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Date format issue

There is a mini-issue about AD vs CE. I do not think this should turn into a long debate. Can we just use AD/CE so both formats appear and the debate goes away? Or for fun a simple bot could be written that changes AD to CE at midnight every night, so Mondays it says AD, Tuesdays it says CE, etc. and both formats get equal play time. But in the absence of the bot, can we just avoid that issue and say AD/CE and move on? I do not see this as an encyclopedic issue and most readers will probably not care either way.

On a separate note, the testpage has seen a good deal of expansion now. I guess no one added the Greek, but the arguments against authenticity have a long section on the Testimonium, and not much on James yet. I will go ahead and expand that now anyway, given that it was sitting there. History2007 (talk) 23:21, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Dab once expressed the opinion that the best way to make this problem go away is to remove AD/CE from the article. WP:MOSNUM states "Do not use CE or AD unless the date or century would be ambiguous without it". I think Huon's point is a good one though, that first century dates can, at times, be confused with ages. If you are going with the AD date format, it needs to be preceded by an &nbsp. I'm for whatever constitutes best WP:MOS practices and gets this article through WP:GAC. Ignocrates (talk) 23:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I do not care, as long as it does not generate unnecessary fanfare. I think it makes very little difference to 90% of readers anyway. If nbsp solves it do it, else we can write a Monday/Tuesday bot. History2007 (talk) 23:58, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

You make the call and I will clean up the dates. To AD or not to AD, that is, as they say, the question. Cheers. Ignocrates (talk) 00:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I really do not care. Please discuss it with Huon and you guys decide. History2007 (talk) 00:10, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Done. I added nbsp's, so the formatting is at least correct. Think about how you want it in the final version, assuming everyone involved wants this to be a world-class article. Ignocrates (talk) 00:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the prevailing opinion (as above) seems to be that the other articles such as Josephus, Jewish War, Against Apion, etc. are in such dire shape that they need help anyway. So world class is desired, but when those are starving... Anyway, enough on this. History2007 (talk) 00:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

They are indeed in dire shape, but creating one silk purse give me a lot more energy to work on all the sows ears! Ignocrates (talk) 02:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I like it the way it is now. Thanks for the formatting! Huon (talk) 00:26, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Note format issue

Lung salad, I noticed you added a new bibliography to the Notes section. Notes should have the author's name, date, and page numbers. Everything but page numbers (including title, publisher and ISBN) needs to be in alphabetical order in the Bibliography section. Can you fix this? Thanks. Ignocrates (talk) 00:20, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I could do that, but I wonder about the purpose of that footnote. It seems rather redundant to what we say in the sentences immediately afterwards, and it does not actually support the sentence it is used as a reference for. I also have doubts about the word "disputed" Lung salad introduced: We describe the dispute in detail; there is no need to allude to it in that sentence. For these reasons I would tend to remove both the footnote and the word "disputed". Huon (talk) 00:32, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually there is no need to worry about that at all. Much further above on this talk page we discussed that the lede would be changed "after the fact" to reflect the body once the body has been finalized with the details, etc. So those changes may or may not survive the final lede after the testpage has been completed and introduced as the last section. History2007 (talk) 00:37, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

All else being equal, one more reliable source is better than one less. However, the content should always be an accurate summary of the source, so maybe the wording needs to be tweaked a bit. And it still needs page numbers. Words like "disputed" need to be tied to a dispute that can be shown in the references. Otherwise, it seems like an editors opinion. No room for that at the GA level. Cheers. Ignocrates (talk) 01:55, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Anyway, all that is sideline talk for now. We will deal with those issues when we get there. For now there is still content that needs to be developed.... History2007 (talk) 02:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to be dense, but where is this development taking place? I noticed a test page, but 99% of the edits are yours. Is this a private party? If so, I don't want to crash it. Ignocrates (talk) 13:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

There was a joke that Bill Gates was not invited to Kardashian's wedding, but in the best of Microsoft tradition crashed it. So you can of course do as Bill did. The testpage has been waiting for anyone to develop, and Eusebeus made some initial edits. No one has done any edits recently. That was why I said that given that it has been sitting there I will add items. I was hoping I did not have to do all the arguments against authenticity, but now I ended up adding several. Now, what we need is someone to check the arguments against authenticity given that I wrote that quickly in the past day. So please check those, add to them etc.

