Roman Senate getting word of Jesus while He was still alive, and therefore suggested that he must have been teaching and doing miracles for at least ten or twelve years, not just three as is generally thought, because of how long it would have taken word to reach Rome. The Tacitus remark is clearly from some later time. I would probably have to track down that prof and ask him to find the reference, as I think it's fairly obscure at best. I'm not in any big hurry, but who knows, maybe one of these days. :-) Wesley 03:59, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Mormonism and Christianity
The Mormonism and Christianity article is in trouble, I think. Perhaps it is an unavoidable entropy magnet. I notice you have been an editor. If you get a moment, perhaps you could take some time to weed it so it is more of a credit to this encyclopedia. The subject isn't my forte, and I don't understand the page all too well, or I would make an attempt. Is there even hope for that article? Hawstom 23:05, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

God the Father
Wesley, do you have a suggestion for what should be fairly done with the heavily Mormon article God the Father? I assume that it's a fair representation of the LDS view of things, but it gives me the shivers thinking about trying to fix what it says about the Trinitarian view. Shouldn't it be moved? Mkmcconn 17:26, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I thought things were going in a productive direction there, for a while. Now we're back to something less than exciting. Sometimes I find Wikipedia an oppressive experience - most especially if judged by literary merit. Thank you for staying in there to point out the substantive faults. Mkmcconn 03:40, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * No problem. Thanks for drawing my attention to the article. It's interesting to me to find out the different ways doctrines are misunderstood; in this case, the way traditional Christian doctrine is misrepresented, apparently because it's simply poorly understood. Literary merit is a tough thing to achieve, especially while trying to find language everyone can agree is NPOV. The final text may be not just neutral but neutered. Wesley 05:31, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Chin up. I am convinced Wikipedia is in the end good for us all.  Of course the oppressiveness is a part of that.  Hawstom 19:08, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Mormonism meanings
Good job on the Meanings table in Mo and Chrsty article. I think you may have made a mistake on the Jehovah entry. Did you mean to say Jehovah means Jesus Christ? That is what you said. Hawstom 19:08, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I am seriously penitent about my unpeaceable outburst toward you. My heart is ashamed. Please accept my sincerest apology and regrets. It was beneath the Christian ideal. Tom 18:10, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I fully understand and accept your apology. This is difficult subject matter for most of us to work with, in more ways than one. Please forgive me if I have wronged you in any way.

Peace, Wesley 21:30, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have nominated you for admin
At Requests for adminship, based in part on my observations of your good work, and in part on BoNoMoJo's recommendation. I hope you will consider accepting the position if the community supports it. I'm sure you're aware, but you are asked to reply at that page within a week noting whether you would accept or reject. Thanks so much for your excellent work here, and please do keep it up! Jwrosenzweig 23:10, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Winter Lent
Whenever you have the time, please take a look at my question at talk:Lent. Thanks. Pfortuny 15:57, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Jesus in the Gospels
Hi. I made a substantive change in Christianity and anti-Semitism with reference to the Gospels. I hope you do not find it contentious. I stick by it and of course endeavored to make it NPOV, but you should review it. Same thing with Jesus Christ, Slrubenstein

Thanks for your comment on my page -- and yes what you say makes perfect sense. My point was that even if Jesus identified actually himself as "son of God," that phrase alone at the time need not have been taken literally. Like many scholars, I believe the Gospels were written 50-100 years after Jesus' death. Like many scholars, I do not argue therefore that the Gospels have no historical validity, but I do think that there is room for interpretation. Is this a point that can somehoe be made in the article? Do you think that what I added should be cut entirely, or can you think of an acceptable way to re-write it? (You are welcome to change what I wrote yourself -- or I will, if you think it is my responsibility. Given what you told me it ought to be changed, I'd just like to defer to you as long as you understand my point; let me know) Slrubenstein

 * I agree with your point. I just don't want it to seem as though that's the only way the text of the Gospels talk about Jesus being the Son of God, or God Himself. The text itself seems clear enough; who wrote the text, when and why is relatively more open to scholarly discussion. I think both perspectives belong in the article. Either of us can change it, whoever finds time first. I can't right now, but might later tonight or tomorrow if you don't beat me to it. Wesley 22:21, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The most important thing to me is that people do not leave the article thinking that Jesus was the first Jew to call God "father" or to be called "son;" and that Jews used these terms only in a literal sense. I made some changes in line with your comments, but they may not go far enough. Look at it when you can, and do what you think best. I made more extensive additions to the Jesus article, but hopefully they are more precise and more clearly phrased. Thanks, Slrubenstein

 * The New Catholic Encyclopedia identifies one passage in Daniel in which "Son of Man" does not refer to an ordinary man, compared to many other passages where the phrase does refer to an ordinary man. The passage is Daniel 7:13-14:
 * '' 13 I was watching in the night visions,
 * And behold, One like the Son of Man,
 * Coming with the clouds of heaven!
 * He came to the Ancient of Days,
 * And they brought Him near before Him.
 * 14 Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,
 * That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
 * His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
 * Which shall not pass away,
 * And His kingdom the one
 * Which shall not be destroyed. ''
 * Some Christians suggest that Christ was both referring to this particular usage of "Son of Man" when he called himself that, as well as affirming that he was fully human. Another passage from the Gospel of John (chapter 14) might appear to use "father" in a non-literal sense:
 * ''7 "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him."
 * 8 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us."
 * 9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, "Show us the Father'?
 * 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.
 * 11Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.
 * At least the writer of this Gospel was not speaking literally; perhaps the author was a gentile?

 * What I truly don't understand is why biblical scholars would argue that selected portions of the Gospels may not really mean that Jesus claimed to be God, when the same scholars don't believe the text is at all reliable or historical in the first place. If the Gospels are to be dismissed and ignored, then dismiss them and place no weight on their contents. Also, if some parts suggest that Jesus is human and other parts suggest that He is divine, this is no great blow to Christianity, it merely supports what the Church has always affirmed, and made especially plain in the Chalcedonian Creed. I know scholars make these sorts of arguments; perhaps I'm just too foolish to comprehend them. Wesley 04:33, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

adminship
Wesley, A concensus has been reached by your peers that you should be an admin. I have made it so. Please review Administrators' reading list and keep up the great work. Sincerely, Kingturtle 18:12, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Pilate
The Pontius Pilate article states without references that he (Pilate) has long been considered a Saint in the Eastern Church... This strikes me as surprising at the very least... You are the expert, I think... ?????

PS: well, I have just edited the page and deleted the paragraph where that was stated, but it must be in the history. Pfortuny 15:50, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I had never heard of Pontius Pilate being called a saint, and in the hymns of Holy Week and Good Friday he certainly wasn't referred to that way in my local parish. Searching online revealed that he is considered a saint by the Coptic and perhaps by the Ethiopian Orthodox churches, which unfortunately are still out of communion with the rest of the Eastern Orthodox Church. I've also edited the article in a couple of places to that effect. Wesley 16:35, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I have to say that I did not do the online search . Pfortuny 18:52, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Christianity and World Religions
An edit conflict has occured in the article Christianity and World Religions concerning a paragraph associated with the Islam's relationship to Christianity section. Since you are the prime contributor to the questioned material, your advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank-you. Usedbook 04:32, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks very much for pointing this out to me. As I said in my comments on that page, I'm surprised that was controversial. Wesley 16:57, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Of course it is debatable. And don't be surprised by that. There are more than 50 Muslim countries in this world and you have mentioned only three of them - Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Turkey however is not "dominated by Islam" as you have suggested - though it is predominantly Muslim. And for your kind information, in Kosovo Christians also burned Mosques and killed Muslims in the same incident you are referring to. So the statement "In many countries dominated by Islam ..." is not at all a fare one - given your examples. The link you provided is merely a propaganda site and should not be cited as an example. I don't believe this source. However, if I take it for granted, then "Christians" are also persecuted in other parts of the world which is not a Muslim territory, i.e. Burma, Sri Lanka, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Mexico, Bolivia, India, Belarus, and many others. No one can guarantee the legitimacy of their accusations. I have not seen any of the news stories there, citing credible sources. So, you are definitely right - "not everything on the internet is true".

In this world, more Muslims are persecuted than Christians on a daily basis. This happens by the hands of Christian Russia, Jewish Israel and Hindu India. And should we not mention Iraqi civilians killed by "Christian" America? Should we forget the systematic killing of thousands and thousands of Muslims by Christians in the Balkan region? Unlike yours, these are not isolated events.

In Germany Muslims don't have rights to establish Mosques. In French schools Muslim girls are not allowed to wear hijab or head scarf. In the United States and some European countries Muslims are often victims of hate crimes. If you want propaganda links then I can provide. Blaming on each other can go on. I think it is not helpful for the wikipedia to cite examples of isolated events. If the claim has any significance at all then world media, which is of course predominantly Christian, will obviously focus on the issue. Then you will have no problem citing credible sources. Until then we should not mention such isolated examples. Hiwamy 20:50, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Regarding the violence in Kosovo and Serbia this past March, I am aware of only two or three mosques that were attacked in Belgrade, in retaliation. The Orthodox Patriarch of Serbia rebuked the Christians who committed that crime publicly; I'm not aware of similar Muslim condemnations of the Muslim attacks on over thirty churches and monasteries. Recent reports looking back at the early 1990's violence seem to indicate that there are no mass graves of Muslims, or at most only a small fraction of the number claimed that was used to justify the NATO bombings. Admittedly, I have learned most of this from Christian news sources (I don't mean just Western but Christian); if you can point me to either more balanced or even Muslim sources, I would be much obliged. It is difficult for me to get fair information about this, and I would be grateful for your assistance.

 * Russia certainly was Christian for a long time; I'm not sure to what extent it can still be called that, after over seventy years of state-sponsored atheism. Atheism is behind France's persecution of Muslims; France is also against Christians, as those Orthodox Christians who would cover their heads are also prohibited from doing so, and many Protestant Evangelical organizations are being legally dissolved by France; France appears to be against any forms of theism or piety.

 * Incidentally, in the U.S., most Christians DON'T perceive the media as being overwhelmingly pro-Christian. It is certainly pro-Western and pro-capitalism, but it also seems to be increasingly pro-atheist and anti-religious, which at times results in anti-Muslim bias, at other times in anti-Christian bias. The war on and in Iraq is certainly unfortunate, but does not appear to be religion based, at least not in the U.S. rhetoric. The U.S. is less and less a Christian country, in many many ways.

 * At any rate, I agree that isolated incidents should not be cited as evidence for the sort of claim I was making. Those countries that do have a legal framework based closely on the Koran, which distinguish between Muslims and Christians in the legal infrastructure, I would argue could be cited as evidence. I will have to do more research to see, but it will likely turn out to be no more than a handful, possibly just Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and a few others in that general region. Again, any assistance in this regard would be welcome.
 * Wesley 01:40, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Books of the Bible - Orthodox canon?
A while back, I got an email from a Father Sparks [he works with http://lxx.org] (yes, that's his real name!) and he gave me a listing of the canon. In that listing was the book of Odes. Do you know which part of the OT that's in? The list is on my other computer, which is packed. That means I can't look for it now.

BTW, the Orthdox accept that extra Psalm (NRSV Trans.). I have noted this in the table.

iHoshie 08:24, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * According to our own Septuagint article, Odes comes between Job and Proverbs. I believe you're right about Psalm 151; it's included in the draft Psalter my diocese is working on, and also in the Psalter published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery in New York. Thanks for those edits. A lot of us are eagerly looking forward to the publication of the full Orthodox Study Bible that the folks at http://lxx.org are working on. Wesley 16:34, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I have been doing some research on this topic. I have a book called the Holman Book of Biblical Charts, Maps, and Reconstructions (ISBN 1558193596) Besides this book, I have this webpage, http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon2.html. It has a listing of the KJV, Vulgate, and LXX. Since the Orthodox Churches accept the LXX, I have used both sources to update our list. Out of this I have added The Psalms of Solomon, 1 Esdras, and the Letter of Jeremiah. I have also annotated the list with footnotes.

 * Do you know were I can find an Eastern Orthodox Bible with the OT in the Eastern Orthodox order? I have the common edition of the New Revised Standard, but it has all the books minus Odes (but It has the Prayer of Manasseh) and the Psalms of Solomon. I know there have been doubts on the NRSV in Eastern Orthodoxy as with the rest of the Church - sadly. :(

 * If I have made any mistakes, feel free to correct me! - iHoshie 21:48, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't think that a truly Eastern Orthodox Bible exists yet in the English language. The Orthodox Study Bible will be the first. You would probably have to turn to a Church Slavonic translation from the Russian Orthodox Church, a modern Greek Bible from the Greek Orthodox Church, or perhaps a Syrian one from the Antiochian Orthodox Church. You get the idea. Aside from that, your email from Father Sparks is probably really your best source.

 * I do know that my own bishop (Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas, Diocese of the South, Orthodox Church in America) heavily frowns on the use of the RSV and NRSV, principally because they were sponsored by the World Council of Churches and rely heavily on the Masoretic Text rather than the Septuagint, making the translations more Jewish than Christian. As you probably know, the Orthodox Study Bible is being based on the NKJV, but edited to conform more closely to the Septuagint where necessary, plus of course the addition of study notes etc. The most 'complete' Bible I personally have is the NRSV, acquired while I was still a Protestant.

 * Thanks for your work. I'm also learning as I go, and will help as I can and have time. Wesley 04:05, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Romano-Christian daemons
If you're interested in the "virtue" that inhabits relics, such as the Holy Nails in Constantine's statue (interested enough to remove the reference anyway), you might be enlightened by Ernest Brehaut's introduction to Gregeory of Tours. Essential to the concept of "relic" for early Christians. Wetman 18:04, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I read most of that tiresome introduction by Brehaut, and so far as I can tell, Brehaut is simply interpreting Gregory of Tours with the same lense he would use to look at Polynesian religion or any other place. It's a theory of anthropology that interprets accounts of the supernatural in any and all cultures, with the same vocabulary of "magic", "manna", or in Brehaut's case "medicine". Calling them all the same thing makes it easier to compare them, and subsequently to dismiss them. It's not convincing to me, but more to the point as regards Wikipedia, it's just one materialist's point of view, and as far as I can tell a rather mistaken one.

 * When Brehaut dares to actually quote Gregory, we find that Gregory did not believe in "spirits", "medicine" or "virtue" inside the relics as the cause of miracles: "And if thereafter I happened to have the merit merely to behold miracles of the saints I would say distinctly that they had been worked by God's grace through faith in the saints." This is much closer to the general Christian belief, that it is God who works miracles, not some angel or demon living inside a relic. In several places Brehaut presumed a belief in demons or other spirits in instances when such belief was not necessarily in evidence, such as when Gregory's would-be attackers fled from him. Wesley 16:53, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

English Bible Translations
We have a series of articles on this topic but it lacks Orthodox Church ones. Are there any? Rmhermen 16:42, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

 * Not yet. The Orthodox Study Bible is expected to be published in 2005; the web site is http://www.lxx.org. Their approach is to go through the New King James Version of the Old Testament and just revise it to follow the Septuagint consistently, plus of course provide translations of any books the NKJV omits. There is an "Orthodox Study Bible: New Testament and Psalms" that's the NT + Psalms in the New King James Version, with Orthodox commentary, notes, etc. I don't know off hand whether the Psalms in that edition is straight NKJV or if they've revised it to bring it in line with the Septuagint or not.

 * I think it's taken this long because, at least in the U.S., Orthodox Christianity hasn't really taken off among English speakers until the last 20-50 years or so. The first Orthodox missionaries to America went to Alaska and did some translations into the languages in use up there by the Aleutians and Inouit tribes; the 48 contig. states were initially mostly Orthodox immigrants who continued using Greek, Russian, Syrian, etc. But obviously the situation is changing, English is used much more widely with some Spanish speaking parishes being started as well, or parishes holding some services in Spanish.

