Talk:Early Christianity

Requested move 17 September 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Unopposed. Ran for 17 days. (closed by non-admin page mover) – robertsky (talk) 02:05, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

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Early centers of Christianity → History of early Christianity – The article is not only about the early centers of Christianity but about the whole history of early Christianity. Privybst (talk) 16:20, 17 September 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Natg 19 (talk) 01:45, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Ethiopia

There should be more coverage of Ethiopia since it was (partly) converted as early as some parts of Europe. 2A01:4C8:1406:B560:F91D:B505:805A:DEBC (talk) 16:24, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Catholic Encyclopedia

@SanctumRosarium: you replaced several attributions ("according to the Catholic Encyclopedia}} with references to primary sources; a double no-go. The CE is a non-neutral and outdated source; atrribution makes it clear for readers that the views expressed in this source are the views of this specific source. And secondary sources are to be preferred over primary sources. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:27, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Non neutral sources should not be used in articles, either as sources or as attributions. Please give me some time to find reliable sources and to verify all the information in the article, hopefully in the next days. SanctumRosarium (talk) 11:51, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Article Re-Organization

As the thread above makes clear, this article desperately needs better sources. However, I also think it needs reorganization. Since September 2022, this article is titled "History of early Christianity," but it is still organized as a list of "centers of early Christianity." I have already added a section on Origins with discussion of Judaism and Jesus. Now, I think we need an article that acts as a survey of early Christianity with links to articles looking at specific centuries, namely Christianity in the 1st century, Christianity in the ante-Nicene period, and Christianity in the 4th century. I would recommend the following organization:

1. Origins
   1. Judaism
   2. Jesus
2. 1st century
3. 2nd century
4. 3rd century
5. 4th century

Ltwin (talk) 14:08, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Maybe renaming the article "History of early Christianity" was not a very good idea. Another option would be to rename it "Early Christianity", then it would would make sense to organize it geographically rather than chronologically. SanctumRosarium (talk) 14:20, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I personally don't think the current geographic organization is very useful. We aren't getting a survey of early Christianity (no matter what the article is called) but a confusing collections of disconnected facts that would be better addressed to articles dedicated to those places. For example, we already have an article on Jerusalem in Christianity that can cover the early Jerusalem church in detail. Ltwin (talk) 14:26, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I think the article would benefit from an overarching narrative where we cover the main themes, facts and events of early Christianity without trying to cover every early geographic center in detail. Ltwin (talk) 14:31, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

You're probably right. Also we can rename the article "Early Christianity". SanctumRosarium (talk) 14:44, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

User:SanctumRosarium, we may need an administrator to move the article because there is already a Early Christianity redirect. Ltwin (talk) 18:41, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. I started work on revising the article here User:Ltwin/Sandbox 13. However, I think we should try to salvage reliably sourced material in the article, we would just need to rearrange it. Ltwin (talk) 14:46, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

@SanctumRosarium But I would like to raise the level of sources. We don't really need to rely on older sources like the Catholic Encyclopedia since there are so many better sources available. I will do what I can to find better sources. Ltwin (talk) 14:48, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Exactly, A New History of Early Christianity by Charles Freeman and the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity of Everett Ferguson are very good sources. SanctumRosarium (talk) 18:03, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I was bold and added the section on 1st century Christianity. I'm planning on adding a subsection on Christian women in the 1st century. Ltwin (talk) 03:39, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

On second thought, we probably need more community input before we completely change the article topic. So I reverted my edits until further discussion. For those interested, my changes (the 1st century section) can be seen here. Ltwin (talk) 19:23, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Renaming the article "Early Christianity" would widen the topic. The article could include not only your chronology, and also additional sections such as "Geographical presence" or similar title, describing some of the early Christian centers. Other sections such as "Texts and doctrine" and "Art" could also be relevant. This is an example of how it could look like:

1. Overview (this could include a definition and dates)
2. History
   1. Origins/etc
3. Texts
   1. Gospels/Acts/Epistles/etc
4. Doctrine/Councils/etc
5. Christian centers
6. Art

SanctumRosarium (talk) 20:02, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Ltwin (talk) 20:08, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Then let's do it! SanctumRosarium (talk) 20:18, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

What is surprising in this article is that there is few content about the dates of Early Christianity. The lead sentence says "up to the First Council of Nicaea in 325" without further details. The first section of the article should better define what is Early Christianity. Scholars may have different views about when it begins and when it ends. Maybe the main historical sources should be presented in this section. What do you think? SanctumRosarium (talk) 20:39, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

When you say historical sources do you mean primary or secondary? We might be able to come up with a historiography section the different scholarly debates about the period. Ltwin (talk) 21:06, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Primary sources such as NT, Apostolic Fathers, Eusebius. SanctumRosarium (talk) 21:33, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I definitely think we should highlight significant Christian writings of the time period and how they shed light on Christian beliefs and practices. Also, I discovered there's an entire article on Historiography of early Christianity that could be linked to in this article. Ltwin (talk) 22:00, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

And do you think we can recycle content from this old version? It was actually a very good article before it was inexplicably destroyed and deleted. SanctumRosarium (talk) 22:22, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm looking through it now. As long as material is backed by a reliable source, I don't oppose using it. I'm not a fan of the article organization. I think it would be better to break things down by century when talking about beliefs, practices and organization since those changed and developed over time. However, I like your suggestion about having sections on geographic spread, art, etc. We might can have sections for the first 3 centuries (with subsections addressing how beliefs/practices changed developed) followed by other sections on early Christian art/architecture, etc. Ltwin (talk) 22:07, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

@Ltwin: I find it absolutely absurd that ONE editor decides to singlehandedly delete everything that they consider irrelevant and superfluous from the article, considering that the aforementioned content was extremely relevant and well-sourced with multiple academic, reliable references ([1]), and that me and other editors have contributed to improve this article and add content to it for days (see the article's history). Please let's talk about this and resolve this issue on the talk page together. GenoV84 (talk) 17:14, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

@GenoV84: OK. Let's talk about it.

1. Can we at least agree that we don't need identical paragraphs in both the Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity subsections? I am going to remove the ones I wrote.
2. The first paragraph in the Gentile Christians subsection should probably belong in the Jewish Christianity subsection, and it appears to cover the same information as the first paragraph in that subsection so they probably need to be merged somehow.
3. The second sentence in the Gentile Christians subsection is as follows:

   Saint Mark of syriac orthodox church is also known as last supper church and believe first christian church."</ref>

   There seems to be a reference missing there, and the grammar needs to be revised.
4. There are many other paragraphs in the Gentile Christian section that cover the same material in regards to the Jerusalem Council. If you would like to eliminate the redundancy yourself, then I will not interfere.
5. I've noticed in the article there are several places where text is supported by 4, 5 and 6 footnotes. Isn't this citation overkill? Wouldn't it be better to just have 1 or 2 citations from reliable sources?

Ltwin (talk) 17:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the rapid reply and for understanding my concerns.

1. I thoroughly agree with points 1 and 2;
2. Regarding point 3, I don't remember what is the reference to that sentence about St. Mark and that probably needs to be reworded in a more appropriate way; if no reference can be found, that sentence probably should be removed because it appears to be unsourced.
3. If you want, I can eliminate the redundancy regarding the content about the Council of Jerusalem;
4. I can bundle those citations into one single note; that will solve the issue easily.

GenoV84 (talk) 18:10, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

OK. Thank you. Ltwin (talk) 18:19, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Library 100 - Critical Approaches to Information Research

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 February 2024 and 12 June 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sashka1229 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Sashka1229 (talk) 00:30, 4 April 2024 (UTC)