Key questions:

• Are there any missing (post 8-rack era) arguments against the authenticity of John?
• How about against James, apart from the Greek upper/lower case item that needs to get expanded?

The arguments against the Testimonium seem well developed, but there are serious overlaps now with those of James. I cleaned it up a little, but can get cleaned up more. So if you want to check, extend, expand those, that would help a lot.

I will therefore take a break from arguments against, leave those to you until you declare them finished and then we can all check them. In the meantime I can work on finishing the arguments in favor of authenticiy. Then we should be ready to look it all over and call it stable. History2007 (talk) 13:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok. It will take a bit of reading to get up to speed - I haven't thought about Josephus for awhile - but I will take a crack at it. You have all done some terrific work here. This article should definitely go through peer review soon, and on to GAC once it can be shown to be stable. Best regards. Ignocrates (talk) 16:26, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I will wait for you to look through the arguments against authenticity section. I will touch up the arguments in favor of authenticity in parallel. There is just one section in the in favor of authenticity that needs work. I can probably finish it in a day or two. As for the GA/GB/GC labels, I really do not care about those. If you do nominate it for GA you need to be prepared to tutor whoever reviews it, for some the issues are at times not obvious. So if you do that you need to be prepared to put in plenty of work on it. That is not my area. Anyway, I will wait for you to work on the arguments against authenticity section. History2007 (talk) 16:46, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I copied the "Arguments Against" section of the test page over to a draft page in my user space. That way I can make notes for myself without disrupting everyone else. So, if you don't see any activity here for a bit that's why. Cheers. Ignocrates (talk) 01:53, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

In any case, I have now finished about 95% of my edits to the "in favor of authenticity" section, and I think what remains to do in that section is adding links and using a uniform reference format. When you have fully completed your edits to the "challenging authenticity" section, just let us know and we will go from there. History2007 (talk) 18:36, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I apologize for not doing more to help with this article. I'm currently jammed with project work off-Wiki. Please proceed and don't wait for me. Ignocrates (talk) 15:43, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, no problem. In that case I will try to touch up the arguments against section as well, fix the ref formats etc. and get a final version together in a day or two so we can move on. History2007 (talk) 15:48, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Final version? Lung salad (talk) 22:24, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure what your question is. History2007 (talk) 22:58, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Neither am I, but I believe the answer is "final version of the testpage before its content gets added to the article proper". Huon (talk) 23:08, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that was what I meant. History2007 (talk) 23:11, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Testpage

I have now finished about 95% of the additions I think were needed to complete the testpage. I still need to double check a few page numbers, and fix a few reference formats, but those should take no more than a couple of hours. Now:

• After all this research, I could probably write 10 more pages, but the article is approaching 90k or so, and that may be close to the length limit, so this is about all the text that we can get into one article. And frankly it is plenty of text and most readers will need some time to read even half of it.

• I double checked all references (I think) but there is one item that I marked as "failed verification" and that is the reference 91 to Mason, page 228. I said before that I had seen the argument about "Jesus son of Damneus" somewhere, and now I think it was here, a blog website. What is certain is that that statement is not due to Mason page 228. The blog references Mason page 228 to state a separate issue, then continues with its own reasoning. And as I stated before that is a rather weak argument given that according to Josephus Annanus was bribing the son of Damneus anyway. Regardless of that issue, there is no WP:RS source for that statement and unless one is offered, it needs to be excluded.

The next steps are to get comments on the testpage and then find IP 84.22.52.10 and bill him for all this. History2007 (talk) 22:51, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I have now double checked every reference and page number in the testpage. I think it is ready to go to mainspace. History2007 (talk) 17:20, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Several days and no issues, so I will just put it up. History2007 (talk) 13:08, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I have an issue. What happened to the "son of Damneus" issue and the fact that Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Early Christian tradition all put the death of James the Just at 69 CE (Eddy, Paul R. and Boyd, Gregory A. (2007) The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Academic, pg 189)? Also there is the idea that "the who was called Christ" was an added gloss that got woven into the text at some point.