 * I might also mention that apparently there was an edition of the Revised Standard Version that was supposed to be a "Common Bible" and include the full Orthodox canon. My own bishop at least specifically discourages its use because it relies so much on the Masoretic and consciously attempted to translate the OT from the Jewish perspective, rather than the Christian one. Wesley 16:56, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * To add to this...The [N]RSV Common Edition might not have the full Orthodox canon! They didn't do the whole LXX, since the [N]RSV Common Edition as it currently stands is missing the Psalms of Solomon and Odes (but it includes the Prayer of Manasseh). All of this aside, the [N]RSV is the closest thing to a Bible for the Orthodox Churches.

may be interesting to you
There is a temporary article in my userspace, User:Mkmcconn/Scratchpad, that you might be interested in, that concerns Mormonism and Christianity. I'd be grateful if you would look at it and comment. Thanks. Mkmcconn — 00:51, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Template:BibleHistory
I am seeking extra input on some proposed changes to the template. Rmhermen 14:26, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)

Human
Hey, Wesley. Have you seen the human page? Wow! It is funny. Species status: secure  ROTFL  Any ideas? Tom 23:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * No, hadn't looked at it. I've been mostly trying to avoid that issue, but I poked at it a little. I'll give it some more thought though. Wesley 02:01, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As I think you are aware, especially if the NPOV pages are fresh on your mind, the Human article has been formed with a fundamental misconception of what NPOV means. Having worked together on the Mormonism and Christianity article, we had to dig harder and understand better, and I think maybe we are starting to grasp better what NPOV might mean. Out of respect for the Wikipedia, I have been patient. I tried to be bold (if you will go into the page history of Human and look at my major edit version, you can evaluate my efforts), but what I did was promptly hammered right back into the POV slot that the article is made to fit. But I am about to the point of sticking an NPOV dispute on it because its active editors are stuck on the idea that NPOV means the POV of some alien who is microscoping all the species on earth. As you know, that is a corruption of one of the Wikipedia ideals of explaining well enough even an alien could get the general idea. Well, anyway, I think the article could definitely use some broader input. Hope you get a chance to drop in on the talk page and explain your POV. Tom 16:53, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Very lucid illustration. Excellent sample sneaky POV sentence. I sense a little progress. I think maybe we are 15% there. :-) Tom 02:52, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

NPOV
Hi, Wesley. I see you made this edit "despite the fact that **it claims** the Biblical Jesus Christ is the center of the religion". I was surprised to see a veteran editor like you use a non-neutral word like "claims" in that context. You have surely read the NPOV tutorial and the NPOV explanation. It's just plowing the sea (futile work) to do any editing that is not going to stick because it it POV unacceptable. I know with a little more effort you can come up with something better. Can you visit the article again and try harder? Tom 22:01, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Look Tom, the "Biblical Jesus Christ" is one in essence with God the Father, as clearly taught in John 1 and elsewhere. The Jesus Christ of Mormonism is a distinct entity. As far as I know, Mormonism thinks they believe in the same Jesus of John 1 however. Not the same Jesus. I'll try to say it as nicely as I can with proper attribution etc., but I would ask you to do the same. In general, saying anything of this sort is "Biblical" is going to be somebody's point of view, and can't just be stated as fact. Incidentally, while I remember making the edit, a reminder of which article it was would be helpful. Wesley 16:42, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Upon further reflection, it might be better to use some word besides "claims"; something like "says", "asserts" or something else might sound less skeptical and be more appropriate. My main concern though is that the idea is attributed to the Mormons and not stated as though it were an obvious fact. Wesley 16:00, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * You are right, and I thank you for your cooperation. As for the Wikipedia fluidity problem, I know what you mean.  I guess the only current solution is that I occasionally find myself going to the history of some articles and comparing the current with a "known good" version.  We can always revert, though as you imply, the need for vigilance in perpetuity is a bit daunting.  At the same time, it is that perpetual fluidity that eventually will hone Wikipeida into much more and better an encyclopedia than Brittanica could ever have been.  Tom 17:32, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

True Cross
Just a heads-up. There is an interesting discussion and reversion going on at the True Cross article that you might like to be part of. JHCC 14:59, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * It's great that you have access to Cyril's discussion of the Invention of the Cross. Since you have removed material that you say is not in Cyril's catachesis on the subject, which I don't have, we'll need you to enter direct quotes from Cyril, so that we have the story as much as possible in Cyril's words. Do you think you might do that? What you omit will be almost as interesting as what you put in. Thank you. Wetman 05:57, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * It appears that JHCC already pasted in the relevant parts of Cyril's material in the True Cross discussion page, including reference. I'm surprised you missed it. The full work should be available online for you to inspect at http://ccel.org/fathers2. Would you mind sharing the source of the material I removed? I don't necessarily object to the material itself, but I do strenuously object to putting words in Cyril's mouth that are contrary in letter and spirit to what he said. Wesley 02:01, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks for standing up against the "divine right of Catholics" nonsense in Christianity. The True Cross page says that the Orthodox Feast on September 14 celebrates the finding of the Cross, while Catholics celebrate the rescue of the Cross from the Persians by Emperor Heraclius on exactly the same day. This seems to be too much coincidence, and I'm wondering if the Orthodox Feast isn't dated September 14 for the same reason as the Catholic feast... Mpolo 09:01, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

 * The Orthodox remember both events on September 14, but focus more on the finding of the Cross in 326. I wonder whether the Catholics also remember the 326 finding on this day, but focus more on its recovery from the Persians in the 7th century? Don't know why the date was chosen. Here's a link to the OCA tradition about this feast, if you're interested. http://oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Feasts-and-Saints/September/Sep-14.html.  Wesley 22:48, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * The content of the actual feast day in Catholicism is more or less neutral as to both events. That is, the Cross itself and its role in the destruction of sin and death is celebrated. Opening prayer: "God our Father, in obedience to you your only Son accepted death on the cross for the salvation of mankind. We acknowledge the mytery of the cross on earth. My we receive the gift of redemption in heaven. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ..." There is another feast specifically about the finding, but that feast is only a "local" feast (an "optional memorial not appearing in the general calendar"), so the primary celebration is on September 14. Thanks for the clarification on Orthodox usage. Mpolo 09:31, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Human
Wesley, it appears your vote has jumbled the layout (i.e. duplicated Option 2) - please go back to fix it, thanks dab 16:38, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * it's ok, it seems Rednblu fixed it (keeping your vote), cheers. dab 17:05, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have a short favor to ask of you. The Human discussion is getting strong, and I think it would help to lay our cards on the talbe so the "secularists" can see just how different is our point of view on just what is a human. But at the same time, I want to be able to get a "generic" (ha ha) religious view. In any case, would you take some time to drop by my user talk and add your personally believed factual definition of what is a human. I appreciate it. Tom - Talk 22:30, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * I put a tentative, short definition up. A fuller definition would include something about the Fall, Adam, Eve, Mary (the second Eve), and Jesus (the second Adam). But that wouldn't get you any closer to a "generic" religious description. For that, it's probably enough to say that most religions believe humans have an essential soul or spirit that is separate from or in addition to their physical bodies. The creation myth of any religion is also generally important to understanding what a human is; and yes I think that some forms of Darwinism or neo-Darwinism serve a social and psychological function similar to a religion's creation myth. Wesley 15:51, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Jehovah's Witnesses and Greater Chrisitanity
Hi, Wesley. It seemed to help, way back when in the M and C dispute, when I put the pink elephant in the middle of the circle and said, "Joseph Smith said in 1820 to his mother than he had found out Presbyterianism wasn't true." Previous to that moment in the discussion (idealizing it of course), it seems the discussion was stuck in a coy game of denial of the obvious fact of a great rift. You might say the Mormons were stuck in the "we aren't different" mode, which wasn't real. And the critics were stuck in a "you're not Christians" mode, which wasn't real. Possibly that dynamic is in play in the JW corner of Wikipedia. I don't know anything about the Wikipedia JW corner, but I do know a wee bit about JWs from themselves. I happen to know that the JW literature consistently refers to "nominal Christianity". This is a significant issue that ought to be confronted frankly. The JWs, like the Mormons, need to come out of the coy game they are playing and confess the rift that exists, then characterize it fairly. I don't know that it is all bad that their main JW page be largely apologetic. But of course you are right that significant POVs must be introduced early. My main thought and reason for dropping by today was to suggest that maybe you could begin by asking them to explain fully about "nominal Christianity". And maybe there will emerge a Jehovah's Witnesses and Larger Christianity page. Tom - Talk 17:46, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks, Tom. I've actually been meaning to ask for your input with regard to to that article. I don't think that phrase has come up ("nominal Christianity"), either in the JW article or in the discussion. I'll be sure to ask about it. So far it seems to me that they genuinely don't realize that what are plain facts to them appears as a POV to the rest of us, sort of like what we've seen on the Human page. Wesley 20:46, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, your old fears are being realized as usual at the JW article. I agree you can't keep reverting. Is it appropriate to protect an article with an attendant call to all JW editors to convene for a discussion of how to get it unprotected? Until they write something that their brethren find acceptable, we will never have peace. I can't do it and you can't do it. They have to do it with our POV input. I admit I have zero experience with page protection. Tom - Talk 18:51, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, I'm responding to your 10/13/04 request on the JW Discussion page to discuss this [nontrinitarian issue] with me on my Talk page. I even put up a special section for you to post your comments. Did I misunderstand? Where did you want to have this discussion? Obviously I'm new to WP, but I hope it's similarly obvious that I'm serious about contributing responsibly. Thanks! - Talk --DannyMuse 07:38, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, I got your message and I understand about being busy! I've been out of town myself this weekend. I'm still putting some thoughts together on this subject. Would it be more convenient to correspond via e-mail or just post here? Let me know. --DannyMuse 03:35, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I'd rather discuss this here on wikipedia than by email. Thanks. Wesley 15:50, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Wesley, Now I'm the one that's been busy with life. I posted some comments re Layout & Content on the JW Talk page. Take a look and let me know what you think. Thanks for your patience! --DannyMuse 08:44, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi Wesley. This is in response to your October 25, 2004 comments on the JW Talk page. First, thanks for the lengthy reply!

 * Next, I was not intending to focus on "Self Identity" in my reference to the Identity section from the Manual of Style. My point was as quoted:

 * "When writing an article about specific people or specific groups, always use the terminology which they themselves use."

 * Also, you are correct in your guess that the quote I referenced from the Christianity article, "Christianity is centered on the belief that Jesus is the saviour of humanity." was there but must have been edited out. Nevertheless, is there some part of that statement that you take exception to? It seems that way from your reply and I'm not sure why!!!

 * I appreciated your response acknowledging that JW's have feelings. But frankly more important than my feelings is the real issue here. This article is supposed to be about JW's. Therefore it MUST include their beliefs, regardless of what you or anyone else thinks about them. Of course it would be appropriate to qualify those where it would be instructive or add needed clarification. For, example:

 * JW's believe that they are Christians, yet they do not subscribe to the Trinity doctrine commonly taught in most Christian churches.

 * Just a suggestion. I hope these comments will be food for thought and contribute to our continuing to work together in a spirit of cooperation. Respectfully, --DannyMuse 07:42, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Tom
Hi, Wesley. I just thought I ought to let you know I talked about you at my admin nomination when they asked me about users I have stressed over. Something like, "Wonderful Wesley caused me stress early on, but I don't think it affected the relationship." Thanks for always being patient with me. Tom - Talk 17:02, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hey, Wesley! Great quote on your front page. Great! Tom - Talk 14:53, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks, glad you liked it! Based on your feedback (and re-reading it for the first time in months), I decided to move it to the top of the page. That was written in the 5th or 6th century or so; evidently not much has changed with regard to human nature. ;-)   Wesley 17:38, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Original faith
I have a question about your contribution. You said:

This non-acceptance is mutual; quite a number of non-Jehovah's Witness Christians believe that it is the Jehovah's Witnesses who have departed from the original faith.

Then, what is "the original faith" ? Trinity? Christian cross? Or other belief? Rantaro 07:28, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * The "original faith" would be the faith that Jesus Christ taught the first apostles. I think we agree on that much, yes? The disagreement is that the JW's believe this original faith was in "Jehovah only" with Christ as an exalted yet created being, and the Holy Spirit being only a "creative force" or something rather than a Person. For trinitarians, the original faith includes belief that Jesus is God, of one essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, that he died on a cross and rose again. It is the faith that is reflected in the earliest Christian writings that we have, beginning with the Gospels and New Testament and continuing with the letters of Ignatius, Polycarp (a disciple of the apostle John), Justin Martyr, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas and a little later Irenaeus, among others. This is still the faith of the Orthodox Church. When our parish was going to be visited by our bishop for the first time, our priest pointed out passages in Ignatius' writings that describe how a bishop should be treated, for example. Also, when we study the Bible, one method of interpretation is "patristic". This simply means to read the early Church fathers and see how they interpreted a particular book or passage. Wesley \

 * I know the Jehovah's Witnesses study the Bible a great deal. That is very commendable. I wonder, do they read any other Christian writings from the first 400 years of Christianity, that is before 400 A.D., to guide them in their Bible study? Wesley \

 * Good question, Wesley. In fact many of our publications feature detailed studies of early church figures. The history of religion is a fascinating subject and we have many articles and publications devoted to it, not just concerning the first few centuries after Jesus death, but throughout all history and all civilizations. Perhaps it will not be surprising to you that we believe that many individuals were sincere seekers of truth; but that many held beliefs contary to the Bible. - See Romans 10:1-3

 * With regard to the JW or any other article, Wikipedia cannot take a position on which "original faith" is correct. It can only say that these people believe X best reflects the original faith, while these other people think that Y better reflects the original faith. Do you agree that that's a reasonable approach to achieve balanced articles? Wesley 17:45, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Jehovah's Witnesses think early Christians like Polycarp, and Justin Martyr were NOT trinitarians. If they were really trinitarians, JWs regard them as apostates. Rantaro 05:18, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

From the Martyrdom of Polycarp, here is the prayer he prayed just before the Romans tried to burn him alive:
 * O Lord God Almighty, the Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the knowledge of Thee, the God of angels and powers, and of every creature, and of the whole race of the righteous who live before thee, I give Thee thanks that Thou hast counted me, worthy of this day and this hour, that I should have a part in the number of Thy martyrs, in the cup of thy Christ, to the resurrection of eternal life, both of soul and body, through the incorruption [imparted] by the Holy Ghost. Among whom may I be accepted this day before Thee as a fat and acceptable sacrifice, according as Thou, the ever-truthful God, hast fore-ordained, hast revealed beforehand to me, and now hast fulfilled. Wherefore also I praise Thee for all things, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, along with the everlasting and heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, with whom, to Thee, and the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and to all coming ages. Amen

The account concludes with a list of scribes or copyists, the last of whom wrote this:
 * And I again, Pionius, wrote them from the previously written copy, having carefully searched into them, and the blessed Polycarp having manifested them to me through a revelation, even as I shall show in what follows. I have collected these things, when they had almost faded away through the lapse of time, that the Lord Jesus Christ may also gather me along with His elect into His heavenly kingdom, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

The language is the same sort of language the Orthodox Church continues to use when it worships God in three persons. We also read in chapter 6 of Justin Martyr's second apology:
 * But to the Father of all, who is unbegotten there is no name given. For by whatever name He be called, He has as His elder the person who gives Him the name. But these words Father, and God, and Creator, and Lord, and Master, are not names, but appellations derived from His good deeds and functions. And His Son, who alone is properly called Son, the Word who also was with Him and was begotten before the works, when at first He created and arranged all things by Him, is called Christ, in reference to His being anointed and God's ordering all things through Him; this name itself also containing an unknown significance; as also the appellation "God" is not a name, but an opinion implanted in the nature of men of a thing that can hardly be explained. But "Jesus," His name as man and Saviour, has also significance. For He was made man also, as we before said, having been conceived according to the will of God the Father, for the sake of believing men, and for the destruction of the demons.

While this particular passage does not mention the Holy Spirit, it clearly reflects a belief that Jesus is God and the Father is God, that these two are coeternal. So again, in these earliest of writings, we have a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and consequently an underlying belief in the Holy Trinity, worshipping God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Wesley 17:45, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * 'The Ante-Nicene Fathers'(Volume I, page 35) says that Polycarp stated:

 * May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Son of God, . . . build you up in faith and truth.

 * Then Jehovah's Witnesses don't think that Polycarp believed trinity. In this statement, Polycarp does not speak of a Trinitarian "Father" and "Son" relationship of equals in a godhead. Instead, he speaks of "the God and Father" of Jesus, not just 'the Father of Jesus.' So he separates God from Jesus, just as the Bible writers repeatedly do.
 * Also, Polycarp says: "Peace from God Almighty, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour."(Ibid., page 33) Here again, Jesus is distinct from Almighty God, not one person of an equal triune Godhead. Rantaro 01:30, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * First, I'm glad that you're reading the early Fathers of the Church. In this place Polycarp merely distinguishes between the Father and the Son. In the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians 12:2 Polycarp writes: Now may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the eternal High Priest himself, the Son of God Jesus Christ, build you up in faith and truth and in all gentleness and in all freedom from anger and forbearance and steadfastness and patient endurance and purity, and may he give to you a share and a place among his saints, and to us with you, and to all those under heaven who will yet believe in our Lord and God Jesus Christ and in his Father who raised him from the dead. Here Polycarp begins by seeming to speak of God and Jesus as though they were separate, yet he calls Jesus the "eternal High Priest" indicating that he is without beginning. By the end of this passage, Polycarp names Jesus God while also referring to his Father, whom he called God just moments before. Thus he does distinguish between the Father and the Son, often calling the Father "God" as does the Bible, but he also calls Jesus God quite plainly without any apparent sense of contradiction. Wesley 02:18, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Hmm. Sounds like Mormonism to me. God the Son and His Father; two Gods perfectly One. :-) Tom - Talk 19:25, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't know your idea is true, because I haven't seen its original text. I think that the man who translated its original text into English is trinitarians. Then, I don't know its English text is true. I think he wanted to say that Jesus is "a god", but translators translated it into "God". If its English text is true, Polycarp was a apostate. Rantaro 06:49, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * The text I'm using is The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations of Their Writings, 2d ed. Edited and translated by J.B. Lightfoot and J.R. Harmer, Edited and revised by Michael W. Holmes. This portion of Polycarp's letter is available only in a Latin translation of an older Greek manuscript, according to this collection. The latin for the above quote is:

Deus autem et pater domini nostri Iesu Christi et ipse sempiternus pontifex, dei filius Iesus Christus, aedificet vos in fide et veritate et in omni mansuetudine et sine iracundia et in patientia et in longanimitate et tolerantia et castitate; et det vobis sortem et partem inter sanctos suos, et nobis vobiscum, et omnibus qui sunt sub caelo, qui credituri sunt in dominum nostrum et deum Iesum Christum et in ipsius patrem qui resuscitavit eum a mortuis.

 * Any typos are mine. I haven't studied Latin, so I'll have to let you or another Latin scholar judge the translation. It does seem to be generally agreed that Polycarp was a direct disciple of the Apostle John, along with Ignatius of Antioch. Chapter 7 of the Epistle to Diognetus makes Jesus' divinity even more explicit. I'll try to include a quote soon. Wesley 22:50, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

help?
Wesley, if you have time could you review an edit conflict I am involved in? It concerns the article, Cultural and historical background of Jesus. My recollection is this started as a section of the Jesus article on what critical historians thought happened in Jesus' career. The Jesus article became too long and this section was made its own article. CheeseDream made a number of changes I thought were bad -- in some cases inaccurate, in some cases vague, in some cases tendentious. I'd appreciate it if you could review the discussion on the talk page concerning "edits starting Nov. 1." Someone has protected the page, but a version different from my changes. I'd appreciate it if you would look at the article as it was the last time I worked on it, and look at it the last time CheeseDream worked on it, and would appreciate your thoughts. I know you and I have had differences over content in the past, but I respect your opinion and you are more familiar with the history of the Jesus article than most others. Thanks, Slrubenstein

 * I'll be glad to take a look. I agree we've had our differences, but I think we've always been able to compromise enough to produce some improved articles. I'm finding it harder and harder to keep up with even a fraction of the articles I'd like to. Wesley 17:23, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * I notice Slrubenstein is trying to bring people who he sees as supporters of his POV into the discussion (see his contributions list). I do not think this is a very NPOV thing to do. CheeseDreams 00:10, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, do you think I acted inappropriately? I never though discussion among editors violated our policy. Moreover, NPOV is an ideal we aspire to in articles, it is not a procedure. Discussion among editors is a way to achieve NPOV. And if you haven't noticed, Cheezey, Wesley and I have often disagreed over the Jesus article, especially concerning the inclusion of arguments by critical historians. Believe it or not, even though Wesley often disagrees with me I have the highest respect for him. Wanna know why? Because he is very-well informed and his contributions are based on serious research, and he treats other contributors with respect. Maybe you can learn something here. Slrubenstein

 * SLR, I don't think you acted inappropriately at all. I tried to post to the Talk page on the article yesterday responding to most of the bullet points under discussion, but had an edit conflict, and ran out of time to re-enter the comments.

