I have been writing dozens of posts about how Wikipedia has been hijacked by regressive leftist social justice idologues for spreading their propaganda.
Recently, however, I stumbled across a Wikipedia page that seems to have all the hallmarks of being a propaganda piece for something else entirely. Namely, the article "Historicity of Jesus", which has all the hallmarks of being Christian propaganda.
This blog post is not about claiming whether Jesus existed or not. That's not really the subject. The subject is about that particular Wikipedia page, which appears to, somehow, be Christian propaganda of a very particular kind.
Note, for example, the typical unencyclopedic language being used, which resembles much more some random blog or social media post by some random person, than an encycloped article. Such as for example: "Despite this, very few scholars have argued for non-historicity and have not succeeded due to abundance of evidence to the contrary."
This is a strong claim of the type that an encyclopedia isn't supposed to make (unless it's a direct quote from some author, which it isn't in this case).
Also not the excessively large "note 2" in the notes section, which not only is way too long, but also contains unencyclopedic language, like "Robert M. Price, a former fundamentalist apologist who is now a Christian atheist, says the existence of Jesus cannot be ruled out, but is less probable than non-existence, agrees that his perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars." (Once again, this is the kind of language that you could find in a blog, forum or social media post, not in an encyclopedia.)
Excessive amount of citations in the lead of the article is one of the signs of the editor having an agenda. (In fact, Wikipedia style guidelines actually state that the lead doesn't need nor should even have citations. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the contents, not the actual contents, and thus it doesn't need citations. The citations should be given in the article proper, not in the lead.) When editors have a particular agenda, when they are adamantly trying to "prove" something, they will often engage in citation-flooding: Trying to give credibility to a controversial claim by adding an excessive amount of citations to it.
Also note how almost every single citation, especially for the strong claims (eg. "virtually all scholars support the historicity of Jesus"), refers to a Christian theologian, apologist or author. I could only find one single citation in the entire article to an openly non-Christian author (although admittedly I didn't check every single one of them).
The article itself doesn't give very strong arguments why these "scholars" don't doubt the historicity of Jesus. The main (and pretty much only) argument refers to the page "sources for the historicity of Jesus". Note how every single reference to Jesus mentioned in that page was written many decades after the (alleged) death of Jesus, and how every single known non-Christian author that is mentioned was born likewise after Jesus's alleged death, and wrote their texts many decades later. (The earliest non-Christian source mentioned there was written in about 93 CE, by an author who was born after Jesus's death. Hardly a contemporary witness.)
The entire argument seems extraordinarily weak, and this article overall seems very unencyclopedic and biased. It makes strong claims about the number of "scholars" and "historians" who doubt the historicity of Jesus, yet gives citations to almost exclusively biased sources (ie. Christian theologians and apologists) for these claims. (Rather obviously Christian theologians and "scholars" don't doubt the historicity of Jesus. They are an extraordinarily biased source to cite for such a claim.) I have the strong impression that the main editors of this article are Christian apologists (probably American ones).
But as we have seen from other Wikipedia articles, this seems par for the course. It's official Wikipedia policy that "the lack of bias rule only applies to editors, not to sources".
Recently, however, I stumbled across a Wikipedia page that seems to have all the hallmarks of being a propaganda piece for something else entirely. Namely, the article "Historicity of Jesus", which has all the hallmarks of being Christian propaganda.
This blog post is not about claiming whether Jesus existed or not. That's not really the subject. The subject is about that particular Wikipedia page, which appears to, somehow, be Christian propaganda of a very particular kind.
Note, for example, the typical unencyclopedic language being used, which resembles much more some random blog or social media post by some random person, than an encycloped article. Such as for example: "Despite this, very few scholars have argued for non-historicity and have not succeeded due to abundance of evidence to the contrary."
This is a strong claim of the type that an encyclopedia isn't supposed to make (unless it's a direct quote from some author, which it isn't in this case).
Also not the excessively large "note 2" in the notes section, which not only is way too long, but also contains unencyclopedic language, like "Robert M. Price, a former fundamentalist apologist who is now a Christian atheist, says the existence of Jesus cannot be ruled out, but is less probable than non-existence, agrees that his perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars." (Once again, this is the kind of language that you could find in a blog, forum or social media post, not in an encyclopedia.)
Excessive amount of citations in the lead of the article is one of the signs of the editor having an agenda. (In fact, Wikipedia style guidelines actually state that the lead doesn't need nor should even have citations. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the contents, not the actual contents, and thus it doesn't need citations. The citations should be given in the article proper, not in the lead.) When editors have a particular agenda, when they are adamantly trying to "prove" something, they will often engage in citation-flooding: Trying to give credibility to a controversial claim by adding an excessive amount of citations to it.
Also note how almost every single citation, especially for the strong claims (eg. "virtually all scholars support the historicity of Jesus"), refers to a Christian theologian, apologist or author. I could only find one single citation in the entire article to an openly non-Christian author (although admittedly I didn't check every single one of them).
The article itself doesn't give very strong arguments why these "scholars" don't doubt the historicity of Jesus. The main (and pretty much only) argument refers to the page "sources for the historicity of Jesus". Note how every single reference to Jesus mentioned in that page was written many decades after the (alleged) death of Jesus, and how every single known non-Christian author that is mentioned was born likewise after Jesus's alleged death, and wrote their texts many decades later. (The earliest non-Christian source mentioned there was written in about 93 CE, by an author who was born after Jesus's death. Hardly a contemporary witness.)
The entire argument seems extraordinarily weak, and this article overall seems very unencyclopedic and biased. It makes strong claims about the number of "scholars" and "historians" who doubt the historicity of Jesus, yet gives citations to almost exclusively biased sources (ie. Christian theologians and apologists) for these claims. (Rather obviously Christian theologians and "scholars" don't doubt the historicity of Jesus. They are an extraordinarily biased source to cite for such a claim.) I have the strong impression that the main editors of this article are Christian apologists (probably American ones).
But as we have seen from other Wikipedia articles, this seems par for the course. It's official Wikipedia policy that "the lack of bias rule only applies to editors, not to sources".
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