Also what is all this stuff about John the Baptist? At best it is tangential to the whole Josephus on Jesus issue and IMHO muddles the focus of the article. Just because John the Baptist existed doesn't mean Jesus existed any more then the existence of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh proves he had a brother called John Frum.--BruceGrubb (talk) 23:19, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

e/c Fine, let us discuss those. But they are 3 separate issue. So let us do those one by one.

1. I commented just above that I could not verify the "Jesus son of Damneus" argument in Mason's book, but did manage to find it on www.thoughts.com where I think I had seen it before. The argument based on Exodus 29:9 etc. seems to be only from the thoughts.com website which is not WP:RS. The Jesus son of Damneus item was on the testpage for a long time, but I commented it out recently given that it could not be verified. Just now with a few keystrokes I just removed the comment markers, but it has to be marked as "not in citation" until you find another WP:RS source that makes that argument. I think you may have assumed the use of www.thoughts.com as a WP:TERTIARY source, but those are the issues with non-RS tertiary sources, quite often they fail verification.

2. The second paragraph of the section "Variations from the New Testament" discusses the 62 AD vs 69 AD issue. If you think that issue needs to be expanded further, we can certainly discuss and do it. The question then will be how to expand it.

3. The mention of the John the Baptist in this article had been present for long before the current discussion and does not relate to these issues. We can certainly discuss that as a separate issue at some point. Most books that refer to Josephus and Jesus also discuss that passage, however. So I think whoever added the discussion on the Baptist followed the general trend in all the books. But again, that is a separate issue.

I think the main item now is to see if you have another WP:RS source for the "Jesus son of Damneus" argument. Hopefully a somewhat recent WP:RS source, as discussed before. History2007 (talk) 00:20, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

While the anointed argument is new the idea of Jesus brother of James being the same as Jesus son of Damneus is very old going back at least as far as Richard M. Mitchell and his 1893 book The Safe Side: A Theistic Refutation of the Divinity of Christ. It shows up again in Remsburg's 1909 The Christ and Arthur Drews in The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (1912) states "(i)n the edition of Origen published by the Benedictines it is said that there was no mention of Jesus at all in Josephus before the time of Eusebius (about 300 A.D., Ecclesiast. Hist., 1, 11). Moreover, in the sixteenth century Vossius had a manuscript of the text of Josephus in which there was not a word about Jesus."

A little later in the same work Drews states "It is extremely doubtful whether James is understood by Josephus to be the corporal brother of Jesus, as brotherhood might very well mean only that he belonged to the Jesus-sect. In that sense Josephus would merely be saying that James was a " brother of Jesus, or leader of those who venerated the Messiah (Christ) under the name of Jesus. It is more probable, however, that this passage also is a later interpolation, as Credner 2and Schiirer are disposed to admit." (...) We understand, therefore, why Origen knows nothing of the passage. In his polemical work against Celsus he does not mention it when he comes to speak of James, though he refers to another in which Josephus represents the destruction of Jerusalem as a punishment of the Jews for having put James to death ; which certainly does not accord with the facts."

Drews is presenting a threefold argument--two that assume the passage is totally authentic and one that assumes it is an interpolation. He even states that there was a version of Josephus as late as the 16th century that had neither reference. Wells and Humphreys both discount the "who was called Christ" Goppelt and Roloff inThe Ministry of Jesus in Its Theological Significance By Leonhard published by Eerdmans states on page 19 that it is possible both parts of Josephus are interpolation while flat out stating the Slavic passages are totally inauthentic (Got to love the right hand-left hand situation with this publisher's QA department).

In short the son of Damneus issue when it does come up is often used to argue for interpolation.--BruceGrubb (talk) 11:03, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Discussion of Mason's book, page 228

Look, I had no problem with the "Jesus son of Damneus" argument when you first suggested it as sourced to Mason, for Mason is clearly a WP:RS source. And it is in the article now, sourced to Mason. The items you need to clarify are:

1. Do you still state that the argument based on Exodus 29:9 and 1 Samuel 10:1 "is sourced to Mason", or do you now agree that Mason is not the source for it? So let us clarify this first.