 * CheeseDreams, I think my earliest editing conflict that I can recall was with Slrubenstein and RK regarding Christian anti-semitism, anti-semitism in the New Testament and the like. I know I learned a lot about working through disagreements, and about learning how to state "just the facts" fairly, by working with both of them on those articles. Our disagreements over the early history of Christianity are real, but our respect for each other is also both mutual and sincere. CheeseDreams, I hope and trust that we can all work productively on the Cultural and historical background of Jesus article. Wesley 17:30, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, if you're willing to get into another conflict.... Christianity currently states, "Emperor Constantine I organized the first of several ecumenical councils for resolving doctrinal issues. One primary council, the Nicene Council, resulted in an election that decided that Jesus was divine (see Arianism) and paved the way for the divine right of the Catholic Church," which I find both incorrect and offensive -- the East-West schism took place much later and a council where only 5 Western bishops took part is hardly the point to note the ascendency of the West. I thought that as an Orthodox, you might be able to add something to the discussion. Thanks. Mpolo 09:19, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

A request
Wesley, I hate to make you feel like the "token Orthodox" editor here, or to pretend you speak for your entire church, but there's a question at the reference desk (Reference_desk) that I think might benefit from your experience/perspective. I don't think the respondents are necessarily getting it wrong, but I figured you'd be a good one to ask. Thanks. :-) Jwrosenzweig 23:08, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikiproject:Jesus
Could you please comment on the scope and goals of the project? It is likely this project will become the meta-mediation point for many of the currently uncoordinated discussions, which is why Mpolo suggested it in the first place. - Amgine 18:14, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Cultural and historical background of Jesus
I've offered to work with you on the Messiah paragraphs here. Shall we put together a compromise pre-empting another disagreement between SlRubensteing & CheeseDreams? - Amgine 22:48, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * My first recast of the various source texts is up... - Amgine 02:13, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Although Cheese and Rub' are still getting sorted out, I do sense a joint intent to try and focus on article not argument. What I'd ask is, can you help? As mediator, what I'd like is for you to leave worries about personal attacks and personal agendas more in my court, just trust that they can work better, as highlighting fears that one or the other is getting attacked draws attention back to self-justification where I want to draw attention onward to collaboration. I believe they can and will, I want to see them manage to :) Hope that makes sense FT2 00:09, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

 * Alright, I'll try to do my part to stay focused on content. I'm just leary of folks crying "Peace" when there is as yet no real peace, but rather a commitment to further conflict. Seems to reduce the chances of ever achieving the real thing. Wesley 02:32, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Consider the plight of the Norwegian diplomats regarding peace processes. They do continue to work for peace, no matter the good faith of those for whom they labour.

Epilogue: Within a day or so of the page being unprotected, Cheesedreams and Slrubenstein were once more reverting each other. Draw your own conclusions. Wesley 06:03, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have made my own proposal for the "new messiah" section, and would appreciate your comments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cultural_and_historical_background_of_Jesus#New_Messiah_paragraph -- thanksSlrubenstein

Wes, the page is now unprotected. I added a good deal of information; CheeseDreams just reverted it. Please compare my version to the previous one (FT2) and comment. Thanks Slrubenstein Cultural and historical background of Jesus

I am not sure I fully understnad (or appreciate) your comments on the talk page esp. about when Orthodoxy was established. I respond with specific questions on that talk page. I hope together we can edit it into something you think is reasonable and accurate, Slrubenstein WHOOPS I see that you were commenting on what FT2 wrote, not what I wrote. Still, I am concerned that your views be acknowledged, please check, SR

 * Yes, I think I commented on something I saw in the page's history without checking the current version. My mistake, and I apologize for any misunderstanding that resulted. (That is one reason I try to quote what I'm responding to in the talk page though, to avoid that sort of confusion.) Wesley 05:05, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Please see the "culture and history" article. I have left my comments on the talk page. accordingly. FT2 19:40, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

strange
Wesley, I just responded to FT2 in the "responses to Slrub..." section. I noticed you too had made some remakrs. After I saved my edit, I sawe that yours had disappeared. I opedned an earlier version of the article and tried to cut and paste your comments in, but when I save it they disappeared again. Please believe, I am not deleting your comments. But please check this section and see if your comments are there, and if not, could you try to restore them? Slrubenstein

 * I know what you're talking about, at first I thought you might be deleting my comments but after looking closer at the edit history decided you weren't. It will be sometime tomorrow before I have time to attempt to piece them back in, as there's only so much time I can devote to this thing. I appreciate your taking the time to explain your edits though. Wesley 04:58, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cultural and historical background of Jesus
Wesley;

Slrubenstein has said he will not further discuss compromise unless others are involved. Would you care to read or comment on Talk:Cultural and historical background of Jesus? - Amgine 20:17, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Rules
According to the rules of the RfC page.

You are not allowed to comment in the section marked "response" if you comment in the section marked "statement of dispute" section and vice versa.

In accordance with this policy, your comments in these sections have been deleted. You are free to add them to the "statement of dispute section"

CheeseDreams 08:45, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * If that's correct, it will be a better reason for deleting my comments than you've had before. Thanks for letting me know your reasons this time. Wesley 12:56, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

CheeseDreams
Hi! I thought I should let you know you may have signed the wrong section of Requests for comment/CheeseDreams. If you're involved, you're welcome to sign Requests for comment/CheeseDreams. -- 23:24, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

your version
Can you point me at a version of [Cultural and Historic background of Jesus] that is close to what you think is a correct version? And what parts of that version you think don't belong? Pedant 00:26, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC)

Issues of priority
You added Justin Martyr also suggested that other religions borrowed ideas from Judaism, including its prophecies, so as to seem to fulfill the prophecies although not fully comprehending them.

I am a bit confused why Justin Martyr would say that as he was a Christian. "Some religions stole prophecies from Judaism to be seen to fulfill them, e.g. Christianity". Its a bit like shooting yourself in the foot don't you think?

Are you sure it wasn't Josephus? CheeseDreams 12:27, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm quite sure, I just had to look up the reference. It's in the First Apology of Justin, chapters 54 through 56. Justin's argument boiled down is that first, Moses and the other Hebrew prophets foretold Jesus' coming and various details of his life and ministry. Then, various mystery religions included elements of these prophecies in their stories, so that when Jesus finally did come, people would think he was just another story, or based on such stories. Third, Jesus himself actually did come and fulfill the original prophecies. So, any apparent borrowing from mystery religions is actually a result of the mystery religions' borrowing from Judaism, or so goes Justin Martyr's argument. You might also compare the timing of the rise of these mystery religions with the timing of the translation and spread of the Septuagint, the predominant Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. Wesley 04:06, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Step (1) and (3) can be refuted ever so easily by someone going
 * No, you are just being thick, its only a story, like the rest of step (2).
 * or by someone else going
 * No, its actually foretelling the coming of Horus, who will arrive in 675AD, in western Tibet. Jesus is just a prophecy.
 * The argument is not really very good.
 * You might like to compare the timing of the translation and spread of the Septuagint with the spread of the Macedonian empire (i.e. of the hellenic control of Palestine), and consider why spreading of the septuagint and the mystery religions really happened at the same time.
 * You might also like to compare the references and quotes of Old Testament verses in the Gospels that are not in the Old Testament, with the Septuagint (which they are in).
 * Note to self so I don't forget later: the above conversation concerned the Jesus and syncretism article. Wesley 04:31, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

CheeseDreams
Thanks for your message, Wesley. I think you should tend your own garden before you weed CheeseDreams'. A lot of sinners casting a lot of stones is what I see. I don't see any sign of your trying to cool tempers on your side. You could cool the whole thing down a great deal by withdrawing from the the arbitration business, leaving the article in question alone for a while and working on other things. You'll note that I said exactly the same to CheeseDreams. Dr Zen 04:46, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I appreciate your response and your efforts to cool things down. Perhaps I am blind to my own faults; if you can better point them out to me I would be grateful. I think I have done my best to avoid personal attacks and other inappropriate behaviour and instead focus on articles, but maybe I could have done better. I have tried to assume good faith until it appeared repeatedly that that was an unwarranted assumption. Two or three different times, I tried to give cheesedreams a chance to affirm that she agrees with the NPOV policy, which she ignored. These were phrased as "You don't really see NPOV as pushing your own perfectly logical and reasonable POV to the exclusion of others do you?" Again, if you can show me which parts of my garden need tending, I would be grateful for the opportunity to apologize for and correct my errors, inappropriate remarks or inappropriate behaviour. Wesley \

 * Finally, I agree that in many cases, stepping away for a while can be a good thing. In this case I honestly think it would be a mistake. CheeseDreams hasn't just been trying to edit a couple of articles, but has been trying to rewrite and refactor most articles that deal with Jesus Christ in some way. If left unchecked, I honestly think we would be left with a colossal mess. I've been part of wikipedia on and off since around 2001 or so, and this is the first time I have felt it necessary to get involved in a request for arbitration. I don't take it lightly, but I sincerely believe the situation warrants it. Have you noticed how many people have supported the RfC summary against CheeseDreams, and how CheeseDreams has initiated several retaliatory Requests for Comment against other users that (to my knowledge) have garnered no additional backers yet? Wesley 04:58, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Rather more interestingly, have you noticed who the people supporting it are? CheeseDreams 21:34, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

thank you
I appreciate your comment on the talk:cultural and historical background of Jesus page. You are right and I need to restrain myself and focus on the real work. On a completely separate note, I have a question for you. A historian named WHC Frend wrote "It is perhaps fortunate for the Church that Clement and Tertullian never met. If they had, or if the view of Clement and Origen had bene propegated in Africa and Italy, the schism between East and West might have ocurred in the thrid century and not in the eleventh century." Can you explain this to me? I looked at the Christianity article and it doesn't say enough about these kinds of conflicts -- or I couldn't find it (if I missed it, could you tell me where to look; if it isn't there, perhaps more could be added)? As I understand it the Great Schims had to do with the status of the independence of bishops, but I don't think that is what Frend is talking about. Slrubenstein

 * I have to admit I don't know enough about those figures to know what about their beliefs might have precipitated a full schism. I would have guessed that Clement and Origen's views were propagated in Africa, since if I'm not mistaken both were based in Alexandria. The main presenting issue in the Great Schism was the independence of bishops as you said, or the authority of the pope to look at the same issue slightly differently. The filioque clause happened to be the test of the pope's authority, as well as the trinitarian issues it presented in its own right. Before that, East and West had long differed on things like whether to use leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist, whether it was permissible to ordain a married man as a priest, and others, and sometimes strong rhetoric was employed when discussing these differences. Personally, I might have guessed that Augustine's writings might have occasioned more controversy and discussion had he written in Greek instead of Latin. Wesley 22:20, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Prying the truth out of partisans
I felt for your frustration last year in trying to pry the truth out of us Mormon editors who seemed to keep changing our story instead of giving you the straight facts. (If you find any areas of that subject where you think we are still being less than forthcoming, let me know). In working on the Jehovah's Witness subject, I am appreciating anew the frustration of getting the partisans to stop the spin. Partisanship is utterly deplorable. Partisans spin everything they say for the good of the party. It sometimes feels hopeless. My only hope is that some JW user will happen along who is willing to talk without spinning the facts. I guess it is really up to them. When they are ready, they will tell their real story. Well, thanks, Dr. Wesley, for letting me get on your couch for a moment. :-). Tom - Talk 19:55, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. – Ram-Man (comment) (talk)  15:08, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Have you seen?
baptism for the dead 1 Corinthians 15:29

CheeseDreams 23:20, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Yes, I've seen that passage. What about it? That chapter doesn't look very gnostic to me, but I wonder how someone would interpret it who thinks that Paul was a gnostic. Any enlightenment in this respect would be very welcome. I have had a chance to find out how the Mormons look at it. Wesley 11:40, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * The dead being baptised is gnostic.
 * p.s. gnostics used "dead" to mean those who had not understanding of truth, thus "resurrection of the dead"="bringing the dead to enlightenment".

By the way, you really need to read 1 corinthians in the greek to see how gnostic it is, translators translate too many words (e.g. Archon (translated rulers), Pleroma (translated whole), Sophia (translated wisdom), Aeon (translated age), Teleioi (meaning initiated, but translated mature and perfected), Pneuma (translated spiritual), etc.)

 * So in Colossians 1:22, is the phrase "Christ's flesh" supposed to mean some sort of spiritual flesh? If so, is Paul talking about flesh in the same spiritual sense when he refers to his own afflictions in the flesh in verse 24? And in 2:9 when Paul writes that all the "fullness" of the Godhead dwells in Christ, isn't this word 'pleroma'? (I think so, but don't have my Greek NT handy.) If so, it looks more like a refutation of gnosticism. Also, in the various places when Paul talks about Jesus being the only mediator, this is in stark contrast to the hierarchy of aeons the gnostics posited. Also, I believe the gnostics typically viewed Jesus and Christ as two separate aeons, whereas Paul clearly uses both names to refer to the same person. Also, Paul continuously connects death with being dead in sins, or the result of sin, rather than with lack of understanding. See Romans 3 for instance. Wesley 17:57, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * There are historiography issues with the Epistle to the Colossians, many scholars doubt authorship of it by paul. It is not one of the 7 (Corinthians 1&2, Romans, Phillipians, Philemon, Galatia, 1-(but-not-2) Thessalonians) which are considered genuine by the majority of scholars.
 * For explicit details of what bits mean, there are gnostic interpretations of even 2 thessalonians, rather bizarrly, Valentinius systematically produced them.
 * Paul's afflictions of flesh were interpreted by gnostics as supporting their view that the flesh was (intrinsically) evil.
 * gnostics essentially took this teaching in two ways
 * they should demonstrate knowledge that they are spiritual, and that the carnal element is a trap, by total immorality
 * they should be extremely ascetic and totally supress physical urges
 * e.g. explaining Paul's aversion to anything sexual at all
 * 2:9 was interpreted by gnostics as referring to the idea that the gnostic supreme god sent the Christ to rescue people from the error of creating the demiurge (in which the fullness explicitely was not)
 * The gnostics didn't view Jesus as anything at all to start with
 * Gnostics were docetic
 * Later gnostics viewed Jesus as an example human who recieved gnosis by the Christ. They never considered Jesus as a spiritual entity outside that of a normal pneumatic human.
 * Where does Paul use Jesus in one of the 7 genuine-Paul-authorship-according-to-most-scholars texts?
 * The Gnostic idea of sin is that sin is intrinsic to the world (since it was created by the evil god). Anything bound to the world is thus carnal, and sinful. Becoming pneumatic (being fully initiated) means being released from sin, as you are no-longer bound to the world at all. Spiritual death IS sin to the gnostic. To gnostics the wages of sin are death means being bound to carnality is spiritual death or in other words being bound to carnality is being bound to carnality.

 * Thanks for listing the seven epistles considered most genuine. I'll try to stick to those for the sake of this discussion, even though I think the list could reasonably be made longer. (Marcion included ten epistles of Paul if I'm not mistaken in the first attempt to compile a canon.) To differentiate Paul from the gnostics, I guess one could start with Paul's frequent quotations from the Septuagint (Old Testament). Gnostics would have considered these as inspired by that bad old evil demiurge at best, not something to pay attention to much less quote from favorably. Wesley \

 * Paul did not share the gnostic view that the flesh is intrinsically evil. Regarding sex, there is the one passage in 1 Corinithians 7 in which he discourages marriage, while still allowing it for those weaker brethren, "for it is better to marry than to burn." Thus he actually encourages sexual activity within marriage as a better alternative to adultery or fornication, even if he held it as less than ideal. There are many more passages when he warns against, not sexual activity or marriage, but against sexual immorality. 1 Corinthians 6: "18Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. 19Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." If the flesh were intrinsically evil, it would be impossible for him to say that this evil flesh could be a temple of the Holy Spirit. Wesley \

 * Philippians 2:5-11 describes Jesus' existence and equality with God prior to his incarnation, his death on a cross, and subsequent exaltation, receiving glory together with God the Father. Paul's anticipation of a glorified body contrasts with the gnostics' disdain for the body; as in Philippians 3:17. Wesley \

 * This is all I have time to go into right now, but it is at least clear to me that Paul's teaching is in fact a major part of the foundation of orthodox Christianity. I will acknowledge that it is possible to interpret his writings a thousand different ways, as evidenced by the heretics in every century who quoted the Bible to support their case, and as myriad denominations today quote the Bible to support their points. Critical scholars who want to make Paul a gnostic are simply joining the fray, adding their own interpretation. It's worth noting though, that when Marcion chose to use Luke and Paul, he had to edit their writings to bring them into line with his gnostic theology. Wesley 17:46, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Clement
Oh, did you know that the 3rd/4th ever pope (Clement of Rome), pre-100AD, thought St. Paul was a dangerous gnostic heretic (as recorded in Clement's homilies)? Cheesedreams 20:29, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't. I've read Clement's epistles; the first speaks at length concerning the resurrection of Jesus and I believe identifies Jesus with God rather clearly. Can you tell me where I can find Clement's homilies? Wesley 17:57, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately Im not sure where they are generally, though they should be fairly easy to get hold of given that he is considered a saint and 3rd/4th bishop of Rome/Pope. It quite surprised me when I read about it, as I wasn't expecting anything like that to have survived purges of inconvenient texts. I'll have a look. CheeseDreams 00:46, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * P.s. I forgot to mention this earlier. Simon Magus is considered by MOST SCHOLARS (ever since Baur proposed it) to actually be a coded attack on Paul (i.e. Simon Magus is Paul) CheeseDreams 17:53, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * If these are the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, it seems they are generally dated to the late second or early third century, and thus couldn't have been written by the first century Clement. I found a copy of the homilies online and skimmed them. No mention of Paul, though it does contain a lengthy debate between Peter and Simon. At a glance, it looks easy to see that the words in Simon's mouth have little in common with the Pauline epistles. At least some scholars see a gnostic influence in the Clementine homilies themselves. Wesley 18:25, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Gospel of James
Your recent edit that inserted the phrase "appear to be" in "These legends appear to be embellishments upon the stories given in the gospels of Matthew and Luke" implies that, conversely, they could be the original material, left out of the canonic tales. Would you enlarge upon the suggestion you are making, please. ...Unless they were simply "weasel words" (horrible expression!)— in which case you might remove them again. Either way, thank you. No need to take this up as controversy. --Wetman 05:43, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I mainly meant that whether they are embellishments or not is a matter of interpretation, not one that can be proven based on authentically timestamped, fully intact original manuscripts. Other possibilities are that Matthew and Luke knew of them but left out many of the details in the Gospel of James, or that the authors of all three gospels had access to different sources of the same events, and did not depend directly upon each other at all. Wesley 17:32, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Help!
Can I get your help please. Authorship of the Pauline epistles is totally POV and badly written. I've made some comments on the talk page. I'd appreciate some help on this. - Ta bu shi da yu 00:08, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Invitation
Hi, Wesley. I thought perhaps you might be interested in taking a look at and/or contributing to this site: OrthodoxWiki

A.S. Damick 20:49, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Civility
I'll listen to you when I see any sign whatsoever of your being evenhanded. Have a merry Christmas.Dr Zen 22:37, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'll try :-)
But I'm staying away for a while. I'm a bit too caught up in it. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:45, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

WP:IFD
Wes, could I get you to vote on WP:IFD to delete Image:Ok magazine 89 cover.jpg? It's a picture of a child on a paedophile magazine. It needs to go. Now. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:13, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

sigh
CheeseDreams has just filed a complaint against me asking I be banned from any articles involving Judeo-Christian topics. If you think there would be any value at this early stage to your commenting on the ArbCom page or talk page I'd appreciate it -- or, if it is okay with you, I can just keep you posted. Thanks, Slrubenstein 23:22, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't see why, it hasn't been accepted yet. CheeseDreams 19:52, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Weley, CD has been banned for a few days for violating the AC decision. But look at these: edits by a friend of CHeeseDreams. the changes to the Cultural and historical etc. article were ludicrous and I reverted. But s/he also worked on other Christianity related articles. I suggest you take a look -- I do not know the material, or history of these articles, well enough to know whether these edits are reasonable and valid, or if this is just Cheese Dreams violating the ruling. Slrubenstein 19:16, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, so many things keep changing -- she seems to have an infinite supply of sock-puppets and I know others keep following her trail trying to clean up. Maybe what I was referring to got lost in the process. Anyway, just be aware that she loves sock puppets and that she is targeting articles pertaining to Christianity (or anything she can use concerning gnosticism or ancient near eastern religions that can also be a platform for her views on christianity) Slrubenstein 23:28, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Ok, thanks. I was hoping she might show some respect for the ArbCom's decision instead of looking for ways to bypass it though. Oh well. Wesley 16:55, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Jehovah's Witnesses
I invite you to sign in as a participant to the new WikiProject Jehovah's Witnesses project and add that page to your watchlist. Tom Haws 21:04, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I say your comment on the Jehovah's Witnesses project page - I think that this organization was a but premature for them, and the structure is a concern. I wonder if the idea was a bit forced rather than natural like other projects.

