Talk:Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter

Mostly identifying information, no analysis but a couple of useful references and one main point of the text picked out.

Spidrak 18:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion 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.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: SnowFire (talk · contribs) 18:18, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Ghosts of Europa (talk · contribs) Hello SnowFire. I love to see more editors tackling Gnosticism! I'm looking forward to reviewing this. 04:28, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable, as shown by a source spot-check.

   a (reference section): b (inline citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

From a first read of the article, I don't see any major issues. Unless otherwise mentioned, any suggestions I make are optional and not blockers for GA.

• The image is clear and relevant, and it has an informative caption. I'm not a lawyer, but the public domain rationale seems reasonable. It might be nice to add another image to break up the Analysis section (perhaps some artwork depicting Peter or Jesus?) but definitely not required.
• No issues with stability.
• The article is neutral, even while discussing potentially inflammatory religious disputes.
  • One nitpick: I think you should clarify in the lede that the text differentiates Jesus (a flesh and blood human) and Christ (a spiritual being). Without that context, it's a bit jarring to read "the Savior Christ" in Wikivoice. In another article, that would not be neutral language!
    • Yeah, fair point. It's a little tricky because it's not like we have a Gnostic St. Augustine to "explain" Gnostic theology to us. To some extent, "Separationism" is just a guess, that it seems like some Gnostics thought the mortal Jesus-body was basically uplifted / possessed by the Christ-spirit. But it's hard to say this directly as capital-T Truth. I switched to just having it be unobjectionably "Jesus" telling Peter stuff, and then trying to explain the Jesus / Christ separation at the end of the paragraph - take a look and see if it works.
      • I think the reworded version is good!
    • I'll see if I can find some relevant art, but unfortunately the Gnostic gospels were only discovered comparatively recently, so finding public domain stuff of this work specifically is a little tough. (Art of laughing ghost-Jesus behind the crucified Jesus would be interesting!) Arguably using later non-Gnostic art could open up complaints of relevance, i.e. we wouldn't want to use vanilla Christian art in Jesus in Islam by default, but maybe I'm overthinking this.
• This article is well written. I made a few small changes to fix some awkward wording, but there are no major issues. Two things I wasn't confident changing:
  • "Peter, you are to be become perfect" - Is this an accurate quote, or a typo?
    • Typo, thanks for the catch. Just goes to show that no matter how many reads you do, there's always some mistakes that will be invisible.
  • Jesus tells Peter that they are blind - Who does "they" refer to in this sentence? The ambiguity could imply Peter and Jesus himself are blind!
    • It was the priests and the people. That said, given that Peter is covering his own eyes later, fair point that it might need clarification.
• The article is focused on the text itself and broadly covers the topic. I was surprised by the lack of a Background section, but you do a good job weaving in the necessary background when it relates to an area of Analysis, wikilinking jargon where appropriate.
• The references look good. Unfortunately, I couldn't easily find Desjardins & Brashler or Ehrman's Forgery and Counterforgery online (Brill is temporarily down from The Wikipedia Library). If this were an FA review, I would head to my local university library, but that seems like overkill for GA. I did find Havelaar, Perkins, Brashler & Bullard, and Werner, and I'm satisfied that the article accurate reflects them. I'll assume good faith on the rest!
  • Some of your citations cover a broad page range. Citation 29 is 20 pages! Narrowing these will make it easier to verify source/text integrity.
  • In my copy of The Nag Hammadi Library in English, the relevant text begins on page 372, not 339. I'm guessing this is just different editions, but wanted to confirm it's not a mistake.
  • Extreme nitpick: Is the statement The author was probably Egyptian solely based on the source saying The reference within the text to “dry canals,” revised from the “dry springs” of 2 Peter, seems to suggest an Egyptian setting for the text at some stage of composition, translation, or transmission, and on the basis of this sort of evidence Birger A. Pearson prefers to assign the text to “third-century Egypt, probably Alexandria.”? If so, I think saying "probably Egyptian" in Wikivoice is too strong.
• Earwig has no copyright concerns.

Great job on the article!

Thanks for taking a look! SnowFire (talk) 05:32, 5 July 2024 (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.

Post-GA follow-up

Thanks again for the review. Re the comments above...

• Narrowed that citation as requested. (The old citation was to the entire "Christology" chapter in Havelaar, but it's now just Christology & Docetism.)
• On The Nag Hammadi Library in English: Yeah, the citation is to the first edition (1981), which the archive.org link should show. But the "Translations" section is to the third edition and has pp. 372–378 like you reported, so just an odd hiccup. It looks like they say the same thing anyway though.
• Well, Pearson is one of the big names, and he thinks it was Egyptian. Checking, Havelaar suggests Syria. Werner suggests Palestine or Syria. I'm pretty sure that Egypt is the most popular place I've seen proposed (other scholars trusting Pearson?) but fair point that even if it's the most popular option, it's still a guess. (A lot hinges on whether Gnosticism really was centered in Egypt, I guess.) I'll weaken the claim some.
• As a side note, I'm not sure how much it differs from the published version (which is what I used when writing this), but there's a "proofs" version of Luttikhuzien's chapter freely and legally available online if you're curious ([1]). I ended up making a WP article on him after reading it, I thought it was a good source - Gerard Luttikhuizen. SnowFire (talk) 07:13, 5 July 2024 (UTC)