2. If Mason is not the source for it, then what is a WP:RS source that can be used for it in the article? It does need a modern WP:RS source. And again, as above Arthur Drews is a rather antique source and "modern scholarship" should be used instead. Mason would have been a good source.

So that argument is present in the article as we speak, but a source for it needs to be provided. So you need to provide a WP:RS source before the "failed verification flag" applied to Mason can be removed from it. That is simple. History2007 (talk) 11:17, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Your dodging the points I raised above but I'll play your game just to prove you wrong.

1. "In Greek it (Christ) means simply "wetted" of annointed. Within the Jewish world, this was was an extremely significant term because anointing was the means by which the kings and high priests of Iserael had been installed. The pouring of oil over their heads represented their assumptions of God-given authority (Exod 29:9; 1 Sam 10:1)." Mason ISBN: 978-0801047008 pg 228.

2. Since Mason clearly DOES say this your claim he doesn't just died a twitching death. But let's go on.

Mason points out to a non-Jew or non-Christan (ie the majority of Josephus' intended readership) the term "Christ" would be an unknown term which along with its visual similarity to "Chrestos" would have made the Testimonium Flavianum as we know it a total "what the..." moment. However Mason goes on to point out "That formulation, "the one called Christ," makes much better sense because it sounds like a nickname. Nicknames were necessary among first-century Jews because there was a relatively small number of proper names in circulation."

Mason then goes into the history of Testimonium Flavianum and where it might have come from. Then on page 239 we get back to the brother of James passage but here Mason falls into the usual argument based on the idea that the Testimonium Flavianum in some form existed and that the Jesus there and the Jesus here are one in the same person seeming forgetting the very point of Christ being a nickname he raised back on page 228. The whole issue of Josephus' James dieing in 62 CE while nearly everybody puts the James brother of Jesus the Christ being killed 69 CE (which would break any connection between the passages) is conveniently ignored.

Now back to the blog you presented. It states "Among our first solution, consider the passage is authentic with absolutely no tampering; even Mason agrees that the use of Christos in this fashion seems more appropriate as it is a nickname rather than a title. (p. 228) Mason suggests that titles were common among first century Jews because of the lack of common names in use. Jesus here is nicknamed “anointed."" As far as that goes Mason does indeed say this.

What the blog next does is takes the pieces Mason presented and puts them together in a different way that does not assume any connection between the James brother of Jesus passage here and the Testimonium Flavianum: "Jesus son of Damneus did in fact get selected to be the High Priest, in which he would have been anointed for the position which the scripture commands in Exodus 29:9 and 1 Samuel 10:1, and thus his nickname would apply."

Though it doesn't mention it the Exodus 29:9 and 1 Samuel 10:1 part also comes from Mason as shown above. Mason provides all the pieces; all the blog does is put them together without assuming any connection between the James brother of Jesus passage and the Testimonium Flavianum. Once that connection is broken the syllogism is simple enough:

Major premise: Christ simply mean "wetted" of anointed and was the mean which the kings and high priests of Iserael had been installed per Exodus 29:9 and 1 Samuel 10:1 and could be used as a nickname (Mason pg 228)

Minor premise: Jesus son of Damneus was made high priest (Mason pg 239)

Conclusion: the "who was called Christ" passage could easily refer to Jesus son of Damneus.

It is interesting the blog does with without considering the whole 62 CE vs 69 CE issue.--BruceGrubb (talk) 00:20, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Bruce, please just think about it. Just above here you have clearly stated that:

• "What the blog next does is takes the pieces Mason presented and puts them together in a different way"
• "Mason provides all the pieces; all the blog does is put them together"

Clearly, clearly that means that unless the blog is used as a reference along with Mason, that paragraph in the article can not be sourced to Mason's book by itself. It can only be sourced to "Mason+Blog". History2007 (talk) 05:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

You are just moving the goal post as your original premise did a major crash and burn.--BruceGrubb (talk) 05:43, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry, I do not see the logic in that statement. What I ask now is:

• Are you accepting that the paragraph can only be sourced to "Mason+Blog", or not.