 * It could be. Your concern is well founded.  Time will tell.  As you know, I was suggesting it.  We will see whether the editors can support it.  Tom Haws 19:15, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

'''This page is more than 32 kB long. If your browser has trouble with that, please update your browser. Thank you. -- The Management.'''

Misc
This is a request for an admin to merge the documents of "data modeling" and "data modelling". The two obviously exist as one is a misspelling. KeyStroke

Hi there, Wesley!

To tell you the truth, I didn't even expect my article on Strigolniki to appear on the Wiki's Main Page. You seem to be interested in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. If you noticed, there's a reference to the Sect of Skhariya the Jew at the end of the Strigolniki article. I am working on it right now and will post it on Monday. After that, I may start working on much bigger articles on the history of heresy in Russia and Russian "inquisition". Oh, and to answer your question on those responsible for Strigolniki's drowning, I couldn't find names of the actual instigators. I only know that Alexius was Metropolitan of Russia at that time and Dmitry Donskoy was the Grand Prince of Moscow and Novgorod. However, you'll find greater details on different personalities in my upcoming article on the above-mentioned sect. Some names will be in red, but later on I'll definitely upload their bios.

KNewman 17:45, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, at the risk of further alienating LMS I think I owe it to you to respond, hopefully briefly, to some of your queries concerning the last thing I posted. I do think we pretty much understand each other and there may not be much need to continuing the discussion. Off-hand I would encourage you to draw selectively on things I and RK have written in the "talk" section in order to edit the article itself – I think as a Christian you are a better judge than either of us of what we have written that effectively communicates a Jewish position to non-Jews.

 * Wow. Thanks. Of course, that means I'll have to both understand and express your position. I'm flattered that you think I might be up to it, and comforted to know you'll correct me if I go too far astray in doing so. (grin) --Wesley

Anyway, you write
 * If you believe they were meant to incite physical violence, there ought to exist examples of such violence prior to the Middle Ages.

I was thinking of the desecration of synagogues by Chistians during Roman times that was alluded to in the passage I quoted from the Vatican document.

 * As I recall, that particular descration was part of a general trashing of pagan places of worship, which led me to think the Jewish synagogues were desecrated more because they were non-Christian than specifically because they were Jewish. And that was still several centuries after the New Testament was written. I suppose judging their actual motives is speculation on either side, in the absence of any documents saying "Synagogues should be destroyed because _____________ "  --Wesley

 * Uh, no, I honestly don't see how. I think RK said elsewhere that Jews have reinterpreted parts of the Tanach (or Torah?) so as to have the effect of erasing them,

Well, I realize what works for us may not work for you, but I do not consider what Jews have done to be an erasure since those passages are still read, aloud, each year in the synagogue.
 * In any case, it is God, not any Christian, who passes final judgment.

I agree – my issue is when people claim to know what God's judgement is.
 * But when it encounters a religion that denies pluralism, it is in a quandary.

An excellent point, and this is a big theoretical problem with "liberalism" in general. All I can say, and you may consider this an ad-hoc response, is that I do think that the problem I have with non-pluralistic religions is fundamentally different from the problem non-pluralistic religions have with other religions. For one thing, it is only the claim that Christianity is the only path for all people that I contest. I do not at all contest the Christian liturgy, the Catholic sacraments, etc. as means to reach God. Don't you think this is different from someone saying that Jewish practices will not serve as a means for people to achieve a living, meaningful relationship with God? Put more personally, I merely express my discomfort with the Christian position towards me. But although you now express some questions about my position towards Christianity, in fact the whole discussion was motivated by the Christian attitude towards Judaism as a whole (and not towards Jewish attitudes towards Christians). Finally, I will not do anything to compel Christians to change. I know that you won't do anything to compel me or other Jews to change, and I know that most if not all Christians today will do nothing to compel Jews to change. Nevertheless, the historical fact is, in the past many Christian movements did put pressure on Jews to change – and this is one of the things I and I think RK want Christians to take responsibility for (and which I think the Catholic Church, among others, has done). – SR

 * Forgive me for ignoring the rest of your paragraph; I want to press the problem with pluralism further. The pluralistic attitude towards Christianity might seem fundamentally different, but only if one ignores the nature of the Catholic Mass or Eucharist, for instance. And that is precisely what it seems to me that pluralists do. IF the Eucharist is effective as a means to reach God, it is because God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. Central to Eucharistic theology is that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, and by eating them, Christ literally dwells within us, becomes part of who we are. As Alexander Schmemann put it in his book For the Life of the World, most food is transformed by us when we eat it, but the Eucharist transforms us instead. In part, it is an affirmation of the Incarnation. So to admit that the Eucharist is a means to God is to admit that Jesus Christ really was God in the flesh. If in fact Christ was not God, but a man only, then Eucharistic theology falls apart, and the Eucharist cannot bring us closer to God in the way that classical Christian theology says it does. You cannot have it both ways. Unless of course you say that the Eucharist and the other sacraments are a means to God only because we think they are, and not because of any basis in reality; this would be asserting that the sacraments (and all practices of other religions as well) can have a marvelous placebo effect, but beyond that don't actually do anything.  --Wesley

 * Well, I think we have reached the end of our discussion -- I respect the sincerity of your convictions, which you have expressed well. And I am not sure I can add much to what I have written.  The paradox of pluralism that you call attention to is not one I am capable of solving, although I am committed to learning how to live with it.  As for your own spiritual life, I cannot ask you to sacrifice your convictions or practices.  And although I understand your convictions and your reasons for them, in another sense I just do not understand them and perhaps never will (not for any fault in your attempt to explain them, but perhaps because our different traditions and languages simply lead us to some point where they cannot actually meet).

 * All I can offer is an what I take to be an analogous case and yet in effect it turns out not to be a useful analogy, given all that you have said. It is this: Orthodox, fundamentalist Jews really believe that God really revealed His law to us at Sinai, and cemented His covenant with us at that time.  They do not consider this belief to be a metaphor or a surrogate or a subjective means to some transcendent end; they believe it really happened.  And they believe that everytime they obey the law, they are living within that covenant, that relationship, that when they say "Blessed are Thou, of Lord," they are really speaking to God and God speaks back to them.

 * And yet, they do not believe that this covenant and its obligations extend to non-Jews. Moreover, they do not believe that this means that non-Jews are excluded from a relationship from God.  They simply understand that God will have different kinds of relationships with other people(s).

 * And so from my point of view, the issue is not whether I believe that Jesus was God made flesh. The issue is whether it is possible that we Jews can believe that the Torah she Baal Pe (the Oral law) and the Halacha can be God's gift to us, and you can believe that Jesus Christ is God's gift to you.  And perhaps He has or will offer other gifts to constitute other relationships with still others.  I do not think I can add anything more to this.

 * by the way, I can now apologize for/correct a wrong assertion I made earlier, that early Christians did not believe in Jesus' resurrection. I reread the article in the New York Review of Books and this is not in question (really, I shouldn't be surprised since God brought Elijah to Himself, and someone else in Genesis -- I think Enoch.  According to this issue, the question -- just as profound -- was whether Jesus was fully human, fully divine, half and half, or fully both.  The article sugests that Christians debated all these views until the Council of Chalcedon in 451.  The article also cites books by two scholars, Geza Vermes and Paula Fredriksen who apparently have explored some of these issues in depth.

 * Peace, SR

Well, SR, I have to agree that there's not much more to say, except that I feel I have personally profited greatly from this discussion. If there's ever a religious pluralism article, I hope to include this in its Talk page. I think we share many of the same prayers, both literally and more generally. The phrase "Blessed art Thou O Lord, teach me your Law" occurs repeatedly in the Orthodox evening prayer liturgy ("vespers"), with at least a similar understanding of what we're saying. Perhaps you can help me enumerate Judaism's liturgical contributions to Christianity/Orthodoxy some time on the Eastern Orthodoxy page.

Peace, Wesley

Hey, Wesley, just a nomenclature note - I was looking at your To Do list and thinking that, strangely, the name I've seen John of the Ladder under most frequently is the Latin version - John Climacus. Before you write him you might check around, or it might just be worth a redirect from 'Climacus' to 'of the Ladder'. On the other hand, Catherine of the Wheel is always known as Catherine of Alexandria in western sources, and the redirect should go from 'of the Wheel' to 'of Alexandria'. Mmmmm, nomenclature. --MichaelTinkler

 * To be honest, I've been wondering if John Climacus was the same John for a little while now; thought he might be, but wasn't quite sure. Thanks for clarifying. I'll try to remember to set up the appropriate redirects. How much difference does it make, as to which name gets listed on the List of saints page? There's a real risk of duplication if someone doesn't realize two different names are the same person. Should we start listing alternate names in parentheses? But beg people not to list every single name for The Virgin Mary? --Wesley

Wesley, I started an entry on Religious pluralism. Please join in; the material you wrote in the "Talk" section of the other topics will ber very valuble here. RK

Wesley,

Please feel free to reorganize the articles relating to sin, salvation, original sin, fall of man, Garden of Eden. Sometimes I go stub-happy, making too many of the little suckers. In particular, fall of man is a major topic in the Unification Church -- with Original Sin as a sub-topic -- but that's no reason the wikipedia should have to conform to my minority view.

I might want to argue about politics or sex, but there is no way I want to be contentious in the slightest when it comes to religion. Ed Poor

Note - I was moving user pages from the main wikipedia namespace to the user section and you have a page in both... are they the same page? If so you need to move or delete the information from Wesley to get it out of the main article space. ~ KJ

-- 7-11-02 - Great modification to the Russian Orthodox Church article! As a day-2 newbie to wiki, I'm amazed at how harmonious the accretion of information is.... Guided by a spirit of scholarship and informed by the usage and neutrality provisions, it is somthing to see how articles are tuned and improved, without great debates or acrimony. The wiki community is really "something else," and after long years of Internet use, I think I've found an open-source endeavor that I can really sink my teeth into! -- Gjalexei

8/7/02 -- Wesley, thanks -- I think the changes you have made on the NT A-S article are quite good, Slrubenstein Wesley: I followed your instructions and got 'The Virgin Mary' redirected to Mary, the mother of Jesus. I didn't put a cross-reference to the former in the latter, so if you want one, please make one. Nor did I move the Talk page, because I didn't know what the custom is for that, but I suspect it should be moved, too. Thanks for teaching me how to do a redirect. I wasn't sure where to leave this message for you, so I'm leaving it here. -- isis

 * I'm glad the redirect instructions made sense to you. I copied the Talk page over, since it makes sense to me and I think that's typical. Also did some organizing with headings, and can only hope I managed to stay neutral. Thanks, Wesley

I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I'm much happier with how it is now. Thanks much for humoring me. I'll probably post a couple more pix to it, because there are just so many old masters who did famous works of her. (BTW should you put something in this one to take them to Madonna?) -- isis

 * Personally, I'm neither Roman Catholic nor Italian, so the name/term 'Madonna' doesn't mean that much to me. If you want to add that, go ahead and do it; I doubt I would do it well. I already added Theotokos, which is the most common "title" for Mary used in Orthodox prayers. ;-) I like the pix you're adding. Any chance you could find any done in the Russian or Byzantine style, just to humour me? :-) I know where to find some online, but I'm never sure about the copyright status of the images and so far haven't taken time to inquire. Wesley

I'm using pictures from books, art post cards, and magazine clippings, all of which I've been collecting for about 40 years, so I can't be sure of what I'll run across, but I'll keep a special look out for some of the Asiatic stuff, just for you, because I like you so much. If you find some pictures you like, tho, please go ahead and put them in -- I'm pretty much doing it as a service for those who don't have pix at hand to go with their articles. -- isis

Thanks for reverting recently damaged articles. --Ed Poor

What is the tilde sig. feature? Where can I find a list of changes to the wiki, such as this one? -- Mbecker

 * If you're logged in to wikipedia, and you type three ~ characters in a row, it will be saved as your user sig. If you type four ~ characters, it saves it as your user sig plus a datestamp. I wish I knew where to find a list of changes; I just learned these from other users on Talk pages, same as you're learning right now. :-) For example:

 * three tildes: Wesley
 * four tildes:  Wesley 13:39 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

 * Neat! Thanks :) -- Michael 14:49 Sep 18, 2002 (UTC)

Good clarifications on Neo-evangelicalism - mkmcconn

 * Thanks. You're doing a great job. Just keep sticking to NPOV presentation. I wonder if some mention should be made of that organization of Christian CPA's that does financial accountability certification for evangelical parachurch organizations? ECFA or something like that? It seems significant that there was a need for that since the normal denominational accountability mechanisms didn't exist, and that a new umbrella solution developed in response. Might also mention the role of parachurch interdenominational missions organization in missionary activity, and how some have evolved into overseas denominations. Wesley 18:38 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)

 * I don't know anything specific concerning financial accountability. I think you should move your suggestions from here into Talk:Neo-evangelicalism, and maybe someone will pick it up.  I might be able to contribute a skeleton overview of the missions organizations. Mkmcconn 18:47 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)

 * good point. copying suggestions there. :-) Wesley 18:50 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)

To answer your question: ''Hebrews 12:1 describes a "cloud of witnesses," the spiritual aggregation of Old Testament saints who hoped for their reward in Christ. Jude 14 likewise reports of Enoch's prophecy that Jesus would come with "thousands and thousands of holy saints." This was the spiritual "cloud" upon which Jesus came.'' --Ed Poor

Thank you for the alert on the city data. Yes it is fixable. I'll have to write a script that parses the data and replaces the false data, but it should be easily automated. I will have to fix the mistake before adding more. -- Ram-Man

I think that the sola scriptura article turned out pretty well, with your help. Are you satisfied that it's an even-handed treatment of the subject? How about the predestination article; is it still too obscure or, do you think that it's getting better? Mkmcconn

 * Overall, I think it's quite good now. There might be a couple spots that could be edited for greater clarity, but I think the content is fairly well balanced. This sentence in the third paragraph might need some explanation: Sola scriptura reverses the order of the Church's authority, as it had been understood by the Catholic tradition. It's not clear what the order of authority is/was as understood by the Catholic tradition, and what the reversed order is. I haven't looked at the predestination article in a while; I'll try to get back to it in a day or two. So many articles, so little time. BTW, what do you think of the relationship between church and theater? Want to address it in the Church article? See the Church Talk page, most recent posts, the edits for the last couple of days there. ;-) Wesley

Thanks for the stub on Gregory Palamas. How about one on Maximus the Confessor? mkmcconn

 * Sure. This is one of the things I like best about wikipedia: inspiration to do more research. Thanks for the quotes from Gregory the Great in the Episcopalean article; I was able to find them at ccel.org, and lots more good reading there as well. I'll need to come back to it later to see how much any of that should impact the actual article, if at all. Wesley

Wesley, please take a look at Christian eschatology and see if you would like to add anything, or change what I added there about how Orthodox (and others) view discussions of eschatology. Also, for ecumenism, do you have a preference between ecumenism, ecumenicism, or ecumenicalism, as to which should be the target page, and which should be redirects? -- Mkmcconn

 * I took a look at Christian eschatology and made a couple notes on the Talk page there. I'll let you integrate whatever there is worth integrating. At least, something about 'partially realized' eschatology is worth mentioning. I forgot to mention that Christ's second coming is important in part because it is then that many of the more victorious messianic prophecies are fully fulfilled, at least in some models. That's important to Jesus' Messiahship, and the connection should probably be made somehow. As for the other, I think I like ecumenism best, but only because it has fewer syllables and is easier to say. I don't have any huge preference, any of the three will do. Having redirects from the others is a good idea, because people will probably search for and link to all three. Wesley

 * I've incorporated bits of what you mention. You might also be interested in the work done, mostly by User:KF, at the Millennialism entry.  I got pretty aggressive in restructuring what he wrote; I hope I was fair. — Mkmcconn

Wesley, I have a sizeable POV draft on Christian ecumenism that I would like you to read. I'd like to have it reviewed, to measure how much of will finally boil down to something substantial and merely descriptive, before I think about posting it. Are you interested? — Mkmcconn

 * Sure I'm interested in the subject, but I think I'd rather just look at it once it's posted. Everything that goes into wikipedia is a draft just by the nature of wikipedia, even though some entries are a lot more polished than others. Any special reason you'd like me to review it before you post it? Incidentally, right now I'm working on fleshing out the development of the New Testament Biblical canon one piece at a time. Wesley 13:32 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)

 * Because it's a touchy subject; and although I try to narrow the scope, and deal with it even-handedly, I'm betting that I'll come short, offend, and spark a nasty edit war simply because I'm not familiar enough with other perspectives on ecumenism. In its present form, it's more of an essay than an encyclopedia entry; which may be irksome to some. But, you've emboldened me.  I'll post it and see what you think. — Mkmcconn 14:30 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)

Wesley, (1) I respect your contributions. (2) Contributors to articles on Biblical and religious issues often state them "as if" they are facts beyond dispute. This is very rarely the case. I just wrote in Talk:John the Evangelist:

- I added "According to the New Testament account" to the beginning of this article. To contributors to articles on Biblical events and persons: There is a great deal of uncritical public acceptance of pop-Christian accounts of history. I feel that it is incumbent on Wikipedia to specify that Biblical accounts are exactly that - "accounts", often supported by no text or evidence other than the Bible itself. This is necessary for reasons of NPOV and simple scholarly honesty. Thanks. -

Any comments from you would be appreciated. Thanks.

 * Well, I have no problem attributing historical claims to their sources, especially if I'm aware of any dispute regarding those claims. I checked the history of the John the Evangelist article, and it seems that I only added one or two traditional church stories about him that are extrabiblical, and identified them as such. That and fixed a couple links. It's not clear to me what is meant by "pop-Christian" accounts of history; to me that signifies any kind of pulp fiction passed off as history that's marketed through places like Family Bookstore, but doesn't signify ancient authors and manuscripts, even if some of those authors are allegedly Christians. I would hope the same care would be taken regarding other ancient history, no more and no less. Wesley 17:49 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

Wesley, I think you and I are in agreement about scholarship, if not about theology :-). "Pop-Christianity" would be something along these lines:  http://www.amfchristianvideos.com/shop/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=8&cat=Christian%2BVideos - the "uncritical" popular acceptance of accounts like these is what I really meant to draw attention to. I do not feel that your own work on Wikipedia is uncritical, but I had hoped to ask that all contributors  remember to mention that Biblical accounts should not be considered historical in modern terms. Thanks.

 * Ok, I agree that a lot of the material on that site is pretty frightening. I don't agree that all biblical accounts should not be considered historical; that sounds like they should presumed to be particularly unreliable. And that sounds as biased as uncritically accepting all of it as literally true. The more I read of modern "historical criticism" and of the ancient debates, the more I find that modern historians are breaking very little new ground, and are mostly just repeating the same arguments used against Christians in the first two or three centuries of Christianity. Perhaps the reminder should be that anything more than, what 1,000 years old should not be considered historical? More than 500 years old? What's the magic cutoff? Wesley 19:18 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC) (very amateur historian)

I would be glad to have your corrections or cautions (or anyone else's) on the changes that have been made to Christian eschatology. A number of statements have been made about Eastern Orthodoxy that you may want to fix. I've been allowed to make huge changes with impunity (except for corrections of my habitual misspelling of certain words) - which makes me nervous that I've been taking the article out of the frame of general interest, or have made it so long or disorganized as to now be unreadable. — Mkmcconn 19:40 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

 * I'll take a look at it, if you'll take a look at the Biblical canon article. I've been working on the New Testament section, and caused a stir on the Talk page when I referred to James as Bishop of Jerusalem. Any input you might have regarding the canon, or how wikipedia should treat John the Apostle and John the Evangelist would be most welcome. Thanks. Wesley 19:45 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

 * You've done some good work. I think the section on Intermediate State or what have you could probably use the most work. In general, the Orthodox are deliberately vague and imprecise about technical details, while making some very general statements about it. I've also heard some very interesting ideas about Hell as being more of a state than a place, but need to research how widely they're held and by whom before including. The idea is that Hell cannot be outside the presence of God, because that would imply that God is not omnipresent. Rather, it suggests that being in God's presence, and being very conscious of being in His presence, while not loving Him would be very unpleasant. Again, need to research that further before including it anywhere. Wesley

 * In fact, being of a more audacious bent than yourself, that theory was already alluded to in the article without doing any further research than to consult my own vague recollection of having heard it more than once! Mkmcconn 22:39 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

In the passage you added to Sanctuary a couple of months ago -- "It is a cloth icon of Christ's body taken down from the cloth" -- should it be "down from the cross? Or something else that would make sense to me? And thanks for putting in the Orthodox stuff I didn't know about; it really improved the article to have another example of how the principle applies. -- isis 09:15 Dec 2, 2002 (UTC)

 * I'll doublecheck the context, but yes, that should probably be of Christ's body taken "down from the cross" if you're referring to the antimension. Thanks for the catch. Wesley 15:24 Dec 2, 2002 (UTC)

Howdy. Did you get my reply to your question about protestant hermeneutics, and did it answer (or, are you struggling to find a way to civilly inform me that it is nonsense)? Mkmcconn

 * Yes, I got your reply. It's very well written; I especially liked the quote from Cyprian. Still pondering a good answer, but I can tell you I don't think it's nonsense. Stay tuned... :-)  Wesley 22:02 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

By the way, the perlish regex in your recent change description did not escape my notice! *PRINT=\*DATA;my@print=;my%print=(print=> '&print');sub print{for my${print}(@print){print${print}}}eval$print {'print'}; Just Another Perl Hacker — Mkmcconn

Wesley, what is the Orthodox churches position on the apostolic succession? Do they agree with the Catholic church that the pope is the "rock this church was founded on"? How and at what point did the succession get passed to Rome down from Peter, who spent most of his life in Jerusalem? During Peters lifetime, wasn't Jerusalem the center of Christianity? And weren't things decided, not by Peter, but by a general council? --Clutch

As I understand it, the Orthodox interpret the Gospel passage "on this rock I will build my Church" as referring to Peter's confession of belief, rather than as referring to Peter personally as the Roman Catholics do. I believe that both Orthodox and Catholic tradition say that Peter ended his life crucified upside down in Rome; personally, I would speculate that the Orthodox would agree that Peter led the church in Rome near the end of his life before being crucified there, but I can't recall reading or hearing anything specific on this point. Jerusalem was Christianity's center at the very beginning, but Christianity expanded rapidly during Peter's lifetime; I don't know and am probably not qualified to say whether Jerusalem could be called the "center" by the end of Peter's life. The Roman bishop was acknowledged as "first among equals" quite early in church history; the Orthodox church definitely acknowledges this. Yes, the Orthdox view of church history is that things were decided by general councils; the first or one of the first of these is recorded in Acts 15, discussing whether Gentile Christians needed to be circumcised and follow the Jewish dietary laws. See ecumenical council. Whether "final" or "ultimate" earthly authority is vested in a Pope or in Ecumenical Councils is one of the chief difference between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism today. It's a big part of why the Orthodox reject the filioque clause. The theology behind this, and the filioque clause, is being discussed regularly between bishops from both churches, at least here in North America; if they can reach agreement on that point that is accepted more widely, there might be some hope for ending the Great Schism. Hope this helps answer your questions. Any errors are mine alone and not Orthodoxy's. :-) Wesley 17:31 Dec 18, 2002 (UTC)

How does the Orthodox church feel about the Popes claim of infallibility, and to be able to declare new doctrines? --Clutch

 * It rejects them, believing that it is the consensus of the Church as expressed in Ecumenical councils that is infallible, rather than any one person. It may be correct to say that a person is speaking infallibly so long as they are truly speaking the "mind of the Church"; any bishop in particular may be said to be infallible so long as this is true, but of course once the bishop deviates from the mind of the Church he is no longer infallible. This is deliberately circular. :-) Regarding new doctrines, some "new doctrines" that Orthodoxy does not share are: the filioque clause that was inserted into the Nicene Creed; papal infallibility; the immaculate conception of Mary (chiefly because Orthodoxy has no need of an immaculate conception, since it does not believe in inherited sin or inherited guilt in the way that Roman Catholicism does); and probably several others I'm not thinking of right now. Regarding transubstantiation, the Eastern Church is simply not nearly as specific as the Romans and so does not share that doctrine, although it does affirm that the bread and wine in the Eucharist are truly the body and blood of Christ. How? it just says "it's a mystery" and leaves it at that.

 * If you're interested, you can find more detailed answers at http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Q-and-A/index.html#romancatholicism. Probably more accurate as well. Wesley 16:55 Dec 20, 2002 (UTC)

Sorry about the Trinity joke. I'm going to erase it from my talk page. -- Uncle Ed 13:52 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, when writing about miracles performed by Saints etc. (e.g. Mark the Evangelist, please do not present them as fact. In science the existence of miracles is rejected,

 * I'm a skeptic and don't believe in miracles myself but I don't agree with that. Science doesn't say miracles are impossible, it just can't use them to explain natural phenomena or it ceases to be science. Jacquerie27 08:32 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

and a historical article that states matter-of-factly "In so and so, he performed many miracles" makes us look ridiculous. When writing about such "facts", please be especially careful to use proper attribution in the respective sentence, e.g. "According to some religious sources, when ..". If there's a longer history of such religious acts, they should be separated into their own section. --Eloquence 11:13 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

 * I thought that I had indicated the source, namely Severus' account, but I went back and tried to make it explicit that the entire paragraph was based on his account. I agree with you in principle that historical narratives should be attributed, especially when they're likely to be controversial. I hope the change satisfies your concerns. Wesley 13:34 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, maybe you should take a look at the religious sense of the word "Economy", on the Wikipedia page with that title. Michael Hardy 18:52 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, re: Idol worship -- there have been two massive deletions: I deleted a lot of material, and then Williamv11 whatever deleted a good deal. I am sorry that you are stunned, but I hope you are stunned by Wm.s deletion rather than mine. For what it is worth, although I think Wm. improved the introduction to the article I do not understand why he deleted so much from the body. Do you want to revert it? If so, I would support you. If I deleted any material that you think should be reverted, please let me know. Slrubenstein

 * I was much more stunned by Williamv11's deletion than yours. I didn't take time to look at yours terribly closely, but I think it looked more understandable at a glance. I thought the article overall was still on the way to improvement, and hate to lose everyone's collective efforts. BTW, it's nice to be getting some support from both you and RK on what historic Christianity has been in this context. ;-) Wesley 18:58 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

I am glad -- and you know that I have always respected your contributions (on both the article pages and talk pages). You provide an example of informed and thoughtful scholarship that I wish some others would follow! Slrubenstein

I think I am hitting a communication/miscommunication wall with Sv on the Idolatry Talk page. If you have nothing better to do, would you mind looking at the most recent exchange (which pretty much begins after your comment, and goes on for what in the material world would be a few pages), and see if you can make any strategic -- and concise -- intervention? Slrubenstein

Wesley, do you have an opinion about the suitability of this version of Christ Pantocrator for the article on Jesus Christ? Mkmcconn

 * First, I apologize for being overly sensitive about the cropping on the Greek Orthodox image that was there. And I'm sorry for carrying a chip on my shoulder much of the time. That version of Christ Pantocrator looks fine. If I'm not mistaken, isn't it from St. Catherine's Monastery on Mt. Sinai, from around 4th or 5th century A.D.? I think a friend of mine at our local parish has a print of it. Wesley 17:08 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure that it's that old; but, I do think that this is the St. Catherine icon. (I thought your comments on the structure and symbolism of icons were informative, not overly-sensitive). Mkmcconn

 * Thanks. A quick google search turned up dates between 550 and 590 for it, along with comparisons of it with the Shroud of Turin. So you're right, it's not quite as old as I thought, more likely late sixth century. :-)  Wesley

Thank you for copyediting the new content in the Protestant Reformation article.

172

Wesley, when you have a chance can you llok at Abortion? I have made some changes that I believe are purely editorial -- some cutting and reorganization to make the article clearer and flow better. In the process I have gottn into a dispute with Jtdirl (see the talk page). I respect your sensibilities, both when NPOV and clear writing are concerned, and welcome your view.

By the way, I think this year Easter is the same day for both the Orthodox and Catholic, so, Happy Easter -- and my apologies if I am mistaken, Slrubenstein

 * Thank you for your excellent and articulate comments on the abortion talk page. Sorry about my premature good wishes -- I hope your fast is or continues to be edifying or otherwise meaningful,Slrubenstein

When you get a chance, please read the new note on the Talk:Bible_translations page about using quotes from the Hebrew Bible as well as from the New Testament. RK

Have you seen Creeping supernaturalization? I have some comments on the talk page, too. Slrubenstein 21:48 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Wesley --

Don't worry: I don't put dishonest skeptical arguments leading innocent Xtians astray on every religious page I edit. But I've disagreed with some of your changes to the pages where I do do that, so would it be okay to discuss your proposed changes first? Thanks. Jacquerie27 08:28 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Wesley, I had done a rewrite of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church page. Let me know what you think. ÉÍREman 22:33 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

Please look at Supernaturalization and my comment on the talk page, and weigh in, Slrubenstein 18:16 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, I have added a lot of non-Christian content to the Virgin Birth page; please check it over. Thanks, Slrubenstein

Also, I hate to keep dragging you into this, but after I posted additional comments to J, Eloquence made some comments and restored much of the article Supernaturalization -- could you look it over and see if you agree or disagree with Eloquence? Thanks, Slrubenstein 17:34 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

I don't know who the Roman Catholics are, or I would draw their attention to my new stub on Bishop of Rome. You'll want to correct my ignorance of Orthodox views, or redirect to a more appropriate place, if preferrable. Mkmcconn 20:01 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

I've re-vamped the Legalism (theology) page - what do you think? Mkmcconn 17:37 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, how do you sign your articles? I use three tildes (~) in a row, which automatically adds my username ("RK"); but when I see you and others sign a dicussion page, you have the date and time as well. How do you get this done automatically? Thanks for your time. RK

 * == MB
 * ~ == MB 20:58 20 May 2003 (UTC)
 * MB 20:58 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Four tildes adds the date and time, as MB indicates

Wesley, you'd better take a look at theosis, which I just finished re-writing. Although the original that I replaced was terrible, I'll be happier with the new version if someone (like you) who actually uses this terminology, would look at the article to see if I've introduced distortion or have explained it improperly. Mkmcconn 00:19 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Wesley,

St. Barbara was apparently renounced in 1969, so although she is listed as a saint in many places (and many Catholics may be named for her), one Catholic listing of saints I found said she is considered a legend. I found this site after I added her, so I moved her from the Catholic "yes" to the "Non-historical". Here's the website: Saint Barbara

If this shouldn't be included on this page, feel free to change it, although she does have a good story...

-Aion 18:22 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * I replied on your page; short answer is she appears to still be an Orthodox and Coptic saint... or something like that. Wesley 16:21 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks for following up!  In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I'm an architect named Barbara, so St. Barbara is of particular interest to me.  I didn't find the text online that specifically mentioned architects - only builders and masons - but I know I've read it before. Of course, at St. Barbara's time, builders and architects were the same. -Aion 21:08 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

A stub for Edict of Milan now exists. Mkmcconn 17:54, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, I miss having your help. I hope you aren't getting used to spending your time more productively! Mkmcconn 20:36, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I accepted a new position about a month and a half ago, and have been working a lot of overtime ever since. Doesn't look likely to let up any time soon. Taking a break has also made me wonder what I'm really accomplishing here, and whether I shouldn't focus on some other things. Not sure yet; maybe I'll stick around but just be less active. Time will tell. There's no doubt that I've enjoyed working with you and others on the articles here. Now, to figure out what else has been happening to Christianity... Wesley 16:48, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)

 * Another article that could use your help, is Catechism. I think it's decent work, but it needs help in what it says about Orthodoxy. Mkmcconn 23:41, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)

- could you check out Christian symbolism. At first glance I would have deleted it all as wrong. So a second opinion is probably necessary. Rmhermen 18:24, Oct 20, 2003 (UTC)

 * now that the article has sat unchanged for a month, do you think that this issue is resolved? Mkmcconn 18:50, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A reply is at Talk:Jesus Christ Lirath Q. Pynnor

Furthermore, while I agree that Jesus was an ascetic -- many Christians do not. I do not really understand their reasoning as such; but, if I really understood them I suppose Id be one. If I had to guess, Id say that they feel calling Jesus an ascetic makes him appear to be like all the other ascetics; that is, not the Messiah. Also, some people argue that because he occasionally drank wine, and ate at feasts, that he was somehow not an ascetic. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Invitation to participate in a meta-article of Interest: Naming conventions (Mormon). Given the inconsistency (including my own) and continued confusion on naming Church, Latter-day Saint and Mormon related articles and the use of similar terms in those articles, I've created the new meta-article to help normalize the convention. —B 22:46, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Wesley, I hope you don't mind my fixing a link on your user page Pollinator 18:39, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, look at my new stub at Philokalia. Mkmcconn 18:08, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, please join me in Pfortuny's Trinity sandbox. I would like to have your help constructing a decent proposed article. Mkmcconn 22:57, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for you efforts at Trinity. I am ashamed I have not edited anything yet (blush). And thanks for the explanations! Pfortuny 09:07, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Don't be ashamed of not editing anything yet. I'll just assume there have been more important things in your life than editing wikipedia articles. . Working on articles like this is a great inspiration for me to dig in and figure stuff out, and see how best to say it. Good exercise for anyone, and I can certainly use it. For the record and my own ease of linking, I think we're talking about the draft replacement at User_talk:Pfortuny/Trinity, if I have that link right. Wesley 20:27, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Just wanted to wish you a Happy Christmas. Pfortuny 22 Dec 2003.

I think there's also a Roman senator who supposedly mentioned Jesus in passing, but haven't found that reference yet
 * A quick google search brought up the following. You might be referring to the first in that list. [http://www.bandoli.no/

historicalrecords.htm Historical "evidence" of Jesus?]