Please clarify that. It just requires a simple yes/no answer. History2007 (talk) 05:45, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I haven't read the blog in question, but if Mason only provides the pieces and does not himself put them together in the way we want them, we either violate WP:SYN by drawing those pieces together ourselves, or we cite the blog to do it for us, and in general blogs are not reliable sources. So unless this blog is an exception (written by an acknowledged scholar on his area of expertise?), we would need some other source beyond either just Mason or the combination of Mason and the blog. Huon (talk) 20:55, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

The author of the blog is an expert at not being an expert at anything. He once attended some military school for a while, but has no scholarly claim whatsoever. He just types things on a public blog as a citizen of the world, not as a scholar of any type. History2007 (talk) 05:31, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

"If you look a little farther, it says that James and Jesus were the sons of a guy named Damneus, and that they were candidates for the high priest - it wasn't Jesus of Nazareth at all!" Robert M Price interview by Luke Muehlhauser on July 11, 2010 regarding his book The Case Against the Case for Christ ISBN 978-1578840052. Now from roughly 7:50 to 11:00 he talks about the TF pointing out that Josephus "staked his entire livelihood on the flattery that the emperor Vespasian was the Jewish messiah" (9:39-9:46)--BruceGrubb (talk) 19:52, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

So we are changing topic again. Right? Bruce you have not addressed the issue of Mason+Blog at all. Give a yes/no answer to that question first, for it is pending. History2007 (talk) 20:05, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the answer to that question is "we can ditch Mason and use Price instead". I would greatly prefer to cite his book instead of an interview, though. Does the book make the same point, and if so, can we get a page number? Huon (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

No, Price's book does not present the same argument about Exodus 29:9 and 1 Samuel 10:1. So that would not be a substitute. As far as I can tell, the only other place that argument seems to be used is in the The Christ myth by Arthur Drews, published in 1910. Over 100 years ago, in fact and not a WP:RS reference given its age. From what I have seen, the Exodus 29:9 and 1 Samuel 10:1 argument is usually only found on blogs or in antique books that seriously predate LP records. Modern scholarship seems to be smarter than to argue that point. History2007 (talk) 20:30, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

History2007 you need to do better research. Drews AND Remsburg both make reference to the "son of Damneus" issue and there are repeats of this point in later works (it for example shows up in Drews The Witness To The Historicity of Jesus, page 9 of 1912). In fact, Remsburg's "To identify the James of Josephus with James the Just, the brother of Jesus, is to reject the accepted history of the primitive church which declares that James the Just died in 69 A.D., seven years after the James of Josephus was condemned to death by the Sanhedrim." is reiterated in Eddy, Paul R. and Boyd, Gregory A. (2007) The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Academic, ISBN 978-0801031144 pg 189: "The account of James's martyrdom in Josephus differ noticeable from the traditional Christian account (...) Moreover according to the Christian Tradition, James was killed just prior to Vespasian's siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE." The point is still a problem even after 100 years.--BruceGrubb (talk) 04:11, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

My apologies, the newer (1912) edition of the Arthur Drews book is only 99 years old now, not over 100 years old. I will be more careful with my arithmetic in the future. But the 1912 edition still seriously predates LP records and can not be used in Misplaced Pages. And John Remsburg also seriously predates the Edsel and is outdated Model T era scholarship. There is still no usable source for the Exodus 29:9 and 1 Samuel 10:1 argument you presented which remains in the article sans a valid reference. Talking of LP records, I do feel that we may need a LP record that keeps repeating: "Misplaced Pages uses modern scholarship". I wonder how that can be arranged... History2007 (talk) 13:13, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Toward peer review

Now that the test page has been incorporated into the article, I suggest you move rapidly to WP:Peer Review. The remaining issues can be resolved there and the reviewers may bring up additional issues. Also, please strive to reach consensus as independent editors. There is a perception of WP:Tag Teaming going on here. Ignocrates (talk) 15:09, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

e/c For Heaven's sake Ignocrates, cut out these laughable conspiracy theories about tag teaming etc. That had been said before, but is just laughable. Just laughable. There were laughable suggestions before that I was emailing people "in secret"! Yet I never bothered to enable email in Misplaced Pages. So I just laughed them off. But now, whatever your perceptions may be, confine your conspiracy theories to the Grassy knoll. This is enough.