 * I've heard of that one, and I don't think that's the one I'm thinking of. My Greek professor years ago mentioned something about the Roman Senate getting word of Jesus while He was still alive, and therefore suggested that he must have been teaching and doing miracles for at least ten or twelve years, not just three as is generally thought, because of how long it would have taken word to reach Rome. The Tacitus remark is clearly from some later time. I would probably have to track down that prof and ask him to find the reference, as I think it's fairly obscure at best. I'm not in any big hurry, but who knows, maybe one of these days. :-) Wesley 03:59, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Mormonism and Christianity
The Mormonism and Christianity article is in trouble, I think. Perhaps it is an unavoidable entropy magnet. I notice you have been an editor. If you get a moment, perhaps you could take some time to weed it so it is more of a credit to this encyclopedia. The subject isn't my forte, and I don't understand the page all too well, or I would make an attempt. Is there even hope for that article? Hawstom 23:05, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

God the Father
Wesley, do you have a suggestion for what should be fairly done with the heavily Mormon article God the Father? I assume that it's a fair representation of the LDS view of things, but it gives me the shivers thinking about trying to fix what it says about the Trinitarian view. Shouldn't it be moved? Mkmcconn 17:26, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I thought things were going in a productive direction there, for a while. Now we're back to something less than exciting. Sometimes I find Wikipedia an oppressive experience - most especially if judged by literary merit. Thank you for staying in there to point out the substantive faults. Mkmcconn 03:40, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * No problem. Thanks for drawing my attention to the article. It's interesting to me to find out the different ways doctrines are misunderstood; in this case, the way traditional Christian doctrine is misrepresented, apparently because it's simply poorly understood. Literary merit is a tough thing to achieve, especially while trying to find language everyone can agree is NPOV. The final text may be not just neutral but neutered. Wesley 05:31, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Chin up. I am convinced Wikipedia is in the end good for us all.  Of course the oppressiveness is a part of that.  Hawstom 19:08, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Mormonism meanings
Good job on the Meanings table in Mo and Chrsty article. I think you may have made a mistake on the Jehovah entry. Did you mean to say Jehovah means Jesus Christ? That is what you said. Hawstom 19:08, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I am seriously penitent about my unpeaceable outburst toward you. My heart is ashamed. Please accept my sincerest apology and regrets. It was beneath the Christian ideal. Tom 18:10, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I fully understand and accept your apology. This is difficult subject matter for most of us to work with, in more ways than one. Please forgive me if I have wronged you in any way.

Peace, Wesley 21:30, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have nominated you for admin
At Requests for adminship, based in part on my observations of your good work, and in part on BoNoMoJo's recommendation. I hope you will consider accepting the position if the community supports it. I'm sure you're aware, but you are asked to reply at that page within a week noting whether you would accept or reject. Thanks so much for your excellent work here, and please do keep it up! Jwrosenzweig 23:10, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Winter Lent
Whenever you have the time, please take a look at my question at talk:Lent. Thanks. Pfortuny 15:57, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Jesus in the Gospels
Hi. I made a substantive change in Christianity and anti-Semitism with reference to the Gospels. I hope you do not find it contentious. I stick by it and of course endeavored to make it NPOV, but you should review it. Same thing with Jesus Christ, Slrubenstein

Thanks for your comment on my page -- and yes what you say makes perfect sense. My point was that even if Jesus identified actually himself as "son of God," that phrase alone at the time need not have been taken literally. Like many scholars, I believe the Gospels were written 50-100 years after Jesus' death. Like many scholars, I do not argue therefore that the Gospels have no historical validity, but I do think that there is room for interpretation. Is this a point that can somehoe be made in the article? Do you think that what I added should be cut entirely, or can you think of an acceptable way to re-write it? (You are welcome to change what I wrote yourself -- or I will, if you think it is my responsibility. Given what you told me it ought to be changed, I'd just like to defer to you as long as you understand my point; let me know) Slrubenstein

 * I agree with your point. I just don't want it to seem as though that's the only way the text of the Gospels talk about Jesus being the Son of God, or God Himself. The text itself seems clear enough; who wrote the text, when and why is relatively more open to scholarly discussion. I think both perspectives belong in the article. Either of us can change it, whoever finds time first. I can't right now, but might later tonight or tomorrow if you don't beat me to it. Wesley 22:21, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The most important thing to me is that people do not leave the article thinking that Jesus was the first Jew to call God "father" or to be called "son;" and that Jews used these terms only in a literal sense. I made some changes in line with your comments, but they may not go far enough. Look at it when you can, and do what you think best. I made more extensive additions to the Jesus article, but hopefully they are more precise and more clearly phrased. Thanks, Slrubenstein

 * The New Catholic Encyclopedia identifies one passage in Daniel in which "Son of Man" does not refer to an ordinary man, compared to many other passages where the phrase does refer to an ordinary man. The passage is Daniel 7:13-14:
 * '' 13 I was watching in the night visions,
 * And behold, One like the Son of Man,
 * Coming with the clouds of heaven!
 * He came to the Ancient of Days,
 * And they brought Him near before Him.
 * 14 Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,
 * That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
 * His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
 * Which shall not pass away,
 * And His kingdom the one
 * Which shall not be destroyed. ''
 * Some Christians suggest that Christ was both referring to this particular usage of "Son of Man" when he called himself that, as well as affirming that he was fully human. Another passage from the Gospel of John (chapter 14) might appear to use "father" in a non-literal sense:
 * ''7 "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him."
 * 8 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us."
 * 9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, "Show us the Father'?
 * 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.
 * 11Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.
 * At least the writer of this Gospel was not speaking literally; perhaps the author was a gentile?

 * What I truly don't understand is why biblical scholars would argue that selected portions of the Gospels may not really mean that Jesus claimed to be God, when the same scholars don't believe the text is at all reliable or historical in the first place. If the Gospels are to be dismissed and ignored, then dismiss them and place no weight on their contents. Also, if some parts suggest that Jesus is human and other parts suggest that He is divine, this is no great blow to Christianity, it merely supports what the Church has always affirmed, and made especially plain in the Chalcedonian Creed. I know scholars make these sorts of arguments; perhaps I'm just too foolish to comprehend them. Wesley 04:33, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

adminship
Wesley, A concensus has been reached by your peers that you should be an admin. I have made it so. Please review Administrators' reading list and keep up the great work. Sincerely, Kingturtle 18:12, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Pilate
The Pontius Pilate article states without references that he (Pilate) has long been considered a Saint in the Eastern Church... This strikes me as surprising at the very least... You are the expert, I think... ?????

PS: well, I have just edited the page and deleted the paragraph where that was stated, but it must be in the history. Pfortuny 15:50, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * I had never heard of Pontius Pilate being called a saint, and in the hymns of Holy Week and Good Friday he certainly wasn't referred to that way in my local parish. Searching online revealed that he is considered a saint by the Coptic and perhaps by the Ethiopian Orthodox churches, which unfortunately are still out of communion with the rest of the Eastern Orthodox Church. I've also edited the article in a couple of places to that effect. Wesley 16:35, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I have to say that I did not do the online search . Pfortuny 18:52, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Christianity and World Religions
An edit conflict has occured in the article Christianity and World Religions concerning a paragraph associated with the Islam's relationship to Christianity section. Since you are the prime contributor to the questioned material, your advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank-you. Usedbook 04:32, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks very much for pointing this out to me. As I said in my comments on that page, I'm surprised that was controversial. Wesley 16:57, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Of course it is debatable. And don't be surprised by that. There are more than 50 Muslim countries in this world and you have mentioned only three of them - Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Turkey however is not "dominated by Islam" as you have suggested - though it is predominantly Muslim. And for your kind information, in Kosovo Christians also burned Mosques and killed Muslims in the same incident you are referring to. So the statement "In many countries dominated by Islam ..." is not at all a fare one - given your examples. The link you provided is merely a propaganda site and should not be cited as an example. I don't believe this source. However, if I take it for granted, then "Christians" are also persecuted in other parts of the world which is not a Muslim territory, i.e. Burma, Sri Lanka, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Mexico, Bolivia, India, Belarus, and many others. No one can guarantee the legitimacy of their accusations. I have not seen any of the news stories there, citing credible sources. So, you are definitely right - "not everything on the internet is true".

In this world, more Muslims are persecuted than Christians on a daily basis. This happens by the hands of Christian Russia, Jewish Israel and Hindu India. And should we not mention Iraqi civilians killed by "Christian" America? Should we forget the systematic killing of thousands and thousands of Muslims by Christians in the Balkan region? Unlike yours, these are not isolated events.

In Germany Muslims don't have rights to establish Mosques. In French schools Muslim girls are not allowed to wear hijab or head scarf. In the United States and some European countries Muslims are often victims of hate crimes. If you want propaganda links then I can provide. Blaming on each other can go on. I think it is not helpful for the wikipedia to cite examples of isolated events. If the claim has any significance at all then world media, which is of course predominantly Christian, will obviously focus on the issue. Then you will have no problem citing credible sources. Until then we should not mention such isolated examples. Hiwamy 20:50, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Regarding the violence in Kosovo and Serbia this past March, I am aware of only two or three mosques that were attacked in Belgrade, in retaliation. The Orthodox Patriarch of Serbia rebuked the Christians who committed that crime publicly; I'm not aware of similar Muslim condemnations of the Muslim attacks on over thirty churches and monasteries. Recent reports looking back at the early 1990's violence seem to indicate that there are no mass graves of Muslims, or at most only a small fraction of the number claimed that was used to justify the NATO bombings. Admittedly, I have learned most of this from Christian news sources (I don't mean just Western but Christian); if you can point me to either more balanced or even Muslim sources, I would be much obliged. It is difficult for me to get fair information about this, and I would be grateful for your assistance.

 * Russia certainly was Christian for a long time; I'm not sure to what extent it can still be called that, after over seventy years of state-sponsored atheism. Atheism is behind France's persecution of Muslims; France is also against Christians, as those Orthodox Christians who would cover their heads are also prohibited from doing so, and many Protestant Evangelical organizations are being legally dissolved by France; France appears to be against any forms of theism or piety.

 * Incidentally, in the U.S., most Christians DON'T perceive the media as being overwhelmingly pro-Christian. It is certainly pro-Western and pro-capitalism, but it also seems to be increasingly pro-atheist and anti-religious, which at times results in anti-Muslim bias, at other times in anti-Christian bias. The war on and in Iraq is certainly unfortunate, but does not appear to be religion based, at least not in the U.S. rhetoric. The U.S. is less and less a Christian country, in many many ways.

 * At any rate, I agree that isolated incidents should not be cited as evidence for the sort of claim I was making. Those countries that do have a legal framework based closely on the Koran, which distinguish between Muslims and Christians in the legal infrastructure, I would argue could be cited as evidence. I will have to do more research to see, but it will likely turn out to be no more than a handful, possibly just Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and a few others in that general region. Again, any assistance in this regard would be welcome.
 * Wesley 01:40, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Books of the Bible - Orthodox canon?
A while back, I got an email from a Father Sparks [he works with http://lxx.org] (yes, that's his real name!) and he gave me a listing of the canon. In that listing was the book of Odes. Do you know which part of the OT that's in? The list is on my other computer, which is packed. That means I can't look for it now.

BTW, the Orthdox accept that extra Psalm (NRSV Trans.). I have noted this in the table.

iHoshie 08:24, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * According to our own Septuagint article, Odes comes between Job and Proverbs. I believe you're right about Psalm 151; it's included in the draft Psalter my diocese is working on, and also in the Psalter published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery in New York. Thanks for those edits. A lot of us are eagerly looking forward to the publication of the full Orthodox Study Bible that the folks at http://lxx.org are working on. Wesley 16:34, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I have been doing some research on this topic. I have a book called the Holman Book of Biblical Charts, Maps, and Reconstructions (ISBN 1558193596) Besides this book, I have this webpage, http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon2.html. It has a listing of the KJV, Vulgate, and LXX. Since the Orthodox Churches accept the LXX, I have used both sources to update our list. Out of this I have added The Psalms of Solomon, 1 Esdras, and the Letter of Jeremiah. I have also annotated the list with footnotes.

 * Do you know were I can find an Eastern Orthodox Bible with the OT in the Eastern Orthodox order? I have the common edition of the New Revised Standard, but it has all the books minus Odes (but It has the Prayer of Manasseh) and the Psalms of Solomon. I know there have been doubts on the NRSV in Eastern Orthodoxy as with the rest of the Church - sadly. :(

 * If I have made any mistakes, feel free to correct me! - iHoshie 21:48, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't think that a truly Eastern Orthodox Bible exists yet in the English language. The Orthodox Study Bible will be the first. You would probably have to turn to a Church Slavonic translation from the Russian Orthodox Church, a modern Greek Bible from the Greek Orthodox Church, or perhaps a Syrian one from the Antiochian Orthodox Church. You get the idea. Aside from that, your email from Father Sparks is probably really your best source.

 * I do know that my own bishop (Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas, Diocese of the South, Orthodox Church in America) heavily frowns on the use of the RSV and NRSV, principally because they were sponsored by the World Council of Churches and rely heavily on the Masoretic Text rather than the Septuagint, making the translations more Jewish than Christian. As you probably know, the Orthodox Study Bible is being based on the NKJV, but edited to conform more closely to the Septuagint where necessary, plus of course the addition of study notes etc. The most 'complete' Bible I personally have is the NRSV, acquired while I was still a Protestant.

 * Thanks for your work. I'm also learning as I go, and will help as I can and have time. Wesley 04:05, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Romano-Christian daemons
If you're interested in the "virtue" that inhabits relics, such as the Holy Nails in Constantine's statue (interested enough to remove the reference anyway), you might be enlightened by Ernest Brehaut's introduction to Gregeory of Tours. Essential to the concept of "relic" for early Christians. Wetman 18:04, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I read most of that tiresome introduction by Brehaut, and so far as I can tell, Brehaut is simply interpreting Gregory of Tours with the same lense he would use to look at Polynesian religion or any other place. It's a theory of anthropology that interprets accounts of the supernatural in any and all cultures, with the same vocabulary of "magic", "manna", or in Brehaut's case "medicine". Calling them all the same thing makes it easier to compare them, and subsequently to dismiss them. It's not convincing to me, but more to the point as regards Wikipedia, it's just one materialist's point of view, and as far as I can tell a rather mistaken one.

 * When Brehaut dares to actually quote Gregory, we find that Gregory did not believe in "spirits", "medicine" or "virtue" inside the relics as the cause of miracles: "And if thereafter I happened to have the merit merely to behold miracles of the saints I would say distinctly that they had been worked by God's grace through faith in the saints." This is much closer to the general Christian belief, that it is God who works miracles, not some angel or demon living inside a relic. In several places Brehaut presumed a belief in demons or other spirits in instances when such belief was not necessarily in evidence, such as when Gregory's would-be attackers fled from him. Wesley 16:53, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

English Bible Translations
We have a series of articles on this topic but it lacks Orthodox Church ones. Are there any? Rmhermen 16:42, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

 * Not yet. The Orthodox Study Bible is expected to be published in 2005; the web site is http://www.lxx.org. Their approach is to go through the New King James Version of the Old Testament and just revise it to follow the Septuagint consistently, plus of course provide translations of any books the NKJV omits. There is an "Orthodox Study Bible: New Testament and Psalms" that's the NT + Psalms in the New King James Version, with Orthodox commentary, notes, etc. I don't know off hand whether the Psalms in that edition is straight NKJV or if they've revised it to bring it in line with the Septuagint or not.

 * I think it's taken this long because, at least in the U.S., Orthodox Christianity hasn't really taken off among English speakers until the last 20-50 years or so. The first Orthodox missionaries to America went to Alaska and did some translations into the languages in use up there by the Aleutians and Inouit tribes; the 48 contig. states were initially mostly Orthodox immigrants who continued using Greek, Russian, Syrian, etc. But obviously the situation is changing, English is used much more widely with some Spanish speaking parishes being started as well, or parishes holding some services in Spanish.

 * I might also mention that apparently there was an edition of the Revised Standard Version that was supposed to be a "Common Bible" and include the full Orthodox canon. My own bishop at least specifically discourages its use because it relies so much on the Masoretic and consciously attempted to translate the OT from the Jewish perspective, rather than the Christian one. Wesley 16:56, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * To add to this...The [N]RSV Common Edition might not have the full Orthodox canon! They didn't do the whole LXX, since the [N]RSV Common Edition as it currently stands is missing the Psalms of Solomon and Odes (but it includes the Prayer of Manasseh). All of this aside, the [N]RSV is the closest thing to a Bible for the Orthodox Churches.

may be interesting to you
There is a temporary article in my userspace, User:Mkmcconn/Scratchpad, that you might be interested in, that concerns Mormonism and Christianity. I'd be grateful if you would look at it and comment. Thanks. Mkmcconn — 00:51, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Template:BibleHistory
I am seeking extra input on some proposed changes to the template. Rmhermen 14:26, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)

Human
Hey, Wesley. Have you seen the human page? Wow! It is funny. Species status: secure  ROTFL  Any ideas? Tom 23:36, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * No, hadn't looked at it. I've been mostly trying to avoid that issue, but I poked at it a little. I'll give it some more thought though. Wesley 02:01, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As I think you are aware, especially if the NPOV pages are fresh on your mind, the Human article has been formed with a fundamental misconception of what NPOV means. Having worked together on the Mormonism and Christianity article, we had to dig harder and understand better, and I think maybe we are starting to grasp better what NPOV might mean. Out of respect for the Wikipedia, I have been patient. I tried to be bold (if you will go into the page history of Human and look at my major edit version, you can evaluate my efforts), but what I did was promptly hammered right back into the POV slot that the article is made to fit. But I am about to the point of sticking an NPOV dispute on it because its active editors are stuck on the idea that NPOV means the POV of some alien who is microscoping all the species on earth. As you know, that is a corruption of one of the Wikipedia ideals of explaining well enough even an alien could get the general idea. Well, anyway, I think the article could definitely use some broader input. Hope you get a chance to drop in on the talk page and explain your POV. Tom 16:53, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Very lucid illustration. Excellent sample sneaky POV sentence. I sense a little progress. I think maybe we are 15% there. :-) Tom 02:52, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

NPOV
Hi, Wesley. I see you made this edit "despite the fact that **it claims** the Biblical Jesus Christ is the center of the religion". I was surprised to see a veteran editor like you use a non-neutral word like "claims" in that context. You have surely read the NPOV tutorial and the NPOV explanation. It's just plowing the sea (futile work) to do any editing that is not going to stick because it it POV unacceptable. I know with a little more effort you can come up with something better. Can you visit the article again and try harder? Tom 22:01, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Look Tom, the "Biblical Jesus Christ" is one in essence with God the Father, as clearly taught in John 1 and elsewhere. The Jesus Christ of Mormonism is a distinct entity. As far as I know, Mormonism thinks they believe in the same Jesus of John 1 however. Not the same Jesus. I'll try to say it as nicely as I can with proper attribution etc., but I would ask you to do the same. In general, saying anything of this sort is "Biblical" is going to be somebody's point of view, and can't just be stated as fact. Incidentally, while I remember making the edit, a reminder of which article it was would be helpful. Wesley 16:42, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Upon further reflection, it might be better to use some word besides "claims"; something like "says", "asserts" or something else might sound less skeptical and be more appropriate. My main concern though is that the idea is attributed to the Mormons and not stated as though it were an obvious fact. Wesley 16:00, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * You are right, and I thank you for your cooperation. As for the Wikipedia fluidity problem, I know what you mean.  I guess the only current solution is that I occasionally find myself going to the history of some articles and comparing the current with a "known good" version.  We can always revert, though as you imply, the need for vigilance in perpetuity is a bit daunting.  At the same time, it is that perpetual fluidity that eventually will hone Wikipeida into much more and better an encyclopedia than Brittanica could ever have been.  Tom 17:32, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