If you had bothered to look at the last edit summary on the page, you would have seen that the last edit was based on a "2 person discussion". Is that what gave you the idea of a conspiracy theory? There was a two person discussion and I had the references to support my position. I made the edit based on agreement, not conspiracy. I do my research carefully. So do give us a break and present your conspiracy theories on the Grassy knoll, not here.

You were directly, I mean very directly invited to do some work and contribute to the article, yet you apologized and refused to do anything just above here - so I did the work after your refusal. My guess is that not having done one's research can be a barrier to participation in the face of a direct invitation. But later accusations are just laughable. As for your patronizing suggestions regarding what needs to be done, do what you like. It does not take much to ask for review. Some people like to sit back, do the minimal amount of work and lecture others on what needs to be done. But before lecturing the underpaid workmen here, it would be good for present company to do some work, then provide advice to others. And again, stop these laughable conspiracy theories. History2007 (talk) 15:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

You are overreacting. I think you have done one of the most comprehensive editing jobs here I have seen on Misplaced Pages. However, when I see similar complex reversions of article content by different editors (diff1 and diff2), that suggests a correlation, although not necessarily causality. That is why I said the perception of non-independence. Consider this friendly advice offered in the spirit of cooperation. Ignocrates (talk) 16:14, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I submitted the request for peer review and asked the reviewers to give feedback as a prelude to submission to WP:FAC. Ignocrates (talk) 16:48, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Your heartfelt concern is so touching, it just warms my heart... I will try not shed tears... I have seen what you type on talk pages here and there, so do not make me laugh any more... I can read.... Correlation vs causality, perception vs reality... Do give me a break. As for my comprehensive editing, I started editing this page because an IP complained about it. I do that every day, this is just another page. I was having a nice day fixing RISC today when you ruined it with this type of laughable and insulting comment. Did I tag team there too? Give me a break. You had made insinuation before. You know that. Now just stop it, and do some constructive work somewhere. Heaven forbid, maybe even write an article one of these days. History2007 (talk) 18:19, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Your faux-outrage and condescending remarks only deepen the perception that something is wrong here. Please follow WP:TPG and observe proper WP:Wikiquette. Thank you. Ignocrates (talk) 19:00, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Nothing faux. But I will not waste time responding to this. Enough said. History2007 (talk) 19:06, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment In order to make this discussion as open to the rest of us as possible, who are you alleging History2007 is tag-teaming this review with Ignocrates? Although somewhat verbose and emphatic in his statements to the contrary, all I see is History2007 responding to your as-yet-unsubstantiated claim. Lay your cards on the table and substantitate your claim or apologize - seems to pretty obvious to me. Ckruschke (talk) 20:58, 22 March 2012 (UTC)Ckruschke

I added the diffs for the two reversions to my comment above, and I apologize for not doing that at the outset. And I was wrong in saying the reversions are identical when they are just highly similar, so I will correct that in the record too. However, let me be clear about this - the only reason the reversions are non-identical is because Lung salad did not restore the content in exactly the same way. In both cases, all of Lung salad's multiple edits were reverted (diff1 and diff2). That said, I support History2007's efforts here, so don't get the wrong impression. As far as your demand that I apologize - who the hell do you think you are? Ignocrates (talk) 22:25, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment How about we dispense with the language Ignocrates... Although I agree the history shows mult edits by History and Lung Salad, there are also mult unbroken edits by Eusebius and Huon in the last 10 days - are they part of this too? Also I'm not sure how all of Lung Salad's edits being reverted has any bearing on the discussion. I've seen many editors who have tried to put in items and been reverted over and over. Maybe we could allow Lung Salad to speak for himself instead of blindly jumping to conclusions - we've already heard History state that your assertions are groundless. Ckruschke (talk) 00:53, 23 March 2012 (UTC)Ckruschke

Is this a stable article, or is there an ongoing content dispute? If the latter, then it should not be listed at Misplaced Pages:Peer review/Josephus on Jesus/archive1 The basic idea is that it is pointless to make detailed comments on the article until the content dispute is resolved, as the final version may change significantly. Ruhrfisch _><>° 11:13, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

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