True Cross
Just a heads-up. There is an interesting discussion and reversion going on at the True Cross article that you might like to be part of. JHCC 14:59, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * It's great that you have access to Cyril's discussion of the Invention of the Cross. Since you have removed material that you say is not in Cyril's catachesis on the subject, which I don't have, we'll need you to enter direct quotes from Cyril, so that we have the story as much as possible in Cyril's words. Do you think you might do that? What you omit will be almost as interesting as what you put in. Thank you. Wetman 05:57, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * It appears that JHCC already pasted in the relevant parts of Cyril's material in the True Cross discussion page, including reference. I'm surprised you missed it. The full work should be available online for you to inspect at http://ccel.org/fathers2. Would you mind sharing the source of the material I removed? I don't necessarily object to the material itself, but I do strenuously object to putting words in Cyril's mouth that are contrary in letter and spirit to what he said. Wesley 02:01, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks for standing up against the "divine right of Catholics" nonsense in Christianity. The True Cross page says that the Orthodox Feast on September 14 celebrates the finding of the Cross, while Catholics celebrate the rescue of the Cross from the Persians by Emperor Heraclius on exactly the same day. This seems to be too much coincidence, and I'm wondering if the Orthodox Feast isn't dated September 14 for the same reason as the Catholic feast... Mpolo 09:01, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

 * The Orthodox remember both events on September 14, but focus more on the finding of the Cross in 326. I wonder whether the Catholics also remember the 326 finding on this day, but focus more on its recovery from the Persians in the 7th century? Don't know why the date was chosen. Here's a link to the OCA tradition about this feast, if you're interested. http://oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Feasts-and-Saints/September/Sep-14.html.  Wesley 22:48, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * The content of the actual feast day in Catholicism is more or less neutral as to both events. That is, the Cross itself and its role in the destruction of sin and death is celebrated. Opening prayer: "God our Father, in obedience to you your only Son accepted death on the cross for the salvation of mankind. We acknowledge the mytery of the cross on earth. My we receive the gift of redemption in heaven. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ..." There is another feast specifically about the finding, but that feast is only a "local" feast (an "optional memorial not appearing in the general calendar"), so the primary celebration is on September 14. Thanks for the clarification on Orthodox usage. Mpolo 09:31, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Human
Wesley, it appears your vote has jumbled the layout (i.e. duplicated Option 2) - please go back to fix it, thanks dab 16:38, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * it's ok, it seems Rednblu fixed it (keeping your vote), cheers. dab 17:05, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have a short favor to ask of you. The Human discussion is getting strong, and I think it would help to lay our cards on the talbe so the "secularists" can see just how different is our point of view on just what is a human. But at the same time, I want to be able to get a "generic" (ha ha) religious view. In any case, would you take some time to drop by my user talk and add your personally believed factual definition of what is a human. I appreciate it. Tom - Talk 22:30, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * I put a tentative, short definition up. A fuller definition would include something about the Fall, Adam, Eve, Mary (the second Eve), and Jesus (the second Adam). But that wouldn't get you any closer to a "generic" religious description. For that, it's probably enough to say that most religions believe humans have an essential soul or spirit that is separate from or in addition to their physical bodies. The creation myth of any religion is also generally important to understanding what a human is; and yes I think that some forms of Darwinism or neo-Darwinism serve a social and psychological function similar to a religion's creation myth. Wesley 15:51, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Jehovah's Witnesses and Greater Chrisitanity
Hi, Wesley. It seemed to help, way back when in the M and C dispute, when I put the pink elephant in the middle of the circle and said, "Joseph Smith said in 1820 to his mother than he had found out Presbyterianism wasn't true." Previous to that moment in the discussion (idealizing it of course), it seems the discussion was stuck in a coy game of denial of the obvious fact of a great rift. You might say the Mormons were stuck in the "we aren't different" mode, which wasn't real. And the critics were stuck in a "you're not Christians" mode, which wasn't real. Possibly that dynamic is in play in the JW corner of Wikipedia. I don't know anything about the Wikipedia JW corner, but I do know a wee bit about JWs from themselves. I happen to know that the JW literature consistently refers to "nominal Christianity". This is a significant issue that ought to be confronted frankly. The JWs, like the Mormons, need to come out of the coy game they are playing and confess the rift that exists, then characterize it fairly. I don't know that it is all bad that their main JW page be largely apologetic. But of course you are right that significant POVs must be introduced early. My main thought and reason for dropping by today was to suggest that maybe you could begin by asking them to explain fully about "nominal Christianity". And maybe there will emerge a Jehovah's Witnesses and Larger Christianity page. Tom - Talk 17:46, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks, Tom. I've actually been meaning to ask for your input with regard to to that article. I don't think that phrase has come up ("nominal Christianity"), either in the JW article or in the discussion. I'll be sure to ask about it. So far it seems to me that they genuinely don't realize that what are plain facts to them appears as a POV to the rest of us, sort of like what we've seen on the Human page. Wesley 20:46, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, your old fears are being realized as usual at the JW article. I agree you can't keep reverting. Is it appropriate to protect an article with an attendant call to all JW editors to convene for a discussion of how to get it unprotected? Until they write something that their brethren find acceptable, we will never have peace. I can't do it and you can't do it. They have to do it with our POV input. I admit I have zero experience with page protection. Tom - Talk 18:51, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, I'm responding to your 10/13/04 request on the JW Discussion page to discuss this [nontrinitarian issue] with me on my Talk page. I even put up a special section for you to post your comments. Did I misunderstand? Where did you want to have this discussion? Obviously I'm new to WP, but I hope it's similarly obvious that I'm serious about contributing responsibly. Thanks! - Talk --DannyMuse 07:38, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, I got your message and I understand about being busy! I've been out of town myself this weekend. I'm still putting some thoughts together on this subject. Would it be more convenient to correspond via e-mail or just post here? Let me know. --DannyMuse 03:35, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I'd rather discuss this here on wikipedia than by email. Thanks. Wesley 15:50, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Wesley, Now I'm the one that's been busy with life. I posted some comments re Layout & Content on the JW Talk page. Take a look and let me know what you think. Thanks for your patience! --DannyMuse 08:44, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi Wesley. This is in response to your October 25, 2004 comments on the JW Talk page. First, thanks for the lengthy reply!

 * Next, I was not intending to focus on "Self Identity" in my reference to the Identity section from the Manual of Style. My point was as quoted:

 * "When writing an article about specific people or specific groups, always use the terminology which they themselves use."

 * Also, you are correct in your guess that the quote I referenced from the Christianity article, "Christianity is centered on the belief that Jesus is the saviour of humanity." was there but must have been edited out. Nevertheless, is there some part of that statement that you take exception to? It seems that way from your reply and I'm not sure why!!!

 * I appreciated your response acknowledging that JW's have feelings. But frankly more important than my feelings is the real issue here. This article is supposed to be about JW's. Therefore it MUST include their beliefs, regardless of what you or anyone else thinks about them. Of course it would be appropriate to qualify those where it would be instructive or add needed clarification. For, example:

 * JW's believe that they are Christians, yet they do not subscribe to the Trinity doctrine commonly taught in most Christian churches.

 * Just a suggestion. I hope these comments will be food for thought and contribute to our continuing to work together in a spirit of cooperation. Respectfully, --DannyMuse 07:42, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Tom
Hi, Wesley. I just thought I ought to let you know I talked about you at my admin nomination when they asked me about users I have stressed over. Something like, "Wonderful Wesley caused me stress early on, but I don't think it affected the relationship." Thanks for always being patient with me. Tom - Talk 17:02, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hey, Wesley! Great quote on your front page. Great! Tom - Talk 14:53, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks, glad you liked it! Based on your feedback (and re-reading it for the first time in months), I decided to move it to the top of the page. That was written in the 5th or 6th century or so; evidently not much has changed with regard to human nature. ;-)   Wesley 17:38, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Original faith
I have a question about your contribution. You said:

This non-acceptance is mutual; quite a number of non-Jehovah's Witness Christians believe that it is the Jehovah's Witnesses who have departed from the original faith.

Then, what is "the original faith" ? Trinity? Christian cross? Or other belief? Rantaro 07:28, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * The "original faith" would be the faith that Jesus Christ taught the first apostles. I think we agree on that much, yes? The disagreement is that the JW's believe this original faith was in "Jehovah only" with Christ as an exalted yet created being, and the Holy Spirit being only a "creative force" or something rather than a Person. For trinitarians, the original faith includes belief that Jesus is God, of one essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, that he died on a cross and rose again. It is the faith that is reflected in the earliest Christian writings that we have, beginning with the Gospels and New Testament and continuing with the letters of Ignatius, Polycarp (a disciple of the apostle John), Justin Martyr, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas and a little later Irenaeus, among others. This is still the faith of the Orthodox Church. When our parish was going to be visited by our bishop for the first time, our priest pointed out passages in Ignatius' writings that describe how a bishop should be treated, for example. Also, when we study the Bible, one method of interpretation is "patristic". This simply means to read the early Church fathers and see how they interpreted a particular book or passage. Wesley \

 * I know the Jehovah's Witnesses study the Bible a great deal. That is very commendable. I wonder, do they read any other Christian writings from the first 400 years of Christianity, that is before 400 A.D., to guide them in their Bible study? Wesley \

 * Good question, Wesley. In fact many of our publications feature detailed studies of early church figures. The history of religion is a fascinating subject and we have many articles and publications devoted to it, not just concerning the first few centuries after Jesus death, but throughout all history and all civilizations. Perhaps it will not be surprising to you that we believe that many individuals were sincere seekers of truth; but that many held beliefs contary to the Bible. - See Romans 10:1-3

 * With regard to the JW or any other article, Wikipedia cannot take a position on which "original faith" is correct. It can only say that these people believe X best reflects the original faith, while these other people think that Y better reflects the original faith. Do you agree that that's a reasonable approach to achieve balanced articles? Wesley 17:45, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Jehovah's Witnesses think early Christians like Polycarp, and Justin Martyr were NOT trinitarians. If they were really trinitarians, JWs regard them as apostates. Rantaro 05:18, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

From the Martyrdom of Polycarp, here is the prayer he prayed just before the Romans tried to burn him alive:
 * O Lord God Almighty, the Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the knowledge of Thee, the God of angels and powers, and of every creature, and of the whole race of the righteous who live before thee, I give Thee thanks that Thou hast counted me, worthy of this day and this hour, that I should have a part in the number of Thy martyrs, in the cup of thy Christ, to the resurrection of eternal life, both of soul and body, through the incorruption [imparted] by the Holy Ghost. Among whom may I be accepted this day before Thee as a fat and acceptable sacrifice, according as Thou, the ever-truthful God, hast fore-ordained, hast revealed beforehand to me, and now hast fulfilled. Wherefore also I praise Thee for all things, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, along with the everlasting and heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, with whom, to Thee, and the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and to all coming ages. Amen

The account concludes with a list of scribes or copyists, the last of whom wrote this:
 * And I again, Pionius, wrote them from the previously written copy, having carefully searched into them, and the blessed Polycarp having manifested them to me through a revelation, even as I shall show in what follows. I have collected these things, when they had almost faded away through the lapse of time, that the Lord Jesus Christ may also gather me along with His elect into His heavenly kingdom, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

The language is the same sort of language the Orthodox Church continues to use when it worships God in three persons. We also read in chapter 6 of Justin Martyr's second apology:
 * But to the Father of all, who is unbegotten there is no name given. For by whatever name He be called, He has as His elder the person who gives Him the name. But these words Father, and God, and Creator, and Lord, and Master, are not names, but appellations derived from His good deeds and functions. And His Son, who alone is properly called Son, the Word who also was with Him and was begotten before the works, when at first He created and arranged all things by Him, is called Christ, in reference to His being anointed and God's ordering all things through Him; this name itself also containing an unknown significance; as also the appellation "God" is not a name, but an opinion implanted in the nature of men of a thing that can hardly be explained. But "Jesus," His name as man and Saviour, has also significance. For He was made man also, as we before said, having been conceived according to the will of God the Father, for the sake of believing men, and for the destruction of the demons.

While this particular passage does not mention the Holy Spirit, it clearly reflects a belief that Jesus is God and the Father is God, that these two are coeternal. So again, in these earliest of writings, we have a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and consequently an underlying belief in the Holy Trinity, worshipping God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Wesley 17:45, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * 'The Ante-Nicene Fathers'(Volume I, page 35) says that Polycarp stated:

 * May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Son of God, . . . build you up in faith and truth.

 * Then Jehovah's Witnesses don't think that Polycarp believed trinity. In this statement, Polycarp does not speak of a Trinitarian "Father" and "Son" relationship of equals in a godhead. Instead, he speaks of "the God and Father" of Jesus, not just 'the Father of Jesus.' So he separates God from Jesus, just as the Bible writers repeatedly do.
 * Also, Polycarp says: "Peace from God Almighty, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour."(Ibid., page 33) Here again, Jesus is distinct from Almighty God, not one person of an equal triune Godhead. Rantaro 01:30, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * First, I'm glad that you're reading the early Fathers of the Church. In this place Polycarp merely distinguishes between the Father and the Son. In the Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians 12:2 Polycarp writes: Now may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the eternal High Priest himself, the Son of God Jesus Christ, build you up in faith and truth and in all gentleness and in all freedom from anger and forbearance and steadfastness and patient endurance and purity, and may he give to you a share and a place among his saints, and to us with you, and to all those under heaven who will yet believe in our Lord and God Jesus Christ and in his Father who raised him from the dead. Here Polycarp begins by seeming to speak of God and Jesus as though they were separate, yet he calls Jesus the "eternal High Priest" indicating that he is without beginning. By the end of this passage, Polycarp names Jesus God while also referring to his Father, whom he called God just moments before. Thus he does distinguish between the Father and the Son, often calling the Father "God" as does the Bible, but he also calls Jesus God quite plainly without any apparent sense of contradiction. Wesley 02:18, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Hmm. Sounds like Mormonism to me. God the Son and His Father; two Gods perfectly One. :-) Tom - Talk 19:25, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't know your idea is true, because I haven't seen its original text. I think that the man who translated its original text into English is trinitarians. Then, I don't know its English text is true. I think he wanted to say that Jesus is "a god", but translators translated it into "God". If its English text is true, Polycarp was a apostate. Rantaro 06:49, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * The text I'm using is The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations of Their Writings, 2d ed. Edited and translated by J.B. Lightfoot and J.R. Harmer, Edited and revised by Michael W. Holmes. This portion of Polycarp's letter is available only in a Latin translation of an older Greek manuscript, according to this collection. The latin for the above quote is:

Deus autem et pater domini nostri Iesu Christi et ipse sempiternus pontifex, dei filius Iesus Christus, aedificet vos in fide et veritate et in omni mansuetudine et sine iracundia et in patientia et in longanimitate et tolerantia et castitate; et det vobis sortem et partem inter sanctos suos, et nobis vobiscum, et omnibus qui sunt sub caelo, qui credituri sunt in dominum nostrum et deum Iesum Christum et in ipsius patrem qui resuscitavit eum a mortuis.

 * Any typos are mine. I haven't studied Latin, so I'll have to let you or another Latin scholar judge the translation. It does seem to be generally agreed that Polycarp was a direct disciple of the Apostle John, along with Ignatius of Antioch. Chapter 7 of the Epistle to Diognetus makes Jesus' divinity even more explicit. I'll try to include a quote soon. Wesley 22:50, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

help?
Wesley, if you have time could you review an edit conflict I am involved in? It concerns the article, Cultural and historical background of Jesus. My recollection is this started as a section of the Jesus article on what critical historians thought happened in Jesus' career. The Jesus article became too long and this section was made its own article. CheeseDream made a number of changes I thought were bad -- in some cases inaccurate, in some cases vague, in some cases tendentious. I'd appreciate it if you could review the discussion on the talk page concerning "edits starting Nov. 1." Someone has protected the page, but a version different from my changes. I'd appreciate it if you would look at the article as it was the last time I worked on it, and look at it the last time CheeseDream worked on it, and would appreciate your thoughts. I know you and I have had differences over content in the past, but I respect your opinion and you are more familiar with the history of the Jesus article than most others. Thanks, Slrubenstein

 * I'll be glad to take a look. I agree we've had our differences, but I think we've always been able to compromise enough to produce some improved articles. I'm finding it harder and harder to keep up with even a fraction of the articles I'd like to. Wesley 17:23, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * I notice Slrubenstein is trying to bring people who he sees as supporters of his POV into the discussion (see his contributions list). I do not think this is a very NPOV thing to do. CheeseDreams 00:10, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, do you think I acted inappropriately? I never though discussion among editors violated our policy. Moreover, NPOV is an ideal we aspire to in articles, it is not a procedure. Discussion among editors is a way to achieve NPOV. And if you haven't noticed, Cheezey, Wesley and I have often disagreed over the Jesus article, especially concerning the inclusion of arguments by critical historians. Believe it or not, even though Wesley often disagrees with me I have the highest respect for him. Wanna know why? Because he is very-well informed and his contributions are based on serious research, and he treats other contributors with respect. Maybe you can learn something here. Slrubenstein

 * SLR, I don't think you acted inappropriately at all. I tried to post to the Talk page on the article yesterday responding to most of the bullet points under discussion, but had an edit conflict, and ran out of time to re-enter the comments.

 * CheeseDreams, I think my earliest editing conflict that I can recall was with Slrubenstein and RK regarding Christian anti-semitism, anti-semitism in the New Testament and the like. I know I learned a lot about working through disagreements, and about learning how to state "just the facts" fairly, by working with both of them on those articles. Our disagreements over the early history of Christianity are real, but our respect for each other is also both mutual and sincere. CheeseDreams, I hope and trust that we can all work productively on the Cultural and historical background of Jesus article. Wesley 17:30, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wesley, if you're willing to get into another conflict.... Christianity currently states, "Emperor Constantine I organized the first of several ecumenical councils for resolving doctrinal issues. One primary council, the Nicene Council, resulted in an election that decided that Jesus was divine (see Arianism) and paved the way for the divine right of the Catholic Church," which I find both incorrect and offensive -- the East-West schism took place much later and a council where only 5 Western bishops took part is hardly the point to note the ascendency of the West. I thought that as an Orthodox, you might be able to add something to the discussion. Thanks. Mpolo 09:19, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

A request
Wesley, I hate to make you feel like the "token Orthodox" editor here, or to pretend you speak for your entire church, but there's a question at the reference desk (Reference_desk) that I think might benefit from your experience/perspective. I don't think the respondents are necessarily getting it wrong, but I figured you'd be a good one to ask. Thanks. :-) Jwrosenzweig 23:08, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikiproject:Jesus
Could you please comment on the scope and goals of the project? It is likely this project will become the meta-mediation point for many of the currently uncoordinated discussions, which is why Mpolo suggested it in the first place. - Amgine 18:14, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Talk:Cultural and historical background of Jesus
I've offered to work with you on the Messiah paragraphs here. Shall we put together a compromise pre-empting another disagreement between SlRubensteing & CheeseDreams? - Amgine 22:48, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * My first recast of the various source texts is up... - Amgine 02:13, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Although Cheese and Rub' are still getting sorted out, I do sense a joint intent to try and focus on article not argument. What I'd ask is, can you help? As mediator, what I'd like is for you to leave worries about personal attacks and personal agendas more in my court, just trust that they can work better, as highlighting fears that one or the other is getting attacked draws attention back to self-justification where I want to draw attention onward to collaboration. I believe they can and will, I want to see them manage to :) Hope that makes sense FT2 00:09, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

 * Alright, I'll try to do my part to stay focused on content. I'm just leary of folks crying "Peace" when there is as yet no real peace, but rather a commitment to further conflict. Seems to reduce the chances of ever achieving the real thing. Wesley 02:32, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Consider the plight of the Norwegian diplomats regarding peace processes. They do continue to work for peace, no matter the good faith of those for whom they labour.

Epilogue: Within a day or so of the page being unprotected, Cheesedreams and Slrubenstein were once more reverting each other. Draw your own conclusions. Wesley 06:03, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have made my own proposal for the "new messiah" section, and would appreciate your comments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cultural_and_historical_background_of_Jesus#New_Messiah_paragraph -- thanksSlrubenstein

Wes, the page is now unprotected. I added a good deal of information; CheeseDreams just reverted it. Please compare my version to the previous one (FT2) and comment. Thanks Slrubenstein Cultural and historical background of Jesus

I am not sure I fully understnad (or appreciate) your comments on the talk page esp. about when Orthodoxy was established. I respond with specific questions on that talk page. I hope together we can edit it into something you think is reasonable and accurate, Slrubenstein WHOOPS I see that you were commenting on what FT2 wrote, not what I wrote. Still, I am concerned that your views be acknowledged, please check, SR

 * Yes, I think I commented on something I saw in the page's history without checking the current version. My mistake, and I apologize for any misunderstanding that resulted. (That is one reason I try to quote what I'm responding to in the talk page though, to avoid that sort of confusion.) Wesley 05:05, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Please see the "culture and history" article. I have left my comments on the talk page. accordingly. FT2 19:40, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

strange
Wesley, I just responded to FT2 in the "responses to Slrub..." section. I noticed you too had made some remakrs. After I saved my edit, I sawe that yours had disappeared. I opedned an earlier version of the article and tried to cut and paste your comments in, but when I save it they disappeared again. Please believe, I am not deleting your comments. But please check this section and see if your comments are there, and if not, could you try to restore them? Slrubenstein

 * I know what you're talking about, at first I thought you might be deleting my comments but after looking closer at the edit history decided you weren't. It will be sometime tomorrow before I have time to attempt to piece them back in, as there's only so much time I can devote to this thing. I appreciate your taking the time to explain your edits though. Wesley 04:58, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cultural and historical background of Jesus
Wesley;

Slrubenstein has said he will not further discuss compromise unless others are involved. Would you care to read or comment on Talk:Cultural and historical background of Jesus? - Amgine 20:17, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Rules
According to the rules of the RfC page.

You are not allowed to comment in the section marked "response" if you comment in the section marked "statement of dispute" section and vice versa.

In accordance with this policy, your comments in these sections have been deleted. You are free to add them to the "statement of dispute section"

CheeseDreams 08:45, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * If that's correct, it will be a better reason for deleting my comments than you've had before. Thanks for letting me know your reasons this time. Wesley 12:56, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

CheeseDreams
Hi! I thought I should let you know you may have signed the wrong section of Requests for comment/CheeseDreams. If you're involved, you're welcome to sign Requests for comment/CheeseDreams. -- 23:24, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

your version
Can you point me at a version of [Cultural and Historic background of Jesus] that is close to what you think is a correct version? And what parts of that version you think don't belong? Pedant 00:26, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC)

Issues of priority
You added Justin Martyr also suggested that other religions borrowed ideas from Judaism, including its prophecies, so as to seem to fulfill the prophecies although not fully comprehending them.

I am a bit confused why Justin Martyr would say that as he was a Christian. "Some religions stole prophecies from Judaism to be seen to fulfill them, e.g. Christianity". Its a bit like shooting yourself in the foot don't you think?

Are you sure it wasn't Josephus? CheeseDreams 12:27, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm quite sure, I just had to look up the reference. It's in the First Apology of Justin, chapters 54 through 56. Justin's argument boiled down is that first, Moses and the other Hebrew prophets foretold Jesus' coming and various details of his life and ministry. Then, various mystery religions included elements of these prophecies in their stories, so that when Jesus finally did come, people would think he was just another story, or based on such stories. Third, Jesus himself actually did come and fulfill the original prophecies. So, any apparent borrowing from mystery religions is actually a result of the mystery religions' borrowing from Judaism, or so goes Justin Martyr's argument. You might also compare the timing of the rise of these mystery religions with the timing of the translation and spread of the Septuagint, the predominant Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. Wesley 04:06, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Step (1) and (3) can be refuted ever so easily by someone going
 * No, you are just being thick, its only a story, like the rest of step (2).
 * or by someone else going
 * No, its actually foretelling the coming of Horus, who will arrive in 675AD, in western Tibet. Jesus is just a prophecy.
 * The argument is not really very good.
 * You might like to compare the timing of the translation and spread of the Septuagint with the spread of the Macedonian empire (i.e. of the hellenic control of Palestine), and consider why spreading of the septuagint and the mystery religions really happened at the same time.
 * You might also like to compare the references and quotes of Old Testament verses in the Gospels that are not in the Old Testament, with the Septuagint (which they are in).
 * Note to self so I don't forget later: the above conversation concerned the Jesus and syncretism article. Wesley 04:31, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

CheeseDreams
Thanks for your message, Wesley. I think you should tend your own garden before you weed CheeseDreams'. A lot of sinners casting a lot of stones is what I see. I don't see any sign of your trying to cool tempers on your side. You could cool the whole thing down a great deal by withdrawing from the the arbitration business, leaving the article in question alone for a while and working on other things. You'll note that I said exactly the same to CheeseDreams. Dr Zen 04:46, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I appreciate your response and your efforts to cool things down. Perhaps I am blind to my own faults; if you can better point them out to me I would be grateful. I think I have done my best to avoid personal attacks and other inappropriate behaviour and instead focus on articles, but maybe I could have done better. I have tried to assume good faith until it appeared repeatedly that that was an unwarranted assumption. Two or three different times, I tried to give cheesedreams a chance to affirm that she agrees with the NPOV policy, which she ignored. These were phrased as "You don't really see NPOV as pushing your own perfectly logical and reasonable POV to the exclusion of others do you?" Again, if you can show me which parts of my garden need tending, I would be grateful for the opportunity to apologize for and correct my errors, inappropriate remarks or inappropriate behaviour. Wesley \

 * Finally, I agree that in many cases, stepping away for a while can be a good thing. In this case I honestly think it would be a mistake. CheeseDreams hasn't just been trying to edit a couple of articles, but has been trying to rewrite and refactor most articles that deal with Jesus Christ in some way. If left unchecked, I honestly think we would be left with a colossal mess. I've been part of wikipedia on and off since around 2001 or so, and this is the first time I have felt it necessary to get involved in a request for arbitration. I don't take it lightly, but I sincerely believe the situation warrants it. Have you noticed how many people have supported the RfC summary against CheeseDreams, and how CheeseDreams has initiated several retaliatory Requests for Comment against other users that (to my knowledge) have garnered no additional backers yet? Wesley 04:58, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Rather more interestingly, have you noticed who the people supporting it are? CheeseDreams 21:34, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

thank you
I appreciate your comment on the talk:cultural and historical background of Jesus page. You are right and I need to restrain myself and focus on the real work. On a completely separate note, I have a question for you. A historian named WHC Frend wrote "It is perhaps fortunate for the Church that Clement and Tertullian never met. If they had, or if the view of Clement and Origen had bene propegated in Africa and Italy, the schism between East and West might have ocurred in the thrid century and not in the eleventh century." Can you explain this to me? I looked at the Christianity article and it doesn't say enough about these kinds of conflicts -- or I couldn't find it (if I missed it, could you tell me where to look; if it isn't there, perhaps more could be added)? As I understand it the Great Schims had to do with the status of the independence of bishops, but I don't think that is what Frend is talking about. Slrubenstein

 * I have to admit I don't know enough about those figures to know what about their beliefs might have precipitated a full schism. I would have guessed that Clement and Origen's views were propagated in Africa, since if I'm not mistaken both were based in Alexandria. The main presenting issue in the Great Schism was the independence of bishops as you said, or the authority of the pope to look at the same issue slightly differently. The filioque clause happened to be the test of the pope's authority, as well as the trinitarian issues it presented in its own right. Before that, East and West had long differed on things like whether to use leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist, whether it was permissible to ordain a married man as a priest, and others, and sometimes strong rhetoric was employed when discussing these differences. Personally, I might have guessed that Augustine's writings might have occasioned more controversy and discussion had he written in Greek instead of Latin. Wesley 22:20, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Prying the truth out of partisans
I felt for your frustration last year in trying to pry the truth out of us Mormon editors who seemed to keep changing our story instead of giving you the straight facts. (If you find any areas of that subject where you think we are still being less than forthcoming, let me know). In working on the Jehovah's Witness subject, I am appreciating anew the frustration of getting the partisans to stop the spin. Partisanship is utterly deplorable. Partisans spin everything they say for the good of the party. It sometimes feels hopeless. My only hope is that some JW user will happen along who is willing to talk without spinning the facts. I guess it is really up to them. When they are ready, they will tell their real story. Well, thanks, Dr. Wesley, for letting me get on your couch for a moment. :-). Tom - Talk 19:55, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. – Ram-Man (comment) (talk)  15:08, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Have you seen?
baptism for the dead 1 Corinthians 15:29

CheeseDreams 23:20, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Yes, I've seen that passage. What about it? That chapter doesn't look very gnostic to me, but I wonder how someone would interpret it who thinks that Paul was a gnostic. Any enlightenment in this respect would be very welcome. I have had a chance to find out how the Mormons look at it. Wesley 11:40, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * The dead being baptised is gnostic.
 * p.s. gnostics used "dead" to mean those who had not understanding of truth, thus "resurrection of the dead"="bringing the dead to enlightenment".

By the way, you really need to read 1 corinthians in the greek to see how gnostic it is, translators translate too many words (e.g. Archon (translated rulers), Pleroma (translated whole), Sophia (translated wisdom), Aeon (translated age), Teleioi (meaning initiated, but translated mature and perfected), Pneuma (translated spiritual), etc.)

 * So in Colossians 1:22, is the phrase "Christ's flesh" supposed to mean some sort of spiritual flesh? If so, is Paul talking about flesh in the same spiritual sense when he refers to his own afflictions in the flesh in verse 24? And in 2:9 when Paul writes that all the "fullness" of the Godhead dwells in Christ, isn't this word 'pleroma'? (I think so, but don't have my Greek NT handy.) If so, it looks more like a refutation of gnosticism. Also, in the various places when Paul talks about Jesus being the only mediator, this is in stark contrast to the hierarchy of aeons the gnostics posited. Also, I believe the gnostics typically viewed Jesus and Christ as two separate aeons, whereas Paul clearly uses both names to refer to the same person. Also, Paul continuously connects death with being dead in sins, or the result of sin, rather than with lack of understanding. See Romans 3 for instance. Wesley 17:57, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * There are historiography issues with the Epistle to the Colossians, many scholars doubt authorship of it by paul. It is not one of the 7 (Corinthians 1&2, Romans, Phillipians, Philemon, Galatia, 1-(but-not-2) Thessalonians) which are considered genuine by the majority of scholars.
 * For explicit details of what bits mean, there are gnostic interpretations of even 2 thessalonians, rather bizarrly, Valentinius systematically produced them.
 * Paul's afflictions of flesh were interpreted by gnostics as supporting their view that the flesh was (intrinsically) evil.
 * gnostics essentially took this teaching in two ways
 * they should demonstrate knowledge that they are spiritual, and that the carnal element is a trap, by total immorality
 * they should be extremely ascetic and totally supress physical urges
 * e.g. explaining Paul's aversion to anything sexual at all
 * 2:9 was interpreted by gnostics as referring to the idea that the gnostic supreme god sent the Christ to rescue people from the error of creating the demiurge (in which the fullness explicitely was not)
 * The gnostics didn't view Jesus as anything at all to start with
 * Gnostics were docetic
 * Later gnostics viewed Jesus as an example human who recieved gnosis by the Christ. They never considered Jesus as a spiritual entity outside that of a normal pneumatic human.
 * Where does Paul use Jesus in one of the 7 genuine-Paul-authorship-according-to-most-scholars texts?
 * The Gnostic idea of sin is that sin is intrinsic to the world (since it was created by the evil god). Anything bound to the world is thus carnal, and sinful. Becoming pneumatic (being fully initiated) means being released from sin, as you are no-longer bound to the world at all. Spiritual death IS sin to the gnostic. To gnostics the wages of sin are death means being bound to carnality is spiritual death or in other words being bound to carnality is being bound to carnality.

 * Thanks for listing the seven epistles considered most genuine. I'll try to stick to those for the sake of this discussion, even though I think the list could reasonably be made longer. (Marcion included ten epistles of Paul if I'm not mistaken in the first attempt to compile a canon.) To differentiate Paul from the gnostics, I guess one could start with Paul's frequent quotations from the Septuagint (Old Testament). Gnostics would have considered these as inspired by that bad old evil demiurge at best, not something to pay attention to much less quote from favorably. Wesley \

 * Paul did not share the gnostic view that the flesh is intrinsically evil. Regarding sex, there is the one passage in 1 Corinithians 7 in which he discourages marriage, while still allowing it for those weaker brethren, "for it is better to marry than to burn." Thus he actually encourages sexual activity within marriage as a better alternative to adultery or fornication, even if he held it as less than ideal. There are many more passages when he warns against, not sexual activity or marriage, but against sexual immorality. 1 Corinthians 6: "18Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. 19Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." If the flesh were intrinsically evil, it would be impossible for him to say that this evil flesh could be a temple of the Holy Spirit. Wesley \

 * Philippians 2:5-11 describes Jesus' existence and equality with God prior to his incarnation, his death on a cross, and subsequent exaltation, receiving glory together with God the Father. Paul's anticipation of a glorified body contrasts with the gnostics' disdain for the body; as in Philippians 3:17. Wesley \

 * This is all I have time to go into right now, but it is at least clear to me that Paul's teaching is in fact a major part of the foundation of orthodox Christianity. I will acknowledge that it is possible to interpret his writings a thousand different ways, as evidenced by the heretics in every century who quoted the Bible to support their case, and as myriad denominations today quote the Bible to support their points. Critical scholars who want to make Paul a gnostic are simply joining the fray, adding their own interpretation. It's worth noting though, that when Marcion chose to use Luke and Paul, he had to edit their writings to bring them into line with his gnostic theology. Wesley 17:46, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Clement
Oh, did you know that the 3rd/4th ever pope (Clement of Rome), pre-100AD, thought St. Paul was a dangerous gnostic heretic (as recorded in Clement's homilies)? Cheesedreams 20:29, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't. I've read Clement's epistles; the first speaks at length concerning the resurrection of Jesus and I believe identifies Jesus with God rather clearly. Can you tell me where I can find Clement's homilies? Wesley 17:57, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately Im not sure where they are generally, though they should be fairly easy to get hold of given that he is considered a saint and 3rd/4th bishop of Rome/Pope. It quite surprised me when I read about it, as I wasn't expecting anything like that to have survived purges of inconvenient texts. I'll have a look. CheeseDreams 00:46, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * P.s. I forgot to mention this earlier. Simon Magus is considered by MOST SCHOLARS (ever since Baur proposed it) to actually be a coded attack on Paul (i.e. Simon Magus is Paul) CheeseDreams 17:53, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * If these are the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, it seems they are generally dated to the late second or early third century, and thus couldn't have been written by the first century Clement. I found a copy of the homilies online and skimmed them. No mention of Paul, though it does contain a lengthy debate between Peter and Simon. At a glance, it looks easy to see that the words in Simon's mouth have little in common with the Pauline epistles. At least some scholars see a gnostic influence in the Clementine homilies themselves. Wesley 18:25, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Gospel of James
Your recent edit that inserted the phrase "appear to be" in "These legends appear to be embellishments upon the stories given in the gospels of Matthew and Luke" implies that, conversely, they could be the original material, left out of the canonic tales. Would you enlarge upon the suggestion you are making, please. ...Unless they were simply "weasel words" (horrible expression!)— in which case you might remove them again. Either way, thank you. No need to take this up as controversy. --Wetman 05:43, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I mainly meant that whether they are embellishments or not is a matter of interpretation, not one that can be proven based on authentically timestamped, fully intact original manuscripts. Other possibilities are that Matthew and Luke knew of them but left out many of the details in the Gospel of James, or that the authors of all three gospels had access to different sources of the same events, and did not depend directly upon each other at all. Wesley 17:32, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Help!
Can I get your help please. Authorship of the Pauline epistles is totally POV and badly written. I've made some comments on the talk page. I'd appreciate some help on this. - Ta bu shi da yu 00:08, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Invitation
Hi, Wesley. I thought perhaps you might be interested in taking a look at and/or contributing to this site: OrthodoxWiki

A.S. Damick 20:49, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Civility
I'll listen to you when I see any sign whatsoever of your being evenhanded. Have a merry Christmas.Dr Zen 22:37, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'll try :-)
But I'm staying away for a while. I'm a bit too caught up in it. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:45, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

WP:IFD
Wes, could I get you to vote on WP:IFD to delete Image:Ok magazine 89 cover.jpg? It's a picture of a child on a paedophile magazine. It needs to go. Now. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:13, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Wesley/Archive1